The Climate thread

[brakeman 28040]

 

[brakeman 28040]

 

[bolverk 28886]

Look at this chart of global sea surface temps. In 2016, temps, while very warm, followed historical patterns. Shit went off the rails in 2023 and continues to do so today.

 

 

Scientists Are Freaking Out About Ocean Temperatures

From his office at the University of Miami, Brian McNoldy, an expert in hurricane formation, is tracking the latest temperature data from the North Atlantic with a mixture of concern and bewilderment.

For the past year, oceans around the world have been substantially warmer than usual. Last month was the hottest January on record in the world’s oceans, and temperatures have continued to rise since then. The heat wave has been especially pronounced in the North Atlantic.

“The North Atlantic has been record-breakingly warm for almost a year now,” McNoldy said. “It’s just astonishing. Like, it doesn’t seem real.”

Across the unusually warm Atlantic, in Cambridge, England, Rob Larter, a marine scientist who tracks polar ice levels, is equally perplexed.

“It’s quite scary, partly because I’m not hearing any scientists that have a convincing explanation of why it is we’ve got such a departure,” he said. “We’re used to having a fairly good handle on things. But the impression at the moment is that things have gone further and faster than we expected. That’s an uncomfortable place as a scientist to be.”

Spin the globe to the south, and the situation is similarly dire.

“The sea ice around the Antarctic is just not growing,” said Matthew England, a professor at the University of New South Wales who studies ocean currents. “The temperature’s just going off the charts. It’s like an omen of the future.”

What’s driving the heat?
Global warming, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, has been driving up global temperatures on land and in the sea for decades now. Over the past year, worldwide average temperatures were more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, higher than before the industrial age. New data from a variety of sources has led some climate scientists to suggest that global warming is accelerating.

Given the overall warming trend, higher temperatures in the oceans aren’t a complete surprise. Oceans absorb most of the additional heat that greenhouse gasses trap near the surface of the Earth, and have been steadily warming for years. The current El Niño weather cycle is also leading to additional heat in the Pacific Ocean and allowing more energy to be released into the atmosphere.

Yet the past year has come as a shock even to those who follow the data closely.

“We all know that there’s been a rapid warming, particularly over the last few decades,” Larter said. “But over the last 18 months, it’s jumped up beyond what we expected.”

Scientists are offering a range of explanations for the record heat in the North Atlantic.

One surprising factor may be a reduction in pollution in the area. In 2020, a new rule went into effect that limited the amount of sulfur dioxide contained in the fuel used by container ships. That has reduced the amount of particulate matter in the air, which let in more solar radiation and contributed to global warming.

“When those aerosols were in the sky above the shipping lanes, they helped create a cloud cover, and there’s much less now,” McNoldy said. “That’s a legitimate thing.”

But the reduction of sulfur dioxide alone can’t explain the North Atlantic’s extreme heat, scientists said.

Another factor may be the complex feedback loops in the Earth’s weather patterns. The North Atlantic has been unusually clear lately, with fewer clouds than normal to block the sunlight from heating the water. The area has also been less windy than normal, which may have also led to a spike in temperatures.

Without strong winds, colder water from deeper in the ocean doesn’t rise to the surface as readily, England said.

What comes next
In the near term, McNoldy said the warmer waters in The Atlantic could fuel a strong and lengthy hurricane season.

“Compared to other fairly significant hurricane seasons, this is way warmer at this point in the year,” he said.

The marine heat is also expected to reduce Arctic sea ice, Larter said.

“What’s bad news for sea ice has a lot of knock-on effects,” he said. “The formation of sea ice is the process that really drives a lot of the ocean’s circulation. And if the overturning circulation slows down, that really has climate impacts across the world.”

Recent research has suggested that as glaciers melt and more fresh water enters the Atlantic, a crucial ocean current could falter, potentially leading to drastic changes in global weather patterns, such as a rapid reduction in temperatures across Europe.

McNoldy said it was too early to say whether the ongoing heat wave is part of the early stages of such a change. “I hope it’s not something much worse, like, you know, like some significant change in the ocean current,” he said. “That would have far greater implications.”

[Biff Tannen 44919]

Good.  Let's fucking end this charade.

[Gap03 3143]

Hurricane season this year is going to be fun, given temps in the Atlantic are already at June levels.  I mean, maybe if we get a tropical storm parked over the Highland Lakes, I'll be able to water my lawn this summer.  Knowing our luck, though, we'll probably have widespread wildfires going that will end up being exacerbated by the dryside winds from a Cat 6 hitting Houston.      

