The Environment Thread

[blue_gold_84]

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/2070-more-3-billion-people-may-live-outside-human-climate-niche

source: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/28/1910114117

Of course this is simply a projection based on various factors but it's worth noting 50 years isn't far away. 

And take it FWIW. NRDC is pretty left biased (https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/natural-resources-defense-council/) but the science posted in this particular article is sound.

Edited May 26, 2020 by blue_gold_84
link added

[FrostyWinnipeg]

1 hour ago, blue_gold_84 said:

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/2070-more-3-billion-people-may-live-outside-human-climate-niche

source: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/28/1910114117

Of course this is simply a projection based on various factors but it's worth noting 50 years isn't far away. 

And take it FWIW. NRDC is pretty left biased (https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/natural-resources-defense-council/) but the science posted in this particular article is sound.

Stop having kids.

[Tracker]

28 minutes ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

Stop having kids.

Well, if your parents didn't have any kinds, there's pretty good chance you won't either. role modeling and all that.

[blue_gold_84]

2 hours ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

Stop having kids.

Kind of a ridiculous oversimplification but okay. FWIW, I think most of the damage has already been done. We're just stuck seeing the bulk of it unfold in the coming century.

[pigseye]

Wow just sad, welcome to the age of censorship,

https://deadline.com/2020/05/planet-of-the-humans-pulled-youtube-michael-moore-jeff-gibbs-censorship-1202942938/

Quote

EXCLUSIVE, updated with new details, 11:42 AM: Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs’ controversial documentary Planet of the Humans has been removed from YouTube, where it was streaming for free — a move the pair calls a “blatant act of censorship.”

 

[blue_gold_84]

https://www.sciencealert.com/as-the-world-gets-hotter-thousands-of-species-are-fleeing-to-earth-s-poles

Quote

Drawing together 258 peer-reviewed studies, researchers compared over 30,000 habitat shifts in more than 12,000 species of bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals.

The resulting database, named BioShifts, is the first comprehensive analysis of its kind, and while the database is limited by our own, human research biases, the data we have certainly suggests marine species are following global thermal shifts much closer than land animals.

This is consistent with the general idea that land use and climate change may force species in opposite directions, a sort of push and pull of redistribution.

Despite its comprehensive nature, the meta-analysis used to create BioShifts only covers 0.6 percent of all known life on Earth, and the animals we have researched tend to be the most charismatic, or important to humans, focused predominantly in the northern hemisphere.

So while we call this a global meta-analysis, it's not really. Instead, it's as close as we can get given the circumstances.

And some additional info in the links below.

https://climatechange.lta.org/climate-impacts/habitat-shifts/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1198-2#Sec2

[Wideleft]

12 minutes ago, blue_gold_84 said:

https://www.sciencealert.com/as-the-world-gets-hotter-thousands-of-species-are-fleeing-to-earth-s-poles

And some additional info in the links below.

https://climatechange.lta.org/climate-impacts/habitat-shifts/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1198-2#Sec2

A complicating factor is that not all species are migrating at the same rate.  For instance, Puffins have adjusted too slowly to their food sources' migration resulting in significant die-offs of populations.

https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/puffin-population-uk-isle-of-may-scotland-declining-climate-change-500122

[blue_gold_84]

https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-bp-data-reveals-clean-electricity-matched-coal-for-the-first-time-in-2019

Quote

Renewables were the largest source of new energy in 2019, but there were still record highs for oil, gas and CO2 emissions, according to new global data from oil giant BP.

Low-carbon electricity generation also matched global coal power for the first time in 2019, analysis of the data shows. Further gains for wind and solar drove clean sources to this new milestone, helped by a historic fall in coal output.

The 69th edition of the company’s influential annual statistical review of world energy is published amid a global pandemic that risks derailing global climate efforts, BP says. The firm joins a long list of others calling for a “green recovery” by saying the world should aim to “build back better”.

The backdrop to all this is laid out in BP’s new data, which describes a world that was using record amounts of energy in 2019, even though demand rose more slowly than in the previous decade.

Renewables posted record growth in 2019 (3.2 exajoules, EJ, 12.2%) and though they met the largest share of rising demand, a similar portion was from fossil fuels. Large increases for oil (1.6EJ, 0.8%) and gas (2.6EJ, 2.0%) offset falling coal use (-0.9EJ, -0.6%).

As a result, global CO2 emissions rose again, albeit by just 0.5%, leaving the gap to global climate goals larger than ever.

