Have we reached a tipping point?
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That's a good question. The surface of permafrost can melt slightly every warm summer. Permafrost depth can vary from a few feet to a thousand feet. It is the deep permafrost that has been frozen for many thousands of years that is the concern. This is where the gases are trapped due to rotting vegetation trapped at the time of freezing. The concern now is that there’s twice as much carbon in the permafrost as there is in the air today. It doesn't take a scientist to understand the impact if this all melts.
Thawing Permafrost: Why It Matters
In these recent hot summer days, as my colleague Xinnan Zhu was walking outside exposed to the outdoor temperature of nearly 100°F, she felt like she was going to melt like an ice cube under the sun. As the Arctic Climate Impacts Stanback researcher, it was far more hot and humid outside our UCS off
blog.ucsusa.org
Why Thawing Permafrost Matters
As the Arctic warms, the unfreezing of permafrost poses a threat to the planet.
blogs.ei.columbia.edu
Ctwoodtick
Minister of Fire
To be fair, many of the “radicals” have pushed for cleaner cars, are vegetarian, etc. sorry but those folks are not as culpable as anyone else, as you put it. I bet there are a lot of people that would give up some modern conveniences for a healthier place to live. I will play the blame game and blame the marrying of big polluters with their political henchmen. I also blame the people who should be smart enough on climate change, but instead push that thought away as un-American in someway. Those people are more culpable.
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Seasoned Oak
Minister of Fire
Nothing Un-american about dealing with climate change but like every other issue it can be made political to push a particular agenda from either side. In the current political enviroment theres not much consensus on any one issue except for of course staying the course on regime change wars.Seems to be a lot of support of that on both sides. To me the radicals are the ones calling for everyone to change their lifestyles except themselves. And as others here pointed out , the carbon footprint goes up with income levels with few exceptions,in this and other countries
The agenda from the other side (that of big oil) started decades ago when their scientists warned them of the effects of fossil fuel on the atmosphere. From there they made a choice. Instead of doing the socially responsible thing they instead decided to launch a massive disinformation campaign in order to confuse and divide public opinion. That is what we are dealing with today.
People have no idea the actual power of oil companies. Right now in Canada some of the largest environmental groups opposing oil and gas pipelines are funded by US oil as it is not in the US interest to have Canada sell it's oil on the world market. If Canadian oil is landlocked we have to continue to sell it to the US at huge discounts, and its working. In December of 2018 West Texas Intermediate Crude sold for $50US/barrel, while Canada was selling Western Canadian Select Crude to the US for $6US/barrel. Yet I nor anyone else seen this discount reflected in fuel prices, it just went into the pockets of oil companies and their shareholders.
Ashful
Minister of Fire
Meh... “big oil”, as if there’s some evil mastermind behind the entire industry, or anything other than competing companies doing what companies do to survive and generate the maximum profit shareholders demand.
I didn’t elect any company to govern or protect us, they’re simply operating within the boundaries our and other governments have created for them. There is blame to be cast for the result, but it’s with your elected and appointed officials who create the parameters within which a corporation can operate, not the corporation for doing the one thing they’re designed to do.
I didn’t elect any company to govern or protect us, they’re simply operating within the boundaries our and other governments have created for them. There is blame to be cast for the result, but it’s with your elected and appointed officials who create the parameters within which a corporation can operate, not the corporation for doing the one thing they’re designed to do.
Not Big Oil, in this case, the example given is Exxon.
"In a confidential 1998 memo, ExxonMobil’s senior environmental lobbyist stated the Orwellian goal of this corporate campaign: “Victory will be achieved when … average citizens ‘understand’ uncertainties in climate science,” and when “recognition of uncertainty becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.'”
If a corporation's survival means resorting to public harm then that behavior is pathological. I don't understand how that can be condoned or just act like it is normal. The fact that there was proven intent to deceive is despicable. The fact that they were not shut down and broken up shows how deeply entrenched their money is.
