It's a bit warm/ wet/ cold outside

[The Legendary Shark]

It's like a bloody swamp, here.

[The Legendary Shark]

Greening of the Earth Mitigates Surface Warming.

I just want to post this link again in case it gets lost. Don't worry, it's all perfectly respectable - NASA's involved and everything. It doesn't mean it's all fixed, or there's nothing to worry about, or it was all Al Gore's fault. It just means that there's a bit of good news at last. A glimmer.

And in these dark times, I figure we'd all appreciate one of those.

[IndigoPrime]

Reading that piece, it appears to be a warning and a ray of hope: stop cutting down the rainforest AND plant a shitload of new trees and then we might have a chance of not fucking up the planet, if other measures are rapidly rolled out as well. If I were a tree right now, I'd be tempted to fuck off into space, like the dolphins in Hitchhiker's Guide.

[The Legendary Shark]

So long, and thanks for all the dog pish.

[shaolin_monkey]

This is a great article from The Conversation which further discusses how 'greening' (getting any kind of low level weeds and grasses to colonise a space) is the first step to woodland growth, as described in your link - by creating a cool and damp area via the albedo effect, where shrubs can thrive.


"Much of the deforestation across the Amazon basin occurs in patches. But as more local patches are cleared, the forest opens up and makes the regional climate drier, which global warming encourages. The entire forest becomes more prone to drought and wildfire as a result."


"So how final is ecosystem collapse? A 19th-century experiment at Rothamsted in England showed that a fenced-off cultivated field would eventually revert to a diverse woodland after about 120 years. Simply removing the stress (in this case, ploughing and grazing) caused new positive feedback loops to become established. Weedy pioneer species colonised the bare ground, providing the shade and damp soil shrub seedlings needed to gain a foothold, which in turn led to trees and eventually a woodland."

http://theconversation.com/one-fifth-of-ecosystems-in-danger-of-collapse-heres-what-that-might-look-like-148137

[IndigoPrime]

We have management in microcosm locally, and it's been really interesting to watch. Our pond is a SSSI, and so need specific things to thrive to retain that status. The pond was man-made in the first place, note, and its first detailed reference dates from 1324 as a "great fishery".

In recent years, local army developments (in short, them ripping up all their hedgerows, leading to a shit-ton of silt run-off) resulted in the pond being inundated with silt. Estimates put it at a metre deep at the foot of the pond, extinguishing a lot of life. Additionally, management funding losses had resulted in a lot of infill. Reeds would grow in the silt, gradually encroaching on the waters. Over time, the reedbeds would turn to marsh and then solid ground, on which invasive tree species would grow. Estimates suggested the pond would within years have turned into marsh. (And this isn't a village pond—it's 52 acres in size, so not tiny!)

Fortunately, pressure from locals and council support resulted in an ongoing dredging and management programme. The pond, once described as 99%+ unviable, is still in danger but got its Green Flag status back in 2019. Local ecosystems are being better managed and are doing quite well. the SSSI status, so close to being lost, is secure. (Naturally, the army couldn't give a fuck and still refuse to do anything to help.)

What this ultimately shows is that it's always about political will. In this case, local and county council deemed that it would be absurd if the town I lived in, named after its pond, lost the pond. So it—albeit almost too late—did something. Worldwide, we are almost too late, but can still do something. It just needs political will—and enough people to apply the pressure.

[Tjm86]

... it would be absurd if the town I lived in, named after its pond, lost the pond.

Well, I suppose "Pondscum" is a better place to live than that Austrian intercourse-named town ...

[paddykafka]

This one made me smile.

https://www.facebook.com/8shit/photos/a.281850191954165/2209912349147930

[Professor Bear]

Everyone knows the Moon is flat, that's why we never see the other side of it even if it's windy out.

[shaolin_monkey]

World Disaster Report 2020 - front page:

"Snapshot of climate- and weather-related disasters and their impacts

In the past ten years, 83% of all disasters triggered by natural hazards were caused by extreme weather- and climate-related events, such as floods, storms and heatwaves.