[InkaUtexas 24820]

Yep, we are fucked. Lets go ahead and cut down all the amazon so we can all have cheap IKEA furniture.

 

[Brisketexan 103146]

On 2/28/2024 at 12:10 PM, bolverk said:

Recent research has suggested that as glaciers melt and more fresh water enters the Atlantic, a crucial ocean current could falter, potentially leading to drastic changes in global weather patterns, such as a rapid reduction in temperatures across Europe.

Do you know what will be AWESOME about that?  When it happens, the climate change deniers will stand up defiantly and say "SEE!  Europe is getting COLDER!  Proof that 'global warming' is a hoax!"  I can guarantee you with 100% certainty that is exactly the path they will take.  Will the rebuttal of "holy shit, you dumbasses....it happened BECAUSE of warming causing melt which caused the current to collapse" even make a dent in their stupidity?  Come on, man.  We all know the answer to that.

[Biff Tannen 44919]

2 hours ago, BeardIP said:

@here

This isn't Slack

[gmr548 16253]

Flew from DEN to IAH on Tuesday night, flew right over the expanding Panhandle fires. Just surreal to see lines of grass fires as far as the eye could see from 36k feet... in February. I'll have to see if my wife (window seat) got photos. Also caused a shitload of turbulence. 

[brakeman 28040]

[Biff Tannen 44919]

We're gonna learn the hard way.  Which may be the best thing for us.

[Jiggy-Z 3419]

42 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

We're gonna learn the hard way.  Which may be the best thing for us.

Not gonna be the best thing for other living things.

[Biff Tannen 44919]

2 hours ago, Jiggy-Z said:

Not gonna be the best thing for other living things.

In the long run it may be.

[elfenix 34000]

34 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

In the long run it may be.

we should probably find some tungsten plates and on them mathematically describe the mechanism for global warming, so that if anyone comes around in another few hundred million years, finds a layer of plastic in the geological records, and realizes they're the second civilization on this planet, maybe they'll find the warning and take heed.

Edited March 1 by elfenix

[hookem2010 2510]

How long do you think we have left? I'm sure we will fuck most other creatures up big time before we get our own comeuppance, but it seems like we are well into the back back half of human history. I think Mother Nature has too big of a lead on technology and/or common sense for the species to endure for another 200,000 years. We got another millennium left in us?

[Doc Sam Beckett 5695]

37 minutes ago, hookem2010 said:

How long do you think we have left? I'm sure we will fuck most other creatures up big time before we get our own comeuppance, but it seems like we are well into the back back half of human history. I think Mother Nature has too big of a lead on technology and/or common sense for the species to endure for another 200,000 years. We got another millennium left in us?

I think we have a long time to go. We will turn the world into this type of hellscape, but instead of Vegas being empty, it will be full of people and we will have devised a way to survive even after destroying the earth. 

[GreenspointTexas 9353]

How in the hell dont people see that we are causing this?

[Brisketexan 103146]

Just now, GreenspointTexas said:

How in the hell dont people see that we are causing this?

Because for a huge swath of the population, facts only make them angry.

[High Plains Drifter 10915]

On 2/28/2024 at 12:10 PM, bolverk said:

Look at this chart of global sea surface temps. In 2016, temps, while very warm, followed historical patterns. Shit went off the rails in 2023 and continues to do so today.

 

 

Scientists Are Freaking Out About Ocean Temperatures

From his office at the University of Miami, Brian McNoldy, an expert in hurricane formation, is tracking the latest temperature data from the North Atlantic with a mixture of concern and bewilderment.

For the past year, oceans around the world have been substantially warmer than usual. Last month was the hottest January on record in the world’s oceans, and temperatures have continued to rise since then. The heat wave has been especially pronounced in the North Atlantic.

“The North Atlantic has been record-breakingly warm for almost a year now,” McNoldy said. “It’s just astonishing. Like, it doesn’t seem real.”

Across the unusually warm Atlantic, in Cambridge, England, Rob Larter, a marine scientist who tracks polar ice levels, is equally perplexed.

“It’s quite scary, partly because I’m not hearing any scientists that have a convincing explanation of why it is we’ve got such a departure,” he said. “We’re used to having a fairly good handle on things. But the impression at the moment is that things have gone further and faster than we expected. That’s an uncomfortable place as a scientist to be.”

Spin the globe to the south, and the situation is similarly dire.

“The sea ice around the Antarctic is just not growing,” said Matthew England, a professor at the University of New South Wales who studies ocean currents. “The temperature’s just going off the charts. It’s like an omen of the future.”

