Thread for discussing climate change

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Chap
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Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Chap »

This is a thread specifically for discussing the issue of climate change.

What is it?

Why is it happening?

What will its consequences be?

What should we do about it?

So - for starters, what do we hope will come out of the forthcoming COP-26 conference this autumn, at which the USA will certainly play an important role?

See: UNITING THE WORLD TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE: Glasgow 31 October -12 November
The COP26 summit will bring parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Maksutov:
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Chap
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Chap »

I've just invited Ceeboo along!
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
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Atlanticmike
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Atlanticmike »

Chap wrote:
Thu Sep 30, 2021 11:56 am
This is a thread specifically for discussing the issue of climate change.

What is it?

Why is it happening?

What will its consequences be?

What should we do about it?

So - for starters, what do we hope will come out of the forthcoming COP-26 conference this autumn, at which the USA will certainly play an important role?

See: UNITING THE WORLD TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE: Glasgow 31 October -12 November
The COP26 summit will bring parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The consequences will be an earth that will be overun with lush, healthy vegetation, providing abundant sources of food. Also, lots of greenery to help absorb all the ""excess"" CO2 you guys keep complaining about.

So I live on the east coast, could you tell me when all the beach houses where I live will be submerged? I've been surfing and fishing on the same beach for 40 years and nothing has changed so far. Will all the millionaires need to sale these million dollar homes in the next year, ten years, 50 years? I mean, you guys say the scientist can predict what's going to happen in 50 to 100 years, correct?
Chap
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Chap »

Atlanticmike wrote:
Thu Sep 30, 2021 1:31 pm
So I live on the east coast, could you tell me when all the beach houses where I live will be submerged? I've been surfing and fishing on the same beach for 40 years and nothing has changed so far. Will all the millionaires need to sale these million dollar homes in the next year, ten years, 50 years? I mean, you guys say the scientist can predict what's going to happen in 50 to 100 years, correct?
You may find this article interesting:

This is an open-access article from a highly rested peer-review journal.

TL;DR: Things look worse than previously thought. A lot of people are going to get their feet wet (and that's when they are standing on the the roofs of their houses, and if carbon emissions are on the low side).

New elevation data triple estimates of global vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding

Scott A. Kulp & Benjamin H. Strauss
Nature Communications volume 10, Article number: 4844 (2019)

Abstract
Most estimates of global mean sea-level rise this century fall below 2 m. This quantity is comparable to the positive vertical bias of the principle digital elevation model (DEM) used to assess global and national population exposures to extreme coastal water levels, NASA’s SRTM. CoastalDEM is a new DEM utilizing neural networks to reduce SRTM error. Here we show – employing CoastalDEM—that 190 M people (150–250 M, 90% CI) currently occupy global land below projected high tide lines for 2100 under low carbon emissions, up from 110 M today, for a median increase of 80 M. These figures triple SRTM-based values. Under high emissions, CoastalDEM indicates up to 630 M people live on land below projected annual flood levels for 2100, and up to 340 M for mid-century, versus roughly 250 M at present. We estimate one billion people now occupy land less than 10 m above current high tide lines, including 230 M below 1 m.
This is from the Discussion:
The levees, seawalls and other defenses and accommodations currently protecting tens or hundreds of millions of coastal-area residents globally point to the potential for protecting ever-larger areas as seas rise. At the same time, current coastal defenses should not be assumed adequate to protect against future sea levels and storms without continued maintenance and, likely, enhancement. These countervailing possibilities point to the merits of reporting results based both on total ECWL exposure and on marginal increases in exposure from the contemporary baseline. Total exposure recognizes the potential vulnerability of all populations on low-lying coastal lands as sea levels rise. Marginal exposure highlights new populations of concern, while leaving out populations in areas that may be defended at present, and thus may be more likely to be defended in the future.

Even in light of the limitations identified, this research, using a significantly improved model of coastal elevations, provides new best estimates of the vulnerability of populated low-lying areas to rising oceans at global and national scales. Reliability increases with the size of the area evaluated, and with the water level considered; thus, global assessments for end-of-century sea levels and floods, under high sea-level scenarios, should be considered most robust. Analysis reveals a developed global coastline three times more exposed to extreme coastal water levels than previously thought. Even with low carbon emissions and stable Antarctic ice sheets, leading to optimistically low future sea levels, we find that the global impacts of sea-level rise and coastal flooding this century will likely be far greater than indicated by the most pessimistic past analyses relying on SRTM. These results point to great need for the development and public release of improved terrain elevation datasets for coastal areas, for example via the high-resolution imagery and lidar point clouds increasingly collected by satellite today. There is also great need for improved population data; data on the location, height and condition of coastal-area levees and seawalls; and improved global sea-level and tidal models.

