Climate Change / Global Warming Discussion

[DragonWatch]

I know most here disagree with this statement but: I firmly believe that even scientists will throw facts overboard because of their politics. And GW IS politics! And money in politicians' pockets. And money to those "studies" with a conclusion prior to the study. And I know, I know it goes both ways. Which is why I am a registered Independent. A Trump-supporting Independent!

@Chopr147 I think "Trump-supporting Independent" mixes like oil and water ~ Where do you side with that science?

I was tossed out with the water as a child or as my quote says "I was born outside the box, and told to stay the he11 out." Yet, yet, once everything was broken, I was called in to not just repair the damage, but make it better. That became my trademark as an enlisted soldier and later as an officer. I worked for a living. I worked my way up from nothing!

Maybe you heard the story "Humpty Dumpty"? Well that is where we are now as a world; the world is broken and you seem to want to take the pieces of Humpty Dumpty and hide them. We do not have the time to look for the pieces deliberately hidden. Life is hard just as it is. . .

As a scout I believed in "pack it in, pack it out" long before it became popular. We made our backpacks in those days, just sayin'

I am not a scientist. I am at my core; grateful to have been allowed to live on this planet; Mother Earth supported my life.

Here is an assignment, part of the old teacher in me, "my wife says she heard that the number of animals & critters (all kinds) that will have died in the fire storm in Australia is in the billions." Is that true? Can you prove her wrong? FYI ~ her father was the head engineer that designed the Gemini and Mercury capsule ejection systems (damned math and science). Oh, and I am not counting the vegetation either (trees and bushes).

 

[nwdiver]

And GW IS politics!

The solution is political. The physics is physics. Anyone the denies the physics isn't fit to be a dog catcher and anyone that would help put someone unfit for office in office is a moron or a monster bent on harming society for personal or ideological gain.

Which of these is a 'political' statement?

• CO2 levels have risen >40% since humanities fossil fuel addiction started
• The burning of Fossil Fuels has emitted more than twice as much CO2 as would be required for that rise
• Doubling CO2 will cause a rise in global average temperature of >3C

We need to accept reality so we can get on with POLITICAL conversation of what the best solution is. Denying reality helps no one. Denial is dangerous, cowardly and pathetic.

 

[SR22pilot]

How is that putting her down?

She is wrong because of her age. She is wrong because she is diagnosed as autistic. Nothing about the facts of what she says. I see little difference compared to the high school bully calling the small kid runt or the heavy kid fatso.

By the way, most people are somewhere on the autism spectrum.

 

[eevee-fan]

She is wrong because of her age. She is wrong because she is diagnosed as autistic. Nothing about the facts of what she says. I see little difference compared to the high school bully calling the small kid runt or the heavy kid fatso.

By the way, most people are somewhere on the autism spectrum.

Yeah, Chopr147 is a bully. When s/he cannot debate on the facts, just attack the person on irrelevant issues. BTW, Stephen Hawkins was handicapped... is that a problem?!? Hm...

 

[SR22pilot]

A note about how the egos in big science really work. These were the bright kids in high school. They were the smartest people they had known until one day they looked around and they were scientists where the people around them were just as smart. They LOVE showing that they are right and others are wrong. They get excited thinking they may have found something others haven’t. When they agree with each other it is a forced agreement based on data. Each still hopes he will discover something where he will be right and the others wrong. Scientific agreement isn’t some politically based collusion but rather consensus forced by fact.

 

[eevee-fan]

 

[mspohr]

Britons reach Africans’ annual carbon emissions in just two weeks

Danny Sriskandarajah, the chief executive of Oxfam GB, described the scale of global inequality revealed by the study as staggering. “It’s a shock to realise that in just a few days our high-carbon lifestyles here in the UK produce the same emissions as the annual footprint of people in some poor countries.

