Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

thanks for these links, hoos, i'll read through them when i get home.

it's all very...awkward, from an enviro/political/persuasive point of view. for the last three decades we've had competing strategies on how to address pollution and climate change. broadly:

1) a cornucopian belief that existing and future technology will save the day via the invisible hand
2) a tech/policy-driven posture that aligns with neoliberalism and technocratic governance approaches
3) a more aggressive, radical activist (and some scientists) movement to fundamentally change the way we approach energy and the environment,
4) whatever we should call the dumbfuck evil republicans and industry groups which actively seek policies which undermine the lives of billions of people.

4 plays well with 1. And 1 and 2 have a lot of overlap. 3 has always been off in its own world, with little political support. Recent political leaders and big green groups have found themselves firmly entrenched within 2. And part of the neoliberal technocratic approach is the constant assurance that people aren’t the problem, stressing that we don’t have to sacrifice human wellbeing to fix the environment (that we broke), that human and environmental progress can go hand and hand. That was certainly the line in the Obama administration, which was a big improvement over the Bush-era.

but…the problem is that 3) is probably the most appropriate way to go at this point. There was a time, about twenty to thirty fucking years ago, when there might have been time to bend the curve of GHG emissions downward, trending toward zero, with enough of a buffer to mitigate most of the worst consequences of climate change. That time appears to have passed, but the political world is still operating as if nothing has changed.

i don’t know, not sure what point I’m getting to, if there is any. It’s just…the Obama-era “all of the above” energy strategy and “cutting energy use is actually GOOD for GDP, which is a wonderful way to measure human progress!!” is really hard to square with reports like the ones Hoos highlighted. I hope this means that more and more AOC’s will show up who will tell the truth, but there are just a TON of people out there who still have no idea and got sick of hearing about this shit back during the Population Bomb-era.

starting this today also as a counterbalance to the degrowth reading

https://imgv2-1-f.scribdassets.com/img/word_document/281433794/original/432x574/f3576d30fb/1548487424?v=1

evidence that sudden depopulation of the americas lead to global climate change is summarized in Charles c. Mann’s 1491, a (pretty good) pop anthropology book published in 2005

i want to read more about it. the thing is, obviously the scientific community was already aware of the little ice age, and i thought they already had various explanations for what caused it? (for example: volcanos and changes is arctic sea ice cover). but of course there could be a variety of complementary forces contributing to the same outcome

1491 is a cracking read

agreed

Some graceful writing which found itself in the WaPo Style section:Everything is not going to be okay: How to live with constant reminders that the Earth is in trouble

To grasp the problem, we have to slow down. To respond to it, we have to act fast.

good long excerpt here from david wallace-wells' the uninhabitable earth even-handedly looking at the tools we already have to fight climate change and why we might well still fuck it up anyway

No single solution alone is sufficient, but the solutions, plural, are here already. As climate activists often say, we have, today, all the tools we need to avoid catastrophic change. It’s true: a carbon tax and government action to aggressively phase out dirty energy, even outright ban much of it; a new approach to agricultural practices and a shift away from beef and dairy in global diet; and public investment in green energy and carbon capture. We just need to choose to implement them — all of them — and quite fast. But of course political will is not some trivial ingredient always at hand. We probably have the tools we need to solve global poverty, epidemic disease, and the abuse of women, as well.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/book-excerpt-the-uninhabitable-earth-david-wallace-wells.html

well uhhhh... shit

Scientists have discovered an enormous void under an Antarctic glacier, sparking concern that the ice sheet is melting faster than anyone had realized — and spotlighting the dire threat posed by rising seas to coastal cities around the world, including New York City and Miami.

The cavity under Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is about six miles long and 1,000 feet deep — representing the loss of 14 billion tons of ice.

It was discovered after an analysis of data collected by Italian and German satellites, as well as NASA’s Operation IceBridge, a program in which aircraft equipped with ice-penetrating radar fly over polar regions to study the terrain.

