Climate Change

[Aractus]

Here is Youtube's sexiest physicist Sabine Hossenfelder explaining how extreme weather events are "attributed" to climate change:



I've been saying this stuff for years, usually I get labelled as a "climate denier" or something of equal denigration.

To summarise: the data does not support the finding that extreme weather events are more likely with a warmer climate. Why not? They're so extreme that climate models can't predict them either way (that is with today's climate & atmospheric gas levels vs pre-industrial).

[Vera]

@Dom Can this pile of bunk be moved where it belongs - in the pseudoscience section. This is in no way, shape or form news, not to mention that there are already more than enough threads about climate change *and* its denial by the ignorant and the illiterate.

[Aractus]

This is not pseudoscience, this is a review of the actual scientific literiture.

Take a look at this recent video:



Within mere hours of that video Matt of PBS Space Time literally posted a retraction in the comments:



You can dislike this, but this is real science and a real review of the literature made accessible to the public, this is not pseudoscience.

[Alan V]

Climate models are not about predicting the weather. Climate and weather are two different things.

Climate models are about projecting trends in the climate based on various scenarios, which include the probabilities of extreme events.

Read the first several paragraphs of this report from the National Academies of Sciences.

The ultimate challenge for the science of event attribution is to estimate how much climate change has affected an individual event's magnitude or probability of occurrence.

[Thumpalumpacus]

To summarise: the data does not support the finding that extreme weather events are more likely with a warmer climate. Why not? They're so extreme that climate models can't predict them either way (that is with today's climate & atmospheric gas levels vs pre-industrial).

Here's why I think it follows that there's a connection:

1) The climate is warming.
2) Heat is energy.
3) There's more energy available to do things like evaporate water into storm systems, push winds around faster, and so forth.

That energy doesn't just sit there and do nothing.

As for "sexiest physicist", that's a pretty idiotic qualifier.

[Alan V]

To summarise: the data does not support the finding that extreme weather events are more likely with a warmer climate. Why not? They're so extreme that climate models can't predict them either way (that is with today's climate & atmospheric gas levels vs pre-industrial).

There is nothing wrong with your video that I saw.  What is wrong is the conclusion you have drawn from watching it.  To say that climate models are not accurate enough to encompass the extreme events we have actually witnessed does not mean that extreme weather events are not more likely with climate change.  On the contrary, it means that climate change apparently causes even greater extreme weather events than the accuracy of the models can project. Scientists are, after all, also comparing weather events from times before and after the gas accumulations in our atmosphere as well as making projections from models.

Our attribution science is improving with time, so perhaps this will be corrected someday.

[Dom]

Threads merged

[Deesse23]

To summarise: the data does not support the finding that extreme weather events are more likely with a warmer climate. Why not? They're so extreme that climate models can't predict them either way (that is with today's climate & atmospheric gas levels vs pre-industrial).

There is nothing wrong with your video that I saw.  What is wrong is the conclusion you have drawn from watching it.  To say that climate models are not accurate enough to encompass the extreme events we have actually witnessed does not mean that extreme weather events are not more likely with climate change.  On the contrary, it means that climate change apparently causes even greater extreme weather events than the accuracy of the models can project.  Scientists are, after all, also comparing weather events from times before and after the gas accumulations in our atmosphere as well as making projections from models.

Our attribution science is improving with time, so perhaps this will be corrected someday.

After writing a rather lengthy dissection of Aractus´BS claim, Dom decided to move the thread before i hit the "send" button, so my response got lost.
I am certainly not going to waste another hour of my life correcting an ignorant and biased idiot like Aractus.

I leave it with Hossenfelders own words:
https://youtu.be/KqNHdY90StU?t=698

[Alan V]

After writing a rather lengthy dissection of Aractus´BS claim, Dom decided to move the thread before i hit the "send" button, so my response got lost.
I am certainly not going to waste another hour of my life correcting an ignorant and biased idiot like Aractus.

I leave it with Hossenfelders own words:
https://youtu.be/KqNHdY90StU?t=698

Aractus does have a point that the media do not accurately convey climate science, but how could they when it's so complicated? And what he writes does not make it any clearer -- just the reverse.

In the end, the science seems too complicated for many people to understand in any detail, but rough generalizations are better than nothing. Extreme events DO increase with global warming.

[mordant]

The 'fuse has been blown' and the Doomsday Glacier is Coming For Us All

Thwaites, the largest glacier on the planet, could completely collapse in 5 years, according to new data coming in. Which would lead to domino effects resulting in rapid sea level rise of as much as 10 feet.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/po...s-1273841/

Cue the chorus of "that's just negativity". It's telling that it's filed under politics, not climate science. The science is settled, it's just down to politics now. And politics will insure that, as usual, nothing close to sufficient is ever done.

