Climate Change

[Harry]

On 14/11/2021 at 04:38, Happy Blue said:

How do you stop the planet going through natural cycles of heating & cooling like it has done for millions of years? tricky   ...we got a giant fireball above us that goes through periods of heating up and cooling down, i really wonder whats making the ice melt right now 

"Threat level: Not only is CO2 now at its highest levels in human history, but one would have to go all the way back beyond the beginning of human history — to the Pliocene Epoch, between 4.1 to 4.5 million years ago — to find a time when Earth's atmosphere held a similar amount of carbon."

So, 4 million years ago the Earth had the same level of carbon 2 million years before the first humans, interesting  ..the Oceans were also 80ft higher back then too so better get higher than that to be safe on-less we can find a way to deflect the heat coming from our star 

Why is Venus hotter than Mercury despite being further from the sun?

Answer: it's much denser atmosphere, which is made up almost entirely of CO2 and traps in the heat....

Venus is the on-crack version of Earth's greenhouse gas problem.

[Happy Blue]

12 minutes ago, Harry said:

Why is Venus hotter than Mercury despite being further from the sun?

Answer: it's much denser atmosphere, which is made up almost entirely of CO2 and traps in the heat....

Venus is the on-crack version of Earth's greenhouse gas problem.

If scientist are correct and the Sun is about to go into a solar minimum cycle things are going to get very cold down here. also our Star melts the ice before one of these cycles as it gives off it's last blasts of radiation before cooling (causing global warming) when this happens we need to make as much heat as possible, electric cars are not going to help

[Azeem]

Doomsday glacier, world's largest glacier about the size of UK will collapse in 5-10 years

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/science/antarctica-doomsday-glacier-melt-climate-b1983727.html%3famp

[Waylander]

Snow in NSW

 

[Tommy]

Today we had 15 C° here, I've never experienced 15 C° in late December ever in my life. It was very confusing as what to wear. I wore a T-Shirt and a jacket, and I was sweating. Then later I went out with only a Sweatshirt and it was fine. Saw people dressed up like it's still 0 C° outside. Confusing for many, I guess. 

[LFCMike]

1 hour ago, Tommy said:

Today we had 15 C° here, I've never experienced 15 C° in late December ever in my life. It was very confusing as what to wear. I wore a T-Shirt and a jacket, and I was sweating. Then later I went out with only a Sweatshirt and it was fine. Saw people dressed up like it's still 0 C° outside. Confusing for many, I guess. 

It was about 14 here. I went the pub in a big coat. That was far too warm! Never known it to be this warm at this time of year

[Azeem]

There was no spring this time, straight to 37C from winters

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Aladdin said:

There was no spring this time, straight to 37C from winters

Where is that to?

[Guest]

On 16/03/2022 at 07:04, Aladdin said:

There was no spring this time, straight to 37C from winters

I was just replying to some comments climate change deniers were posting on Facebook. Considering they are dumb enough to think they know more than all the experts I figure they cant be reasoned with so I just insult them. It makes me feel better 

[Tommy]

20 hours ago, Gunnersauraus said:

I was just replying to some comments climate change deniers were posting on Facebook. Considering they are dumb enough to think they know more than all the experts I figure they cant be reasoned with so I just insult them. It makes me feel better 

Careful though, they'll report you if you insult them directly. They're little snitches. I've been banned from posting and commenting several times after speaking out to racists etc. 

[Guest]

26 minutes ago, Tommy said:

Careful though, they'll report you if you insult them directly. They're little snitches. I've been banned from posting and commenting several times after speaking out to racists etc. 

I said the other day that someone needs to assassinate nigel farage because hes trying to stop us getting to net zero. It was a joke but probably shouldnt have said it to be fair

[Tommy]

2 hours ago, Gunnersauraus said:

I said the other day that someone needs to assassinate nigel farage because hes trying to stop us getting to net zero. It was a joke but probably shouldnt have said it to be fair

Yea, that could even get you into legal trouble if someone reports it. 

[Azeem]

It's 45C in some parts already. With a corrupt lot in govt expecting needless power shortages too. 

[nudge+]

5 minutes ago, Aladdin said:

It's 45C in some parts already. With a corrupt lot in govt expecting needless power shortages too. 

How many/how long power cuts are you having?

[Azeem]

2 minutes ago, nudge said:

How many/how long power cuts are you having?

7 hrs in most cities and 12 hrs in rural sides. They're saying they'll fix it in coming weeks. There was no power cuts for 6 years before this

[nudge+]

1 minute ago, Aladdin said:

7 hrs in most cities and 12 hrs in rural sides. They're saying they'll fix it in coming weeks. There was no power cuts for 6 years before this

That's brutal, especially during such a heatwave... We were having over 10h power cuts in Sri Lanka last month, they have now reduced it to 3.5 hrs daily thanks to plenty of rain in recent weeks and also fuel line of credit from India. 

[CaaC (John)+]

Quote

We may be looking at the wrong climate change data… and it might be worse than we thought

Living in a time of polar ice caps means the “greenhouse” model may be underestimating of climate change.

Six times since 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released major assessment reports on the climate. The most recent was last year. The results show, unequivocally, that human influence is leading to global warming and climate change, and it may soon be unstoppable.

But have we been looking at the wrong data?

A large amount of the work in the more than 14,000 scientific papers which went into the 2021 IPCC report is based on comparing climate data gathered since the industrial revolution with climate data from Earth’s ancient past. We can paint a picture of climatic changes and their impacts through geological history by analysing ice core samples, rocks, and fossil records to measure things from atmospheric methane and CO_2, to sharp decreases in biodiversity.

But are we looking at the right periods of Earth’s history for our comparison?

An international team of researchers believes that we have not. The researchers’ paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal, argues that we have wrongly been comparing today’s climate to historical episodes known as “greenhouse” phases. And the modelling would be more accurate if we compared modern climate data with data from previous “icehouse” periods in Earth’s history.

The researchers’ results suggest that human-induced climate change will be worse and even more rapid than we thought.

The term icehouse refers to periods in Earth’s history in which the planet has large reserves of ice – like we currently do with the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets.

 “The research comes down to the different environments the Earth is operating under,” says University of Waikato, New Zealand, scientist and team member Terry Isson. “At the moment, we’re in an ‘icehouse’ phase, with glaciers and ice caps. The data we look at for forecasting the effects of global warming come from a period of ‘greenhouse’ when the Earth didn’t have massive stocks of ice.”

A major effect of global warming is the reduction of dissolved oxygen in the oceans – marine anoxia – leading to mass death of underwater life and marine dead zones. When ice caps and glaciers melt, they release fresh water on to the ocean surface, preventing circulation and cutting off oxygen supply to deeper water.

The authors note in beginning the paper: “Warming-mediated increases in marine anoxia may be more pronounced in a glaciated versus unglaciated climate state.”

“We know that global warming affects oxygen levels and how acidic our oceans are. This has a
flow-on effect to the kind of life that our oceans can sustain,” says Isson.

Instead of looking at greenhouse periods, the team looked at an event 304 million years ago – in an ice-capped world much like today – known as the Kasimovian–Gzhelian Boundary (KGB). Within about 300,000 years, atmospheric CO₂ levels doubled, oceans became anoxic, and biodiversity dropped on the land and in the oceans.

Scientists theorise the massive carbon release may have been triggered by volcanic eruptions that tore through coal beds in the carboniferous period. The eruptions would have started fires, and warming may have melted permafrost, leading to the release of more organic carbon.

“It was one of the fastest warming events in Earth’s history,” says Isabel Montañez, professor in the University of California’s Davis Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and a member of the research team. This is the first identified rapid warming event in an icehouse Earth. The team’s results show that an icehouse climate may be more sensitive to warming than greenhouse phases when carbon dioxide levels are already higher.

Using carbon isotopes and trace elements from rocks and plant fossils, the researchers estimate that about 9000 gigatons of carbon was released into the atmosphere just before the KGB. “We don’t have a rate, but it was one of the fastest in Earth’s history,” Montañez says. The increase doubled atmospheric CO₂ from about 350 parts per million, similar to levels just before industrialisation, to approximately 700 ppm.

The team also analysed rocks in present-day China to deduce oceanic oxygen levels 304 million years ago. A lack of oxygen can be seen in increased uranium isotopes in rocks on the ocean floor. The team estimates that about 23% of the world’s oceans became anoxic dead zones after the KGB, matching the fossil record showing mass extinctions on land and in the sea around the time.

“If you raised CO₂ by the same amount in a greenhouse world, there isn’t much effect, but icehouses seem to be much more sensitive to change and marine anoxia,” Montañez says.

The new research doesn’t discount the decades of work that has already sounded the alarm about human-induced climate change, but rather it strengthens it.

Modelling is not a perfect science which spits out an exact, infallible answer. Understanding the infinitely complex system which is the Earth’s climate historically, and then making predictions about the future is gruelling. Models must be developed and are strengthened by the volume and relevance of the data we put in.

