Climate change is not the immediate threat facing us today

[Old Rocks]

The pandemic proved AGW is bogus. The planet warmed while pollution ceased, thus proving without doubt that man’s use of fossil fuels isn’t causing the planet to warm. In fact, it appears fossil fuels cool the planet.

The lockdowns and reduced societal activity related to the COVID-19 pandemic affected emissions of pollutants in ways that slightly warmed the planet for several months last year, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).


The counterintuitive finding highlights the influence of airborne particles, or aerosols, that block incoming sunlight. When emissions of aerosols dropped last spring, more of the Sun's warmth reached the planet, especially in heavily industrialized nations, such as the United States and Russia, that normally pump high amounts of aerosols into the atmosphere.

"There was a big decline in emissions from the most polluting industries, and that had immediate, short-term effects on temperatures," said NCAR scientist Andrew Gettelman, the study's lead author. "Pollution cools the planet, so it makes sense that pollution reductions would warm the planet."
COVID-19 lockdowns temporarily raised global temperatures, research shows: Reductions in aerosol emissions had slight warming impact, study finds

LOL Maybe for some people, but I never missed a days work in the steel mill from the pandemic. We produced steel through the whole thing. And the mill is producing even more steel.

 

[gipper]

LOL Maybe for some people, but I never missed a days work in the steel mill from the pandemic. We produced steel through the whole thing. And the mill is producing even more steel.

So you’re saying pollution continued unabated and unchanged during the pandemic. Yet the evidence doesn’t support this thinking.

 

[Rigby5]

So you’re saying pollution continued unabated and unchanged during the pandemic. Yet the evidence doesn’t support this thinking.

Carbon emissions never go away on their own.
CO2 can last forever. It does not decompose or settle out.
The only thing that reduces CO2 is plant growth.
So since we were still producing more CO2 than plants could absorb, even during the covid recession, there is no way global warming could possibly reduce.
And actually, even if you halted all CO2 production, global warming would keep increasing, because the carbon continually causes a greater portion of heat retention. The heat continually accumulates, regardless of if no more carbon would be added at all.
Even worse is that it is getting warm enough so that more water vapor is being evaporated and added to the atmosphere, and that accelerates global warming even more.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Republicon's video of lies & more lies
The creators should be banned from the internet

Spoken like a true Fascist

 

[Rigby5]

It;s all political theater to gain more control over every aspect of our lives. We could END fossil fuels in 3 to 5 years by building out nuclear.. Does it seems strange that "leadership" and the public is MORE SCARED by commercial nuclear power than the end of the world from runaway warming?

Those in charge have NO CLUE how to "fix it". Wind and Solar are NOT "alternatives". They are merely supplements. Can't run an advanced society on just wind and solar and limited hydro. Solar isn't for every region and is only there at reasonable energy for 6 or 9 hours a day depending on the season, the location and the weather. Wind is phenomenally flaky and takes several days in a row off about 2 or 4 times a month, It's there for an hour and gone for 20 minutes next time you look. No amount of batteries or other storage is gonna fix that. And even strong attempts to double/triple the cost of wind/solar with grid scale battery storage is an enviro nightmare in itself.

MANDATING electric vehicles without expanding total grid power by 30% to 40% and TOTALLY re-doing transmission lines is nucking futz.

Nuclear and using wind/solar OFF GRID to make and store hydrogen is a MUCH better option. Hydrogen would be the transportation fuel. Instead of battery vehicles, you have fuel cells to use the hydrogen.

Not enough smarts in politics to figure this out.. They're gonna waste TONS of money and get people killed in the process.

Agreed, with all of it, including hydrogen.

 

[ReinyDays]

Carbon emissions never go away on their own.
CO2 can last forever. It does not decompose or settle out.
The only thing that reduces CO2 is plant growth.
So since we were still producing more CO2 than plants could absorb, even during the covid recession, there is no way global warming could possibly reduce.
And actually, even if you halted all CO2 production, global warming would keep increasing, because the carbon continually causes a greater portion of heat retention. The heat continually accumulates, regardless of if no more carbon would be added at all.
Even worse is that it is getting warm enough so that more water vapor is being evaporated and added to the atmosphere, and that accelerates global warming even more.

Although I agree with your conclusion, that the pandemic ought not to have any effect on global warming ... I disagree with the causes you've stated ...

