Climate Change Thread

[Sharpshooter]

On 9/17/2023 at 5:45 PM, gwarrior said:

OH MY GOD, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!

Not ‘we’ and not ‘all’. 
 

Many that are kids today or will be born in the relative future won’t have a chance at the life and lifestyle ‘we’ enjoy today. 
 

Climate change is an existential threat. 
 

It doesn’t mean extinction, but it does discriminate against the poor and middle class. 

[RupertKBD]

On 9/29/2023 at 2:17 PM, Sabrefan1 said:

Let's not forget the most important thing!  The smoke from the Canada wildfires stung my frickin' eyes off and on during the summer here in Buffalo!  Frickin' Canadian B*stards!!!! 

 

2 hours ago, Sharpshooter said:

Sorry eh

 

Yeah, we totally forgot to rake the forests this year....

 

....our bad....

[Sabrefan1]

1 hour ago, RupertKBD said:

Yeah, we totally forgot to rake the forests this year....

 

....our bad....

 

Funny you say that.  Improper forestry practices mixed with a corrupt for profit power company is why California kept setting itself on fire year after year.  One of the humdingers, the floor of the forest was littered with years of branches and when a power line well overdue for inspection would spark or snap, the state would catch fire and plenty of people would lose their homes and unfortunately others would die in the fires.

[gwarrior]

4 hours ago, Sharpshooter said:

Not ‘we’ and not ‘all’. 
 

Many that are kids today or will be born in the relative future won’t have a chance at the life and lifestyle ‘we’ enjoy today. 
 

Climate change is an existential threat. 
 

It doesn’t mean extinction, but it does discriminate against the poor and middle class. 

It was a joke. Or supposed to be one. Might have been in bad taste.

[Sharpshooter]

19 minutes ago, gwarrior said:

It was a joke. Or supposed to be one. Might have been in bad taste.

All good, and I didn’t mean to reply to you particularly. Apologies. 
 

Was just using your post as a means to offer my point of view on the topic. 
 

Again, apologies for not stating that before. 
 

Cheers. 

[Naslund]

[gwarrior]

8 minutes ago, Sharpshooter said:

All good, and I didn’t mean to reply to you particularly. Apologies. 
 

Was just using your post as a means to offer my point of view on the topic. 
 

Again, apologies for not stating that before. 
 

Cheers. 

Ah, ok. I get it. I was like it was a joke, and got that super serious response. It's all good. And I see what's going on. I don't take it lightly, but I'm also the type where I gotta make a joke.

[Sharpshooter]

2 minutes ago, gwarrior said:

Ah, ok. I get it. I was like it was a joke, and got that super serious response. It's all good. And I see what's going on. I don't take it lightly, but I'm also the type where I gotta make a joke.

Oh for sure. Dark humour is the best humour. 

[gwarrior]

8 minutes ago, Sharpshooter said:

Oh for sure. Dark humour is the best humour. 

Hell yeah it is.

[UnkNuk]

A Lake Turned to a Hot ‘Soup.’ Then the River Dolphins Died.

 

The carcasses of at least 125 Amazon river dolphins have been found floating or beached after temperatures in Lake Tefé, Brazil, reached a staggering 39.1 degrees Celsius.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/04/us/amazon-river-dolphins-dead-heat-drought.html?campaign_id=54&emc=edit_clim_20231005&instance_id=104502&nl=climate-forward&regi_id=56405277&segment_id=146603&te=1&user_id=dc88543b79693b0f05322365a827e237

[Satchmo]

I always thought that the science of climate change was kind of recent.   Never really thought about it but I would have guessed the sixties, maybe fifties.

 

I found out a little while ago that it was first mentioned in a paper by a women named Eunice Newton Foote in 1856.   Lifted from Wikepedia:  

 

She was the first scientist to conclude that certain gases warmed when exposed to sunlight, and that rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels would change 
atmospheric temperature and could affect climate, a phenomenon now referred to as the Greenhouse effect  

 

I was surprised to see how long this idea has actually been around.