If our findings stand, coastal communities worldwide must prepare themselves for much more difficult futures than may be currently anticipated. Recent work has suggested that, even in the US, sea-level rise this century may induce large-scale migration away from unprotected coastlines, redistributing population density across the country and putting great pressure on inland areas60. It is difficult to extrapolate such projections and their impacts to more resource-constrained developing nations, though historically, large-scale migration events have posed serious challenges to political stability, driving conflict61. Further research on global-scale modeling of the timing, locations, and intensity of migratory responses to increased coastal flooding is urgently needed to minimize the potential human harm caused by such threats.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Gadianton »

I hope the conference goes well. Where is the point of no return? Meaning, at what point will policy be too late and make no difference?
Chap
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Chap »

Gadianton wrote:
Thu Sep 30, 2021 2:44 pm
I hope the conference goes well. Where is the point of no return? Meaning, at what point will policy be too late and make no difference?
We are already at a point where we cannot avoid significant global heating, simply because of the amount of CO2 we have already pumped into the atmosphere. You can't just pull the stuff back again in a couple of years.

It's already going to be nasty, perhaps fatal for many people. All we can aim for is to stop things getting a whole lot worse than they are currently certain to be.

Here's an explainer from the COP-26 website:

THE WORLD IS CURRENTLY NOT ON TRACK TO LIMIT GLOBAL WARMING TO 1.5 DEGREES.
The targets announced in Paris would result in warming well above 3 degrees by 2100 compared to pre-industrial levels. If we continue as we are, temperatures will carry on rising, bringing even more catastrophic flooding, bush fires, extreme weather and destruction of species.

We have made progress in recent months to bend the temperature curve closer to 2 degrees; but the science shows that much more must be done to keep 1.5 degrees in reach. The world needs to halve emissions over the next decade and reach net zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century if we are to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees.

As part of the Paris Agreement, every country agreed to communicate or update their emissions reduction targets - their Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) - every five years to reflect their highest possible ambition and a progression over time. These targets set out how far countries plan to reduce emissions across their entire economy and/or in specific sectors.

2020 marked the first of these five year cycles. This means that countries are expected to update their 2030 targets before we meet in Glasgow. We are calling on all countries to update them so that they are in line with holding temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. It is especially important that developed countries and the largest emitters take the lead.

While targets are important, they must translate into action, fast. Which is why developed countries must rapidly phase out coal power, and all countries should commit to not opening or financing any new coal-fired power stations across the world.

At the same time, we must work together to provide developing countries with better support to deliver clean energy to their citizens.
Forests play a vital role in removing carbon from the air. Protecting them is critical if we are going to meet our climate goals, and right now they are still being lost at the rate of a football pitch every few seconds. We are encouraging countries to work together to reform the global trade in agricultural commodities (like beef, soy and palm oil) so that sustainable production is rewarded, helping farmers to make a better living while forests are protected.

And finally, we need to clean up our air and reduce carbon emissions by switching to driving zero emission cars, vans and trucks. The UK will end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. Countries with major car markets should follow our lead. If we send a strong signal to the industry, investment will shift more quickly to new, clean technologies, and all countries will be able to enjoy the benefits sooner.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Image

Image

wHat AbOuT tHe MiLlIoNaIrEs?!?!

Image

The graph was put together by something called the Global Carbon Project described here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Carbon_Project
The current chairman of the Global Carbon Project is Rob Jackson of Stanford University. Previous co-chairs include Naki Nakicenovic of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Corinne Le Quéré of the University of East Anglia, and Philippe Ciais of the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (LSCE). Its Executive Director is Josep Canadell of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The GCP has additional international offices in Tsukuba, Japan, and Seoul, Korea, and an international scientific steering committee consisting of a dozen scientists from five continents.
Is it scientism to trust these guys over Breitbart? Maybe. But I’m not sure we can afford, as a species, to just accept that living in a 400 ppm world is good not only for us, but for all the other species that are going extinct due to climate change that’s commensurately related to habitat loss and pollution.

bUt ArCtIc ShIpPiNg LaNeS wILl Be IcE fReE!

Yeah. And what does that mean in a practical sense? Breathing air at 400 ppm is probably going to be reality since getting 8 billion people on the same page is an impossible task.

