Jim’s Global Warming Thread

[jadnashua]

Southeast Asia over the last week or so has set numerous all time high temperatures. One place never got below 89.7F overnight. Very few places have a/c available and potable water is sometimes hard to find. Many places hit 110F or higher, pretty nasty for early May. This has also triggered some severe thunderstorms.

FWIW, researchers in the Arctic have taken some samples from the permafrost, let them melt, and as a result Various bacteria and viruses grew out of it. Some had been encapsulated for over 30,000 years. Hard to tell what might show up. Lots of dead organic material in that permafrost that bacteria gobble up releasing CO2 in the process amplifying the problem.

[jadnashua]

This past April was the 530th consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th century average. I call that a definite trend. El Niño is 0.1 degree away from officially being declared. This typically shifts the weather patterns around. It's expected to officially occur in July, but nothing is for certain. These cycles were first noted in the 1600's, so are not new. They do seem to be a bit more extreme when they happen though. That heat record persisted during La Niña, which is a cooler period in the eastern Pacific.

A recent report on the Greenland glaciers found much more melting from the bottom up that has doubled the average annual sea level rise in the last eight years or so. That information was not in the models, so they are being updated. More to come as they try to compare the updated models with existing data and see how it compares with the new data as it's received.

[jadnashua]

About 5-years ago, it was reported that the areas covered by glaciers in Glacier National Park had diminished by 85% of what had been considered normal...and, it's been warmer there since, warming at twice the world average. This past winter may have reversed that trend, but the snow is melting as we approach summer. It will be telling to see if any of that big snowpack sticks around to fall to then augment the snow and ice in the glaciers. In 1850, there were about 80 glaciers in the park...in 2015, there were 26. Since then, some of them have shrunk so much that they probably shouldn't be considered a glacier.

The expected start of El Niño later this summer may help or hurt the situation. We won't know right away...the trend versus an odd year is all part of the difference between climate change versus weather...IOW, you can't judge one year's result from a multi-year trend.

If you want to see any glaciers in the continental US, now might be the time. They'll stick around in Alaska for longer, but they're melting, too. Keep in mind that when the white man discovered Glacier Bay in Alaska, they weren't aware that it was actually a bay...since that mid-1800's when first documented, it's retreated almost 70-miles, exposing the extend of the bay.

[jadnashua]

April hit the highest ocean temperature levels since we've had satellites able to measure the entire earth's rather than spot checking in the shipping lanes.

[jadnashua]

A basic law of physics states that as you heat water it reduces its ability to hold gasses. Think how a warm beer handles its carbon dioxide. Globally the oxygen levels in the ocean have dropped two percent between 1960 and 2010, and regionally as much as twelve. In some spots where there are high concentrations of fertilizer runoff, it can drop even further into dead zones. By 2080, it's predicted that 70 million square miles of the ocean will be oxygen deprived, near dead zones. Today, the oxygen levels have already caused the fish population to have moved in some areas not counting those that moved because of warming. Note also that anorexic bacteria also produce CO2 and methane (which is a much more potent greenhouse gas). Oxygen in the deeper oceans requires mixing caused by winds and currents that both get changed as things warm. The lighter glacier melt water also inhibits mixing. Seafood is a primary component of sustenance in many parts of the world which is getting stressed as things warm.

[Jim Farrell Tiler]

New Zealand contributes o.o9 % of carbon emissions but our useless government is hell bent on crippling our economy.
large productive farms are being sold off to overseas interests to plant out in pine trees as carbon sinks.
if you want to buy a new diesel vehicle there is up to a $7000 tax on top of the price and if you buy a ev you get a rebate

https://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicles/cl...-2023-changes/

[jadnashua]

Ever heard the old saying "a rising tide, raises all boats"?

We've had satellite coverage for only about 40-years, not long enough to establish a reliable trend. The sea ice coverage around Antarctica has both increased in the early 2010's, to a protracted trend of decrease with each of the last 4-5 years showing succeeding lower late summer coverage with the western portions almost sea ice free by the end of summer. This has some deleterious effects as it lets storm surges, warmer waters, and tidal effects to more radically impact the glacier's ice shelves. Sea ice does not directly affect sea level, but glacial ice does. Thwaite's glacier is one of the major ones in western Antarctica, and all of the observations have indicated it is moving faster and faster each year. Now, if that continues, there's a reason why it's called the Doomsday Glacier...if it were to crash and melt, it would raise the global sea levels by about 10', or 3M.

