This month’s open thread on climate change topics. How are we in November already? And why is it still so warm… ?
Anyway, please stay on topic and avoid insulting other commenters.
Reader Interactions
445 Responses to "Unforced variations: Nov 2024"
Dharmasays
John Pollack says
13 Nov 2024 at 1:37 PM If I were planning climate resiliency measures for extreme heat in the Sydney Australia region in the face of rising GMST, I would have little concern that temperatures in the western suburbs would reach 60C in the next several decades.
I cannot imagine being any more off the mark with a comment like that.
AS JP said earlier to Geoff – John Pollack: – “Unfortunately, they don’t shed any light on the physical mechanism(s) that would be required to generate a +12C mid latitude increment in extreme summer temperatures from a +4C change in GMST. This is the exaggeration I am referring to.”
The whole thing is about what might happen in western Sydney and other places already experience extreme heatwaves in a +1.2C GMST world later in a hypothetical +4c GMST anomaly world — that is most likely to be at least A CENTURY FROM NOW — what JP is focusing on and talking about has nothing to do with either Geoff or the fairly sensible thoughtful article he quoted and referenced for general consumption.
And to Nigelj says
13 Nov 2024 at 2:34 PM
First you give a quote of mine which was said 3 days before the short quotes you take from JP then claim he was already addressing my concern. Very creative (smile)
Pitman is an expert on the topic and he makes a lot of good logical sense. If people are curious, such as JP, then he should go read what Pitman says on the topic in his commentaries and published papers, and others as well. What Geoff shared was useful and quite interesting information. It included several refs. I looked at them. Then I add some extra information myself. eg about Australia warming X1.5 faster than the rest of the world on average. And today I added some info about the difference made by higher humidity on warming impacts effects. Seems at least tangentially related to Canadian and western Sydney heatwaves in coming decades and a century from now (god help them all when that time arrives).
Dharmasays
I have a serious complaint. Can we please stop conflating the word “uncountable” with the word “countless”?
Please accuracy is important. Paul P used the world “uncountable” in his text all those years ago now. These countable errors need to stop.
Piotrsays
Darma: ” I have a serious complaint. Can we please stop conflating the word “uncountable” with the word “countless”? Please accuracy is important. Paul P used the world “uncountable” in his text all those years ago now. These countable errors need to stop.”
Reality: Paul P, “all those years ago (14 Oct 2021):
“ long range predictions of the next El Nino or La Nina [could] therefore save countless lives”
So Darma fabricated a quote to use it to attack opponents for what …he has just done. An internet troll
in a nutshell.
Dharmasays
Can you prove it though?
Piotrsays
Darma “ Can you prove it though?
are you talking to me ? If yes, which part of giving you both the date (14 Oct 2021) and the author (Paul Pukite) of the RC post in which he wrote about “saving COUNTLESS lives”, I quote:
” Paul P, 14 Oct 2021: “ long range predictions of the next El Nino or La Nina [could] therefore save countless lives””
is not enough a proof of you?
Particularly, that you do not apply the same standards of proof to yourself – heck – you apply ZERO
standards to yourself – THE ONLY PROOF you apparently need is …that … you said so, as in:
– Paul P used the world “uncountable” in his text all those years ago now .
And you presented it as an unquestionable fact, so unquestionable that you built on that
your pontification toward your opponents:
– “I have a serious complaint”
– “Can we please stop conflating the word “uncountable” with the word “countless”?”
– Please accuracy is important.
– Paul P used the world “uncountable” in his text all those years ago now .
– These countable errors need to stop. ” (c) Darma Nov14.
Dharmasays
Commercial Operations Start For World’s ‘Largest’ Offshore Solar PV Project
CHN Energy of China has commissioned a 1 GW floating solar PV project in China as the world’s largest offshore solar power plant
It integrates fish farming with solar PV generation, expected to serve as a model for other large-scale projects of this scale
The company recently also energized a 3 GW solar power plant in a coal mining subsidence area in China
China’s state-owned energy firm China Energy Group (CHN Energy) has grid-connected a 1 GW offshore floating solar power plant in China, calling it the world’s 1st and largest of its kind open-sea offshore solar PV project.
The offshore PV installation has come up 8 km off the eastern coast of Dongying City in China’s Kenli district in Shandong province. CHN Energy has put up 2,934 PV platforms installed using large-scale offshore steel truss platform fixed pile foundations.
On completion, the 1 GW project is expected to generate 1.78 billion kWh annually. It will be equivalent to meeting the annual electricity needs of around 2.67 million urban residents in China.
Recently, the company also energized a 3 GW solar power plant, calling it China’s largest single-capacity PV power plant built in a coal mining subsidence area. It was grid-connected on November 5, 2024. enough to power 2 million households, according to CHN. https://taiyangnews.info/markets/worlds-largest-offshore-solar-power-plant-in-china
Should I assume the US will sanction this solar energy group entity or maybe even try to blow up the interconnector cable to the mainland lest China be seen as doing something successful again?
My reaction to the link. Capitalism has its flaws. Most of these can be rectified with an interventionist government..
