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The concurrence of three climatic events

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31–40 of 408 posts

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#31
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…

Just curious really, but sources on China being particularly uncooperative with this kind of stuff? Totally take your word for it, of course. I'm mainly just surprised I hadn't heard this particular point before in the various and constant Bad-China discourse.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#32
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…

Keep calm, carry on, adapt.

Slow-moving crises are not crises, they're problems, not emergencies.

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Here, have some literature, down-voters! ----

[1] Nine long and nearly continuous sea level records were chosen from around the world to explore rates of change in sea level for 1904–2003. These records were found to capture the variability found in a larger number of stations over the last half century studied previously. Extending the sea level record back over the entire century suggests that the high variability in the rates of sea level change observed over the past 20 years were not particularly unusual. The rate of sea level change was found to be larger in the early part of last century (2.03 ± 0.35 mm/yr 1904–1953), in comparison with the latter part (1.45 ± 0.34 mm/yr 1954–2003). The highest decadal rate of rise occurred in the decade centred on 1980 (5.31 mm/yr) with the lowest rate of rise occurring in the decade centred on 1964 (−1.49 mm/yr). Over the entire century the mean rate of change was 1.74 ± 0.16 mm/yr. [0]

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We compare estimates of coastal and global averaged sea level for 1950 to 2000. During the 1990s and around 1970, we find coastal sea level is rising faster than the global average but that it rises slower than the global average during the late 1970s and late 1980s. The differences are largely a result of sampling the time-varying geographical distribution of sea level rise along a coastline which is more convoluted in some regions than others. More rapid coastal rise corresponds to La Niña–like conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean and a slower rate corresponds to El Niño–like conditions. Over the 51 year period, there is no significant difference in the rates of coastal and global averaged sea level rise, as found in climate model simulations of the 20th century. The best estimate of both global average and coastal sea level rise remains 1.8 ± 0.3 mm yr−1, as found in earlier studies. [1]

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Kemp et al. (1) note that recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports emphasize sub-2 °C scenarios. Simultaneously, IPCC reports also overemphasize catastrophic scenarios, as does broader discourse. For example, the cataclysmic Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) and Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 5-8.5 (SSP5-8.5) scenarios—now widely considered implausible (2)—account for roughly half of the scenario mentions in recent IPCC Assessment Reports’ impacts (Working Group II) sections (Fig. 1A), similar to underlying scientific literature (3). The SSP3-7.0 emissions pathway, which Kemp et al. (1) use in their analyses, assumes a world in 2100 heavily reliant on coal and with no climate policy—an implausible future (3, 4). It projects vastly higher emissions than the International Energy Agency (IEA) stated policies scenario, which has continually been revised downward in recent years (4) (Fig. 1B). [2]

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[0]: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200... [1]: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200... [2]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2214347119

Cherry-picked because hey, why not?

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#33
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.

This could work in combination with emission of Iron Salt Aerosols (ISAs). These would have two beneficial effects: increase of phytoplankton growth in iron-poor regions of the oceans, and increased photogeneration of OH and Cl radicals in the troposphere to increase the rate of removal of methane.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#34
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.

Maybe those guys advocating a sulfur dioxide pipe to the stratosphere had the right idea. We clearly aren't conserving our way out of this mess.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#35

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?

"Eliot Jacobson, Ph.D. Retired professor of mathematics and computer science, retired casino consultant, now a full time volunteer, husband and grandfather. Know-it-all doomer. Born in the year 316 ppm CO2."

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#36
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just spraying seawater upwards to make clouds might do the trick: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-conceptual-Flettner-sp...

Even if scientists agreed that spraying seawater upwards from every ship would mitigate say 10 years of climate change, can you imagine world governments coming to an agreement to do it, and how to fund it?

Also, H2O is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, so this is prolly not really a great idea

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#37
post #22
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."

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 si…

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Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#38
He forgot the 4th event - Social Contagion Resulting in Climate Sensationalism.

Can we please have a realistic discussion on climate change? I'm so sick of these "scientists" acting like we're in "Day After Tomorrow" and every normal weather event is suddenly a precursor to the Armageddon that'll take us all out in the next decade or less. You scientifically cannot look at individual weather events and determine they're climate change, that's pseudoscience.

People like this author only manage to turn rational individuals into deniers due to their over the top claims that never come true.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#39
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.

Skeptics will stay skeptics whatever we say. Last time the timeframe was too long, this time the timeframe is too short.

"we had ice age in the past", "we had warming in the past", 1990 is too close, -2m years is too far, the sun is closer (it's not), "numbers can say anything", "oooooh spooky graphs ;)" &c.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#40

"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…

IF the correlation between sulphuric oxide contents in shipping fuel and these measures changes are true then we have the solution in the article right there. The best day to start solar radiation management was yesterday, the second-best is now.
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