The discovery is described in a paper published Jan. 30 in the journal Science Advances. The researchers expected to see significant loss of ice, but the scale of the void came as a shock.

“The size of the cavity is surprising, and as it melts, it’s causing the glacier to retreat,” said Pietro Milillo, a radar scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and the paper’s lead author. He said the ice shelf encompassing the Florida-sized glacier is retreating at a rate in excess of 650 feet per year, and that most of the melting that led to the void occurred during the past three years.

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/hole-opens-under-antarctic-glacier-big-enough-fit-two-thirds-ncna965696

cool cool cool

it's cool when glaciers start moving so fas (~ 2 feet a day, a little less than an inch per hour) that you can actually sit there and watch them move. it's up there with the opening of the northwest passage as a convenient, quality of life kind of improvement

why we might well still fuck it up anyway

if this were a war that could be fought with soldiers, guns and bombs, we'd be all over this. instead it is a "hearts and minds" battle, and the forces of evil have the preponderance of advantage on their side, because change is hard and plunging straight ahead over the cliff is easier, especially when the cliff's edge is in the indistinct and difficult to imagine future rather than at one's feet.

the new civilization VI expansion adds climate change

https://i.imgur.com/J4daZvn.jpg

What does the future hold for your children? pic.twitter.com/VQXJswcngn

— Baroness von Sketch (@BaronessShow) October 11, 2018

Gee, I wonder how this report will come out?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/20/white-house-climate-change-national-security-panel

extinction is cool. it rocks, actually.

denier on the panel or not, I wouldn't expect anything good to come out of a panel appointed by this WH. i don't know how long it's supposed to take for their assessment to come out, but i assume the next administration (hopefully a new one after 2020) would just start over when they take office

god, just retire and gtfo

Everyone needs to watch this video of @SenFeinstein disparaging literal children from @SunriseMvmt calling on her to support @AOC and @SenMarkey’s Green New Deal.pic.twitter.com/SjF8thnucQ

— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) February 22, 2019

For a year I've been reporting this story about major climate news, finally breaking today: A new simulation finds that global warming could cause stratocumulus clouds to disappear in as little as a century, which would add 8°C (14°F) of extra warming. https://t.co/1cSmLOsmOS

— Natalie Wolchover (@nattyover) February 25, 2019

that's... troubling

CHILD: Please Senator Feinstein, we'd like to have a future!
SEN. FEINSTEIN: You're fucked, kid. What can I tell you? #HeartsAndMinds pic.twitter.com/ba6hz8No1s

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) February 23, 2019

is this the historic first appearance of a perrin tweet itt

ban perrin tweets

*They want to take your hamburgers and make you eat dog food to survive* -- Here's a supercut of all the insane things CPAC speakers have been saying Democrats and cows pic.twitter.com/HfmBnlRGyo

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 1, 2019

chris hayes podcast with david wallace-wells, author of the recently released the uninhabitable earth: https://art19.com/shows/why-is-this-happening-with-chris-hayes/episodes/50188bd0-6810-48d2-bd82-98936fdd7316

i'm pretty sure dog food is also bad for the environment

massive spikes in homelessness every time there's a natural disaster? sure why not, let's fuckin' do this

Insurers have warned that climate change could make affordable cover for ordinary people unaffordable after the world’s largest reinsurance firm blamed global warming for $24bn (£18bn) of losses in the Californian wildfires.

Ernst Rauch, Munich Re’s chief climatologist, told the Guardian that the costs could soon be widely felt, with premium rises already under discussion with clients holding asset concentrations in vulnerable parts of the state.

“If the risk from wildfires, flooding, storms or hail is increasing then the only sustainable option we have is to adjust our risk prices accordingly. In the long run it might become a social issue,” he said after Munich Re published a report into climate change’s impact on the company. “Affordability is so critical [because] some people on low and average incomes in some regions will no longer be able to buy insurance.”

The lion’s share of California’s 20 worst forest blazes since the 1930s have occurred this millennium, in years characterised by abnormally high summer temperatures and “exceptional dryness” between May and October, according to a new analysis by Munich Re.

