Antarctica: Ice shelves shrinking 'with no sign of recovery
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Most have decided they prefer SUVs, cheap burgers and flying to Greece twice a year for 50 quid over the Amazon being a thing or co-existing with wildlife.
And the ones that didn't make that choice are unwilling to change things because deep down they know violence (in the short term) is the only thing that can stop the car going over the cliff.
Yep, too busy boosting my lines of code for an unskilled BS manager. I don't even have time for my family, let alone the environment.
nah that’s just what ideologues say because they care more about their top-down control agenda. If climate change was fixed tomorrow, they’d be disappointed because they wouldn’t be able to exact control over others in the name of climate concern.
Plant more trees. Invest in renewables.
I do not know how people can be convinced those things will do anything to mitigate the changes we are seeing and will see for years even if we stop all carbon output now.
What his needed is shame, for people to be shamed, but we have no religion anymore so no one cares about shame.
- global amount of co2 emissions per year
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi.... - average co2 sequestered per tree - 25-45 kg depending on species (google for estimates)
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2015/03/17/power-one-tree-ve... 37 billion metric tons / 25 kg = ~1.48 trillion
Amount of land available for reforestation as of 2019 is enough for 1.2 trillion native saplings.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aax0848
Given the above, we could plant this many trees in a year or two if we really tried. Couple that effort with more renewables, more investment into fusion and co2 sequestration machines, more electric cars, etc, and it's taken care of. I would question the character of any person who wants to be the one doing the shaming or thinking we need shaming for this. This is an engineering problem.
Even by this logic, I'm gonna go with the guys who've put themselves behind the mitigate-climate-disaster agenda.
Fixing Climate Change needs to be like the World War II Mobilization Effort. Nothing short of that will fix anything.
For example, I am currently homeless living in a minivan. I know my carbon footprint is way lower than most people. (Solar for my power, no heat, no ac, etc). But I would love to live in a tiny house close to town with solar. But no one will build them, and they can't even build them because of all the regulations.
And then you have people who would be against all this because they think their "freedom" is worth more than children's future.
So I am left being a positive nihilist. I know it will all fail but I act the way I do because it is the right thing to do.
this is so untrue! Channeling a sense of futility is some kind of coping? Large numbers of people, specialists, researchers, university people, clergy.. Elementary school walkouts around the world on the same day?
This kind of public defeatism is exactly why under-25 leaders is required -- how about that idea?
But we do need younger people in politics. UK parliament is overwhelmingly old, rich, eurosceptic people. Funny how there's no diversity where it really matters.
Great.
Just like Brexit, the fuckwit Goehring but dumb Nigel Farage was going to steal Tory votes, so dumb dumb Cameron promised the Brexit vote to keep those votes. And he was too chickenshit to ignore the results of the referendum although the government was allowed to do so (again, for the price of electoral annihilation).
Any links? Last time I check they have huge amount of work going on in that area.
From https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66740920 - "Dan McGrail, the chief executive of industry group RenewableUK, told the BBC: "Industry has highlighted to government on several occasions that this auction has been set up in a way which is very unlikely to secure the capacity we need to stay on track to meet the government's own target of 50 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2050 [up from 13.66GW now]." and also "Labour's shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband told the BBC: "This is just the latest episode in the Tories' 13 years of failed energy policy. They broke the onshore wind market by banning it, they undermined the solar industry by removing the feed-in tariff, and they caused chaos in the home insulation market with their failed schemes."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66749344 - "the lack of offshore wind will be a blow to the pledge to deliver 50 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2030 compared with 14GW today."
So you can either think that was incompetent or malicious. And when trying to decide you can look at the mentioned de-facto onshore wind power block the Tories put in since 2015 ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66715141 ) and the previously announced ban combustion cars by 2030 which they pushed back to 2035 while talking about a new ban on solar panels on farmland ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-66863110 ). Or maybe their Return to Office policy ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61145692 and https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/get-back-work-office-britai... ) which.
And you can see https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-redirects-hs2-funding-... about the HS2 rail, and wonder to yourself why the "Spiralling HS2 costs" were something the government could not cope with, but the "faster journey times, increased capacity and more frequent, reliable services across rail, buses and roads" are something they will be able to deliver. When part of the HS2 plan was to move intercity trains off the local lines and freight off the roads, leading to more frequent reliable road and bus journeys. "billions to fix potholes on the country’s roads" - first, we know what causes potholes; heavy vehicles moving frieght". And this is more reliable bus journeys from the government which brought us "Buses in 'crisis' as 3,000 routes reduced or scrapped" in 2018 ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-44681974 ) and killed off 20% of bus services in the last year ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66442599 ).