 

[blue_gold_84]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2020/06/22/the-arctic-circle-hit-101f-saturday-its-hottest-temperature-ever/#42716b1a4eb6

Quote

This past weekend, a small Russian town in the Arctic Circle hit a scorching temperature, 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit. While the temperature has to be verified by experts, if it stands, it will be the hottest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic Circle.

The small Russian town of Verkhoyansk is known for its brutally cold winters and is one of the coldest towns on Earth. However, temperatures in recent months have skyrocketed double digits above average temperatures.

 

[Wideleft]

Another in the great (and award-winning) series from the Washington Post.  The key to this series is that it uses data to identify regional impacts to illustrate the crisis while everyone else seems to be waiting for the entire world to combust at once.

This giant climate hot spot is robbing the West of its water

"ORCHARD CITY, Colo. — On New Year’s Day in 2018, Paul Kehmeier and his father drove up Grand Mesa until they got to the county line, 10,000 feet above sea level. Instead of the three to five feet of snow that should have been on the ground, there wasn’t enough of a dusting to even cover the grass.

The men marveled at the sight, and Kehmeier snapped a photo of his dad, “standing on the bare pavement, next to bare ground.”

Here, on Colorado’s Western Slope, no snow means no snowpack. And no snowpack means no water in an area that’s so dry it’s lucky to get 10 inches of rain a year. A few months after taking the photo, Kehmeier stared across the land his family had tilled for four generations and made a harsh calculation: He could make more money selling his ranch’s water than working his land."

........

"The world has already warmed by 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since the industrial revolution, on average. But global warming doesn’t affect the planet uniformly, and 10 percent of it is already at 2C, The Post found. These hot spots offer a window into what will happen as more of the planet warms: In New Jersey and Rhode Island, a 2C world has weakened winter’s bite; in Siberia, 10,000-year-old mammoths are being exposed by melting permafrost; and from Japan to Angola to Uruguay and Tasmania, changing ocean currents and warming water have decimated fisheries and underwater kelp forests."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/climate-environment/climate-change-colorado-utah-hot-spot/?tidr=a_breakingnews&hpid=hp_no-name_hp-breaking-news%3Apage%2Fbreaking-news-bar&itid=hp_no-name_hp-breaking-news%3Apage%2Fbreaking-news-bar

[FrostyWinnipeg]

 

[FrostyWinnipeg]

 

[FrostyWinnipeg]

 

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://scitechdaily.com/nasa-research-reveals-the-true-causes-of-sea-level-rise-since-1900 and the results will shock you.

 

[Mr Dee]

 

 

[blue_gold_84]

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-big-chunk-greenland-ice-cap.html

Quote

An enormous chunk of Greenland's ice cap has broken off in the far northeastern Arctic, a development that scientists say is evidence of rapid climate change.

The glacier section that broke off is 110 square kilometers (42.3 square miles).

The warming of the Arctic is happening at an alarming rate.

[FrostyWinnipeg]

13 hours ago, blue_gold_84 said:

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-big-chunk-greenland-ice-cap.html

The warming of the Arctic is happening at an alarming rate.

Problem solved!

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/climate-change-denialist-given-top-role-major-us-science-agency

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/arctic-sea-ice-shrinks-to-its-second-lowest-annual-minimum-extent-ever/

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-to-ban-sale-of-new-gas-only-cars-in-15591347.php

[FrostyWinnipeg]

 

[blue_gold_84]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/nitrous-oxide-climate-1.5753907

Quote

A new study published in the journal Nature suggests that nitrous oxide — a gas that is 300 times more harmful to the climate than carbon dioxide — is steadily increasing in the atmosphere.

While nitrous oxide is produced in different ways, the study found  the largest contributor is agriculture, where it is produced as a by-product of nitrogen, largely used in agriculture as a fertilizer.

The atmosphere's  nitrous oxide had 270 parts per billion in 1750, according to the study, and had risen to 331 parts per billion in 2018. The fastest rise was in the last five decades. 

Here's the link to the study itself: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2780-0.epdf

 

[Wideleft]

Bringing the chill of the cosmos to a warming planet

Scientists are tapping into a law of physics to create cooling systems that work without special fuel or electricity

 

By Sarah Kaplan 

OCTOBER 7, 2020

 

Long ago, in lands that were always warm, people got ice from the heavens.

At sunset, they poured water into shallow earthen pits or ceramic trays insulated with reeds. All through the night the water would radiate its heat into the chilly void of space. By morning, it turned to ice — even though the air temperature never dropped below freezing.

This wasn’t magic; it was science.

 

For centuries, desert dwellers in North Africa, India and Iran tapped into a law of physics called radiative cooling. All objects — people, plants, buildings, planets — give off heat in waves of invisible light. On a clear, starry night, that radiation can rise through the atmosphere until it escapes Earth entirely. Coldness, which is really the absence of heat, is created through this invisible connection to the cosmos.