Wetter and more humid winters spurred new forest growth which became tinder dry in heatwave conditions that preceded the wildfires, the report’s authors said.

After comparing observational data spanning several decades with climate models, the report concluded that the wildfires, which killed 85 people, were “broadly consistent with climate change”.

Nicolas Jeanmart, the head of personal insurance, general insurance and macroeconomics at Insurance Europe, which speaks for 34 national insurance associations, said the knock-on effects from rising premiums could pose a threat to social order.

“The sector is concerned that continuing global increases in temperature could make it increasingly difficult to offer the affordable financial protection that people deserve, and that modern society requires to function properly,” he said.

Munich Re’s insurance cover in hurricane-prone regions such as Florida is already higher than in northern Europe, by an order of magnitude.

Premiums are also being adjusted in regions facing an increased threat from severe convective storms which hold an energy and severity primed by global warming. These include parts of Germany, Austria, France, south-west Italy and the US midwest.

Increases in the intensity and frequency of California’s wildfire season are predicted by climate models, and the Munich Re analysis combines monthly meteorological data with financial losses to graph the trend’s rise since 2001.

Average annual wildfire losses trailed well below $5bn even within this millennium, until 2017 and 2018, when they leapt to more than $20bn. Munich Re believes that global warming made a “significant contribution” to this.

No insurer has linked wildfires to climate change before, although a Lloyds report into Superstorm Sandy in 2014 found that global warming-linked sea level rises had increased surge losses around Manhattan by 30%.

Climate scientists say that linking extreme weather events to climate change is akin to attributing the performance of a steroid-taking sportsman to drug use – the connections are clearer in patterns than in individual disasters.
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Paul Fisher, the Bank of England’s former coordinator on climate change, and a fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, said: “In general, one can’t prove that a single event is the result of climate change but it is likely to cause more such events of greater severity.”

“It is very interesting if insurers conclude that climate change was a significant contributory factor to the event and will make the insurance companies think carefully about the pricing and availability of similar insurance policies.”

It may also influence several court cases testing the liability of fossil fuel companies for the effects of global warming.

Dr Ben Caldecott, the director of Oxford University’s sustainable finance programme, said: “Company directors and fiduciaries will ultimately be held responsible for avoidable climate-related damages and losses and urgently need to up their game to avoid litigation and liability.”

Munich Re has divested its large thermal coal holdings. However, it maintains some gas and oil investments.

Wow, can’t believe all these insurance companies and the military are falling for this hoax that is also a good thing

I walked around this property—it also had a water view—in the slow, pensive way of the rich shopper, cultivating an opaque expression which could suggest equally the taking in of beauty, or polite condemnation. The place was lovely, but it was also like everything in Miami, beige, beige, beige, pink, white, beige, blue, beige, beige, white. The Zen-like bedrooms all looked like ideal places for thinking about not looking at screens at night, while looking at a screen.

The rhythm of these things is as follows: greeting, walk around, short chat, good bye. This short chat was longer. We talked about shoes and jewelry and the intense beauty of Miami, which I meant every word of. I felt bad lying to her and with no good segue for my true mission, I was worried that when I came out with my questions, her demeanor would change. But just as charmingly as she received my greetings and compliments on the layout of the kitchen and, on her shoes, she said sure, there was a problem, but if anything was going to happen, she thought it would be more like in fifty years than thirty.

It’s amazing that people in these situations tell you what they think. I think bread actually takes twenty minutes to bake, she said, removing the doughy mass from the oven. I think I can drive a car after I’ve run out of gas, he said, as he rolled silently into the breakdown lane.

