The Climate Emergency

Humans lean toward capitalism as a way to advance oneself. We would do it if barter was the only way and there was no coin of the realm.

What we can do is not be destructive in our efforts to better our lot.. Clearcutting when selective harvesting will do, using what we need and not getting a years supply of whatever material in a scarring manner or reuse of materials already in our waste piles instead of mining for more.

Add in switching to renewable energy sources as we can and there should be more than enough jobs out there both high and low tech fields. Just do it in a sensible transition from where ee are to where we could be.

The key to getting people to recycle aggressively is put a cash value on the materials. Jobs would transfer from mining ores to reprocessing existing materials. Not all of course but a good portion, enough to make the difference over time.
 
cullennz said:
I read these threads and sometimes it is like some people actually wan't businesses to make a loss, or at least not make a profit and have to sack workers causing poverty.


Maybe I have the wrong end of the stick and if so I apologise

But it is like every now and again people forget how a basic economy works.

Small businesses start. Hire people. Those people have a wage
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I want harmful businesses to change AND profit so that everyone can prosper.

e.g. McDonald's started selling healthier choices years ago.

Transitions. That word again. Incremental systems changes.

I need to look into more about fossil fuel companies and their changes.

I know Origin Energy here are doing more about renewables.

And I saw Rio had a big thing on their website about working with local native animal & vegetation conservation groups.

I'm looking out for stuff like that.

Fossil Fuel companies and managed funds (and their investors) are dead scared they'll be left with what's known as "stranded assets".

So they need to divest of non-renewable resource depletion gradually but systematically, so as not to create share price volatility above and beyond the normal (so as not to go out of business).

It's rather cool.
 
OK, not to deny the ice is melting and seas rise for it, so don't bite me on that. I know that is happening.

We know the plates that make the surface of the planet move. This causes mountains to rise and earthquakes when the fail lines build pressure.

This also cause coastal cities and historically entire areas to go below sea level. Alexandria in the north of Egypt for example.

Has this been taken into account for coastal area flooding anywhere? Or do we just automatically go for the hot topic of the moment ignoring the earth is in movement?
 
8enotto said:
OK, not to deny the ice is melting and seas rise for it, so don't bite me on that. I know that is happening.

We know the plates that make the surface of the planet move. This causes mountains to rise and earthquakes when the fail lines build pressure.

This also cause coastal cities and historically entire areas to go below sea level. Alexandria in the north of Egypt for example.

Has this been taken into account for coastal area flooding anywhere? Or do we just automatically go for the hot topic of the moment ignoring the earth is in movement?
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The scientists take subsidence into account, that's partly why tide gauges are no longer the standard used to measure changes in sea level on a global scale.

Of course reporting in the popular press tends to be all over the place. But I do recall quite a bit of coverage over the flooding in New Orleans being caused in part by the city itself sinking.



Tide-gauge records might underestimate sea level rise

Rising above Tide Gauges
Tide gauge data have been venerable but imperfect indicators of variations in global mean sea level. The gauges are few and far between, and are always at the edge of the land. Moreover, rather than measuring absolute sea level change, tide gauges measure the height of the sea surface relative to crustal reference points that may move with tectonic activity or local subsidence.
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Here's a related article regarding Venice:

Venice Menace: Famed City is Sinking & Tilting
Venice subsided about 120 mm in the 20th century due to natural processes and groundwater extraction, in addition to a sea level rise of about 110 mm at the same time, Teatini said in a statement. Bock and his colleagues calculate that the city and surrounding land could sink by about 80 mm (3.2 inches) relative to the sea in the next 20 years if the current rate holds steady.
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Mind you, the articles I've linked are from Sciencey type news sources, reporting pretty closely what the scientists themselves are saying - the same scientists that are telling us the climate change is real, almost exclusively human caused, and faster than previous natural cycles of climate change.

Then again, popular press reporting does not always do such a good job.
 
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crescent said:
The scientists take subsidence into account, that's partly why tide gauges are no longer the standard used to measure changes in sea level on a global scale.
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Tide gauges are still used and do receive adjustments for subsidence. They are being overtaken by satellite data for which no such adjustments are required, but the tide gauge data is still required for looking at historical data.

Typically what happens is this.