 

[mspohr]

Naomi Klein On Looming Eco-Fascism: ‘We Are Literally And Politically Flammable’ | HuffPost

Do you think that’s a blindspot for the climate movement at large? It seems like there has been this consensus for a long time that, if only we could exorcise denialism from the polity, then people would embrace social democratic policies to deal with emissions. Is there any evidence for that?

It’s a massive blindspot. The assumption that the biggest problem we’ve had is just convincing the right to believe in the scientific reality of climate change was a failure to understand that the right denied climate change not because they didn’t understand the science, but because they objected to the political implications of the science. They understood it better than many liberals understood it.

 

[eevee-fan]

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Britons reach Africans’ annual carbon emissions in just two weeks

Danny Sriskandarajah, the chief executive of Oxfam GB, described the scale of global inequality revealed by the study as staggering. “It’s a shock to realise that in just a few days our high-carbon lifestyles here in the UK produce the same emissions as the annual footprint of people in some poor countries.

I saw the New Year's firework at London on Youtube. I think they spent the equivalent of Africa's annual carbon emissions that one night. I thought they must be celebrating generating over half their electricity from renewables by spending their CO2 savings that one night. Much prefer UAE's more 'digital' firework and I heard China's display is also very high tech/low carbon.. reminds me... gotta find it on Youtube and watch that one!

 

[JRP3]

Shanghai New Year drone display was pre-recorded

The display of thousands of drones flying in formation over the city was widely covered by global media.

But people who were at the event on New Year's Eve have said they saw nothing.

The company behind the display has confirmed to the BBC that the footage broadcast around the world was actually from a practice run on 28 December.

 

[eevee-fan]

Shanghai New Year drone display was pre-recorded

Guess they had either found some technical issue and had to go old school, perhaps next year.

 

[JRP3]

No, they just had nothing on actual New Years.

 

[mspohr]

View attachment 496517


I saw the New Year's firework at London on Youtube. I think they spent the equivalent of Africa's annual carbon emissions that one night. I thought they must be celebrating generating over half their electricity from renewables by spending their CO2 savings that one night. Much prefer UAE's more 'digital' firework and I heard China's display is also very high tech/low carbon.. reminds me... gotta find it on Youtube and watch that one!

I read somewhere that fireworks displays are starting to use pressurized air launchers instead of chemical propellant. This saves on CO2 emissions and also improves the display since you don't have all that smoke from the launch rocket.

 

[mspohr]

Lethal algae blooms – an ecosystem out of balance

Lethal algae blooms – an ecosystem out of balance

Toledo is not alone. According to scientists, algae blooms are becoming more frequent and more toxic worldwide.

A 14-month long algae bloom in Florida, known as the “red tide”, only ended earlier this year, after killing more than 100 manatees, 127 dolphins and 589 sea turtles. Hundreds of tonnes of dead fish also washed ashore.

The causes of the blooms vary, and in some cases are never known, but in many parts of the world they are being increasingly linked to climate change and industrialised agriculture.

Then in the late-1990s, blooms began to reappear. A cyanobacteria bloom requires two things: nutrients and heat. In the case of Lake Erie, nearby farms have become increasingly reliant on large inputs of synthetic fertiliser.

“We went from agriculture that was small farms [and a] variety of crops to larger commercial farms that were harvested for essentially two row crops, corn and soya beans,” says Davis. Today, corn and soya beans are Ohio’s top crops.

We have to look around and say, ‘Look, what do we grow here?’” says Bridgeman. “We grow corn and soya beans. Where does the corn go? It goes into our gas tanks. Where do the soya beans go? They go to China, they go to hogs. Is that really what we want to be doing with our watershed

 

[mspohr]

The Australian fires are a harbinger of things to come. Don't ignore their warning

The Australian fires are a harbinger of things to come. Don't ignore their warning | Steve Pyne

Yes, Australia and bushfire are old acquaintances. But the past 20 years feel different. The bad fires are more frequent, more eruptive and more damaging. The Black Saturday fires, which killed 173 people, struck with the cultural force of a terrorist attack, and seemed to call into question the very premises of a “first world” society on a land capable of such fury. The Forever bushfires deepen that query.

