Global Warming

[Mic09]

2 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

@Mic09 I think we're very much in agreement, and people should be careful not to say things that the evidence doesn't support. However, I think from a science communication perspective, we have to accept that people will naturally be most concerned about climate change during dramatic climate events, and be ready and willing to capitalise on that concern as it arises. So yes, we don't want to go beyond the evidence, but we also certainly don't want the Scott Morrison 'now isn't the time to be talking about climate change' type comments either, which are objectively more harmful IMO.

Amen.

[Chindie]

Flooding has factors other than direct climate change. Surface water flooding is becoming more of a problem for instance due to increased land use and poor planning/accounting for drainage.

However, it's undoubted that climate change is contributing significantly to the extent of flooding we now have. Britain is generally getting warmer and wetter, which has twofold issues - we're getting more rain more often, but we're also getting more cases of 'unseasonal' flooding, where rainfall follows extended periods of extremely hot weather and the ground doesn't soak that water up, leading to flooding that we traditionally wouldn't expect - a late summer downpour in recent years can turn nasty where historically it didn't.

[chrisp65]

Not a single one of these record breaking events we are relentlessly experiencing is proof of climate change.

Trouble is, that has been allowed to become an excuse. The usual suspects can trot out that line as though we are all to wait for the ones that are clearly climate change related. But that’s a convenient way of kicking our can down someone else’s road.

This winter I’ve had to scrape ice of the car windscreen twice. Through all of December, January and half of February there have been two days cold enough at 7:00am for me to scrape ice. On its own, proves nothing.

We’ve never had such rainfall. Which on its own proves nothing.

We’ve never had 9 consecutive days of strong winds. Which on its own proves nothing.

Hottest summer again? Proves nothing.

No bugs on the front of your car when you go for a drive? Proves nothing.

 

Trouble is, once we have undeniable proof, we will have passed the point of no return. You think refugees are a problem now? Stick around a while. You think house insurance is an expensive pain in the arse? Stick around a while. 

[villakram]

Daytona 500 rained out for the 2nd time in its 62 year history or 2nd in 8 years. Nothing really to absolutely do with human driven climate change as much as just being weather, but it's kinda funny seeing the fans of such a sport with their associated political leanings being pissed on from on high... and it may well be associated with with us lot are doing.

 

[lapal_fan]

Yea like others have said, singular weather patterns matter not.  And it's not useful that we can't say we haven't experience similar individual weather patterns before either, because we kinda have.  It's that we're seeing them more often, in a shorter space of time, along with other evidence which builds up a picture which says "there's climate change".

Also problematic is that we've only really been recording weather for 100 years (a bit more in western societies), which is not a big time frame at all. 

The best cases for climate change are your carbon metrics and your temperature metrics.  Geologists are very helpful with this and are doing good work in discovering historic weather through rock analysis etc.  Same goes with Ice cores etc. 

We also don't know what the consequences of our actions are (totally).  We're seeing rising sea levels, we're seeing more regular extreme weather patterns and we're seeing more extinction events (but again.. we've not been recording these things for long). 

The world will be fine, but people who live in places which'll be affected by these changes won't be, and neither will the flora/fauna in those places.  

Yellowstone and other super volcanoes are humanities main concerns, those will wipe most of us out. 

[blandy]

2 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Trouble is, once we have undeniable proof, we will have passed the point of no return. You think refugees are a problem now? Stick around a while. You think house insurance is an expensive pain in the arse? Stick around a while. 

It's not happening...

OK, it is happening, but it's not our fault...

OK, it is our fault, but there's nothing can be done, now... 

We're basically at stage 3 already.

[maqroll]

So low lying, densely populated areas are going to get wiped off the map by 2050, just 30 years from now. Projections show Mumbai being underwater at high tide, as well as Bangladesh, and the entire south coast of Vietnam. Not to mention all the little island nations in the Indian and Pacific oceans. The last 30 years have seen massive migrations of people into those cities like Mumbai, and now they'll have to flee back. 

This has refugee crisis written all over it and there will be wars fought over access to clean water. Happy days ahead, eh?

[maqroll]

4 hours ago, villakram said:

Daytona 500 rained out for the 2nd time in its 62 year history or 2nd in 8 years. Nothing really to absolutely do with human driven climate change as much as just being weather, but it's kinda funny seeing the fans of such a sport with their associated political leanings being pissed on from on high... and it may well be associated with with us lot are doing.

 

Auto racing should be done with electric vehicles. I know it's blasphemy, but watching cars spit out out earth killing fumes for three hours going in circles around a track seems really stupid.

[LondonLax]

19 hours ago, Mic09 said:

Again, you are correct, but when passing judgement on these events we need to have the full picture of what is going on.

For example, here is the first article I found from the telegraph (I am confident there are better sources out there) :

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/australia-burning-bushfires-bad/

I can only assume that other factors such as rising population and carelessness in throwing out cigarettes etc might have played a part too - which is not a direct effect of a changing climate.

I 100% agree with you - but often events such as floods are blamed on climate change while it is not necessarily so. Hence the reason why we need to have a good understanding of what is exactly going on rather than jumping to conclusions based on a limited picture.

