Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

spent some time today with an academic who has a paper coming out soon on a climate-change related topic which has been bounced around in peer review for months, primarily because one of the reviewers is a climate change skeptic who is also a petrochemical-industry-funded lobbyist who kept raising objections he had cut-and-pasted from other reviews he'd done elsewhere

that same academic has another paper held up with another journal for reasons he suspects are not too dissimilar

makes me wonder just how much potentially important research around the world is being delayed by deliberate interventions from what are essentially paid saboteurs

makes me wonder just how much potentially important research around the world is being delayed by deliberate interventions from what are essentially paid saboteurs

From 2010: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/reports/2010/10/14/8484/big-oil-goes-to-college/

If Big Oil doesn't have a problem with funding civil wars and buying off politicians, tossing your petty cash at academics seems like a good insurance policy.

A stat that caught me by surprise- Wyoming is, by far, the largest producer of coal in the US:

As of 2014, twenty-five states produced coal. The coal-producing states were, in descending order, with annual production in millions of short tons:

1. Wyoming 395.7
2. West Virginia 112.2
3. Kentucky 77.3
4. Pennsylvania 60.9
5. Illinois 58.0
6. Montana 44.6
7. Texas 43.7
8. Indiana 39.3
9. North Dakota 29.2
10 Colorado 24.0
11. Ohio 22.3
12. New Mexico 22.0
13. Utah 17.9
14. Alabama 16.4
15. Virginia 15.1
16. Arizona 8.1
17. Mississippi 3.7
18. Louisiana 2.6
19. Maryland 2.0
20. Alaska 1.5
21. Oklahoma 0.9
22. Tennessee 0.8
23. Missouri 0.4
24. Arkansas 0.1
25. Kansas 0.1

something something trump's hairspray amirite

A sharp and mysterious rise in emissions of a key ozone-destroying chemical has been detected by scientists, despite its production being banned around the world.

Unless the culprit is found and stopped, the recovery of the ozone layer, which protects life on Earth from damaging UV radiation, could be delayed by a decade. The source of the new emissions has been tracked to east Asia, but finding a more precise location requires further investigation.

CFC chemicals were used in making foams for furniture and buildings, in aerosols and as refrigerants. But they were banned under the global Montreal protocol after the discovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica in the 1980s. Since 2007, there has been essentially zero reported production of CFC-11, the second most damaging of all CFCs.
Sign up to the Green Light email to get the planet's most important stories
Read more

The rise in CFC-11 was revealed by Stephen Montzka, at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Colorado, and colleagues who monitor chemicals in the atmosphere. “I have been doing this for 27 years and this is the most surprising thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I was just shocked by it.”

link?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0106-2

thanks, but I was referring to the quoted article (always appreciate primary sources though)

yeah, sorry about that

also https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/16/mysterious-rise-in-banned-ozone-destroying-chemical-shocks-scientists

Yes this happened

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/388161-gop-lawmaker-says-rocks-falling-into-the-ocean-is-causing-higher

from the splinter news story on this guy:

As the Washington Post found, you’d need to drop a rock that weighed 6.6 quadrillion pounds directly into the ocean to see the level of sea rise that we see now.

look if you can prove to me that a 6.6 quadrillion pound rock didn't fall into the ocean i might be more likely to accept climate change is possible okay

"I'm pretty sure that on human time scales, those are minuscule effects,” responded Duffy

The only way to be absolutely sure is to halt all research on global alarmist warmism and divert all funding and attention to the important new Falling Rocks Theory Law

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study?CMP=share_btn_tw

Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet.

The world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study. Yet since the dawn of civilisation, humanity has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans abounds.

hell yeah, fuck you animals

*dons giant foam finger with 'humanity #1' printed on it*

Somehow misread the thread title as Global Warming's Terrifying New Hat.

https://goo.gl/images/4yP4Zr

Fuck,should have been
https://i3.cpcache.com/product/293429211/cap.jpg

so uh this seems bad

https://theoutline.com/post/4708/montreal-protocol-vienna-convention-noaa-nasa-ozone-layer-hole-cfc?zd=2&zi=k5lys3ei

Pruitt pointed to “the demand for Powder River Basin coal,” referring to the basin straddling Wyoming and Montana that accounts for a large chunk of American coal production, as an example of exported American coal.

“I was in Wyoming recently,” he continued. “And if we really care about clean air, we would allow Indonesia to buy our coal from Wyoming, because it’s far cleaner than what they’re using now.”

...“So we need to be exporting LNG [Liquid Natural Gas], and we need to be exporting coal to the rest of the world,” Pruitt continued. “We need to be sharing with them our technology to access natural gas through hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. Those are things that will help air quality across the globe.”

