Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719

Hi! Bye!

just starting to read it now, but it's by bill mckibben, so it's going to be a good read. the man is truly a hero.

i would say its scary but its way beyond that. kind of an r.i.p. earth dispatch really.

"In early June, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled on a Norwegian research trawler to see firsthand the growing damage from climate change. "Many of the predictions about warming in the Arctic are being surpassed by the actual data," she said, describing the sight as "sobering." But the discussions she traveled to Scandinavia to have with other foreign ministers were mostly about how to make sure Western nations get their share of the estimated $9 trillion in oil (that's more than 90 billion barrels, or 37 gigatons of carbon) that will become accessible as the Arctic ice melts. Last month, the Obama administration indicated that it would give Shell permission to start drilling in sections of the Arctic."

well that's good news, at least

we're fucked

all that pesky arctic ice was hiding all the oil!

it's why if you talk to people who work on climate change (people at environmental nonprofits, climate scientists, think tanks), everyone has this attitude that's beyond fatalistic. like, you almost have to laugh at the situation a little bit to keep yourself from going insane. i guess the article talks about that a bit:

We're in the same position we've been in for a quarter-century: scientific warning followed by political inaction. Among scientists speaking off the record, disgusted candor is the rule. One senior scientist told me, "You know those new cigarette packs, where governments make them put a picture of someone with a hole in their throats? Gas pumps should have something like that."

but yeah, it's absurd. in 2010, my dad told me "you know who Obama should appoint for secretary of energy? Sarah Palin. i don't agree with her about a lot of stuff, but she has really good ideas about energy." my dad's kind of an outlier i guess, because he's a super fundamentalist who believes the earth is 8000 years old and doesn't believe that climate change could happen because god promised not to flood the earth again, and even if environmental catastrophe did occur, he'd be raptured out of it (the "pre-wrath rapture" theory") before the shit hit the fan. but man, there are a toooooooon of really ignorant people out there that don't want to hear anything that's bad news.

it really is up to the governments of the world. all of them. the average person is too far gone to really change things. i'm too far gone! he mentions that moral outrage over the loss of a city due to climate-related storms would change opinion, although there has already been mass devastation to cities due to super storms and it hasn't changed anyone's mind about anything. plus, for some reason people don't want to make the connection. major damage due to warming doesn't make people hate the oil companies.

this is increasingly all I think about and it leaves me in a heavy depression. I try to be fatalistic about it and tell myself that the universe will go on regardless, but that's not comfort since I guess one day it will be a dark grey cold mass of atoms.

i find it near-impossible to imagine a government stepping in to take the necessary action against oil companies in liberal socialist Europe, there's absolutely no chance in hell it wd happen in the US or China

all the news stories here about the drought are about how you might be paying more at the pump in the future! that is the number one concern. oh and food prices are gonna go up. that takes second place.

thats really the frustrating part; it really seems like as a planet we could buckle down and fix things, we just won't

whenever I hear the phrase "the price at the pump" it makes me insane. was looking at various political parties' platforms, and of course in the energy section for the democrats' paper there is little mention of climate change, and instead just talk about energy security, independence, and yes, the "price at the pump."

It sounds like it may be coming to a head in the US soon if next year's corn harvest may be fucked.

I am curious what the thinking inside China is - I oddly expect more of them than the US, partly because I don't associate them with "Oh God won't let that happen".

I remember having my huge bout of paralyzed fear about the environment in early 1992 -- still always associate the Church's stellar Priest = Aura with that, probably why that album has lingered with me for so long. I don't see myself returning to that state anymore because it's almost like...well, I went through it, and my fears never went away. I just became inured, and so I'll just live my life as low impact as possible and...wait.

xpost but it's up to people to force their governments to act.

what i'm dreading even more than the world that we'll have to live in for the rest of our lives - where the new normal is weeks on end of 100+ degrees, droughts, Katrinas, oceanic foodchains ruined by acidification, climate refugees struggling to move to the remaining pockets of the world where agriculture isn't wrecked - is the geoengineering "solutions" that will inevitably arise. it's so obvious that that's where we're headed. and no doubt, geoengineering efforts will probably be pushed by exxon-mobil and the like.

