Climate Change Thread

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Remember that up to a quarter of the global population was infected by the Spanish Flu. A quarter of the current global population would be ~2 billion. Superior medical infrastructure is moot at the point where it becomes overwhelmed by numbers.

Tamiflu, intravenous hydration, steroids for immunomodulation, anti-biotics to combat piggy-back infenctions...

I am not saying it would be fun, and many would die, I am only asserting that death rates would not approach Spanish Flu, much less Black Death, proportions. Except, of course, in Central Africa, Indonesia, and possibly the Indian subcontinent. Their populations and available health system support might be overwhelmed as you suggest.

[CrossLOPER]

It's worth pointing out that as bad as the Black Death was it didn't actually cause societal collapse

I can guarantee you that, with all the specialization and global reliance present in the world right now, a 30-60% loss in human population was cause societal collapse. The loss of supply routes would lead to implosions in various sectors of human civilization which would probably lead to further death. It is not entirely impossible that the human race would either go extinct or regress to a more primitive state.

It's much worse because fewer people (especially in more developed nations)0 know anything about tool use, farming or general survival practices.

[Shaka_Khan]

If the current outbreak continues to get worse, and studies show that it looks like it will continue for a long time, then I predict a great big rise in mask companies' and indoor-activity-providing companies' stocks (such as Amazon, Netflix indoor game companies, etc). Some (actually I think a lot of) the other companies will fall (and some are already falling). (Don't get me wrong. I hope everyone stays safe). To put it simply, I think there might be a big change in the way we live for a long time. We were already heading towards that direction before the outbreak. A lot of the malls already closed down, and less people went to the cinemas for example.

[Shaka_Khan]

Starting at 6:50, you can watch the footages and the interview/investigation that show how severe the situation is. It was already severe starting in late December.

[Shaka_Khan]

[Shaka_Khan]

[Shaka_Khan]

Here are the footages from Wuhan, China that the news media isn't showing. People are just collapsing to the ground:

[Viking]

Maybe the mods could split off some of the latest posts to a new topic, before the virus gets us all.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/po...-must-stopped/

We've not talked about the Anti-Greta yet. A lot of people have talked about how she's not become organically famous like Greta for her protest. That's true to an extent but it ignores the fact that the media was kinda looking for Greta as the face of the swelling climate movement.

[Montmorency]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/po...-must-stopped/

We've not talked about the Anti-Greta yet. A lot of people have talked about how she's not become organically famous like Greta for her protest. That's true to an extent but it ignores the fact that the media was kinda looking for Greta as the face of the swelling climate movement.

http://foxnews.com/media/conservativ...lism-democrats

[Genava]

Global Temperatures over Time

Yes, we are in a period of global warming.

Yes, we are substantially warmer and trending warmer than an any point in the Common Era of human history (CE, formerly AD).

Yes, the degree of warming being experienced can have a notable, even profound, impact on our daily existence and not all that far in the future.

No, it is not the hottest it has ever been. We have yet to reach the temperature spike experienced 110 thousand years ago by our prehistoric ancestors.

The Eemian is a time with one of the strongest orbital forcing over the Arctic region (Milankovitch cycle) for the last million years which means that Greenland is experiencing a significant warming. Thus a strong feedback occurred with decreasing sea ice and albedo, which further amplify the warming. In addition, there was significant change in ocean circulation resulting from this.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05314-1
https://skepticalscience.com/LIG2-1906.html

This is actually not the case for the current warming since insolation over the Arctic region peaked during the Holocene Climate Optimum and is decreasing for millennia:
https://twitter.com/dan613/status/12...524096/photo/1
https://twitter.com/dan613/status/12...323073/photo/2

Our global temperature is substantially lower than it was 5+ million years past. (To be fair, the sediment records on this have huge variance swings in any short term segment, and it should be acknowledged that global cooling appears to have stopped and/or slightly reversed in the past 500k years).

We have MUCH better and more complete data of the last 50 years than of the preceding 100, than of the preceding 1000. These shorter time-frame tools do correlate strongly with an anthropomorphic explanation of the current warming trend, but we lack near equivalent data from the deep past that could establish anthropomorphic causality without demur by explaining how this warming is different than preceding ones as to cause. This is the source, ultimately, of those arguing rationally that the anthropomorphic explanation is flawed. It does not, of course, explain the larger number of climate-change detractors who are shouting 'anti-capitalist-conspiracy-theory' from the depths of their own ignorance.

Sadly, we can only drag the mid-point of the intelligence bell curve upwards, not eliminate the negative standard deviation side of the curve.

Just a point about the causality of the current warming, this is not something we know from palaeoclimatology or by any comparison with the past. This is something we can observe physically. We see the greenhouse effect rising and we see the trigger being the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.

