Thread: Any doubts about Climate Change?

Originally Posted by Maanaam

But, but, but...North America and Britain are having a huge freeze!

And they might have a bigger one next year, too.

The Australian government this week formally recognized the extinction of a small rodent native to the northern area of the Great Barrier Reef, marking the first known case of mammalian extinction caused by human-induced climate change.



The Bramble Cay melomys, roughly 14-16 centimeters in length, was found only on Bramble Cay, a small coral island just 340 meters long and 150 meters wide in the Torres Strait, between the northern Australian state of Queensland and Papua New Guinea.


After the Queensland state government declared the species extinct in the wild in 2016, its status was quietly changed from "endangered" to "extinct" on a list at the bottom of a statement released by Environment Minister Melissa Price on Monday.

With the cay only about 3 meters above sea level, the rat-like rodent was left vulnerable to storm surges and rising sea levels, according to Luke Leung, an academic who co-wrote a report with the Queensland state government confirming the rodent's extinction.

"It was the only vertebrate stuck on the island, it could not fly away like the birds which nest there," he said, noting that salt water inundation also killed off much of the rodent's food sources and deprived it of shelters.

"There's always a risk of storm surges in any low-lying islands, but climate change has made this more intense and frequent so the risk is heightened and the species went extinct."

Leung's research found the last known sighting of the Bramble Cay melomys, the only mammal species native to the Great Barrier Reef, was in late 2009.

The researcher said the broader ecosystem of Bramble Cay, including birds and turtles that use the island as a nesting area does not appear to be affected by the loss of the rodent.

https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2...te-change.html

Moving in the right direction, but a long way to go.

LONDON (Reuters) - The amount of future new wind capacity in Europe financed last year rose to a record high, industry group WindEurope said on Thursday, as falling costs and increased competition made it possible for investors to fund more for less cash.

In total, 16.7 gigawatts (GW) of projects reached a final investment decision - 12.5 GW onshore and 4.2 GW offshore - 45 percent more than in 2017, WindEurope said in its annual report.


Funding for the new investments rose to 26.7 billion euros (23.2 billion pounds). Even though 45 percent more future capacity was invested in, the amount spent on the investments was 20 percent more than a year earlier, a sign that costs continue to fall.



“Cost reductions across the industry’s value chain and increased industry competition have made it possible for investors to finance more capacity for less cash,” it said.

The cost of generating electricity from wind power fell to 1.59 million euros per megawatt (MW) in 2018 from 1.93 million euros/MW in 2017, WindEurope said.

However, the report distinguishes between finance for future projects over the next few years and farms actually installed, saying the amount of capacity newly installed last year fell.



“Last year was the worst year for new wind energy installations since 2011 ... 12 EU countries didn’t install a single wind turbine last year,” said WindEurope’s chief executive Giles Dickson.

In the 28 European Union member nations plus Switzerland, Norway and Turkey, the amount of capacity added last year was 11.7 gigawatts (GW), 32 percent less than in 2017, due to poorly designed auctions and issues with permits, the report said.

In the 28-nation EU bloc, new wind installations fell to 10.1 GW, the lowest level since 2011.

“Investments in future capacity were quite good last year thanks to the UK, Spain, Sweden - and thanks also to the further expansion of offshore wind,” Dickson said.


“But the outlook for new investments is uncertain. There are structural problems in permitting, especially in Germany and France. And with the notable exception of Lithuania and despite improvements in Poland, there’s a lack of ambition in central and eastern Europe,” he added.

In total, 189.2 GW of wind power capacity is now installed in Europe, 6 percent higher than in 2017. That accounts for 18.4 percent of the EU’s total installed power generation capacity.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu...e%20newsletter

NASA eyes colossal cracks in ice shelf near Antarctic station

The Brunt ice shelf is preparing to unleash an iceberg twice the size of New York City.




Things are looking dicey along the Brunt Ice Shelf, home to the British Antarctic Survey's Halley VI Research Station. NASA is keeping an eye on some growing cracks threatening to unload an iceberg soon.


NASA/USGS Landsat satellites are monitoring the action as the cracks grow. When the iceberg calves, it could be twice the size of New York City. That would make it the largest berg to break off the Brunt ice shelf since observations of the area began in 1915.


An annotated view of the ice shelf shows the cracks as they relate to the Halley VI station. The crack leading up the middle is especially concerning. It's been stable for 35 years, but NASA says it's now extending northward as fast as 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) per year.