what is the true percentage of people in the US that believe god is protecting us though? I feel that there are many who just don't want to admit the truth because it is terrifying, or are just susceptible to listening to whichever account of events is least traumatizing. I figure it's quite a minority who really believe that God Himself will prevent any ecological disaster, even if a majority of Americans identify as religious.

xxpost

like most Americans are religious, but not thaaaaat religious, right? I mean most people just like to say they believe in god and attend church once in a while. right guys??

now I think I'm fooling myself maybe

i need a drink after reading this

I get the impression that it works on a lower/earlier level, like as long as there's FUD about climate change, people can react to it as "one story is this, and one story is that, but God would not put us in the situation where Story 1 happens so it must be Story 2"

I am curious what the thinking inside China is - I oddly expect more of them than the US, partly because I don't associate them with "Oh God won't let that happen".

also because their leadership would actually have the ability to unilaterally "force" action on the issue. don't know if they'd actually do it, but at least it's possible.

there was a nyer stat about 26% (iirc) of americans defining themselves as evangelicals, recently (xxxp)

hey Z S, sorry to use you as a lazy wikipedia substitute, BUT, is it correct that the limited action that was taken by governments after the discovery of the hole in the o-zone layer was actually effective? that stat always seemed slightly reassuring to me, because i couldn't believe that anyone did a lot, but the idea that some modest action was effective seemed promising.

these are some of the people in power in the united states. just so we are clear:

In 2009, for the first time, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce surpassed both the Republican and Democratic National Committees on political spending; the following year, more than 90 percent of the Chamber's cash went to GOP candidates, many of whom deny the existence of global warming. Not long ago, the Chamber even filed a brief with the EPA urging the agency not to regulate carbon – should the world's scientists turn out to be right and the planet heats up, the Chamber advised, "populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological and technological adaptations." As radical goes, demanding that we change our physiology seems right up there.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce is horrible for many reasons, not least of which is that they fool people into thinking they're an actual gov't agency!

Not long ago, the Chamber even filed a brief with the EPA urging the agency not to regulate carbon – should the world's scientists turn out to be right and the planet heats up, the Chamber advised, "populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological and technological adaptations." As radical goes, demanding that we change our physiology seems right up there.

as cynical as i am about the intelligence of our conservative political leaders, i think that many of them really do understand the implications of climate change. as time goes on and denying climate change becomes more and more absurd - think about the first warnings about cigarettes and cancer in the late 50s, the loooooooong conservative battle against those scientists who were trying to save lives, and then the gradual, quiet acceptance of the facts in the following decades - the rhetoric will quickly shift to geoengineering "solutions", since by then it will be too late to actually effectively mitigate climate change by reducing CO2 emissions. hell, it's probably already too late NOW, when you take into account tipping points/feedback loops. anyway, they'll be happy to move straight to geoengineering, because that's a pro-business attitude that doesn't involve changing your own lifestyle.

http://adsoftheworld.com/files/sony.start_.new_.tunnel20.jpg

wait did ned just say that he made his peace with the destruction of the planet via an australian college rock band from the 80's?

sounds about right

You gotta start somewhere.

hey Z S, sorry to use you as a lazy wikipedia substitute, BUT, is it correct that the limited action that was taken by governments after the discovery of the hole in the o-zone layer was actually effective? that stat always seemed slightly reassuring to me, because i couldn't believe that anyone did a lot, but the idea that some modest action was effective seemed promising.

yes, the actions taken were relatively effective! but the experience is - cue negative nancy alert - unfortunately not very applicable to the problem of climate change. ozone depletion is primarily caused by the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Banning the use of CFCs in things like spray cans and refrigerators was relatively easy to accomplish, since there are chemical substitutes that could be used at a similar cost. and it was regulation that could be implemented quickly, from the top down, on industry.

climate change, on the other hand, is driven by the emission of greenhouse gases, primarily from burning coal and using oil. but the key is that the infrastructure required to deliver energy and car-centered transportation to the people is enormous. you can't change it overnight, and you can't do it in a way that consumers barely notice (like phasing out CFCs in spray cans). there are cleaner substitutes for coal and oil, of course, but the substitutes tend to be more expensive and will take a long time to replace to replace the existing infrastructure.

and also, there's just the sheer usefulness of fossil fuels. think about what a gallon of gasoline provides for you - it enables a weak, feeble human being to move a one ton automobile for 30 miles or so! imagine pushing that car! all from a gallon of fossilized ancient dead organisms! it's seriously amazing. and so incredibly cheap. $3 for access to superhuman powers. it's like playing videogames on god mode. people in underdeveloped countries understandably want access to oil and coal. again, all of this in contrast to CFCs, which could be eliminated without negatively impacting the prospects of a better life for anyone else.

xpost -- Said album was more of a vehicle and a lens, in that it builds up to a pretty harrowing ending. I don't know whether it matched my mood or enabled it, but I find it pretty inextricable in reflecting back, and anytime I encounter stories or concerns like this it's part of the soundtrack in my head.