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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Manetho »

Atlanticmike wrote:
Thu Sep 30, 2021 1:31 pm
I've been surfing and fishing on the same beach for 40 years and nothing has changed so far.
The Miami area is suffering chronic and increasing flooding from high tides. Alaskan villages are falling into the Arctic Ocean as the ice and permafrost thaw. California has had multiple record-breaking wildfires in recent years, as the wildfire season grows longer because of drier conditions. This summer, the northwestern United States and western Canada were hit with an unprecedented heat wave. In the Seattle area, where 90-degree F weather is rare and 100-degree weather nearly unheard of, the temperature hit 108, and in the town of Lytton, British Columbia, the temperature hit 121 degrees F, the highest temperature ever recorded north of 45° latitude. The heat wave was such an extreme outlier that it's hard to quantify how much of an outlier it is, and it's pretty much certain that it wouldn't have happened without the global temperature increase since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Chap »

Manetho wrote:
Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:17 pm
Atlanticmike wrote:
Thu Sep 30, 2021 1:31 pm
I've been surfing and fishing on the same beach for 40 years and nothing has changed so far.
The Miami area is suffering chronic and increasing flooding from high tides. Alaskan villages are falling into the Arctic Ocean as the ice and permafrost thaw. California has had multiple record-breaking wildfires in recent years, as the wildfire season grows longer because of drier conditions. This summer, the northwestern United States and western Canada were hit with an unprecedented heat wave. In the Seattle area, where 90-degree F weather is rare and 100-degree weather nearly unheard of, the temperature hit 108, and in the town of Lytton, British Columbia, the temperature hit 121 degrees F, the highest temperature ever recorded north of 45° latitude. The heat wave was such an extreme outlier that it's hard to quantify how much of an outlier it is, and it's pretty much certain that it wouldn't have happened without the global temperature increase since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
You and Atlanticmike are no doubt both correct. The difference between you is that he is using a sample size so small as to be of pretty well zero predictive value, and you are following the big picture.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Res Ipsa »

Atlanticmike wrote:
Thu Sep 30, 2021 1:31 pm
Chap wrote:
Thu Sep 30, 2021 11:56 am
This is a thread specifically for discussing the issue of climate change.

What is it?

Why is it happening?

What will its consequences be?

What should we do about it?

So - for starters, what do we hope will come out of the forthcoming COP-26 conference this autumn, at which the USA will certainly play an important role?

See: UNITING THE WORLD TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE: Glasgow 31 October -12 November

The consequences will be an earth that will be overun with lush, healthy vegetation, providing abundant sources of food. Also, lots of greenery to help absorb all the ""excess"" CO2 you guys keep complaining about.

So I live on the east coast, could you tell me when all the beach houses where I live will be submerged? I've been surfing and fishing on the same beach for 40 years and nothing has changed so far. Will all the millionaires need to sale these million dollar homes in the next year, ten years, 50 years? I mean, you guys say the scientist can predict what's going to happen in 50 to 100 years, correct?
Actually, Mike, your first paragraph is simply false, as has been shown by the scientific literature for years now.

From the 2018 United States National Climate Assessment, Chapter 10
Climate projections to the year 2100 suggest that increases are expected in the incidence of drought and elevated growing-season temperatures.86 Elevated temperatures play a critical role in increasing the rate of drought onset, overall drought intensity, and drought impact through altered water availability and demand.87,88 Increased evaporation rates caused by high temperatures, in association with drought, will exacerbate plant stress,89 yield reduction,90,91,92 fire risks,93,94,95,96 and depletion of surface and groundwater resources.97,98,99,100 Soil carbon, important for enhancing plant productivity through a variety of mechanisms,101 is depleted during drought due to low biomass productivity, which in turn decreases the resilience of agroecosystems.23 In 2012, the United States experienced a severe and extensive drought, with more than two-thirds of its counties declared as disaster areas.102 This drought greatly affected livestock, wheat, corn, and soybean production in the Great Plains and Midwest regions 44,103,104,105 and accounted for $14.5 billion in loss payments by the federal crop insurance program.106 From 2013–2016, all of California faced serious drought conditions that depleted both reservoir and groundwater supplies. This lengthy drought, attributed in part to the influence of climate change,88,107 resulted in the overdrawing of groundwater, primarily for irrigation, leading to large declines in aquifer levels (Ch. 3: Water, KM 1).98,108 In 2014, the California state legislature passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act to develop groundwater management plans for sustainable groundwater use over the next 10–20 years.109,110,111

