Global warming discussion IV

[CapelDodger]

Such efforts are, at best, a distraction from the actions that need to be taken.

I disagree : it doesn't detract from efforts to get action taken, and if anything might increase popular pressure foraction. Let's not stray into Lomborgian "if we do this we're not doing that" when we can do both.

It's no great effort to slap down the last farts issuing from the flaccid balloon that is denier-world.

 

[CapelDodger]

To my understandings, this is the new trend of accelerating changes that we will get to enjoy for at least the next several centuries.

Quite the optimist, I see. I'm not expecting more than a few decades.

 

[macdoc]

It's no great effort to slap down the last farts issuing from the flaccid balloon that is denier-world.

ANY attention just offers a soapbox and makes them and perhap a few innnocent readers that the deniers have some point.....

 

[Trakar]

I disagree : it doesn't detract from efforts to get action taken, and if anything might increase popular pressure foraction. Let's not stray into Lomborgian "if we do this we're not doing that" when we can do both.

It's no great effort to slap down the last farts issuing from the flaccid balloon that is denier-world.

Personally, I don't see that the vast majority of people are interested in saving themselves, or have proven that there is any value in wasting effort to save them from themselves, and I've lost interest, the survivors will write the history.

 

[CapelDodger]

Personally, I don't see that the vast majority of people are interested in saving themselves, or have proven that there is any value in wasting effort to save them from themselves, and I've lost interest, the survivors will write the history.

I am cultivating my own garden and trying not to be too egregious a part of the problem.

 

[CapelDodger]

ANY attention just offers a soapbox and makes them and perhap a few innnocent readers that the deniers have some point.....

For most people if it's in the paper they must have some point otherwise it wouldn't be in the paper, would it? People are that dumb.

OK, there's mostly no hope for them, but I don't think these things should go unanswered. On principle. And I appreciate the efforts of those who do - but let's face it it's mostly boilerplate by now. There's nothing new coming out at all, and we know why. It's too late.

 

[macdoc]

The comments sections in news rags are a hopeless forum for answering and there are enough laypersons who DO haunt those pages to provide an answer.

The critical point is the powers that be are moving the effort to carbon neutral forward and in many cases on a purely economic basis.

When even Exxon caves, the Saudi ruler, Tony Abbot and Harper turfed ( both in part for being dunderhead climate deniers ) .....when all the coal companies in the US worth hundred and fifty billion a few years back are now worth 150 million and falling....it's a long slow end game for fossil.

The technology to move out of fossil I think is where the hard decisions will come.

 

[Trakar]

I am cultivating my own garden and trying not to be too egregious a part of the problem.

While self-sufficiency is a good start, I recommend to people that they form communities of like-minded individuals. Even at a micro-scale, there are some things that are much easier with a group than as isolated individuals.

 

[Trakar]

...The technology to move out of fossil I think is where the hard decisions will come.

The hard decision most people, even among many (if not most) of those who claim to understand how serious climate change is, is when does it become an over-riding priority when it comes to deciding who to vote for.

My answer of 50 years ago seems to be an extreme outlier even amongst many so-called Climate hawks.

 

[CapelDodger]

While self-sufficiency is a good start, I recommend to people that they form communities of like-minded individuals. Even at a micro-scale, there are some things that are much easier with a group than as isolated individuals.

Group sufficiency is, I think, the natural human mode.

I had new neighbours move in next-door this winter and they have Green Party posters in their window, so I'm happy. I thought I'd recognised like minds, and not just when the solar panels went up.

 

[macdoc]

I'm in enviable position of having electricity from 95% zero carbon sources ( there are a few gas turbines for peak power ) so that aspect of personal electrical use is a non-starter.
I don't cut my power use for ecological reasons but rather economic...just saves me money.

Biggest issue for me is transport and there is no vehicle as yet that will meet our needs tho one staff now has a current Prius that he's quite impressed with. I'll be gone from Canada by the time the Honda van needs replacing.

We are likely to move to a long electrical range plug in hybrid in 2020 in Australia when I move there full time.

By then, for the riding there - might even be an EV bike in the mix as I''d love to ride the rain forest tracks on an electric and will be useful for errands

We won't go off grid for the property in Malanda tho we could. We will have solar hot water and solar panels as we do now in Aus but a bigger set up for panels.

Electricity is expensive and too much coal still in Australia but we expect an avalanche of change for the home owner by 2020 as we will get 300 days of sunlight in a tropical setting so a lot of available power.

Australia just might switch to solar and wind very rapidly as it has the right structure to do so.

The Australian Government has settled on reforms to the Renewable Energy Target, following careful consideration and extensive consultations.

The new target for large-scale generation of 33,000 GWh in 2020 will double the amount of large-scale renewable energy being delivered by the scheme compared to current levels and means that about 23.5 per cent of Australia’s electricity generation in 2020 will be from renewable sources.

I suspect it might accelerate faster than that.
https://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/renewable-energy-target-scheme

This was done by the former Tony Abbot gov so it is lip service to what could be achieved.

How Australia could reach 90% renewables by 2030

By Giles Parkinson on 23 November 2015
Print Friendly
The Australian Greens have now launched details of how they would meet their long held policy proposal to take Australia to 90 per cent renewable energy for its electricity needs by 2030.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/how-australia-could-reach-90-renewables-by-2030-2030

••••

I find city efforts like Portland's
https://www.travelportland.com/article/easy-green-portland/

to be effective as a city has a lot more power to enforce changes like building codes. Portland has a dept. dedicated to reducing carbon and city dwellers are behind it...you don't dare have a pizza delivery that is not fully EV.

That is the kind of think carbon neutral headspace that is very important.