If global warming is real, then why is it cold in winter? Huh? Fuck you, science.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4MCRrsmzYU

The first six months of 2012 were the hottest on record. Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring branch of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, takes a look at record warm temperatures across the county and the world and their connections to global warming.

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/2012/jul/11/weather/

The 'Dark Knight' shootings are terrifying and ppl will rightly be appalled by them but somehow climate change lacks the immediacy that would rightly make it that much more terrifying.

it's because what's predicted to happen has never happened before in human memory and so people just ignore it.

if you can scarcely conceptualize a threat then it's hard to motivate yourself to give up deeply ingrained habits and privileges to stop it.

i do wonder what sort of world the rest of my life will be spent in. will my neighbors and myself experience widespread privation? or will life in america just become marginally more difficult, with our wealth and technology insulating ourselves from the worst of it? will my diet change thanks to rolling food shortages? will we all simply die of malnutrition in 40 years?

3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.

he sorta blows his math cred in the second sentence. that number is almost zero.

odds are expressed as a fraction of 1 iirc

agree. the odds are small, not large. an editor should have picked that up.

Dodgy formatting imo, should it be 3.7 x 10^99:1? Or 3.7 x 10:99? Or what?

more proof that this is all a hoax

Sorry, I've got my stupid head on and didn't read the sentence properly. Yes, it makes no sense as he has written it.

it makes sense it's just inaccurate. he shd've used odds against if he wanted to draw the stars comparison.

i mean, i knew what he meant, so it makes sense, and i squinted at the -99 index when i read it

It's a covert way of saying the situation looks hopeless and we don't have a prayer of it getting better.

Yesterday, I attended a conference at which an influential financier shared this unpublished map. Look at it. The estimated death toll is 2-3 *billion*; the timeframe is 20-30 years (previously: 50). Segments of the elite have simply 'written off' large parts of the Global South. pic.twitter.com/P7JTfepn9k

— Benjamin Ramm (@BenjaminRamm) October 16, 2022

"ideal zone for capturing solar energy to power the global north"

Psychedelics conference

what even is one of them?

Saw several tweets saying that map is rubbish (one tweet traced it to 20 years ago). But the point was that, as things get worse, certain groups of people are going to try and figure out how they can come out relatively unscarred.

White House is pushing ahead research to cool Earth by reflecting back sunlight

The White House is coordinating a five-year research plan to study ways of modifying the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth to temper the effects of global warming, a process sometimes called solar geoengineering or sunlight reflection.

The research plan will assess climate interventions, including spraying aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back into space, and should include goals for research, what’s necessary to analyze the atmosphere, and what impact these kinds of climate interventions may have on Earth, according to the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. Congress directed the research plan be produced in its spending plan for 2022, which President Joe Biden signed in March.

Mrburns.jpg

The ones who accept the science and think some Breaking Bad cliffhanger plot twist is going to avert the coming genocide are worse than the outright deniers. Tho I suspect that as with Covid, the most vocal deniers are actually following the science quite closely.

But the point was that, as things got worse, certain groups of people figured out how they could come out relatively unscarred.

ftfy

(can we do strikethrough text?)

this is an excellent, really long feature with lots of interesting photographs, videos, and infographics about the deforestation of the amazon and how that's directly creating droughts and tipping points already crossed which can't be undone (not in our lifetime, at least). it's washington post so paywalled, but i have a 'gift link' which should work for everyone:

How the Forest Dies
https://wapo.st/3As5FHc

not at all surprising that cop27 was a total failure in terms of actually mitigating climate change, given that no powerful country is willing or able to divorce from growthism, but still quite depressing to witness

— kaisa (@kuuhulluutta) November 20, 2022

if COP26 was about rolling back mandatory decarbonisation, at #COP27 we got roll-out Wall Street Consensus:

(carbon) financiers triumph in scaling up the derisking state - see green hydrogen/Just Transition partnerships & 'influencer' NGFS central banks https://t.co/RRwqcBvUkz

— Daniela Gabor (@DanielaGabor) November 20, 2022

US climate envoy John Kerry backs the United Arab Emirates’ decision to appoint the CEO of a state-run oil company to preside over the upcoming UN climate negotiations in Dubai, citing his work on renewable energy projects.