Australia’s predisposition to fire makes it an early flash point for what I like to call the Pyrocene. But many of the same phenomena are appearing in America – unstoppable fires, fire deaths and fire refugees, smoked-in and incinerated cities, damaged watersheds and post-burn floods, economic crunches from lost tourism, bankrupt utilities, snake-bit insurance companies. Wildfires moving from exurban fringes to city cores. Extended states of emergency. Prolonged and painful cleanups. Political anger.

 

[mspohr]

Oil companies are spending billions on PR – but are they winning?

Oil companies are spending billions on PR – but are they winning?

However, opponents of the industry say the only path to significant US climate action is through legislation and that lawmakers won’t be able to legislate unless they reveal how the industry has controlled the public dialogue around climate change and put a stop to its misdeeds.

Geoffrey Supran, a research associate who studies global warming politics at Harvard University, is urging House committees to demand more information from oil companies about their influence over public policy. Supran said obtaining corporate documents is “one of the most important actions Congress could take to address the climate crisis”.

Over roughly the last three decades, five major US oil companies have spent a total of at least $3.6bn on advertisements – not counting their investments in public relations programs like sponsored beach clean-ups, or their influence through trade associations, dark money groups and campaign donations.

Robert Brulle, a visiting professor of environmental sociology at Brown University who co-authored the research tallying oil spending on ads, said the findings are just the tip of the iceberg. Brulle has previously found that more than $2bn was spent lobbying Congress on climate legislation between 2000 and 2016.

He says lawmakers should investigate the oil industry the way the former congressman Henry Waxman took on tobacco companies in the 1990s.

“I think what we’ll find is that the fossil fuel campaigns are going to dwarf what the tobacco industry did. It’s an order of magnitude larger,” Brulle said.

 

[mspohr]

Such flours are likely soon to become the feedstock for almost everything. In their raw state, they can replace the fillers now used in thousands of food products. When the bacteria are modified they will create the specific proteins needed for lab-grown meat, milk and eggs. Other tweaks will produce lauric acid – goodbye palm oil – and long-chain omega-3 fatty acids – hello lab-grown fish. The carbohydrates that remain when proteins and fats have been extracted could replace everything from pasta flour to potato crisps. The first commercial factory built by Solar Foods should be running next year.

The hydrogen pathway used by Solar Foods is about 10 times as efficient as photosynthesis. But because only part of a plant can be eaten, while the bacterial flour is mangetout, you can multiply that efficiency several times. And because it will be brewed in giant vats the land efficiency, the company estimates, is roughly 20,000 times greater. Everyone on Earth could be handsomely fed, and using a tiny fraction of its surface. If, as the company intends, the water used in the process (which is much less than required by farming) is electrolysed with solar power, the best places to build these plants will be deserts.

Several impending disasters are converging on our food supply, any of which could be catastrophic. Climate breakdown threatens to cause what scientists call “multiple breadbasket failures”, through synchronous heatwaves and other impacts.

Research by the thinktank RethinkX suggests that proteins from precision fermentation will be around 10 times cheaper than animal protein by 2035. The result, it says, will be the near-complete collapse of the livestock industry. The new food economy will “replace an extravagantly inefficient system that requires enormous quantities of inputs and produces huge amounts of waste with one that is precise, targeted, and tractable”. Using tiny areas of land, with a massively reduced requirement for water and nutrients, it “presents the greatest opportunity for environmental restoration in human history”.

Not only will food be cheaper, it will also be healthier. Because farmfree foods will be built up from simple ingredients, rather than broken down from complex ones, allergens, hard fats and other unhealthy components can be screened out. Meat will still be meat, though it will be grown in factories on collagen scaffolds, rather than in the bodies of animals. Starch will still be starch, fats will still be fats. But food is likely to be better, cheaper and much less damaging to the living planet.
Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming – and save the planet

Lab-grown food is about to destroy farming – and save the planet | George Monbiot

We can’t afford to wait passively for technology to save us. Over the next few years we could lose almost everything, as magnificent habitats such as the rainforests of Madagascar, West Papua and Brazil are felled to produce cattle, soya or palm oil. By temporarily shifting towards a plant-based diet with the lowest possible impacts (no avocados or out-of-season asparagus), we can help buy the necessary time to save magnificent species and places while these new technologies mature. But farmfree food offers hope where hope was missing. We will soon be able to feed the world without devouring it.

 

[mspohr]

Water wars: early warning tool uses climate data to predict conflict hotspots

Water wars: early warning tool uses climate data to predict conflict hotspots

Researchers from six organisations have developed an early warning system to help predict potential water conflicts as violence associated with water surges globally.

The tool has already predicted conflicts that are likely to happen in 2020 in Iraq, Iran, Mali, Nigeria, India and Pakistan. Developers claim an 86% success rate in identifying conflict zones where at least 10 fatalities could occur. The tool currently focuses on hotspots across Africa, the Middle East and southeast Asia.

“The machine learning model is ‘trained’ to identify patterns using historical data on violent conflict and political, social, economic, demographic, and water risk,” said Charles Iceland, senior water expert at the World Resources Institute, part of the WPS partnership.

 

[mspohr]

Something else is out of control in Australia: climate disaster denialism

Something else is out of control in Australia: climate disaster denialism | Ketan Joshi

At the same time, Australia is pioneering the denial of climate disaster.

There is some interesting research around denialism. Researchers have essentially discovered a strong political divide when it comes to climate science: progressives are much more likely to accept it as fact than conservatives. And presenting climate deniers with scientific information in the hope that they’ll change their minds actually reinforces their rejection, because they are so taken aback by the information.

This phenomenon affects solutions, too. If a policy proposal to reduce emissions conflicts with someone’s pre-existing beliefs – if it requires more government intervention in markets, for example – they tend to deny that the problem exists in the first place.

Rightwing media outlets in Australia have responded to the current bushfires by either refusing to give the story its due prominence or by spreading falsehoods. Specifically, there is a claim emerging that environmentalists have blocked hazard reduction efforts by supposedly opposing dry fuel loads being burned or manually removed. It isn’t one of those half-truths – there’s no truth in it at all. Once spread by a rightwing journalist over 10 years ago, it has been given a new lease of life as a meme on social media.

 

[Merrill]

Oil companies are spending billions on PR – but are they winning?

Oil companies are spending billions on PR – but are they winning?

However, opponents of the industry say the only path to significant US climate action is through legislation and that lawmakers won’t be able to legislate unless they reveal how the industry has controlled the public dialogue around climate change and put a stop to its misdeeds.

Geoffrey Supran, a research associate who studies global warming politics at Harvard University, is urging House committees to demand more information from oil companies about their influence over public policy. Supran said obtaining corporate documents is “one of the most important actions Congress could take to address the climate crisis”.

Over roughly the last three decades, five major US oil companies have spent a total of at least $3.6bn on advertisements – not counting their investments in public relations programs like sponsored beach clean-ups, or their influence through trade associations, dark money groups and campaign donations.

Robert Brulle, a visiting professor of environmental sociology at Brown University who co-authored the research tallying oil spending on ads, said the findings are just the tip of the iceberg. Brulle has previously found that more than $2bn was spent lobbying Congress on climate legislation between 2000 and 2016.

He says lawmakers should investigate the oil industry the way the former congressman Henry Waxman took on tobacco companies in the 1990s.

“I think what we’ll find is that the fossil fuel campaigns are going to dwarf what the tobacco industry did. It’s an order of magnitude larger,” Brulle said.

Everybody knows this, the problem is the people that could do something about it won’t because they are getting some of those billions. Especially now since we have a dodo in power who also is part of the problem.