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Climate Spiral [video]

svs.gsfc.nasa.gov

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Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#51

Post by photochemsyn »

pvaldes wrote: post #3

Very cool and clever plot. How it was done?

I think it's based on the plots they have on big storage freezers in in the biology world. These circular plotters are used because if there's a temperature spike (power failure etc.) at midnight for some reason you can see it next day by glancing at the plot. For this, they're basically just taking the normal temperature graph plot and wrapping it around a year over and over again. Mathematically, a switch to polar coordinates would be used I think.

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#52

Post by DoughnutHole »

a-dub wrote: post #14

so here's a fun question: it's become quite trendy in policy circles in california to incentivize the removal of lawns and gardens as part of water conservation efforts. doesn't removal of fertile topsoil and replacement of it with rocks and cacti at scale actually reduce carbon sequestration and heat absorption capacity?

[EDIT: Below I have demonstrated a slow brain rot that has robbed me of my ability to do basic dimensional analysis. My lecturers are spinning in their graves, least of all because I forgot that the kilogram is between the gram and the tonne. Luckily I was off by 3 orders of magnitude in both directions so I guess it sort of balances out?]

The heat absorption is a good point, I don't know what native foliage is like to live in compared to the concrete hell you'd be left with without lawns. But, I find it hard to imagine that turf grass in climates where it can't survive without massive irrigation and ceaseless human intervention sequesters more carbon than it costs to maintain.

The numbers I've quickly gathered are all over the place, but given that:

- The average Californian lawn is ~500 sqm [0]

- Grass sequesters ~ 85g of carbon per sqm per year, or 42 tonnes per year [1]

- As of 2011 the average Californian household uses 190 gallons of potable water a day on landscaping [2]

- About 0.004 metric tonnes of carbon is generated processing 1000 gallons of potable water or 0.76 tonnes per day of watering [3]

So, the average Californian lawn sequesters 42 tonnes of carbon a year, while the energy cost of irrigating it emits about 277 tonnes.

This is all quick back of an envelope math, but the carbon cost of irrigating a lawn where it wasn't meant to grow is massively larger than the amount that the grass sequesters. It's honestly bad enough that you could tear up every lawn in California and not even bother replacing them with native foliage, and it would still result in a net decrease in carbon emissions.

[0]: https://www.homeadvisor.com/r/average-yard-size-by-state/

[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282543110_Modeling_...

[2]: https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/11525/how-much-water-do-califor...

[3]: http://leansixsigmaenvironment.org/index.php/how-much-impact...

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#53

Post by EForEndeavour »

Geee wrote: post #37

It's misleading to imply that this is an exponential process, rather than an S-curve. If we look where all the oil came from, we could deduce that by burning it all we would be just going back to similar environment. I.e. the absolute worst thing that could happen is a tropical paradise.

A "tropical paradise" at the poles, with uninhabitable equatorial regions, and untold disruption to human civilization as we know it. The transition to that global configuration is unlikely to look paradisal.

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#54

Post by Geee »

turtledove wrote: post #43
Geee wrote: post #37

It's misleading to imply that this is an exponential process, rather than an S-curve. If we look where all the oil came from, we could deduce that by burning it all we would be just going back to similar environment. I.e. the absolute worst thing that could happen is a tropical paradise.

The problem is not the end state, it's the speed at which we are approaching that end state. Think about a car moving down the highway, when you gradually apply the brake, you can safely decelerate to 0. When you hit a stationary barrier, getting to 0 is potentially deadly and also damages the car. Rapid climate change kills species, disrupts supply chains, increases damaging weather like hurricanes, destroys agricul…

Agree. Still, most people seem to be under the impression that there's a "tipping point" and then temperatures will spiral into infinity.

It's disruptive, but nature and humanity is adaptive. Many species will also thrive, and total agricultural output will rise with more co2 in atmosphere.

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#55

Post by titzer »

veltas wrote: post #29

This visualisation is misleading because the visual area covered increases quadratically as the radius increases, and (less misleading) the velocity of the 'pen' increases linearly too. But it's measuring a difference (not an absolute quantity): so velocity and (especially) area are arbitrary. I could take the same graph and apply it to the period between 1890 and 1945 and it would seem just as concerning, with a dif…

It could be misleading the other way too, if the starting radius was extremely large and the increments very small, then it could be made to look like no big deal. But that's the thing with temperature. We rarely start graphs at absolute zero (-273C), so what's your point again?

