Cont: Global warming discussion V

[lomiller]

I was on vacation in the UK in the Summer of 2003, when they had a couple of days of 100 degree temperature.
It was Horrible.And Ihave lived most of my life in the American West, where yu can expect 100 F of higher days ever year, so I am used to high temperature, and I found 100 F in London hard to take. It was probably the damn humidity that made it so bad.
I don't envy you in the UK.

The upper limit for human survival is a wet bulb temperature of ~35 deg C. Beyond this evaporation no longer cools your body much. At 38 deg C (100.4 def F) you reach this at ~45% relative humidity. at 40 deg C you hit it at ~30% relative humidity Fortunately increasing temperature decreases relative humidity so even a wet climate like England isn't going to hit 45% humidity at these temperatures any time soon. The higher humidity there still makes it far worse than what's you'd see in a dry climate and wet bulb temperatures on 28deg C are more then enough to be fatal to the elderly and people in poor health.


Fortunately Wet bulb temperature of 35 deg C have only been observed a few times and over relatively short periods, but is expected to become more common over the next 50 years. Keep in mind that's the limit where even healthily individuals (or mammals in general) can survive for prolonged periods even if they are inactive.

 

[Pixel42]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62323048

Weather forecasters faced unprecedented levels of trolling during this month's extreme heat in the UK, according to leading figures in the industry.

The BBC's team received hundreds of abusive tweets or emails questioning their reports and telling them to "get a grip", as temperatures hit 40.C.

BBC meteorologist Matt Taylor said he had never experienced anything like it in nearly 25 years working in weather.

The Royal Meteorological Society condemned the trolling.

Most of the abuse seems to have been prompted as links were made between the heatwave and climate change.

Morons.

Nice to see this being spelt out:

Hundreds of people have also shared their experiences of the 1976 heatwave on social media, with many making the false suggestion that this month's heatwave was "no different".

The peak temperature in 1976 was 35.9C, more than four degrees lower than the 40.3C recorded on 19 July. Nine out of 10 of the hottest days ever recorded in the UK have been since 1990, according to the Met Office. The hottest day from 1976 ranks as 13th in the list of the hottest UK days on record.

 

[Trakar]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62323048

Morons.

Nice to see this being spelt out:

LOL, well, given the state of infrastructure throughout many, if not most western nations, it shouldn't be surprising that the trolls have left their collapsing bridges and taken to the streets and internet to share their dissatisfaction (and personally preferred delusions) regarding the current state of the world.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

Why we are all ****** and our little individual actions amount to the square root of sod all - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/29/drake-defends-short-private-jet-flights - and - https://www.theguardian.com/environ...private-jet-flights-super-rich-climate-crisis

Every single thing any of us have done over the years is just wiped out by the actions of ******** like this.

Why the **** am I bothering? We are all ******. And that may well be a good thing.

 

[The Atheist]

We are all ******. And that may well be a good thing.

I think it is. We passed peak humanity some time ago, and there's no future for the species. I have a thread on "Reasons humans deserve to be doomed" with several millions reasons. Kylie Jenner and her ilk just made it #5,728,333 reasons.

This is why I stress to my kids to live it up, don't give a crap about the planet or anyone else, and have no children.

 

[Samson]

I think it is. We passed peak humanity some time ago, and there's no future for the species. I have a thread on "Reasons humans deserve to be doomed" with several millions reasons. Kylie Jenner and her ilk just made it #5,728,333 reasons.

This is why I stress to my kids to live it up, don't give a crap about the planet or anyone else, and have no children.

Well your children are broadly immune from global warming, so I think a population freeze in NZ is an obvious first step, like closing a night club.

 

[The Atheist]

Well your children are broadly immune from global warming, so I think a population freeze in NZ is an obvious first step, like closing a night club.

Good idea. Let's do forced sterilisation and see how it goes. Save a few dollars of DPB as well.

 

[Samson]

Good idea. Let's do forced sterilisation and see how it goes. Save a few dollars of DPB as well.

It seems a spectacular no brainer, more people means more cows.
Let's index population to cows, and clean Lake Ellesmere.

 

[The Atheist]

Bye bye sea turtles!

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/03/us/florida-turtles-born-female-climate-change/index.html

 

[The Atheist]

Maybe we can have a race with the turtles?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/climate-change-infectious-disease-paper_n_62dfeac9e4b03dbb991d9a9e

 

[Trakar]

NASA Studies Find Previously Unknown Loss of Antarctic Ice

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-studies-find-previously-unknown-loss-of-antarctic-ice

New research on Antarctica, including the first map of iceberg calving, doubles the previous estimates of loss from ice shelves and details how the continent is changing...

