Even better news: We don't need solar, wind or any other mumble-jumble, he have the miracle of clean coal.
It was that loser Tobias and the bet was $1 million that Miami would cease to exist and no longer be on the map. in 20 years. He is a moron.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/climate/us-climate-report.html Directly contradicting much of the Trump administration’s position on climate change, 13 federal agencies unveiled an exhaustive scientific report on Friday that says humans are the dominant cause of the global temperature rise that has occurred since the start of the 20th century, creating the warmest period in the history of civilization. Over the past 115 years global average temperatures have increased 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to record-breaking weather events and temperature extremes, the report says. The global, long-term warming trend is “unambiguous,” it says, and there is “no convincing alternative explanation” that anything other than humans — the cars we drive, the power plants we operate, the forests we destroy — are to blame. The report was approved for release by the White House, but the findings come as the Trump administration is defending its climate change policies on several fronts. The United Nations convenes its annual climate change conference next week in Bonn, Germany, and the American delegation is expected to face harsh criticism over President Trump’s decision to walk away from the 195-nation Paris climate accord and top administration officials’ stated doubts about the causes and impacts of a warming planet. “This report has some very powerful, hard-hitting statements that are totally at odds with senior administration folks and at odds with their policies,” said Philip B. Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center. “It begs the question, where are members of the administration getting their information from? They’re obviously not getting it from their own scientists.”
Read through some of the executive summary (first 30 pages or so)... it paints a terrifying picture. We're cooking ourselves.
East Antarctica’s biggest glacier lost ice because of warm water and strong winds A map of Antarctica shows where Totten Glacier is. Map: Chad A. Greene, University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, 2017 The largest glacier in East Antarctica contains so much ice it could raise sea levels by at least 11 feet if it all melted — and research now shows the ice has been retreating because of warmer-than-usual waters brought on by strong winds. Between 2001 and 2006, water just a couple of degrees warmer than usual caused ice in this region of Antarctica to flow toward the sea about 5 percent faster than usual, according to a study published today in Science Advances. That might not seem like much, but it actually means that ice was melting — in an area of Antarctica that’s largely been considered stable. several massiveicebergs have been breaking off the continent lately, one glacier has been cracking from the inside out, and rain has been observed over what’s technically an ice desert. But these changes have mostly occurred in Western Antarctica, an area that’s closer to the tip of South America and more susceptible to global warming. Western Antarctica is also much more studied, says Catherine Walker, a NASA postdoctoral fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Because of its location, it’s easier to access by boat and planes, and the US has a research base there. In comparison, East Antarctica is much less studied. “Antarctica is isolated in itself but East Antarctica is generally just untouched,” Walker tells The Verge. While West Antarctica has seen lots of changes, East Antarctica has generally been considered more stable, Walker says. But today’s study shows that that’s not the case: glaciers in this part of the continent are also experiencing melting. And with our planet warming up, things aren’t going to get better. “Up till now, we basically had a stationary ice sheet, and now it’s started to move,” says Walker, who was not involved in today’s research. The study adds to evidence that the Totten Glacier is “sort of the canary in the coal mine,” she says. Totten is the biggest glacier in East Antarctica, says study co-author Chad Greene, a PhD student researching East Antartica at The University of Texas at Austin. And previous studies have shown that the glacier is melting from below: Totten, in fact, is rooted to ground rock deep below sea level, and that makes it vulnerable to warming ocean waters, Greene tells The Verge. The glacier is also holding back the vast Aurora Subglacial Basin, which is all underneath sea level. Totten is “serving as this little cork, I guess, or a plug to hold vast ice that’s just waiting to flow down,” Walker says. If all this ice melts, there’s the potential for many feet of sea level rise — so scientists have been trying to understand what’s happening at Totten. For today’s study, Green and his colleagues analyzed satellite data and used models to answer that question. They found that between 2001 and 2006, the ice in the floating portion of the glacier, called the Totten Ice Shelf, was flowing faster toward the ocean. Even if we think of ice as something solid, in fact, ice flows in glaciers. Think of it as pancake batter that’s pilled up and spreads toward the edges under its own weight, Greene says. And how fast ice flows is a proxy for ice melting: if the ice is thinning, losing weight, it just flows faster. The reason for the speedup seems to be warmer-than-usual waters, which were carried from the deep ocean by strong westerly winds, according to the study. As strong winds carry warm water from the bottom of the ocean (upwelling) to the continental shelf break, the warm water melts Totten Ice Shelf from below, and the glacier responds by speeding up. Video: Chad A. Greene, University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, 2017 The melting occurred where ice, bedrock, and the ocean meet, melting the glacier from below. It wasn’t constant, though: the ice slowed down again between 2006 and 2013, and might have picked up speed again after 2013, though more data is needed to actually confirm this, Greene says. The findings don’t bode well for the future: climate change is expected to make those westerly winds that carry warm water from the deep ocean even stronger, and bring them closer to Antarctica itself. Ocean waters are also warming up overall, threatening to eat away at the ice. “You can melt ice a lot more quickly with warm water than you can with warm air,” Greene says. The glacier won’t collapse in our lifetime, he says, but understanding all the things at play that might cause the collapse is key to understand how high sea levels could rise. A study published last month showed that strong winds and warmer than usual waters were also responsible for speeding up melting at four glaciers in Western Antarctica. Those glaciers though had the potential to raise sea levels by only a few millimeters. Totten could add more than 11 feet of water to the oceans, submerging cities like New York and Miami. It’d be “much more significant than we’ve ever seen in our lifetime,” Walker says.