What’s driving the heat?
Global warming, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, has been driving up global temperatures on land and in the sea for decades now. Over the past year, worldwide average temperatures were more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, higher than before the industrial age. New data from a variety of sources has led some climate scientists to suggest that global warming is accelerating.

Given the overall warming trend, higher temperatures in the oceans aren’t a complete surprise. Oceans absorb most of the additional heat that greenhouse gasses trap near the surface of the Earth, and have been steadily warming for years. The current El Niño weather cycle is also leading to additional heat in the Pacific Ocean and allowing more energy to be released into the atmosphere.

Yet the past year has come as a shock even to those who follow the data closely.

“We all know that there’s been a rapid warming, particularly over the last few decades,” Larter said. “But over the last 18 months, it’s jumped up beyond what we expected.”

Scientists are offering a range of explanations for the record heat in the North Atlantic.

One surprising factor may be a reduction in pollution in the area. In 2020, a new rule went into effect that limited the amount of sulfur dioxide contained in the fuel used by container ships. That has reduced the amount of particulate matter in the air, which let in more solar radiation and contributed to global warming.

“When those aerosols were in the sky above the shipping lanes, they helped create a cloud cover, and there’s much less now,” McNoldy said. “That’s a legitimate thing.”

But the reduction of sulfur dioxide alone can’t explain the North Atlantic’s extreme heat, scientists said.

Another factor may be the complex feedback loops in the Earth’s weather patterns. The North Atlantic has been unusually clear lately, with fewer clouds than normal to block the sunlight from heating the water. The area has also been less windy than normal, which may have also led to a spike in temperatures.

Without strong winds, colder water from deeper in the ocean doesn’t rise to the surface as readily, England said.

What comes next
In the near term, McNoldy said the warmer waters in The Atlantic could fuel a strong and lengthy hurricane season.

“Compared to other fairly significant hurricane seasons, this is way warmer at this point in the year,” he said.

The marine heat is also expected to reduce Arctic sea ice, Larter said.

“What’s bad news for sea ice has a lot of knock-on effects,” he said. “The formation of sea ice is the process that really drives a lot of the ocean’s circulation. And if the overturning circulation slows down, that really has climate impacts across the world.”

Recent research has suggested that as glaciers melt and more fresh water enters the Atlantic, a crucial ocean current could falter, potentially leading to drastic changes in global weather patterns, such as a rapid reduction in temperatures across Europe.

McNoldy said it was too early to say whether the ongoing heat wave is part of the early stages of such a change. “I hope it’s not something much worse, like, you know, like some significant change in the ocean current,” he said. “That would have far greater implications.”

 

in the early/mid 80s, (good god nearly 40 years ago) I had to take a science class outside of my major, so I took a class on climate modeling or something. The professor not only warned of global warming due to human burning of fossil fuels, but predicted this exact same scenario as a consequence, (in addition to more frequent and worse extreme weather events, sea level rise, etc.) 40 fucking years ago.  4 decades and not a gotdamned thing has been done. 

Edited March 1 by High Plains Drifter

[Brisketexan 103146]

6 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

in the early/mid 80s, (good god nearly 40 years ago) I had to take a science class outside of my major, so I took a class on climate modeling or something. The professor not only warned of global warming due to human burning of fossil fuels, but predicted this exact same scenario as a consequence, (in addition to more frequent and worse extreme weather events, sea level rise, etc.) 40 fucking years ago.  4 decades and not a gotdamned thing has been done. 

Blah blah blah....but have you considered how awesome it is that "rolling coal" makes thuh libz cry?  Yeah, I thought not.  

[Captainant 26861]

39 minutes ago, GreenspointTexas said:

How in the hell dont people see that we are causing this?

[bolverk 28886]

8 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

in the early/mid 80s, (good god nearly 40 years ago) I had to take a science class outside of my major, so I took a class on climate modeling or something. The professor not only warned of global warming due to human burning of fossil fuels, but predicted this exact same scenario as a consequence, (in addition to more frequent and worse extreme weather events, sea level rise, etc.) 40 fucking years ago.  4 decades and not a gotdamned thing has been done. 

Agreed that that's the most frustrating thing about all this. We've known about this shit for DECADES. Shit, some Swedish guy did so in 18 fucking 96.

 

[High Plains Drifter 10915]

12 minutes ago, Captainant said:

 

Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we pwned the libs. 

 

 

[jimmyjazz 45055]

3 hours ago, hookem2010 said:

How long do you think we have left? I'm sure we will fuck most other creatures up big time before we get our own comeuppance, but it seems like we are well into the back back half of human history. I think Mother Nature has too big of a lead on technology and/or common sense for the species to endure for another 200,000 years.

