I find myself frequently copying & pasting the same basic climatology links, so I'm preparing a parking lot here where I can have a bunch of them available. Nothing much to see here right now, sorry!
Why Republicans Turned Against the Environment Aug. 15, 2022, By Paul Krugman, Opinion Columnist
In 1990 Congress passed an amendment to the Clean Air Act of 1970, among other things taking action against acid rain, urban smog and ozone.
The legislation was highly successful, greatly reducing pollution at far lower cost than business interest groups had predicted. I sometimes see people trying to use acid rain as an example of environmental alarmism — hey, it was a big issue in the 1980s, but now hardly anyone talks about it. But the reason we don’t talk about it is that policy largely solved the problem.
What’s really striking from today’s perspective, however, is the fact that the 1990 legislation passed Congress with overwhelming, bipartisan majorities. Among those voting Yea was a first-term senator from Kentucky named Mitch McConnell.
That was then. This is now: The Inflation Reduction Act — which, despite its name, is mainly a climate bill with a side helping of health reform — didn’t receive a single Republican vote. Now, the I.R.A. isn’t a leftist plan to insert Big Government into everyone’s lives: It doesn’t coerce Americans into going green; it relies on subsidies to promote low-emission technologies, probably creating many new jobs. So why the scorched-earth G.O.P. opposition?
The immediate answer is that the Republican Party has turned strongly anti-environmental over time. But why?
Surveys from the Pew Research Center show the widening partisan divide over environmental policy. In the 1990s self-identified Republicans and Democrats weren’t that different in their environmental views: Republicans were less likely than Democrats to say that we should do whatever it takes to protect the environment, more likely to say that environmental regulation hurts the economy, but the gaps were relatively modest.
Since then, however, these gaps have widened into chasms, and not in a symmetrical way: Democrats have become somewhat more supportive of environmental action, but Republicans have become much less supportive.
Most of the divergence is fairly recent, having taken place since around 2008. I can’t help pointing out that Republican belief that environmental protection hurts the economy soared precisely during the period when revolutionary technological progress in renewable energy was making emissions reductions cheaper than ever before.
Republican voters may be taking their cues from politicians and media figures. So why have conservative opinion leaders turned anti-environment?
It’s not about belief in free markets and opposition to government intervention. One of the most striking aspects of recent energy disputes is the extent to which Republicans have tried to use the power of the state to promote polluting energy sources even when the private sector prefers alternatives. The Trump administration tried, unsuccessfully, to force electric utilities to keep burning coal even when other power sources were cheaper. Currently, as The Times has reported, many Republican state treasurers are trying to punish banks and other companies seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
What about the cynical view that the G.O.P. is simply in the pocket of fossil fuel interests? Obviously money talks, and contributions from coal and, to a lesser extent, oil and gas do flow mainly to Republicans. But the Inflation Reduction Act — which will open up many business opportunities — was endorsed by a number of large corporations, including energy companies like BP and Shell. Republicans were unmoved.
What has happened, I’d argue, is that environmental policy has been caught up in the culture war — which is, in turn, largely driven by issues of race and ethnicity. This, I suspect, is why the partisan divide on the environment widened so much after America elected its first Black president.
One especially notable aspect of The Times’s investigative report on state treasurers’ punishing corporations seeking to limit greenhouse gas emissions is the way these officials condemn such corporations as “woke.”
Wokeness normally means talking about racial and social justice. On the right — which is increasingly defined by attempts to limit the rights of Americans who aren’t straight white Christians — it has become a term of abuse. Teaching students about the role of racism in American history is bad because it’s woke. But so, apparently, are many other things, like Cracker Barrel offering meatless sausage and being concerned about climate change.
This may not make much sense intellectually, but you can see how it works emotionally. Who tends to worry about the environment? Often, people who also worry about social justice — either that, or global elites. (Climate science is very much a global enterprise.)
Even Republicans who have to know better won’t break with the party’s anti-science position. As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney had a decent environmental record; yet he joined every other Republican member of Congress in voting against the I.R.A.
What this means is that those people hoping for bipartisan efforts on climate are probably deluding themselves. Environmental protection is now part of the culture war, and neither policy details nor rational argument matters.
Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a distinguished professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography.
@ElwoodBlues Great information. It doesn't take a Nobel Prize winner in Economics to figure out that it's a good idea to care about the world we live in; sounds like a win, win for us and our grandkids. We need to care more. What is terrible is when people don't care enough to help out. We can all help, don't trash, pick up the trash, take mass transit, eat less meat, reuse, don't buy plastic, invest in green companies, be mindful and respectful of wildlife, and don't impose on them.