[Alan V]

Thwaites, the largest glacier on the planet, could completely collapse in 5 years, according to new data coming in. Which would lead to domino effects resulting in rapid sea level rise of as much as 10 feet.

Human nature is such that we typically do not change quickly except in emergencies.  The problem with waiting for emergencies in the case of climate change is that by the time they arise they may be overwhelming.

Losing such a big glacier may make the sea rise of ten feet inevitable over a longer period of time, but I would still like to know how long that is.  The problem is that no one is sure.

I just read a book titled Before the Collapse about the "Seneca cliff," or the tendency of complex systems to grow slowly but collapse relatively quickly.  It reminded me that IPCC projections tend to be conservative rather than alarmist, as so many politicians think they are.  The IPCC summaries have underestimated how quickly ice sheets will melt.

We live in interesting times.

[Antonio]

Thwaites, the largest glacier on the planet, could completely collapse in 5 years, according to new data coming in. Which would lead to domino effects resulting in rapid sea level rise of as much as 10 feet.

Human nature is such that we typically do not change quickly except in emergencies.  The problem with waiting for emergencies in the case of climate change is that by the time they arise they may be overwhelming.

Losing such a big glacier may make the sea rise of ten feet inevitable over a longer period of time, but I would still like to know how long that is.  The problem is that no one is sure.

I just read a book on the "Seneca cliff" titled Before the Collapse, or about the tendency of complex systems to grow slowly but collapse relatively quickly.  It reminded me that IPCC projections tend to be conservative rather than alarmist, as so many politicians think they are.  The IPCC summaries have underestimated how quickly ice sheets will melt.

We live in interesting times.

I always wanted ocean front property

[Dom]

Thwaites, the largest glacier on the planet, could completely collapse in 5 years, according to new data coming in. Which would lead to domino effects resulting in rapid sea level rise of as much as 10 feet.

Human nature is such that we typically do not change quickly except in emergencies.  The problem with waiting for emergencies in the case of climate change is that by the time they arise they may be overwhelming.

Losing such a big glacier may make the sea rise of ten feet inevitable over a longer period of time, but I would still like to know how long that is.  The problem is that no one is sure.

I just read a book on the "Seneca cliff" titled Before the Collapse, or about the tendency of complex systems to grow slowly but collapse relatively quickly.  It reminded me that IPCC projections tend to be conservative rather than alarmist, as so many politicians think they are.  The IPCC summaries have underestimated how quickly ice sheets will melt.

We live in interesting times.

I always wanted ocean front property

Me too. Glad I live inland and uphill now.

[mordant]

Human nature is such that we typically do not change quickly except in emergencies.  The problem with waiting for emergencies in the case of climate change is that by the time they arise they may be overwhelming.

Losing such a big glacier may make the sea rise of ten feet inevitable over a longer period of time, but I would still like to know how long that is.  The problem is that no one is sure.

I just read a book on the "Seneca cliff" titled Before the Collapse, or about the tendency of complex systems to grow slowly but collapse relatively quickly.  It reminded me that IPCC projections tend to be conservative rather than alarmist, as so many politicians think they are.  The IPCC summaries have underestimated how quickly ice sheets will melt.

We live in interesting times.

I always wanted ocean front property

Me too. Glad I live inland and uphill now.

I'm about 850 ft above sea level and a couple hundred feet above the nearest of the Finger Lakes, but my wife wonders if that will be worthwhile if we end up stranded on an island, lol.

Actually though 10 feet would be catastrophic even if it did not involve tsunamis. IIRC the article mentioned 250 million people worldwide living < 3 feet above high tide lines.

My guess is that we won't see 10 feet all at once. Thwaites will go rapidly, and then it's a question of how fast the ice bottled up inland behind it will slough off into the ocean. But I could see 2 or 3 feet right away, and Tampa for example is already struggling with sea rise issues and the NY City subway regularly floods when there's a good storm surge. I recall reading that Florida's atop such porous ground that sea walls would be no help, even if they were practical to build. Water would just seep under them. In the end, half of Florida's land mass could well be abandoned to the waves in a scenario like this.

My stepson will probably inherit the house we live in and he expects to be in an area full of refugees by the time he's my age. He's probably not wrong.

[Dom]

I always wanted ocean front property

Me too. Glad I live inland and uphill now.

I'm about 850 ft above sea level and a couple hundred feet above the nearest of the Finger Lakes, but my wife wonders if that will be worthwhile if we end up stranded on an island, lol.

Actually though 10 feet would be catastrophic even if it did not involve tsunamis. IIRC the article mentioned 250 million people worldwide living < 3 feet above high tide lines.

