The Arctic may have crossed key threshold in a long-dreaded climate feedback
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As a result, the carbon budget for keeping warming under two degrees over postindustrial (widely thought to be catastrophic but survivable) has shrunk. Dr. Peter Carter, one of the IPCC's reviewers, explains how we are likely to miss 1.5 and 2 degree targets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa13KrOvE2s
Personally, I think the situation is likely much worse than reported in the mainstream media. There's a fear of scaring people too much, or making them give up in despair, so we keep hearing about how we "could" meet these increasingly farcical reduction targets, even as we're blowing past them.
He then kind of vacillates a bit when asked to quantify it. He talks about historic methane concentrations from ice core samples and then compares that to current methane concentrations in Barrow, AK, the site of the methane eruption.
This was intriguing to me, so I tried to find the original report he's talking about. What it shows is absolutely nothing like he represents. Indeed, there has been large and rapid increase in methane concentrations in Barrow, Alaska over the past few years. But it's a change of about 5-10% [1]. And there were similar-scale eruptions in years past, such as in 2003.
The change is certainly more rapid than the trend. It's probably noteworthy. Clearly something is happening in that area. But this sort of silly exaggeration is one of the reasons why so many dismiss climate science.
If you want people to believe you, don't exaggerate the science.
[1] https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/09/arctic-met...
The report you linked doesn't sound much less alarming:
"To spot methane levels breaking the 2000ppb mark so sharply in this fragile region is unprecedented, as the chart below illustrates."
Is it possible that a 5-10% change is actually "massive"?
> The 2019 measurements are consistent with the trend over the past decade. Outliers (i.e. isolated data points that lie well above the average) are seen throughout the record. Do not over-interpret them.
He goes on to say there's no evidence this is from methane hydrates, or permafrost:
> That is not to say that we shouldn't worry about the potential for increased methane release from melting permafrost. But there is no evidence to support breathless claims that we have e.g. crossed some "tipping point" with regard to such processes.
The question is whether there has been a massive eruption of methane that is unprecedented, and could only come from methane hydrates.
Michael Mann says the "eruption" is consistent with past outliers and we shouldn't over-interpret the data. He says there is no evidence the increase is from permafrost, and that it appears likely to be from anthropogenic (i.e., non-tipping point) sources.
I'm not making an argument against climate change science. I'm making an argument against Dr. Peter Carter exaggerating climate science.
If you want to make an immediate, large impact, without having to rely on other people’s actions, start taking public transportation everyday.
Their logic is that by reintroducing megafauna like elk and moose into more parts of Siberia, these animals will graze during winter to survive, thus exposing more of the soil, which lets the frost permeate down to further depths and slows down the recession of permafrost.
Their logic is sound and experiments have demonstrated that grazing animals do help to reintroduce permafrost, but I seriously doubt their operation is scalable (they are something like a 3-5 man team)
- reinsulate your house
- if you live in a sunny place, build/buy a solar heated water tank
- plant trees
- try zero waste lifestyle
- fund lithium recycling plants
- buy electric companies stock
- fund a local veggies club
- fund a repair / recycling shop
- harass your family and neighbors to use the two above
- walk any distance below 5 miles that doesn't require heavy loads (or rain)
- stop buying
- go to an AWS datacenter and cut some wires at random
If you don't have money nor time:
- paste this comment to people you don't know on the internet
what's wrong with the rain?
You say that as a joke, but I know some of you work in the tech industry.
Go into work and make sure your company isn't running twenty physical machines when twenty virtual machines on one physical machine would do.
If you're in charge of buying desktops for a corporation, check the power consumption of different models and take it into consideration when making your choice. One watt times a thousand desktops is a thousand watts.
If you're writing code that runs on hundreds of machines or more, write more efficient code.
And any power you save is also saving your company/customers money, so make the same case to your boss/coworkers.
Meh, it's at that threshold point where there'd be some advantage but it would never put me ahead financially to do it
>if you live in a sunny place, build/buy a solar heated water tank
alas
> plant trees
there are trees in every place that could hold a tree where I am, but i've done what I can in the yard
> try zero waste lifestyle
i hate plastic but everything comes wrapped in it. what do?
> buy electric companies stock
it's a crown corporation, i just pay my taxes
> fund a local veggies club
seems like the local asian supermarket sources these things as locally as it can already tbqh
> fund a repair / recycling shop
i like this idea a lot
> harass your family and neighbors to use the two above > walk any distance below 5 miles that doesn't require heavy loads (or rain) > stop buying
all in on these already
> go to an AWS datacenter and cut some wires at random
violence usually results in more energy expenditure, centralizing all that compute actually probably saves us a ton of energy compared to running idle machines everywhere
We have all the technology available to solve this issue, will we be given the political support and permissions to use it ?
That doesn't mean that if you buy an electric car or replace your oil furnace with electric heat pumps there is no difference being made. They sold it but somebody bought it.
Commercial and Residential Sector Emissions for US - 12% All Transportation for US - 29% (It includes rail and aircraft. Only 60% of it is light duty vehicle and I couldnt find what percentage of it is commercial transport)
So we have 12%+ 29%0,6 = 32%. It is big number but now we have to produce same amount of energy in electricity. 79% of all electricity generation was fossil fuels.
32% (0.21) = 7%
So even if all individuals will stop using fossil fuels for heat and will use electric cars for transportation. We will have less than 10% of reduction.
Where are you getting that number? It's 63.6% in the US:
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
Moreover, most of the fossil fuel generation is natural gas, which emits less carbon per unit energy than gasoline and large scale generation is significantly more thermodynamically efficient than small gasoline engines. And heat pumps are significantly more thermodynamically efficient than oil furnaces.
Meanwhile power generation from non-carbon sources is growing at a fast pace while coal is dying out, so that number will only improve over the lifetime of the vehicle/heat pumps, and if you want to get ahead of the curve you can install some solar panels on your roof.
Not if you and I don't demand it. And demanding takes more then simply voting.
Do we all simply wait for the inevitable like frogs in a slowly boiling pot? I guess I could practice survival skills but I'd rather die than live in what I expect will be absolute hell come 20 - 30 years.
what people always do when they are dissatisfied with the government. organise with like minded people and rebel.
Also, you don't need to wait for the majority to rebel [2]
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/citizens/support_en [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/18/a-look-at-h... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w
Just look at what happened in France when the government decided to increase taxes on fuels.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/3/150302-syria-...