Dude, the earth is only 6,000 years old.  /fundagelicals

[Biff Tannen 44919]

It's a combination of head in the sand stupidity, greed, and for a lot of people, the inability to comprehend geologic time scale and the effect humans have on our environment as the population grows exponentially.

[High Plains Drifter 10915]

On 2/28/2024 at 6:11 PM, Brisketexan said:

They can't just let THIS fire burn, it's too big, mean, and destructive.  You have to contain it if possible.

Now, they should probably look at being more aggressive about controlled burns in the panhandle going forward, but that's a separate path.

 

I'm going to remove my reply to this thread, because the other thread seems to be more for other things. I'll spoiler the tldr part.

Spoiler

For two years I worked for the Nature Conservancy- a massive nonprofit that works to restore degraded ecosystems to their natural (more or less anyway) state. They try and focus on unique or special or uncommon ecosystems, areas, whatever. There are some legitimate complaints about the organization, but they do good work. Some decades ago they bought (or had donated in some cases) some former ranchland from a number of different ranches. This land had been mismanaged for over a century by the ranching landowners. We started trying to restore the land. First priority was get the burn danger down, by doing controlled burns whenever possible (almost impossible because of state, local, and even federal pushback) or just getting out the chainsaws and clearing brush. 

About a year after I started, a pretty big fire (although small by the standards of the current one) was started by lightning, quickly spread, and in a day was burning large areas of the Conservancy's land. They decided to let it burn (despite huge protests of donors, adjacent landowners, volunteers) working only to save the visitor center, the on-site house of the caretaker that lived there, and a few other buildings. I worked for two days on crews digging, chainsawing, bulldozing a fire break around those structures. None burned, other than one old well house, despite the fire getting to withing maybe 50 ft of the visitor center.  Thousands of acres of the property did burn, including grasslands and forested areas. We eventually had to evacuate due to the smoke becoming too thick, or we probably could have saved the well house also. 

Neighboring ranchers called in the state forest service (who to their credit give help us dig our firebreaks), who helped to completely extinguish any spark that ended up on their land. Very minimal acreage of land on the neighboring ranches burned. Great success!

 

<*At least some of this population increase is due to birds locally migrating to the burned area due to the fire improving their habitat: More bugs to eat, more seeds to eat, healthier grass to hide in, etc. Whatever the reason, the point stands.>

 

 

Flash forward one year: 

The area around the visitor center, which had been a grassy field before the fire, was back to being a grassy field with wild flowers, butterflies, ground nesting birds, absolutely idyllic looking. 

When comparing areas that had burned to nearby ranchers' fields that had not burned, the difference was stark: lush green fields vs brown pasture. 

Also, by a fortuitous set of circumstances, somebody had done an intensive bird census of ground nesting birds in the area a few years before the fire. Two years after the fire, we replicated that study using the exact same methodology. The population of ground nesting birds (quail mostly) was greater than it had been a few years before the fire*. And this is all despite the fact that during the entire intervening four or five years (two or three years before the fire, two years after the fire) the area had been under serious drought conditions. I have no doubt that if similar studies had been done, the same thing would have been found for arthropods, small mammals, reptiles, herbivores, large predators, etc. 

I don't want people or houses to burn. I don't want cattle to burn. By all means, save what can be saved structure and livestock wise. What I do want is for people to wake the fuck up, and realize that burning is a good thing, its what is supposed to happen, and it is going to happen no matter what we do. All we can do is choose how the burning happens. And we need to consider that when we use the land for any purpose (living, ranching, farming, hunting, recreation, whatever). If we don't, we will have what is happening right now happen again and again and again. 

Nature is telling us to rip the band aid off, and let it burn, like we should have been doing for the past 100+  years. Then when we rebuild, lets rebuild in a way that acknowledges that there will be fires again in the future. And be prepared for them. And be good stewards of the land in the meantime. 

 

Point is, and the reason I quoted your post and not any of the others-- the attitude that this fire is "too big, too mean, too destructive" to not put out is exactly why this fire is happening. 

 

Shit's on fire yo. 

Good.gif

 

 

 

[DaysOff 7671]

200 years. Tops.

[nbmishoid 904]

Won’t change ranchers minds re climate change.   Biden fault.

[Brisketexan 103146]

1 hour ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

I'm going to remove my reply to this thread, because the other thread seems to be more for other things. I'll spoiler the tldr part.

