Climate Change

[Alan V]

CNN's Five Things:

Australia's Great Barrier Reef is suffering its sixth mass bleaching event due to heat stress caused by climate change, the reef's managers confirmed today. The update comes mid-way through a 10-day monitoring mission by scientists who are considering whether to add one of the world's seven natural wonders to their "in danger" list." According to a biologist monitoring the project, more than half of the living coral seen from the air is severely bleached completely white and are producing fluorescent pigments in an attempt to protect their tissue from the intense sun during marine heatwaves. This is the fourth mass bleaching event in six years and the first since 2020, when about one quarter of the reef showed signs of severe bleaching. Previous bleaching occurred in 1998 and 2002.

[SYZ]

CNN's Five Things:

Australia's Great Barrier Reef is suffering its sixth mass bleaching event due to heat stress caused by climate change, the reef's managers confirmed today. The update comes mid-way through a 10-day monitoring mission by scientists who are considering whether to add one of the world's seven natural wonders to their "in danger" list." According to a biologist monitoring the project, more than half of the living coral seen from the air is severely bleached completely white and are producing fluorescent pigments in an attempt to protect their tissue from the intense sun during marine heatwaves. This is the fourth mass bleaching event in six years and the first since 2020, when about one quarter of the reef showed signs of severe bleaching. Previous bleaching occurred in 1998 and 2002.

Contrary to what this report appears  to indicate—that the problem is solely Australia's—oceanic and overall
global warming is far more the problem of other countries, particularly China, the United States, and India.



It's all very well for Antonio Guterres "name-check" Australia—and as a non-scientist at that.  Maybe
he should be taking the United States to task for its disgraceful atmospheric emissions record?

[Alan V]

Contrary to what this report appears  to indicate—that the problem is solely Australia's—oceanic and overall
global warming is far more the problem of other countries, particularly China, the United States, and India.

I don't think any well-informed person would blame Australia for the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.

[SYZ]

Contrary to what this report appears  to indicate—that the problem is solely Australia's—oceanic and overall
global warming is far more the problem of other countries, particularly China, the United States, and India.

I don't think any well-informed person would blame Australia for the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.

Not in the literal sense I agree, but Antonio Guterres yesterday called Australia a
"holdout", and used an address to a sustainability summit to take an extraordinary
public swipe at Australia's climate change efforts.  In actuality, according to our
federal Emissions Reduction Minister, Angus Taylor, Australia has reduced emissions
faster than 15 other members of the G20.  

Australia has delivered a 20% emissions reduction since 2005, which is a better
performance than the US, Canada, and New Zealand.  Our emissions now equate
to only 1.3% of the global total.

[GenesisNemesis]

Climate tech firm to launch scaled-up plant sucking CO2 from air

BRUSSELS, June 28 (Reuters) - Construction is due to begin on Wednesday on what could become the world's biggest plant to capture carbon dioxide from the air and deposit it underground, the company behind the nascent green technology said.

Swiss start-up Climeworks AG said its second large-scale direct air capture (DAC) plant will be built in Iceland in 18-24 months, and have capacity to suck 36,000 tonnes of CO2 per year from the air.

That is a sliver of the 36 billion tonnes of energy-related CO2 emissions produced worldwide last year. But it is a 10-fold increase from Climeworks' existing DAC plant, currently the world's largest, and a leap in scale for a technology that scientists this year said is "unavoidable" if the world is to meet climate change goals. read more

The new "Mammoth" plant will contain around 80 large blocks of fans and filters that suck in air and extract its CO2, which Icelandic carbon storage firm Carbfix then mixes with water and injects underground where a chemical reaction turns it to rock. The process will be powered by a nearby geothermal energy plant.

[Scoop]

cool, Back in the 80's we said its possible, difficult and time consuming, but doable.

Assuming we don't kill ourselves over religion, race, pronouns, and greed that is.

[Inkubus]

The extent of the leaks is still unclear but rough estimates by scientists, based on the volume of gas reportedly in one of the pipelines, vary between 100,000 and 350,000 tonnes of methane.

Link

Wouldn't igniting the shit be the smart thing to do? The byproducts of combustion are far less harmful than the release of methane.

[airportkid]

Wouldn't igniting the shit be the smart thing to do?

A system like that should have cutoff valves specifically for stopping gas escape if the piping gets breached.  I don't understand why these valves haven't been closed already, even if it takes saturation divers to go down and close them.  Or have the well heads themselves been blown up?

[Inkubus]

Wouldn't igniting the shit be the smart thing to do?

A system like that should have cutoff valves specifically for stopping gas escape if the piping gets breached.  I don't understand why these valves haven't been closed already, even if it takes saturation divers to go down and close them.  Or have the well heads themselves been blown up?

No, there are no shutoff valves along the length of the thing because of access problems if they were to malfunction. Those lines are always full of gas, liquefied gas for negative buoyancy, you don't want the things floating to the surface which they could do if empty.
100,000 tons of liquid gas will take months to boil off.

[airportkid]

No, there are no shutoff valves along the length of the thing because of access problems if they were to malfunction.

