Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

I suspect the Fort McMurray wildfire just did more to delay oil sands production than any number of Keystone XL protesters.

yeah, welcome to Fire Season 2016

http://shawglobalnews.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/wildfire_2.gif

handy guide to your state's governor+AG's record on climate change: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/04/3774746/governors-ags-climate-research/

HFS at 7:28 -> 7:54

New Study Found Ocean Acidification May Be Impacting Coral Reefs in the Florida Keys
http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/news-events/press-releases/2016/new-study-found-ocean-acidification-may-be-impacting-coral-reefs-in-fl-keys/

http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/assets/images/LANGDON-OA-680.jpg

holy shit

The collapse of Carribean reefs is mostly due to the sea urchin dieoff first seen in 1983, and probably due to an introduced pathogen. Urchins are the primary grazers preventing algae overgrowth on coral, and between fertilization runoff, overfishing of reef keystone predators, and the urchin dieoff, reefs faced a lot of stresses before ocean chemistry reached temperature or acidity thresholds.

Great Barrier Reef tourism operators refuse media and politicians access to bleached reefs

North Queensland tourism operators are routinely refusing to take media and politicians to see coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef for fear the attention will trigger a collapse in visitor numbers, it has been claimed.

Several major operators with the backing of industry heavyweights refused to ferry Greens senators Richard di Natale and Larissa Waters to reefs off Cairns, the backdrop for their election campaign announcement on reef policy on Thursday.

They were just the latest in a string of operators denying media requests to help them obtain pictures and footage and report on what scientists say is the worst bleaching event in the reef’s history, according to dive operator, Tony Fontes.

“I’ve had lots of people call me asking for contacts and I know obviously lots of dive operators up in Cairns and I’ve contacted them saying, ‘Would you be willing to talk to the media about this?’” the Whitsunday-based Fontes said.

“Nine out of ten refuse, politely, to talk to the media.

http://i.imgur.com/olbytRo.jpg

https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0_qCr9y-CKnhM3GidFwgZlIYhXc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6466065/Screen%20Shot%202016-05-10%20at%2012.21.20%20PM.png

kee-rist

*sob*

don't worry, when we shift back to la nina (could be this fall) global temps might drop a bit, and then you'll get to deal with the fun people who claim that a new era of global cooling is upon us

This is not very scientific, but definitely a feeling of a lot of things suddenly jumping/coming to a head over the last 6 months. Not reassuring.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-36292868

50 killed by lightning strikes over 2 days in Bangladesh.

"Bangladesh is prone to electrical storms but this year they have been particularly severe.
Experts suggest a general rise in temperatures and deforestation may be factors."

whatever species takes our place as the dominant lifeform on the planet will point to shit like this for why we deserved to go

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/donald-trump-climate-change-golf-course-223436?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link

whatever species takes our place as the dominant lifeform on the planet

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/05/release-the-kraken/483884/

octopuses are fascinating, incredibly smart creatures, i'm pretty okay with them becoming the world's dominant lifeform after we terminally fuck everything up for ourselves. good luck octopuses

maybe donald will get the squids and octopi to pay for his sea wall

The world is about to install 700 million air conditioners. Here’s what that means for the climate

That’s already happened in some places. In just 15 years, urban areas of China went from just a few percentage points of air conditioning penetration to exceeding 100 percent — “i.e. more than one room air conditioner (AC) per urban household,” according to a recent report on the global AC boom by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. And air conditioner sales are now increasing in India, Indonesia and Brazil by between 10 and 15 percent per year, the research noted. India, a nation of 1.25 billion people, had just 5 percent air conditioning penetration in the year 2011.

A study last year similarly found “a close relationship between household income and air conditioner adoption, with ownership increasing 2.7 percentage points per $1,000 of annual household income.” For Mexico in particular, it therefore projected a stupendous growth of air conditioning over the 21st century, from 13 percent of homes having it to 71 to 81 percent of homes.

“We expect that the demand for cooling as economies improve, particularly in hot climates, is going to be an incredible driver of electricity requirements,” U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in an interview.

In most ways, of course, this is a very good thing: Protecting people from intense heat — a town in India this month saw temperatures exceed 123 degrees Fahrenheit — is essential for their health and well-being. It’s just that it’s going to come with a huge energy demand, and potentially huge carbon emissions to boot.

Overall, the Berkeley report projects that the world is poised to install 700 million air conditioners by 2030, and 1.6 billion of them by 2050. In terms of electricity use and greenhouse gas emissions, that’s like adding several new countries to the world.

Weather turns tropical across Siberia as abnormal summer heat roasts six regions

current southwestern heat wave is pretty nuts:

http://ktar.com/story/1128315/report-arizona-town-was-hottest-place-on-earth-over-weekend/
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/latest-southwest-grapples-soaring-temperatures-39990704

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/06/30/science.aae0061

Emergence of healing in the Antarctic ozone layer

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a21632/ozone-layer-healing/

!! Is this actually the first piece of good news in this thread's history? (I mean besides revised estimates for still-bad news)

I just realized how my posture/bearing kind of locks up when I open this thread, was left w nothing to brace against

Well, the global warming math is still terrifying, but always nice to have more evidence that taking action and setting policy can have consequences.

now we just have to get rid of those flatulent cows.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/30/how-meat-is-destroying-the-planet-in-seven-charts/

It certainly is impressive that the ozone layer can rebound back so fast, but I don't think we will be as lucky with all the other damage we have have caused or stored up for future catastrophes.

my current nightmare fuel:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pacific-radioactive-waste

xpost Yeah it means next to nothing in the big picture...but maybe advantageous in nudging some in the FF industry who privately believe it's too late to change course

Its bomb detritus and short-lived isotopes from the four surface blasts of Operation Hardtack I. Most atmospheric testing was air blasts that globally disperse their residue. I'm sure its pretty safe to walk and scavenge near the dome (much as it is to scuba in spent fuel pools), the main danger is ingesting radionuclides in the groundwater.