[Satchmo]

On 9/26/2023 at 1:39 PM, cripplereh said:

It was going to happen as the past has shown, just mankind has given it a boost.

Maybe.   We don't know for sure what caused the climate changes of the past so we can't really say are are just going through the same thing again.

 

We can say that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere will heat things up.   That's a pretty well accepted feature of this weird and wonderful universe we call home.

 

[the destroyer of worlds]

16 hours ago, Satchmo said:

I always thought that the science of climate change was kind of recent.   Never really thought about it but I would have guessed the sixties, maybe fifties.

 

I found out a little while ago that it was first mentioned in a paper by a women named Eunice Newton Foote in 1856.   Lifted from Wikepedia:  

 

She was the first scientist to conclude that certain gases warmed when exposed to sunlight, and that rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels would change 
atmospheric temperature and could affect climate, a phenomenon now referred to as the Greenhouse effect  

 

I was surprised to see how long this idea has actually been around.

 

I would post the Arrhenius article from 1896 (  https://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf  ) and I even think I would post the Plass article for 1956 (  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1956.tb01206.x  ) whenever I'd encounter people who made the claim that this was a recent thing.  Nope, scientist have been working on this for a long time.  

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-15874560

A brief history of climate change

[4petesake]

 

[6of1_halfdozenofother]

A different angle of the climate change perspective.

Quote

Collectively, we spend only 45 minutes daily on the activities that produce the most pollution

Publishe

Authors

1. William Fajzel

   PhD student, Earth and Planetary Science, McGill University

2. Eric Galbraith

   Professor of Earth Science and Canada Research Chair in Human-Earth System Dynamics, McGill University

d: October 19, 2023 11.53am EDT

 

Why do we feel stuck in our efforts to solve the great sustainability crises of the 21st century? Between the dire need to successfully mitigate climate change while making progress on human-focused Sustainable Development Goals, the challenges of the Anthropocene — the era in which we now live — can appear insurmountable.

Yet, despite the central role of human actions in creating sustainability solutions, there has been no high-level, comprehensive depiction of what the global human population is doing in precise, numerical terms.

We provide such a view by mapping out the global human use of time, assembling many data sources to provide interdisciplinary perspectives on fundamental aspects of human behaviour and experience.

Our results suggest that solutions to the sustainability crises are eminently achievable, in physical terms, if people are given the appropriate political and economic motivations.

The study of people’s time

As researchers with backgrounds in Earth system science, our work strives to bring the study of humans in line with the approaches used to study the rest of the Earth system. One way we are doing this is by quantifying the full breadth of human activities in units of time, according to their physical outcomes.

Time is a robust measure because it is a universal and physical quantity: around the world, all eight billion people have the same 24 hours a day to devote to a range of activities.

The activities that we choose to engage in, how much time is spent on each, and the technology involved are continually shaping our planet, societies and subjective experience of life.

Big-picture understanding

Much like how, at a glance, the global carbon cycle provides a big-picture understanding of how and where carbon moves around the Earth, we set out to create a bird’s-eye view of what humanity is doing at the dawn of the Anthropocene.

By combining and standardizing a diverse array of data on how people spend their time — compiled from national time-use surveys, economic statistics, childhood education metrics, wearable sleep-measuring devices — we depict what humanity as a whole is doing on an average 24-hour period: the Global Human Day.

The most immediate observation is that globally, a vast majority of time is dedicated to activities that we classify as directly human-focused.

 

The average person on Earth spends close to seven hours daily on activities such as socializing, using media, eating meals and exercising. (Shutterstock)

In addition to nine hours of sleep and 1.5 hours of biological and health-care needs, the average person on Earth spends close to seven hours per day on passively relaxing, socializing, using media, eating meals, exercising, playing games and religious practice. Meanwhile, education and research fits into a tidy one hour.

We also identify a group of activities dedicated to running and managing our societies and economies. The tasks of governance, law, finance, trade, banking and paying bills occupy one hour. Another daily hour is spent commuting and moving place to place.