My guess is that we won't see 10 feet all at once. Thwaites will go rapidly, and then it's a question of how fast the ice bottled up inland behind it will slough off into the ocean. But I could see 2 or 3 feet right away, and Tampa for example is already struggling with sea rise issues and the NY City subway regularly floods when there's a good storm surge. I recall reading that Florida's atop such porous ground that sea walls would be no help, even if they were practical to build. Water would just seep under them. In the end, half of Florida's land mass could well be abandoned to the waves in a scenario like this.

My stepson will probably inherit the house we live in and he expects to be in an area full of refugees by the time he's my age. He's probably not wrong.

And they'll be white refugees who are citizens. I wonder how they will like it. 

[Alan V]

My guess is that we won't see 10 feet all at once. Thwaites will go rapidly, and then it's a question of how fast the ice bottled up inland behind it will slough off into the ocean. But I could see 2 or 3 feet right away, and Tampa for example is already struggling with sea rise issues and the NY City subway regularly floods when there's a good storm surge. I recall reading that Florida's atop such porous ground that sea walls would be no help, even if they were practical to build. Water would just seep under them. In the end, half of Florida's land mass could well be abandoned to the waves in a scenario like this.

My stepson will probably inherit the house we live in and he expects to be in an area full of refugees by the time he's my age. He's probably not wrong.

From what I have read, Miami is already lost, as is New Orleans, unless we remove CO2 from the atmosphere.  It's just a matter of time.

The question is, how much time?  Flooding may happen over such a long period of time that people will be able to comfortably migrate away from problem areas, though they would lose a lot of buildings and infrastructure. 

We likely will be long gone.

[Thingymebob]

My guess is that we won't see 10 feet all at once. Thwaites will go rapidly, and then it's a question of how fast the ice bottled up inland behind it will slough off into the ocean. But I could see 2 or 3 feet right away, and Tampa for example is already struggling with sea rise issues and the NY City subway regularly floods when there's a good storm surge. I recall reading that Florida's atop such porous ground that sea walls would be no help, even if they were practical to build. Water would just seep under them. In the end, half of Florida's land mass could well be abandoned to the waves in a scenario like this.

My stepson will probably inherit the house we live in and he expects to be in an area full of refugees by the time he's my age. He's probably not wrong.

From what I have read, Miami is already lost, as is New Orleans, unless we remove CO2 from the atmosphere.  It's just a matter of time.

The question is, how much time?  Flooding may happen over such a long period of time that people will be able to comfortably migrate away from problem areas, though they would lose a lot of buildings and infrastructure. 

We likely will be long gone.

East Anglia would be submerged first over here along with the low countries across the North sea.

[Dom]

My guess is that we won't see 10 feet all at once. Thwaites will go rapidly, and then it's a question of how fast the ice bottled up inland behind it will slough off into the ocean. But I could see 2 or 3 feet right away, and Tampa for example is already struggling with sea rise issues and the NY City subway regularly floods when there's a good storm surge. I recall reading that Florida's atop such porous ground that sea walls would be no help, even if they were practical to build. Water would just seep under them. In the end, half of Florida's land mass could well be abandoned to the waves in a scenario like this.

My stepson will probably inherit the house we live in and he expects to be in an area full of refugees by the time he's my age. He's probably not wrong.

From what I have read, Miami is already lost, as is New Orleans, unless we remove CO2 from the atmosphere.  It's just a matter of time.

The question is, how much time?  Flooding may happen over such a long period of time that people will be able to comfortably migrate away from problem areas, though they would lose a lot of buildings and infrastructure. 

We likely will be long gone.

I definitely plan on being gone long before refugees from San Francisco show up at my door.

[Minimalist]

I saw a segment on CBS Mornings which described research into a certain variety of seaweed.  When used as a supplement in cattle feed, it reduced methane burping to zero.  The question is whether it is a scalable solution, since seaweed farming is challenging.

Cows belching and farting is nothing when compared to the gaseous fumes emitted from the mouths of oil company executives.

[SYZ]

I'm at 21 metres (69 ft) height AMSL.

Dunno if I'll be okay or....?

[Alan V]

I'm at 21 metres (69 ft) height AMSL.

Dunno if I'll be okay or....?

Anyone at any height above sea level will be okay (except those caught in storms).  They will have plenty of time to leave the coasts.  What they can't do is move the farms, roads, cities, homes, and so on.  Decreasing total population could compensate for those losses.

[Vera]

Dimming Sun's rays should be off-limits, say experts

"Planetary-scale engineering schemes designed to cool Earth's surface and lessen the impact of global heating are potentially dangerous and should be blocked by governments, more than 60 policy experts and scientists said on Monday.

Even if injecting billions of sulphur particles into the middle atmosphere—the most hotly debated plan for so-called solar radiation modification (SRM)—turned back a critical fraction of the Sun's rays as intended, the consequences could outweigh any benefits, they argued in an open letter.