Exxon Sowed Doubt About Climate Science for Decades by Stressing Uncertainty - Inside Climate News
As he wrapped up nine years as the federal government’s chief scientist for global warming research, Michael MacCracken lashed out at ExxonMobil for opposing the advance of climate science. His own great-grandfather, he told the Exxon board, had been John D. Rockefeller’s legal counsel a century...
insideclimatenews.org
Seasoned Oak
Minister of Fire
Where ther is demand, there is supply,same as the drug problem. As long as demand for petro fuels remains and even increases ,you cant blame "big oil" for supplying that demand. And as long as politicians can take unlimited amounts of money from the same people they claim to regulate, those people and companies will get their way.
Seasoned Oak
Minister of Fire
Ctwoodtick
Minister of Fire
What you described of oil and politics is worth of blame certainly. Very much a rigged system that begreen accurately described as pathological.
Their simple, single-basin model shows how the increase in Antarctic sea ice in a colder climate could trigger a waterfall of changes that could contribute to tipping the global climate into glacial periods. This could happen but it would take a minor shift in the earth's orbit or something of that nature to set this into motion.
It's good work, we don't understand the ice age cycle fully yet. It sounds like there are several models, some disagreeing with others. I don't see them saying that their model is applicable to climate conditions evolving today due to anthropogenic causes.
The study is here:
Global cooling linked to increased glacial carbon storage via changes in Antarctic sea ice - Nature Geoscience
Isolation of deep water around Antarctica due to surface cooling can explain half of the change in atmospheric CO2 levels through glacial–interglacial cycles, according to coupled ocean–sea ice and biogeochemical numerical modelling.
www.nature.com
Seasoned Oak
Minister of Fire
So change it. A rigged system the we all so willingly patrticipate in. Complaining about it does nothing. No large masses of people giving up their carbon based lifestyle, so we will deal with the consequences.
How do you change a system or an organization that has enough money and resources to discredit or corrupt any individual that opposes their viewpoint?
Seasoned Oak
Minister of Fire
Thats kinda my point,you cant ,and i dont spend a lot of time worrying about things i cant change. Like the Govt,big oil and climate change. Better to put all my efforts into dealing with it. Same for all 3. Sure we can all do our small part, but unless theres an immediate crisis, looming ,nothing much gets done. Been that way for a long time.
Ctwoodtick
Minister of Fire
Well, regarding changing it, we have some choices coming up in this next election. We can choose continued ignorance or something different than that. It may not solve the problem but I’m sick of this clown saying whatever he wants and lots of people kinda nodding their heads.
Seasoned Oak
Minister of Fire
Interesting regarding politics no matter which party gets into power, very little changes. Even when a single party has control of all 3 branches.( irregardless of party)Leads me to believe none of them are in it for us, only for themselves. So again i will deal with it.
spirilis
Minister of Fire
Atmospheric carbon isotope ratios, which have been shifting rapidly since ~1850.
RealClimate: How do we know that recent CO2 increases are due to human activities?
RealClimate: Note:This is an update to an earlier post, which many found to be too technical. The original, and a series of comments on it, can be found here. See also a more recent post here for an even less technical discussion. Over the last 150 years, carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have...
www.realclimate.org
It's one of the damning "fingerprints" at the scene of the crime.
A number of years ago, I remember being told that Lake Michigan was at or near record low levels. I was assured that the experts had figured it out, the science was settled. Human induced climate change was to blame. The level would continue to drop indefinitely. Voting for a certain political party would be our only hope of reversing it.
Fast forward to today. Lake Michigan is at or near record highs. I am assured that the experts have figured it out, the science is settled (for real this time). The cause is human induced climate change. It will cause the level to rise and fall ever faster. Unless...
What I have learned: Any change in the planet is caused by human induced climate change. Anyone who doubts the "experts" (even though their past predictions may have been totally wrong) must live in a cave and believe the Earth is flat.
Fast forward to today. Lake Michigan is at or near record highs. I am assured that the experts have figured it out, the science is settled (for real this time). The cause is human induced climate change. It will cause the level to rise and fall ever faster. Unless...