Saturation diving is routine, so that's gonna need further elaboration.  As to bouyancy the lines can be anchored to not float when empty with such common devices as concrete.  That the system wasn't designed for access or accident sounds very much like it was designed with its top priority that its total cost not exceed $5.95.  Which wouldn't be surprising but definitely disgusting that so critical a system was permitted to be built so slapdash.

[Vera]

Europe is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world.

Temperatures in Europe have increased at more than twice the global average over the past 30 years—the highest of any continent in the world. As the warming trend continues, exceptional heat, wildfires, floods and other climate change impacts will affect society, economies and ecosystems, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The State of the Climate in Europe report, produced jointly with the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, focused on 2021. It provides information on rising temperatures, land and marine heatwaves, extreme weather, changing precipitation patterns and retreating ice and snow.

Temperatures over Europe have warmed significantly over the 1991–2021 period, at an average rate of about +0.5 °C per decade. As a result, Alpine glaciers lost 30 meters in ice thickness from 1997 to 2021. The Greenland ice sheet is melting and contributing to accelerating sea level rise. In summer 2021, Greenland saw a melt event and the first-ever recorded rainfall at its highest point, Summit station.

In 2021, high impact weather and climate events led to hundreds of fatalities, directly affected more than half a million people and caused economic damages exceeding US$ 50 billion. About 84% of the events were floods or storms.

It's not all bad news. A number of countries in Europe have been very successful in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. In particular, in the European Union (EU) greenhouse gas emissions decreased 31% between 1990 and 2020, with a net 55% reduction target for 2030.

Europe is also one of the most advanced regions in cross-border cooperation in climate change adaptation, in particular across transnational river basins. It is one of the world leaders in providing effective early warning systems, with about 75% of people protected. Heat-health action plans have saved many lives from extreme heat.

But the challenges are formidable.

"Europe presents a live picture of a warming world and reminds us that even well prepared societies are not safe from impacts of extreme weather events. This year, like 2021, large parts of Europe have been affected by extensive heatwaves and drought, fueling wildfires. In 2021, exceptional floods caused death and devastation," said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.

Guess I won't have to go to back to Brazil in order to live out my old age in a tropical climate. Though it's gonna be more like a desert probably.

[epronovost]

COP15 agreeent has been reached with member countries agreeing to protect 30% of their landmass to preserve biodiversity, an 11 hour agreement. Of course, much like the Paris Accord of 2015, it doesn't contain any mechanism to force countries to comply beside shame, but it's at least a positive statement to preserve our dying ecosystems.

[Rhythmcs]

It also privileges the worlds worst offenders, who have landmass to spare, that they aren't exactly sacrificing to continue not utilizing.

[Alan V]

From this One Earth article:

"Ultimately, even relatively modest warming is expected to increase the risk that various climatic tipping points will be crossed—causing large changes in the future state of Earth’s climate system, thereby adding further amplifying feedbacks. Despite major recent progress in incorporating a host of interacting feedbacks, climate models may still be underestimating the acceleration in global temperature change that a large and interrelated set of amplifying feedback loops and tipping points could cause. In a likely short-term scenario, our lack of dramatic emission reductions could result in a future with ongoing and intensifying climate impacts. In the worst case long-term scenario, interactions among feedback loops could result in an irreversible drift away from the current state of Earth’s climate to a state that threatens habitability for humans and other life forms. In any case, the accuracy of climate models is of vital importance since they guide climate mitigation efforts by informing policymakers about the expected effects of anthropogenic emissions."

The article identified 41 separate feedback loops, 27 of which are positive and amplify warming.

[Cavebear]

I am not a climate scientist.  But I am an experienced gardener.  It has become obvious to me that the average last frost date in Spring over the last couple decades has become at least a week earlier and the average first frost date in Fall is about a week or two later.  I recognize that is not precise, but my garden reacts to the changes, so I am doing the same.  

I have a detailed system of when to plant seeds inside under lights to grow them to where they succeed transplanted outdoors.  I changed my schedule by a week a few years ago, and I may change it by another week soon.  I understand that local conditions don't prove world-wide changes.  But when they do for 20 years locally, it is not just random odd weather.

I do dislike making planting plans from local events.  But when things become consistent, I have to adjust to that.  For this particular post, I won't even get into worldwide climatic events and measurements.  I'll leave that to others.  

But after 50 years of gardening in the same general place, I can sure see a difference!

[Rhythmcs]

Pretty cool stuff. Your anecdotal experience matches up with first and final frost dates in the us - we have frost maps going back a century. The growing season has extended about a month - two weeks on each end, in that century. Alot of it just in the last two decades. On the surface that would seem like a good thing - but what really hurts (and I imagine especially hurts the smaller a garden - with less of everything to lose) are the "freak" weather events -in- the growing season. Air quotes there because they've become the new normal. Strong winds blowing over tall stands when it should be mild. Cold snaps, heat waves, wet when it should be dry, dry when it should be wet. Early and late bugs. Faster spread of disease in humid conditions. It's gotten to the point where a single 30x72 high tunnel has approximately the same productive output (and net income) as a field acre.