As of December, Halley station was home to around 30 science and technical staff on missions to study the ice shelf and climate change in the polar region. The BAS completed a relocation of the futuristic-looking Halley station in 2017, placing it farther away from the unpredictable cracking.


"It is not yet clear how the remaining ice shelf will respond following the break, posing an uncertain future for scientific infrastructure and a human presence on the shelf that was first established in 1955," NASA says. Researchers are concerned the ice shelf could become unstable or break up.

NASA says iceberg calving is "a normal part of the life cycle of ice shelves, but the recent changes are unfamiliar in this area."

The ice shelf had been fairly stable since British explorer Ernest Shackleton surveyed its coast in 1915. Now its future is uncertain.

https://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-eyes-...rctic-station/

Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard': scientists


OSLO (Reuters) - Evidence for man-made global warming has reached a “gold standard” level of certainty, adding pressure for cuts in greenhouse gases to limit rising temperatures, scientists said on Monday.

“Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals,” the U.S.-led team wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change of satellite measurements of rising temperatures over the past 40 years.


They said confidence that human activities were raising the heat at the Earth’s surface had reached a “five-sigma” level, a statistical gauge meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that the signal would appear if there was no warming.

Such a “gold standard” was applied in 2012, for instance, to confirm the discovery of the Higgs boson subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe.

Benjamin Santer, lead author of Monday’s study at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said he hoped the findings would win over skeptics and spur action.


“The narrative out there that scientists don’t know the cause of climate change is wrong,” he told Reuters. “We do.”

Mainstream scientists say the burning of fossil fuels is causing more floods, droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels.

U.S. President Donald Trump has often cast doubt on global warming and plans to pull out of the 197-nation Paris climate agreement which seeks to end the fossil fuel era this century by shifting to cleaner energies such as wind and solar power.

Sixty-two percent of Americans polled in 2018 believed that climate change has a human cause, up from 47 percent in 2013, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

SATELLITE DATA

Monday’s findings, by researchers in the United States, Canada and Scotland, said evidence for global warming reached the five sigma level by 2005 in two of three sets of satellite data widely used by researchers, and in 2016 in the third.

Professor John Christy, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville which runs the third set of data, said there were still many gaps in understanding climate change. His data show a slower pace of warming than the other two sets.

“You may see a certain fingerprint that indicates human influence, but that the actual intensity of the influence is minor (as our satellite data indicate),” he told Reuters.

Separately in 2013, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that it is “extremely likely”, or at least 95 percent probable, that human activities have been the main cause of climate change since the 1950s.

Peter Stott of the British Met Office, who was among the scientists drawing that conclusion and was not involved in Monday’s study, said he would favor raising the probability one notch to “virtually certain”, or 99-100 percent.

“The alternative explanation of natural factors dominating has got even less likely,” he told Reuters.


The last four years have been the hottest since records began in the 19th century.

The IPCC will next publish a formal assessment of the probabilities in 2021.

“I would be reluctant to raise to 99-100 percent, but there is no doubt there is more evidence of change in the global signals over a wider suite of ocean indices and atmospheric indices,” said Professor Nathan Bindoff, a climate scientist at the University of Tasmania.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-c...-idUSKCN1QE1ZU

Winter weather in the United Kingdom is known to be raw and bleak but, today, the sun shone in all its glory and temperatures surged to levels not seen before during the cold, dark season.


Temperatures in the community of Trawsgoed in Wales shot up to 20.3 Celsius, the warmest temperature ever recorded in the United Kingdom in February or any winter month.

Such weather would be unusually warm even in July or August in this typically chilly location about 32km inland from the cool waters of the Irish Sea.

The previous highest February (and winter) temperature observed in the United Kingdom was 19.7C set on February 13, 1998, at Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/new...ectid=12207296

The more evidence there is, the harder it is not to believe that we have already entered an era of uncontrollable temperature rises and the associated chaos that will bring.

As Australia welcomes the first day of autumn with a sigh of relief, the summer statistics have arrived from the Bureau of Meteorology confirming suspicions that the country just sweated through it's hottest-ever summer.