What I have learned: Any change in the planet is caused by human induced climate change. Anyone who doubts the "experts" (even though their past predictions may have been totally wrong) must live in a cave and believe the Earth is flat.
Seasoned Oak
Minister of Fire
Iv heard that for every flood and every hurricane for awhile now. Is it causing the cali fires or is it overgrowth not being allowed to burn periodically and when it finally does its biblical. Maybe a little bit of both.
spirilis
Minister of Fire
A bit of both. PG&E probably could have gotten away with a few more years or maybe a decade of mismanagement of their infrastructure & lack of trimming had global warming not set in. Global warming/climate change just caught them sooner with their pants down.
It's not like climate change can or should be blamed for everything weather-related, it's just that everything weather-related has a little bit of bias added by climate change. It's a steadily rising signal against the background noise of everything else that affects weather. We can expect that "signal" to get louder and louder by the year.
spirilis
Minister of Fire
It's like tuning your car's wheel alignment out of spec a little more each year. No you can't blame that near-fatal accident on bad alignment, but I wonder if those tires would have had better tread and traction and wouldn't have skidded across a lane if you'd have corrected the problem instead or planned around it by replacing tires every year.
Likewise, dealing with the additional stressors from climate change will get expensive and require we get on our infrastructure game quickly.
Likewise, dealing with the additional stressors from climate change will get expensive and require we get on our infrastructure game quickly.
Ashful
Minister of Fire
Amusing post, and I get your point. But I’d be surprised if there was ever 100% consensus or certainty on the cause and impact of the prior water level drop. More importantly, past inaccuracies or errors do not invalidate present predictions.
This is an enormous and complicated system, with a lot of noise and incomplete understanding of the inputs and feedback systems. Characterization of those unknowns increases each year, and even the rate of characterization is increasing each year, such that improvement in the models year by year is accelerating.
That’s not to say there’s anywhere near 100% certainty, but citing inaccuracies in what can today be called some pretty crude and infantile models of 20 years’ past is not really treating the problem or the science with any honesty.
So, while I don’t work in this field, it appears to me that we are at a point where enough of the models have been in close enough agreement for a long time, to the point where refutation of the human contribution to climate change is nearly impossible to deny. At this point, the more valid debate appears to be one of magnitudes, in what fraction of climate change is due to our contributions, the level to which we are able to reduce those contributions, and what the financial and social impact will be.
DBoon
Minister of Fire
Installed a 5 kW array and added another 10 kW a month ago. Production is about 15 MWh/yr, projected. House this is at is being remodeled and will use GSHP with radiant floor heating (consumption ~4 MWh/yr, never running the woodstock), all electric hot water, kitchen, etc. (using about 6 MWh/yr), and the balance will power my 1 year old Chevy Bolt (today 35,000 miles/year at 4.5 miles/kWh = 8 MWh/yr). This is a not large house (1750 square feet). The ~2000 square foot vegetable garden grows much of our food. The woodlot provides blown down trees for wood to burn in the woodstove. I probably use about 30-40 gallons of gas a year in my lawn tractor and farm tractor.
Existing house just had a Fujitsu mini-split installed, and we burn locally cut wood (see above). Previously, we'd use about 350 gallons of oil a year. With the mini split, probably cut that in half. Our electricity is 100% wind and solar option, for which we pay about a 1.5 cent/kWh premium. My wife still drives a 40 mpg gas car about 12,000 miles per year, so add 300 gallons of gas to the mix.
In a year or two, I'll be 100% carbon neutral, once the house remodel is finished, excepting the wife's car, which will likely be utilized for long trips only.
It's what I think is the right thing to do, and how I've chosen to spend my money.
Seasoned Oak
Minister of Fire
You would be in the very small minority. Add a single family to the carbon based population of a first world country and all your carbon neutral contributions are offset right there. Not that what your doing is meaningless ,i think its great, but will it change the climate equation. Very little IMO. As far as saving money on energy your approach is top notch. But unless its adopted by large numbers of people in first world countries ,may not solve the problem.
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