Without numbers on milliSieverts (etc.) to me its just scaremongering. Fortunately, we have a new report:

Bordner et al, 2016. Measurement of background gamma radiation in the northern Marshall Islands. PNAS, p.201605535.

On the shoreward side of the dome (C, in the figure) the values were 40 mrem/yr. New York's Central Park averages 100 mrem/yr, due mostly to the rock outcroppings.

http://www.pnas.org/content/113/25/6833/F3.large.jpg

ty as always for yr informed perspective, one thing I can cross off the worry list

You guys post the most beautiful pictures in this thread.

Sanpaku, not quite sure I follow - isn't the concern not the current radiation levels, but What Could Happen with seawater infiltration getting a lot of what's inside the dome back outside? Or am I misunderstanding?

Not global-warming related, but reminds me of this http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/10304648/Baltic-Sea-under-threat-from-Second-World-War-chemical-weapons.html which I did an undergrad paper on circa 2004. We had to format the paper as a letter to Condi Rice pressing her to take interest in a national security threat. It would appear that my missive went unheard but maybe it's really NBD.

Nuclear fission triggers don't require more than 10 to 15 kg of uranium-235, there were just four of them used in ground blasts, much of their fission products were dispersed globally in the initial blasts, and due to its 30-year half life, three quarters of the most problematic one, cesium-137, has already decayed since the tests.

There just isn't that much soluble radioactive material inside the dome compared to the volume and natural background of radioisotopes in the ocean. Its a situation akin to the immediate aftermath of Fukushima, where for seafood consumers, their alpha-emitter dose from naturally occurring polonium-210 and potassium-40 were still 100-2000x greater than from from Fukushima emissions.

Fisher et al, 2013. Evaluation of radiation doses and associated risk from the Fukushima nuclear accident to marine biota and human consumers of seafood. PNAS, 110(26), pp.10670-10675.

So, if you're the protagonist of Ballard's "The Terminal Beach", don't drill into the thin freshwater lens near the dome, collect rainwater instead.

The original inhabitants of Runit are right to be angry about the loss of their homes, but there are other interests, too. Adjusted for inflation, the United States provided assistance of "$1.87 million per original inhabitant of the four affected atolls (Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap, and Utrik)", and the current assistance agreement of $52 million/yr to the Marshall Islands will expire in 2023. U.S. government aid accounts for most of the Marshall Islands GDP, and its important to keep the guilt spigots open.

window... closed

http://gizmodo.com/the-window-for-avoiding-a-dangerous-climate-change-has-1782836113

protecting NYC:

The first stage of the Big U, which will run down the East Side from 25th Street to Montgomery Street, near the Manhattan Bridge, will have the virtue of protecting several large public-housing developments on the Lower East Side, as well as a key power substation that flooded during Sandy, causing a massive blackout in Lower Manhattan. "It's clearly about Wall Street," says Klaus Jacob, a disaster expert at Columbia University. Given the importance of Wall Street to the U.S. economy, that's not surprising. But how long will it be before Red Hook, an economically diverse neighborhood in Brooklyn that was also heavily damaged by Sandy, gets a barrier? Worse, a wall around Lower Manhattan might actually deflect more water into Red Hook, says Alan Blumburg, a highly respected oceanographer at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. "It might keep water out of Manhattan, but it will make the problem worse for people in Brooklyn, not better." (A spokesperson for Mayor de Blasio disputes this, citing engineering studies that show the impact on Brooklyn would be negligible, and points out that $100 million in federal funds have been allocated to design a flood-protection plan in Red Hook.)

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/can-new-york-be-saved-in-the-era-of-global-warming-20160705

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTNllJWmhrg

that is excellent. A+ for whoever designed those figures

Two Middle East locations hit 129 degrees, hottest ever in Eastern Hemisphere, maybe the world

jesus christ ;_;

Basrah is just lucky the humidity was low and there was some wind yesterday, making swamp coolers (etc.) viable. Last year about this time their heat index hit 165 degrees.

Oops, last years record was for Bandar Mahshahr, Iran, 80 miles to the East.

Siberia burning, as seen from 1 million miles away (NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory at Earth-Sun L1):

http://siberiantimes.com/PICTURES/ECOLOGY/Wildfires-2016-July-23/inside%20arial%20shot%20wide.jpg

Through the end of June, NOAA and NASA agree that every single month of 2016 so far has set a new record high for monthly average global temperature. The majority of the old records being broken were set in 2015.

This seems cool: http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/07/28/experimental-artificial-leaf-solar-cell-converts-co2-usable-fuel

In the meantime, trees do a pretty good low-tech job of removing CO2 from the atmosphere and don't require any electricity.

Now if there were only some way to monetize trees.

kendrick lamar has a song called "money trees", start with that