First direct observation of carbon dioxide's increasing greenhouse effect
https://phys.org/news/2015-02-carbon...se-effect.html

Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997
https://www.researchgate.net/publica..._1970_and_1997

Radiative forcing ‐ measured at Earth's surface ‐ corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley....9/2003GL018765

Global atmospheric downward longwave radiation over land surface under all‐sky conditions from 1973 to 2008
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley....9/2009JD011800

Simple measurements demonstrate that CO2 is a greenhouse gas contrary to claim in online blogs
https://climatefeedback.org/claimrev...-gas-tim-ball/

Analysis: Why scientists think 100% of global warming is due to humans
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis...-due-to-humans

[Montmorency]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/c...newables.html/

In just the first four and a half months of this year, America’s fleet of wind turbines, solar panels and hydroelectric dams have produced more electricity than coal on 90 separate days — shattering last year’s record of 38 days for the entire year. On May 1 in Texas, wind power alone supplied nearly three times as much electricity as coal did.

The latest report from the Energy Information Administration estimates that America’s total coal consumption will fall by nearly one-quarter this year, and coal plants are expected to provide just 19 percent of the nation’s electricity, dropping for the first time below both nuclear power and renewable power, a category that includes wind, solar, hydroelectric dams, geothermal and biomass.

Natural gas plants, which supply 38 percent of the nation’s power, are expected to hold their output steady thanks to low fuel prices.

The decline of coal has major consequences for climate change.

Coal is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, and its decline has already helped drive down United States carbon dioxide emissions 15 percent since 2005. This year, the agency expects America’s emissions to fall by another 11 percent, the largest drop in at least 70 years. While the pandemic has made these projections uncertain, the decline is expected to come partly because Americans aren’t driving as much, but mainly because coal plants are running less often.

The United States is not yet at the point reached in Britain, which now goes for weeks at a time without using any coal power at all. But some parts of the United States are now getting an early preview of life where coal is on the decline and renewables are soaring. “In some parts of the country, we’re now seeing renewable penetration hit 60 or 70 percent on some days,” said Nat Kreamer, chief executive of Advanced Energy Economy, a clean-energy business group, “and no one’s screaming that they can’t do that.”

But -

Republicans urge Trump to bar banks from shunning fossil fuel loans

A group of Republican lawmakers from energy-producing states on Friday called on President Donald Trump to prevent banks from halting loans and investments with companies that produce oil and other fossil fuels while they have access to federal assistance programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Wall Street’s big banks ... should not be able to reap the benefits of participating in federally guaranteed loan programs laid out in the CARES Act, such as the Paycheck Protection Program or the trillion dollar Federal Reserve facility lending programs, while simultaneously targeting American energy companies and workers,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Trump.

Democratic lawmakers like Senator Elizabeth Warren, who want an economic recovery featuring investments in conservation and alternative energy to fight climate change, have been calling on Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to bar oil and gas companies from accessing loans through the Main Street facility.

Many energy companies have been struggling to stave off bankruptcy due to a meltdown in global crude prices after governments around the world issued stay-at-home orders that obliterated demand for motor and jet fuel.

For years, environmental activists have pressured banks and financial firms to drop support of fossil fuel companies.

The Republican lawmakers, led by Senators Kevin Cramer of North Dakota and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, and Representatives Don Young of Alaska and Liz Cheney of Wyoming, accused some major U.S. financial institutions of halting fossil fuel investments to “placate the environmental fringe.” They specifically cited BlackRock Inc, the world’s largest asset manager, which has been given a central role in the COVID-19 corporate recovery as a fiduciary to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

BlackRock announced in January it was divesting from coal burned in power plants. Its global head of sustainable investing, Brian Deese, was a White House climate official under former President Barack Obama, a Democrat.

“Considering BlackRock’s central role as a Federal Reserve fiduciary for the distribution of CARES Act credit facilities, its hostility towards the American energy sector is unacceptable and should be closely scrutinized,” the lawmakers wrote.

The lawmakers urged Trump to use “every administrative and regulatory tool” to prevent those institutions from participating in federal lending programs while “discriminating” against investments in parts of the energy sector, but did not specify what measures could be taken.

A spokesman for BlackRock said the company will execute its mandate as a fiduciary to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York “at the sole discretion of the bank, and in accordance with their detailed investment guidelines, in order to provide broad support to credit markets and achieve the government’s objective of supporting access to credit for U.S. employers and supporting the American economy.”

Obviously we need central planning to rescue Coal and Oil, the pillars of American greatness.

[CrossLOPER]

Obviously we need central planning to rescue Coal and Oil, the pillars of American greatness.

Can't they just invest in something else to make money? It seems like a lot of effort to prop up a technology that is dying by itself.

[Tuuvi]

It seems like the Republicans have swallowed their own propaganda and they're too ideologically invested in fossil fuels to give up on them, even if it doesn't make good financial sense.

[CrossLOPER]

It seems like the Republicans have swallowed their own propaganda and they're too ideologically invested in fossil fuels to give up on them, even if it doesn't make good financial sense.