Nope. Your whole "East Anglia" conspiracy theory doesn't hold up under examination. Ten years later, journalists from The Guardian and The Daily Mail went back and examined the whole thing.
“In fact, the email was an entirely innocent and appropriate conversation between scientists,” Mann states in this week’s BBC Four documentary, Climategate: Science of a Scandal. He and Jones were merely trying to find appropriate ways of illustrating a graph of global temperature changes.
This view was not shared by Sarah Palin: the former US vice-presidential candidate wrote a Washington Post op-ed article that claimed the emails “reveal that leading climate ‘experts’ … manipulated data to hide the decline in global temperatures”.
. . .
but his views were supported by many others, such as Mike Hanlon, former science editor of the Daily Mail. “Scratch and sniff as we did, there was no smoking gun, no line that would show that there had been a conspiracy to fabricate a great untruth,” he said later. Thus, from the Guardian to the Daily Mail, the notion that Climategate represented “the worst scientific scandal of a generation” – as one UK newspaper had claimed – was found in the end to be unsupportable.
And now for the GOOD stuff!
Other powerful support was provided by physicists at University of California, Berkeley, who decided to test if deniers had been right to question Jones’s temperature charts. Led by Professor Richard Muller and backed by funds that included a $150,000 grant from noted climate-crisis denial supporters, the Charles Koch Foundation – the team re-analysed more than 1.6bn land temperature measurements dating back to the 1800s – and came to exactly the same conclusions as Jones: the fairly level temperatures that had continued through the past few centuries began to spike sharply a few decades ago as atmosphere carbon levels rose.
“Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with warming values published previously,” said Muller. “This confirms these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate-change sceptics did not seriously affect their conclusions.”
The East Anglia emails show nothing wrong was done. “In fact, the email was an entirely innocent and appropriate conversation between scientists,” Mann states in this week’s BBC Four documentary,...
People behaving badly and science lost a lot of credibility.
I agree that the East Anglia emails show scientists are people too. And when those people communicated privately and informally, they said things outsiders could misinterpret, like "use Mike's trick" which doesn't mean fake the data, it means correlate it with tree rings.
The journalists at the Guardian & Daily Mail looked long and hard at the East Anglia emails. Either those journalists joined the conspiracy, or they can be trusted when they say they found no wrongdoing, just informal personal communications that could be spun in a negative way.
Science is not as objective as most believe.
I've been part of the writing & publication of peer reviewed papers; I've also been a peer reviewer. Each individual publication is subject to question and doubt, but after a while they begin to pile up more and more evidence.
Science is a decentralized process. You could throw out everything done at East Anglia and barely make a dent in the work done on climate change. And that's where consensus comes in. Since I'm not trained to vet all the equations and assumptions climatologists use, I have to look to those others who can do so.
Thus I tend to accept the consensus opinion of the American Physical Society AND the American Chemical Society. Add in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and at least 15 other national organizations of publishing scientists, and you start to get a pretty strong consensus. See https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
@anonymized-h
I get it. I disagree.
Everybody is entitled to his/her own opinion. But your original claim here,
the historical data that forms the basis of Climate Change models was faked
is dead. It doesn't hold up under inspection. The two 'climate gates' didn't uncover anything terrible despite your beliefs to the contrary, and, because science is so decentralized, climate science doesn't need East Anglia at all.
@anonymized-h
there's no global data set available during this time period.
Actually, there is plenty of data recorded. Just not by humans.
There are ice cores from glaciers on multiple continents, sea & lake sediment cores, and tree ring data. And they all correlate. Oops, don't forget peat! Here's a pretty picture:
For just a taste, here's an article identifying major volcanic events over the last 11,000 years. In upper portions of glaciers you can count the years by layers and correlate different glaciers by volcanic events. CO2 can be read from trapped ice bubbles. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020JD032855
For yucks, look up "eruption of 1267"
Also see "Bristlecone pine tree rings and volcanic eruptions over the last 5000 yr" https://media.longnow.org/files/2/Salzer_Hughes_2007.pdf
And "Marine sediments unlock secrets about climate change in South Africa" https://theconversation.com/marine-sediments-unlock-secrets-about-climate-change-in-south-africa-56942
And "Climate connections between the hemisphere revealed by deep sea sediment core/ice core correlations" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0012821X96000830
Awww... Australia is feeling left out. There there, "12,000 year temperature record" https://www.ansto.gov.au/news/12000-year-temperature-record
@anonymized-h On the side of climate change there are multiple independent models converging to very similar results.