If a worker is laid off, they won't be using energy at work, they'll be home using energy ... and we'll still be burning fossil fuels transporting all the food from the farms into the cities ... I don't burn gasoline if I order on-line, but someone else does to bring that product to my front door ... the 20% of us without access to fossil fuel energy are still clear cutting forests for firewood ... the urban asphalt is still jacking temperatures up 5ºC (locally) whether people get the vax or not ...

I don't know why these denialist bozos can't seem to understand this ... looking at the CO2 readings at the Mouna Loa Observatory, I only see a measly 1/3 reduction in CO2 emissions over the past year compared to the average ... such a tiny little bit won't effect temperatures ... this pandemic has had no effect on global warming ... it only "looks like" there's a correlation, the black trace on the left-hand chart in the above link that dips down at the beginning of each COVID wave is strictly a co-incidence, there's absolutely no connection at all between the two ... there's a limit to what can be learned from empirical evidence, especially in the face of such overwhelming statistical evidence ...

The only thing that reduces CO2 is plant growth.

Yup ... you seem a bright person ... from the 1.7 ppm increase in CO2 this past year due to man-kind's emissions ... calculate how much is the total mass of CO2 added this past year ... and how well does this compare to 40 gigatonnes of emissions we know we're producing? ... that seems a lot of plant growth, as if they evolved to do just this ... I'm a big time sports fan:
- Plants - 220,000 ppm Oxygen
- Animals - 425 ppm Carbon Dioxide
This is called a "blow-out" win for plants ...

 

[flacaltenn]

Carbon emissions never go away on their own.
CO2 can last forever. It does not decompose or settle out.
The only thing that reduces CO2 is plant growth.
So since we were still producing more CO2 than plants could absorb, even during the covid recession, there is no way global warming could possibly reduce.
And actually, even if you halted all CO2 production, global warming would keep increasing, because the carbon continually causes a greater portion of heat retention. The heat continually accumulates, regardless of if no more carbon would be added at all.
Even worse is that it is getting warm enough so that more water vapor is being evaporated and added to the atmosphere, and that accelerates global warming even more.

Couple of nuances here. The CO2 "cycle" is the whole of generation and retention. BOTH the Land (plants) and the Oceans are the major players in this..

I hate it when the units are in carbon and not CO2 -- but human emissions are about 5% of the YEARLY CO2 cycle that nature sources and sinks. And after reading a lot of lit on this -- I doubt that NATURE'S contributions are KNOWN within 5% of the correct numbers.

CO2 is NOT permanently resident in the atmos and has both a long and short term time constant for residency.. All that exchange is constantly in flux and the oceans (especially the colder ones) are SUPER sinks for CO2.. This is sequested DEEP in Davy Jones locker land at great depths.

Even now -- about 1/3 to a 1/2 of man's emissions are eaten yearly by natural land/ocean sinks.

The other "nuance" is -- the greenhouse POWER of CO2 to heat the surface is logarithmically limited by increasing the CONCENTRATION in the atmos.. The MORE CO2 -- the LESS the incremental increase.. For every doubling of CO2 -- you get the SAME increase in surface temperature..

SO -- since the Industrial revolution we haven't even REACHED the 1st doubling, but from basic physics and chemistry you can find the math for an atmos GHouse model. A doubling in Concentratiion using this BASIC SCIENCE -- yields about 1.1degC increase in surface temp.. We've seen about 1.6DegC since that time.. That's from a baseline of 270ppm conc CO2 to about 410 today.. Haven't REACHED the 540ppm mark YET,.

But the IMPORTANT bit of this is that the NEXT 1.1DegC of CO2 warming to reach 1080ppm WILL TAKE TWICE AS MUCH CO2 as the 1st doubling... Not gonna finish the 1st doubling til about 2050???? Will reach 1080 by 2150??? Dont know.. That's the basic Greenhouse math in every Atmospheric Physic textbook..

But where I get off the GW crazy train is with the auxillary - MORE CONTROVERSIAL -- CATASTROPHIC theories of GW.. The ones that make people shit their skivvies with monster storms and droughts, melting of antarctica/greenland, fantastic amounts of ocean rise --- ARE NOT SETTLED science.. After 30 years of closely following the science, my position is that CO2 has power to increase surface warming, but NOT SUPERPOWERS theorized as "all positive feedbacks", "accelerated warming curves" and "trigger temperatures" at which we could no longer make a difference to outcome.,

Sorry for the length.. Appreciate your objectivity and interest.. Thought you might find some things to discover here...

