West Antarctica Begins to Destabilize with ‘Intense Unbalanced Melting’
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I just think it's so sad to see everything go to shit due to some greedy assholes that won't invest in solutions that are effective AND sustainable.
I plan to become a climate change prepper in the future because shit will hit the fan sooner or later.
http://dailytimes.com.pk/business/23-Oct-16/china-axes-part-...
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/chinas-growth-in-renewable-...
EDIT: I'm not ready to call climate change solved yet, but at the deployment trajectory China is on, the rest of the world will have no choice but to follow, as China is pushing renewable generation costs very low (which undercuts nuclear and fossil fuels, pushing their prices higher making renewables even more competitive). Solar and wind are both below 3 cents/kWh unsubsidized, with wind expected to fall another 15% in the next 2-3 years, and solar another 25% in the same time period.
Also, a large country is likely to have regions that will lose big in case of global warming, while other regions are indifferent or even stand to gain. The large country's single government has reason to oppose global warming in that case, which means that it can put all of its diplomatic weight on the side of global warming countermeasures. And once countermeasures were agreed to, they can be enforced across the entire country. If it were split up into smaller countries, the ones that will be less affected by global warming have an incentive to avoid countermeasures so they can exploit their competitive advantage there.
Sure, but then about half of those would actually do something about it.
Of course, the other half would keep thumping the Bible or Atlas Shrugged (or both), but even so that's a fraction of the current level of inaction.
However, in the US, specifically in the South since that's my experience, many actively deny climate change and refuse to pursue green policies, ostensibly on religious grounds though when discussing it with them it either makes no sense or they can't establish any. It's very frustrating. They see climate change and green policies as some sort of atheist, pinko, commie conspiracy.
USA still haven't even paid what it owes to Nicaragua for fucking it up.
The US also owes about 1.3 billion to the UN due to non-payments.
Anyhow, if you expect 7 billion people to do anything in regards to climate change, don't hold your breath.
Except that China is halting construction on 20+ coal plants. And deploying renewables faster than any other country. And putting in place heavy subsidies for electric vehicles. Chinese citizens overwhelmingly support renewables and the cost associated with it:
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/09/29/china-cities-overwhelmi...
Americans? One presidential candidate wants more fracking, the other one thinks China invented climate change, and everyone else is oblivious in their SUV on their way to Starbucks.
One might argue its easier for China to evolve to a non-carbon economy because their citizens haven't tasted the decadence Americans have of a carbon-intensive lifestyle; regardless, China is going above and beyond what the US has ever considered for climate change policy, and drag us Americans along for the ride. Thanks China?
When the West reached that stage, renewable power was less of a consideration and option, and so we opted for emissions standards and similar than brought the noticeable effects down to tolerable levels, and we are paying for it now in weaker support for putting in place a proper fix.
Well that's a particularly ridiculous theory.
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1732/
Yeah, for the small countries that have no influence whatsoever. Sweden once also was a great country (I doubt you would have complained back then) but it overextended in its wars and got basically castrated by the Russian Empire.
I believe you have other problems in Sweden right now after your men allowed your country to be invaded.
"Pfeffer adds estimates of sea level rise due to thermal expansion and ice melting to calving approximations and concludes that SLR by the end of the century will range 0.8 to 2.0 m above present with an emphasis on the lower area of this range (Figure 7)."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_sea_level#Sea-level_at_...
[2] http://uk.businessinsider.com/cities-exposed-to-rising-sea-l...
Thats true, but what most people don't know is that sea level rise don't necessarily mean catastrophic floods. A far bigger problem -- in our lifetime -- is aquifer salination, that is the intrusion of saltwater into coastal freshwater aquifers. This is already happening, in the Nile-valley, Benin and Cyprus but also in Louisiana and California.
When the salinity of coastal Freshwater aquifers reaches a critical level, growing crops in coastal areas can be all but impossible.
How does that work? Coastal cities will have more than half a meter more water to deal with and additionally have to face larger more powerful storm surges on top of those 50cm. Don't forget at certain times of the year we see stronger tides.
I also wonder if in 2007, the IPCC were more optimistic about our ability to curb emissions and took into account some of the feedback looks which are kicking in?
Moreover, Miami is built on porous limestone; sinkholes are everywhere (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/03/18/notes-from-unde...) and will grow whenever salt water pours in, so Miami sinks. They don't even need rising sea levels to make things worse there.
http://www.npr.org/2016/05/10/476071206/as-waters-rise-miami...
Because those are slated to be (and according to some measures, already are in certain areas) the primary impacts of climate change, for the geographically unlucky.
Is wealth going to be made on installing rather than manufacturing hardware? It's also hard to see how e.g. SolarCity protects its margins from competition with other installers. Customer acquisition is a big chunk of costs right now, but if SolarCity spends a bunch on ads to get Americans thinking about rooftop solar that helps competing installers too. Look at the Australian market for a glimpse at the future (much lower installation costs, much higher penetration, broad consumer awareness without further advertising).
EDIT: my own best guess is that if there's going to be a breakout company that achieves high margins on cleantech it's going to be in the area of storage. That's because a patented approach that can seriously lower storage costs or increase cycle life (which amounts to practically the same thing for stationary storage) is an advantage that can't be immediately cloned. OTOH I do not expect protected margins for companies that are lowering costs by scaling, e.g. Tesla's battery gigafactory. Historical reminder: at the beginning of the 2000s China had no solar PV industry to speak of. In less than a decade Chinese manufacturers went to dominating the market because IP barriers were minimal and they could scale larger very quickly once there was a state commitment.