Average yields of many commodity crops (for example, corn, soybean, wheat, rice, sorghum, cotton, oats, and silage) decline beyond certain maximum temperature thresholds (in conjunction with rising atmospheric carbon dioxide [CO2] levels), and thus long-term temperature increases may reduce future yields under both irrigated and dryland production.37,91,92,97,103,112,113 In contrast, even with warmer temperatures, future yields for certain crops such as wheat, hay, and barley are projected to increase in some regions due to anticipated increases in precipitation and carbon fertilization.97,114 However, yields from major U.S. commodity crops are expected to decline as a consequence of higher temperatures,45 especially when these higher temperatures occur during critical periods of reproductive development.115,116,117 Increasing temperatures are also projected to have an impact on specialty crops (fruits, nuts, vegetables, and nursery crops) (Ch. 25: Southwest, KM 6), although the effects will be variable depending on the crops and where they are grown.118 Additional challenges involve the loss of synchrony of seasonal phenomena (for example, between crops and pollinators) (Ch. 7: Ecosystems; Ch. 25: Southwest, KM 6). Further, the interactive effects of rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, elevated temperatures, and changes in other climate factors are expected to enhance weed competitiveness relative to crops,119 with temperature being a predominant factor.120,121

Irrigated agriculture is one of the major consumers of water supplies in the United States (Ch. 3: Water; Ch. 25: Southwest, KM 6). Irrigation is used for crop production in most of the western United States and since 2002 has expanded into the northern Midwest (Ch. 21: Midwest, KM 1) and Southeast (Ch. 19: Southeast, KM 4). Expanded irrigation is often proposed as a strategy to deal with increasing crop water demand due to higher trending temperatures coupled with decreasing growing-season precipitation. However, under long-term climate change, irrigated acreage is expected to decrease, due to a combination of declining water resources and a diminishing relative profitability of irrigated production.97 Continuing or expanding existing levels of irrigation will be limited by the availability of water in many areas.11,98,108 Surface water supplies are particularly vulnerable to shifts in precipitation and demand from nonagricultural sectors. Groundwater supplies are also in decline across major irrigated regions of the United States (see Case Study “Groundwater Depletion in the Ogallala Aquifer Region”) (see also Ch. 3: Water, Figure 3.2; Ch. 25: Southwest, KM 1; Ch. 23: S. Great Plains, KM 1).

Crop productivity and quality may also be significantly reduced due to increased crop water demand coupled with limited water availability122,123,124 as well as increased diseases and pest infestations (Ch. 25: Southwest, KM 6).125 The expected demand for higher crop productivity and anticipated climate change stresses have driven advancements in crop genetics.126,127 Seed companies have released numerous crop varieties that are tolerant to heat, drought, or pests and diseases. This trend is expected to continue as new crop varieties are developed to adapt to a changing climate.128 Recent advances in genetics have allowed researchers to access large and complex genomes of crops and their wild relatives.129 This has the potential to reduce the time and cost required to identify and incorporate useful traits in plant breeding and to develop crops that are more resilient to climate change. Currently, the United States has the largest gene bank in the world that manages publicly held crop germplasm (genetic material necessary for plant breeding). However, progress in this area has been modest despite advances in breeding techniques.130,131,132,133 Further, institutional factors such as intellectual property rights, and a lack of international access to crop genetic resources, are affecting the availability and utilization of genetic resources useful for adaptation to climate change.134 Investments by commercial firms alone are unlikely to be sufficient to maintain these resources, meaning higher levels of public investment would be needed for genetic resource conservation, characterization, and use. Societal concerns over certain crop breeding technologies likely will continue, but current assessments of genetically engineered crops have shown economic benefits for producers, with no substantial evidence of animal or human health or environmental impacts.135
https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/10/

As to your second paragraph, if you want want information about a specific location, you have to disclose where it is. Just as the increasing average temperature doesn't result in uniform increases everywhere, average sea level rise doesn't result in the same amount of increase at every location. Sea level rise is one effect of global warming that has been under predicted for many years now. In part, that has resulted from not understanding how soon Antarctica would start to lose mass. One of the dirty little secrets about the IPCC reports is that, if there isn't enough physical information known about a process, it is left out of the predictions and discussed in a footnote. For years, it was assumed that increased precipitation in the form of snow falling on the Antarctic continent (as a result of higher moisture content in the atmosphere) would exceed melting at the edges, so that Antarctica would continue to gain mass for a substantial period of time, thus reducing sea level rise. As we have learned more and more about the physical processes at work in Antarctica and gained the ability to measure the continent's mass, we discovered that Antarctica has become a contributor to sea level rise much sooner than expected. The future scenarios for sea level rise are included in the Working Group 1 Report of the AR 6. This post at Real Climate summarizes the report's section on sea level rise quite nicely. https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/a ... eport-ar6/
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