Less than four hours a day

Altogether, slightly more than three hours remain in which we deliberately alter the Earth and our environments. Nearly three-quarters of this time is directed to our food system and tidying inhabited areas.

The remaining time — the final 45 minutes, approximately, of the average human’s day — is where all resource extraction, manufacturing and construction occur, comprising the most ecologically destructive facets of industrialized civilization. In fact, the extraction of all materials and all energy provisioning, including the extraction and refining of all fossil fuels, occupies only six minutes.

Along with just over half an hour put into construction and manufacturing, these 45 minutes for sourcing, expanding and maintaining the built environment is an astoundingly low figure for activities that are responsible for producing and consuming an estimated 70 gigatonnes of material per year. It highlights the efficiency of modern industry and the potency of its impacts.

In comparison, only one minute is spent on managing waste.

 

Only about 45 minutes of the average human day is dedicated to the activities that determine most of our planetary impact. (Shutterstock)

Using our time

Our results do not suggest that material extraction and energy provision are insignificant activities. They still represent billions of labour hours per year and support the functioning of our modern civilization.

But the time involved is relatively small when viewed as part of the whole of daily human existence - on par with the time we collectively spend cleaning our homes and doing dishes.

In this context, it is feasible to imagine shifting the composition of these activities to a large relative extent (to, say, building renewable energy systems rather than continuing to extract fossil fuels) without disrupting the overall patterns of human life.

Naturally, this will require major economic and political incentives, but there is clearly the time available to do so.

 

From https://theconversation.com/collectively-we-spend-only-45-minutes-daily-on-the-activities-that-produce-the-most-pollution-207894

(sorry about the shit formatting, The Conversation's formatting doesn't copy/paste well)

 

[Satchmo]

All these posts about the mid 19th century start of climate change science made me think that Mark Twain was wrong when he said 'Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.'

 

Turns out I've been wrong too.   In googling the quote to make sure I had it right, I learned that it was actually Charles Dudley Warner who said it first.  Twain just liked it so much, and used it often enough, that everybody thinks it was his line.

 

That's my second nerdy post of the day...

[RupertKBD]

If you haven't heard of White Hydrogen before, just wait. You will be hearing a lot about it in the months and years to come:

 

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/29/climate/white-hydrogen-fossil-fuels-climate/index.html

 

Quote

 

When two scientists went looking for fossil fuels beneath the ground of northeastern France, they did not expect to discover something which could supercharge the effort to tackle the climate crisis.

Jacques Pironon and Phillipe De Donato, both directors of research at France’s National Centre of Scientific Research, were assessing the amount of methane in the subsoils of the Lorraine mining basin using a “world first” specialized probe, able to analyze gases dissolved in the water of rock formations deep underground.

A couple of hundred meters down, the probe found low concentrations of hydrogen. “This was not a real surprise for us,” Pironon told CNN; it’s common to find small amounts near the surface of a borehole. But as the probe went deeper, the concentration ticked up. At 1,100 meters down it was 14%, at 1,250 meters it was 20%.

This was surprising, Pironon said. It indicated the presence of a large reservoir of hydrogen beneath. They ran calculations and estimated the deposit could contain between 6 million and 250 million metric tons of hydrogen.

That could make it one of the largest deposits of “white hydrogen” ever discovered, Pironon said. The find has helped fuel an already feverish interest in the gas.

White hydrogen – also referred to as “natural,” “gold” or “geologic” hydrogen – is naturally produced or present in the Earth’s crust and has become something of a climate holy grail.

Hydrogen produces only water when burned, making it very attractive as a potential clean energy source for industries like aviation, shipping and steel-making that need so much energy it’s almost impossible to meet through renewables such as solar and wind.

But while hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it generally exists combined with other molecules. Currently, commercial hydrogen is produced in an energy-intensive process almost entirely powered by fossil fuels.

A rainbow of colors is used as a shorthand for the different types of hydrogen. “Gray” is made from methane gas and “brown” from coal. “Blue” hydrogen is the same as gray, but the planet-heating pollution produced is captured before it goes into the atmosphere.