"Solar geoengineering deployment cannot be governed globally in a fair, inclusive and effective manner," said the letter, supported by a commentary in the journal WIREs Climate Change.

"We therefore call for immediate political action from governments, the United Nations and other actors to prevent the normalisation of solar geoengineering as a climate policy option."

[...]

The failure to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that drive global heating has led some policy makers to embrace solar geoengineering—widely dismissed not long ago as more science fiction than science—in order to buy time for a more durable solution.

It has long been known that injecting a large quantity of reflective particles into the upper atmosphere could cool the planet.

Nature sometimes does the same: debris from the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines lowered Earth's average surface temperature for more than a year.

But the open letter said there are several reasons to reject such a course of action.

Artificially dimming the Sun's radiative force is likely to disrupt monsoon rains in South Asia and western Africa, and could ravage the rain-fed crops upon which hundreds of millions depend for nourishment, several studies have shown.

"Stratospheric sulfate injection weakens the African and Asian summer monsoons and causes drying in the Amazon," the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its most recent scientific assessment.

Other regions, however, could benefit: a study last year concluded that SRM could sharply curtail the risk of drought in southern Africa.

Scientists also worry about so-called termination shock if seeding the atmosphere with Sun-blocking particles were to suddenly stop.

If SRM "were terminated for any reason, there is high confidence that surface temperatures would increase rapidly," the IPCC said.

In addition, the technology would do nothing to stop the continuing buildup of atmospheric CO2, which is literally changing the chemistry of the ocean.

The open letter also cautions that raising hopes about a quick fix for climate "can disincentivise governments, businesses and societies to do their upmost to achieve decarbonisation or carbon neutrality as soon as possible".

Finally, there is currently no global governance system to monitor or implement solar geoengineering schemes, which could be set in motion today by a single country, or even a billionaire with rockets.

The open letter calls for an "international non-use agreement" that would block national funding, bad outdoor experiments and refuse to grant patent rights for SRM technologies.

Such an agreement "would not prohibit atmospheric or climate research as such," the letter said.

Signatories include Frank Biermann, a professor of global sustainability governance at Utrecht University; Aarti Gupta, a professor of global environmental governance at Wageningen University in The Netherlands; Professor Melissa Leach, director of the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, England; and Dirk Messner, president of the German Environment Agency."

[Alan V]

CNN's 5 Things:

The Environmental Protection Agency faces a Supreme Court case today that could challenge the federal government's ability to fight the climate crisis and prevent its worst outcomes. Republicans are expected to argue that the EPA has no authority to regulate emissions from the power sector. Instead, they say that authority should be given to Congress. A Supreme Court decision siding with coal companies could undercut the Biden administration’s plans to slash planet-warming emissions at a time when scientists are sounding the alarm about climate change. Observers say the outcome of this case is tough to predict, but a ruling that would shift the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants to Congress would be the worst-case scenario for the EPA.

We will see how the conservative court rules. This could be a big setback.

[SYZ]

The world’s climate scientists and governments have declared climate change is now
a threat to human well-being and warned we are about to miss the window to “secure
a liveable and sustainable future for all”.

Window to save ourselves from climate change 'rapidly closing', IPCC warns.

The new report found the scale of the impacts from climate change threatened to
overwhelm Australia's ability to adapt in the coming decades, with some impacts
requiring rapid and radical transformations in how we live and operate, combined
with immediate and sharp cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

Immediate actions aimed at stopping warming at 1.5ºC could reduce many of the
most severe impacts to society and ecosystems, but will not stop all of them.
Current global policies put the world on a course of at least 2.1ºC warming by 2100,
and possibly as much as 3.9ºC.

"It is essential to meet the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5ºC. And
science tells us that will require the world to cut emissions by 45% by 2030 and
achieve net zero emissions by 2050",  UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said.

This is an example of coastal erosion at Wamberal, a suburb of the Central Coast
region of central New South Wales, Australia which faces the Pacific Ocean.  Eighteen
of these multi-million dollar homes have been declared uninhabitable due to the
structural insufficiency of their foundations caused by sub-soil subsidence.



The report found if the sea level rose by 1.1m (43½ inches) which could happen early
in 2100, up to a quarter of a million Australian residential buildings would be exposed
to inundation as well as thousands more commercial and industrial buildings.

Between AU$164 billion and AU$226 billion of infrastructure would be exposed, along
with up to 35,000km (21,800 miles) of roads and 1,500km (745 miles) of rail lines.

           

[Alan V]

NBC News:

Two-thirds of Americans think the United States should use a mix of fossil fuels and renewables in the future, rather than phase out fossil fuels completely, the Pew research says. About 28 percent — including more than half of Republicans — oppose the U.S. taking steps toward becoming carbon neutral.

We still have a lot to learn.