Opposed to climate change there is nitpicking. Yes, you can always question this ice core or that model's methane equation, but it's all nitpicking.
When climate change deniers actually have a numerical climate model that both accurately backcasts all the prior data and forecasts a different future climate, you'll have a leg to stand on. You can always find a few more nits to pick and I don't have the patience to address every nit.
You have no model, you have no backcasts or forecasts, you have nits. If that's enough to satisfy you, so be it.
Regardless of your nits, your original claim here,
the historical data that forms the basis of Climate Change models was faked
is dead. It doesn't hold up under inspection. The two 'climate gates' didn't uncover anything terrible despite your beliefs to the contrary, and, because science is so decentralized, climate science doesn't need East Anglia at all.
@anonymized-h And conveniently, none of the climate skeptics managed to keep a copy of the definitive proof of climate change malfeasance. RIIIIIGHT.
When you start proposing that Fox News and the Wall St Journal and National Review and The Sun are all participating in some kind of leftwing blackout of alleged definitive proof of climate change malfeasance, then I have to conclude that from your perspective reality has a liberal bias.
@anonymized-h What you've done is demonstrate clearly that you've got nothing here; that your original allegation:
the historical data that forms the basis of Climate Change models was faked
is dead. It doesn't hold up under inspection. The two 'climate gates' didn't uncover anything terrible despite your beliefs to the contrary, the 3rd one is a figment of your imagination, and, because the science is so decentralized, climate science doesn't need East Anglia at all.
There is no such thing as an average or ideal climate.
While that may or may not be true, it's irrelevant to the issue at hand. The goal in reducing CO2 output is purely about protecting our YUGE investments.
So here's another way to look at managing anthropogenic climate change; thru the lenses of probability and cost benefit analysis.
The total stock capitalization of American businesses traded on the stock exchanges is $48 trillion. Someone on Quora calculated the land & resource value of the whole USA at $5000 trillion. So I don't think it's unreasonable to value US seaside land, buildings, & infrastructure at the very round number of $100 trillion.
If you are CEO of a $100 trillion corporation, and some of your people are telling you the whole thing could be flooded in 20 years or 40 years or whatever, what's the prudent thing to do? Answer: ask for cost benefit analyses.
This approach removes the whole "religious war" aspect of the question and focuses on insurance style calculations.
What are the cost estimates for protecting your $100 trillion from floods, and what's a reasonable probability estimate that the doomsayers are correct? The religious war approach pins those probabilities at 0% and 100%, but suppose you allow a 25% probability that the doomsayers are correct, or, alternatively, that they're only 25% correct (25% is just for the sake of argument; I'm not married to the figure).
With that assumption, you now have $25 trillion at risk, so what's the prudent amount to spend to insure that $25 trillion?
A quick google says homeowners insurance costs about $3300/yr for each $1 million of value. Scaling to $25 trillion, that works out to $82 billion per year, or a 12 year investment of about $1 trillion.
So there's nothing outlandish about a ten year one trillion dollar green energy plan, especially given that the plan includes plenty of jobs, infrastructure upgrades, and goods purchased from American businesses.
Regarding John Christy, his Congressional testimony speculation was PROVEN WRONG!
Christy is fond of this graph:
Remote Sensing Systems estimate of the temperature of the middle troposphere compared to the CMIP5 multi-model average (top frame), and the difference between the two over time (bottom frame). Illustration: Santer et al. (2017), Nature Geoscience
Lemme just point out here that Christy's data ALSO shows rising temperatures, and the difference between his remote sensing data and other data only amounts to tiny fractions of a degree per decade. What Christy is doing here is nitpicking the models; saying their predictions aren't quite right. He's not dismissing the models, he's helping fine tune them.
And now to commentary from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/jun/28/climate-scientists-just-debunked-deniers-favorite-argument
... atmospheric temperatures seem not to have warmed quite as fast since the turn of the century as climate model simulations anticipated they would.
How you react to this information is a good test of whether you’re a skeptic or a denier. A denier will declare “aha, the models are wrong, therefore we don’t need any climate policies!” A skeptic will ask what’s causing the difference between the observational estimates and model simulations.
There are many possible explanations. Maybe the tricky and often-adjusted estimates of the atmospheric temperature made by instruments on orbiting satellites are biased. Maybe there’s something wrong with the models, or our understanding of Earth’s atmosphere. Maybe the inputs used in the model simulations are flawed. The answer is likely a combination of these possibilities, but in congressional testimony earlier this year, Christy tried to place the blame entirely on the models, with a denier-style framing:
the average of the models is considered to be untruthful in representing the recent decades of climate variation and change, and thus would be inappropriate for use in predicting future changes in the climate or for related policy decisions.
And in testimony to Congress in December 2015, Christy offered his unsupported speculation that the discrepancy was a result of climate models being too sensitive to rising greenhouse gases:
ndeed, the theoretical (model) view as expressed in the IPCC AR5 in every case overestimated the bulk tropical atmospheric temperature response of extra greenhouse gases … indicating the theoretical understanding of the climate response is too sensitive to greenhouse gases.
New study tests and falsifies Christy’s assertions
In a new study, a team climate scientists led by Ben Santer sought to answer this question. They effectively disproved Christy’s assertion that the discrepancy was due to models being too sensitive to the increased greenhouse effect. Instead, the main culprit seems to be incorrect inputs used in the climate model simulations.
So Christy's assertion about the model has been proven wrong. But wait, there's more!!
The issue is that climate model simulations are run using specific scenarios. These scenarios assume specific changes in factors that influence global temperature and climate changes (known as “forcings”), like rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases and changes in solar and volcanic activity. Climate models don’t make “predictions;” rather, they make “projections” of how temperatures and other climatological factors will change in response to those forcing input scenarios. There’s also a random component known as “internal variability” due to factors like unpredictable ocean cycles.
An infamous example of deniers exploiting this wonky technical point to mislead policymakers happened in 1998. Congressional Republicans invited fossil fuel-funded Pat Michaels to testify ahead of the Kyoto international climate negotiations. In a shameless distortion of reality, Michaels evaluated a 1988 global temperature projection by James Hansen at NASA, but deleted all except the scenario that was the least like the actual forcing changes that had occurred over the prior decade. By only looking at Hansen’s model projection under a scenario where greenhouse gases rose much faster than they had in reality, Michaels deceptively made it appear as though Hansen’s climate model had vastly over-predicted global warming.
Santer’s team found a similar issue in comparing simulated and observed changes in atmospheric temperatures over the past few decades:
There are known systematic errors in these forcings in model simulations performed in support of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. These errors arise in part because the simulations were performed before more reliable estimates of early 21st century forcing became available. The net effect of the forcing errors is that the simulations underestimate some of the cooling influences contributing to the observed “slowdown”.
For example, were Christy right that models are too sensitive to rising greenhouse gases, they should be systematically wrong during the entire period for which we have observational data. On the contrary, aside from a small discrepancy in the late 20th century that can be explained by natural internal variability, Santer’s team showed that the difference between model simulations and observations only begins around 1998. A problem with model sensitivity would also show up in studies looking at global temperature changes in response to large volcanic eruptions, which create a big change in forcing and temperature. But those studies rule out the low climate sensitivities that Christy favors, and as Santer’s team notes:
there are no large systematic model errors in tropospheric cooling following the eruptions of El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991.
On the other hand, research has identified a number of real-world cooling influences in the early 21st century that weren’t accurately represented in the climate model simulation scenarios. The sun went into an unusually quiet cycle, there was a series of moderate volcanic eruptions, and the boom in Chinese coal power plants added sunlight-blocking pollution to the atmosphere. Using statistical tests, Santer’s team showed that those unexpected cooling effects combined with shifts in ocean cycles best explained the model-data discrepancy in atmospheric temperatures over the past 20 years.
TL;DR: Christy only identifies a discrepancy beginning around 1998. Climate scientists used Christy's data to fine tune their computer climate models, and for that I thank him!!
@ElwoodBlues I agree, but just don't end up in you know where 😜, that would be super duper hot. Jesus warned us that the sun will scorch us in the end days. Increased temperatures is not the only birth pangs in the last generation before Jesus will make a new heaven and a new earth, but increased knowledge, terrors, cold hearts, earthquakes, floods, and the gospel in "the air". And oh yeah, I almost forgot mockings...
If all the ice in Greenland melted, it would raise global sea levels about 23 feet. It won't all melt, but 10% would be very noticeable. Add in Antarctica, and you're looking at a total sea level rise of 210 feet from complete melting. Even 5% melting would result in a 10 foot rise which would be problematic in many cites such as Miami & New Orleans.
