Climate change - continued from a discussion in another thread

[Fishmanic]

Texas electric company declares bankruptcy

Oldest Texas electricity co-op goes bust after getting hit with $2 billion bill

Energy group said it won't pass on "unaffordable electric bills" to its members after state's power freeze.

www.cbsnews.com

 

[itiwhetu]

I saw an interesting program about some scientists who were looking at major industrial cities in the US. They showed that as the cities became cleaner the temperatures were rising because the atmosphere was cleaner. The cities that kept burning coal were cooler. Is global warming just a cause and effect thing because we have a cleaner environment, that we now all live in. This is the first generation that has bothered about burning coal since the industrial revolution.

 

[OnlyGenusCaps]

I missed this. You are absolutely correct, some pollutants, especially particulate matter, can have a cooling impact. They reflect light back into space. Unfortunately, it's pretty well established that they are also not so great to breathe - asthma, emphysema, cancer, and the like. But they can cool.

There are some folks that promote "geoengineering" who want to put clouds of these sorts of things into the high atmosphere. Of course there are knock on impacts of reducing the sunlight hitting the planet, but I suspect the bigger issue will become the question of who has the right to control the climate. Can you imagine a scenario where a warming world is bad for China but good for the States, or vice versa? Something new to fight about.

 

[Fishiemang]

This is fun.....

I read some of it.

Seen the pretty graphs.

The one aspect that most people dodge when they discuss this is this:

Deforestation

These pretty graphs that show a steady increase in greenhouse gasses never show deforestation, and it's effects on them. The major one everyone cries about is carbon emissions. Plant food essentially.

Back in the day, not to long back, "science" told you that the ice age was coming. Now, I'm not talkin about that Time Magazine cover. It was a real debate, globally. The great cooldown. Now, 40-50 years later, it's the great warm up.

We have to keep in mind Earth and her cycles. Every 11,000. A time when glaciers cover vast areas of the surface. At their peaks, the ocean.levels are low, and more saline, yet aquatic live survives. We are on the opposite end of this. 10,000 years out. We know this looking at ice cores down in the global freezer on the bottom of the planet.

Hominids have been around millions of years. Humans walked the Earth when the Sahara, as mentioned, was an ocean. It will be an ocean again. Cycles.

To say that nothing will be alive in 2050 if carbon emissions are at 0% immediately ignores science itself. Humans are not the only contributing factor to greenhouse gas emissions. Methane is released from millions, even billions of years ago, all the time, via shifting ocean currents and sediments. Even in lakes. Every time anything creates waste, it creates a carbon emission. Farts count folks. This is why they are so hell bent to go after cattle farming in particular. Carbon emissions.

Humans will never be carbon free. It just won't happen. We are too used to our creature comforts like living in houses, using metals, and fuel products.

This brings us back around full circle to deforestation.

Now it is not a complete fix all to plant trees, but it's a much better start than trying to eliminate what humans have created over just this past 300 years. Plant trees. Trees have the added benefit that when they "eat" the bad stuff, they emit stuff we like....oxygen. It's a win-win.

Renewable resources are a better focal point is what I am getting at. It's the synthetic market that is killing the planet. Instead of chopping down half the rainforest to create toilet paper, how about let's get things like hemp off the "ohhh that's illegal" list, as it is a highly renewable resource, that done properly, can reap many benefits. That tree took 100 years maybe to get there to make a handful of boards and some paper products. Hemp does it in 6 months. Hell, Henry Ford created an entire car out of hemp! It didn't catch on, but he was on it before it was the cool thing to talk about.

I do not concern myself with timelines. Anyone who believes all life will stop on Earth any time before our own star becomes a red giant and grows so large as to turn the surface of Earth into Venus is missing some critical info gaps. Life will ALWAYS find a way. Always has. Look at cockroaches. They been around forever. Millions of years. Alligators too. They survived what wiped out most of the planet! Oceanic life, where it all begins, will be around as long as water is wet, and the correct amino acid pool is available.

 

[OnlyGenusCaps]

This is fun.....

I read some of it.

Seen the pretty graphs.

The one aspect that most people dodge when they discuss this is this:

Deforestation

These pretty graphs that show a steady increase in greenhouse gasses never show deforestation, and it's effects on them.

That's true, deforestation is likely a significant issue. The way to determine that would be something looking at the seasonal fluctuations in the Hawaiian observatory data - you know the one where CO2 goes up in the northern hemisphere winter and down in the northern summer. Much of the is driven by the uptake of CO2 from northern vegetation, likely forests. I've not seen this, but looking at the decline in forest cover over that time, across those latitudes, and determining if there is less "recovery" in the northern summer would give an idea of how much deforestation is impacting the issue. I don't know that this hasn't been done (I could go do a Web of Knowledge search, but I'm not motivated at the moment), but whether it has or not, that's a really good idea you have!

Back in the day, not to long back, "science" told you that the ice age was coming. Now, I'm not talkin about that Time Magazine cover. It was a real debate, globally. The great cooldown. Now, 40-50 years later, it's the great warm up.

The bulk of scientific papers from that era do not suggest that was the case. There have been analyses looking at that. Yes, there were some folks who thought they were onto something, but most scientists weren't buying it. Remember the Hawaiian atmospheric data goes back rather longer than that time, and it's super easy to demonstrate the CO2 hols heat energy in (I could run samples through a infrared spectrometer as a sophomore in college).

We have to keep in mind Earth and her cycles. Every 11,000. A time when glaciers cover vast areas of the surface. At their peaks, the ocean.levels are low, and more saline, yet aquatic live survives. We are on the opposite end of this. 10,000 years out. We know this looking at ice cores down in the global freezer on the bottom of the planet.

Absolutely those cycles have been happening for about 5 million years give or take. Lots to do with ocean currents and the closing of the Panamanian Isthmus. What is cool though is there is emerging evidence humans solved the problem of going back into a glacial period with agriculture! Okay so before I paunch into this, I want to state that this is not "settled" science. I am sure you know that the way science progresses is though building evidence. When we have a little, it's still a bit uncertain, but once the evidence is overwhelming, it becomes thought of as settled (unless something with really strong evidence comes up and completely upends everything we thought we knew - rare, but exciting when it happens!). So, there is some evidence that small shifts in climate began occurring shortly after the spread of agriculture. When you cultivate land, especially newly cultivated land, there is a tendency of the stored organic carbon in the soil to have the chance to be metabolized by the soil microorganisms (it also helps the crops grow). So, there is the possibility that the spread of agriculture essentially "solved" the problem of glacial cycles. People are still working on this, but how cool would it be if our ancestors through their adaptation and adoption of farming practices prevented a new glacial cycle from occurring?! To me, if true, really interesting!

To say that nothing will be alive in 2050 if carbon emissions are at 0% immediately ignores science itself. Humans are not the only contributing factor to greenhouse gas emissions. Methane is released from millions, even billions of years ago, all the time, via shifting ocean currents and sediments. Even in lakes. Every time anything creates waste, it creates a carbon emission. Farts count folks. This is why they are so hell bent to go after cattle farming in particular. Carbon emissions.

You are completely correct. There are climate alarmists! And frankly, they don't help. The obsecure the science. They piss people off. And perhaps worst, in my opinion, they attempt to dictate what "must" be done! This is why I am constantly arguing for people who have more conservative political views to not take themselves out of the conversation about what, if anything, to do by saying the science doesn't exist. Much of the basics of climate change are in the "settled" column. Sure, what will happen, exactly that year, in exactly your location. No. Stupid water. So hard to model!!! That's an entire converation unto itself though. But overall, what the drivers are and the rate of change, we're onto that. But whether one says the sky is falling, or there is no sky, that person takes themselves out of the conversation about policy. I want people to disagree about what we do with this information. That's how democracies work (or representitive republics - I'm not here to quibble about terminology for governmental frameworks), and perhaps even more importantly than that, this is how we come up with the best ideas. People see the flaws in ideas they disagree with much more clearly than those they agree with. Everyone should want to get feedback from people they don't agree with, improvement follows.

Now it is not a complete fix all to plant trees, but it's a much better start than trying to eliminate what humans have created over just this past 300 years. Plant trees. Trees have the added benefit that when they "eat" the bad stuff, they emit stuff we like....oxygen. It's a win-win.

I have a funny story related to this. Before I launch in though, yes, planting trees is a good idea in my opinion. No argument from me. However, I have a colleague who studies... Well, it's a mathematician (remember how I mentioned that modeling this was hard - we'll we've had to call in the mathematicians). She studies carbon pools at a global level,a dn she likes to tell people: "I don't care about your trees. Most are dead in a few hundred years. That's not long-term carbon storage. I want your carbon back in the soil!" What's interesting is, she is right. She's hard core free market. So, her dream plan would be for the US Farm Bill to stop telling farmers what they can and can't plant. It would simply provide subsidies for farmers who increase the carbon content of their top-soil. That's it. Let the market decide what they want to plant. Because soil with more organic content, read: carbon, increases productivity, the farmers would win, the market would win (all by her very free market estimations), and the carbon would be stored again for thousands of years. Plus it would wipe out the US carbon footprint. I keep telling her that the US can't agree on some very basic things, and a radical idea like hers is DOA. But it's still enjoyable how passionate she is.