WTF Climate Change News

Jopsy Pendragon

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Bio-engineered self-reproducing sea algae that consumes CO2 and produces a plankton like food source...

But of course, it won't have an offswitch and will over-correct causing an ice age and other problems. ;)
 
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Innula Zenovka

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Bio-engineered self-reproducing sea algae that consumes CO2 and produces a plankton like food source...

But of course, it won't have an offswitch and will over-correct causing an ice age and other problems. ;)
The offswitch could be, since we're bio-engineering it, that it can't self reproduce if the temperature falls below whatever degrees celsius.
 

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Bio-engineered self-reproducing sea algae that consumes CO2 and produces a plankton like food source...

But of course, it won't have an offswitch and will over-correct causing an ice age and other problems. ;)
It does not need to be bio-engineered. The Antarctic polynyas are some of the most productive biological locations on the planet due to the interactions of phytoplankton, calcium from Antarctic inflows, and deep sea upwelling. I spoke to one marine scientist who estimated that the carbon uptake in these pools of water are capable of bringing the planet back from the brink and can offset human activities, but this is only if we are able to cut back very soon. The ice sheets have been slowly opening up further away from the edge of the Antarctic continent, and it is not clear how much further the open water can get before the delicate balance is disrupted.

On the other hand recent measurements from the Southern Ocean indicate that an unknown amount of the carbon is getting burped back out. It is not clear how much, though. Unfortunately, the carbon cycle is complicated. Decomposition is basically a slow motion fire, and only a fraction of the carbon pulled out of the atmosphere gets sequestered. This is why the influence on the long time scale for carbon uptake in the Amazon is still an open question.
 

Beebo Brink

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The human hamster wheel. One of the ways huge quantities of carbon were removed and sequestered from the atmosphere and the ocean was in laying down oil and coal deposits. We're "liberating" millions of years worth of sequestered carbon, and now scrambling for ways to restore balance that involves anything EXCEPT leaving oil & coal in the ground. Instead we're theorizing about carbon sequestering technology that can somehow run without using the same energy demands that got us into this mess in the first place.
 

Jopsy Pendragon

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The offswitch could be, since we're bio-engineering it, that it can't self reproduce if the temperature falls below whatever degrees celsius.
Sure... but can you guarantee that limit won't be circumvented by a minor mutation in a population of a few trillion algae cells? :D

 
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What’s Behind the World’s Biggest Climate Victory? Capitalism

Solar and wind will power half the globe by 2050, based on BloombergNEF forecasts. By that time, coal and nuclear will have all but disappeared in the U.S., forced out by cheaper renewables and natural gas.

The market triumph of renewable energy marks the biggest victory yet in the fight against global warming. Solar and wind are proliferating not because of moral do-gooders but because they’re now the most profitable part of the power business in most of the world. An industry that once relied on heavy subsidies and was propped up by government mandates is now increasingly standing on its own.
 

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Beebo Brink

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CNN Business - The Market Has Spoken: Coal is Dying

"It's hard to see any scenario where coal rebounds," said Joe Aldina, manager of coal research at S&P Global Platts Analytics. Approximately 15% of America's coal fleet has been retired since 2017, the year Trump took office, according to Platts. And that trend will probably continue. Platts expects another 10% of the coal fleet will be shuttered between 2019 and 2020. That translates to more than 100 coal-fired units at power plants. "Coal is going to get phased out over the long term," Aldina said.
 

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‘We will make them hear us’: Millions of youths around the world strike for action
NEW YORK — In one of the largest youth-led demonstrations in history, millions of people from Manhattan to Mumbai took to the streets around the globe on Friday, their chants, speeches and homemade signs delivering the same stern message to world leaders: do more to combat climate change — and do it faster.

From small island nations such as Kiribati to war-torn countries such as Afghanistan and across the United States, young people left their classrooms to demand that governments act with more urgency to wean the world off fossil fuels and cut carbon dioxide emissions.
 

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By the way talking about Greta Thunberg: how visible is she in the American media by now, since she arrived a few weeks ago in NYC?

In Europe she's been running all over, up and down most tv stations and newspapers; she became very popular and some kind of "climate Jeanne D'Arc". She leaves nobody cold, either people do like or hate her because she takes no prisoners and does not want to make compromises, but ensure the survivability of the human race, so there's not much in between right now.

The hype around her is amazing; but this is purely the politicians fault, who are just not taking climate change serious enough. If the politicians would have done that, she would be still an anonymous nobody school girl.
 

Brenda Archer

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By the way talking about Greta Thunberg: how visible is she in the American media by now, since she arrived a few weeks ago in NYC?

In Europe she's been running all over, up and down most tv stations and newspapers; she became very popular and some kind of "climate Jeanne D'Arc". She leaves nobody cold, either people do like or hate her because she takes no prisoners and does not want to make compromises, but ensure the survivability of the human race, so there's not much in between right now.

The hype around her is amazing; but this is purely the politicians fault, who are just not taking climate change serious enough. If the politicians would have done that, she would be still an anonymous nobody school girl.
I don’t watch TV anymore so I can’t speak to that, but Thunberg is popular with online leftists.