In an interview Sunday with the Associated Press, the former US secretary of state acknowledged that the Emirates and other countries relying on fossil fuels to fund their state coffers face finding “some balance” ahead.

However, he dismissed the idea that Sultan al-Jaber’s appointment should be automatically disqualified due to him leading the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. Activists, however, equated it to asking “arms dealers to lead peace talks” when authorities announced his nomination on Thursday.

“I think that Dr Sultan al-Jaber is a terrific choice because he is the head of the company. That company knows it needs to transition,” Kerry said after attending an energy conference in the Emirati capital. “He knows – and the leadership of the UAE is committed to transitioning.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/16/cop28-john-kerry-backs-uae-appointment-oil-chief

“We believe we have compromised significantly, and we're prepared to compromise further" - John Kerry, years ago, shockingly

oceans broke heat record in 2022, breking the 2021 record, which broke the 2020 record, which broke the 2019 record...

such bad luck, when is this random bad luck going to stop

A random walk down Maple Street.

When I was in grad school towards the end I was doing Atmosphere-Ocean stuff and remember reading about how it was a good thing that the jet stream kept the weather patterns relatively stable. Now just listening to the anecdotal evidence of this crazy wind outside today, um...

Silver linings

https://heatmap.news/politics/the-war-criminal-who-accidentally-decarbonized-the-world

Again, this story is not all rosy. Price increases have created gas shortages in countries like Pakistan that can’t afford to compete. But even this is showing one of the enormous upsides of renewable power: relative price stability. Renewable power production is somewhat erratic depending on the weather, of course, but most of the expense of wind and solar is in the purchase and installation. Afterwards maintenance costs are predictable and production reasonably easy to forecast, particularly at utility scale.

Carbon power, by contrast, relies on a continual supply of mined commodities traded in a global market where prices can and do gyrate wildly based on the business cycle, discovery or depletion of deposits, movements in financial markets (if not speculator chicanery), and as we’ve learned this year, the lunatic depredations of the dictators who control most global supply.

Via el tweetbox

Putin's war of aggression kicked off a de facto Green New Deal in the EU, and it is going far better than the most optimistic projections: https://t.co/UX42mAuRoK pic.twitter.com/JiyfoEvjxS

— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) March 8, 2023

ground sourced heat pumps require a large upfront investment but once they're up and running they are incredibly efficient, reliable, low cost and low maintenance. if most houses, apartments and commercial buildings switched over for their heating and cooling it would produce a HUGE carbon savings over any other method.

Vladimir Putin - thank you!

My dad did/does think global warming is all nonsense but sees the cost savings in solar panels, electric car and ground-source heat pumps so has gone fully Green over the past decade or so.

feeling extinction-pilled today. after spending a couple minutes pondering the astonishing indifference (at best) anybody remotely adjacent to power has towards the rapidly mounting genocide of people like me... i'd usually talk to my support network, but they're all going through crises more immediate than genocide, which is more ever-present background noise.

so i wind up thinking about the other background noise - the overwhelming likelihood that the earth will basically be uninhabitable 50 years from now. sure, trans people are confronting genocide, but in the larger scheme of things, it's really just a sideshow, isn't it? if you look at it in kubler-ross terms... well, you've got your denial, and you've got your anger. why not blame the queers? millennia of christianity have made us damn near ideal scapegoats for anything you like. and here i am, just going through depression, again. well, i guess i'm predisposed to it. save the earth? i can't even protect my friends...

just to be clear, the earth is not going to be uninhabitable 50 years from now

Technically no, but it could be a wee bit more unpleasant than it might be now.

nice take-down of another shit hollywood climate change morality play

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/pathos-porn-about-climate-change-on-scott-z-burnss-extrapolations/

Things began to look very unusual two months ago.
Today the charts need no commentary, they speak for themselves.
This is the Atlantic. https://t.co/P26XnJmKj6 pic.twitter.com/Xin8kUT3Fr

