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July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

nytimes.com

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Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#481

Post by brooklyndavs »

I'm just a software developer with a side interest in climate science so please excuse any ignorance on this topic. What I find troubling is it seems, from what I have read, our climate models currently have a poor handle on co2 and methane feedbacks, both positive and negative. For example there seems to be a general scientific consensus that NOx from industrial sources (mostly coal power plants) is having some cooling effect. When these are removed, which will happen slowly but steadily as coal is retired, there will be a warming response but it is not clear how much this response will be. Similarly, you have positive feedbacks coming into place like the decline of sea ice in the arctic, less forests and more combustion of those forests, and co2/methane releases from permafrost. These are other feedbacks are known but nothing I have read has convinced me we have a full scientific understanding of the impact that these feedbacks will have.

Thats why like others in this thread I feel rather hopeless about humanity ever getting global warming under control. We of course have the problem of humanity to continue putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere via our economic activity. This of course is co2 but also methane and HFCs. The challenge of bringing these down to safe levels while keeping not only the standard of living we enjoy currently in the west but also bringing billions more people into the middle class world wide is impossible with existing technology and incredibly hard with emerging technology. To get to a carbon neutral prosperous, middle class society for everyone on the planet will take many decades. If we ever get to that point I'm afraid feedbacks and built in system inertia will be so strong that the planet will keep on warming for 1,000s of years despite our best efforts.

TL;DR I think we as humans really screwed this up and I don't have much hope of us collectively being able to fix it.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#482

Post by _ph_ »

soundwave106 wrote: post #354
s_q_b wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power isn't some counter-cultural fad. It's the top recommendation and consensus among climate scientists. This messianic fantasy that solar and wind will save us, to which every anti-nuclear technologist clings, is not only wrong, but dangerous. Global warming is no longer a theoretical issue. It is here . Now. Within 20 years people will begin abandoning the Persian Gulf, sending a wave of refugees across E…

Unfortunately, nuclear has one big issue in addition to the issues already described (long time to build a plant; geo-political concerns on the link between plants and atomic weapons): when it goes bad, it can go spectacularly wrong. No other power source has produced a singular disaster like Chernobyl where about 2500 square km of land is basically uninhabitable for a few hundred years+. Coal fires are the only thin…

And, what might be little known outside of Germany, we still suffer from the Chernobyl incident, as it is still not entirely safe to eat wild mushrooms (and certain game) from southern Germany forests due to radioactive contamination. And that won't change in my lifetime.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#483

Post by nl »

bluehazed wrote: post #332
mikeash wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy storage solves that problem. The technology exists, the only potential trouble is cost, so it comes back to price again. Storage costs are also dropping rapidly. A proper comparison of nuclear to wind/solar needs to account for the cost of storage as well, but even if you add that in I suspect it's approaching parity.

"Energy storage solves that problem" Yes, but we don't have that solution.

We do actually.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery are cheap to produce, have decent power density and are solving this exact problem now in Africa and South America.

Production levels are just starting to ramp up now.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#484

Post by throwanem »

RankingMember wrote: post #450
throwanem wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, by all means, don't stop there! Elucidate the enormities you're willing to encompass.

C'mon man don't throw a thesaurus at us like that.

Language can be a form of play! I picked up my vocabulary from books, back when books were what you had to use. You have the Internet. Go thou forth and roll around in it!

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#485

Post by nl »

tomp wrote: post #413
mikeash wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Pretty much any building you can point at has enough space for batteries to sustain its power needs overnight. The only reason we haven't all run out and done it is because, first, it's not necessary with the grid as it is now, and second, it costs a whole lot. The engineering issues are in getting this stuff to be sufficiently cost effective that we can afford to put them into wide use.

How many batteries can we build? How do we build them on such a large scale? Do we mine enough raw materials for so many batteries? Are there enough materials for so many batteries? How do we cool them? How do we replace the faulty ones? How long do they last? How many people do we need to maintain them? How do we train them? How do we dispose of the batteries? Not all of these questions have have hard or problematic…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery solves all of these problems.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#486

Post by sevenless »

jandrese wrote: post #455
sanxiyn wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NPR article is "irreversible in 1000 years scale". Yes, things are different in million years scale. But even immeidately achieving zero emission today will not cool the planet, at least for 1000 years.