The national mean temperature for summer smashed the 1961-1990 average by a whopping 2.14 °C, almost a full degree above the previous hottest summer on record (2012-2013), which was 1.28 degrees above the old average.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/env...01-p5119e.html

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/new...ectid=12210364

Growing call for climate change 'alternatives' to be taught in US schools

Here are the alternatives:

1. you either accept the science that anthropogenic driven climate change is a real thing and it's happening; or

2. you announce that you're a moron and really want to be on the wrong flat-earth side of history.

Greta Thunberg, the girl who started this movement, has been (properly!) nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

I hope she wins it.

It started in front of the Swedish parliament, on 20 August – a regular school day. Greta Thunberg sat with her painted sign and some homemade flyers. This was the first school climate strike. Fridays wouldn’t be regular schooldays any longer. The rest of us, and many more alongside us, picked it up in Australia, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, New Zealand, Uganda. Today the climate strike will take place all around the world.


This movement had to happen, we didn’t have a choice. We knew there was a climate crisis. Not just because forests in Sweden or in the US had been on fire; because of alternating floods and drought in Germany and Australia; because of the collapse of alpine faces due to melting permafrost and other climate changes. We knew, because everything we read and watched screamed out to us that something was very wrong.


That first day of refusing to go to school was spent alone, but since then a movement of climate strikers has swept the globe. Today young people in more than 100 countries will walk out of class to demand action on the greatest threat humankind has ever faced.


These strikes are happening today – from Washington DC to Moscow, Tromsø to Invercargill, Beirut to Jerusalem, and Shanghai to Mumbai – because politicians have failed us. We’ve seen years of negotiations, pathetic deals on climate change, fossil fuel companies being given free rein to carve open our lands, drill beneath our soils and burn away our futures for their profit. We’ve seen fracking, deep sea drilling and coalmining continue. Politicians have known the truth about climate change and they’ve willingly handed over our future to profiteers whose search for quick cash threatens our very existence.


This movement had to happen, we didn’t have a choice. Last year’s UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on global warming could not have been clearer about the extreme dangers of going beyond 1.5C of global warming. To have any chance of avoiding that extreme danger emissions must drop rapidly – so that by the time we will be in our mid- and late-20s we are living in a transformed world.


The students who are striking in cities, towns and villages around the world are uniting behind the science. We are only asking that our leaders to do the same.


If those in power today don’t act, it will be our generation who will live through their failure. Those who are under 20 now could be around to see 2080, and face the prospect of a world that has warmed by up to 4C. The effects of such warming would be utterly devastating. Rivers would flood, storms would wreak havoc on coastal communities and coral reefs would be eliminated. Melting polar ice caps would lead to dramatically higher sea levels, flooding coastal areas. Places on Earth will become uninhabitable.


Scientists have also shown us that burning fossil fuels is “the world’s most significant threat to children’s health”. Nine out of every 10 children around the world are breathing dangerous air. Our lives are being compromised before we are born. Toxic particles from exhaust fumes pass through the lungs of pregnant women and accumulate in the placenta. The risk of premature birth, low birth weight and cognitive dysfunction this causes is a public health catastrophe. Pollution from diesel vehicles is stunting the growth of our lungs, leaving us damaged for life. Toxic air from burning fossil fuels is choking not only our lungs but our hopes and dreams.


And the worst effects of climate change are disproportionately felt by our most vulnerable communities. This is not just about cutting down emissions, but about equity – the system we have right now is failing us, working only for the rich few. The luxury so few of us enjoy in the global north is based on the suffering of people in the global south.


We have watched as politicians fumble, playing a political game rather than facing the facts that the solutions we need cannot be found within the current system. They don’t want to face the facts – we need to change the system if we are to try to act on the climate crisis.


This movement had to happen, we didn’t have a choice. The vast majority of climate strikers taking action today aren’t allowed to vote. Imagine for a second what that feels like. Despite watching the climate crisis unfold, despite knowing the facts, we aren’t allowed to have a say in who makes the decisions about climate change. And then ask yourself this: wouldn’t you go on strike too, if you thought doing so could help protect your own future?


So today we walk out of school, we quit our college lessons, and we take to the streets to say enough is enough. Some adults say we shouldn’t be walking out of classes – that we should be “getting an education”. We think organising against an existential threat – and figuring out how to make our voices heard – is teaching us some important lessons.


Other adults keep saying: “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.” But we don’t want your hope. We don’t want you to be hopeful. We want you to panic and we want you to take action. We want you to join us.


We’ve relied on adults to make the right decisions to ensure that there is a future for the next generation – surely we don’t have all the answers. But what we do know is that we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, phase out subsidies for dirty energy production, seriously invest in renewables and start asking difficult questions about how we structure our economies and who is set to win and who is set to lose.


And we are no longer alone. Tens of thousands of scientists from around the world have released statements in support of the strikes by children. The scientists have been very clear about what we need to do to tackle climate change. We are uniting behind the scientists. We are only asking that our leaders do the same.


It is so important that this happens now. The kind of changes that need to happen mean everyone recognising that this is a crisis and committing to radical transformations. We strongly believe that we can fight off the most damaging effects of climate change – but we have to act now.


There is no grey area when it comes to survival. There’s no less bad option. That’s why young people are striking in every corner of the globe, and it’s why we are asking that older people join us on the streets too. When our house is burning we cannot just leave it to the children to pour water on the flames – we need the grownups to take responsibility for sparking the blaze in the first place. So for once, we’re asking grownups to follow our lead: we can’t wait any longer.


This movement had to happen. And now, you adults have a choice.


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/15/school-climate-strike-greta-thunberg

The problem is how to fix it. planting trees wont fix it, whatever europe does will not fix it. The fix is unafordable and so catastrophic to the current world economy noone would implement it, so get use to rising temperatures sea levels etc, global warming is here to stay. A recent study suggests if the whole continental united states was given over to planting new forests it would only remove about 10% of the current atmospheric CO2. Thailand cant even get farmers to stop burning off despite some of the worst air pollution levels in the world, forget the rest, which would require all power to be renewables only, no fossil fuel heating or transport no meat or dairy just for starters.

Originally Posted by Hugh Cow

The problem is how to fix it. planting trees wont fix it, whatever europe does will not fix it. The fix is unafordable and so catastrophic to the current world economy noone would implement it, so get use to rising temperatures sea levels etc, global warming is here to stay. A recent study suggests if the whole continental united states was given over to planting new forests it would only remove about 10% of the current atmospheric CO2. Thailand cant even get farmers to stop burning off despite some of the worst air pollution levels in the world, forget the rest, which would require all power to be renewables only, no fossil fuel heating or transport no meat or dairy just for starters.

It's beyond fixing now. It's not about reducing C02 production any more, it's about reversing it.

So basically the current and next generations are fucked and will have to live with the consequences.

The pace could be slowed but there is no political will to do so, and anyway we might have reached a tipping point where it makes no difference.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

It's beyond fixing now. It's not about reducing C02 production any more, it's about reversing it.

So basically the current and next generations are fucked and will have to live with the consequences.

The pace could be slowed but there is no political will to do so, and anyway we might have reached a tipping point where it makes no difference.

Sadly, there is every chance you are right Harry. In Oz, with some of the best total sunlight hours in the world for solar, the government is looking at more coal mines opening, a hypocritical gesture akin to Norway reducing emissions and selling as much oil as possible.

The poles become livable and the equator unlivable. Temperate regions just swap their tops and bottoms.

It's a boon for Canada, Russia and Nordics. Africa, northern S. America and Indonesia get hosed.

Not the end of the world.

^ Where to you get that utter nonsense? Fox news?

Originally Posted by Hugh Cow

The problem is how to fix it. planting trees wont fix it, whatever europe does will not fix it. The fix is unafordable and so catastrophic to the current world economy noone would implement it, so get use to rising temperatures sea levels etc, global warming is here to stay.

You're not wrong on that first part but what if the costs of not fixing it is too high.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

You're not wrong on that first part but what if the costs of not fixing it is too high.

That is the more salient point isn't it. To be honest I do not think that the global capitalist economy will figure that out until it is to late.

While I believe that anthropogenic climate change is an undeniable fact, I will be interested to see the IPCcs view in probabilities published in 2021.

I also believe that two major concerns need to be addressed.

1. The percentage of anthropogenic climate change versus the natural cyclic climate changes. We do seem to be in a period where both factors are pushing change, and, more importantly, accelerating that change. Neither factor can be ignored any longer. Species, including humans and bacteria will not have time to adapt.

2. The effects, regardless of percentages to blame, are causing feedback loops in ice sheets, atmosphere and oceans, that simply cannot be turned off. It’s a devastating prognosis that even the mighty USA can no longer ignore.

It saddens me that, the hardline capitalists who hold the power, are so corrupt that, even while they recognize the problem, they are using that knowledge to squeeze the last dollar out of the system while they still can.