Browsing around on OpenInfraMap I have seen some grid scale battery storage, e.g. https://openinframap.org/#9.74/51.6119/-2.1051/L,P,S Minety 150MW battery down as 266MWh storage capacity so there are some around.
There's independent company Octopus Energy which pays ordinary people with solar / battery / wind turbines to export energy to the grid, and if you're an interested geeky customer you can download the half-hourly pricing so you can tune your system to import cheap power and export at peak times; they do this to encourage rollout of renewables - https://octopus.energy/press/octopus-energy-doubles-payments...
Without any form of meaningful storage (eg pumped hydro) the UK grid will be in trouble.
You are fundamentally incorrect and either do not understand what a capacitor is or are unwilling to use the correct language in an attempt to prove a point...which unfortunately undermines it. Additionally, smart grids are already capable of transitioning between sources and solar or wind with battery storage are more cost effective than fossil fuel generation today: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/04/15/wind-solar-power-now-th...
Fundamentally, at a grid level, lithium batteries can't provide what the average person considers "storage", that is running the grid from said storage. When people hear lithium battery, they think of a phone or laptop - the battery is the sole source of power for 6-12 hours.
On a grid however, lithium batteries provide very short duration stabilisation from "noisy" supply, absorb spikes in generation and boost troughs.
You cannot cost effectivly power the grid from lithium batteries on a still night. Pumped hydro etc are needed to cover prolonged periods of low supply (and absorb prolonged periods of oversupply).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station
Cruachan in Scotland stores 7GWh
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station
Ffestiniog in Wales stores 1.4GWh
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ffestiniog_Power_Station
Foyer at Loch Ness exists, can’t quickly see how many Wh it stores.
Coire-Glas is proposed and could double the existing electricity storage apparently, which would make it huge, but not yet approved https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-650...
Still, powering a country though a cold dim calm winter is a lot of power; the UK uses around 800GWh/day of electricity, not counting gas/energy for heating. To store a week or a month or a winter of that is not a solved problem.
surely the power companies can just build them if wind is so cheap
2030-2049 all remaining airports close all shipping declines to zero, no flying for 2050, and after electric planes may fly.
Therefore, you would only need to find economic linchpins or similar points of leverage in the UKs fossil gas supply, automative supply chain and marketplace, and petroleum supplies to force a more rapid transition despite neglected policy. The rest of the global market will drag the UK, as California does in the US with regards to automative fuel efficiency standards.
A successful EV future depends on the continuing rapid expansion globally by Tesla and BYD [3] (as well as smaller players of course, if they can ramp expeditiously), not politicians or older constituents who could not care less about a future they won't exist in.
(also important is deploying as much inexpensive low carbon energy generation as possible as fast as possible, but is a topic for another thread [4])
[1] https://www.viking-link.com/
[2] https://www.drax.com/press_release/drax-ends-half-a-century-...
[3] https://www.statista.com/chart/30758/most-popular-plug-in-el...
100% agree with you, why is it still allowed to build personal swimming pools? those insanely large cars, oversized houses, widespread ignorance and disrespect for the environment
https://earlyretirementextreme.com/
This isn't the poster you replied to, but someone with a similar point of view of trying to live simply.
Like, I applaud the dedication, and I hope you find this life fulfilling, but you can't expect _everyone_ to be able to live like that. And not even from a "but some people _neeeed_ sports cars" or other indefensible position, but I mean just from a purely practical position.
You very clearly live in a climate that allows for that. There are _billions_ of people who don't, or won't, shortly, no matter what we do. Heck, you might not live in a climate that will allow for that in the near future.
Again, not to shit on what you're doing, it's honestly interesting and like another commenter said, if you have a blog (maybe solar powered on some upcycled laptop-turned-server?), I'd be interested to read it. But all your choices are personal choices, and they are _really_ low-impact in the grand scheme of things. Even personal swimming pools aren't really moving any appreciable needle, we need broad, sweeping, systemic changes to really make an impact.
Somehow passing regulation to get a large industry to clean up its energy usage or reduce its waste by even 1% is likely going to do more than somehow convincing everyone in the world to give up electric toothbrushes. Please don't feel like I'm telling you to give up on what you're doing! But if you feel like you have any extra energy to try to change public opinion on things, well, I'd prefer if we could get around to the high-impact stuff first, is all.