Basically it is irreversible on a human level timescale. Many generations of life on this planet are going to have to adjust to higher average temperatures. It's going to be (and already is really) a mini-extinction event. Unless we don't change course, then it might be a mass extinction.

There's the possibility of geo-engineering.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#487

Post by craftkiller »

RodericDay wrote: post #420
oogali wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discourage consumption by who? People without money? You're busy looking up, and forgetting there's a class or two of people below you that would be [disproportionately] affected by your policy.

If you think everyone should have access to some meat, you can take some of that tax money and use it to subsidize a minimal amount of meat consumption for low-income families.

That's a scary thought. Think of it this way: in a corrupt society the wealthy upper class can do whatever they want and get away with it. If we continue controlling behavior like this through tax then we'd have the same behavior as the corrupt society: wealthy people do what they want and poor people can't do anything... The difference is you'd be codifying this into law. Instead of being 'corrupt' behavior we can work to abolish, it would be the acceptable expected behavior.

Maybe that isn't corruption at all, and we've been wrong this whole time. Maybe right and wrong are malleable enough to sway under money. Maybe we need corruption to survive as a species. I don't know.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#488

Post by nl »

stillsut wrote: post #337
nl wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people say this like it is some kind of self evident comment. High levels of industrial production without counting the cost of carbon emissions is the problem. Counties with high birth rates (mostly in Africa) aren't the ones causing that. It's really the 2 person family in the West, with 3 cars, a MacManshion and 4 overseas holidays a year.

In the same way that PG showed us how startup = growth, AGW = continued exponentially growing emissions.Since the effect of CO2 on temperature is logarithmic, there can only be marked warming in the continued exponential growth scenarios. Europe and even US have negative emission growth recently, even though our populations are slowly growing, our emissions efficiency is outclassing our increased consumption for a ne…

As far as I can tell, I think most of your assumptions here aren't born out by the evidence.

Firstly, 6B in Africa is the most pessimistic assumption possible[1].

Secondly, this is completely wrong: 1st world alone, and at their current and projected rate we'll continue to increase CO2 concentration and warm but second derivative of temperature will go strongly negative, and we will never hit a crisis.

To quote Wikipedia: In a scenario where global emissions start to decrease by 2010 and then declined at a sustained rate of 3% per year, the likely global average temperature increase was predicted to be 1.7 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2050, rising to around 2 °C by 2100.[2]

To make it clear: with a global reduction in emissions (not just first world) we are still in the "crisis" area of a 2 °C increase in temperatures by 2100.

Those estimates were made in 2008, and I believe we are already past the possibility of dropping emissions enough to meet those targets.

[1] https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/ (Need to choose Africa)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_circulation_model

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#489

Post by tomp »

nl wrote: post #485
tomp wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many batteries can we build? How do we build them on such a large scale? Do we mine enough raw materials for so many batteries? Are there enough materials for so many batteries? How do we cool them? How do we replace the faulty ones? How long do they last? How many people do we need to maintain them? How do we train them? How do we dispose of the batteries? Not all of these questions have have hard or problematic…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery solves all of these problems.

Flow batteries are amazing for home use, but for industrial scale? I don't know... Also, IIRC, don't they have a fairly limited temperature range?

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#490

Post by balabaster »

stillsut wrote: post #320
balabaster wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live just North of Toronto, it's definitely gotten above 30 degrees a few times this year and I think above 40 (Celcius), but I can't be sure. We have no air conditioning. There are days it's downright uncomfortable and you're walking around shirtless and sitting by a fan because even warm air flow is better than no air flow. There are a lot of cold showers and cold drinks consumed. I have to say though, it's only…

geothermal cooling. Really? For a private residence north of Toronto? I have a $50 AC in my bedroom, that I'll turn on at night to get to sleep. That cost maybe $10/month in electricity. I don't see how the upfront and maintenance cost for something like geothermal can ever breakeven in a place where you only need to use it for a few days a year in one room. Do you?

It's not a few days a year in one room. Geothermal maintains a stable temperature throughout the year so it reduces the need for AC in summer and heating in the winter. While it doesn't do the whole job, it does enough that you can reduce your power needs significantly. As for break even, it does, when you consider the whole picture. Additionally, if you don't take on environmental needs as your own personal cause, then how can you expect others to.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

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