The most promising from a climate perspective is “green” hydrogen, made using renewable energy to split water. Yet production remains small scale and expensive.

That’s why interest in white hydrogen, a potentially abundant, untapped source of clean-burning energy, has ratcheted up over the last few years.

“If you had asked me four years ago what I thought about natural hydrogen, I would have told you ‘oh, it doesn’t exist,’” said Geoffrey Ellis, a geochemist with the US Geological Survey. “Hydrogen’s out there, we know it’s around,” he said, but scientists thought big accumulations weren’t possible.

Then he found out about Mali. Arguably, the catalyst for the current interest in white hydrogen can be traced to this West African country.

In 1987, in the village of Bourakébougou, a driller was left with burns after a water well unexpectedly exploded as he leaned over the edge of it while smoking a cigarette.

The well was swiftly plugged and abandoned until 2011, when it was unplugged by an oil and gas company and reportedly found to be producing a gas that was 98% hydrogen. The hydrogen was used to power the village, and more than a decade later, it is still producing.

When a study came out about the well in 2018, it caught the attention of the science community, including Ellis. His initial reaction was that there had to be something wrong with the research, “because we just know that this can’t happen.

Then the pandemic hit and he had time on his hands to start digging. The more he read, the more he realized “we just haven’t been looking for it, we haven’t been looking in the right places.”

The recent discoveries are exciting for Ellis, who has been working as a petroleum geochemist since the 1980s. He witnessed the rapid growth of the shale gas industry in the US, which revolutionized the energy market. “Now,” he said, “here we are in what I think is probably a second revolution.”

White hydrogen is “very promising,” agreed Isabelle Moretti, a scientific researcher at the University of Pau et des Pays de l’Adour and the University of Sorbonne and a white hydrogen expert.

“Now the question is no longer about the resource… but where to find large economic reserves,” she told CNN.

 

Cole Notes version: Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe, but it's usually found in molecules with other elements (Like H2O) The process of splitting the Hydrogen from the other elements costs money and often requires the burning of fossil fuels, which defeats the purpose.

White Hydrogen is almost pure hydrogen, which eliminates both of the above problems.

More in the link....

[Playoff Beered]

1 hour ago, RupertKBD said:

If you haven't heard of White Hydrogen before, just wait. You will be hearing a lot about it in the months and years to come:

 

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/29/climate/white-hydrogen-fossil-fuels-climate/index.html

 

Cole Notes version: Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe, but it's usually found in molecules with other elements (Like H2O) The process of splitting the Hydrogen from the other elements costs money and often requires the burning of fossil fuels, which defeats the purpose.

White Hydrogen is almost pure hydrogen, which eliminates both of the above problems.

More in the link....

 

LOL, we were talking about Mali the other day, from the article...

 

Quote

Then he found out about Mali.

 

[Fan Abroad]

On 10/14/2023 at 7:16 PM, Satchmo said:

Maybe.   We don't know for sure what caused the climate changes of the past so we can't really say are are just going through the same thing again.

 

We can say that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere will heat things up.   That's a pretty well accepted feature of this weird and wonderful universe we call home.

 

 

[Gurn]

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2023/10/26/acapulcos-residents-are-left-in-flooded-and-windblown-chaos-with-hurricanes-toll-still-unknown/

"

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — Survivors of a Category 5 storm that killed at least 27 people as it devastated Mexico’s resort city of Acapulco spent Thursday searching for acquaintances and necessities and hoping that aid would come quickly in the wake of Hurricane Otis.

The Pacific storm had strengthened with shocking swiftness before slamming into the coast early Wednesday, and the Mexican government deployed around 10,000 troops to deal with the aftermath. But equipment to move tons of mud and fallen trees from the streets was slow in arriving.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://apnews.com/article/otis-mexico-acapulco-hurricane-warming-oceans-pacific-18a5160b0d90caf693b41273647bd076

"Hurricane Otis turned from mild to monster in record time, and scientists are struggling to figure out how — and why they didn’t see it coming.

........