There's no effort, I simply don't need all of that
I've no desk, no fork/spoon, just sticks for the rice, simplicity. and I'm still a remote developer when possible
Also I believe on hard work and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox, meaning that every effort, even small count. Regulations is one way, but also with inflation I think these minimal lifestyles will naturally spread, there are many advatanges to it (better quality of life)
Not even if the alternative would mean millions and millions of deaths due to heath, draught, fires, flooding and wars due to people try to move to livable areas?
I bet you could accept no fridge, no ac, no car, if the alternative would be sudden death…
and if you're healthy (not overweight, low BMI), you can endure heat below 40°C just fine
As a male, I can relate to living simply, but as a male living with my gf, there's no way I'd be in a relationship too long without some investment in modern luxuries!
Passing a carbon fee and dividend[1] would help a lot, though I guess it's uncertain whether something on that scale could be enforced without violence.
[1] https://citizensclimatelobby.org/get-loud-take-action/energy...
/s
You’re fearmongering in an attempt to incite violence. I half suspect this to be a closet Greenpeace account.
You're already under a form of violence - your kids will wonder why you never did anything about it.
And lobbyism too: 7T$ of FF subsidies per year, while a global energy transition has been estimated at 7T$. So in one year of subsidies we could solve a big part of the problem.
>The discussions of the remarkable September global warming have noted that much of the warming is associated with an extreme warming anomaly over Antarctica, with the suggestion that this warming is a weather effect that will disappear. While it is true that Antarctic temperature fluctuates greatly from month to month, we note that there is a latent southern Hemisphere polar amplification of warming that has long been dormant, as Southern Hemisphere sea ice cover has been relatively constant for several decades. The recent decline of sea ice area may be an indication that, averaged over weather, Antarctica will become a more important contributor to global temperature change.
The above is from James Hansen's latest newsletter. Another one of those pesky self-reinforcing feedback loops.
> Scientists found 68 of Antarctica's 162 ice shelves experienced a "statistically significant" reduction in mass between 1997 and 2021.
> Another nine ice sheets saw smaller losses over the same period, while 29 gained mass and 62 did not change significantly.
Missing a key piece in this summary: What was the net change? Was it an increase or decrease?
> You can plant trees for free using Spotify.
> We made a second audio clip where all the revenue goes to planting trees
> Sounds too good to be true. How does this work?
> Everytime you listen to a song on a streaming service it earns a tiny bit of cash for its creator.
> We use that money to plant trees.
Neat!
They are earning royalties for the amount of times people listen to their audio. And use the royalties to pay for trees.
If anyone is stealing anything, it’s Spotify. Most artist are paid pennies for their music even when a lot of people listen to it. Spotify is great for consumers, but not so great for most musicians.
Rather than planting a tree, you can actually help the atmosphere more by cutting a tree and building a house out of it and not letting it rot for a really long time. By cutting the tree and building the house, you are sequestering the carbon for probably longer than the tree would live (depending on what would be its future) and also making space for new trees to grow.
If you are looking to actually affect the long term outcome, you need to do one of two things:
1) stop emitting CO2
2) sequester the atmospheric CO2 somewher, for a really long time.
Even if you planted every single place on Earth that could accept a tree, you would not double Earth's biomass. If you did this and then somehow managed all those trees from dying, the only thing you would achieve is you would delay the entire proces by roughly 7 to 8 years. And if you can't prevent trees from dying or getting burned, you only get about 5 years.
From my point of view, planting trees is a huge distraction. There is absolutely no way planting trees will get us out of our problems, it is much better to start thinking about something actually productive.
Trees are a great co2 sink and large reforesting would result in a lot of runway, on the order of hundreds of years of runway, for technological co2 sequestration to develop further.
You are misusing this word, by suggesting that planted tree is a sequestered form of CO2. That's not the reality, in reality trees die or burn.
Your logic is faulty.
You see, you can bind all CO2 we emit per year with 1.6 trillion trees. True. But you can only do this ONCE, and it takes many years.
And then you are left with the Earth's landmasses all covered with trees that need to be actually sequestered (like buried deep underwater) to create space for a new batch of trees that have to be planted all over again.
From a climate concern point of view, trees as carbon sinks work.
- global amount of co2 emissions per year
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi....
- average co2 sequestered per tree - 25-45 kg depending on species (google for estimates)
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2015/03/17/power-one-tree-ve...
37 billion metric tons / 25 kg = ~1.48 trillion
Amount of land available for reforestation as of 2019 is enough for 1.2 trillion native saplings.
If you start with completely empty land, at first you will have increase in biomass, but after some time for new trees to grow you will need to have some other ones to die. The trees might keep exchanging CO2 to O2, but you will also get steady increase in emitted CO2 either through forest fires or microorganisms or animals eating and decomposing and literally breathing the CO2 back to atmosphere.