— Dr Thomas Smith 🔥🌏 (@DrTELS) June 10, 2023

is this good

looks great if you like monster storms with high winds and rainfall measured in inches per hour

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/356238972_10161305771492137_5491188824864969283_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=0oVjV0OT554AX8ETKhd&_nc_oc=AQlI8ChoVJgz3LUBSb9x3z_jMQvXRrni8nHnzsMWYBNZ8j9fR9AdWVZIpA87Wldp4_U&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.xx&oh=00_AfBxe-dgGsDqvUKT3GM1jybmmTPAdkV5uTQRmtz3sCRpIg&oe=64A37B4B

They really shouldn’t dive off of that, the water is not that deep there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nykR3t3aKA8

The lake near me is lower than usual this year, apparently. I don't know, when I drive past it looks plenty fuckin' deep. Maybe some of the rich fucks around here shouldn't try to float superyachts behind their goddamn multi-million-dollar houses.

Global warming's terrifying effects on rich boat owners?

are we going to do anything to mark the warmest days on earth in 125,000 years? feel like i should bake a cake. ON THE SIDEWALK.

With ice growth remaining slow, the record #Antarctic sea ice anomaly (negative departure from average) continues to somehow get larger in size...

Seasonal cycle graphs at https://t.co/V0Lt0w20IQ. More info at https://t.co/QXRkBvOtPG. pic.twitter.com/MiVukwJoCn

— Zack Labe (@ZLabe) July 6, 2023

hell, i thought i was scared of everything already but now i'm scared of something else!

"This phenomenon, which creates air circulation in a clockwise direction, prevents the formation of clouds and, Dr. Domínguez Sarmiento added, “allows radiation to hit directly, as the sky is completely clear and thus temperatures on the surface rise.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/06/world/americas/hermosillo-mexico-heat.html

it was nice of you guys not to worry me about anticyclones though. i was blissfully unaware of the phenomenon until now.

the future is the present's past already. people still dealing with the effects and trauma of recent events. years to recover and rebuild. what if next summer is hotter? nobody is ready for that. biden thinks he's low on relief money now? lemme telly buddy, this planet is gonna be a pricy place to live.

“Miscarriages have been increasing because of the intense heat,” said Zainab Hingoro, a local health-care worker. When she once would have 3 out of 10 pregnant patients miscarry, she now has 5 to 6 out of 10."

“It was like thousands of snakes sighing all at once,” he recalled."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/pakistan-extreme-heat-health-impacts-death/

We went to a UW-Madison football game on Saturday, and they had the local weatherman on hand to announce that it was officially the hottest temperature the team had ever played in there. And everyone cheered.

sounds about right.

They'll stop cheering when all the corn, wheat and soy fields shrivel up and burn to a crisp.

They'd think that that was owning the libs, seeing as they prefer to eat meat.

I think they were mostly just happy to have broken a record, any record. I mean, it *was* a sporting event ...

the two on the right are august and july of this year

https://i.imgur.com/nyVMtVO.png

A lot of nasty 'positive' feedback loops have already been triggered. They'll be self-reinforcing for the foreseeable future no matter what steps we take to limit our emissions. Doesn't mean we shouldn't stop digging the hole we're in even deeper.

I don’t think this has been shared here yet https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/life-and-death-in-americas-hottest-city?fbclid=IwAR3a3I5AWGbIcTM1Z__d8ahnBj_t4L-3YFYwrbq-gDoxuRKANXcZ2Goeyi4#

By the end of 2007 more than 3 million copies of the DVD set for the BBC series Planet Earth had sold. At an average weight of .25 pounds that is more than 750,000 pounds or over 375 tons of mostly unbiodegradable waste filled with toxic chemicals and metals.

i see so many copies of this in my line of work so i crunched some numbers.

Man-made global warming aside, new study projects mammals could face extinction in 250M years, more or less the amount of time since they first appeared
The immediate good news is that can all claim to be the peak of evolution

source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01259-3

Alfred Wegener playing the ultimate long game in exacting revenge upon his foes.

Step aside climate change and Red Giant Sun, I’m burning the Earth first. The Andromeda-Milky Way Collision is the end of show fireworks. Angry neutron stars yelling that you don’t have to go home to resist entropy but you can’t do it there.