Climate Change / Global Warming Discussion

[S'toon]

Greenland ice melt speed has doubled

Greenland's ice sheet melted twice as fast between 2003 and 2010 as it did from 1900 to 1983, according to the first study of Greenland ice loss over the past century that is based on observations rather than models.

Between 1900 and 2010, meltwater from Greenland boosted the global sea level by 25 millimetres, making up 10 to 18 per cent of global sea level rise, reports the new study published today by an international team of researchers, including some in Canada.

Previous estimates have suggested that Greenland contains enough ice to raise world sea levels by about six metres if it all melted – a process that could take thousands of years.

The new study, published Wednesday in Nature, provides the first good estimate of how much Greenland has contributed to sea level rise so far, filling a gap in the last report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the researchers report.

<snip>

Full article at:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/greenland-melt-1.3367833

 

[S'toon]

Lake Poopo, Bolivia's 2nd-largest lake, dries up

What happens when a lake dries up entirely? In the case of the Lake Poopo in Bolivia, the Andean nation's formerly second largest after the famed Titicaca, the answer is nothing short of devastation.

The saltwater lake was located in the Bolivian altiplano at an altitude of 3,700 metres.

The government has declared the area a "disaster zone," but many say not enough has been done to make the area sustainable again.

"We have no lake. There were flamingos. But after the first few days of December, we are not surprised the lake has dried up," Valerio Calle Rojas, one of 150 fishermen from the Untavi community, told Reuters.

Rojas explained Lake Poopo's gradual water loss.

"From corner to corner, it is dry. In the 90's there was at least 2,000 square kilometres (772 square miles) of water (in the lake). After that, the water level began going down, In 1995, 1996, there was a drought as well, and the water dried up, but it came back quickly," he said. "Right now the water should be coming back at least a little bit. There should be some rain. But that's not happening and so there's nothing,"

The situation has been made all the more acute by the building up of metres-high sediment from local mining that has no water to combine with, leaving much of the local land full of a reddish sand.

Local specialists have no trouble identifying the role of climate change.

"Lake Poopo has been tracked for about 60 years and there has been evidence that climate change has had an effect in the last decade, from the 90's in the 20th Century. The temperature has gone up 0.9 degrees Celsius," said Milton Perez, a professor at the Oruro Technical University.

That has made water evaporate three times as fast between rains. He went on to note the changing climate patterns.

<snip>

Full article at:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/lake-poopo-bolivia-dries-up-1.3371359

 

[ggies07]

So back to my Star Wars analogy , 350.org has posted a Star Wars intro parody on climate.

EDIT: well damnit, these boards won't let me insert the code to embed the video. If you go to 350.org's page on Facebook and scroll down a bit, it's there.

 

[RichardC]

So back to my Star Wars analogy , 350.org has posted a Star Wars intro parody on climate.

EDIT: well damnit, these boards won't let me insert the code to embed the video. If you go to 350.org's page on Facebook and scroll down a bit, it's there.

https://www.facebook.com/350.org/vi.../?video_source=pages_finch_main_video&theater

I think that this is working.

Enjoy!

 

[EchoDelta]

So you actually believe a country would abide by a treaty (even a legally binding one) if their people are out of work because they don't have access to cheap energy? What about all the countries who's economies are based on fossil fuels. There is no way countries like Russia, Nigeria, Angola, etc can replace fossil fuels. As some countries cut their use of fossil fuels the price of it goes down which makes it even more attractive to use. By the way unless we find new ways for heavy transport and air travel we will still need quite a bit of fossil fuels even if we replace all cars and light trucks with electric vehicles. As of now the cost of an electric car is quite a bit more than an ice. Yes it is currently cheaper for fuel but it takes a long time to pay off the difference. We are currently on the PG&E EV-A rate which pays us when our solar panels over produce at a high price and then we charge the car at the low rate. As more and more folks install solar panels that will change. Eventually we will need expensive solar storage and or run some fossil fuel plants to handle the demand during the time that renewables can't produce. The cost to run a plant only part time will be vary expensive. This will greatly increase the cost to charge our cars. Cheap natural gas in the US has given us an economic advantage to other countries. This and the actual boom in the oil industry has been a leading reason that our unemployment rate has gone down. Any country that has access to cheap energy has a competitive advantage and will be able increase the living standard of their folks. I don't think most countries will be willing to give up this advantage.

I thin you mean "governments" not "countries". Profound difference, and a more precise wording that helps illuminate possibilities.

 

[RichardC]

So you actually believe a country would abide by a treaty (even a legally binding one) if their people are out of work because they don't have access to cheap energy? ... Any country that has access to cheap energy has a competitive advantage and will be able increase the living standard of their folks. I don't think most countries will be willing to give up this advantage.

As the costs of solar and wind continue to fall with increasing volumes, they become the cheap energy source. It is this insight which enabled the world to reach the agreement that was reached in Paris.

I was pleased to see Canada change sides on this issue prior to Paris, and hope that the US will shortly do the same.

 

[ggies07]

This is not looking good and does not bode well for stopping extreme climate change getting out of hand.