"In just 12 hours, Otis’ strength more than doubled from 70 mph (113 kph) winds to 160 mph (257 kph), also a record, as it neared the coast. And it got even stronger before it struck. Storms typically gain or lose a few miles per hour in 12 hours, though some outliers gain 30 to 50 mph (48 to 80 kph) in a day."

 

What happened with Otis was just plain nuts, said University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy. But it coincides with a documented trend of hurricanes rapidly intensifying more often in recent decades because of warmer water connected to climate change, scientists said.

 

 

Five different hurricane experts told The Associated Press they weren’t quite sure what set Otis off and why it wasn’t predicted, especially since meteorologists have been dramatically improving their intensity forecasts in recent years.

“The models completely blew it,” said MIT atmospheric sciences professor Kerry Emanuel, a hurricane expert.

 

^^^ Looks like things are changing, weather wise, and not for the better.

[6of1_halfdozenofother]

13 hours ago, RupertKBD said:

If you haven't heard of White Hydrogen before, just wait. You will be hearing a lot about it in the months and years to come:

 

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/29/climate/white-hydrogen-fossil-fuels-climate/index.html

 

Cole Notes version: Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe, but it's usually found in molecules with other elements (Like H2O) The process of splitting the Hydrogen from the other elements costs money and often requires the burning of fossil fuels, which defeats the purpose.

White Hydrogen is almost pure hydrogen, which eliminates both of the above problems.

More in the link....

 

In before someone proposes sending a hydrogen collection/compression unit into space to "harvest" hydrogen. 

[UnkNuk]

Canada projected to miss its 2030 emissions reduction targets, says environment commissioner

 

Ottawa does not yet have a road map for meeting its 2030 emissions-reduction goals, the federal Environment Commissioner concluded in a bleak assessment that also found the government’s projections in this area are overly optimistic.

 

More than two years ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged at an international summit that Canada would cut its greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 40 per cent below 2005 levels by the end of the decade.

 

In a report tabled Tuesday in the House of Commons, Environment and Sustainable Development Commissioner Jerry DeMarco says an audit by his office found that the federal government is on track to continue Canada’s streak of missed climate targets.

 

The report says Ottawa’s own emissions projections reveal a gap between its emissions goals and the policies meant to fulfill them. Mr. DeMarco also found that the minority Liberals have dragged their feet on implementing key policies, failed to prioritize the most important policies and relied on unrealistic assumptions that undercut their own projections.

 

The result is that Canada is the only Group of Seven country whose emissions are higher now than in 1990, the report says.

 

More at:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-on-track-to-miss-2030-emissions-reductions-targets-says/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Morning Update&utm_content=2023-11-8_7&utm_term=Morning Update%3A Federal chief technology officer lied about ArriveCan app%2C MPs hear&utm_campaign=newsletter&cu_id=t7%2BP3rI%2Bt%2FYx5Iui%2B6yRZxVYYZ6TE%2BGK

 

[UnkNuk]

Well, at least we're not alone.  

 

Canada, other major fossil-fuel producers are failing to meet climate targets, report says

 

Canada and other major fossil-fuel-producing countries are failing to meet targets to keep global warming in check, a newly released major international report warned Wednesday, putting the world’s energy transition at risk.

 

The 2023 Production Gap report says the countries are planning to produce 110 per cent more fossil fuels in 2030 than is consistent with keeping global warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, and 69 per cent more fossil fuels than what’s in line with a 2 C target.

 

“These plans throw the global energy transition into question. They throw humanity’s future into question. Governments must stop saying one thing and doing another, especially as it relates to the production and consumption of fossil fuels,” wrote Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, in a foreword to the report.

 

More at:

 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/article-canada-other-major-fossil-fuel-producers-are-failing-to-meet-climate/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Morning Update&utm_content=2023-11-8_7&utm_term=Morning Update%3A Federal chief technology officer lied about ArriveCan app%2C MPs hear&utm_campaign=newsletter&cu_id=t7%2BP3rI%2Bt%2FYx5Iui%2B6yRZxVYYZ6TE%2BGK

[Satchmo]

A new method of carbon capture has been on my radar since I saw a 60 Minutes episode on a facility built in Iceland.  Now, there is another plant built in California by Heirloom Carbon Technologies, with others to come in Texas and Louisiana.  There is a huge amount of money being put into this idea.

