WTF Climate Change News

[Beebo Brink]

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are surging "faster than ever" to beyond anything humans ever experienced, officials say - CBS News

One of the major drivers of the exceptional heat building within Earth's atmosphere has reached levels beyond anything humans have ever experienced, officials announced on Thursday. Carbon dioxide, the gas that accounts for the majority of global warming caused by human activities, is accumulating "faster than ever," scientists from NOAA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California San Diego found.

"Over the past year, we've experienced the hottest year on record, the hottest ocean temperatures on record, and a seemingly endless string of heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms," NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press release. "Now we are finding that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing faster than ever."

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are surging "faster than ever" to beyond anything humans ever experienced, officials say - CBS News

Ironically I still hear conservatives mocking climate change because it's not happening fast enough for them to notice... I posted a video on this thread a while ago about how climate change was slowing down due to people and corporations cleaning up their habits but I bet some people are just behaving worse because they don't care.

 

[Free]

There's no end to the weird shit we're gonna see.

Alaska's rivers are turning bright orange and as acidic as vinegar as toxic metal escapes from melting permafrost

Alaska's melting permafrost is dumping toxic metals into the state's rivers, turning them bright orange and making the water highly acidic. The contaminated rivers are so vibrant they can be seen from space, and the problem is likely to get much worse in the future.

Chemical analysis of the rusty rivers revealed high levels of zinc, nickel, copper and cadmium, as well as iron, which is largely responsible for the orange hue of the waterways. Researchers also found that the polluted waterways were unusually acidic: Some of the smaller streams had a pH of as low as 2.3, which is around the same as lemon juice or vinegar, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

 

[Beebo Brink]

A Wild Plan to Avert Catastrophic Sea-Level Rise - The Atlantic

The proposed (absolutely bonkers) scheme is to drill over 100 holes through the Thwaites glacier to drain away the liquid at its base that lubricates the movement of ice toward the sea. Without that water to glide on, the mass of ice above would grind to a stop and freeze in place (theoretically).

Pilot projects to test the feasibility of this project would take decades. Actual deployment was take even more decades. The scale of this operation would be massive and carried out in one of the most unforgiving environments on the planet.

The only good thing I can say about this intervention is that it would not actively damage the planet, as would so many other geo-engineering proposals. It would, however, divert an incredible amount of resources to a dubious venture.

All the drilling and pumping and tractors and camps would require a small city’s worth of energy. There might be no way to supply it cleanly. Solar panels could support some summertime operations, but not drilling and pumping. The camp that drilled a borehole for scientific research in 2018 required thousands of gallons of diesel fuel. To power 100 such sites would, in a terrible irony, likely require a great and sustained conflagration of fossil fuels.

 

[Beebo Brink]

The Arctic is warming rapidly. These clouds may hold clues as to why (sciencenews.org)

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

A Wild Plan to Avert Catastrophic Sea-Level Rise - The Atlantic

The proposed (absolutely bonkers) scheme is to drill over 100 holes through the Thwaites glacier to drain away the liquid at its base that lubricates the movement of ice toward the sea. Without that water to glide on, the mass of ice above would grind to a stop and freeze in place (theoretically).

Okay help me out with this.

1. There's water underneath the glacier, making the rock the glacier sits on slippery

2. Water is melted ice, it's down there because some of the ice in the glacier above it melted and the water trickled down

3. Draining out the water from the base will stop the ice higher in the glacier from continuing to melt because...???magic??? (fill in the blank)

4. "Drain the water out" to where? NOT the ocean, somehow? Whatever.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Solar panels in France, which were deployed in 1992, still do provide 79.5% of their original output.

Solar modules deployed in France in 1992 still provide 79.5% of original output power

New testing conducted at France's oldest PV system have shown that its solar modules can still provide performance values in line with what the manufacturers promised.

www.pv-magazine.com

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Okay help me out with this.