If scientists didn’t adjust for subsidence: Climate deniers go “see I told you scientists don’t know what they are doing”


When scientist do adjust for subsidence: Climate deniers go “Scientists are all frauds. Just look at how different their numbers are from the raw data!”
 
BTW, there is actually a third issue when looking at local sea level rise.

The ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are so big, their gravity has a major impact on local sea levels. If the Greenland ice sheet melted, the resulting change in gravity would cause local sea levels in Greenland would drop upwards of 100m. Even though globally sea levels would go up 6m on average within ~1000 km of Greenland sea levels would actually drop, and sea levels farther away would rise even more because this water would need to go someplace.
 
8enotto said:
OK, not to deny the ice is melting and seas rise for it, so don't bite me on that. I know that is happening.

We know the plates that make the surface of the planet move. This causes mountains to rise and earthquakes when the fail lines build pressure.

This also cause coastal cities and historically entire areas to go below sea level. Alexandria in the north of Egypt for example.

Has this been taken into account for coastal area flooding anywhere? Or do we just automatically go for the hot topic of the moment ignoring the earth is in movement?
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Plate tectonics is the dominant climate forcing on timescales of tens to hundreds of millions of years. Over decades, not so much.

There are other reasons why coastlines in particular areas may rise or fall, as have been mentioned. They're essentially noise on top of the underlying trend caused by global warming.

And yes, they've all been taken into account.
 
Please, don't be tossing around the denier stuff in a thread that actually looks at data and looks for facts.

Anyhow, I am aware many factors come into play. So I asked.

Where does the data/prediction of sea level changes come from if the Greenland ice mass would melt? It seems odd such an turn of events that it would lower at the area of Greenland.

Another thing, I can recall news of planes of the 2nd world war being released from ice masses in the 80's. So some time between the end of the war and then they were covered. Later released in a 70 year span more or less.

This tells me a short span heating an cooling cycle is in play if just locally to certain areas.
 
8enotto said:
Where does the data/prediction of sea level changes come from if the Greenland ice mass would melt?
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I imagine they just calculate the number of cubic feet of ice (area times average thickness) and work out how much that much water would raise average sea levels. From memory it's about 25 feet.

Keep in mind that warm water expands; I think about half the expected rise in sea level with global warming is due to that rather than melting ice.

It seems odd such an turn of events that it would lower at the area of Greenland.
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Sorry, I can't parse this. Care to try again?

Another thing, I can recall news of planes of the 2nd world war being released from ice masses in the 80's. So some time between the end of the war and then they were covered. Later released in a 70 year span more or less.

This tells me a short span heating an cooling cycle is in play if just locally to certain areas.
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In the couple of such stories I've come across the plane crashed into a glacier in the mountains, got buried by snow and incorporated into the glacier, which then transported it down the mountain to eventually emerge at the bottom. So nothing to do with climate change as such.
 
8enotto said:
Ple

Where does the data/prediction of sea level changes come from if the Greenland ice mass would melt? It seems odd such an turn of events that it would lower at the area of Greenland.
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The Eamian (~120KYA – 130KYA) is considered a reasonably good model for what the earth would look like as temperatures increase as the earth still looks fairly similar. At the Eamian maximum, 125KYA, the earth was 2 deg warmer the it is now and sea levels were 20-30 feet (6m-9m) higher because ~1/2 the ice in both the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melted.


If the Eamian maximum is exceeded things get really dicey because past that permafrost and Methane Hydrates that have remained frozen for millions of years start to melt potentially adding another 1-2 deg C warming even if humans stopped emitting CO2 altogether. At 3-4 deg warming puts us in a regime where there are palm trees in Alaska, most of central North America is desert, the Amazon is mostly gone and significant, the ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica are gone there is significant melting in East Antarctica that could raise sea levels by dozens of meters.

The only “good” thing about the sea level rise numbers is that no one is really sure how quickly they would go up, but paleo-climate data indicates global sea levels can go up 2m – 5m a century when the really big ice sheets are melting.


8enotto said:
Another thing, I can recall news of planes of the 2nd world war being released from ice masses in the 80's.
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Not the same thing. These would have been stuck in glaciers slowly making their way towards coastal areas where they would have melted. This process happens regardless of warming or even cooling. For this type of analysis you need ice that isn’t moving and at present plants and artifacts that have been under ice since the Holocene maximum are melting out of the ice.
 
lomiller said:
BTW, there is actually a third issue when looking at local sea level rise.

The ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are so big, their gravity has a major impact on local sea levels. If the Greenland ice sheet melted, the resulting change in gravity would cause local sea levels in Greenland would drop upwards of 100m. Even though globally sea levels would go up 6m on average within ~1000 km of Greenland sea levels would actually drop, and sea levels farther away would rise even more because this water would need to go someplace.
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What? Their gravity raises local sea levels by 100m? Doesn't sheer mass raise local sea levels close to any major land mass? Do ships have to go (gently) uphill as they approach land? I didn't know that ;)
 
OK, that seems a quite reasonable explanation for both.

Thanks.

Still not good news for the world as we know it but then it wasn't always like this before either.
 
lomiller said:
BTW, there is actually a third issue when looking at local sea level rise.

The ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are so big, their gravity has a major impact on local sea levels. If the Greenland ice sheet melted, the resulting change in gravity would cause local sea levels in Greenland would drop upwards of 100m. Even though globally sea levels would go up 6m on average within ~1000 km of Greenland sea levels would actually drop, and sea levels farther away would rise even more because this water would need to go someplace.
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There are also ocean currents to take into account with sea levels. For example, sea water is flowing away from the east coast of the US, keeping sea levels relatively low, due to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which the Gulf Stream is a part of.

If AMOC weakens, as fresh water from melting ice flows into the sea, then sea levels there will rise.
 
GlennB said:
Doesn't sheer mass raise local sea levels close to any major land mass?
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AFAIK it would.
GlennB said:
Do ships have to go (gently) uphill as they approach land? I didn't know that ;)
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I guess that would depend on how you defined “uphill”. The ship would be pulled that direction as well, so it wouldn’t be moving either up or down relative the gravitational field.
 
8enotto said:
Still not good news for the world as we know it but then it wasn't always like this before either.
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Not while there were humans around it wasn't.

The real issue with climate change is the speed with which the earth is warming. The last time there was a 3-6 deg change in global temperatures that happened this rapidly was when the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. Other studies have started linking CO2 pulses with the other major extinction events in the earths history.
 
lomiller said:
Not while there were humans around it wasn't.

The real issue with climate change is the speed with which the earth is warming. The last time there was a 3-6 deg change in global temperatures that happened this rapidly was when the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. Other studies have started linking CO2 pulses with the other major extinction events in the earths history.
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Well, that supports my theory that dinosaurs used trilobite fossil fuels and coal plants which causes DGW (dinosaurigenic global warming).
 
The crater of the meteor that messed up the dinosaur world is a days drive away. The soil under my house is ancient seabed and volcanic ash.

I am aware a big change could make Mexico mostly seabed again.
 
8enotto said:
The crater of the meteor that messed up the dinosaur world is a days drive away. The soil under my house is ancient seabed and volcanic ash.

I am aware a big change could make Mexico mostly seabed again.
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The direct damage from the Chicxulub impact itself was localized, relatively speaking. It killed things in ~1000 mile radius. It was almost certainly the resulting climate disruption and ocean acidification that made the extinction global. (Ocean Acidification is another consequence of large increases in atmospheric CO2)
 
theprestige said:
This is all good stuff, but none of it really says "climate emergency" to me.
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As a time bomb ticks down towards activation, there is little difference in the state of the device between t-minus 1000 years, and t-minus 1 second.

In your opinion, at what point on that timer is it an "emergency" to act for someone in the blast radius who wishes to avoid the possible effects of the explosion? 1 year?, 1 day?, 1 minute?, or at the time of explosion?
 
Distracted1 said:
As a time bomb ticks down towards activation, there is little difference in the state of the device between t-minus 1000 years, and t-minus 1 second.

In your opinion, at what point on that timer is it an "emergency" to act for someone in the blast radius who wishes to avoid the possible effects of the explosion? 1 year?, 1 day?, 1 minute?, or at the time of explosion?
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To me, an emergency connotes a sense of urgency and a willingness to sacrifice good things to meet the urgent need.

It's not a question of when I think it's an emergency. It's a question of when the people calling it an emergency start acting like it's an emergency. Right? When there's a fire in a crowded theater, you yell "fire" and accept the risk of people being injured or killed during the evacuation, because it's an emergency.