  Hide contents

For two years I worked for the Nature Conservancy- a massive nonprofit that works to restore degraded ecosystems to their natural (more or less anyway) state. They try and focus on unique or special or uncommon ecosystems, areas, whatever. There are some legitimate complaints about the organization, but they do good work. Some decades ago they bought (or had donated in some cases) some former ranchland from a number of different ranches. This land had been mismanaged for over a century by the ranching landowners. We started trying to restore the land. First priority was get the burn danger down, by doing controlled burns whenever possible (almost impossible because of state, local, and even federal pushback) or just getting out the chainsaws and clearing brush. 

About a year after I started, a pretty big fire (although small by the standards of the current one) was started by lightning, quickly spread, and in a day was burning large areas of the Conservancy's land. They decided to let it burn (despite huge protests of donors, adjacent landowners, volunteers) working only to save the visitor center, the on-site house of the caretaker that lived there, and a few other buildings. I worked for two days on crews digging, chainsawing, bulldozing a fire break around those structures. None burned, other than one old well house, despite the fire getting to withing maybe 50 ft of the visitor center.  Thousands of acres of the property did burn, including grasslands and forested areas. We eventually had to evacuate due to the smoke becoming too thick, or we probably could have saved the well house also. 

Neighboring ranchers called in the state forest service (who to their credit give help us dig our firebreaks), who helped to completely extinguish any spark that ended up on their land. Very minimal acreage of land on the neighboring ranches burned. Great success!

 

<*At least some of this population increase is due to birds locally migrating to the burned area due to the fire improving their habitat: More bugs to eat, more seeds to eat, healthier grass to hide in, etc. Whatever the reason, the point stands.>

 

 

Flash forward one year: 

The area around the visitor center, which had been a grassy field before the fire, was back to being a grassy field with wild flowers, butterflies, ground nesting birds, absolutely idyllic looking. 

When comparing areas that had burned to nearby ranchers' fields that had not burned, the difference was stark: lush green fields vs brown pasture. 

Also, by a fortuitous set of circumstances, somebody had done an intensive bird census of ground nesting birds in the area a few years before the fire. Two years after the fire, we replicated that study using the exact same methodology. The population of ground nesting birds (quail mostly) was greater than it had been a few years before the fire*. And this is all despite the fact that during the entire intervening four or five years (two or three years before the fire, two years after the fire) the area had been under serious drought conditions. I have no doubt that if similar studies had been done, the same thing would have been found for arthropods, small mammals, reptiles, herbivores, large predators, etc. 

I don't want people or houses to burn. I don't want cattle to burn. By all means, save what can be saved structure and livestock wise. What I do want is for people to wake the fuck up, and realize that burning is a good thing, its what is supposed to happen, and it is going to happen no matter what we do. All we can do is choose how the burning happens. And we need to consider that when we use the land for any purpose (living, ranching, farming, hunting, recreation, whatever). If we don't, we will have what is happening right now happen again and again and again. 

Nature is telling us to rip the band aid off, and let it burn, like we should have been doing for the past 100+  years. Then when we rebuild, lets rebuild in a way that acknowledges that there will be fires again in the future. And be prepared for them. And be good stewards of the land in the meantime. 

 

Point is, and the reason I quoted your post and not any of the others-- the attitude that this fire is "too big, too mean, too destructive" to not put out is exactly why this fire is happening. 

 

Shit's on fire yo. 

Good.gif

 

 

 

Well,  maybe my take wasn't nuanced enough.  There are too many structures in danger to let this one burn.  If firefighters could make a defensive effort as to just 5-6 buildings, then sure.....let the rest of the open prairie burn.  But here, the fire line is so damned long that there are literally thousands of structures, including whole towns, in the fire's way.  And I GUARANTEE you that the firefighting efforts are focused almost entirely on areas where the fire could threaten a material number of structures.  In other words, I am very confident that where the fire's spread threatens only open land and a few non-essential structures (a barn, storage building, etc.), the firefighting effort is functionally "let it burn."

They can't do so BROADLY here because a lot of shit is threatened.  But I'm sure they are "letting it burn" where the threat to property is reduced.  If for no other reason than they have to husband their firefighting resources and use them where they are most needed.

When a fire is this big (and thus threatens thousands and thousands of structures and lives), and is moving at ridiculous speeds, then yeah, you can't just "let it burn."  Even the scenario you quoted didn't just "let it burn."

[bolverk 28886]

Weirdly Warm Winter Has Climate Fingerprints All Over It, Study Says
Recent heat waves in cities worldwide have the hallmarks of global warming, researchers said. And last month was the hottest February on record.

Winter was weirdly warm for half the world’s population, driven in many places by the burning of fossil fuels, according to an analysis of temperature data from hundreds of locations worldwide.