The number of climate- and weather-related disasters has been increasing since the 1960s, and has risen almost 35% since the 1990s.

The proportion of all disasters attributable to climate and extreme weather events has also increased significantly during this time, from 76% of all disasters during the 2000s to 83% in the 2010s.

These extreme weather- and climate-related disasters have killed more than 410,000 people in the past ten years, the vast majority in low and lower middle-income countries. Heatwaves, then storms, have been the biggest killers.

A further 1.7 billion people around the world have been affected by climate- and weather-related disasters during the past decade."

Full report:

https://media.ifrc.org/ifrc/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/IFRC_wdr2020/IFRC_WDR_ExecutiveSummary_EN_Web.pdf

[JayzusB.Christ]

Everyone knows the Moon is flat, that's why we never see the other side of it even if it's windy out.

[shaolin_monkey]

It has been a pretty interesting month or two for me re climate science.

I completed the first quarter of a year long course with flying colours, which will give me a 'Climate Steward' title at the end. This segment was super interesting - all about short lived climate pollutants such as black carbon, and how quick and easy methods to prevent it will keep temperatures more stable as we tackle long lived warming pollutants like CO2. It also covered the various methods of creating renewable energy, hydrogen creation from water and electrolysis, and sequestering and storing the carbon currently in the air. The next part focuses on planning for cities, governments, councils, and companies in terms of becoming as close to zero carbon as possible.

Next up was a piece of research for George Mason Uni, under Prof. John Cook. Working with six others we had to review hundreds of scientific abstracts and catalogue any that were related to climate science. I may be getting my name on a research paper for the first time! Either way, it was fascinating learning about all the crazy research underpinning the headlines around climate change, plus what is involved in turning it around.

The abstracts that came up covered so many things, like paleoclimatology, ocean circulation studies, ice core sampling, climate modelling refinements, ice shelf erosion in Greenland and Antarctica, studies in carbon sequestration and storage, decadal rainfall changes across continents, glacier shrinkage, movement of flora/fauna ranges northward, soil carbon depletion, forest cover depletion, and so much more! I had to separate them out from a bunch of other scientific abstracts that touched on a wide range of subjects, so got to read up on them too. My brain was melting each evening, but learned a hell of a lot!

Finally, I've been one of the beta-testers for the new Cranky Uncle app I backed, due to launch on the 15th. The idea of it is to teach the argumentative tricks and devices used by climate science deniers, conspiracy  theorists and so on, and thereby inoculate yourself against them. It is all done with great humour, facing off against the titular Cranky Uncle himself as you learn such things as logical fallacies, cherry picking, strawman, red herring, slothful deduction etc etc, and try to beat him at his own game. It'll be free on release, and I may even have a cameo of sorts in it.

Busy busy!

It's good to see the folk at Project Drawdown hard at it too. Their latest report on all the drawdown initiatives is out, which you can find here:

https://drawdown.org/

[shaolin_monkey]

Epic article about how electricity from renewables has become so much cheaper so quickly compared to fossil fuel-generated electricity!

https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

[shaolin_monkey]

Thread re health and climate change, plus link to report in The Lancet (you'll need to subscribe, but it is free).

Deaths by heatstroke doubled.

https://twitter.com/globalhlthtwit/status/1334396292265627648?s=20

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32290-X/fulltext

[IndigoPrime]

Epic article about how electricity from renewables has become so much cheaper so quickly compared to fossil fuel-generated electricity!

We are really in a bizarre period right now, where energy companies are clearly attempting to grind out the last of the oil/coal profits before moving on, rather than transitioning at speed. By law, solar should be integrated into every new build. Energy companies should be retrofitting existing housing, where possible, and using a similar ownership model to smart meters. (To encourage home users, they can profit share, or offer residents ownership options over the panels if they prefer that.) We should have a shit-load of wind farms around much of our coast.

Instead: something something green headline something forget about it next week something something probably do something by 2050 or whatever something.