Climate Change

[pipbarber]

A thread for all things climate change related.

I can barely think of a better/worse way to start. From the bright minds that brought to the world Brexit.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ate-crisis

Apparently it is going to secure British 'independence.' Perhaps he means independence from the gulf stream?

[stylofone]

George Monbiot <3 says people like Sunak do the exact opposite of what is needed because as the climate crisis worsens, the deniers and fossil fuel companies who control him get more desperate, so they intensify their criminal actions.

People seem mystified by this apparent perversity. But it’s a clear manifestation of the pollution paradox, which I see as essential to understanding modern politics. The most damaging companies have the greatest incentive to invest money in politics (by making donations to political parties, funding lobbyists and junktanks, hiring troll farms and microtargeters and all the other overt or covert techniques). So politics, in our money-driven system, comes to be dominated by the most damaging companies.

Sunak, Trump and many others like them are not just desperate politicians who will try anything to retain or regain power (though they are that). Nor are they simply representatives of capital. They are representatives of the dirtiest, most destructive varieties of capital, the varieties engaged in a war against humanity. In the conflict between the two existential crises, they know which side they’re on

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... plutocrats

[Irrev-Black]

George Monbiot <3 says people like Sunak do the exact opposite of what is needed because as the climate crisis worsens, the deniers and fossil fuel companies who control him get more desperate, so they intensify their criminal actions.

People seem mystified by this apparent perversity. But it’s a clear manifestation of the pollution paradox, which I see as essential to understanding modern politics. The most damaging companies have the greatest incentive to invest money in politics (by making donations to political parties, funding lobbyists and junktanks, hiring troll farms and microtargeters and all the other overt or covert techniques). So politics, in our money-driven system, comes to be dominated by the most damaging companies.

Sunak, Trump and many others like them are not just desperate politicians who will try anything to retain or regain power (though they are that). Nor are they simply representatives of capital. They are representatives of the dirtiest, most destructive varieties of capital, the varieties engaged in a war against humanity. In the conflict between the two existential crises, they know which side they’re on

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... plutocrats

A firm founded by Rishi Sunak’s father-in-law signed a billion-dollar deal with BP two months before the prime minister opened hundreds of new licences for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea.

In May, the Times of India reported that Infosys bagged a huge deal from the global energy company which is thought to be the second-largest in the history of the firm.

The Indian IT company is owned by the prime minister’s wife’s family although Sunak has insisted the matter is of “no legitimate public interest”.

Could one possibly suspect Sunak's motives?

[Irrev-Black]

Yeah, reefs are one thing, and coral sure look nicer when they're not dead and white.

But what about the plankton?

Consider the plankton—literally “wandering” from the Greek. This galaxy of organisms makes up the base of the oceanic food web. Phytoplankton are microscopic floating plants that feed on sunlight. These are in turn eaten by animals called zooplankton, including small crustaceans and fish larvae. Zooplankton are consumed by larger critters, like adult fish. “Phytoplankton will drive zooplankton, which will drive fish and will feed other things,” says Francisco Chavez, a biological oceanographer and senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. “The whole ecosystem has to be impacted in some form or another under warmer sea surface temperatures.”

Warmer temperatures will themselves stress out any number of the species in the planktonic community. Like corals do in reef ecosystems, the organisms of the open ocean have certain tolerances for heat. “A big part of the problem is we don't know the optimal temperature ranges for probably 99 percent of the organisms out there,” Roopnarine says. “We know they have them, but it's a very difficult thing to measure.”

The sea has absorbed around 90 percent of the excess heat humanity has pumped into the atmosphere—and it shows. By 2014, half of the world’s ocean surface was logging temperatures once considered extreme, which rose to 57 percent by 2019. In other words, extreme heat has become the new normal.

“Twenty years ago, we were talking about how 2050 would be when we could really point to dramatic things beginning to happen, and we would be in trouble by 2080, 2100,” says Roopnarine. “Literally—I would say every year for the past 15 years—things are happening that tell us our models have been a bit too slow. The speed at which this has been happening, I think, is quite surprising.”

