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It's a bit warm/ wet/ cold outside

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

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The Legendary Shark


Thanks for that - it sounds like an okay place. Would've been more interesting had the farm sported thirty acres of sugar beet but I guess that would've been too obvious.

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shaolin_monkey


Trooper McFad

Citizens are Perps who haven't been caught ... yet!

shaolin_monkey


shaolin_monkey

"Among incoming President Joe Biden's Day One priorities: Begin rolling back climate and environmental policies of the Trump administration, many of which were rollbacks of Obama-era or earlier rules.

Biden's advisers have compiled a list of more than 100 rules and policies developed by the Trump administration that it sees as targets for review, CNN has learned. Each of the policies relate to environmental conservation and climate change and are linked to an executive order Biden intends to sign on public health and the environment.

Many items on the list are key targets of criticism by the environmental groups that accused the Trump administration of disregarding the hazards of climate change and being overly sympathetic to the wishes of industry."

- Gregory Wallace & Kristen Holmes, CNN, Jan 20, 2021

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/20/politics/climate-environment-biden-trump-regulations/index.html

shaolin_monkey

Crazy, grim news from Texas, as they deal with a real climate emergency. It has actually been snowing on the Texas/Mexico border! Well below zero, and no e edgy for millions!  😳

It seems counter-intuitive, but this is climate change driven by global warming.

There was a sudden stratospheric warming in the (already too warm) Arctic, which pushed a huge cold front south over Europe and North America.

More about that here:

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/sudden-stratospheric-warming-and-polar-vortex-early-2021



Things have gotten difficult for Texas fast. The record snow and cold weather has meant a huge demand for energy, causing rolling blackouts and an emergency energy situation.

https://eu.statesman.com/story/news/2021/02/14/texas-weather-rolling-blackouts-power-outage-winter-storm/4485015001/


Really grim news coming out about Texans who just don't know the dangers cold brings - 100 car pile ups, deaths from burning indoors (house fires and carbon monoxide poisoning) to stay warm due to power outages etc etc.






IndigoPrime

It's also caused the usual lack of empathy from idiots. Lots of people in the northern USA going "but we have inches of snow here every day". Yes. Good for you. You also have infrastructure and an understanding of how to deal with this. (Similarly, I often see Nordics laughing at Brits when it snows, presumably not realising we don't have snow tyres, and that our heating systems are primed to usually only turn on two or three times per day.)

sheridan

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 15 February, 2021, 02:48:42 PM
It's also caused the usual lack of empathy from idiots. Lots of people in the northern USA going "but we have inches of snow here every day". Yes. Good for you. You also have infrastructure and an understanding of how to deal with this. (Similarly, I often see Nordics laughing at Brits when it snows, presumably not realising we don't have snow tyres, and that our heating systems are primed to usually only turn on two or three times per day.)

Yes to this - though it's often even British people criticising the UK for not being able to cope with rare snow events, even though they live here and should know how rare it is.  For instance - I've been living at the current house for two years now and the last week or so is the first we've had snow here.

shaolin_monkey

How on earth can the U.K. be hosting COP26, lauding itself for reducing CO₂, then opening its first bloody coal mine in 30 years?! It's ludicrous! Hypocrisy at its most blatant!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/20/absolutely-ridiculous-top-scientist-slams-uk-government-over-coalmine


shaolin_monkey

Beijing just hit 25.6°C today.

This is a full +5.8° hotter than the record from 1996 and about +20°C warmer than normal for this time of year. It beat the record of  20°C - which was set yesterday. 😳

North and South Korea also recorded their hottest February day ever.


The Legendary Shark



China is massively expanding its weather-modification program, saying it will be able to cover half the country in artificial rain and snow by 2025.

China isn't the only country involved in cloud-seeding and such, which makes me wonder if/how such interventions with natural processes effect the climate as a whole and how much noise this kind of thing puts into the system for climatologists to cut through.

Also, might a global weather modification plan help to alleviate some extreme weather events by, for example, getting an unseasonably heavy precipitation to fall early or at a different rate to protect people and crops, or might such a global approach further disturb Earth's atmosphere in unexpected ways?

Have we any thoughts on whether or not weather modification will help us weather climate change?

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shaolin_monkey

Aye, geoengineering is a bit of a climate hot potato.

Some argue that with no signs of emissions falling quickly enough we may have no choice but to turn to them. Other scientists are against interfering further in an already chaotic system being made more so by climate pollutants, and instead should focus on radical decarbonisation. Others again say this is just a technological sticking plaster which allows polluters to continue polluting, where they just wave their hands Jedi-like and say "don't worry, geoengineering/technology will fix all the crap we're pumping more and more of into the atmosphere."

Some of the discussions around this pop up here:

https://e360.yale.edu/features/geoengineer-the-planet-more-scientists-now-say-it-must-be-an-option


You might also find the book 'Ministry of the Future' by Kim Stanley Robinson an interesting read, in that it takes the scientific theory of geoengineering and includes it in his story about how a continent deploys it (particulate matter to create cloud cover, which temporarily stalls global heating, allowing more time to decarbonise if I remember correctly) after they suffer a cataclysmic warmth/humidity event that kills millions.

My take on it all is we should consider ALL potential solutions, but decarbonisation must at the heart of anything we do, otherwise we're just stalling the inevitable rise of temperature that exceeds the ability of flora and fauna to withstand/adapt to it (which is, of course, already happening).

IndigoPrime

I was hoping the deep freeze in Texas — with some truly terrifying temperatures (single figures and worse in Fahrenheit) — would wake certain parties the fuck up. Instead, it's made GOP people double down on how bad the New Green Deal is, on the basis that there were power outages due to windmill failures. (That this is bullshit and the power outages were primarily down to appalling Texan power grid deregulation is apparently neither here nor there.)

shaolin_monkey

Ha! Yes, gas pipes supplying power stations froze solid, and they blamed wind turbines. Wind generation did drop off something like 30%, but then it only supplies about 16% of the total electricity for the state! Crazy loons!

There's a good breakdown of what happened here:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-deep-freeze-caused-texas-to-lose-power/


The frozen gas pipelines also affected electricity in Mexico:

https://www.pipeline-journal.net/news/texas-deep-freeze-also-freezes-gas-pipelines-mexico-leaving-millions-without-power




Tjm86

So scientists are starting to hypothesise about some of these effects based on the data ...

The Grauniad reporting as well as their source which links to far more reputable sources.

The Day After Tomorrow may well have been the usual Hollywood tomfoolery but it contained a nugget of truth it seems.   :(

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/25/atlantic-ocean-circulation-at-weakest-in-a-millennium-say-scientists

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00699-z