And the glaciers don't have to melt in place. While the global average temp has risen about 1°F, Greenland has risen about 4°F. That means more meltwater on top. Which sinks to the bottom thru crevasses and lubricates the bottoms of glaciers to slide faster. Once the ice slides into the ocean; once it leaves land and becomes floating ice, it raises sea levels.
@ElwoodBlues It is important to care for our environment. Thank you for all these detailed research information. I think we can all do our part to care about our world. Even picking up our trash instead of throwing it on the ground is helpful. I am wondering what the air-conditioning is doing to our atmosphere lately?
but I've yet to hear a rational explanation of how miniscule increases in an atmospheric trace gas such as CO2, causes the earth to warm.
It's because CO2 & methane are transparent to visible light but more opaque to infrared. The solar energy comes pouring in via the visible spectrum, but the heat can't leave so easily via the infrared spectrum due to that opacity. Kids' version: https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/explainer-co2-and-other-greenhouse-gases
In order to actually prove human carbon emissions influence climate, all variables would have to remain constant
Nope. With multiple data points we can solve for multiple variables simultaneously. Detailed climate models account for all the variables you list and more. They are verified and calibrated based on 800,000 years of prior climate data.
http://web.mit.edu/globalchange/www/climate.html
Global warming models are based on small amounts of data. The earth is 4.6 billion years old, and we are expected to believe they can draw conclusions based on a hockey stick graph with 50 years of data?
Nope, not 50 years, 800,000 years, covering about 7 ice ages. The climate data comes from bubbles in glacial ice, and is corroborated by data from lake & sea floor sediments. https://icecores.org/about-ice-cores CO2 & methane & temp data
Here's where the various data sets were collected:
The most salient thing about the 800,000 years of climate data is the rate of change during those previous 7 ice ages compared to the current rate of change this century.
Where does the money for climate research come from?
Fair question - it comes mostly from the National Science Foundation. Equally fair: where does the money for climate denial come from? The US oil industry makes about $110 billion per year; coal another $20 billion. Big Oil spends $3.6 billion per year on advertising; a sum equal to about 8X the whole NSF climate budget. You're not naive enough to believe none of that money goes to propaganda, are you?
The global warming / climate change we're seeing in the last 100 or so years is MUCH different from anything measured in the glacial & sea sediment records covering the last 800,000 years. CO2 is rising 100x faster, and temps 10x faster.
"How is Today’s Warming Different from the Past?" https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GlobalWarming/page3.php "As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming."
How is today's CO2 increase different? https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide "The annual rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred at the end of the last ice age 11,000-17,000 years ago."
Fact is, anthropogenic global warming is accepted by a YUGE segment of the scientific community. Would you accept the consensus opinion of the American Physical Society AND the American Chemical Society? How about the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and at least 15 other national organizations of publishing scientists? See https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
Terminology: Global Warming vs. Climate Change https://climate.nasa.gov/global-warming-vs-climate-change/
Can the proponents of this ... tell us the % of CO2 in the atmosphere and let us know what % they want it at
Yes
Current average atmospheric CO2 levels: 417.2 parts per million. That's about 50% higher than pre-industrial levels. In 1990, average CO2 levels were about 355 ppm. https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2914/No-sign-of-significant-decrease-in-global-CO2-emissions https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/14/4811/2022/
Actually, the Paris Accords set a limit on temperature rise. The Accords agree to limit global temperature rise this century at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
For large industrial countries like the US, that means cutting its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to about 50% below 2005 levels by 2030.
In 2005, US CO2 emissions were 19.5 metric tons per capita. In 2021 we emitted 14.24 metric tons per capita That means the US is more than half way to the Paris Accords emission level.
Lemme repeat that - the US CO2 emissions cuts are already more than half way to the Paris Accords levels!
We are on track, and the dire economic predictions of the anti-environemental extremists are proven false.
Electric cars have a FAR lower lifetime CO2 footprint and a FAR lower lifetime energy footprint. Since energy correlates closely to dollars, it means electric cars have a far lower total cost of ownership.
These graphs are for Vancouver CA in 2018, so energy costs are similar to the US; however energy is represented in megajoules - there are 3.6 MJ in a KWH, and 1 MJ = .37 horsepower hours. It assumes 150,000Km of travel over the life of the car, about 93,000 miles.
Lifecycle CO2 costs (these include extracting & transporting oil)
The world has 8,000 gigawatts of installed electricity generation capacity, according to the International Energy Agency. In theory, if the capacity ran 24-7 it could generate 69 million gigawatt hours of electricity annually.