That aligns with the findings published late Wednesday by the European Union’s climate monitoring organization, Copernicus: The world as a whole experienced the hottest February on record, making it the ninth consecutive month of record temperatures. Even more startling, global ocean temperatures in February were at an all-time high for any time of year, according to Copernicus.

Taken together, the two sets of figures offer a portrait of an unequivocally warming world that, combined with a natural El Niño weather pattern this year, has made winter unrecognizable in some places.

The first analysis, conducted by Climate Central, an independent research group based in New Jersey, found that in several cities in North America, Europe and Asia, not only was winter unusually warm, but climate change played a distinctly recognizable role.

Climate Central looked at anomalies in December and January temperature data in 678 cities worldwide and asked: How important are the fingerprints of climate change for these unusual temperatures? That is to say, its researchers tried to isolate the usual variability of the weather from the influence of climate change.

“There’s the temperature,” said Andrew Pershing, Climate Central’s vice-president for science, “and then there’s our ability to really detect that climate signal in the data.”

Cities in the Midwestern United States jumped out for experiencing an extraordinarily warm winter and for the influence of climate change, which is caused mainly by the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. “Really off the charts,” Dr. Pershing said. “No ice on most of the great lakes. That’s remarkable.”

Minneapolis, for instance, was nearly 5.6 degrees Celsius warmer than average between December and February. The fingerprints of climate change could be detected for 33 days, essentially a third of the winter season.

Tehran was 4.2 degrees Celsius warmer on average during the same three-month period. The effects of human-made climate change could be detected over 68 days of winter.

Milan’s winter average temperature was roughly 2 degrees Celsius higher, but there was a strong climate change signal over 55 days,.

Elsewhere, even though there were a few significantly hot days, winter average temperatures didn’t vary wildly and the climate signal was less pronounced.

The Climate Central report, also published Wednesday, concluded that 4.8 billion people worldwide “experienced at least one day of temperatures that would be virtually impossible without the influence of carbon pollution.”

In some parts of the world, the unusually warm winter weather was overshadowed by other crises, such as war. Several cities in Ukraine were significantly warmer than usual, and there, too, were the fingerprints of climate change. Kyiv, for instance, was nearly 3 degrees Celsius warmer on average this winter, and climate change was seen to have played a role for 33 days. Likewise, in several cities of Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the tropical belt, where it’s usually much hotter on average, climate signals are easier to detect, though temperature increases can be smaller. Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur for instance were barely 1 degree Celsius warmer on average. But the effects of climate change could be detected for nearly the entire three-month period.

It’s not just individual cities that set records this winter. Globally, February 2024 was the warmest February on record, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service. It was 1.77 degrees Celsius above the average February temperature in the recent preindustrial era from 1850-1900.

This is the ninth month in a row to break the temperature record for that respective month. Taken together, the past 12 months have been the hottest 12 consecutive months on record: 1.56 degrees Celsius above the average from 1850-1900.

“A year ago, the fact that the global temperature for a particular month would reach 1.5 degrees C above the pre-industrial level would have been considered exceptional,” said Julien Nicolas, a senior scientist at Copernicus, via email. Now, it’s happened repeatedly.

This doesn’t mean we have exceeded the international Paris Agreement goal of stopping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial temperature. For that to happen, the planet would need to be 1.5 degrees warmer for several years, long enough to reflect a more permanent change.

For now, in the short term, the ocean has been particularly hot. The average global sea-surface temperature in February was the warmest recorded for any month, surpassing the previous record set in August 2023.

[RomaVicta 29472]

John Kerry was on All Things Considered yesterday. He's been fighting the good fight as a Biden envoy and pledges to continue working on slowing climate change [younger viewers may become alarmed and saddened by the following word. Viewer discretion advized.] warming. Made good points about progress and now focusing on the private sector.

I just got sad. I hate that, but it's true.

Humanity has handed the ball off on warming to natural processes already triggered by anthropormorphic impact.

• The permafrost thawing (New Yorker article) releasing massive amounts of methane.
• The threat to the Gulf Stream due to glacier melting and fresh water added to North Atlantic Ocean.
• Intensification of wildfires due to weather patterns already impacted.
• Rising ocean temperatures killing coral reefs and supporting plumes of phosphate triggered micro-organism growth that causes giant dead zones in spots like the middle of the Gulf of Mexico every year.

There are others that I'm forgetting. My sources are generally The New Yorker and Atlantic over the last four years or so.

What do we get from idiots? 