The problem Tex is that it is about climate extremes. Countries in the far North such as Canada and possibly parts of northen U.S.A and northern Europe, Russia etc could in fact get colder with extreme severe temperatures and longer winters, making them almost uninhabitable and too cold to grow crops, whilst fish stocks move further south to warmer ocean temperatures as warming ocean currents change direction and do not travel as far North.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

You point to a real and serious problem. But you are wrong blaming it on the capitalist economy. I am looking at former communist Germany, the DDR. They should have had a grip on environmental issues as they were not driven by capitalism. But really it was a disaster area. Pollution on a magnitude not conceivable in the advanced western societies.

I quite disagree with you. Although surely not always as per good standards of environmental protection, in the view of some remote areas of North America, Canada where a huge disasters on a great scale have been happening over decades. Many links to those problems there can be find, although not very much publicized...

Originally Posted by Klondyke

in the view of some remote areas of North America, Canada where a huge disasters on a great scale have been happening over decades.

The difference is that disasters of that magnitude happened right in the middle of population centers in the DDR. Google Bitterfeld.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

You point to a real and serious problem. But you are wrong blaming it on the capitalist economy. I am looking at former communist Germany, the DDR.

There is no doubt that the former Soviet Union and it's satellite states poured an enormous amount of carbon into the atmosphere but they have been gone now for the better part of three decades. In that time frame carbon emissions have skyrocketed. The capitalist system is simply not sustainable. The corporations are to short term profit motivated to actually address what is a long term problem.

(sorry, cannot find on rt)

The U.S. Is the Biggest Carbon Polluter in History. It Just Walked Away From the Paris Climate Deal.







https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...mate-deal.html

Originally Posted by bsnub

There is no doubt that the former Soviet Union and it's satellite states poured an enormous amount of carbon into the atmosphere but they have been gone now for the better part of three decades. In that time frame carbon emissions have skyrocketed. The capitalist system is simply not sustainable. The corporations are to short term profit motivated to actually address what is a long term problem.

A lot of the increase comes from third world countries and China trying to catch up. But it is true, it is not sustainable and it is the responsibility of the west to drive our consumption down.

The DDR was on par with the USA on energy consumption per head, due to extreme inefficiency. What's worse they used mostly brown coal and run down very old inefficient power plants without any filters. Emitting black clouds of soot, CO2, CO and sulphur compounds because that coal contained plenty of sulphur. Chemical production areas like Bitterfeld were disaster areas saturated with toxic waste, and it was densely populated. The same stuff was used for heating the appartments of inner city Berlin burning them in ancient tile stoves. Black soot out of every chimney. The sky was yellow during winter. My personal experience, as I lived in Berlin, fortunately not in the center but I could see it over the wall.

I heard a story from someone working on city gas. They switched over from old gas factories producing gas from coal to russian natural gas. They did so without upgrading their infrastructure. The coal gas contained a lot of water vapor and the seals were designed for that. Switching over to russian gas without upgrading the seals meant the underground pipes got leaky. A huge part of the gas leaked out. You could literally drive a steel rod through the inner city pavement and use a lighter to ignite the gas streaming out of the hole.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

The DDR was on par with the USA on energy consumption per head, due to extreme inefficiency.

Again, I cannot agree with you. Do you have some figures? Although I cannot give you a link with figures - they surely can be found - it's a very known fact that USA did not have any need to save energy since abundance of a pretty cheap sources around.

Many years ago (ca. 40) I had been involved in planning of all-electrical housing, thus studying available sources and realized projects . The West Germany had been very advanced in this field, so getting know a lot, not only about them. In that time all available sources indicated that the US energy consumption per head was always 3 - 4 times more than of an European average. Not only in electrical domestic housing but also in a total energy.

The reason why it is so, is very clear: The majority of US houses is of wooden construction with a poor insulation including the sliding windows (mainly single glazed), with a direct electrical heating combined with air/conditioning. Nothing like that comparable in Europe - whether West or East.

And the large road cruisers where no one cared about consumption of the cheap gas?

I know, in last decades it has changed a lot, the gasoline is no longer so cheap and the houses are of better construction. But in Europe it has changed a lot as well.

That you did see black clouds of soot over the Berlin wall? It does not mean that nobody cared about a reasonable energy consumption and so the cost.

That's why the first oil crisis in 1973 was not so shocking in Europe as in USA...