The Analysis of Sea Levels.

[StrandedonEarth]

One of the useful tools for this topic...

This is pretty cool..

Accompanying article

[Chemp]

There was a big article about the Thwaites Glacier in the local press last week. It's very well written, but it's behind a paywall and not in English, anyway. I was looking for more sources and found a related article in Nature.

It's not encouraging

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Good news out of China on a potential 'game changer' in extracting Rare Earth Elements via electricity (electrokinetic techniques) vs the common polluting methods that involve leachates drawing the minerals from adsorbed clay deposits (pollutes ground water and requires strip mining).

It’s electric! Technique could clean up mining of valuable rare earth elements | Science | AAAS

 

Edited November 2, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[kerbiloid]

So, (to/yester)day _{depends on time zone}  Greta The Great explained everything about climate, life, and 42 in the Royal Festival Hall, but I'm not sure if the links are not political.

Edited November 2, 2022 by kerbiloid

[kerbiloid]

Meanwhile, 2 months ago (idk if it was here)

https://clintel.org/open-letter-to-global-leaders-assembled-at-cop27-in-sharm-el-sheikh-egypt/

[SunlitZelkova]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

So, (to/yester)day _{depends on time zone}  Greta The Great explained everything about climate, life, and 42 in the Royal Festival Hall, but I'm not sure if the links are not political.

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Meanwhile, 2 months ago (idk if it was here)

https://clintel.org/open-letter-to-global-leaders-assembled-at-cop27-in-sharm-el-sheikh-egypt/

Just a heads up, I think these fall under climate policy and thus politics. This thread is mainly for the pure science.

Person says such and such about solving climate change- no.

Person says such and such about how climate is working- yes.

It's a thin line between either or though, of course.

[DDE]

On 11/3/2022 at 3:05 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

It's a thin line between either or though, of course.

I think we can should focus on the fact that Greta, She of the Bygone Era Before Coal Resurgence, is not a climate scientist. Therefore, anything she says is based on the works and statements of someone else, and likely suffers from signal loss ('broken telephone'). Instead of arguing whether her statements are political, we can simply and resolutely discount her as a suitable source for the discussion of science 

[farmerben]

how dare you

Edited November 4, 2022 by farmerben

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/11/06/katharine-hayhoe-climate-scientist-gps-contd-vpx.cnn

Climate Scientist points out that the forecast, while still warming, looks a lot better than it did 20 ya. Government, personal and industry efforts to increase renewables and reduce pollution are working.  Finally - the efforts at remediation, specifically carbon capture, should be natural solutions, like ecosystem restoration. 

[DDE]

On 11/4/2022 at 3:26 PM, farmerben said:

how dare you

She's now a solid 19 and can hold my beer.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Climate Scientist points out that the forecast, while still warming, looks a lot better than it did 20 ya. Government, personal and industry efforts to increase renewables and reduce pollution are working.  Finally - the efforts at remediation, specifically carbon capture, should be natural solutions, like ecosystem restoration. 

Two years of the hydrocarbon breakdance and high prices more, and:

1. "The improved climatic models let us be carefully optimistic about the global changes. The situation with carbon dioxide emission has stabilized, the expected ocean rising will not exceed one centimeter this century."

2. "The ecological activists insist that the humanity should use at least one ton of turf per every ton of coal to keep the powerplants matching the Ultra-Green rev. 3 standard.
This week they are protesting against the usage of heavy oil products on the railroad instead of certified coke briquettes produced out of natural coal with sawdust."

Edited November 8, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Beamer]

The WMO released their 2022 report last Sunday, their findings on sea level rise seem relevant to the discussion: https://public.wmo.int/en/our-mandate/climate/wmo-statement-state-of-global-climate

 

[farmerben]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

This week they are protesting against the usage of heavy oil products on the railroad instead of certified coke briquettes produced out of natural coal with sawdust."

Serious research goes into turning elephant grass into fuel to drive steam turbines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscanthus_×_giganteus

[kerbiloid]

17 minutes ago, farmerben said:

elephant grass

Elephants can eat it themselves and replace cars.

