The Global Warming Thread

[hitbyambulance]

bad on top of bad:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... story.html

The Trump administration on Monday took another step to opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling for oil and gas, potentially fulfilling a decades-long dream for Republicans.

[Isgrimnur]

ars technica

Something as simple as black paint could be the key to reducing the number of birds that are killed each year by wind turbines. According to a study conducted at a wind farm on the Norwegian archipelago of Smøla, changing the color of a single blade on a turbine from white to black resulted in a 70-percent drop in the number of bird deaths.
...
Estimates from the US Fish and Wildlife Service calculated that approximately 300,000 birds were killed by wind turbines in 2015 (which is probably two orders of magnitude fewer than die as a result of colliding with electrical power lines each year), and bird deaths from turbines are trending down as the industry moves to larger turbine blades that move more slowly.
...
At the Smøla wind farm, regular checks of four particular wind turbines—each 70m tall with three 40m-long blades—found six white-tailed eagle carcasses between 2006 and 2013. In total, the four turbines killed 18 birds that flew into the blades over those six years, along with five willow ptarmigans that are known to collide with the turbine towers rather than the blades. (Another four turbines selected as a control group were responsible for seven bird deaths, excluding willow ptarmigans, over the same timeframe.)

And so, in 2013, each of the four turbines in the test group had a single blade painted black. In the three years that followed, only six birds were found dead due to striking their turbine blades. By comparison, 18 bird deaths were recorded by the four control wind turbines—a 71.9-percent reduction in the annual fatality rate.

Digging into the data a little more showed some variation on bird deaths depending upon the season. During spring and autumn, fewer bird deaths were recorded at the painted turbines. But in summer, bird deaths actually increased at the painted turbines, and the authors note that the small number of turbines in the study and its relatively short duration both merit longer-term replication studies, both at Smøla and elsewhere.

[Enough]

ars technica

Something as simple as black paint could be the key to reducing the number of birds that are killed each year by wind turbines. According to a study conducted at a wind farm on the Norwegian archipelago of Smøla, changing the color of a single blade on a turbine from white to black resulted in a 70-percent drop in the number of bird deaths.
...
Estimates from the US Fish and Wildlife Service calculated that approximately 300,000 birds were killed by wind turbines in 2015 (which is probably two orders of magnitude fewer than die as a result of colliding with electrical power lines each year), and bird deaths from turbines are trending down as the industry moves to larger turbine blades that move more slowly.
...
At the Smøla wind farm, regular checks of four particular wind turbines—each 70m tall with three 40m-long blades—found six white-tailed eagle carcasses between 2006 and 2013. In total, the four turbines killed 18 birds that flew into the blades over those six years, along with five willow ptarmigans that are known to collide with the turbine towers rather than the blades. (Another four turbines selected as a control group were responsible for seven bird deaths, excluding willow ptarmigans, over the same timeframe.)

And so, in 2013, each of the four turbines in the test group had a single blade painted black. In the three years that followed, only six birds were found dead due to striking their turbine blades. By comparison, 18 bird deaths were recorded by the four control wind turbines—a 71.9-percent reduction in the annual fatality rate.

Digging into the data a little more showed some variation on bird deaths depending upon the season. During spring and autumn, fewer bird deaths were recorded at the painted turbines. But in summer, bird deaths actually increased at the painted turbines, and the authors note that the small number of turbines in the study and its relatively short duration both merit longer-term replication studies, both at Smøla and elsewhere.

Finally, I have been hoping for some potential reduction, but seasonal painting sounds like a pita, maybe they can make them changeable from the ground? Now on to saving the bats that get shredded by wind farms, guessing this doesn't help them.

[Defiant]

Never heard of blue ammonia before.

The world’s first shipment of blue ammonia is on its way from Saudi Arabia to Japan, where it will be used in power stations to produce electricity without carbon emissions.

Saudi Aramco, which made the announcement Sunday, produced the fuel, which it does by converting hydrocarbons into hydrogen and then ammonia, and capturing the carbon dioxide byproduct. Japan will receive 40 tons of blue ammonia in the first shipment, Aramco said.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/saudi-ar ... 11461.html

[Smoove_B]

It case you're mainlining sadness today, a reminder that we've officially withdrawn from The Paris Agreement:

“The U.S., as a global economic leader moving toward renewable energy, sets a vitally important example for the rest of the world,” he told The Nation’s Health. “And our exit from the agreement and adopting anti-science policies sets an equally awful example for other countries to do the same.”