The kind of minor improvements and incremental progress being described in this thread come across as more climate inconvenience than climate emergency.
 
theprestige said:
This is all good stuff, but none of it really says "climate emergency" to me.
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I invite you to teleport down here, where we are baking in 50C+ temperatures, everything is on fire and we are literally choking on smoke.

ETA: For the Celcius-challenged, that's 122F.
 
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theprestige said:
To me, an emergency connotes a sense of urgency and a willingness to sacrifice good things to meet the urgent need.

It's not a question of when I think it's an emergency. It's a question of when the people calling it an emergency start acting like it's an emergency. Right? When there's a fire in a crowded theater, you yell "fire" and accept the risk of people being injured or killed during the evacuation, because it's an emergency.

The kind of minor improvements and incremental progress being described in this thread come across as more climate inconvenience than climate emergency.
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The people who are calling it an emergency are acting like it's an emergency. Unfortunately the people who have the power to enact sufficient change to do anything about it aren't calling it an emergency.
 
arthwollipot said:
I invite you to teleport down here, where we are baking in 50C+ temperatures, everything is on fire and we are literally choking on smoke.

ETA: For the Celcius-challenged, that's 122F.
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For our American friends, that's roughly equivalent to the mid-summer temps in Death Valley, CA. Only over most of Australia.
 
arthwollipot said:
The people who are calling it an emergency are acting like it's an emergency. Unfortunately the people who have the power to enact sufficient change to do anything about it aren't calling it an emergency.
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Perhaps a certain event, which occurred very recently in the U.S.A., can give you a little hope about this.

Besides, I hope for you you have air conditioning, and that power isn't out where you live.
 
wobs said:
UK says it is planning to go to net zero carbon by 2050.

Meanwhile, the UK opens a new coal mine:
https://www.envirotech-online.com/n...ews/uk-opens-first-coal-mine-in-decades/50754
- For coke production, so to make steel, we still need coal.

Are there alternatives? Maybe, but we need more electricity capacity, with more renewables and nuclear. Its not so simple though:
https://leard.frontlineaction.org/coking-coal-steel-production-alternatives/
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This sounds reasonable. Another important idea, I rarely hear about, is a massive reduction of useless military spending in order to be able to pay for more solar panels, wind turbines, and safe nuclear power stations.
 
At times of zero to negative interest rates on Public Debt, money for investment is really no issue. The Fed could issue a 100-year Climate Bond of 2% in the Trillion range, and investors would be exited to have a safe haven to park their money.
 
Michel H said:
Perhaps a certain event, which occurred very recently in the U.S.A., can give you a little hope about this.

Besides, I hope for you you have air conditioning, and that power isn't out where you live.
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I do, and it isn't. However, I do have a close friend who does not, and who lost power for about five hours yesterday.

I've got her dog.
 
theprestige said:
To me, an emergency connotes a sense of urgency and a willingness to sacrifice good things to meet the urgent need.

It's not a question of when I think it's an emergency. It's a question of when the people calling it an emergency start acting like it's an emergency. Right? When there's a fire in a crowded theater, you yell "fire" and accept the risk of people being injured or killed during the evacuation, because it's an emergency.

The kind of minor improvements and incremental progress being described in this thread come across as more climate inconvenience than climate emergency.
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:rolleyes:
 
theprestige said:
To me, an emergency connotes a sense of urgency and a willingness to sacrifice good things to meet the urgent need.

It's not a question of when I think it's an emergency. It's a question of when the people calling it an emergency start acting like it's an emergency. Right? When there's a fire in a crowded theater, you yell "fire" and accept the risk of people being injured or killed during the evacuation, because it's an emergency.

The kind of minor improvements and incremental progress being described in this thread come across as more climate inconvenience than climate emergency.
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If you define 'emergency' not by the situation but by the response, then you're right. What we have is a climate tragedy.
 
The climate change crowd needs to start practicing what they preach. Until then, they will have richly earned zero credibility.
 
Efforts to adapt to the change in climate are making countries like China rich, leaving the US in the dust. When America finally comes around to going as Renewable as possible, they will have to import the technology and expertise instead of selling.
And, of course, trillions in coastline property are going to be annihilated.

Climate Change is going to cost the US more and more the longer it pretends it doesn't exist.
 
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