My goal is to have the same luxuries and conveniences as I have now but in a low carbon industrial civilization.

Countries like Sweden with a carbon neutral by 2050 plan for the whole nation are admirable yet it remains competitive in the business community ( second in the world ) and happy citizens for the most part.

 

[macdoc]

Some of you might recall Bench Burch calculated that we were carpet bombing Greenland with thermal equivalent of 4,000 Hiroshima bombs a day....

Well one of those came to earth at Fort McMurray which has some sort of black irony as it is the centre of tar sand development

Hiroshima....yup

Oil production is down 1 million barrels a day and it's the largest natural disaster for Canada so far with $9 billion in costs estimated.

The fire was the size of 10 Manhattan Islands and expected to double again.

Rider I was talking to yesterday ....his brother lost all but his camper - family got out barely.

This is what he drove through

ah what's a couple of degrees here and there...

 

[Trakar]

Some of you might recall Bench Burch calculated that we were carpet bombing Greenland with thermal equivalent of 4,000 Hiroshima bombs a day....

Well one of those came to earth at Fort McMurray which has some sort of black irony as it is the centre of tar sand development

Hiroshima....yup

[qimg]https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/news/canada/2016/05/06/fort-mcmurray-scenes-from-the-rubble/fire8jpg.jpg.size.custom.crop.1086x724.jpg[/qimg]

[qimg]https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/news/canada/2016/05/06/fort-mcmurray-scenes-from-the-rubble/fire3jpg.jpg.size.custom.crop.1086x724.jpg[/qimg]

Oil production is down 1 million barrels a day and it's the largest natural disaster for Canada so far with $9 billion in costs estimated.

The fire was the size of 10 Manhattan Islands and expected to double again.

Rider I was talking to yesterday ....his brother lost all but his camper - family got out barely.

This is what he drove through

[qimg]http://www.metronews.ca/content/dam/thestar/uploads/2016/5/5/2016-05-04-07-57-02-ng-a03-05052016-firesarahmackinnon2.jpg[/qimg]

ah what's a couple of degrees here and there...

Wait till the rains of Fall try to wash all this away.

 

[macdoc]

It's not just fire where the thermal impact is showing...

Climate-exodus expected in the Middle East and North Africa
May 2, 2016

Plagued by heat and dust: Desert dust storms such as here in Kuwait could occur more often in the Middle East and North Africa as a result of climate change. In addition, temperatures on very hot days could rise to 50 degrees Celsius on …more

The number of climate refugees could increase dramatically in future. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia have calculated that the Middle East and North Africa could become so hot that human habitability is compromised.
The goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees Celsius, agreed at the recent UN climate summit in Paris, will not be sufficient to prevent this scenario. The temperature during summer in the already very hot Middle East and North Africa will increase more than two times faster compared to the average global warming. This means that during hot days temperatures south of the Mediterranean will reach around 46 degrees Celsius (approximately 114 degrees Fahrenheit) by mid-century. Such extremely hot days will occur five times more often than was the case at the turn of the millennium. In combination with increasing air pollution by windblown desert dust, the environmental conditions could become intolerable and may force people to migrate.
More than 500 million people live in the Middle East and North Africa - a region which is very hot in summer and where climate change is already evident. The number of extremely hot days has doubled since 1970

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-05-climate-exodus-middle-east-north-africa.html#jCp

 

[macdoc]

1.5C eh...

Not bloody likely

 

[macdoc]

New scrutiny for a slowing Atlantic conveyor
Eric Hand
Science 13 May 2016:

Summary

Scientists are retrieving data from the largest effort yet to monitor the Atlantic conveyor belt, a set of powerful ocean currents with far-reaching effects on the global climate that has mysteriously slowed over the past decade. Five research cruises this spring and summer will fetch data from the 53 moorings in an array called Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program (OSNAP), which stretches from Labrador to Greenland to Scotland. The array's measurements of temperature, salinity, and current velocity will be key to understanding the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), and how it is affected by climate change. The AMOC currents include the Gulf Stream, which brings shallow warm waters north, nourishing fisheries and warming northwest Europe. The warm waters give up their heat in the bitterly cold regions monitored by OSNAP, become denser, and sink, forming ocean-bottom currents that return southward, hugging the perimeter of the ocean basins. Models suggest that climate change should weaken the AMOC as warmer Arctic temperatures, combined with buoyant freshwater from Greenland's melting ice cap, impede the formation of deep currents. But so far, limited ocean measurements show the AMOC to be far more capricious than the models have been able to capture.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6287/751

this is tied into the cold spot in the Atlantic which causing weather havoc.

What’s going on in the North Atlantic?
Filed under: Climate Science — stefan @ 23 March 2015
The North Atlantic between Newfoundland and Ireland is practically the only region of the world that has defied global warming and even cooled. Last winter there even was the coldest on record – while globally it was the hottest on record. Our recent study (Rahmstorf et al. 2015) attributes this to a weakening of the Gulf Stream System, which is apparently unique in the last thousand years.

The whole world is warming. The whole world? No! A region in the subpolar Atlantic has cooled over the past century – unique in the world for an area with reasonable data coverage (Fig. 1). So what’s so special about this region between Newfoundland and Ireland?

more

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/03/whats-going-on-in-the-north-atlantic/

 

[Megalodon]

If you want to know what is really interesting about both the area and the cooling, read up on the Younger Dryas.

 

[macdoc]

Still uncertain on that as far as a bolide goes tho.

 

[Alphaba]

Meanwhile, GISS global temperature anomalies running means (PDF) have been updated for April 2016:

 

[macdoc]

1.5 C eh .....sure