plan is to travel a ton over next 3 years taking into account global warming is not something I expected having to do but here we are
Holy shit if that number is true. https://www.theguardian.com/environ...fuel-subsidies-are-a-staggering-5-tn-per-year Fossil fuel subsidies are a staggering $5 tn per year A new study finds 6.5% of global GDP goes to subsidizing dirty fossil fuels Monday 7 August 2017 06.00 EDT Fossil fuels have two major problems that paint a dim picture for their future energy dominance. These problems are inter-related but still should be discussed separately. First, they cause climate change. We know that, we’ve known it for decades, and we know that continued use of fossil fuels will cause enormous worldwide economic and social consequences. Second, fossil fuels are expensive. Much of their costs are hidden, however, as subsidies. If people knew how large their subsidies were, there would be a backlash against them from so-called financial conservatives. A study was just published in the journal World Development that quantifies the amount of subsidies directed toward fossil fuels globally, and the results are shocking. The authors work at the IMF and are well-skilled to quantify the subsidies discussed in the paper. Let’s give the final numbers and then back up to dig into the details. The subsidies were $4.9 tn in 2013 and they rose to $5.3 tn just two years later. According to the authors, these subsidies are important because first, they promote fossil fuel use which damages the environment. Second, these are fiscally costly. Third, the subsidies discourage investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy that compete with the subsidized fossil fuels. Finally, subsidies are very inefficient means to support low-income households. With these truths made plain, why haven’t subsidies been eliminated? The answer to that is a bit complicated. Part of the answer to this question is that people do not fully appreciate the costs of fossil fuels to the rest of us. Often we think of them as all gain with no pain. So what is a subsidy anyway? Well, that too isn’t black and white. Typically, people on the street think of a subsidy as a direct financial cost that result in consumers paying a price that is below the opportunity cost of the product (fossil fuel in this case). However, as pointed out by the authors, a more correct view of the costs would encompass: not only supply costs but also (most importantly) environmental costs like global warming and deaths from air pollution and taxes applied to consumer goods in general. The authors argue, persuasively, that this broader view of subsidies is the correct view because they “reflect the gap between consumer prices and economically efficient prices.” Without getting too deep into the weeds, the authors discuss both consumer subsidies (when the price paid by a consumer is below a benchmark price) and producer subsidies (when producers receive direct or indirect support which increases their profitability). The authors then quantify what benefits would be achieved if the fossil fuel subsidies were reformed. Interested readers are directed to the paper for further details, but the results are what surprised me. Pre-tax (the narrow view of subsidies) subsidies amount to 0.7% of global GDP in 2011 and 2013. But the more appropriate definition of subsidies is much larger (8 times larger than the pre-tax subsidies). We are talking enormous values of 5.8% of global GDP in 2011, rising to 6.5% in 2013. The authors also broke the results down by fossil fuel type and usage (coal, petroleum, natural gas, electricity). It is not clear to me how the authors separated the various fuel sources out of electrical generation; however, the results show that petroleum and coal receive much larger subsidies compared to their counterpart fuels. The authors organized results by geographical region and found that the top three subsidizers of fossil fuels are China, USA, and Russia, respectively. The European Union is a bit less than half of the entire US subsidy. Other notable countries and regions are discussed. There are two key takeaway messages. First, fossil fuel subsidies are enormous and they are costs that we all pay, in one form or another. Second, the subsidies persist in part because we don’t fully appreciate their size. These two facts, taken together, further strengthen the case to be made for clean and renewable energy. Clean energy sources do not suffer from the environmental costs that plague fossil fuels. I asked one of the authors, Dr. Coady, why their work is important. He told me: A key motivation for the paper was to increase awareness among policy makers and the public of the large subsidies that arise from pricing fossil fuels below their true social costs—this broader definition of subsidies accounts for the many negative side effects associated with the consumption of these fuels. By estimating these costs on a global scale, we hope to stimulate an informed policy debate and provide renewed impetus for policy reforms to reap the large potential benefits from more efficient pricing of fossil fuels in terms of improved public finances, improved population health and lower carbon emissions. As a climate scientist, I focus almost exclusively on the scientific questions related to climate change. But equally important are the economic issues that, when dealt with, will usher in a new era of energy.