When things are in balance, forests do not actually remove any CO2 because any CO2 removed is balanced out by new CO2 emitted. Only planting a new forest on a new land binds some new CO2, and that only temporarily until the forest matures.
That's why "invest on renewables" was right next to it on the OP. I'd invert the order, and invest on artificial capture too. But the comment is quite right.
Where do you find the space for that, and the labour?!
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aax0848
We could also set aside more land for reforestation as well.
Finding labor is easy.
This is an easy problem to solve, we just need to build up the knowledge that it is possible and then execute on it. Right now most people have never even considered things this way because they’re only exposed to doomer talk whenever climate change gets discussed. :(
It would probably use land that's currently in use for agriculture, in a time when huge areas of old growth rain forest are cleared to make more space for agriculture. One country deciding to turn pasture into forest would probably cause more forest to be lost in Brazil, of a type that stores _way_ more CO2 per hectare.
I think we should start with getting better at preventing and fighting huge forest fires, and to stop considering wood pellet burning as "renewable energy".
Any further focus on planting trees only distracts from real solutions, imo.
That's absolutely false. Most of the world's biomass is stored in peatlands and burning that much peat in 10 years would increase the atmospheric CO2 by hundreds of ppm very quickly - significantly more CO2 than humans have produced in our entire history combined.
Why is this important is that living things form a carbon cycle of which our atmosphere is a part. Peat is sequestered for an unknown amount of time and is at the very least temporarily removed from the cycle.
The reason we have coal is some hundreds of millions of years ago there were huge plants that would topple but there was nothing on Eearth yet that could completely digest plant matter. So the biomass would basically stay where it fell and new plants would grow on top of dead ones. This explains the shape of coal deposits.
Some time later I think fungi evolved that could digest cellulose and any plant afterwards would rot rather than get burried. This explains why ALL coal deposits in existence are older than something like 600M years.
New coal is being made every day somewhere on the planet.
> This explains why ALL coal deposits in existence are older than something like 600M years.
Of course coal is old, because it's preceded by peat and lignite.
I think the point of the questions you were responding to is that cool is also renewable, just like trees are.
We just don't refer to it as such, because that renewability requires a really long time.
of course obviously, people shouldn't extract and buy fossil fuel and all those derived products (plastics)
We need to recover lands and grow forests.
Trees are not carbon pumping units, they are part of ecosystem.
The moment we will start to understand this, we will make a giant step in the right direction.
https://earth.stanford.edu/news/growing-carbon-offsets-trees
Honestly these kinds of problems need insane out of the box thinking, because trying to change human behavior is one of the hardest things in the world. It doesn't work unless you're okay living under fascists/communists (no thanks).
I'd much rather we explore unorthodox "organic" "all-natural" attempts like dropping some JDAMs into a volcano. Who knows, it might work. People certainly will not stop burning fossil fuels or being selfish.
Is it even possible? If so which volcano?
1) ocean acidification
2) a sky white rather than blue
3) severely alerted rain patterns
4) a very sharp positive climate transient if for some reason you stop doing it
5) etc etc
Also most climate scientists we simply cannot control a system that chaotic
Also, injecting sulphuric acid at large scale in the atmosphere might not be such a great idea.
But yeah, chemtrails would work.
I get that that human-led climate change means that humans are mucking things up (which sucks). But if humans cause large swings in climate that would happen naturally, then it’s not like what we’re causing is unique right? It’s just natural phenomenon from unnatural causes.
It seems to me, that humans are rightfully worried about existence. But even large-mass-scale extinction is a natural repeating phenomenon. So I say long live the next species (which I can only assume is sharks with freakin’ laser beams attached to their heads https://youtu.be/INFavIUmhcE)
It is easier to adjust over hundreds of years than decades or less.
It's the insane speed of human caused climate change that's causing the mass extinctions.
It is unique in several ways. In a moral sense it is unique in that we knowingly caused it and failed to take action. In a historical sense, extinctions on this scale are so rare they are almost unique. What is unprecedented however is the rate of change. This is important because species aren't able to adapt anymore when the climate changes so rapidly.
Most people consider the death of their descendants and loved ones a poor outcome that they would like to prevent...
Yes things are self correcting in the sense that if we muck things up badly enough our society will collapse and something else will come after. But that kind of mass destruction will be horrifically bad for an awful lot of people.
I personally think we will survive the climate catastrophe. It might be a Black Death type event, horrific and painful for everyone. But a wiser breed of humans will emerge on the other side.