Main Menu

It's a bit warm/ wet/ cold outside

Started by The Enigmatic Dr X, 24 July, 2019, 09:35:09 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

shaolin_monkey

Here's an interesting graph from 'My World In Data' which shows the CO2 impact of various types of food, including how it is grown, transported etc etc.

Short answer - eat less beef.



Link to full article:

https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local


Of course, we need to remember that while individual actions are great for any number of reasons, systemic change is needed - and that is driven by government and corporations.

Tiplodocus

Be excellent to each other. And party on!

shaolin_monkey

I'd say both probably. It does suck that chocolate is so high up the list.

shaolin_monkey

There it is folks - the first recorded experiment showing the heat-trapping effects of CO2 (notes here as carbonic acid gas), in 1856, by Eunice Foote. It is an experiment that has been independently corroborated over and over and over, and is a foundation stone of many sciences, including climate science.

And yet there are still deniers out there who say the CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere is having no effect on our climate.  ::)

https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/first-paper-to-link-co2-and-global-warming-by-eunice-foote-1856



TordelBack

Quote from: shaolin_monkey on 16 February, 2020, 12:06:57 PM
It does suck that chocolate is so high up the list.

Right, but this is per kilo of chocolate.  That's a lot of chocolate, about 9 Dairy Milks - and maybe 5,500 calories, over twice as much as a kilo of beef or chicken, which Google tells me the average American eats 2kg of per week (0.5 pounds of meat a day! Christ!).

Even with strict environmental principles, I think you have room for sufficient chocolate in your diet if you're behaving elsewhere.

Professor Bear

Interesting reminder from Novara that climate catastrophe isn't some far away abstract but a reality that some parts of our own country have been dealing with for years now.
The media haven't been covering this like the scandal it is but instead with a shrug at this just being the way things are now - see also: the yearly New York floods and snowstorms.  We aren't far away from floods permanently damaging homes or infrastructure and people having to relocate elsewhere, but the way the story is covered now shows we'll only see this as a string of human interest pieces on lost heirlooms and not what it really is: Britons turned into refugees in their own country, and we've seen with the Grenfell survivors how that's going to turn out when coupled with the housing shortage and a government and media colluding to sweep human beings and their situation under the rug.

TordelBack

Didn't noted intellectual  Ben Shapiro explain the solution clearly enough for you, Prof? People in flood-affected areas should just sell their houses and move. Simple as that.


shaolin_monkey

Yep, totally agree with that article.

Here in Cardiff there are some plans to put up a sea wall not far from where I am. That's great for sea level increase (for a short while) but does nothing to address flooding from our river, the Taff.

An example from today - Bute Park, flooded.



Last night this area of Cardiff got a highly unusual yellow warning alert that they could see flooding, all based on the river - nothing to do with the sea:



Although, if we are talking about sea level rise, here's how much of Cardiff is likely to be flooded regularly from storm surges by 2050:



So yeah - sea level rise might be a focus at the mo, especially with current fears about the imminent collapse of the Thwaites glacier, but people are often ignoring the other big flood risk - increased precipitation.

As the sea warms there's more energy for storms. As the air warms, there's more room for humidity. When you combine storm power with extra humidity you get sudden dumps of enormous volumes of water.

https://www.climatecentral.org/news/report-pouring-it-on-climate-change-intensifies-heavy-rain-events

Wales saw that this weekend, as did many other parts of the U.K.

The sad thing is, the increased regularity of storms and heavy inland precipitation isn't the new normal. It is going to get worse.





shaolin_monkey

PS - There are multimillion pound developments going up in Cardiff Bay currently. Those idiots are going to lose a LOT of money over the next decade.

shaolin_monkey

#475
PPS - Wales has long been a subject of interest for climatologists, as per this article on flooding and rainfall in 2012, which also noted at the time:

"The question is partially answered by the Clausius-Clapeyron relation: put simply, this holds that in a warming trend, for every added degree Celsius the air can potentially hold 7% more water vapour. It therefore follows that moist air-masses, such as those advected towards the UK from the sub-tropical Atlantic, can become substantially moister in a warming world, leading to more intense rainfall-rates and increased event-totals."

https://skepticalscience.com/2012-floods.html

Gary James

Quote from: shaolin_monkey on 16 February, 2020, 06:51:05 PM
There are multimillion pound developments going up in Cardiff Bay currently.
Again? Or is this continuing from the revitalization of the area which began in the 90s?

It would be interesting to see the final cost (adjusted for inflation) transforming a location so completely comes to - although at least some of the money poured into the area has been from tourism thanks to a certain television series and its offshoots.

shaolin_monkey

Quote from: Gary James on 16 February, 2020, 08:05:14 PM
Quote from: shaolin_monkey on 16 February, 2020, 06:51:05 PM
There are multimillion pound developments going up in Cardiff Bay currently.
Again? Or is this continuing from the revitalization of the area which began in the 90s?


Yep, again:

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/plans-transform-cardiff-bay-1000-17034304

Gary James

*sees overhead shot of swimming pool close to water's edge*
*ponders if planners anticipated rising water levels*
*considers tasteless joke about self-refilling pool*

The mention of Toys R Us brought a tear to my eye. Used to be a great retailer to pick up cheap action figures when they had sales on...

I don't know what storm we are on now - really racing through the alphabet at the moment with names - but the wind is causing merry havoc with the trees outside. I'm going to be so disappointed if I'm finally done in by a falling branch, rather than my anticipated demise at ninety years old (in a threesome with twins).

shaolin_monkey

Prof. Katy Hayhoe is one of the greatest communicators of climate change.  Her Global Weirding series is massively accessible, with a 'Plain English' approach to the commentary, combined with nifty cartoon animations to keep folk engaged.

Also, they are designed to be completely non-partisan.  In fact, she even has an episode which relates climate change to evangelicals!!

If you ever wanted to discuss a topic around climate change with your kids or family, I recommend picking an episode from her channel, watching it together, and then discussing it:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi6RkdaEqgRVKi3AzidF4ow


Anyway, I particularly liked this episode, which asks "Is Carbon Dioxide really a pollutant?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfq72W3RP_o


I also recommend following her on Twitter - @KHayhoe - where she regularly tweets fantastic updates re the climate change and the world at large, in a very positive and engaging way.