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Many of the Climate Impacts Predicted in the Last National Climate Assessment, in 2014, Are No Longer Theoretical (nytimes.com)
This year's report contains many of the same findings cited in the previous National Climate Assessment, published in 2014. From a report: More and more of the predicted impacts of global warming are now becoming a reality. For instance, the 2014 assessment forecast that coastal cities would see more flooding in the coming years as sea levels rose. That's no longer theoretical: Scientists have now documented a record number of "nuisance flooding" events during high tides in cities like Miami and Charleston, S.C.
"High tide flooding is now posing daily risks to businesses, neighborhoods, infrastructure, transportation, and ecosystems in the Southeast," the report says. As the oceans have warmed, disruptions in United States fisheries, long predicted, are now underway. In 2012, record ocean temperatures caused lobster catches in Maine to peak a month earlier than usual, and the distribution chain was unprepared.
"High tide flooding is now posing daily risks to businesses, neighborhoods, infrastructure, transportation, and ecosystems in the Southeast," the report says. As the oceans have warmed, disruptions in United States fisheries, long predicted, are now underway. In 2012, record ocean temperatures caused lobster catches in Maine to peak a month earlier than usual, and the distribution chain was unprepared.
Sea levels are rising at about 4mm per year, and that rate is expected to accelerate as warming continues. This is a SERIOUS PROBLEM in the long run, and we need to deal with it.
But since 2014, that is 16mm, or about 0.6 inches. It is ridiculous to claim that this is the cause of coastal flooding. This sort of silly alarmism is causing "crisis fatigue" and just making people more and more skeptical about global warming and science in general.
Not to mention that much of the lower half of the Atlantic seacoast is subsiding at a rate around 3-4mm per year.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Nice red herring. Nobody's "throwing options off the table that lightly". There is active ongoing research into the effects of iron seeding going on at my nearby university, and CO2 producing power is being replaced as we speak with other options
The only ones throwing options off the table are the people who keep maintaining that it's not a big problem and that if we just wait a little bit, the climate will change back.
https://www.businessinsider.co...
You are welcome on my lawn.
is that America will NOT be the hardest hit. Mid to Southern Europe, along with China's breadbasket, will be hit by high temps and massive droughts.
If Nations want to avoid this, they will all work together, as opposed to pushing others to cut back, while they continue to add lots more fossil fuel plants.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Come up with actual solutions that don't involve mass starvation before throwing around insults like "denier" and "liar."
I am a science supporter. Here are my solutions:
1. Better and more available contraceptives for 3rd world women.
2. Better education, healthcare, higher literacy rates, and better sex ed for 3rd world women
In the long run, these first two solutions will likely have the greatest effect. No one will use less CO2 than the people that aren't born. The 1st world has already turned the corner on both population growth and energy consumption. We need to help the rest of the world do the same, and do it faster.
3. More efficient air conditioners. The best ACs use a 3rd the power of the worst. Wider adoption of ACs in India, China, and SE Asia is the biggest reason for growing CO2 emissions. We should have an $10M X-Prize for a better and cheaper AC.
4. More efficient and cost effective insulation, and improved passive heating systems for buildings.
5. Better sensors to detect people moving around in buildings. Only heat/cool/light where the people are.
6. Better batteries. Wider adoption of electric cars.
7. Wider adoption of wind and solar, along with better storage, and better long distance transmission.
8. Improvement of internet speeds and tele-presence technology so that fewer people need to travel and commute.
9. Aggregated self-driving-delivery-on-demand services, so no one needs to drive to the grocery store to buy a jug of milk, or go to the post office to drop off a package.
10. Iron fertilization of the oceans to generate plankton blooms. This will remove CO2 from the ocean, and increase fish harvests. People can eat more fish and less beef. Of all the geo-engineering proposals, this is the easiest and the most likely to work.
None of these require killing half the human race (although #1 and #2 will reduce our numbers) nor destroying our civilization.
9. Aggregated self-driving-delivery-on-demand services, so no one needs to drive to the grocery store to buy a jug of milk, or go to the post office to drop off a package.
I've got a better idea—how about we design our cities and neighbourhoods so that the shops are within walking distance of most people instead of regarding the mandatory use of a car for this as something "normal", which in much of the rest of world it is not?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
without force. Only government can decide who suffers and who gets to live the Great life.
;)
Government will decide who's money is taken to pay the price, who is affected by the grand goal of controlling our climate. Who must downsize their dreams/houses/lives, Who gets what amount of electricity, heat and food. What industries are outlawed. Who's jobs are done away with. Who gets travel permits and who must stay where they are.
It seems to me that most everyone here is shouting that something has to be done but usually exclude themselves. They see it as the fault of others that little is being done.
Step up, vote correctly and you will bring your wildest dreams in to reality. But you may not like what you get. Socialism really does suck kids!
As for me, I don't see much happening that will affect me. I am 63. Have not flown in 10 years. Put 23 miles on my Toyota Prius last month. Have not driven over 2k-3k miles a year in, well years. Live in a 2000 sq ft house. And work remotely for the most part. How about you?
Just my 2 cents
don't forget all the little ways you can make a difference that are actually attainable.