P.S.
A problem, though.

As cows are official methane providers and a motor of global warming, too much elephants would be much greater evil.

Interesting, do the cow-haters realise, that the cows don't provide more methane than the eaten grass can synthetize (and then release it into air anyway, if not as cow f*rts, then as rotten mass eaten by beetles)?

Edited November 8, 2022 by kerbiloid

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

32 minutes ago, Beamer said:

The WMO released their 2022 report last Sunday, their findings on sea level rise seem relevant to the discussion: https://public.wmo.int/en/our-mandate/climate/wmo-statement-state-of-global-climate

 

Sadly, those graphs I see have the 'shifting zero' or 'what zero' problem.

The State of the Climate in Europe 2021 (arcgis.com). 

I can't copy the graphs directly, but the first one has the 'zero' in the 1850 - 1930 band.  The second has the 'zero' in the 1940 - 1990 band.   While correcting (or corelating) the zero across graphs doesn't change the shape of the graph, I've mentioned before that it is disingenuous if not counter-productive to show the zero during or immediately after 'The Little Ice Age'.  It should be noted that temperatures in those lower ranges were exceptionally hard on human life and crops.  Suggesting that policy makers and individuals should strive for carbon levels akin to the 1850s is bad 'science' and ignores the human experience.

Lately, I've seen what I consider a 'better' zero showing up; that's the period between the 1940s and 1980s.

 

[Beamer]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Sadly, those graphs I see have the 'shifting zero' or 'what zero' problem.

The State of the Climate in Europe 2021 (arcgis.com). 

I can't copy the graphs directly, but the first one has the 'zero' in the 1850 - 1930 band.  The second has the 'zero' in the 1940 - 1990 band.   While correcting (or corelating) the zero across graphs doesn't change the shape of the graph, I've mentioned before that it is disingenuous if not counter-productive to show the zero during or immediately after 'The Little Ice Age'.  It should be noted that temperatures in those lower ranges were exceptionally hard on human life and crops.  Suggesting that policy makers and individuals should strive for carbon levels akin to the 1850s is bad 'science' and ignores the human experience.

Lately, I've seen what I consider a 'better' zero showing up; that's the period between the 1940s and 1980s.

 

The first graph is showing temperature differences from pre-industrial conditions, so it makes perfect sense to use a baseline before the industrial revolution. 1850 is a common choice as starting point because that's when thermometer based record keeping began. Data from before that time is generally less precise since it's indirectly inferred from tree rings, ice cores etc. For graphs not centered around a specific historic event or period the choice of baseline is pretty much arbitrary, what matters is the trend.

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

18 minutes ago, Beamer said:

The first graph is showing temperature differences from pre-industrial conditions, so it makes perfect sense to use a baseline before the industrial revolution.

Does it though?  For what purpose?  Remember, we have to identify the problem and recommend solutions.  Trying to get people to go back to 1850s level technology / industrial output / pollution levels is not only unrealistic, it would be inhumane.

There's a big difference between just having data, and using it purposefully. 

The Little Ice Age did not occur because of or in spite of human activity.  It apparently did not end because of or in spite of it, either.   

Thus - using the 1850s as a baseline projects a false sense of scale.

[SunlitZelkova]

7 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/11/06/katharine-hayhoe-climate-scientist-gps-contd-vpx.cnn

Climate Scientist points out that the forecast, while still warming, looks a lot better than it did 20 ya. Government, personal and industry efforts to increase renewables and reduce pollution are working.  Finally - the efforts at remediation, specifically carbon capture, should be natural solutions, like ecosystem restoration. 

It’s hard to see this as a positive when most of what is being done now seems to be considered “good enough” by leaders and businesses.

2.8 degrees over 4 degrees… the USSR didn’t collapse into a nuclear civil war, but millions still died in the 1990s in the ensuing economic crisis…

I also dislike when climatologists try to play ecologist.

57 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Does it though?  For what purpose?  Remember, we have to identify the problem and recommend solutions.  Trying to get people to go back to 1850s level technology / industrial output / pollution levels is not only unrealistic, it would be inhumane.