Rising global temperatures are already contributing to extreme weather, such as worsening hurricanes and droughts. People in low-income and minority communities are being disproportionately harmed by those effects.

“It’s important that we recognize the synergism that worsening climate change has on health, especially recognizing the disproportionate impact on Black and brown communities,” he said.

In practice, the U.S. government has been ignoring the obligations of the Paris agreement since the 2017 withdrawal announcement. But the formal Nov. 4 exit still matters, Miller said.

[Zaxxon]

I just can't.

[Isgrimnur]

I'd say it's been a good run, but we really are a shit species.

[NickAragua]

Well, maybe the sentient rats or cockroaches will get it right next time.

[Little Raven]

So good news, because of COVID - emissions are way down this year, with France leading the way. But the US actually did quite well, reducing our emissions by almost 12%.

Bad news - China weathered COVID remarkably well, so the research team involved in this study actually estimates that China has increased it's year over year emissions, though they're not yet sure by how much.

Still, mixed news is better than just bad news.

[hitbyambulance]

Bad news - China weathered COVID remarkably well, so the research team involved in this study actually estimates that China has increased it's year over year emissions, though they're not yet sure by how much.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/worl ... imate.html

[Zaxxon]

A political obituary for Donald Trump.

I don't agree that obituary is the right word, as he's not disappearing anytime soon. But the overall piece I found solid.

[Grifman]

Massive iceberg is potential ecological disaster:

https://graphics.reuters.com/CLIMATE-CH ... dvxjrbzvx/

[malchior]

A political obituary for Donald Trump.

I don't agree that obituary is the right word, as he's not disappearing anytime soon. But the overall piece I found solid.

I have an issue with one passage. I still don't understand why people give him credit for this. He doesn't calculate. He rages. Where are all the accounts of his strategic brilliance from insiders? They don't exist. Instead what we've always heard from all the Trump whisperers was talk about how he is misunderstood and/or just kidding around. He has no impulse control. He is almost certainly mentally ill. He has no strategic capability. We saw that in the last 4 years. He literally played out the same campaign and hoped it'd work out. He doesn't adjust. He doesn't learn. All the things that endear him to his base are because of this set of traits.

And I find this narrative troubling because we need to understand what actually happened to be able to have a chance to stop it. It doesn't help to hang this solely on some belief that his magical secret strategy just didn't pan out this time because the system held. Instead, we need to realize that the system failed so badly that someone like him was able to wield power and we simply lucked out that he wasn't more competent, The election could have been vastly different and the likely end of Democracy if the turnout happened to be just slightly different. Either in his ability to bulldoze the system if it was a single state in play or outright winning. It was razer close.

The most mendacious of Trump’s predecessors would have been careful to limit these thoughts to private recording systems. Trump spoke them openly, not because he couldn’t control his impulses, but intentionally, even systematically, in order to demolish the norms that would otherwise have constrained his power.

[Zaxxon]

And apparently I posted that link in the wrong thread. Sorry, all.

Or is it that Trump's bloviating contributes significantly to climate change?

[Isgrimnur]

We just need to feed them more seaweed:

Seaweed

Professor of aquaculture at James Cook University in Townsville, Rocky De Nys, has been working with the CSIRO studying the effects seaweed can have on cow's methane production.

OZ

A company commercialising a CSIRO-developed, seaweed feed product, which slashes the amount of greenhouse gases cattle burp and fart into the atmosphere, has won a $1 million international prize for its work reshaping the food system.
...
"We think we can tackle the dairy and the feedlot part of that pretty simply, which may be 5 megatons in Australia and globally 500 megatons of emissions," Dr Battaglia said.

"That's equivalent to taking 100 million cars off the road.

"But in the long run, if we can start to think about ways to deliver this into grass-fed sectors, the impact is 10 to 100 times more than that."

[Smoove_B]

Trump today is finalizing a surprise rule that bars the EPA from regulating oil and gas and refineries, deeming them "necessarily insignificant" sources of greenhouse gas pollution. The idea Trump is finalizing these short-lived rules only to “to clog up the works and slow the Biden administration down" is sounding more likely every day

Because of course.

[Zaxxon]

At this point, if he doesn't push out an executive order banning electric vehicles and requiring everyone to keep their thermostat set to 76 in the winter and 62 in the summer, I'll consider it a win.

[coopasonic]

At this point, if he doesn't push out an executive order banning electric vehicles and requiring everyone to keep their thermostat set to 76 in the winter and 62 in the summer, I'll consider it a win.

My wife would likely sponsor the second half of that (and possibly the first as well... BEV + car sickness = bad news).