I heard an interesting story about how an accountant reduced CO2 emissions by a hundred thousand tons per year.
Potatoes were sold by the ton. So farmers would soak their harvested potatoes in water to increase the weight before they sold them. Then the buyers would put the potatoes in warehouses and run giant dehumidifiers to dry them out so they wouldn't spoil, and so they would cook faster.
An accounting change, started by McDonalds and soon adopted by the rest of the fast food industry and then groceries, was to buy potatoes based on dry-weight. This obviated the need to soak and then dry the potatoes, saving time and energy consumption by both the farmers and their customers.
Say someone is diagnosed with a Stage 1 cancer. The doctor says, "Treat this now to give you the best chance to survive." The patient either doesn't believe the doctor, or doesn't think the money is available, or thinks that God will save them, or thinks the doctor is just being an alarmist. So, the patient does nothing.
A couple years later the patient goes back to the doctor. The cancer has metastasized. There's a huge effort, but it's all for naught.
Is it really alarmism when 99% of the experts say we need to solve a problem as quickly as possible?
If you look at data for Fort Denison in Sydney for example, they show a rise of around 0.25 feet over 100 years.
If you look at that graph even more closely, you'll find something pretty interesting.- the sea level is pretty stable up until 1950 or so, where it takes a large rise and then remains fairly stable thereafter (draw your own fit line from 1860 to 1950, then from 1950 to 2010).
So since 1950 there has hardly been a rise at all, at peaks a 50 *mm* increase - that is just 0.003 feet!
Just how is that much sea level rise supposed to result in any flooding above and beyond the huge variance that is tidal levels?
In any coastal city I have seen it would take feet of sea level rise, at least, to cause any real long term worry for a city and then only during larger storm events (which has not changed due to global warming, despite what people would have you believe).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your claims are as absurd as claims of other people.
On average it will be wetter or more precisely: more humid. There is no evidence that deserts will become green or "food baskets" as your parent calls them get more water in the right time.
Humidity in the air, which makes it (perceived) unbearable for humans, does not mean it rains enough to water plants or even food crops.
We have trouble to predict El Nino and LA Nina effects, and that are cyclic climate phenomena, and you want to predict which area of the world will have more water for agriculture in 20 years or in 50 years? I call that hubris (no idea why americans spell it that way) .... but good luck!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Just how is that much sea level rise supposed to result in any flooding above and beyond the huge variance that is tidal levels? ... however that depends on coastal structure, no idea if Sydney is particular prone to storm floods.
Because 1mm average sea level rise means 1mm more water in low tide and roughly 6mm more water in high tide and on top of that, if there is a wind from the wrong direction it increases those 6mm to 18mm to 36mm
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Because it is actually pretty hard to have enough people within walking distance to support most types of stores beyond the corner quickie-mart.
It is not a problem in Europe, and neither in the few countries I visited in Africa and Asia.
that is going to need market area of a couple tens of thousands of people, and it is rather difficult to get that many people to fit within walking distance of anything.
You have never been in a civilized city, like Paris?
There are supermarket chains that have a store every 200m ... and the big stores you find in commercial areas or outside of every medium sized town, like Leclerce or Auchon etc. have a "miniAuchon" etc. all over the city.
And then again: every majour road is chained with "Arabs" selling food and groceries and "Chineese" selling vegetables and fruit. I live in Menilmontant when I'm in Paris. In a radius of 100m around my place are probably close to 50 food shops, and 3 or 4 of them are super markets. In a radius of 400m I most likely have 20 super markets.
Three times a week thee is a market on the middle "lane" of the road. The road is "three lanes", a double lane in each direction, and a center lane for pedestrians, lined left and right with trees. There is market so often and you can buy everything from eggs via cheese and oysters and fish to vegetables and simple clothing and a USB charger ... or second hand cloth.
https://www.google.co.th/maps/...
Use street view and walk around. It is full with small shops, restaurants, small hotels, coffee bars and: super markets!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
When science gets it wrong, it's still wrong.
That and people keep claiming science is all about fact/truth etc when it's nothing of the sort. It's about best explanation of the day.
Science does not know everything. IAAS and I'll be the first to tell you that. However, science is indisputably the best tool humans have to investigate a great number of things in the universe.
You are right that science is not about the truth, but only insofar as science considers absolute truth to be inaccessible. However, science most definitely does deal in facts -- observable facts -- as the foundation of a process that tries to place the tightest possible shrink-wrap around the truth.
As for science being about the "best explanation of the day", you overlook that science continually strives to find better and better "explanations" (aka theories or laws) -- ones that last longer and longer before they need to be replaced, modified, or extended. This is a strength, not a weakness. And some of these "explanations" are venerable indeed -- ones such as thermodynamics, the atomic theory of matter, darwinian evolution, and so on. They can be challenged at any time by contrary evidence, but we have yet to see any.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Fuck them and their apology. It was zero episodes too late. How many impressionable Slashdot nerds use manbearpig to shout down real science? Fuck them, and fuck the Slashdot incel nerds who take their science cues from a cartoon.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
I read your grade school Mr. Science link. I am sure this is convincing to a grade schooler. However, most grade schoolers have not been taught that correlation is not causation. I wont bother providing a link for that.