The world consumed about 27 million gigawatt hours of electricity in 2019. That electricity warmed homes and ran businesses. What’s more, the world consumed the equivalent of roughly 28 million gigawatt hours of electrical energy to power its cars and trucks. That energy, of course, was stored in liquid fuel. Power plants didn’t have to generate it. Gasoline and diesel make most of the world’s vehicles go.
So 27 plus 28 is 56. The world needs 56 million gigawatt hours to keep the lights on as well as drive cars and trucks. There is 69 million gigawatt hours of capacity.No problem. But the generating capacity of wind and solar, of course, can’t be “on” 100% of the time. And even coal, nuclear, and hydro power plants have to take maintenance downtime. Still, there looks to be some spare generating capacity and the world’s 2 billion or so vehicles won’t convert to battery power all at once.
BTW, lithium batteries are great because they recycle so well.
Study: Recycled Lithium Batteries as Good as Newly Mined > Cathodes made with novel direct-recycling beat commercial materials 15 Oct 2021
And, lithium salts dissolved in hot geothermal wells has minimal environmental impact.
The new 'gold rush' for green lithium Geothermal brine could become a promising and sustainable source of an essential element for the renewable energy transition 24th November 2020
Bit more about recycling of automotive lithium battery packs
Here’s what Redwood learned in its first year of EV battery recycling The company recycled 500,000 lbs of material from 1,268 EV battery packs.
In February 2022, Redwood Materials began a pilot program in California to recycle electric vehicle batteries. The startup partnered with the state government as well as Ford, Volvo, Volkswagen, and Toyota, plus the car dismantling industry, to source end-of-life lithium-ion and nickel metal hydride traction batteries. Now a year in, it has shared some findings from those first 12 months.
In total, Redwood recovered 1,268 battery packs, amounting to more than 500,000 lbs (226,796 kg). Most of these were from cars that had reached the end of their particular road—Redwood says that less than 5 percent were "damaged, defective, or recalled."
Those packs came from 19 different EV and hybrid models, and the vast majority—82 percent in total—was lithium-ion, with the remaining 18 percent NiMH cells. Redwood says it recovered 95 percent of the lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and other metals from these packs. And as we noted last month, the company is already producing production-grade copper anode foil.
Seems there is acid rain denial among some folks who don't live in the areas where forests were decimated by acid rain. I didn't know acid rain denial was such a big thing!
Environmental regulations reduced SO2 which reduced sulfuric acid in rain. What a difference 30 years made!
Note that rising pH means falling acidity. Every increase of 1 in pH equates to a reduction by a factor of 10 in acid concentration. pH of 7 is neutral.
@ElwoodBlues in Pennsylvania in the seventies there were some really bare years in the woods, then death everywhere, tent caterpillars taking over, more bare years.... But people would never propose "solutions" to something like that! Industry was God to them but the forest wasn't squat to them. And libs were already so, so much fun to torture!
That's why I still call it "Hate Sylvania" in my heart.
Are glaciers shrinking? What does the photographic evidence say?
Muir Glacier, Alaska
Muir Glacier and Inlet, Alaska, 1880s and 2005
Carroll Glacier, Alaska, 1906 and 2004
Grinnell Glacier, Montana, 1926 and 2008
Bear Glacier from space 1980. 1989, 2011
Bear Glacier from the air 2002, 2007
Glacier shrinkage driving global changes in downstream systems https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1619807114
Accelerated global glacier mass loss in the early twenty-first century https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03436-z
Using largely untapped satellite archives, we chart surface elevation changes at a high spatiotemporal resolution over all of Earth’s glaciers. We extensively validate our estimates against independent, high-precision measurements and present a globally complete and consistent estimate of glacier mass change. We show that during 2000–2019, glaciers lost a mass of 267 ± 16 gigatonnes per year, equivalent to 21 ± 3 per cent of the observed sea-level rise6. We identify a mass loss acceleration of 48 ± 16 gigatonnes per year per decade, explaining 6 to 19 per cent of the observed acceleration of sea-level rise.
The oceans have not risen a millimeter. Again you are WRONG
Sea level rise, mm/year, as measured by GPS
Anonymized-hj says:
There has been no increase in sea levels.
Actually, sea levels have risen 6 to 8 inches in the past 100 years. But the process continues even after the warming stops.