I did not say this; I said nothing, because I did not have to, because—fiddling attractively with a circular gold pendant at her tan throat all the while—she continued to talk. “The scientists, economists, and environmentalists that are saying this stuff, they don’t realize what a wealthy area this is.” She said that she lived here and wasn’t leaving, and that the people selling Miami were confident, and all working on the same goal as a community to maintain this place, with the pumps and the zoning and raising the streets. There were just too many millionaires and billionaires here for a disaster on a great scale to be allowed to take place.

https://popula.com/2019/04/02/heaven-or-high-water/

i hate that piece with all of my heart, whatever its utility. it gave me a panic attack last night AND it reads like no one edited it. these are barely paragraphs, they're like sequences of popular tweets

"cultivating an opaque expression" my god

I agree it's a bit unwieldy but idk I don't find the style offensive

leave it to me to find unwieldy style offensive

"Cultivating an opaque expression" >> "keeping my face blank", all day every day.

we're all shorting the entire state, but it takes so long we're all bankrupt first.

well that was a nightmarish read, thx simon

Fox's Todd Piro seems genuinely confused by a diner guest supporting higher taxes to fund the Green New Deal and fight climate change. pic.twitter.com/aX38cGpwMO

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) April 4, 2019

The New American Energy Era pic.twitter.com/WqbVM1hvvq

— Rick Perry (@SecretaryPerry) April 14, 2019

gotta love the words of a very dumb man glowing on a page like they're being issued from the mouth of a god

In a Switch, Some Republicans Start Citing Climate Change as Driving Their Policies

Driven by polls showing that voters in both parties — particularly younger Americans — are increasingly concerned about a warming planet, and prodded by the new Democratic majority in the House shining a spotlight on the issue, a growing number of Republicans are now openly discussing climate change and proposing what they call conservative solutions.

“Denying the basic existence of climate change is no longer a credible position,” said Whit Ayers, a Republican political consultant, pointing out the growing climate concern among millennials as well as centrist voters — two groups the G.O.P. will need in the future.

what's this??? some republicans are considering the possibility of helping to mitigate climate change instead of literally being the biggest obstacle to doing something about it? better late than nev-

...In almost all of the cases in which conservative politicians are cautiously staking out territory on climate change, they still do not acknowledge the extent of man’s responsibility for causing it. Putting a price on emitting carbon into the atmosphere is verboten. And they insist solutions do not need to include eliminating or even curbing the use of oil, coal and other dirty energy sources primarily responsible for heating the planet.

“If we can find strategies that allow us to reduce emissions while continuing to use fossil fuels, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing,” Mr. Graves said in a recent interview.

Likewise, Representative Frank Lucas of Oklahoma won praise when he took over as the new top Republican on the House Science Committee this year, and said that climate change has intensified droughts and storms. But in an interview Mr. Lucas also said reducing the use of coal, oil and gas is not a solution.

...And Mr. Barrasso, even as he promotes nuclear and other policies that he frames as climate friendly, characterizes Democrats as taking “drastic” positions. “What began as a conversation about cleaner energy, has transformed into punishing global agreements, and now full government economic takeover,” he said in a statement.

...President Trump, who routinely mocks climate science, is preparing to announce a federal advisory panel to cast doubt on the overwhelming body of evidence that climate change is a threat. At a recent hearing at which former Secretary of State John Kerry testified on climate change, Representative Tom Massie, a Kentucky Republican, floated long-debunked theories that offer alternative explanations for warming other than human activity.

something tells me that this temporary surge in republican curiosity about doing something helpful on climate change will end in unanimous support for 'clean coal' research and (continued) nuclear subsidies

i keep forgetting if nuclear is supposed to be no good and very bad, or actually good

it’s both iirc

not everyone agrees, even (esp) among people who actually are trying to do something about climate change in good faith

pros:
zero-carbon* energy
we know it works, there's an industry built up around it, the energy flows into the grid as-is
capable of providing huge amount of electricity (currently 20% in US, 75% in france)

cons:
- it's expensive, and the costs of financing/subsidization are going up, not down.
- wind and solar are already cheaper than nuclear, especially when considering options for future/new sources of electricity.
- fukushima, three mile island, chernobyl, etc
- the plan for nuclear waste is to bury it in a mountain
- *nuclear isn't zero-carbon energy, exactly. construction/decommissioning of nuclear plants is carbon-intensive. this same issue applies to other clean energy sources (like wind turbines), of course. but it's particularly intense with nuclear plants.