 

[Rigby5]

Couple of nuances here. The CO2 "cycle" is the whole of generation and retention. BOTH the Land (plants) and the Oceans are the major players in this..

I hate it when the units are in carbon and not CO2 -- but human emissions are about 5% of the YEARLY CO2 cycle that nature sources and sinks. And after reading a lot of lit on this -- I doubt that NATURE'S contributions are KNOWN within 5% of the correct numbers.

CO2 is NOT permanently resident in the atmos and has both a long and short term time constant for residency.. All that exchange is constantly in flux and the oceans (especially the colder ones) are SUPER sinks for CO2.. This is sequested DEEP in Davy Jones locker land at great depths.

Even now -- about 1/3 to a 1/2 of man's emissions are eaten yearly by natural land/ocean sinks.

The other "nuance" is -- the greenhouse POWER of CO2 to heat the surface is logarithmically limited by increasing the CONCENTRATION in the atmos.. The MORE CO2 -- the LESS the incremental increase.. For every doubling of CO2 -- you get the SAME increase in surface temperature..

SO -- since the Industrial revolution we haven't even REACHED the 1st doubling, but from basic physics and chemistry you can find the math for an atmos GHouse model. A doubling in Concentratiion using this BASIC SCIENCE -- yields about 1.1degC increase in surface temp.. We've seen about 1.6DegC since that time.. That's from a baseline of 270ppm conc CO2 to about 410 today.. Haven't REACHED the 540ppm mark YET,.

But the IMPORTANT bit of this is that the NEXT 1.1DegC of CO2 warming to reach 1080ppm WILL TAKE TWICE AS MUCH CO2 as the 1st doubling... Not gonna finish the 1st doubling til about 2050???? Will reach 1080 by 2150??? Dont know.. That's the basic Greenhouse math in every Atmospheric Physic textbook..

But where I get off the GW crazy train is with the auxillary - MORE CONTROVERSIAL -- CATASTROPHIC theories of GW.. The ones that make people shit their skivvies with monster storms and droughts, melting of antarctica/greenland, fantastic amounts of ocean rise --- ARE NOT SETTLED science.. After 30 years of closely following the science, my position is that CO2 has power to increase surface warming, but NOT SUPERPOWERS theorized as "all positive feedbacks", "accelerated warming curves" and "trigger temperatures" at which we could no longer make a difference to outcome.,

Sorry for the length.. Appreciate your objectivity and interest.. Thought you might find some things to discover here...

Yes I left off that ocean organisms like coral consume carbon from the air.
They think fresh lava also absorbs CO2 from the air.

But the point is the EPA is all upset about NOx from diesel engines, and that is silly.
NOx naturally and quickly decomposes.
CO2 does not.

And yes I agree there is a level of CO2 production that is equal to natural consumption, so does no harm.

As far as extreme positive feedback acceleration, that is possible. But it is also possible increased water vapor will also cause negative feedback increase in cloud albedo. But who wants to live on a planet where there is perpetual cloud cover.

 

[flacaltenn]

Yes I left off that ocean organisms like coral consume carbon from the air.
They think fresh lava also absorbs CO2 from the air.

But the point is the EPA is all upset about NOx from diesel engines, and that is silly.
NOx naturally and quickly decomposes.
CO2 does not.

And yes I agree there is a level of CO2 production that is equal to natural consumption, so does no harm.

As far as extreme positive feedback acceleration, that is possible. But it is also possible increased water vapor will also cause negative feedback increase in cloud albedo. But who wants to live on a planet where there is perpetual cloud cover.

CO2 doesn't "decompose" well, but it does CYCLE from atmos to sinks in HUGE quantities. And like all other molecules that try to leave the atmos -- it is CONSUMED in the outer atmos and turned back into C and O2 plasmas.

It's also NOT a constant at any one place on the planet.. It SEASONALLY changes by amount much greater than the 10 year concentration rate of rise. You can see that on unfiltered data from Mauna Loa lab in the mountains of Hawaii.. Nature clearly dominates this cycle. By about 20 to 1 ratio.. And IT COULD BE MORE important to start an accurate audit of this cycle for clues on how humans are AFFECTING the sinking capabilities of ocean and land -- or even the sourcing of CO2 FROM the oceans/lands. COULD BE more important than the 5% of the cycle that we emit -- of which nearly 1/2 gets sequestered out of the cycle by nature.