Pollution is one thing but I think we are near or at the ability to take GG to zero technology wise. The issue is how to replace and retire GG without wrecking the economy and society.

[Beamer]

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Does it though?  For what purpose?

For the purpose of showing temperature differences since we started accurately measuring them. This is not really a popular press publication (although the absolutely horribly over-designed website might make you think different), it assumes that the people reading it have some prior knowledge and familiarity with conventions.

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Remember, we have to identify the problem and recommend solutions.

The problem has been identified, it's getting a lot hotter fast. The solutions will have to be ignorant of the whodunnit, leave that to the historians (disclaimer: I am not). All data we have suggests that even if we go back to pre-industrial levels right now (which is of course impossible, and would in itself be a disaster even greater than the climate change) it will still keep getting worse for a long time. People need to be a little less concerned about avoidance, a lot less concerned about the guilt question, and a lot more concerned about battening down the hatches. Avoidance alone is not a solution, it is part of it for sure and just 'good common sense' but it's not going to be enough. Expressed in both economical and personal damage, climate change is already a disaster by all reasonable definitions of the word.

It doesn't matter if it's getting hotter because we are coming out of an ice age or because our cows and cars and factories are gassy or how much exactly each contributes, what matters is that it's doing huge amounts of damage and we'll be getting more of that in the future. We know ways to reduce our own footprint, so let's do that for starters, that's the good common sense part. But aside from that we need to pump a lot more money into research focused on reducing the speed of change or even reversing it, and into preparing for the worst. Whether that's through CO2 reclamation or mirrors in space to reflect sunlight or just strengthening the dykes, or whatever people can come up with if we get serious about it doesn't really matter, as long as it works.

TLDR: We've learned the planet is getting hotter, and that we are at least contributing to that. Now we need to learn how to live with a hotter climate, and learn how to make it colder.

 

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

the USSR didn’t collapse into a nuclear civil war, but millions still died in the 1990s in the ensuing economic crisis

Millions' lifespan got shorter by several years for a decade, but not that "millions died".
The population kept growing, but slower. And the population is younger than in Western Europe by 5..7 years.

8 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Trying to get people to go back to 1850s level technology / industrial output / pollution levels is not only unrealistic, it would be inhumane.

Just 6.5 bln humans are added since the Dickens characters were fighting for shilling.

2 hours ago, Beamer said:

We know ways to reduce our own footprint, so let's do that for starters, that's the good common sense part. But aside from that we need to pump a lot more money into research focused on reducing the speed of change or even reversing it, and into preparing for the worst. Whether that's through CO2 reclamation or mirrors in space to reflect sunlight or just strengthening the dykes, or whatever people can come up with if we get serious about it doesn't really matter, as long as it works.

Usually it happens via another catastrophe.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

I think I just solved Global Warming.

(Industrial CO2 shortage) --- CAPTURE IT!

This is a crisis: the beer is flat.

Quote

 

While atmospheric CO2 levels keep increasing, some industries aren't getting enough of the gas.

The cost of industrial CO2 has been rising since the summer. These price surges have created problems for breweries, which need the gas to carbonate beer, along with suppliers across the food and beverage industry that need the gas for cooling and preservation purposes. 

"The situation is worrying. Many companies only get part of the ordered quantity or nothing at all and have no planning security," said Stefanie Sabet, managing director of the Federal Association of the German Food Industry in a statement in September.

 

 

Prices of industrial CO2 are rising and stocks are dropping.

 

Quote

 

According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the price for industrial CO2 in September 2022 was 25% higher than in the previous year. Around 70% of ammonia production has stopped since August, according to Fertilizers Europe, the European association of fertilizer manufacturers.

...

 

When it comes to the food industry, CO2 is best known for its capacity to add that nice fizz to drinks like mineral water, sodas or beer. Breweries also need carbon dioxide to pre-charge tanks, bottles and kegs so that the beer does not come into contact with air during filling and does not foam during bottling. It also helps to preserve beers — "if not used, the product can have a very short shelf life," Spillane said.

