WTF Climate Change News

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

NIMBY never gets out of fashion, does it?

 

[Sid]

Well, it is the area where I live about 99% of my time, so yes if it is ugly as hell, please NIMBY.
Edit to add:
Plus, in the nature around agglomerations like das Ruhrgebiet, Kreis Aachen, and parts of South Limburg, the last thing people who try to recreate there want to see, is even more industrial eyesores than they already have directly in and around their homes in these dense populated and industrialized urban clusters.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Restarting Texas’s Frozen Energy Heartland Will Be a Climate Mess

 

[danielravennest]

How it started (Bell Labs, 1954):

How it's going:

For reference, the world's total energy consumption of all kinds is around 18,000 GW. 200GW of new solar translates to 50GW of average output, or 0.28% of world energy supply. We need a couple more doublings of the installation rate, which might take 10-20 years.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

How it started (Bell Labs, 1954):

How it's going:

For reference, the world's total energy consumption of all kinds is around 18,000 GW. 200GW of new solar translates to 50GW of average output, or 0.28% of world energy supply. We need a couple more doublings of the installation rate, which might take 10-20 years.

I expect that a fair number of people are considering doing solar roofs as they have to replace them. My mom is considering it, and we've been considering it here as well; and since Sally did damage our roof, but in a sneaky manner, hopefully that will be soon.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Climate crisis hitting 'worst case scenarios', warns Environment Agency

Sir James Bevan says extreme flooding in UK indicates urgent need for change if humanity is to survive

www.theguardian.com

 

[Beebo Brink]

Climate crisis hitting 'worst case scenarios', warns Environment Agency

Sir James Bevan says extreme flooding in UK indicates urgent need for change if humanity is to survive

www.theguardian.com

At some point in the future, what is left of humankind will view the world like this. with habitable land falling inside the Arctic Circle. The ice will be gone, and the Arctic Ocean will be as balmy as the old Mediterranean Sea. Residents of these upper latitudes will fight off the hordes of Southern Mutant Barbarians who threaten to overrun them when the harvests are good.

But eventually the Ice Ages will return and we'll start the cycle all over again as Arctic humans move south and marvel at the ancient ruins of mythic civilizations abandoned so long ago.

 

[Sid]

We simply don't know what will be next.
The only things we can do is make educated guesses for the future and leave the earth as clean and tidy as possilbe for the next generations.
But there are still so many unknowns.
It is possible you are right with your pretty pessimistic vision about the future Beebo, but there is a possibility as well that students in 2121 smile when they research a century old newspapers and Internet archives and discuss how on earth it was possible that the people in 2021 did not stumble over the obvious solutions right before their noses. Failing to ad 1+1 together.

 

[Ashiri]

It is possible you are right Beebo, but there is a possibility as well that students in 2121 smile when they research old newspapers and Internet archives and discuss how on earth it was possible that the people in 2021 did not stumble over the obvious solutions right before their noses.

It's not like we don't already know what the obvious solutions are, it's just a collective unwillingness to make the changes fast enough.
We don't need any as yet undiscovered technologies (not that they'd do any good considering development time) when we have the technologies we need.

 

[Sid]

Just an example:
When I was a kid we had a record player with vinyl discs. Than came the tape cassettes and the walkman, then the CDs and the diskman, then mp3 on the mp3 players and now Spotify on the mobile phone through Internet and WIFI headphones. 9 Mayor fundamental shifts in less than 50 years.
Compare the world from around 1921 and now.
It shows that things can change relatively rapidly. Totally (yet) unknown breaktroughs can and will be discovered in every field over the years.
Will it be in the field of climate control as well?
We simply don't know what the future brings. That's my main point.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

As I understand - if the oceans become enough fresh water from melting ice.... it can cause a big freeze...

 

[Innula Zenovka]

As I understand - if the oceans become enough fresh water from melting ice.... it can cause a big freeze...

Presumably, given enough time, the world's temperatures will revert to a mean average, simply by the laws of mathematics.

But that's *given enough time," which is rather a lot.

 

[Ashiri]

As I understand - if the oceans become enough fresh water from melting ice.... it can cause a big freeze...

If the thermohaline circulation is disrupted then no more Gulf Stream and Europe gets chillier among other effects. And some of the other effects are more serious in the long term. These ocean currents take cold, saline, oxygenated water from the poles along the ocean floor and upwell at lower latitudes entraining nutrients from the ocean floor. The Gulf Stream (and other poleward moving warm surface currents) are the return flow.

 

[Sid]

Who knows where this ends.

 

[Free]

Who knows where this ends.

A solar panel the size of a pizza oven?

 

[Casey Pelous]

A solar panel the size of a pizza oven?

Perhaps a pizza the size of a solar panel?

 

[Sid]

A solar panel the size of a pizza oven?

Experimental.

 

[Free]

Perhaps a pizza the size of a solar panel?

We already have those.

 

[Beebo Brink]

As I understand - if the oceans become enough fresh water from melting ice.... it can cause a big freeze...

Only in some locations, and not on a global level.

The thermohaline circulation moves warm waters from the equator up to the northern latitudes, buffering places like the British Isles from the cold temperatures that they would otherwise experience. So if infusions of fresh water disrupt the circulation pattern, that warmth is no longer dispersed along those coastal areas in the north and they revert to the same cold weather the rest of us have to deal with every winter.

This doesn't CREATE cold weather, so it's not much help against climate change. Instead, it's one of the symptoms of accelerating climate change.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

Only in some locations, and not on a global level.

The thermohaline circulation moves warm waters from the equator up to the northern latitudes, buffering places like the British Isles from the cold temperatures that they would otherwise experience. So if infusions of fresh water disrupt the circulation pattern, that warmth is no longer dispersed along those coastal areas in the north and they revert to the same cold weather the rest of us have to deal with every winter.

This doesn't CREATE cold weather, so it's not much help against climate change. Instead, it's one of the symptoms of accelerating climate change.

I knew it was a symptom, and no, its not a good thing - the last study I'd seen on it suggested it was in fact a very bad thing, because it would cause a lashback of freezing near the poles, as well as an overheating in southern climes because they didn't get the cooler water because they system would be broken. But I guess that was 15 or so years ago.

Also, my statement was a bit abbreviated because was chiming in during a very short break.