I think the question you're asking is "how does a millionaire/billionaire multiply their net worth in a decade or two", while that question I'm answering is "how do I go from salary slave to capitalist class in a decade or two"
"Last year marked a turning point for renewables. Led by wind and solar, renewables represented more than half the new power capacity around the world, reaching a record 153 Gigawatt (GW), 15% more than the previous year. Most of these gains were driven by record-level wind additions of 66 GW and solar PV additions of 49 GW."
Be a consultant in XXIth century urbanization, be it to save energy, reduce pollution or to prepare for the worst. Once we get +2 degrees, countries might understand why +6 degrees might be harmful and massively subscribe to your services.
Or start a weapon industry. See that Daesh thing? That's what happens when there's a slight draught every summer.
Start a boat people company. They'll be in very much demand in 20 years.
You'll object that you have much more money than that and you're not aiming for a mere salary. Well, you'll be happy to have the skill everyone needs when the rest of the world is fighting for survival. Just imagine what if the world votes on a complete ban on petrol and puts the world on an energy diet. Which is the only thing we must do.
Their revealed belief would seem to be that the effects will be mitigated one way or another.
[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/science/9-cities-to-live-i...
There's also any number of companies that let you do the equivalent via CFD's (Contract For Difference). Be warned: Many of them allow crazy levels of leverage that can wipe you out with tiny little swings.
You're right it's not a given that you'll be able to "just" short whichever share you want, but it's hardly difficult to find a way of betting against a given company.
Zero objection and there is no moral component whatsoever to their question.
EDIT:
I'd like someone to explain the downvoting behavior (of my comment). As multiple of my examples show, the investment can be in alternative energy, for example, when obscene expanses of valuable coastland are being flooded and people are simply 'forced' to act. I don't understand why the question or my defense of it were downvoted.
I hope that it is NOT sarcasm.
Trying to just "build a wall" around cities just doesn't sound like it's going to work, I even saw designs where buildings in Manhattan will have to be built on stilts, but how much environmental environmental damage will all this new construction do?
Probably best off to just start relocating these cities and find new homes for the inhabitants.
This combined with other issues like fracking, leaking methane into the atmosphere aren't exactly filling me with confidence.
Sea levels will rise by a meter over the next hundred years. That's really not very much in the scheme of things.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/science/flooding-of-coast-...
http://uk.businessinsider.com/cities-exposed-to-rising-sea-l...
I'm going to say you're underestimating the affects of climate change if you think a one meter rise in sea level globally isn't a big deal. Not to mention a selfish point of view, considering some peoples homes are already being inundated and the catastrophic effects it will have on coral reef systems.
Harvest it.
Bury it.
That's the sort of thing we have to start thinking about.
Carbon sequestration is a very active area of research, but for the most part, you're looking at injecting liquid C02 or water with a very large amount of dissolved C02 into deep reservoirs. Ideally, you want to inject it into a rock that will react with it to precipitate carbonate minerals over time, instead of dissolving what's already there.
At any rate, large-scale carbon sequestration is an interesting but difficult problem. It's been done successfully on small scales, but how do you do it on a global, carbon-neutral scale? It's surprisingly tough to figure out, and we're not putting anywhere enough focus on it. It's certainly better funded than a lot of things, but it needs more research and more funding.
You need to move CO2 from the atmosphere into the geosphere. Biomass can do that (e.g. hydrocarbons), but it's inefficient (a lot of it goes back to the atmosphere) and slow. Carbonate precipitation is much more permanent, and it's something we can force to happen at a high rate.
Isn't that going to release the carbon?
Little patches of nature system, taking from destabilizing temperature zones to areas where they could thrive?
Basically, give up the concept of a invasive species, and speed a adaption up that would occur anyway?
Talking about the laterality of a quasi-spherical object is tenuous, as well.
When using systems of coordinates that require an arbitrary choice of origin point, one generally has to simply state what the choice is.
For the system of coordinates being discussed in this thread, the origin point is defined as the prime meridian, and it forms half of one of an infinite number of geodesics that bisect Antarctica. But because that particular geodesic is elevated to a special status by an arbitrary choice in the setting of the system of coordinates, when using that system of coordinates, it is perfectly reasonable -- under the conventions of that system -- to discuss masses that would be on one half or the other of the planet if it were divided into two parts through that geodesic.
But nobody seriously argues that the geodesic is in any way special physically compared to the infinity of others passing through the same two points (near the mean rotational poles); the Prime Meridian is a convention, and so an eastern and western hemisphere each bounded by a plane perpendicular to the meridian extended to a great circle.
Moreover, there is nothing special about this particular system of coordinates on the Earth, and the Prime Meridian does not really even have much local meaning more than a few metres away from the Greenwich Observatory, which is firmly set in what locals universally call "East London" or even "South-East London".
So, "Western Antarctica" is simply absorbing a particular choice of coordinate system on the Earth, which in turn has a defined origin point for one axis that was chosen arbitrarily. The label "Western Antarctica" is not invariant under a change of coordinates (whether by changing where there Prime Meridian is by an angle that (in radians) is not an integer factor of \pi, or by changing to a wholly different set of coordinates that use different axes altogether), and so isn't a physical feature of Antarctica, but then there's nothing physical -- in the sense of invariant under change of coordinates -- about the U.S. midwest, or Western Australia either.
However, conventional sets of coordinates on any physical system make descriptions of coordinate-invariant features easy for people who accept the convention, and understand its features and limits. (For instance, the lat-long-alt system is not very useful very close to the coordinate singularity; but that singularity vanishes under change of coordinates, and it is only a deliberate choice in matching the coordinate singularity to a point near the (approximate) line of (approximate) axisymmetry that leads to confusion like the one that appears to be gripping you when dealing with features near the coordinate singularities.)
On top of this... for the love of all that is holy, basic english would be "*HAS seen".