When you have actual scientific evidence, please post it. Until then, AGW is no different than being Christian. Both require faith and ignoring or twisting science to get the desired conclusion regardless of facts or lack thereof.
We can measure the effective 'age' of the atmosphere via carbon dating. It is getting older. We know that CO2 traps heat within the atmosphere. We have sophisticated models that predict the change in climate accurately (and models from 30 years ago have proved to be very good). So in what way is this correlation and not causation? For it to be only correlation you need to show why, this time, CO2 is not trapping heat in the atmosphere.
3. More efficient air conditioners. The best ACs use a 3rd the power of the worst. Wider adoption of ACs in India, China, and SE Asia is the biggest reason for growing CO2 emissions. We should have an $10M X-Prize for a better and cheaper AC.
4. More efficient and cost effective insulation, and improved passive heating systems for buildings.
Efficiency angle already well into diminishing returns territory especially heating and cooling scene. While it is physically possible to do some crazy shit like heat a mansion in sub-zero weather with a candle the reality is quite different.
5. Better sensors to detect people moving around in buildings. Only heat/cool/light where the people are.
This is often a counterproductive strategy for the most energy efficient heating and cooling technologies as a practical matter they operate by leveraging temperature differentials on a continuous basis. When you heat or cool a space it's not just the air and moisture content you are also heating or cooling solid matter in the environment which is 1000 times the density of air.
6. Better batteries. Wider adoption of electric cars.
7. Wider adoption of wind and solar, along with better storage, and better long distance transmission.
By far the biggest bang for the buck in energy space is development of dirt cheap batteries that don't suck ass in any way (low weight, high density, safe, operating temperatures, long life). If you can pull it off everything in the energy scene changes overnight.
9. Aggregated self-driving-delivery-on-demand services, so no one needs to drive to the grocery store to buy a jug of milk, or go to the post office to drop off a package.
If you want do something meaningful on the conservation front increasing household size is the most effective option available.
Iron fertilization of the oceans to generate plankton blooms. This will remove CO2 from the ocean, and increase fish harvests. People can eat more fish and less beef. Of all the geo-engineering proposals, this is the easiest and the most likely to work.
There are productive things that can be done with carbon without polluting the air and seas with crap and seeing what happens.
STP/biochar for example can provide best soils for growing crops while sequestering excess carbon.
This is exactly how cities and villages are made around the whole world that haven't been bulldozed for a highway. I lived this way for years on the West Coast of the USA, and I saw it in Peru. Mixed-use densely populated centers, built to a human scale rather than an automobiles. Guess what? It's way more pleasant to be able to do your daily commute and socializing and basic grocery shopping in the course of a half-mile walk than sit in traffic. It's way more fun, way more affordable, way less accident-prone, way better for everyone to live around. And, it spares the environment of a lot of damage.
You seem to be just fine with them predicting less.
That is just your perception.
But in case of e.g. Spain: yes. There is no reason why Andalusia should have more rain when the "weather" around it, aka over the Atlantic is warmer and hence more water evapours. The water aka clouds don't know: "oh!!!! we are more know!!!! we can go over the mountains and rain behind it!!! Lets go, lets go!"
The clouds will rain down before the mountains just like they always did ...
If that will result in less water, I don't know. Most of regions like that rely on snow melting after the winter. So with your idea of more humidity, more clouds, perhaps some of the regions have more snow/ice. Which would mean more water in spring and summer ... but: neither you nor me have the expertice and equipment to pick regions where this is the case. And on global scale: that is most likely irrelevant. Or do you want to have a new profession? "Refugee pilot from 'badly hit regions' for humans to migrate to 'positively affected regions'" ??? Do you really think you can monitor all the variables and happenings that such a "traffic pilot" would work? Or do you accept that harvest changes and other developments trail 20 or 30 yeas behind the hardships the refugees experience?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The notion that "global warming" means that it has to warm everywhere equally all the time is a ridiculously weak straw man. But even if that were true, a +2C increase would not be enough to make snow disappear in places where it is common. In fact in most such places the limiting factor in snow isn't temperature, but atmospheric moisture.
The simplest disproof of the "uniformly warmer everywhere all the time" straw man is winter. AGW is caused by solar forcing, which is locally weakest in winter. In fact, at the North Pole, there is no wintertime forcing at all.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
By the time it's "that important" to the people who make the decisions, it will be too late to do much of anything about it. This is the sort of thing you have to be VERY proactive about. There are feedback loops that are incredibly difficult to reverse and crossing certain thresholds triggers those. It's like freeway repair. The longer you wait, because "it's not that bad yet" the more expensive and disruptive the fix becomes. Sure a few hundred million for some potholes and cracks sounds like a lot, but it sounds like very little compared to $1.5 billion to replace the entire roadbed. Same with global warming. Yeah, the changes we need to make sound like a lot and disruptive but compared to what it will take a mere 5 years from now, 10 years from now... it's nothing.
You can keep your ant farm for humans. I can stand outside at night and hear the wind blowing in the trees. When I lay down to sleep, it is actually dark in the room.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba