Heat Wave

[Gunnar]

-_-

Why did I know you’d post something retarded?

Highways don’t naturally form, reservoirs with complicated pipe systems don’t spontaneously appear, and electricity doesn’t magically jump into your wife’s vibrator. eta: It just occurred to me that Xanax doesn’t understand oil pipelines and thus doesn’t understand how we could pipe water to needy areas.

Also, this is why gas prices rise and fall, you felt-brained muppet:

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/gas ... ations.php

Anyway. A little rant - The Earth doesn’t balance anything, there's no intentional system, there isn't a right and natural way for humans to consume natural resources. There are just a series stupid mistakes that's now become stupid choices that will be catastrophic. The Earth isn't better or worse with or without us. Better and worse are ideas and we're the only ones who have ideas. Our opinion is the only one that matters, there's not some beautiful natural order asserting itself, it's just physics and stupidity and now a slow and creeping realization that we’re in a new era.

God isn’t directing anything, Xanax, and even if He were then I can tell you He doesn’t give two craps about the Earth, if one believes the Bible’s stories and prophecies. The only "system" that's really in play in our human story is that life doesn't give up, it systematically invades any niche if it can, and we’re part of that existential mandate.

Until it isn’t.

In a couple of decades you might look back at your stupid stupid comments, and think "What the “F” was I on about?” Because human suffering is just starting. Right now, for you, it's on tv and right-wing news sites, and it’s something to muse about. To make stupid comments about- like Dems controlling gas prices. But when it kills the first person you love, you'll feel it, and it time all of us will see this for what it was: a sad, stupid accident that became an evil, stupid choice that is going to yield more human suffering that we in the West can get our little monkey brains around yet.

We think, those of us who can think, that Global Heating will be like the movies. Perhaps our monkey brains can imagine a quick montage of suffering, and then we’re back to the main characters and action. Back to normal! Life will go on! And if not, Jesus will appear! This is delusion. This will instead be a slog; decades of slowly losing everything. Our choices will narrow over weeks, months, and years. We’ll eventually just watch in horror, and then numb silence. It's going to be a long and uncomfortable and boring and sad decline in some ways, and a violent ending in other ways. For a few billion of us, it's going to be a horrible, painful early death.

But, yeah. Water doesn’t flow up hill and Democrats control gas prices.

- Doc

Yeah! All the above too!

[Gunnar]

Remember the 5 stages of climate change denial.

Stage 1: Deny the Problem Exists
Often when people are first faced with an inconvenient problem, the immediate reaction involves denying its existence. For a long time climate contrarians denied that the planet was warming. Usually this involves disputing the accuracy of the surface temperature record, given that the data clearly indicate rapid warming.

Stage 2: Deny We're the Cause
Once people move beyond denying that the problem exists, they often move to the next stage, denying that we're responsible. John Christy and Roy Spencer took this approach by disputing the accuracy of global climate models in The Daily Mail and The Christian Post, respectively. Spencer was quite explicit about this:

Stage 3: Deny It's a Problem
Once they've progressed through the first two stages and admitted global warming is happening and human-caused, contrarians generally move on to Stage 3, denying it's a problem. Lomborg and Ridley did their best Tony the Tiger impressions in The Washington Post and Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, respectively, arguing that global warming is 'Grrrrreat!' (or at least nothing to worry about).

Stage 4: Deny We can Solve It
In his editorial, Roy Spencer bounced between the second and fourth stages of global warming denial, also claiming that solving the problem is too expensive and will hurt the poor. In reality the opposite is true.

Spencer specifically attacked renewable energy like wind power as being too expensive. In reality, wind power is already cheaper than coal, even without considering the added climate damage costs from coal carbon emissions. When including those very real costs, solar power is also already cheaper than coal. Additionally, the poorest countries are generally the most vulnerable to climate change. Listening to Spencer and continuing to cause rapid climate change is what will really hurt the poor

Stage 5: It's too Late
Stage 5 global warming denial involves arguing that it's too late to solve the problem, so we shouldn't bother trying (though few climate contrarians have reached this level). Unfortunately this stage can be self-fulfilling. If we wait too long to address the problem, we may end up committing ourselves to catastrophic climate change.

The good news is that we still have time to avoid a catastrophic outcome. The more emissions reductions we can achieve, the less the impacts of climate change will be. The challenge lies in achieving those greenhouse gas emissions reductions when Rupert Murdoch's media empire and other news outlets are spreading climate misinformation and denial

Apparently, ajax has reached stage 5. He sometimes seems to be arguing that we humans have already royally screwed ourselves by putting off the problem too long, and that we no longer have any viable option but to just throw up our hands in ignominious defeat and accept the consequences we have imposed on ourselves by our collective inaction.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I’m not trying to prevent crap. That ship has sailed. We’re most likely in a runaway greenhouse effect now. I’m attempting to adapt to our new reality.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/19/weather/ ... index.html

For the first time on record, precipitation on Saturday at the summit of Greenland — roughly two miles above sea level — fell as rain and not snow.

Temperatures at the Greenland summit over the weekend rose above freezing for the third time in less than a decade. The warm air fueled an extreme rain event that dumped 7 billion tons of water on the ice sheet, enough to fill the Reflecting Pool at the National Mall in Washington, DC, nearly 250,000 times.

