Australian Atheists Forum

nibble wrote: ↑Mon Jan 29, 2024 11:29 am Another climate warming catastrophe in the making

"BENTUK JAYA, Indonesia — Indonesia has been clearing tens of thousands of acres of densely vegetated peatland for farming, releasing massive amounts of carbon that had been sequestered below for centuries and destroying one of the Earth’s most effective means of storing greenhouse gases. "

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/in ... r-BB1gVLax

A quote from that article...

Activists in other countries point to Indonesia as a cautionary tale. In 2015, huge fires across Indonesia’s degraded peatlands emitted more greenhouse gases than the entire European Union over several months, amounting to what the United Nations called “one of the worst environmental disasters of our century.” The fires blanketed Southeast Asia in a thick haze, causing the premature deaths of more than 100,000 people, estimated Harvard University researchers.

I remember previous outbreaks of "The Haze" which blankets the whole region. At the time it was the immediate health effects that were front of mind, but I didn't lock it in as a climate change mega-disaster. More recently I keep thinking 2023 was a really really terrible year, with its Canadian and Hawaian fires, record temperatures, sea ice disappearance and ocean heat shocks. But there have been so many of these events before 2023, it's hard to keep track.

Once again I feel like we are doomed, we will see economic collapse, mass migration, climate megadeaths in my lifetime, the energy transition hasn't been enough to stop emissions from rising.

This weather sure is strange. Down here in Melbourne we have not had a day above 35 degs in Jan. Last time that happened it was 1984. Not that I'm complaining as I dread summer and welcome our cool weather. Some explanations in this article Melbourne weathers its first January without a ‘hot’ day since 1984

nibble wrote: ↑Wed Jan 31, 2024 1:53 pm This weather sure is strange. Down here in Melbourne we have not had a day above 35 degs in Jan. Last time that happened it was 1984. Not that I'm complaining as I dread summer and welcome our cool weather. Some explanations in this article Melbourne weathers its first January without a ‘hot’ day since 1984

We've got a 38 forecast for sunday, alarmingly!

1.5 degrees? Bwark! Bwark! We won't get to 1.5 degrees!

And reality went SLAP.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68110310

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... -26bn-deal

This article suggests that the rush to buy up known oil and gas deposits is 'partly due to' Russias various trade embargoes and the souring price of fossil fuels (why are fossil fuels souring in value?)

Anyway, i suspect this buying frenzy may also be due to the prospect of a trump presidency, and his 'drill, drill, drill' policy.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... at-records

Humanity is on a trajectory to experience the hottest February in recorded history, after a record January, December, November, October, September, August, July, June and May, according to the Berkeley Earth scientist Zeke Hausfather.

It's that ocean temperature chart that is alarming me, i look at it all the time. What does it mean? What are the consequences? Lots of hypotheses from climate scientists but it's notable how often 'we don't really know,' pops up. Well, we do know it's going to be very bad, but how and when exactly is not entirely clear. Computer modelling only gets you so far.

Good news is that El Nino is weakening.

pipbarber wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 8:30 amIt's that ocean temperature chart that is alarming me, i look at it all the time. What does it mean? What are the consequences? Lots of hypotheses from climate scientists but it's notable how often 'we don't really know,' pops up. Well, we do know it's going to be very bad, but how and when exactly is not entirely clear. Computer modelling only gets you so far.

I saw a quote recently that the ocean is so warm now it's possible for cyclones to form and make landfall in NSW. There need to be other factors occur to create such cyclones, so they weren't actually predicting it. But the prospect of Byron Bay or Coffs Harbour being wiped off the map is the sort of thing that I imagine.

Well that's good news anyway;

The capacity of rooftop solar in Australia will eclipse the country's entire electricity demand in coming decades, according to a report that charts the technology's "staggering" rise.

Almost 20 gigawatts of small-scale solar has already been installed across Australia's biggest electricity system, but a report from Green Energy Markets predicts this will more than triple by 2054, even by conservative assumptions.

It appears rooftop solar is going to do the same thing as smart phones in disrupting existing power generation systems. Currently 41GW is the existing power generation from existing old style centralised power plants including hydro.

"They go well beyond the levels of installed capacity in the NEM we have now for coal, gas and hydro power plants combined of [about 41GW], and also well above typical historical daily averages in electricity demand."

Tripling based on current models of climate change incentive but multiply by 5 times given aggressive climate change action by the government, although again you have to take this with a grain of salt, because they completely failed to predict the current level of rooftop solar, it's quite likely they have again underestimated it, but for that we'll have to wait and see. And I mean this is just rooftop solar, no windmills, no solar collector farms, just people and their homes, I must admit it's encouraging and I think it will accelerate faster than they expect.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-21/ ... /103489806

This is really not surprising, emissions targets are a load of crap. The terrible thing is that China's plan is to INCREASE emissions until 2030. These latest figures show it's on a trajectory to increase its emissions even more than it said it would. The increase in this progress report is 5.2%, I read in another article that it would have been around 4.2%, but they added a percentage point because China is making so many renewables. You have to burn a lot of coal to manufacture all those solar panels and wind turbines.

Anyway, just imagine, we're living in a climate nightmare already, the effects from these extra emissions are yet to be felt, and they're going to keep on making it worse for another six years. Faaaark!

Oh, and two other terrible things: firstly, emissions figures are generally skewed to make them look better than they really are, so the reality is probably even worse than the 5.2% increase in emissions. Secondly, the assumptions for how bad the climate disaster will be, and when it will hit are also hopelessly optimistic. Things we were hoping to prevent by 2050 are already happening. China is promising "net zero" by 2060, and it's already failing to meet its own milestones just 3 years after Xi laid out his pledges.

https://phys.org/news/2024-02-china-key-climate.html