Two studies published Aug. 10 and led by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California reveal unexpected new data about how the Antarctic Ice Sheet has been losing mass in recent decades:

One study, published in the journal Nature, maps how iceberg calving – the breaking off of ice from a glacier front – has changed the Antarctic coastline over the last 25 years. The researchers found that the edge of the ice sheet has been shedding icebergs faster than the ice can be replaced. This surprise finding doubles previous estimates of ice loss from Antarctic’s floating ice shelves since 1997, from 6 trillion to 12 trillion metric tons. Ice loss from calving has weakened the ice shelves and allowed Antarctic glaciers to flow more rapidly to the ocean, accelerating the rate of global sea level rise.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05037-w - Antarctic calving loss rivals ice-shelf thinning
​

The other study, published in Earth System Science Data, shows in unprecedented detail how the thinning of Antarctic ice as ocean water melts it has spread from the continent’s outward edges into its interior, almost doubling in the western parts of the ice sheet over the past decade. Combined, the complementary reports give the most complete view yet of how the frozen continent is changing.
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/14/3573/2022/- Elevation change of the Antarctic Ice Sheet: 1985 to 2020
​

 

[Trakar]

PNAS: Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2108146119

Abstract
Prudent risk management requires consideration of bad-to-worst-case scenarios. Yet, for climate change, such potential futures are poorly understood. Could anthropogenic climate change result in worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction? At present, this is a dangerously underexplored topic. Yet there are ample reasons to suspect that climate change could result in a global catastrophe. Analyzing the mechanisms for these extreme consequences could help galvanize action, improve resilience, and inform policy, including emergency responses. We outline current knowledge about the likelihood of extreme climate change, discuss why understanding bad-to-worst cases is vital, articulate reasons for concern about catastrophic outcomes, define key terms, and put forward a research agenda. The proposed agenda covers four main questions: 1) What is the potential for climate change to drive mass extinction events? 2) What are the mechanisms that could result in human mass mortality and morbidity? 3) What are human societies' vulnerabilities to climate-triggered risk cascades, such as from conflict, political instability, and systemic financial risk? 4) How can these multiple strands of evidence—together with other global dangers—be usefully synthesized into an “integrated catastrophe assessment”? It is time for the scientific community to grapple with the challenge of better understanding catastrophic climate change.

Of particular interest to me, are the following passages:

Even without considering worst-case climate responses, the current trajectory puts the world on track for a temperature rise between 2.1 °C and 3.9 °C by 2100 (11). If all 2030 nationally determined contributions are fully implemented, warming of 2.4 °C (1.9 °C to 3.0 °C) is expected by 2100. Meeting all long-term pledges and targets could reduce this to 2.1 °C (1.7 °C to 2.6 °C) (12). Even these optimistic assumptions lead to dangerous Earth system trajectories. Temperatures of more than 2 °C above preindustrial values have not been sustained on Earth’s surface since before the Pleistocene Epoch (or more than 2.6 million years ago) (13).

Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5, now SSP5-8.5), the highest emissions pathway used in IPCC scenarios, most closely matches cumulative emissions to date (25). This may not be the case going forward, because of falling prices of renewable energy and policy responses (26). Yet, there remain reasons for caution. For instance, there is significant uncertainty over key variables such as energy demand and economic growth. Plausibly higher economic growth rates could make RCP8.5 35% more likely (27).

The entire paper deserves close examination, but I'll end this post by linking the references in the above excerpts.

• ¹¹ P. R. Liu, A. E. Raftery, Country-based rate of emissions reductions should increase by 80% beyond nationally determined contributions to meet the 2 °C target. Commun. Earth Environ. 2, 1–29 (2021).
  ¹²Climate Action Tracker, 2100 warming projections. Climate Action Tracker. Accessed 1 March 2022. https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures.
  ¹³M. Willeit, A. Ganopolski, R. Calov, V. Brovkin, Mid-Pleistocene transition in glacial cycles explained by declining CO2 and regolith removal. Sci. Adv. 5, eaav7337 (2019).
  ²⁵C. R. Schwalm, S. Glendon, P. B. Duffy, RCP8.5 tracks cumulative CO2 emissions. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 117, 19656–19657 (2020).
  ²⁶Z. Hausfather, G. P. Peters, Emissions—The ‘business as usual’ story is misleading. Nature 577, 618–620 (2020).
  ²⁷P. Christensen, K. Gillingham, W. Nordhaus, Uncertainty in forecasts of long-run economic growth. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 115, 5409–5414 (2018).