California Drought Puts Tens of Millions of Big Trees at Risk: Study - NBC News

High temperatures and insect damage also contributed to the loss of water content in areas, the researchers note, though their results purposefully left out regions burned by forest fires between 2011 and the present. They found that forest regions accounting for up to 888 million trees experienced measurable canopy water loss, and that 58 million trees lost more than a third of their canopy water.

 

[ggies07]

Watching interviews of Leo and Tom for the "Revenant" and the climate change subject crossed paths with the making of this film. Leo gives a great example of how the Earth climate is changing.

Starts at 11:10

 

[ggies07]

This is nice to see:

France will pay citizens $11,000 to upgrade to electric vehicles | Inhabitat - Green Design, Innovation, Architecture, Green Building

 

[beeeerock]

This is a good read...: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160105-the-man-who-studies-the-spread-of-ignorance

"This search led him to create a word for the study of deliberate propagation of ignorance: agnotology."

Love that word!

 

[ggies07]

I thought this was a nice development and makes sense after reading about it:

Thanks to satellite data, scientists have finally figured out why Greenlands ice sheet is melting - Yahoo News

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison believe increased cloud cover over the ice sheet itself may be to blame for up to a third of the ice melt that is occurring, a new study indicates.

 

[Jaff]

Fracking can cause earthquakes...

IIC - Scientists agree fracking can cause earthquakes but how is still a mystery

 

[AudubonB]

That article, Jaff, had such a strange title that I had to check it out.

You see, back in the Early Ordovician, when I studied geology, we already "knew" that injecting fluids into the earth caused seismic events.

So I had to look to your reference to learn if anything had changed.

However, on reading it I got the impression that someone was attempting to write on something he or she knew nothing, and was making a jumbled hash out of statements from others. As follows:

[FONT=arial, sans-serif]But while the amount of research on “induced seismic activity” is growing, the link between fracking and quaking is still a mystery....[/FONT]
“What are the factors that make it prevalent in some areas and entirely absent in most other areas?”...
Fracking involves pumping high-pressure fluids underground to create tiny cracks in rock and release natural gas or oil held inside....
Scientists agree that fracking or injecting waste water into wells can cause earthquakes...“Among the earth science community, I don’t think there’s any doubt,” said Arthur McGarr of the United States Geological Survey. “The scientists are all on the same page.”...
But many questions still have to be answered. Experts need to sort out when fracking is the cause of earthquakes and when they’re caused by waste water pumped into deep aquifers

Then I learned the publication's audience: this is an insurance industry ​magazine. Their interest is to find out who is to blame for any occurrence - so they would like to be able to distinguish whether it was a waste-water injector, fracker or whomever was any incident's causal agent.
Lots of luck, they'll need it.

 

[Jaff]

I think you nailed it...I think that many in the Insurance industry, from an underwriting perspective, would be unaware of the link...myself included...nothing new here...

 

[Todd Burch]

Congratulations everybody, 2015 was officially the warmest year on record. Looking forward to when I can take that great beach vacation on the shores of Maine.

 

[tigerade]

Great article about climate change denial:
Ted Cruz is a pseudo science onto himself | Editorial | NJ.com

 

[ggr]

Great article about climate change denial:
Ted Cruz is a pseudo science onto himself | Editorial | NJ.com

"Onto"? What does that even mean? Journalism today... sheesh.

 

[ggies07]

Opinion: Time for divestment by Bill McKibben

In fact, as testimony at the Statehouse last week made clear, if the state treasurer and state legislators had only agreed to divest from fossil fuels when the idea was first proposed three years ago, it would have been better than free: they would have saved the state’s pension fund $77 million in losses

For three years she’s been relying on a study claiming that divestment would be costly. But it turns out her numbers were wrong, and all the other research was right. Had she acted morally, the state would have profited. Instead, she sat on her hands and the state’s pensioners — not to mention the planet — got burned.

 

[tigerade]

Recent record temperature years without global warming, scientists say - The Washington Post

Last week, U.S. agencies announced that the year 2015 had smashed records to become the hottest year ever recorded by humans, a finding that emphasizes the continued pattern of long-term global warming on Earth. The prior hottest year was just one year earlier — 2014 — and nine out of the 10 hottest years on global record have now occurred in the past decade.
The announcement of the 2014 temperature record was accompanied by a startling statistic. News media reported that the odds of this spate of record-breaking years happening due to natural variations only — that is, not as the result of human-caused climate change — came to as low as one in 650 million.

Now, a new paper out Monday in the journal Nature Scientific Reports conducts what the authors have described as a more rigorous calculation, concluding that the odds of this series of record-breakers — ending with 2014 — were not quite as low as reported. Even so, the calculations still make it clear that the string of record temperatures was highly unlikely to have occurred by chance alone, supporting the idea that human-caused climate change is the culprit.

 

[tigerade]

Washington Is Getting Close To Enacting The First Carbon Tax In The U.S.

Washington state inches closer to being the first state in the US to enact a carbon tax.