1. There's water underneath the glacier, making the rock the glacier sits on slippery

2. Water is melted ice, it's down there because some of the ice in the glacier above it melted and the water trickled down

3. Draining out the water from the base will stop the ice higher in the glacier from continuing to melt because...???magic??? (fill in the blank)

4. "Drain the water out" to where? NOT the ocean, somehow? Whatever.

Maybe the plan doesn't need to stop the melting to work. Just have enough holes so more melt continues to drain out through the holes. Maybe the glacier won't move much if the water continues to drain out fast enough.

I'm of course just guessing here...

 

[Beebo Brink]

Okay help me out with this.

Water at the base makes glaciers glide faster toward the ocean. The (very shaky) theory is that an anchored glacier won't slip into the ocean, thus preventing sea levels from rising very quickly (in geological terms), and it will act as a stopper for the ice behind it. Overall, the ice will continue to melt, mind you, but melt rate is still way slower than dunking an entire glacier into the ocean.

There is precedent for this happening naturally for one glacier (not in Antarctica), and that one event left an indelible memory in the author of this scheme. So he has extrapolated from this one incident to somehow saving the world from rapid sea level rise, seemingly oblivious to the scale required to even attempt this.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Realistically, if an entire glacier were to instantly melt and flow into the ocean, how much would sea levels rise globally? I'm struggling with the scale of such an event.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Realistically, if an entire glacier were to instantly melt and flow into the ocean, how much would sea levels rise globally? I'm struggling with the scale of such an event.

Depends on the size of the glacier, of course, but the size of Thwaites isn't the main issue for sea level rise. That specific glacier acts like a stopper for a long line of glaciers behind it. The collapse of Thwaites could very likely lead to the eventual collapse of the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) and that would lead to a rise of over 10 feet for the entire fucking ocean. Huge amounts of water.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Depends on the size of the glacier, of course, but the size of Thwaites isn't the main issue for sea level rise. That specific glacier acts like a stopper for a long line of glaciers behind it. The collapse of Thwaites could very likely lead to the eventual collapse of the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) and that would lead to a rise of over 10 feet for the entire fucking ocean. Huge amounts of water.

That is a really huge deal! Thanks for putting that in perspective for me.

 

[Archer]

Thwaites alone would account for over 2 feet of rise.

 

[Casey Pelous]

A Wild Plan to Avert Catastrophic Sea-Level Rise - The Atlantic

The proposed (absolutely bonkers) scheme is to drill over 100 holes through the Thwaites glacier to drain away the liquid at its base that lubricates the movement of ice toward the sea. Without that water to glide on, the mass of ice above would grind to a stop and freeze in place (theoretically).

Pilot projects to test the feasibility of this project would take decades. Actual deployment was take even more decades. The scale of this operation would be massive and carried out in one of the most unforgiving environments on the planet.

The only good thing I can say about this intervention is that it would not actively damage the planet, as would so many other geo-engineering proposals. It would, however, divert an incredible amount of resources to a dubious venture.

I guess this reflects the downside of legalizing weed.

 

[Beebo Brink]

So TIL that nitrous oxide (N20) is an even worse greenhouse gas than CO2, and (of course) levels of this gas have been rising to levels not seen in 800,000 years.

Study Finds Nitrous Oxide Emissions Grew 40% over 40 Years, Accelerating Climate Change | Scripps Institution of Oceanography (ucsd.edu)

Emissions of nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide or methane – continued unabated between 1980 and 2020, a year when more than 10 million metric tons were released into the atmosphere primarily through farming practices, according to a new report to which researchers from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography contributed.

Agricultural production accounted for 74% of human-driven nitrous oxide emissions in the 2010s – attributed primarily to the use of chemical fertilizers and animal waste on croplands – according to the report “Global Nitrous Oxide Budget 1980-2020,” published today in the journal Earth System Science Data.

At a time when greenhouse gas emissions must decline to reduce global warming, in 2020 and 2021 nitrous oxide flowed into the atmosphere at the fastest rates in history, the international team of researchers led by Boston College reported. On Earth, excess nitrogen contributes to soil, water, and air pollution. In the atmosphere, it depletes the ozone layer, and exacerbates climate change.