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#56

Post by titzer »

a-dub wrote: post #14

so here's a fun question: it's become quite trendy in policy circles in california to incentivize the removal of lawns and gardens as part of water conservation efforts. doesn't removal of fertile topsoil and replacement of it with rocks and cacti at scale actually reduce carbon sequestration and heat absorption capacity?

Most of LA would be a rocky semi-desert without irrigation. If you want to sequester carbon, maybe do it someplace that does have rainfall to support an effective carbon-sink ecosystem and doesn't require huge amounts of energy input?

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#57

Post by incomingpain »

chasing wrote: post #15
smitty1e wrote: post #5

I find data presented in such a manner, without comment, quite a bit more compelling than much of what passes for debate these days.

A significant part of the debate is simply scientists going, "please, for the love of god, look at the data."

>A significant part of the debate is simply scientists going, "please, for the love of god, look at the data."

Nobody! wants to look at the data. Climate change isn't about science or data anymore. It's about politics.

The first group of climate change I find are the doomers. They got bored with Mayan calendars and Y2k dates. They jumped into climate change and we are literally on the verge of extinction always. When deadlines come and go, they just give us another 10 years. Right now, we have 10 years left until we are all dead. Climate change is the equivalent of 4 nuclear bombs a second... This is also the group who sees political violence as necessary because by not solving climate change you are literally killing them. So they will be politically violent to get their way. Self-defence right?

The next group is the politicos whose 'solution' to climate change is a planned economy. Nothing really to do with fixing climate change. Unanimously voted against in the USA multiple times now. Hilariously even named after Roosevelt's new deal which never survived. Realize government expands constantly and virtually never cancels stuff. Yet the new deal by roosevelt was so destructive that it has been entirely dismantled.

The next group are the investors or financial incentives. They have significant financial benefit to see at least temporarily a big boost to climate change related stocks. Great long term investments and I have invested this way, but this group isn't about climate change, they are in it for the $.

Climate scientist? You're never going to speak against your own team. Your job security depends upon you also pushing that the climate is blowing up. Otherwise what are you being paid for?

Then you have the worst group. The 'you're a science denier' group. They have no intention to look at or even consider the data. If you don't accept the unscientific 'consensus' from financially biased climate scientists. Then you're a science denier. How about the very real problem that climate science is REALLY BAD. Nothing is ever reproduced. Nothing is ever peer reviewed. Correlation factors are less than 10%. Huge history of failed predictions and flawed systems. Climate science is worse in terms of replication crisis than psychology. Even better... this is the group who produces the illegitimate content.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...

So what are those black/red dots for predicted 2050 and 2100 ranges? IPCC AR5 RCP8.5 is very official sounding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_P...

Seriously... the picked the most blown out of proportion prediction that is certainly not going to happen as the best option for this graph? They had to do that though didn't they.

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#58

Post by leto_ii »

DoughnutHole wrote: post #52
a-dub wrote: post #14

so here's a fun question: it's become quite trendy in policy circles in california to incentivize the removal of lawns and gardens as part of water conservation efforts. doesn't removal of fertile topsoil and replacement of it with rocks and cacti at scale actually reduce carbon sequestration and heat absorption capacity?

[EDIT: Below I have demonstrated a slow brain rot that has robbed me of my ability to do basic dimensional analysis. My lecturers are spinning in their graves, least of all because I forgot that the kilogram is between the gram and the tonne. Luckily I was off by 3 orders of magnitude in both directions so I guess it sort of balances out?] The heat absorption is a good point, I don't know what native foliage is like…

> - The average Californian lawn is ~500 sqm [0]

> - Grass sequesters ~ 85g of carbon per sqm per year, or 42 tonnes per year [1]

500 * 85g/m2 = 42500 g/m2 - that's 42.5 kg, not 42.5 tonnes.

I haven't checked your original sources, but based on the numbers you provided you're off by 3 orders of magnitude. Intuitively this makes sense, I mean 42 tonnes is a huge amount of carbon to sequester in a lawn. Where would all that mass go? It would mean that the average lawn produces >> 42 tonnes of grass per year.

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#59

Post by gmuslera »

MrsPeaches wrote: post #6

I really like this one as well: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4978

It is important to show that the warming and anomalies are uneven, because in the north (specially over the northern polar circle) a few positive feedback loops happen, like permafrost thawing that emits CO2 and methane that were frozen there for very long time.

I'm not sure that that reinforcement of the trends were taken into account in old models, or how much it can accelerate things over old predictions that may still be used to dictate policies.

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