O.o

- Doc

[Res Ipsa]

Just a couple things. The notion of "balance" is relevant, but the earth doesn't have a fixed "set point" that it will naturally return to. The relevant balance is the energy balance. Right now, the energy coming in to the earth's systems is larger than the amount going out. So, in terms of energy in and energy out, the earth is out of balance. Global warming is the earth's mechanism to restore that balance. The atmosphere heats up and expands, allowing a higher rate of outward radiation. Eventually, the balance will be restored at some point. But neither physics nor the earth "cares" whether that balance point supports life.

All other things being equal, nuclear energy would help us reduce our carbon emissions over time. But, part of the problem right now is that building those suckers takes lots of concrete, and producing concrete is very CO2 intensive. So, a mass effort to build nukes may prevent us from keeping the total temperature rise in a safe zone, even though the benefits of lower emissions would gradually occur over the lifetime of the plant. Another problem is cooling the plants. That takes lots and lots of water. And what are we becoming short of?

As for what China's doing -- if only there were a way to compare solar production in China with that in other countries. Something like a Moogle or a Floogle....

Taken as a percentage of total power generated, China kicks our ass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country

[canpakes]

Right now, the energy coming in to the earth's systems is larger than the amount going out.

That’s one way to put it, but along those lines, one thing that the denier crowd should consider is that we’ve been taking stored energy that required millions of years to accumulate, concentrate and park on ‘standby’, and we’re releasing it in mere decades. Simple physics demands that this energy is accounted for somewhere, as the planet isn’t magically sloughing off the byproducts of usage into outer space because it ‘knows’ that this is happening.

We use over 90 million barrels of oil and 3200 cubic feet of coal per day. Think of how long it took to accumulate the energy for just each day’s present usage. That difference represents our man-made imbalance imposed into the system.

[Res Ipsa]

That's a good point. If we release carbon into the atmosphere that natural processes took billions of years to store in the earth, how long would it take natural processes to return us to the climate we had 100 years ago?

[canpakes]

That's a good point. If we release carbon into the atmosphere that natural processes took billions of years to store in the earth, how long would it take natural processes to return us to the climate we had 100 years ago?

And did it in just a few hundred years?

It’s that rate of change that’s the major problem. Deniers never want to discuss that part of it.

[Chap]

That's a good point. If we release carbon into the atmosphere that natural processes took billions of years to store in the earth, how long would it take natural processes to return us to the climate we had 100 years ago?

And did it in just a few hundred years?

It’s that rate of change that’s the major problem. Deniers never want to discuss that part of it.

We need to distinguish the time since the plant materials that were eventually transformed into today's coal oil and gas were largely laid down from the length of the period during which they were laid down.

So far as I recall, most of our fossil fuels originated in plant matter from the Carboniferous Period (the clue is in the name ...), approximately 286 to 360 million years ago. So this stuff soaked up energy from the sun and locked it up as carbon compounds over a period of about 75 million years, and then stayed in the ground slowly cooking and being squeezed under pressure into coal, oil and gas for about four times longer than that.

And of course not all the energy and CO2 absorbed by plants in the Carboniferous Period stayed locked in carbon compounds for ever. A high proportion of those compounds (excuse me for not making a guesstimate right now of what that proportion might have been) would have been broken down fairly quickly as living creatures of all shapes and sizes fed on the plants, and their energy and associated CO2 was released back into the environment.

[Doctor Steuss]

Not trying to be contentious but is there any way to move flood water to the desert that isn't cost prohibitive?

With advances in solar technology (and reductions in production costs), I think it would probably easily pay for itself over time via water rights. You could probably get away with having a lot of small, relatively inexpensive (as far as government mega projects go) satellite pumping stations.

While in no way comparable, a family member's ranch uses a series of small solar pumps to transfer water from a spring-fed pond to an upper pond. It's been a while since I walked the fence, but If I recall correctly there are 3-4 small pumps (the housing of each "station" is about the size of a carryon luggage case). Each pump has a single panel (maybe 45 watts) at each pump. The distance between the ponds is probably about 130 yards, and 30 feet of elevation. This small setup is able to irrigate about 40 acres of pasture.

[Res Ipsa]

Not trying to be contentious but is there any way to move flood water to the desert that isn't cost prohibitive?

With advances in solar technology (and reductions in production costs), I think it would probably easily pay for itself over time via water rights. You could probably get away with having a lot of small, relatively inexpensive (as far as government mega projects go) satellite pumping stations.

While in no way comparable, a family member's ranch uses a series of small solar pumps to transfer water from a spring-fed pond to an upper pond. It's been a while since I walked the fence, but If I recall correctly there are 3-4 small pumps (the housing of each "station" is about the size of a carryon luggage case). Each pump has a single panel (maybe 45 watts) at each pump. The distance between the ponds is probably about 130 yards, and 30 feet of elevation. This small setup is able to irrigate about 40 acres of pasture.

I suppose its possible, but I think the logistics would be pretty rough. Flood water tends to be full of silt and debris. Keeping any pipeline open and functional would be, in my opinion, a nightmare. The other problem is predictability. As long as we keep increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we're changing the amount of energy and water vapor. We are seeing where the flood prone regions are today, but I'm skeptical that we have the ability to predict patterns that would justify construction of infrastructure were it is needed in order to pipe water thousands of miles.

A better solution for water may be desalinization using solar/wind power. Of course, removing water from the oceans may have long-term consequences as well. I haven't read up on that.