Between about 21,000 years and about 11,700 years ago, Earth warmed about 4 degrees C (7.2 degrees F), and the oceans rose (with a slight lag after the onset of warming) about 85 meters, or about 280 feet. However, sea levels continued to rise another 45 meters (about 150 feet) after the warming ended, to a total of 130 meters (from its initial level, before warming began), or about 430 feet, reaching its modern level about 3,000 years ago.
This means that, even after temperatures reached their maximum and leveled off, the ice sheets continued to melt for another 8,000 years until they reached an equilibrium with temperatures.
Stated another way, the ice sheets’ response to warming continued for 8,000 years after warming had already ended, with the meltwater contribution to global sea levels totaling 45 additional meters of sea-level rise.
From about 3,000 years ago to about 100 years ago, sea levels naturally rose and declined slightly, with little change in the overall trend. Over the past 100 years, global temperatures have risen about 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F), with sea level response to that warming totaling about 160 to 210 mm (with about half of that amount occurring since 1993), or about 6 to 8 inches. And the current rate of sea-level rise is unprecedented over the past several millennia.
Sea levels have been quite stable for the last 2000 years while humans built coastal cities. Climate change now threatens to raise sea levels and swamp those cities.
The antarctic ozone hole is a case that demonstrates both humanity's ability to affect the atmosphere and humanity's ability to fix the damage we've done. The ozone hole began shrinking when we reduced CFC outputs by over 99%.
NASA began measuring Earth’s stratospheric ozone layer by satellite in 1979. By the time the Montreal Protocol went into effect in 1989, ozone concentrations (in Dobson units) had declined significantly over the Antarctic, enlarging the ozone hole.
The American Chemical Society says:
Chlorofluorocarbons and Ozone Depletion A National Historic Chemical Landmark . . . “When we realized there was a very effective chain reaction, that changed the CFC investigation from an interesting scientific problem to one that had major environmental consequences,” Rowland told Chemical & Engineering News in an extensive interview in 2007. “You don’t often get many chills down your back when you look at scientific results,” he added, but that had been one of those moments.
Research studies in the laboratory show that chlorine (Cl) reacts very rapidly with ozone. They also show that the reactive chemical chlorine monoxide (ClO) formed in that reaction can undergo further processes that regenerate the original chlorine, allowing the sequence to be repeated very many times (a chain reaction). Similar reactions also take place between bromine and ozone.
But do these ozone-destroying reactions occur in the "real world"? All the accumulated scientific experience demonstrates that the same chemical reactions do take place in nature. Many other reactions (including those of other chemical species) are often also taking place simultaneously in the stratosphere. This makes the connections among the changes difficult to untangle. Nevertheless, whenever chlorine (or bromine) and ozone are found together in the stratosphere, the ozone-destroying reactions are taking place.
Sometimes a small number of chemical reactions are so dominant in the natural circumstance that the connections are almost as clear as in laboratory experiments. Such a situation occurs in the Antarctic stratosphere during the springtime formation of the ozone hole. Independent measurements made by instruments from the ground and from balloons, aircraft, and satellites have provided a detailed understanding of the chemical reactions in the Antarctic stratosphere. Large areas reach temperatures so low (less than 80°C, or 112°F) that stratospheric clouds form, which is a rare occurrence, except during the polar winters. These polar stratospheric clouds allow chemical reactions that transform chlorine species from forms that do not cause ozone depletion into forms that do cause ozone depletion. Among the latter is chlorine monoxide, which initiates ozone destruction in the presence of sunlight. The amount of reactive chlorine in such regions is therefore much higher than that observed in the middle latitudes, which leads to much faster chemical ozone destruction. The chemical reactions occurring in the presence of these clouds are now well understood from studies under laboratory conditions that mimic those found naturally in the atmosphere.
SW-User
How about a local place, if it has to be SW, SW introduced categorizatons long ago and you can have posts found under a tab? I think a cafe might be more useful than preaching on SW, though?
@SW-User I'm not sure what you mean by a cafe. Like a physical cafe, a Starbucks or something? Anyway, I see the same misinformation frequently repeated here on SW, so I want to make it easier for myself to respond with solid science.
SW-User
@ElwoodBlues an actual place caring? And it's often healthy to connect in real life those who support your thoughts. Otherwise, you end up like your own drumbeat, drumming to your own tune, out of spec from life, and guessing when people don't respond they are deniers.
You did post under parking your thoughts... I'm not sure it's hard to imagine someone might give you another idea where to "park" your ideas.
Place to park the facts on volcanic emission of CO2.
