Re: The Global Warming Thread
Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:07 pm
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons bring us some web forums whereupon we can gather
http://www.octopusoverlords.com/forum/
Sure, but that's like saying the president has a good idea so we should ignore "Not a fan of non-white people" at the end of his speech. The point being, why provide a distraction from the message for people to latch on to?
We can agree on the entirety of your statement. In some ways AOC reminds me of Elon Musk--I like what she's trying to do, but she frequently likes to get into her own way.
+1GreenGoo wrote: ↑Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:40 pmSure, but that's like saying the president has a good idea so we should ignore "Not a fan of non-white people" at the end of his speech. The point being, why provide a distraction from the message for people to latch on to?
We can both agree that it isn't important, but I think it's annoying and unnecessary, and particularly unwarrantedly arrogant.
Whoa. Elon Musk has his issues, but he’s no AOC. Please remind me of AOC’s major achievements to date. Maybe I’m missing some important stuff.
I'm not talking about achievements but rather propensity to get in one's own way. Musk is a master of that. And I say that as a huge Musk fan who has followed his companies obsessively for many years.Kurth wrote:Whoa. Elon Musk has his issues, but he’s no AOC. Please remind me of AOC’s major achievements to date. Maybe I’m missing some important stuff.
For the first time since forecasters began recording data — at least 132 years — the mercury did not reach 70 degrees in downtown Los Angeles for the entire month of February.
The average high for the month was 61 degrees, significantly lower than the historical average of 68 for February. That makes it the eighth-coldest February on record, said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
“Most of the time we’ll get one or two Santa Ana wind events in between the rain that would give us temperatures above 70 degrees,” he added. “But it’s just been back-to-back storms and no offshore flows.”
It’s a big change for Southern California, where temperatures having been rising to record levels in recent years along with a prolonged drought. Weather experts said the chilly February doesn’t signal a larger change in some of those trends.
Even factoring in the cold snap, California is still warmer than average, and swings between periods of severe winter rainstorms and profound drought will probably become more pronounced in the future because of climate change, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA.
The salty patches were small, at first — scattered spots where soybeans wouldn’t grow, where grass withered and died, exposing expanses of bare, brown earth.
But lately those barren patches have grown. On dry days, the salt precipitates out of the mud and the crystals make the soil sparkle in the sunlight. And on a damp and chilly afternoon in January, the salt makes Dawson Pugh furrow his brow in dismay.
“It’s been getting worse,” the farmer tells East Carolina University hydrologist Alex Manda, who drove out to this corner of coastal North Carolina with a group of graduate students to figure out what’s poisoning Pugh’s land — and whether anything can be done to stop it.
Of climate change’s many plagues — drought, insects, fires, floods — saltwater intrusion in particular sounds almost like a biblical curse. Rising seas, sinking earth and extreme weather are conspiring to cause salt from the ocean to contaminate aquifers and turn formerly fertile fields barren. A 2016 study in the journal Science predicted that 9 percent of the U.S. coastline is vulnerable to saltwater intrusion — a percentage likely to grow as the world continues to warm. Scientists are just beginning to assess the potential effect on agriculture, Manda said, and it’s not yet clear how much can be mitigated.
Widespread and sometimes drastic marine oxygen declines are stressing sensitive species—a trend that will continue with climate change
10-year plan to phase out all Baby Boomers
WWII-style mobilization to invade, occupy, and overthrow the sun
Ban on kites to increase supply of farmable wind
Greenhouse gas emissions from energy production rose strongly again last year, according to new data from the International Energy Agency, with a young fleet of coal-fired power plants in Asia accounting for a large proportion of the increase.
Energy demand grew at its fastest pace this decade, with a 2.3% increase globally driving rises in fossil fuel consumption. Coal use in power stations was a third of the increase in energy consumption, and together gas and coal were responsible for nearly 70% of the growth in energy consumption, and while demand for solar and wind power also increased, it was by much less overall.
Gas consumption in the US leapt by 10%, or the equivalent of the UK’s entire gas consumption in a year. Fracking has been a key driver, and oil production in the US also grew, while the dismantling of government incentives intended to reduce reliance on fossil fuels has continued.
Asia is now responsible for the majority of coal-fired power generation globally, and the average age of power plants there is now just 12 years, meaning they have decades to go before reaching their planned end of production in about 30 to 50 years.
Heating and cooling accounted for a fifth of the increase in global energy demand – the cooling needed for many areas to cope with global warming is an increasing factor in the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, as temperatures in some regions rose to record levels as the result of climate change.
President Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he reversed bans on offshore drilling in vast parts of the Arctic Ocean and dozens of canyons in the Atlantic Ocean, a U.S. judge said in a ruling that restored the Obama-era restrictions.
U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason in a decision late Friday threw out Trump’s executive order that overturned the bans that comprised a key part of Obama’s environmental legacy.
Presidents have the power under a federal law to remove certain lands from development but cannot revoke those removals, Gleason said.
“The wording of President Obama’s 2015 and 2016 withdrawals indicates that he intended them to extend indefinitely, and therefore be revocable only by an act of Congress,” said Gleason, who was nominated to the bench by Obama.