Curious if now known lurker TheChatch will ever come out of his lurking ways and show his face again. In a thread that he fucking started. TheChatch care to weigh in?
of course it is. When people bring out Solyndra and government being too involved with renewable energies, this shit does not get brought up enough.
Fuck man, thats depressing as hell. If anyone is a reader, I can't recommend Sixth extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert enough. Basically we're living thru a mass extinction as we speak. The 6th one in the last 500 million years. Its the worst species die off since the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Some estimates put humanity as the cause for 90% of the die offs. Really makes you hate humanity sometimes.
Read the first couple of posts and I am shocked that Moxin24 appears to have been a climate change denier. Has he changed his opinion?
https://www.theatlantic.com/science...agazine&utm_term=two miles of a fracking well Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, may pose a significant—but very local—harm to human health, a new study finds. Mothers who live very close to a fracking well are more likely to give birth to a less healthy child with a low birth weight—and low birth weight can lead to poorer health throughout a person’s life. The research, published Wednesday in Science Advances, is the largest study ever conducted on fracking’s health effects. “I think this is the most convincing evidence that fracking has a causal effect on local residents,” said Janet Currie, an economist at Princeton University and one of the authors of the study. The researchers took the birth records for every child born in Pennsylvania from 2004 to 2013—more than 1.1 million infants in total—and looked at the mother’s proximity to a fracking site, using the state of Pennsylvania’s public inventory of fracking-well locations. They used private state records that showed the mother’s address, allowing them to pinpoint where every infant spent its nine months in utero. They found significant, but very local, consequences. Infants born to mothers who lived within two miles of a fracking well are less healthy and more underweight than babies born to mothers who lived even a little further away. Babies born to mothers who lived between three and 15 miles from a fracking well—that is, still close enough to benefit financially from the wells—resembled infants born throughout the rest of the state. While birth weight may seem like just a number, it can affect the path of someone’s life. Children with a low birth weight have been found to have lower test scores, lower lifetime earnings, and higher rates of reliance on welfare programs throughout their lives. In a previous study, a different team of researchers examined twins in Norway whose birth weight diverged by 10 percent or more. The lighter twin was 1 percent less likely to graduate from high school and earned 1 percent less than their sibling through their life. “Hydraulic fracturing has widely dispersed benefits—we are all paying lower natural-gas bills for heating, we’re all paying lower electricity prices, we’re all paying less for cheaper gasoline at the pump. And even if health was all that you care about, we’re all benefitting from decreased air pollution thats widely dispersed, because coal plants are closing,” said Michael Greenstone, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and another authors of the paper. But all those benefits, he said, were borne by the local communities that lived extremely close to hydraulic fracturing wells. “There’s this interesting trade off between the greater good and what are the costs and benefits for local communities,” he told me. Oil and gas lobbying groups rushed to criticize the study. “This report highlights a legitimate health issue across America that has nothing to do with natural gas and oil operations. It fails to consider important factors like family history, parental health, lifestyle habits, and other environmental factors and ignores the body of scientific research that has gone into child mortality and birthweight,” said Reid Porter, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, a trade organization that represents the oil and gas industry. In the fracking study, researchers tried to separate the costs of fracking and socioeconomic status and parental health in several ways. First, they compared baby birthweight near fracking wells to those babies immediately around them, which they believe accounts for the wealth of various communities. Second, they found that the connection held for siblings who were or were not exposed to a fracking well. “We follow the same mother over time and ask whether on average, children born after fracking starts have worse outcomes than their siblings born before fracking starts,” Currie told me. “In this case, since we follow the same woman over time, we are controlling for her underlying characteristics.” Babies who gestated near a well had a reliably lower birth weight than their siblings who were not exposed to the well. The researchers don’t yet know why this link between fracking and low birth weight exists, though they suggest that air pollution could be a possible contributor. The process of fracking may release chemicals into the air, for one, but many wells also run multiple diesel engines at once, and they can be a hub of local activity, with trucks regularly commuting to the sites. While environmental activists and some researchers have proposed that fracking chemicals may leak into groundwater, most studies have failed to find lasting and widespread water pollution near wells. The birth-weight study seems to suggest that air, not water, pollution may instead be the threat that fracking sites pose to human health. Greenstone believes the next step for this research is to figure out exactly what is driving the babies’ low birth weight. “Is it the trucks? Is it the diesel generators?” he said. “If you knew the channel, you might be able to devise a light-touch regulatory approach.” But he and Currie also believe more research is needed to figure out how fracking affects people outside the womb and later in their life. Such connections will be harder to distill, but may become easier as this kind of broad, data-based approach to environmental economics becomes more widespread.