• You can destroy the lives of our children and their's, but you'll never take our hamburgers!
• Things will cost more if we do anything. Makes any action de facto evil.
• It's a socialist plot cooked up by the nanny-state-make-us-slaves Dems.
• It's not happening. It was cold during the winter. So there.
• Donald fucking Trump. Rush fucking Limbaugh. Ronald fucking Reagan. (Villain Nixon signed off on the EPA. He's a comparative hero. Let that sink in.)

Being right will have never been less satifying than it will be for the girl whose head we patted and then dismissed.

But don't worry, it's only Climate Change. 

[elfenix 34000]

1 hour ago, RomaVicta said:

John Kerry was on All Things Considered yesterday. He's been fighting the good fight as a Biden envoy and pledges to continue working on slowing climate change [younger viewers may become alarmed and saddened by the following word. Viewer discretion advized.] warming. Made good points about progress and now focusing on the private sector.

I just got sad. I hate that, but it's true.

Humanity has handed the ball off on warming to natural processes already triggered by anthropormorphic impact.

• The permafrost thawing (New Yorker article) releasing massive amounts of methane.
• The threat to the Gulf Stream due to glacier melting and fresh water added to North Atlantic Ocean.
• Intensification of wildfires due to weather patterns already impacted.
• Rising ocean temperatures killing coral reefs and supporting plumes of phosphate triggered micro-organism growth that causes giant dead zones in spots like the middle of the Gulf of Mexico every year.

There are others that I'm forgetting. My sources are generally The New Yorker and Atlantic over the last four years or so.

What do we get from idiots? 

• You can destroy the lives of our children and their's, but you'll never take our hamburgers!
• Things will cost more if we do anything. Makes any action de facto evil.
• It's a socialist plot cooked up by the nanny-state-make-us-slaves Dems.
• It's not happening. It was cold during the winter. So there.
• Donald fucking Trump. Rush fucking Limbaugh. Ronald fucking Reagan. (Villain Nixon signed off on the EPA. He's a comparative hero. Let that sink in.)

Being right will have never been less satifying than it will be for the girl whose head we patted and then dismissed.

But don't worry, it's only Climate Change. 

I heard that yesterday and was enraged by Exxon’s ceo blaming the population at large for not doing enough to combat this problem. Hope that guy gets slowly fucked with a rusty cactus

[RomaVicta 29472]

On the plastics front which isn't really related to climate, there was a similar POV on a Last Week Tonight episode where Oliver narrated the story of how Coca-Cola and other big plastic users somehow managed to push the burden of dealing with plastic on to the consumer. It's our responsibility to save the unimaginably massive tonnage of plastic they create every day.

I recall glass bottles with deposits from the old days. As with aluminum, there was an incentive to collect the bottles and turn them in for a little cash.  California has a deposit return on plastic bottles that works pretty well. I was in Europe this past summer and was impressed at how much less they rely on plastic. 

We don't give a shit, or we feel deprived if anyone wants to change anything. It's pathetic. I'm no great citizen but I buy beverages like colas exclusively in aluminum. It helps fund other recycling and gives me a shred of rationalizing that I'm some kind of fucking hero for allowing an ounce of civic mindedness to penetrate my awareness.

[brakeman 28040]

 

Horrific! But as a medical professional, this is great for business.

 

[brakeman 28040]

This should go to political cartoons but we are the threatened species.

[Biff Tannen 44919]

3 minutes ago, brakeman said:

 

Horrific! But as a medical professional, this is great for business.

 

Oh. So we’re all fucked then, regardless of whether we eat healthy or not. God dammit. Welp, bbq every day!

[RomaVicta 29472]

You have to believe something environmental is causing the rise in rate of rapid onset dementia in people under 60. I don't have a link for that, but I believe I've read or heard about the dementia rate from someplace reliable.

[DigglerontheHoof 20449]

We deserve whatever Mother Nature throws at us. 

[Bookman 4550]

On 2/29/2024 at 3:20 PM, Brisketexan said:

Do you know what will be AWESOME about that?  When it happens, the climate change deniers will stand up defiantly and say "SEE!  Europe is getting COLDER!  Proof that 'global warming' is a hoax!"  I can guarantee you with 100% certainty that is exactly the path they will take.  Will the rebuttal of "holy shit, you dumbasses....it happened BECAUSE of warming causing melt which caused the current to collapse" even make a dent in their stupidity?  Come on, man.  We all know the answer to that.

My father said this weekend that the snow in California is proof that climate change is a hoax. 

[troph 23963]

[WhatTheBuck 28574]

1 hour ago, Bookman said:

My father said this weekend that the snow in California is proof that climate change is a hoax. 