...
In 2015, Obama halted exploration in coastal areas of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas and the Hanna Shoal, an important area for walrus. In late 2016, he withdrew most other potential Arctic Ocean lease areas — about 98 percent of the Arctic outer continental shelf.
The bans were intended to protect polar bears, walruses, ice seals and Alaska Native villages that depend on the animals.
In the Atlantic, Obama banned exploration in 5,937 square miles (15,377 square kilometers) of underwater canyon complexes, citing their importance for marine mammals, deep-water corals, valuable fish populations and migratory whales.
White House officials described their actions to make the areas off limits to future oil and gas exploration and drilling as indefinite. Officials said the withdrawals under Section 12-A of the 1953 act used by presidents dating to Dwight Eisenhower cannot be undone by an incoming president. It is not clear if a Republican-controlled Congress can rescind Obama’s action.
“There is a precedent of more than half a century of this authority being utilized by presidents of both parties,” a White House aide said. “There is no authority for subsequent presidents to un-withdraw. . . . I can’t speak to what a future Congress will do.”
David Rivkin, an attorney for the Baker and Hostetler law firm who served on the White House Counsel staffs of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, disagreed with the assertion that the decision cannot be overturned. “Basically I say the power to withdraw entails the power to un-withdraw,” Rivkin said, “especially if you determine the justification for the original withdrawal is no longer valid.”
A legal fight would likely follow, Rivkin said. But “it’s not clear why Congress would want to give a president tremendous authority operating only one way.”
It claims global warming will not cause significant problems, while the scientific evidence suggests the planet is on course for a range of possible outcomes with a greater chance of experiencing ‘dangerous’ weather conditions than avoiding them.
The GWPF has repeatedly been accused of misrepresenting the science and cherry-picking findings that appear to fit with its stance on the issue
Canada is warming on average at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the world, a new scientific report indicates.
The federal government climate report also warns that changes are already evident in many parts of the country and are projected to intensify.
Canada's Arctic has seen the deepest impact and will continue to warm at more than double the global rate.
The report suggests that many of the effects already seen are probably irreversible.
Canada's annual average temperature has increased by an estimated 1.7C (3F) since 1948, when nationwide temperatures were first recorded.
The largest temperature increases have been seen in the North, the Prairies, and in northern British Columbia.
Annual average temperature in northern Canada increased by approximately 2.3C.
"While both human activities and natural variations in the climate have contributed to the observed warming in Canada, the human factor is dominant," the report states.
"It is likely that more than half of the observed warming in Canada is due to the influence of human activities."
Smoove will be thrilled:
Climate change is melting permafrost soils that have been frozen for thousands of years, and as the soils melt they are releasing ancient viruses and bacteria that, having lain dormant, are springing back to life.
Granted, McKibben has built a reputation on catastrophism. But when the world's scientists start to panic, well....I could, in other words, do my best to scare you silly. I’m not opposed on principle — changing something as fundamental as the composition of the atmosphere, and hence the heat balance of the planet, is certain to trigger all manner of horror, and we shouldn’t shy away from it. The dramatic uncertainty that lies ahead may be the most frightening development of all; the physical world is going from backdrop to foreground. (It’s like the contrast between politics in the old days, when you could forget about Washington for weeks at a time, and politics in the Trump era, when the president is always jumping out from behind a tree to yell at you.)
But let’s try to occupy ourselves with the most likely scenarios, because they are more than disturbing enough. Long before we get to tidal waves or smallpox, long before we choke to death or stop thinking clearly, we will need to concentrate on the most mundane and basic facts: everyone needs to eat every day, and an awful lot of us live near the ocean.
The heads of two major central banks have written a stark warning about the financial risks of climate change.
Bank of England governor Mark Carney and France's François Villeroy de Galhau set out the dangers to the global economy in an open letter.
"If some companies and industries fail to adjust to this new world, they will fail to exist," they wrote.
The letter was co-signed by the chair of the climate-focused Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS).
The NGFS is a coalition of 34 central banks which was formed in 2017, with the Bank of England as a founding member. It released its first major report into climate-related financial risks on 17 April.
In the letter published by the Bank of England on Wednesday, Mr Carney and Mr Villeroy de Galhau describe "the catastrophic effects of climate change" already having an impact on the planet, such as "blistering heatwaves in North America to typhoons in south-east Asia and droughts in Africa and Australia".
They say that "these events damage infrastructure and private property, negatively affect health, decrease productivity and destroy wealth".
The NGFS elaborates in its "call to action" report, saying that climate change will lead to "disruptive events such as mass migration, political instability and conflict".
I did ok:To reduce our impact on the climate and avert disaster, it’s going to take more than switching to high-efficiency light bulbs. But the most effective ways that individuals, policymakers and businesses can reduce our carbon footprint might surprise you.
Let’s see how much you know about what can be done to fight climate change.
Your score: 28.1%
You’re a student of climate change
Don't fret, but hopefully you learned some about what can be done to reduce carbon emissions. Your next challenge: Try to put one of the solutions for individuals into practice.