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The concurrence of three climatic events

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Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#21

Post by iso1631 »

djleni wrote: post #17
giarc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps. I never know what to believe. I've heard smart, knowledgeable people like Bill Gates state that he thinks we won't experience a scorched Earth ending, but that we will solve this crisis. I'd like to believe him, but then I see an article like this and I don't know who to believe, the graphs are pretty damning if only to say "that line is way above the other lines, and that is bad."

For what it’s worth, the average interpretation I’ve seen from climate scientists is: - No, we won’t hit scorched earth Venus-like runaway warming. - If we don’t reduce emissions drastically, greenhouse gas warming plus various feedbacks will cause extreme weather, render some parts of the world unlivable due to wet bulb temperature, and overwhelm unprepared infrastructure, costing huge amounts of money and creating…

Millions of migrants seems a massivly optimistic view. I suspect it will be well over a billion in 10 years.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#22

Post by tovej »

giarc wrote: post #11
booleandilemma wrote: post #4

This guy's blog is subtitled "Eliot Jacobson's Collapse of Everything Blog". Is this his schtick? Does he just say the world is ending all the time, or is what he's saying true?

Perhaps. I never know what to believe. I've heard smart, knowledgeable people like Bill Gates state that he thinks we won't experience a scorched Earth ending, but that we will solve this crisis. I'd like to believe him, but then I see an article like this and I don't know who to believe, the graphs are pretty damning if only to say "that line is way above the other lines, and that is bad."

Bill Gates has been buying up water reserves, has investments in polluting industries, and he's got an interest in keeping the public thinking it's "not so bad". It is. Bill Gates is also behind the "our world in data" series on youtube, that consistently misrepresents climate science to make it seem like we can solve it with enough "green industry", when the only real solution is degrowth, we can't afford to keep siphoning the carbon out of the earth. GDP growth is correlated with --- and the main driver of --- the warming.

This message doesn't serve the interests of billionaires, and Gates is no exception.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#24

Post by jgilias »

htk wrote: post #8

Reading the article I see some very short timeframes being used (e.g. 1991-2020, 1979-2000) as statistically relevant. Might be enough when preaching to the choir, but irrelevant to the skeptics.

Those are standard climatological periods. You need that for data to be comparable and make sense. I would expect the skeptics to put in at least minor surface level effort in trying to understand the thing that they’re skeptical about, but yeah, maybe that’s too much to ask.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#25

Post by Daishiman »

phtrivier wrote: post #20
mbil wrote: post #10

Interesting that removing sulphur emissions may have resulted in more solar radiation being absorbed by the oceans. Wonder if cargo ships could purposely emit some benign material that would reflect away sunlight. Although I suspect there could be unintended consequences.

> As of January 1, 2020, the International Maritime Organization put a limit on the sulfur content in shipping fuels, reducing the global upper limit on sulfur content from 3.50% to 0.50%. Here is a link to an article describing this change. This reduced limit was mandatory and led to over a 75% drop in sulfur oxides. While great for the environment in many respects (e.g. less acid rain and ocean acidification), ther…

Regulation of CFCs was successful at helping to recover the ozone layer. Likewise the Clean Air Act.

Regulation works remarkably well in many spaces. Skepticism is warranted as usual but the cynics that claim it almost never works usually have a hidden agenda.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#26

Post by abeppu »

> The IPCC suggests that current sulfur aerosol levels are contributing in the neighborhood of 0.5° C to total global cooling, offsetting warming that would otherwise rapidly occur.

> By cleaning up shipping fuels, massive regions of the world’s oceans that were protected from heating by shipping sulfate aerosols are now experiencing rapid warming. This includes the main shipping routes between Asia and the Western US as well as the major routes from the Easter US to Europe and the Middle East. And that’s where the warming is happening. This rapid heating is known as “termination shock,” and it appears to be what’s happening right now.

It's frustrating that we've argued a lot about the hazards of intentional geoengineering responses without reaching a consensus that we should do it, and meanwhile the shipping industry was cavalierly doing it along-side their other emissions. Yes, we need to rapidly cut emissions. Yes, we need to in parallel invest in carbon capture. But if every fraction of a degree matters, shouldn't we also be at least continuing if not scaling up these these albedo-increasing changes?

(edited for grammar)

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#28

Post by soperj »

Ancalagon wrote: post #7
xrd wrote: post #2

I read the whole article. I looked at all the graphs and charts. I still don't understand the near term significance, even with the detailed explanations. Assuming I'm exactly average, that means 50% of the population won't understand it either. Of that 50%, how many will actually care? Nothing will happen until it is too late. His final words weren't encouraging and I can't say I feel any better either.

Third paragraph from the bottom. Seems pretty clear in layman's terms to me. > As we enter Northern hemisphere summer, large regions of the planet will experience record heatwaves, fires, storms and flooding. These events will set records in intensity, duration and frequency. The planet’s overall temperature will spike to new highs for the modern era, with 1.5°C in sight for 2024. Antarctic polar sea-ice will continu…

We've got 40 years of data on Antarctic sea ice, and over the last 4 decades it's been growing, not retreating. [1]

[1]https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#29

Post by [deleted] »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #16

"The end of global industrial civilization is where we are headed right now, not at some future dystopian moment. I wish I had a hopeful word to end with. But I don’t." That's a pretty terrifying ending. Many of these trends (reducing sea ice causing increased ocean warming, burning of forests and permafrost) may be irreversible once things pass a certain point. At very least we may need to engage in some sort of lar…

[deleted]

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#30

Post by AnonCoward42 »

vichu wrote: post #12

I fear that this is the year "wet-bulb temperature" becomes a term regular households across the world become deeply familiar with. It may be as ubiquitous as the term "social distancing" became. I've always naively thought that climate disaster was still 10-20 years out, but it seems like it's going to begin in earnest now and instead be completely catastrophic after these next 10 years. What can I as an individual…

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