my take is that there are better options for electricity than building additional nuclear plants that are expensive as hell, risky as hell, potentially contain a portal into hell itself, and for which we don't really have a plan for decommissioning/waste disposal. so it's not like i want france to tear down their infrastructure that provide 80% of their electricity or anything. a lot of upfront costs have already been paid, it's already a key part of the grid, etc. but when it comes to making decisions about future electricity generation, or renewing a new round of expensive subsidies to keep it going, and especially when nuclear is presented as some sort of common sense core climate change solution? nope imo

thx!

Has there ever been any real progress on generating electricity through tidal forces, or was the stuff I saw on that years ago actually Popular Science futurist gobbledygook?

Any progress on using tidal forces has been glacially slow-paced. Research funding for demonstration projects doesn't seem to be there.

maybe karl or sanpaku would know better but iirc one of the issues that most limits our ability to effectively use marginal sources of electricity generation (eg tidal forces) is the grid itself. like, there are all kinds of insanely powerful natural events happening all the time, but not only do you have to harness that power, you have to have a way to store/distribute it

thanks y'all, makes sense

iirc one of the issues that most limits our ability to effectively use marginal sources of electricity generation (eg tidal forces) is the grid itself. like, there are all kinds of insanely powerful natural events happening all the time, but not only do you have to harness that power, you have to have a way to store/distribute it

that's exactly right. wind and solar both rely harnessing insanely powerful natural events happening all the time, and they continue to become cheaper and more efficient on the generation side. but they're inherently intermittent. that's why people who are out to actively manipulate people (like trump) can say things like "what about when the sun goes down or it's not windy! you'll be sitting in the dark!" and that's logical enough to fool a lot of people.

increasing the quality and quantity of battery storage is the big issue now. here's a good, quick overview: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20022019/100-percent-renewable-energy-battery-storage-need-worst-case-polar-vortex-wind-solar

Using energy production and power demand data, they showed how a 100 percent renewable energy grid, powered half by wind and half by solar, would have had significant stretches without enough wind or sun to fully power the system, meaning a large volume of energy storage would have been necessary to meet the high demand.

"You would need a lot more batteries in a lot more places," said Wade Schauer, a research director for Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, who co-wrote the report.

How much is "a lot"?

Schauer's analysis shows storage would need to go from about 11 gigawatts today to 277.9 gigawatts in the grid regions that include New England, New York, the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest and parts of the South. That's roughly double Wood Mackenzie's current forecast for energy storage nationwide in 2040.

and, relevant to the conversation upthread about nuclear, existing nuclear infrastructure could essentially serve as a load leveler when wind or solar is relatively low. should have added that as a "pro", i guess.

in addition to the 50-50 wind-solar projection, Schauer and co-author Brett Blankenship considered what would happen with other mixes of wind and solar power, and if existing nuclear power plants were considered as part of the mix.

By considering the role of nuclear plants, the report touches on a contentious debate among environmental advocates, some of whom want to see all nuclear plants closed because of concerns about safety and waste, and some who say nuclear power is an essential part of moving toward a carbon-free grid.

The Wood Mackenzie analysis shows that continuing to use nuclear power plants would dramatically decrease the amount of wind, solar and storage needed to get to a grid that no longer burns fossil fuels. For example, 228.9 gigawatts of storage would be needed, compared to 277.9 without the nuclear plants.

"If your goal is decarbonization, then nuclear gets you a lot farther than if you retire the nuclear," Schauer said.

again, imo if 277.9 GW of storage is needed to supplement 100% solar/wind, then start building that shit IMMEDIATELY. an all-in effort on wind/solar/storage would also create a ton of jobs. if maintaining the existing nuclear infrastructure reduces that top-line storage number to 228.9 GW, then keep it for now and then gradually retire the plants around 2030-2050 as we pass 228.9 and approach the full 277.9 GW.

see? climate change is totally easy

how come you haven't told this to the president?????