The climate demonstrations are among the largest we’ve ever seen. She can’t be more than a figurehead, not at her age, but she’s doing a good job. The spectacle of huge crowds of protesting teenagers is going to stick with us.
 
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Beebo Brink

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The hype around her is amazing; but this is purely the politicians fault, who are just not taking climate change serious enough. If the politicians would have done that, she would be still an anonymous nobody school girl.
I'm not a good judge of her impact here because I'm so laser-focused on climate change news anyway. Greta's efforts are really admirable, so I'm definitely in the "like her" camp; her candor is very refreshing. She's also helped focus a lot free-floating anxiety that is now coming together in the form of marches, which to my mind are -- at least so far -- just feel-good expressions of concern. They're not high pressure on politicians yet, certainly not enough to counter the influence of big business, especially the coal & oil/gas industries.

Democracies are not a vehicle for quick, radical change. By their nature, by their intent, democracies introduce change slowly and by consensus -- even when they're not owned lock, stock & barrel by special interests. There was a perfect example of this last week in an interview with Cory Booker at some rally. When Booker first started speaking to the reporter, he was all gung-ho let's deal with climate change, but then the reporter asked "What do you say to the oil worker who just wants to feed his family?" and on a dime, Booker pivoted. Now he gushed about how we need to make this careful, considerate transition so no worker is left behind. He said that because he MUST say that in a democracy if he has any hope of surviving politically.

And that's the major impediment to truly substantive, meaningful change in the time frame left to us before climate-induced chaos overwhelms governance: Short-term needs will always outweigh long-term needs.

All these people who are marching so fervently to prevent climate change are oblivious to what meaningful action would entail, how quickly it would have to be enacted, how much it would affect their life right now, today, and how badly. Massive job losses, business and infrastructure shut down, building and construction shut down, many of the conveniences of modern life stripped away.

What these people want is a controlled transition, without huge personal sacrifices. There is still no recognition that painless transitions -- ones that Cory Booker can champion with a smile on his face -- take too long.
 

Bartholomew Gallacher

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All these people who are marching so fervently to prevent climate change are oblivious to what meaningful action would entail, how quickly it would have to be enacted, how much it would affect their life right now, today, and how badly. Massive job losses, business and infrastructure shut down, building and construction shut down, many of the conveniences of modern life stripped away.

What these people want is a controlled transition, without huge personal sacrifices. There is still no recognition that painless transitions -- ones that Cory Booker can champion with a smile on his face -- take too long.
I do know a scientist who does work in the field of climate research, he's a professor at university level. The more I am listening to him always the more apocalyptic it gets; there are two people in the world which really make him mad, one is 45 - he always suggests then that 45 should just talk to the farmers in the midwest where already many drastic changes are quite visible by now, or the almond farmers in California which are now switching over to growing coffee - the other Angela Merkel. Germany has been in his opinion the biggest stumbling block in the EU in climate politics - no wonder thanks to the car industry - and is the main reason why it lacks so much behind what could have been possibly done by now. And he's of course really frustrated why the politicians are not just doing their job about it, so we've lost already much valuable time.

The issue with climate change is that the goals of the Paris treaty are based on now obsolete assumptions; we do know by now that the change is happening much faster and more drastically than anybody would have imagined before.

So from a scientific view point today just implementing Paris' regulations is much too little and way too slow which means if you trust science the goals to mitigate the impact somewhat based on today's scientific knowledge must be much more drastically than COP.

Of course this would impact anybodies life; the plain truth though is that we cannot rescue whatever is still possible without changing our lifestyle on a global scale and making sacrifices.And yes, it is going to cost a lot, but this means also that new jobs might get generated in that kind of field, aside that the money spent on mitigating probably is better spent than leter dealing with the unmitigated effects of it. In the end of course it's just easier to continue like that than to implement changes. Which is by the way one of the main reasons I do firmly believe that later in this century geoengineering attempts are going to be made when makind finally is desperate enough to try.

And clearly this contradicts what the politicians care about; most care about getting elected for another term, but not for much more than that.
 
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Beebo Brink

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The issue with climate change is that the goals of the Paris treaty are based on now obsolete assumptions; we do know by now that the change is happening much faster and more drastically than anybody would have imagined before.
:qft:

Because of the strong political pressure on climate researchers, they have been brow-beaten to publish the most conservative estimates that they can support with 99% confidence. There are many indicators that aren't fully understood that paint a much darker picture, but the confidence level in that outcome may be lower, so it's not discussed. But if you have 80% confidence in a bad scenario, I kinda want to hear about it.

As a rule of thumb, whenever I hear a prediction I double the damage and halve the timespan, as compensation for that conservatism. If a climate scientist says "We anticipate a 3" rise in ocean level by 2100 due to factor X", I translate that to "We'll probably see a 6" rise by 2050."
 

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Yang is starting to look smarter by the minute with this UBI thing. If we don’t have enough time for markets and typical legislation to fix climate change, it’s also not enough time to re-employ everyone now in a obsolete industry. The best argument for wealth transfers to the poor is avoiding the kind of social chaos that destroys the rule of law. This also applies to foreign aid.