Possibly. They seem genuinely surprised that reopening the economy wasn't just a matter of an "on" switch. I guess the question is what the tipping point is, or if things are set for a massive disaster to wipe away several world powers. Based on their behavior now, I don't think that China, Russia, the US or Brazil are capable of a concentrated effort and the collapse of any one of these would cause considerable problems.

[edyzmedieval]

I've been following the daily updates prompted out by Bloomberg - if you want you can subscribe here -> https://www.bloomberg.com/green - and a lot of the reports are focused on the demise of coal. Despite it having a slight resurgence in the past 4 years, coal is definitely on the way out and most likely will be phased out fully in the next 15-20 years.

Furthermore, significant economic growth & rebounding can be done with green investments, something which a number of wealth funds are betting on.

[Montmorency]

Uh-oh.

For a decade, her team had been sampling the air from sensors on aircraft flying over the world’s largest rainforest. Their collating of recent results showed that, perhaps for the first time in thousands of years, a large part of the Amazon had switched from absorbing CO2 from the air, damping down global warming, to being a “source” of the greenhouse gas and thus speeding up warming.

[edyzmedieval]

So in other words, the goose is no longer cooked, it's close to being burnt?

[Montmorency]

California wildfires in the past days have burned more land than in all of 2019.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020...alifornia.html

2020:

[Hooahguy]

Clearly they should have raked the forest floor better.

[ReluctantSamurai]

The only thing missing for California is an earthquake. Would fit right in with 2020

A possible first:

https://www.livescience.com/two-hurr...of-mexico.html

But hell, climate change is just a hoax...

[Hooahguy]

I'd wager that they would prefer to see it as a god-sent apocalypse before they admit its climate change.

[Shaka_Khan]

[Montmorency]

The kind of things ACIN is seeing in California these days, among some of the worst regional fires in the history of European settlement. Also, among a severe heat wave, in which Death Valley just hit 130 * F, possibly "the hottest reliably measured temperature in recorded history on Earth."

https://twitter.com/ceejay35_/status...02328323653632

Oakland's Lake Merritt shrouded in orange wildfire smoke, this morning around 9 a.m. Streetlights and car headlights illuminate the landscape. No sign of the sun.
@StephenKing
will you write about this?

left: san francisco/bay area rn right: blade runner 2049

[EvaaWill89]

These are the usual climatic changes that the earth goes through more than once. But of course, humanity is contributing to global warming.
I believe that all countries should follow the recommendations of scientists, otherwise everything will be worse than it could be

[Montmorency]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weath...nia-santa-ana/




Where have I seen that pattern before?




2020, you cad.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Media bias at its' best (or worst):

https://www.mediamatters.org/broadca...tors-including

Corporate broadcast TV outlets — ABC, CBS, and NBC — aired a combined 114 segments about wildfires on their morning and evening news shows from August 1 to August 31.
All five of these mentions occurred during a 10-day period from August 14-23, which saw California suffer under extreme heat.
Only five of the 114 wildfire segments -- just 4% of them -- mentioned climate change.
This marks the third year in a row that major corporate broadcast TV news shows have mentioned climate change in less than 5% of wildfire segments.
Notably, four of the five climate mentions appeared during broadcast morning programs -- three of which appeared on the program CBS This Morning: Saturday and were noted by CBS meteorologist Jeff Berardelli.
The coronavirus pandemic, which is complicating efforts to fight wildfires and handle evacuations, was mentioned in only 17 of the 114 wildfire segments, or 15%.
California’s exploitative practice of using prison labor to fight the fires, which was significantly reduced because of the pandemic, was mentioned in only 3 wildfire segments.

Nearly half of the wildfire segments that aired on broadcast news over a 10-day period of extreme heat between August 14 and August 23 -- 35 out of 71 segments -- mentioned that the heat wave or extreme temperatures generally help to fuel the wildfires. But only three of these 35 wildfire segments discussing the heat wave also mentioned climate change.

The scientific links of climate change to the region’s extreme heat and wildfires couldn’t be more clear, but viewers of broadcast news programs must have that information as they consume these reports. Broadcast news shows must do better at accurately reporting climate change and other factors involved in the 2020 wildfires -- having only 4% of wildfire segments mention climate change is unacceptable as we face the existential crisis of our time head-on.

I wish data was available for more than just these three media outlets...

And in BREAKING NEWS, California just got nuked!!

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/...s-15557949.php

It sure looks like a mushroom cloud, though....

[Shaka_Khan]

[Shaka_Khan]

The speed at which the situations worsen over time seems to be exponential...

[ReluctantSamurai]

Oh, but the world's "leading climatologist" sez "It'll start getting cooler. You just watch." "I don't think science knows, actually".

https://www.politico.com/video/2020/...ifornia-090147

The naivete of Wade Crowfoot in literally pleading with Trump shows he understands very little about the man