It's clearly arrogant to look at the immediate past climate history of FOUR SUCCESSIVE DEEP ICE AGES and say that "negative feedbacks" and "trigger temperatures" are a real thing. For instance, the planet had 4 chances to KILL ITSELF by melting out of those Ice Ages and exposing every last bit of CO2 sequestered in frozen tundra --- But it DIDNT DO THAT.. And frozen tundra and warming oceans are the key "drivers" of these ambitious CATASTROPHIC (and unproven) Global warming add-ons..

For instance, hardly EVER mentioned by the IPCC is the fact that melting sea ice in the Arctic is MAJOR NEGATIVE feedback since ice PREVENTS the cold Arctic oceans from becoming the planet's most MASSIVE CO2 sink.. Those cold open waters are many times more effective in near permanent removal of CO2 from the atmos than the equivalent acreage of mature forest..

Or the NEW science on Antarctic coastal glacier melting being MOSTLY driven by active volcanic rifts under those coastal glaciers and NOT the wimpy 1 or 1.5degC surface warming in that frozen desert area..

 

[flacaltenn]

Really interesting take on a Woods Hole study that is continually updating the CO2 sinking ability of the oceans. Shows how clearly, nothing is ever really settled in science. Original estimates of the variability and sinking ability were based largely on temperature. Only in the past 20 years have people realized that plankton and algae and other CO2 consuming plant life play a LARGE ROLE..

That's why I say that whatever's left over in temperature anomaly ABOVE and beyond the 1.1degC doubling of CO2 COULD BE our poor book-keeping on the CO2 cycle and NOT fundamentally JUST human emissions..

Man could be HARMING or ENHANCING the ocean sinking abilities by affecting the phytoplankton, and other biologics that live in the light zone at the surface..

Study suggests the ocean is soaking up twice as much CO2 as we thought

The world’s oceans play an important role in regulating the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by absorbing billions of metric tons of it each year. A new study suggests we may have been greatly underestimating the effectiveness of this vast carbon sink, with new modeling from scientists at…

newatlas.com

Just like forests, oceans act as a carbon sink by absorbing the gas through organisms that use it for photosynthesis. The phytoplankton that inhabit the seas engage in this process by using sunlight and carbon to produce food and energy.

---

The microscopic organisms then either die or are gobbled up by zooplankton, both of which will pull them deeper into the ocean and take their stores of carbon along for the ride. There they can become buried in sediment or eaten up by larger marine creatures. Overall, the oceans are thought to absorb around a third of the carbon dioxide emitted through human activity in this way.

But the WHOI scientists believe this “biological pump” may be pulling in a lot more carbon than we give it credit for. The team arrived at this conclusion by rethinking the way we calculate what is known as the euphotic zone, which is the section of upper ocean layer that sunlight is able to penetrate.

 

[ReinyDays]

The good news is that we'll know for sure what the temperatures will be in a hundred years ... in a hundred years ... and with complete scientific certainty ...

 

[Woodznutz]

I thought Donald Trump was the greatest threat to mankind.

 

[watchingfromafar]

I thought Donald Trump was the greatest threat to mankind.

He still is -

 

[Woodznutz]

Man could be HARMING or ENHANCING the ocean sinking abilities by affecting the phytoplankton, and other biologics that live in the light zone at the surface..

---

Too late. We're doomed.

 

[fncceo]

He still is -

How many "greatest" threats are we allowed?

I would have thought no more than one.

 

[Crick]

The good news is that we'll know for sure what the temperatures will be in a hundred years ... in a hundred years ... and with complete scientific certainty ...

The bad news will be that it will be a hundred years too late to do anything about it.

 

[Woodznutz]

He still is -

Dems can solve the Trump problem easily, just adopt his policies on immigration and energy and he'll go away.

 

[Crick]

Dems can solve the Trump problem easily, just adopt his policies on immigration and energy and he'll go away.

Where the F do you get that idea?

 

[Woodznutz]

Where the F do you get that idea?

Trump ran to solve the problems Dems created. If the Dems stop creating those problems, Trump will have no reason to run.

 

[ReinyDays]

Trump ran to solve the problems Dems created. If the Dems stop creating those problems, Trump will have no reason to run.

I'm from a family of immigrants ... fuck you in the asshole ... dirty savage ... go eat your damn acorns foolish person ...