But the trends are clear. The climate is changing, and the planet is warming because of human activity. If anything, the new research is a warning that underlines this point. Comparing with other icehouse periods may provide a better picture of where our own ice-capped world is heading. “This research indicates that this process may be more rapid and more severe in our current
climate, and we may be seriously underestimating the rate and effect of global warming if we
continue to rely on greenhouse comparisons,” says Isson.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/icehouse-climate-change-greenhouse/

 

[CaaC (John)+]

Quote

Climate change is turning the European Alps from white to green

The Alps are experiencing a 'greening', where climate change has caused a loss of snow and Alpine habitats which has allowed non-native species to thrive.

Snow in the European Alps is melting and invasive plant species are outcompeting native Alpine plants, satellite imagery has shown. Both findings will reinforce climate change, say scientists.

The changes noticed in a new study, which uses satellite data from 1984 to 2021, show that as much as 77 per cent of the Alps has experienced greening, where areas with previously low vegetation have suddenly seen a boom in plant growth.

While the new plants do take a small amount of carbon out of the atmosphere by photosynthesis, scientists say the greening has a much bigger negative effect on climate change, as less of the Sun’s light will be reflected away from the Earth meaning the planet will get warmer.

The Alps are expected to see a reduction in snow mass of up to 25 per cent in the next 10-30 years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2019 report. As the snow melts, there will be more rock falls and landslides, which could have devastating consequences.

The new study shows that the Alps is experiencing snow cover recession that can already be seen from space, which the authors warn will only get worse as time goes on.

A comparison of aerial images of a section of the Western Swiss Alps today and in 1984 © swisstopo

In the changing mountain environments, native Alpine plants have suffered while new species have thrived. This is because the plants specialised to higher elevations have had to focus on long-term living in the Alps, sacrificing the characteristics that could make them more competitive in the short term.

"If you think about a garden, there are always unwanted weeds that spread everywhere because they can utilise resources, like nutrients, very well," said Dr Sabine Rumpf, lead author of the study. "They typically grow fast and produce many offspring, while other plant species are simply outgrown by them because they can’t exploit the resources as fast as the weeds do.

"This is similar to what's happening in mountain environments. High alpine species invest their resources in ‘body armour’ to persist in the long-term – most of them are very long-lived but don’t reproduce very often successfully."

It's unlikely that the Alpine plants could catch up with the non-native species, or adapt to the changing environment, for this reason, said Rumpf. "Evolution is a slow process and only runs its course via sexual reproduction. So, species that reproduce very slowly will thus take even longer to adapt than other species. Some will be able to adapt but, overall, the chances are not very high for the majority."

As greening increases in the Alps, the habitats for many Alpine plant species will disappear entirely.

"The mountains harbour very specialised plant species. Some only grow in snow beds, where the snow persists for a long time in the growing season, while others are adapted to grow in the cracks of rocks or on windblown ridges. If the environmental conditions change, some of these habitats disappear. Other habitats are colonised by fast-growing better competitors and turn unsuitable for these specialists. If the habitats of specialists are disappearing, so will they."

"The mountains harbour very specialised plant species. Some only grow in snow beds, where the snow persists for a long time in the growing season, while others are adapted to grow in the cracks of rocks or on windblown ridges. If the environmental conditions change, some of these habitats disappear. Other habitats are colonised by fast-growing better competitors and turn unsuitable for these specialists. If the habitats of specialists are disappearing, so will they

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/climate-change-is-turning-the-european-alps-from-white-to-green/

 

[Waylander]

With the massive destruction of rain forests continuing since the European expansion of powers since the 16th C and the world population massively expanding, I don't hold out much hope for humanity.

I am one of those that believe there will major tectonic and earthquake activity when the planet crosses some internal barriers we do not know about and most of humanity will be destroyed and need to begin again. 

 

 

 

[Azeem]

Do humans have a net positive or negative effect on the planet ?

[Waylander]

Probably in small numbers Humans being omnovores might have kept everything in balance yet something went wrong. 

[nudge+]

This must be one of the wonkiest concepts to mitigate climate crisis that I've read recently. I present to you... Silicone space bubbles!

https://senseable.mit.edu/space-bubbles/

[Tommy]

 

 

[Azeem]

 

[Waylander]

Yes it has been a big problem, France had to turn off a number of nuclear reactors as they did not have enough water to cool them.

I don't think this will happen every summer yet will likely become more frequent.