We need to learn to say to our family, friends, and loved ones: “You can’t be that dumb.”

[hookem2010 2510]

I heard some "good" news on NPR the other day. They had a researcher studying ice loss in the Antarctic on, and he said when Thwaites goes, they now believe the ice shelf it's holding in place won't lead to abrupt sea level rise (10 ft) measured in years. It will instead take place over several decades!

We've seen how great we are at adapting to gradual (on a human timescale) climate change and taking the necessary steps to avoid catastrophe. I'm sure we will respond appropriately to the world's largest glacier breaking off and melting, and not just let our coastal cities and island nations gradually drown, right?

[GreenspointTexas 9353]

There is only one solution: Carbon Capture

 

everything else either wont gain enough traction or will enter too late to change anything

[Captainant 26861]

18 minutes ago, GreenspointTexas said:

There is only one solution: Carbon Capture

 

everything else either wont gain enough traction or will enter too late to change anything

Oh you mean like cutting down thousands of acres of rainforest for paper pulp? That's capturing that damn carbon that was in the trees!

[Mdhorn 5819]

9 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

You have to believe something environmental is causing the rise in rate of rapid onset dementia in people under 60. I don't have a link for that, but I believe I've read or heard about the dementia rate from someplace reliable.

Something else I'm curious about that happened last time the cicadas emerged along the East Coast was that birds were going blind.  I don't recall (and may be my own ignorance but I didn't see studies at the time) but my hunch was that the cicadas were emerging through pesticides.  And then the blindness seemed to pass once the cicadas were gone, but I never read a connection.  Going to watch again this year and see if they both happen around the same time again. I witnessed it several times and still think about it.  

https://news.yahoo.com/birds-suddenly-going-blind-mystery-153821318.html 

[Mdhorn 5819]

1 hour ago, WhatTheBuck said:

We need to learn to say to our family, friends, and loved ones: “You can’t be that dumb.”

I've said this many times--if I'm wrong, then we erred on the side of caution--no harm, no foul and needed to it eventually anyways since petroleum is nonrenewable. If you're wrong, then what?  Do you honestly believe 9 billion people can't affect the planet?  Why are you against acting responsibly?  It's usually met with silence or stupidity--but there's no changing minds or retention.  Clean brainwash of any logic or rational thought.  

[Mdhorn 5819]

9 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

You have to believe something environmental is causing the rise in rate of rapid onset dementia in people under 60. I don't have a link for that, but I believe I've read or heard about the dementia rate from someplace reliable.

Lot's of sicknesses that are probably being diagnosed individually to try and understand how the body responds or adapts, but what does the body do to a composite barrage of things hitting it at once.  For example: plastics and pesticides and covid/vaccine responses.  

[elfenix 34000]

1 minute ago, Mdhorn said:

I've said this many times--if I'm wrong, then we erred on the side of caution--no harm, no foul and needed to it eventually anyways since petroleum is nonrenewable. If you're wrong, then what?  Do you honestly believe 9 billion people can't affect the planet?  Why are you against acting responsibly?  It's usually met with silence or stupidity--but there's no changing minds or retention.  Clean brainwash of any logic or rational thought.  

it's always the people shouting 'personal responsibility' who don't want to take any

[WhatTheBuck 28574]

1 hour ago, GreenspointTexas said:

There is only one solution:

You can’t be that dumb.

Lets amend that. “You can’t possibly be that dumb.”

Edited March 8 by WhatTheBuck

[RomaVicta 29472]

43 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Oh you mean like cutting down thousands of acres of rainforest for paper pulp? That's capturing that damn carbon that was in the trees!

I've had a thought for years that the Western countries who've alread obliterated their massive forests should pay Brazil handsomely to protect those forests. I know it's ebil globalism and shit, but why leave the burden of averting an international crisis in the hands of a single country?

Pay off the current rapacious destroyers of the forest to kill their incentive for continuing. I don't care if they're evil. I don't care what they are. They're in it for money, pay them and be rid of them. In the breathing space before the next round of exploiters appear, take steps preserve and protect the forests. Fund the local, indigenous peoples in the best way to kill any incentive they have to destroy the forest just to feed their people.

The US and the rest of the West have got fat eating up other country's resources. It's time to put back where we can.

I know the first instinct of many Americans is to invade, but let's try to throttle back a little on that inclination. Maybe help people instead of bombing them. 

And put a lot of money into carbon capture if there's any future in it. I'm not well educated on it.

Oh, and stop riding around in giant fucking pick up trucks if you're not a rancher or outdoor worker for fuck's sake.