Fire is part of the Australian ecosystem and has been for hundreds of thousands of years. Indeed there are species of trees that have evolved to have seed pods so dense that they will only open and release their seed if they are on fire. The new seed then germinates and grows in the nutrient rich ash covered ground. 

The problem in the last two summers however is that the rainfall pattern has been so out of whack that even areas that are classified as rainforest have dried out and have been burning. Australia is a big continent, the size of Europe, the areas in the north are wetland tropics whilst Tasmania in the south has a similar climate to the UK. These last two summers forests have burnt that have never known fire in their history, trees that are thousands of years old have burnt down bringing down the ecosystems that live in them. 

The Australian climate is largely driven by currents in the Indian Ocean (called the Indian Ocean Dipole) and in the Pacific Ocean (called El Niño). This video explains the phenomenon and also explains why drought in Australia is linked to the recent flooding in east Africa.

Edit: It seems to becoming clearer that the key issue driving climate around the world is actually ocean temperatures. The data trend showing ocean warming is well documented and whilst that might not impact us directly it seems to be a key driver of extreme weather events which then do affect us directly. 

Edited February 18, 2020 by LondonLax

[chrisp65]

Could also have gone in the science thread.

Currently about 5% efficient, but everything starts out fairly poorly efficient and industry adopts the idea and runs with it.

Imagine every window at work or in your house, or your car, being a clear solar panel.

 

 

[villakram]

32 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Could also have gone in the science thread.

Currently about 5% efficient, but everything starts out fairly poorly efficient and industry adopts the idea and runs with it.

Imagine every window at work or in your house, or your car, being a clear solar panel.

 

 

Versions of this type of thing have been doing the rounds for years. Consumer grade deployment is very hard, e.g, Musk's solar shingles. 

[Xann]

Worcestershire and Shropshire's flood defences to be tested again over the coming days.

[Xann]

Quote

Tomorrow, Thursday February 27 the Court of Appeal will give its judgment on the legality of the UK Government’s planned expansion of Heathrow Airport. The hearing is set to start at 10am in Court 71, the Royal Courts of Justice, Strand. Extinction Rebellion and others will be gathering in solidarity outside the court buildings from 9am. 

What the Court of Appeal decides on Thursday is of huge significance internationally as well as for the UK. 

Plan B, one of several parties bringing legal challenges against Heathrow expansion, argued that the proposed expansion is illegal because it failed to take into account Paris Agreement temperature limit of 1.5˚C and “well below” 2˚C. 

A ruling in Plan B’s favour tomorrow morning would be groundbreaking. The basic principle, that a government should assess major infrastructure projects against their own policy commitment to the Paris temperature limit, would be applicable to all 195 Governments which have ratified the Paris Agreement.

Extinction Rebellion

Heathrow expansion chucked out this morning and appeal denied.

[VILLAMARV]

Quote

... somehow we are convinced that resistance is futile, impractical, or just too expensive to economic growth. We have surrendered our autonomy and the future of our planet to market forces, despite the fact that, collectively, we are those forces. Sometimes it takes a shock to wake the frog from its stupor and make it jump. 

Perhaps it is not inevitable that half our food is imported (as I write, my neighbour is ploughing a field to plant with courgettes at one week’s notice); that what we do grow is almost exclusively picked by imported hands (we have been inundated with applications from UK nationals); that culinary fulfilment is seen as dependent on having the choice of eight types of tomato, 365 days a year (so far almost everyone seems happy with our radically reduced offering).

Perhaps we can cook for ourselves, from scratch, from what is available, rather than ordering a take-away or ready-meal (UK searches for 'how to cook' are up 3,600 per cent). Perhaps we might spend more of our huge wealth on looking after the vulnerable (there seems to be a growing acceptance that businesses should serve rather than exploit).

Despite the suffering and tragedy, one silver lining of coronavirus must be this undeniable proof that we are not the boiled frogs of the fable. We do have control over our destiny; we are not eight billion heartless, mindless consumers, just waiting to be cooked alive.

If we can mount this response to one global crisis, perhaps we will finally realise that we can do better over climate breakdown, which will kill many more, and offer no chance of recovery.

https://wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk/opinion/news-farm-environment-ethics-farming/frogs-baseline-readjustment-and-hope

[VILLAMARV]

From hope above

To despair below. 

2 hours ago, Ikantcpell said:

Yes ive watched it and i think it's brilliant, a bit long but well worth the time.

 

We're proper shit aren't we

[Xann]

This year saw the largest recorded temperature anomaly since records began.

Siberia had the warmest 3 months on the books.

[Xann]

San Francisco

[LondonLax]

And Sydney six months back:

Is this now going to happen every summer or is it a freak year?
 

[mjmooney]

That Attenborough programme on BBC last night was depressing and terrifying in equal measures.

We're **** ed. 

Edited September 14, 2020 by mjmooney

[Brumerican]

2 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

That Attenborough programme on BBC last night was depressing and terrifying in equal measures. We're **** ed. 

Our demise is inevitable. Just like every civilisation who chose hubris over harmony.

For people outside the UK the whole episode can be seen here,