NYC is sinking...the analysis concluded that is the result of the excessive weight of the buildings. During the last ice age, those areas covered by that ice sunk, and have been slowly recovering for the intervening millennia, but that is slowing down...it seems that the added weight of the man-made stuff on Manhattan has now been nullified, and the added weight is causing it to sink.

Throw in that the ocean level annual rise has doubled in the last 5-years (it goes up for two reasons, warmer water expands, and more glaciers are melting), resulting in one of the worst flood damage situations ever recorded on the island. Jakarta is moving their capital because of flooding. This is caused by two things: subsistence caused by over pumping the ground water, and ocean level rising. London has experienced some significant flooding as has Miami and other cities around the world. THere are millions of people potentially being impacted, not at some future date, but today, as it's now becoming harder and harder for them to buy flood insurance, required for a mortgage in some places. The federal program is becoming more strict...they are realizing paying someone to rebuild after a flood multiple times means maybe the dwelling really shouldn't be there in the first place.

The impacts of things like this will keep increasing. As the temperatures rise, more and more places will become inhospitable to human survival, especially in lower income areas where things like reliable power grids and enough money may allow common use of things like a/c, but it's also putting strains on potable water, and how to provide it to the population.

IMHO, a bit more preventative actions now can help longer term, regardless of how little...every bit helps...ocean levels affect the whole world, so we all need to get on the same page. We need to think more globally and consider the outcomes. We all need to get involved to make it a bit fairer, but you have to start somewhere, and if everyone waits for someone else to go first, nothing will get done.

[cx]

I think I mentioned before that the melting glaciers and rising oceans aren't actually catastrophes, they just alter the landscape, Jim. Bad for New Orleans, good for Baton Rouge, etc.

I think I've read that after the most recent "ice age," maybe 12 or 10 thousand years ago, the sea level rose some 400 feet. The various land masses probably looked a good bit different before that bit of warming and melting. Didn't directly affect near as many people as will the next one, but from our vantage it wasn't all that bad, eh? Less ice, more water, different shorelines. Some species died, some benefited.

When Yellowstone finally erupts, all our (Norte Americanos) hand wringing over internal combustion engines will have been for naught.

[jadnashua]

YEah, Yellowstone is a consideration, but the last time was maybe 600K years ago, and we have no good idea when it will do its thing again. It supposedly threw rocks almost to the Pacific coast...that's one huge expolosion!

Last time a big volcanic event happened, we had a 'near winter' for about 2-years while the dust settled. Well, it dropped the world's average temperature by about a full degree. A transient effect, a blip, not what we're seeing now with a fairly consistent rise as the CO2 and methane levels rise. Volcanos can change the weather, but aren't as impactful to the climate changes.

We deal with what we can, and live with what we can't. We can limit the known greenhouse gasses if we want to, but it will take everyone's participation. Otherwise, we'll just drag out the consequences.

[jadnashua]

Ignoring the problems about glacial erosion and how fast the lack of sea ice can create its own set of problems, the diminished extent of sea ice has some major effects of its own on the overall oceans of the world. Warmer overall ocean temperatures make it harder to build up sea ice over the winter, and more and more of it is gone by the end of summer.

When sea ice forms, a good portion of the salts are extracted so most of what actually freezes is purer (not pure, though) water. The resulting higher concentration of brine is denser, so it falls to the ocean floor. This results in a conveyor belt of denser water that drives some of the world's ocean currents and extends many thousands of miles across the floor of the oceans. There are two places where this primarily happens in the world...off of Greenland, and around Antarctica. That slowly moving concentrated brine flow moves nutrients and oxygen around the world's oceans, taking up to a couple of years to ultimately surface.

The melting of the glaciers also results in melt waters that are less salty, so when it freezes into sea ice in the winter in those areas, the resulting brine concentration is lower.