 

As a chemistry nerd I think the whole thing is pretty cool:

 

Heirloom’s technology hinges on a simple bit of chemistry: Limestone, one of the most abundant rocks on the planet, forms when calcium oxide binds with carbon dioxide. In nature, that process takes years. Heirloom speeds it up.

 

At the California plant, workers heat limestone to 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit in a kiln powered by renewable electricity. Carbon dioxide is released from the limestone and pumped into a storage tank.

 

The leftover calcium oxide, which looks like flour, is then doused with water and spread onto large trays, which are carried by robots onto tower-high racks and exposed to open air. Over three days, the white powder absorbs carbon dioxide and turns into limestone again. Then it’s back to the kiln and the cycle repeats.

 

Heirloom will take the carbon dioxide it pulls from the air and have the gas sealed permanently in concrete, where it can’t heat the planet. 

 

For now, it's very expensive but costs should come down, as they have done with solar energy.   It also takes a lot of energy to do the work so there is the question of how clean that energy is.   

 

It's also a bit like like spending a lot of time/effort/money on recapturing your livestock and not putting enough of any of those things into fixing the barn door.

 

The quoted lines above are from the NYT and here's a link to their paywalled article: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/climate/direct-air-capture-carbon.html

 

I found a few more articles with no paywall:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2022/10/25/heirloom-startup-helps-minerals-absorb-co2-in-days-instead-of-years/?sh=3b90c99c4369

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/05/microsoft-backed-start-up-heirloom-uses-limestone-to-capture-co2.html

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/05/26/1025402/heirloom-stripe-breakthrough-energy-lowercarbon-carbon-removal/

 

[StrayDog]

31 minutes ago, Satchmo said:

A new method of carbon capture has been on my radar since I saw a 60 Minutes episode on a facility built in Iceland.  Now, there is another plant built in California by Heirloom Carbon Technologies, with others to come in Texas and Louisiana.  There is a huge amount of money being put into this idea.

 

As a chemistry nerd I think the whole thing is pretty cool:

 

Heirloom’s technology hinges on a simple bit of chemistry: Limestone, one of the most abundant rocks on the planet, forms when calcium oxide binds with carbon dioxide. In nature, that process takes years. Heirloom speeds it up.

 

At the California plant, workers heat limestone to 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit in a kiln powered by renewable electricity. Carbon dioxide is released from the limestone and pumped into a storage tank.

 

The leftover calcium oxide, which looks like flour, is then doused with water and spread onto large trays, which are carried by robots onto tower-high racks and exposed to open air. Over three days, the white powder absorbs carbon dioxide and turns into limestone again. Then it’s back to the kiln and the cycle repeats.

 

Heirloom will take the carbon dioxide it pulls from the air and have the gas sealed permanently in concrete, where it can’t heat the planet. 

 

For now, it's very expensive but costs should come down, as they have done with solar energy.   It also takes a lot of energy to do the work so there is the question of how clean that energy is.   

 

It's also a bit like like spending a lot of time/effort/money on recapturing your livestock and not putting enough of any of those things into fixing the barn door.

 

The quoted lines above are from the NYT and here's a link to their paywalled article: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/climate/direct-air-capture-carbon.html

 

I found a few more articles with no paywall:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2022/10/25/heirloom-startup-helps-minerals-absorb-co2-in-days-instead-of-years/?sh=3b90c99c4369

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/05/microsoft-backed-start-up-heirloom-uses-limestone-to-capture-co2.html

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/05/26/1025402/heirloom-stripe-breakthrough-energy-lowercarbon-carbon-removal/

 

That sounds like a pretty cool process! And while I get your analogy about the barn door, it's at least better than standing around wondering if you want to go after your cows....