CO2 is also used to decaffeinate coffee, for food packaging and as a refrigerant. Liquid and solid "dry ice" CO2 is used for quick freezing and keeping food refrigerated during transport.

The gas is also used to promote the growth of plants in greenhouses

 

 

Joking aside: Carbon Capture (from the atmosphere) is in its infancy and still very expensive and not available for industrial uses.

Spoiler

It may sound like an obvious "kill two birds with one stone" situation. But carbon capture from the air — a process called direct air capture — is still too expensive to present itself as a tenable option for most companies. 

Some corporations, like the Swiss company Climeworks AG, have developed methods to capture CO2 from the air and pump it deep underground, where it can be permanently stored. But this captured gas is meant to mitigate climate change and is not available for industrial use.

So, enough to damage the climate but, so far, too scarce to be taken from the air without being very expensive. 

 

 

Flat beer could be another byproduct of the energy crisis – DW – 11/15/2022

Edited November 15, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[kerbiloid]

Another reason to conquer Mars and/or to launch the air scoops to the Venus.

They have pure CO2.

Or grow the grape right there and deliver the drinks already bottled.

[Beamer]

20 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Joking aside: Carbon Capture (from the atmosphere) is in its infancy and still very expensive and not available for industrial uses.

Technological carbon capture and storage is very expensive and at the current levels of technology not effective enough to make much of a dent. However, there are some clever people thinking up low tech ways, like https://geobites.org/carbon-to-carbonates-capturing-co2-with-rocks/. Of course the good old 'planting trees'^* is another low tech method. Capturing carbon is something the earth has been doing for a long time through various means, we can leverage those means if we're smart about it. Technology is not necessarily always the best solution, and it's unlikely we'll find a 'silver bullet' solution, progress will have to come from a variety of methods.

^* A big problem with almost all of the current tree planting actions is that the land used for this is typically land that has already been earmarked to 'naturally regenerate'. So instead of a beautiful natural forest we get regular mono-cultures like this:

Spoiler

As much as I like to see more trees, that is obviously not a good way to go about it. The same field would have been a lot more 'healthy' if it was just left alone for a while. And of course, planting them on one side and cutting them down on the other just as fast doesn't help much either. If we want more trees, we should probably stop cutting them down before we try to plant more.

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

18 minutes ago, Beamer said:

mono-cultures

That's been an interesting shift in the last several years.  I think when "Mr. Beast" started his campaign to 'plant xmillion trees' people got interested, big time; which was followed by lots of smart people saying "hey, we need to plant trees where trees go, plant/allow grasslands to be diverse, and put the right trees (and etc.) in the right spots".  You see a lot more about biodiversity and balance in planting, reclamation and 'buffer zones' than you used to.  Shows we actually can be smart!

 

[Beamer]

20 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

That's been an interesting shift in the last several years.  I think when "Mr. Beast" started his campaign to 'plant xmillion trees' people got interested, big time; which was followed by lots of smart people saying "hey, we need to plant trees where trees go, plant/allow grasslands to be diverse, and put the right trees (and etc.) in the right spots".  You see a lot more about biodiversity and balance in planting, reclamation and 'buffer zones' than you used to.  Shows we actually can be smart!

 

I like to think I keep up to date on my internet memes, but until 2 weeks ago I never heard of this Mr Beast. When I did and had a look at a few of his videos, I wondered the same thing I always wonder about 'personality' centered YT channels. But hey if he gets the good message out there, he's got my blessing

Still, the usage of land that has already been earmarked for natural regeneration is a big issue. It makes sense of course, no land developer is going to give up his high priced and prized land, bought to build a mall or houses, for a bunch of trees. If some well meaning charity asks a mayor of a city if he has some land to spare for a tree planting action, the mayor is going to say "Sure, we weren't doing anything with this piece of land anyway". That really needs to change before we get anywhere. Planting trees instead of letting them grow naturally doesn't really help all that much, even when done sensibly and responsibly (although that's still a lot better than the picture I posted).