 

[Beebo Brink]

If you think I'm a downer, you should read "Last Week in Collapse", a regular newsletter that compiles the latest in news about spiraling down the drain environmental issues. It's posted on Substack, but also on r/Collapse (but without illustrations).

Last Week in Collapse | Substack

This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter compiling some of the most important, timely, useful, soul-crushing, ironic, stunning, exhausting, or otherwise must-see/can’t-look-away moments in Collapse.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Modern climate change is 10x faster than historic global warming mass extinction events | The Cottonwood Post

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

SpaceX's Starlink May Be Keeping the Ozone From Healing, Research Finds

SpaceX's growing Starlink megaconstellation could be hindering the Earth's ozone layer from healing itself, researchers find.

futurism.com

 

[Beebo Brink]

I started wandering through Substack this past week, with all the newbie awe that I experienced when I first explored Reddit. It's a sign that my post-retirement brain is slowly recovering from burn-out (but that's another story). Today I found The Crisis Report by Richard Crim, which I recommend highly if you have a high tolerance for depressing climate news. His reports are ruthlessly factual, grounded in the latest scientific findings, which he presents in enough detail to satisfy anyone's scientific thirst.

I'm in the "I'd rather know than not know" camp on climate change, so I find these reports fascinating. When he makes predictions based on his analysis of the data, he is specific enough that corroboration will follow shortly (or not). His take on 2024 through 2030 is... sobering.

After reading through the latest half-dozen of his reports, I came away with some interesting nuances that I'd been largely unaware of, about the climate science community. The background that Crim provides is very useful for understanding where we are and where we are going.

Briefly, back in the 1980s, the climate change scientists split into two groups of opposing theories, the Moderates and the Alarmists. This split was, at least in part, based on the unknowns over the effects of sulfur particulates in the atmosphere and their role in mitigating the effects of climate change and the overall sensitivity of the atmosphere to these and other forcings. The Moderates maintained that sulfur particulates did not have a significant effect on climate and that the planet's atmosphere in general was resilient and not easily unbalanced. The Moderate position has largely predominated IPCC reports and policy proposals for responding to climate change.

Unfortunately, given the spiking sea surface temperatures during 2024 -- which were a "surprise" to mainstream climatologists -- it's looking increasingly like the Moderates were wrong, VERY wrong. The 2020 maritime regulations that removed sulfur from shipping fuel has had a disproportionate effect on climate, at least disproportionate to the predictions of the Moderate camp. It's right in line with the Alarmist concerns (such as expressed by Hansen) that sulfur particulates played a very important role in seeding clouds, which in turn raised the Earth's albedo. The loss of this masking effect is exposing just how sensitive the atmosphere is to the Earth's albedo and to rising levels of CO2 and injections of other gases. The dynamics are much more volatile than the Moderates theorized.

Among Crim's predictions, the loss of sulfur particulates has meant a sudden injection of energy (sun's heat) into our atmospheric systems, and it will probably take several years for the planet to adjust and find a new equilibrium. If it can. At the same time as this change, our northern latitudes (Canada and Siberia) are hosting raging fires of their forests and huge swaths of melting permafrost, both of which are injecting even more Greenhouse Gases into the mix. Look for extremely volatile weather and mounting agricultural losses from 2024 moving forward.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Greece: Why some scientists think extreme heat could be the reason people keep disappearing | CNN

t was a shock when Michael Mosley, a doctor and well-known TV presenter in the UK, was found dead earlier this month after hiking in scorching temperatures on the Greek island of Symi.

But it is now one of a series of tourist deaths and disappearances in Greece as the country endures a powerful, early summer heat wave with temperatures pushing above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).

On Saturday, a Dutch tourist was found dead on the island of Samos. The following day, the body of an American tourist was found on Mathraki, a small island west of Corfu. Albert Calibet, another American tourist, has been missing since he set out for a hike on June 11 on Amorgos. And two French women disappeared on Sikinos after going for a walk.