Those two things (that we know of now) contribute to an observed drop in the circulation since about 1997 of 30%, and the rate of decrease is getting larger. We can speculate what the long-term results will be, but we don't have enough data from the satellites to know how this will ultimately end up, but it doesn't look good. Those nutrients spread around the world help maintain the life as we know it in the oceans. With less mixing, and slower movement, it's likely things will pop up that we had not considered. As I've mentioned before, a large portion of the world's population relies on foods derived from the sea. The balance created over the last few million years appears to be coming out of whack. We can only speculate what the end result will be. The status quo is likely broken, and may not easily be restored. Get ready for a new normal, and it may show up much faster than people realize.

[cx]

Never heard that part before, Jim. I'm curious as to how they tag the brine, or the water, to determine that it actually travels to those far away places. Any insight into that?

[jadnashua]

The satellites can deduce surface salinity, but I'm not sure how they track the current that runs along the floor. That tends to trigger plankton blooms when it eventually surfaces, and that's what feeds a huge population of sea creatures from krill, to shrimp, to fishes that eat those, and so forth up the food chain. SO, maybe the position of those and their extent is part of the equation...did not find an answer to that.

In places where sea ice persists more often between seasons, it tends to shed more and more of its salinity. During the freezing process, some of it tends to get trapped in the ice in pockets, but subsequent melting, rain, glacial runoff, and gravity causes it to percolate down and that's what further fuels the current.

That movement towards the equator with the 'supply' off of Greenland is what fuels the Gulf Stream, in the North Atlantic. In the Pacific, without the constraints, the circulation isn't as robust as the area is so vast. If the Gulf STream collapses, the US east coast, and much of Europe will see some major changes. The nature of things is to reach an equilibrium, so the colder areas become warmer, and the warmer areas become colder...break that process, and places will become more radical, with higher and lower seasonal swings.

[jadnashua]

Experiments in greenhouses have found that raising the temperature and increasing the CO2 levels will lengthen the time pollen is being produced, the volume of pollen, and the size of the plants.

This has both good and bad end results. A bit more carbon is incorporated into the larger biomass, but for those affected by the increased amount of pollen, and the duration of it in the environment, it can be a major health issue.

Since 1990, the average pollen 'season' in the USA and southern Canada has been expanded by about 3-weeks with the worst offenders in Texas and the US southeastern states.

That increase in biomass is somewhat offset by things like the millions of acres of rain forest that have been cleared for things like illegal mining and cattle production. Now if man didn't keep messing things up, the balance might be restored. Fat chance...greed and ignorance are pretty powerful actors.

[cx]

Most of what you point out are valid issues, I think, Jim, some of them perhaps even concerns. Some of them no doubt exacerbated by the presence of humans on the planet, but not necessarily caused only by the presence of humans on the planet. In any case, if we consider all of them to be negative (not sure I can buy that), what's your proposed solution?

Shall we form a world government with the power to force all of us to do what some of us think is best for our own good, given that what some of us think is best may not be even close to the correct approach? Haven't we demonstrated plenty of that right here in our own little corner of the planet already?

If humans are in fact the problem, wouldn't the most logical approach be to simply remove all the humans? That way, even if that didn't actually fix the problem, which I think is a possibility, there would be no one to be troubled by the problems continuing or even getting worse. After all, the planet had a few ice ages without any major complaints that current humans are aware of.

The subsequent floods, or at least the most recent one, seems to have some records chiseled in some stones, but humans don't appear to have been eradicated by them.

I'm just curious.

[jadnashua]

Until and if the majority begin to realize that things are changing, and that it is highly likely what we've done is at least a significant part of the problem, little will change the course of events.

The vast majority of scientists believe that human activities are a major portion of the problem.

What we do know, and can easily document, at least for the last million years, is that the CO2 levels have risen the fastest and to the highest point that we can discern in at least that period, and most of that occurred in the last 200-years which corresponds to the burning of fossil fuels.