The world now cools off with the help of more than 3.5 billion refrigerators and air conditioners, a number that is quickly growing. But those appliances are also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. In seeking relief from the heat, humans are making the globe even hotter, compounding the demand for cooling.

To break that cycle, University of California at Los Angeles materials scientist Aaswath Raman wants to turn ancient technology into a 21st-century tool.

 

Working with colleagues, he has developed a thin, mirror-like film engineered to maximize radiative cooling on a molecular level. The film sends heat into space while absorbing almost no radiation, lowering the temperature of objects by more than 10 degrees, even in the midday sun. It can help cool pipes and panels — like a booster rocket for refrigerators and cooling systems. Incorporated into buildings, it may even replace air conditioning. And it requires no electricity, no special fuel — just a clear day and a view of the sky.

“It sounds improbable,” Raman acknowledged. “But the science is real.”

Generations after people learned to make ice in the desert, he hopes that same science can help us survive in a rapidly warming world.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2020/10/07/radiative-cooling-climate-change/?arc404=true

http://www.aaswathraman.com/

[Brandon]

On 2020-10-07 at 10:47 AM, FrostyWinnipeg said:

 

I'm curious to see how fast food restaurants deal with having to invest in a more expensive drink container / cup.    I know for McDonalds the most expensive part of selling you a drink is the cup itself.   I just hope most places don't end up with crappy stuff (looking at you A & W with your terrible paper straws that turn to paper mache in a matter of seconds) .  

For us we already have moved on because of our toddler insists on chewing on her straws and cutlery so we go out with a foldable metal straw and have a really slick fork/spoon/knife gadget that snaps together for easy storage.   

 

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pdvsa-eni-vessel/idled-venezuelan-floating-oil-facility-under-repairs-amid-environmental-concerns-source-idUSKBN2712H5

[Wideleft]

The town that built back green

By Annie Gowen 

OCTOBER 23, 2020

 

After a tornado demolished Greensburg, Kan., it rebuilt without carbon emissions. Can its lessons help communities and economies rebound from fires, hurricanes and covid-19?

 

GREENSBURG, Kan. — After powerful tornadoes swept through Nashville earlier this year, killing 25 and leaving a trail of destruction for miles, one of the first calls officials made was to tiny Greensburg, population 900.

A wind-swept farming community in southwestern Kansas, Greensburg rebuilt “green” after an EF5 tornado — the most violent — barreled through at more than 200 miles per hour and nearly wiped it off the map in 2007.

A decade later, Greensburg draws 100 percent of its electricity from a wind farm, making it one of a handful of cities in the United States to be powered solely by renewable energy. It now has an energy-efficient school, a medical center, city hall, library and commons, museum and other buildings that save more than $200,000 a year in fuel and electricity costs, according to one federal estimate. The city saves thousands of gallons of water with low-flow toilets and drought-resistance landscaping and, in the evening, its streets glow from LED lighting.

It’s exactly the kind of community Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden envisions when he talks about the need to conserve energy and transition away from fossil fuels towards wind, solar and other sources that do not emit the greenhouse gases driving climate change. President Trump has dismissed global warming and disparaged wind turbines as well as LED lighting and other forms of energy conservation.

Greensburg is no liberal bastion. It sits in Kiowa County, where Trump handily beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, carrying 83 percent of the vote.

But leaders there now are routinely consulted by communities around the world grappling with devastating weather events from wildfires, tsunami, earthquakes and floods — in Australia, China, Japan and Joplin, Mo. In March, the city council member in Nashville wanted to ask what kind of building codes or regulations could make its buildings more tornado-resistant going forward.

(more)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2020/10/22/greensburg-kansas-wind-power-carbon-emissions/?arc404=true

[blue_gold_84]

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/gm-and-ford-knew-about-climate-change-50-years-ago-energy-trade-publication-has-uncovered-11603738820

Quote

Scientists at two of America’s major automakers knew as early as the 1960s that car and truck emissions caused climate change, but internal research was stifled while funding to undermine environmental causes persisted, a months-long investigation by energy trade publication E&E News has found.

“We also know that certainly by the 1980s and 1990s, the auto industry was involved in efforts to undermine climate science and stop progress to address climate change,” Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law, said in the piece.

E&E News obtained hundreds of pages of documents on GM’s corporate history from the General Motors Heritage Center and Wayne State University in Detroit. Documents on Ford’s climate research were unearthed by the Center for International Environmental Law. The Climate Investigations Center provided additional material on both manufacturers.