Heat on its own isn’t the only concern. When oceans warm, a few things happen physically and chemically to the surface waters that these organisms call home. The warmer seawater gets, the less oxygen it can hold. As the planet rapidly warms, scientists have found that ocean oxygen levels have been steadily dropping, in some cases precipitously: The loss is up to 40 percent in tropical regions. That, of course, deprives organisms of the oxygen they need to survive.

Could be we've already ruined the lot.

[Roentare]

Found this on mastodon.

[Roentare]

It looks at the consequences carbon dioxide emissions have on an atmospheric circulation pattern called the Hadley cell that has a big impact on weather across much of the world. The study shows what might happen to the world if people keep polluting willy-nilly before finding a way to take those CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere.

“Nature is not that simple.”

Surprise, surprise — things don’t just snap back to normal, the study finds. That shows how important it is to limit pollution now rather than waiting to clean it up later. “It’s easy to think that if we reduce the CO2 concentration, the atmosphere will recover to its original state,” says Seo-Yeon Kim, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at Seoul National University. “Nature is not that simple.

Why sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere cant undo the climate change

[stylofone]

“It’s easy to think that if we reduce the CO2 concentration, the atmosphere will recover to its original state,” says Seo-Yeon Kim, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at Seoul National University. “Nature is not that simple.

When you look at something like the list of the world's largest machines , it immediately shows the problem of scale when it comes to the dream of carbon capture. Nearly all the machines are for the extraction, processing or transport of fossil fuels, especially coal. The largest floating vessels are natural gas platforms. Destroying the climate has been the biggest global industrial project in the history of humanity. The principles are simple and have been known since pre-history. You find stuff and burn it. We have refined the process and expanded it with these monstrous machines, as a driving force of the world economy.

The parallel process of carbon capture is a recent concept, it's more expensive to do and it isn't used to make stuff or fuel the economy. It's absurd to think that the companies and governments will ever do anything like what is required. Beyond absurd. Insane.

[Roentare]

Climatologist and weather historian Maximiliano Herrera went so far as to call it one of the most "extreme weather events the world has ever seen".

"For its duration, area, and intensity, it's probably the worst winter heatwave in the Southern Hemisphere," he said.

He said temperatures in South America earlier this week had even rivalled the prolonged heat experienced in Europe during July, despite being the middle of winter.

"South America is living one of the most extreme events the world has ever seen, unbelievable temperatures up to 38.9C in the Chilean Andine areas in mid-winter," Mr Herrera wrote on social media.

In the Coquimbo region, the mountain town of Vicuna reached a top of 37C, the Liceo Samuel Román Rojas weather station peaked at 35.4C and Monte Patricia reached 31.5C.

The unrelenting heat helped secure July 2023 as Earth's hottest month on record by global average temperature, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

New analysis by not-for-profit research group Climate Central found the exceptional heat of July would have been unlikely if not for climate change.

"There are likely multiple causes to these temperatures — record warm sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic, the developing El Niño in the Pacific, a heat dome that was recently over the region combined with foehn winds, and anthropogenic climate change,"

Mid-winter temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius in South America leave climatologists in disbelief

[stylofone]

If Republicans get their way in the US, we're really fucked!

https://news.yahoo.com/republican-2024- ... 39499.html

[pipbarber]

If Republicans get their way in the US, we're really fucked!

https://news.yahoo.com/republican-2024- ... 39499.html

I don't know why, but i read the comments at the end of this article. Of the 50 or so i scanned probably 15 promoted some form of denial. One interesting point that comes through is the idea that if we can't maintain our current economic systems and lifestyles it's the end of the world! It would be better if nothing existed rather than not be able to use exactly as much electricity and natural gas as i damn well please. Apparently the Dems and the dodgy scientists want us all to go back to the dark ages.

It is probably true though, to say that if we are to rapidly reduce emissions we need to radically change our economic systems. People are scared of that, i guess, with some justification. But really it's that or death by a thousand catastrophes. I suppose the latter seems more appealing than the former. It doesn't for me though. Modernity fucking sucks in so many ways, we have more to gain than lose, in my opinion. What happened to our imaginations?