There's a silly rumor going around that volcanoes emit far more CO2 than human activity. That silly rumor was debunked in 2009, LOL!!!
According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the world’s volcanoes, both on land and undersea, generate about 200 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, while our automotive and industrial activities cause some 24 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year worldwide. Despite the arguments to the contrary, the facts speak for themselves: Greenhouse gas emissions from volcanoes comprise less than one percent of those generated by today’s human endeavors.
33 measured degassing volcanoes emit a total of 60 million tons of CO2 per year. There are a total of ~150 known degassing volcanoes, implying (based on the measured ones) that a total of 271 million tons of CO2 are released annually. 30 historically active volcanoes are measured to emit a total of 6.4 million tons of CO2 per year. With ~550 historically active volcanoes total, they extrapolate this class of object contributes 117 million tons per year. The global total from volcanic lakes is 94 million tons of CO2 per year. Additional emissions from tectonic, hydrothermal and inactive volcanic areas contribute an estimated 66 million tons of CO2 per year, although the total number of emitting, tectonic areas are unknown. And finally, emissions from mid-ocean ridges are estimated to be 97 million tons of CO2 annually.
Add all of these up, and you get an estimate of around 645 million tons of CO2 per year. Yes, there are uncertainties; yes, there's annual variation; yes, it's easy to get led astray if you think that Mt. Etna is typical, rather than the unusually large emitter of CO2 that it is. When you realize that volcanism contributes 645 million tons of CO2 per year – and it becomes clearer if you write it as 0.645 billion tons of CO2 per year – compared to humanity's 29 billion tons per year, it's overwhelmingly clear what's caused the carbon dioxide increase in Earth's atmosphere since 1750.
In fact, even if we include the rare, very large volcanic eruptions, like 1980's Mount St. Helens or 1991's Mount Pinatubo eruption, they only emitted 10 and 50 million tons of CO2 each, respectively. It would take three Mount St. Helens and one Mount Pinatubo eruption every day to equal the amount that humanity is presently emitting.
Bookmarking this post, not that I expect to find any eagerness to argue with the usual deniers and conspiracists on this site. We all know who the most of them are.
Most of the Earth's ice is in Antarctica and Greenland; are those glaciers and ice sheets shrinking?
A recent study of Greenland’s ice sheet found that glaciers are retreating in nearly every sector of the island, while also undergoing other physical changes. Some of those changes are causing the rerouting of freshwater rivers beneath the ice.
In a study led by Twila Moon of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, researchers took a detailed look at physical changes to 225 of Greenland’s ocean-terminating glaciers—narrow fingers of ice that flow from the ice sheet interior to the ocean. They found that none of those glaciers has substantially advanced since the year 2000, and 200 of them have retreated. . . . “The coastal environment in Greenland is undergoing a major transformation,” said Alex Gardner, a snow and ice scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-author of the study. “We are already seeing new sections of the ocean and fjords opening up as the ice sheet retreats, and now we have evidence of changes to these freshwater flows. So losing ice is not just about changing sea level, it’s also about reshaping Greenland’s coastline and altering the coastal ecology.”
April 1, 2021. The Antarctic ice sheet's mass has changed over the last decades. Research based on satellite data indicates that between 2002 and 2020, Antarctica shed an average of 149 billion metric tons of ice per year, adding to global sea level rise.Apr 1, 2021 . . . Areas in East Antarctica experienced modest amounts of mass gain due to increased snow accumulation. However, this gain is more than offset by significant ice mass loss on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (dark red) over the 19-year period. Floating ice shelves whose mass change GRACE and GRACE-FO do not measure are colored gray.
For Antarctica, BEDMAP2 and Bedmachine provides the most complete and up-to-date estimate of ice volume, and it is derived by combining thousands of radar and seismic measurements of ice thickness [2,3].
In fact, BEDMAP 2 is derived from 25 million measurements. Fretwell et al. 2013 estimated that the Antarctic Ice Sheet comprised 27 million km3 of ice, with a sea level equivalent of ~58 m. BedMachine estimates the sea level equivalent of Antarctica to be 57.9±0.9m
https://www.globalchange.gov/browse/indicators/global-sea-level-rise
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-coastal-flooding
Remote Sensing Systems estimate of the temperature of the middle troposphere compared to the CMIP5 multi-model average (top frame), and the difference between the two over time (bottom frame). Illustration: Santer et al. (2017), Nature Geoscience
Update: source https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/89/9/2008bams2370_1.xml