“What most people don’t realize,” he added, “is that the challenges we have domestically with respect to air quality, a lot of it is because of what happens internationally. And if those countries would simply adopt what we’re doing here, air quality in the United States would be better, and it would be better in those areas as well.”

https://i.imgur.com/T03Espu.jpg

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/pruitt-if-we-really-care-about-clean-air-we-should-export-more-american-coal

to state the obvious, this kind of analysis only makes sense in a world a) without a greenhouse gas effect, b) with zero other options for energy besides coal. a real leader would be pushing to make the united states the leader in clean energy tech and exporting THAT

There's an argument for a robust LNG market as a bridge fuel to a zero carbon future. At present, natural gas is a natural complement to renewables, as in places without massive hydropower resources (like say, Denmark+Sweden), every MW of utility solar or wind power is backed by a MW of gas turbines to handle intermittency. Increased green energy purchasing and mandates have driven firms to build renewables, and replace coal boilers with gas turbines. It's the later shift that's been responsible for most reductions in greenhouse emissions.

However, O&G companies have been exporting fracking technology for a decade, and frankly, there are relatively few places outside the US where its been successful. For example, Poland has some huge shale beds, and Europe has high gas prices, and hundreds of exploratory wells have been drilled by a dozen companies, but the returns to date have been dismal. China has its own mega O&G companies that are perfectly capable of developing their own fracking tech. As I understand it, pretty much every innovation in the field since Mitchell Energy fracked the Barnett shale under the DFW area in the late 90s has been incremental improvements to number of fracked stages or in pumped fracking solutions for specific fields, nothing earth shattering.

Of course, Pruitt is a shill, and no serious observers believes there's a role for coal. There's simply no way to make clean coal (gassification + oxy-fuel combustion + underground sequestration) profitable. Even renewable power-to-methane (PTM) for carbon neutral use of gas turbines would be cheaper.

I hereby declare my intention to become a leader in healthy eating by insisting that the whipped cream topping be left off my Chocolate Brownie Explosion Platter.

As I understand it, pretty much every innovation in the field since Mitchell Energy fracked the Barnett shale under the DFW area in the late 90s has been incremental improvements to number of fracked stages or in pumped fracking solutions for specific fields, nothing earth shattering.

Sanpaku also appears to be eliding the "underreported methane leaks from fracking and pipelines" issue that Karl went into upthread

I'm aware of it, but wellhead/pipeline leaks are a regulatory issue. Methane from wellheads could be monitored, with political will; and the cost wouldn't be that high. Methane monitors are low 4 digits, every wellhead is already networked. I personally doubt that fracked wells have any greater issues than conventional ones here, the cracks barely propagate 100 ft, rather than the 1000s to the surface.

I think the main issue is that we are so behind in electricity storage technology in areas without hydropower that I wouldn't be surprised if NG generation wasn't a big part of the energy mix throughout my lifetime (maybe 30-40 years). At present, batteries are viable for a few hours demand, but there are places where the wind doesn't blow, or the skies are overcast, for a week.

The most viable path I've seen is a heavy push towards power-to-methane, so that existing NG pipeline infrastructure could be used for longer term renewable energy storage, and the gas turbines gradually shift from geological to manmade fuel.

man I hate this thread's title

anyway: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/06/01/trump-withdrew-from-the-paris-climate-plan-a-year-ago-heres-what-has-changed/?utm_term=.a3a8b76e7553

One prominent group studying how countries are faring in their Paris goals, the Climate Action Tracker, just improved its assessment of the United States’ expected performance, rather than downgrading it, citing a continuing reduction of carbon in the electricity sector that is being driven mainly by market forces, rather than Trump policies.

“Although the Trump administration is working hard on rolling back climate policies, we do not yet see an effect on our projections of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Niklas Höhne, a founder of NewClimate Institute and professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. “In fact, still it’s the opposite. We have revised our projections for the U.S. in 2030 downward because there have been more renewables online and less coal.”

Hurrah for the market?!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-06-14/antarctica-sea-level-rise/9859828

looking forward to reading this

The August 5 issue of @NYTmag will be dedicated entirely to a single story, a captivating, revelatory history about the decade we almost stopped climate change, but didn't. Story by @NathanielRich with stunning aerial photography by George Steinmetz.

— Jake Silverstein (@jakesilverstein) July 25, 2018

oh man

a deep dive into the history of the luddites, i assume

Would that be the '00s or the '90s?

haha, yeah i had the same question. it seems like they're going to use hansen's 1988 testimony as a starting point, so maybe they mean the 90s.

Rich's climate change novel, 'Odds Against Tomorrow', was very good. Looking forward to this.

welp

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DizDn0nWsAAesOj.jpg

London and New York now resemble something you might have visualised whilst listening to a Drexciya album.

looking forward to dying in an off-to-the-side skirmish of the First Polar War, glad i won't have to live to see the world where 95% of humanity have died off but somehow the remainder have rewired the whole planet with solar and nuclear infrastructure to support their high rise city covering New Zealand. tho i'm sure their hunger games equivalent will make for great television.

i am terrified by the geopolitical implications of this map but also delighted by a well-done infographic map

here's where gregg easterbrook mentions how great it will all be for canada and siberia

the implications of those big brown 'uninhabitable' areas are gonna keep me up at night for sure

I mean that's not going to happen overnight. but the global south will get hit hardest first. this bullshit with border patrol and ice right now almost feels like a test run for the decades of potential fascism to come.

in this book

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/515TD3ctgWL._SX355_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

he excerpts various Defense Department reports on climate change where they explicitly talk about the need to fortify the border against future incoming "starving climate refugees"

tbf as discussed above, this is an old racist/xenophobic thing - tons and tons of malthusianism following the population bomb, taken seriously and studied by all kinds of decision-makers.

yeah to be clear, i reject the matlthusian trap as a flimsy pretext for aspiring fascists to unleash their genocidal tendencies.

yuuuuup.

i'll take the contrarian view there - we're only 50 years out from the publication of the population bomb, and the ultimate consequences of the J-curve of population in a world of constrained resources are not at all clear. the agricultural green revolution in the 60s really saved the day by increasing crop yields through the world, at least temporarily, in ways that the neo-malthusians didn't forsee (and tbf, almost no one did). but the underlying problems outlined by those gloomy malthusians are still there (sanpaku to thread), and counting on new agricultural/genetic revolutions to solve them.

don't get me wrong, obviously the entire topic of population and resource constraints is thorny and rife with potential for mischaracterization by racists. but that doesn't mean that resource constraints are solved or that we shouldn't worry about population.

the neo-malthusians did foresee this, sorta - one of the ways this mentality manifested itself in decision-making was in support for technocratic and developmentalist solutions like the green revolution which also dovetailed with neocolonial capitalism. it was already underway of course but it got a serious boost from this. i was babbling about this upthread when i read outlaw territories, the details are already a little foggy to me though.

but agreed with your overall point - my pointing out the history of these ideas is by no means me trying to say there's nothing to see here folks. there are serious resource crises ahead. i just think we should put effort into expanding our minds with regard to other paradigms than us-versus-them or how-will-capitalism-invent-our-way-out-of-this-one. i was on a design review a while back where one earnest young man was pitching conversions of offshore oil rigs into vertical farms because "we're running out of farmland and there won't be enough to feed everybody." notwithstanding the problems with vertical farming and the minuscule amount of land this would make up for, my real concern was that he was buying into the scarcity claims. we're not running out of farmland, we're just doing other, stupid things with it like building suburban sprawl or raising cattle instead of soybeans. (MVRDV's "pig city" film essentially already did his project but as a pointed dystopian commentary: https://vimeo.com/89893363 ) so we should be pushing as much as possible the point that the problem is capitalism, not only in creating global warming, but in maintaining an inequitable distribution of its products. there is enough to go around.

obviously this gets much trickier is when regions are rendered uninhabitable and we get into real questions of relocation. i live in a city where people can't even move their way into the middle of a subway car to make room for the people entering the door. "THERE'S SO MUCH ROOM," i have sometimes had to point out to people. so getting them to realize that we can and must reconfigure the sprawling landscape of north america and accommodate millions of climate refugees seems like a tall, perhaps impossible order. but if we don't start thinking this way we're preemptively ceding the definition of the problem and of its plausible solutions to the build-a-wall fascists of today and 2050 alike. i dunno, all easier said than done.

i'm sorta...if we're already not "fair and just" at resources distribution now, and if we haven't been safe from 40 yrs of ascending fascism from 80 to 20 (partially as a result of population relocations), i'm intimidated at the possibility of catastrophic scarcity of food and water too.

*re-reads KM's post, considers replacing txt with 'yup'* xp

i just think we should put effort into expanding our minds with regard to other paradigms than us-versus-them or how-will-capitalism-invent-our-way-out-of-this-one.

otm! sadly, though, these seem to be the two defaults that we're heading toward. the military, left to their own devices, will likely see climate refugees as threats and build walls and detention camps. and most other people seem happy to rely on people like elon musk to solve things.

your point about inequitable distribution being the real problem is correct, i think, but it's been true for many years now. there shouldn't be anyone starving out there right now, and no one living on $1 a day. and yet...here we are. so i'm not optimistic that mankind will successfully initiate a peaceful global political-economy-agricultural revolution centered on long-term ecological thinking, just as resource constraints get tighter and the effects of climate change continue to become more real and physical and damaging. we're already geared toward short-term thinking, and that's before the electricity goes out for a week, or the grocery store in some small town starts missing shipments.

realistically, how many human beings can this planet support in the long term? if it's 7b and we have 8b, then what happens?