PS I may have alternative open-source links for some of these reference links if anyone has trouble accessing these references.

 

[Trakar]

Regarding Antarctic Ice loss

PLOS (Public Library of Science) has an article out regarding this same topic called "The things we take for granted." (https://allmodels.plos.org/the-things-we-take-for-granted/ )

 

[Aridas]

Federal study: New climate law to slice carbon pollution 40%

Hardly a full solution to the issues at hand, even if the projections end up as reality, but it's a heck of a lot better than nothing.

 

[The Atheist]

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2108146119

I think we might have been over-estimating where the warming line is - it might be that 2^o is way too much, because of the concentration of heat in the cities, and the proliferation of severe weather events.

This year, we've seen all kinds of heat and drought records broken across the NH, while concurrently having the worst flooding in history in the south. I'd love to see a reliable study of the growth of severe weather events this century, because the way the climate is already - and the sea turtles are a guide - makes me think we're already in an extremely dangerous phase.

 

[Trakar]

I think we might have been over-estimating where the warming line is - it might be that 2^o is way too much, because of the concentration of heat in the cities, and the proliferation of severe weather events.

This year, we've seen all kinds of heat and drought records broken across the NH, while concurrently having the worst flooding in history in the south. I'd love to see a reliable study of the growth of severe weather events this century, because the way the climate is already - and the sea turtles are a guide - makes me think we're already in an extremely dangerous phase.

The analysis is always conservative, that is the nature of science publication and journalism in general. The reality that unfolds is almost always much more jarring in expression of the full implications of what the science indicates.

 

[lomiller]

I think we might have been over-estimating where the warming line is - it might be that 2^o is way too much, because of the concentration of heat in the cities, and the proliferation of severe weather events.

This year, we've seen all kinds of heat and drought records broken across the NH, while concurrently having the worst flooding in history in the south. I'd love to see a reliable study of the growth of severe weather events this century, because the way the climate is already - and the sea turtles are a guide - makes me think we're already in an extremely dangerous phase.

These types of thing are accounted for in bot the models and in the temperature datasets. The biggest problem with the estimate of 2 deg warming is that it's based on emissions reductions that are not happening yet. The business as usual scenarios are much worse than 2 deg C.

 

[Trakar]

These types of thing are accounted for in bot the models and in the temperature datasets. The biggest problem with the estimate of 2 deg warming is that it's based on emissions reductions that are not happening yet. The business as usual scenarios are much worse than 2 deg C.

...well, that, and the fact that even the hoped for reductions are based upon very conservative estimates of the warming effects that they are designed to adjust/adapt to.

 

[Trakar]

7 Tipping Points of Near-Term Concern

("Points of No Return" - https://grist.org/climate-tipping-points-amazon-greenland-boreal-forest/)

This article discussed and explored a commentary in Nature (27 November 2019) titled "Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against". The Tipping points discussed were divided into 3 categories (Sea, Ice, and Land). The Sea tipping points looked at were focused upon the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and the fate of the oceans' Coral Reef systems. The Ice tipping points looked at were the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Antarctica Ice Sheets (particular focus on West Antarctica’s Amundsen Sea system and the Thwaites Glacier). There were 3 Land tipping points looked at, and these are the thawing of the Northern Hemisphere's permafrost, the fate of the Boreal forests, and the transition of the Amazon Rainforest.

After discussing the issues with each of these tipping points, to include the primary problem being that we are approaching (if not having already tipped some of these (now or in the near future) into) irreversibility of all of these systems simultaneously, the discussion shifts to how we might still achieve some progress in in slowing or stopping these systems from their current race toward collapse. This might be achieved through finally taking ownership of ownership for our societal emissions.

Good informative read, that helps understand many of the problems we face if we don't address our climate forcing activities while ending on a high point by discussing how we have achieved some extremely difficult societal goals in the past, and how we might yet be able achieve a truly remarkable planetary-scale reformation of behavior if we individually and jointly commit to these as necessary efforts for the survival of our nations, economies and quite possibly our species.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

while ending on a high point by discussing how we have achieved some extremely difficult societal goals in the past, and how we might yet be able achieve a truly remarkable planetary-scale reformation of behavior

We will, but only after our noses have been well and truly rubbed in it. And 'conservatives' will be wailing "If only we had known what the effects of global warming would be - why didn't you tell us?".