The sun has some cycles, and the orbit of the earth isn't a constant, plus, there were some periods of significant and persistent volcanic activity, which can and does affect both the sunlight that reaches the earth, and disrupts the mix of gasses there as well. We've only seen the effects of that as mildly transient events (you can look up the year of no summer), but extend activity like that for years and it can shift things. The albedo effect has a feedback loop...have more snow and ice coverage for some reason, more of the sunlight gets reflected back rather than being absorbed...that allows more snow and ice coverage for longer, which makes for more energy being reflected back into space by that snow and ice. What we're into now is that the earth is getting warmer (that's easily seen if you look at the data), which is melting more of the snow and ice, which is allowing more of the sun's energy to be absorbed versus being reflected back into space, which melts more snow and ice, which makes it warmer still. Look at the records for the Arctic...the average temperatures there have risen 3-4x faster than other areas of the globe because it's losing more and more of its ice coverage. The Alaskan oil pipeline relies on permafrost to provide a stable support for the pipeline to operate. To accomplish that, it was originally built with chillers to help ensure the ground stayed frozen so the pipeline's path didn't get bent and broken...it worked for decades, but is having some significant issues today...there's more melting.

Personally, I think it's almost criminal to think about opening up a new coal-fired power plant. But, it's happening.

What we need is a means to buffer our sometimes excessive green energy production for those times the sun isn't shining or the wind stops blowing. Today, it's less expensive to produce power with solar cells, but again, the sun doesn't shine all of the time. The UK earlier this year had a day when they were able to supply their whole country's power needs with green power. There are times when we have more than we can use, which is where some sort of buffer would solve the problem. There's work going on towards that goal that includes things like producing hydrogen from that, kinetic energy storage (moving water uphill when you have excess power and letting it fall later when you want to retrieve that stored energy. Some places are using grid sized battery packs to store that excess. An experiment that seems to be working in Sweden is a sand 'battery'...they use excess green energy to superheat a tower filled with dry sand...later, that heat energy is used to heat businesses, factory needs, and homes. It turns out that sand is a very good storage medium for heat. Niagra Falls since they built the power station there has diverted water overnight from above the falls to a storage pond that can then be used to generate power during the day when they don't want to essentially shut off the falls for the tourists. There are other areas in the world where the terrain would allow that sort of power storage.

A study recently finished identified numerous areas in the UK that could utilize geothermal power. In the USA, there are many thousands of old, abandoned mines that are now flooded that could be used for geothermal without having to drill new wells, or minimizing those.

Every month or so, we see various advances in battery tech that promises increased energy density and longevity. Some of them also seem to work without as much of even any of the metals like lithium. One recent discovery promises up to 10x the energy density of a battery which means a battery that today could let you drive 300-miles, for the same size, might let you go 3,000-miles. Some of these advances will also accept higher (therefore faster) recharge rates, so some of the objections to an EV would be overcome. That would require a buffer to supply that burst of energy, which makes some of the other technologies more important than simpler grid stability. That also will require building the distribution grid. Texas isn't helping matters, as they're their own power island, so they can't export any excess, or pull in power when they have a deficit unlike the vast majority of the rest of the country.

So, it's going to take a willingness to make changes. Some of the modern small nuclear power plant designs could help, as they're safe, clean, and can ramp up quickly if needed.

You also need the infrastructure to move power from where it's more easily produced to where it is ultimately needed, that can vary based on when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. There's a lot of resistance to off-shore windfarms, but off shore is a much more reliable power production area than on land, without hills, trees, buildings getting in the way. Tidal is a constant that could work, and after successful demonstration in the north of Scotland, the companies involved have orders for scaled up versions that may come on line in the next few years.

It is human nature to not like change. Things ARE changing, and we need to change with it.

IOW, there are lots of ways to get the power we desire without adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. If the ice on all of Antarctica were to melt, the ocean levels would rise about 400'...wiping out billions of people's homes and changing the look of the globe. They will probably rise at least 10', which still will mess up a lot of what we know...a good portion of Florida would be underwater, along with New Orleans, a good portion of Boston, New York City, Houstin, and LA. That's just in the USA...far more populated areas around the world are at risk, and it may happen much sooner than people realize.

The way I see it, doing nothing is not a choice...every little bit helps. Ignoring it won't make it go away.