Socialism has been tried many times and has failed. As Einstein said don’t keep trying the same experiment and expecting different results. I do think we need a new system beyond Capitalism or socialism but we don’t have a workable plan yet.
I feel Israel has not done enough to protect Palestinian civilians. Trouble is the Jewish vote in america can swing elections so no Party wants to upset the Israeli people.
Radge Haverssays
Seems like everything everywhere all at once.
Well every particular thing, including collections of things, fail sooner or later. That’s why dogmas suck so hard. I’d say spare me your -izzums, but any old heuristic port in a storm, I guess. How did we get here? A lack of collective imagination, no doubt.
Hey, how about that climate, eh?
(Yeah, ‘they’ ought to do something about that, Welp, time to make the doughnuts.)
Dharmasays
Nigelj,
Albert Einstein is the world-famous physicist. This article was originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949). It was subsequently published in May 1998 to commemorate the first issue of MR‘s fiftieth year. —The Editors
Why Socialism?
by Albert Einstein
Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is. https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
Enjoy!
Like Albert said more or less: Don’t keep trying the same experiment-doing the same things-over and over and over again, and expecting different results. That’s the definition of insanity.
Then the idea of the US, the IPCC, publications by climate scientists and COP29 came to mind. Why?
Nigeljsays
Dharma, thanks for Einstein’s original essay highlighting the problems of capitalism and promoting socialism. Its interesting that his essay was written in 1949 when it appeared that the grand socialist experiments in the USSR and China and lesser attempts elsewhere might actually have worked, but by the 1970s s they were all failing badly and were generally hated and were mostly abandoned. I wonder what Einsten would have thought about all that. I have grown sceptical of socialism, although publicly owned services like schools and provision of income support for the unemployed and elderly makes perfect sense and has practical justifications .
If we keep repeating capitalism in the same form as currently Im sure you are right the outcomes would be the same. But we can make pragmatic changes to capitalism to make it more socially fair and more environmentally sustainable. Im less sure that we can make pragmatic canges to socialism that would make it workable.
Regarding “dont keep doing the same experiment and expect different results.” The IPCC reports havent exactly galvanised the world into taking climate change seriously and fixing the problem, yet they keep turning out the same sorts of reports, expecting things will change. Unfortunately in this instance I dont think that the IPCC reports are the problem or writing them differently would make very much difference. The problems are people dont want to listen, dont want to make sacrifices, and dont see the climate change problem as a priority due to a whole lot of psychological reasons and being worn down by denialist lies. That said the IPCC reports are a bit overly ‘nuanced.’
The Democrats do seem to be losing a few elections and yet they keep on with much the same election policies and election strategies expecting things will change. Its hard to know why they do this. I doubt going hard left will win them any elections, but they have become a bit too centrist and left climate change out of this campaign, and that made them look ready to sacrifice any policy on a whim. There have also been some silly ideas and vote losers like suggesting defunding the police and letting in far too many immigrants per year. The Democrats have been unfairly blamed for the inflation which originated in 2020 with a time delay, so that didnt help.. But IMHO they are still infinitely preferable to the GOP or Trump.
Nigelj: I tend to agree with you that a hybrid of socialism and capitalism is probably optimal, and here in the UK amongst other countries, have gone too far down the road of neo-liberal capitalism.
The main problem with capitalism is that externalised costs do not appear on the balance sheet, so the optimal way to make profit is cut costs to the bone and dump the consequences on someone else (or society). This degrades quality of life for those others. This is why some form of regulation is needed. We have seen in the UK the fallacy of assuming government is bad and private is good with the dreadful outcomes of privatisation of postal services, energy, water and public transport. Thames Water is facing administration which, given water is an essential resource, will require the government to use taxpayers money to take over and put in the much needed investment in the infrastructure. Yes the government, which the neo-liberal capitalists insist is wasteful and inefficient is expected to bear the cost (through taxpayers) of the failure of the private sector. Hypocrisy at its worst.
Nigeljsays
Adam Lea,
I do indeed favour a hybrid system that is essentially capitalist but combines elements of socialism. Sweden, Norways and Finland do this quite well as you may be aware. They put childrens best interests at the centre of decion making, and use whatever capitalist or scoialist tools seem useful to that end. Quite an interesting philosophy.
The main problem of capitalism is indeed externalised costs and the need for regulation to fix that. Of course there are different approaches from simple regulatory limits to cap and trade schemes and taxation schemes like carbon taxes. They can all work and it probably depends on which is the most politically viable. However the problem with cap and trade schemes is they are very opaque and so its possible for right wing governmnets sceptical of the climate problem to minimse the effectiveness of the schemes while saying to the public look we have this scheme that will fix the problem.
In New Zealand the water supply is still provided by local government. Prices are cheap but there has been under investment in upgrading aging infrastructure. But that would likely happen also if it was privatised. Water supply is a “natural monopoly” and regardless of who owns the asset it thus needs strong regulation.
The electricity system used to be completely government owned and did quite a decent job. In the 1980s it was turned into a state ownded corporation called Electricorp which also did quite a good job. Then in the 1990s the conservative governmnet broke up electricorp into a state owned lines company, and a couple of partly state owned corporatised generating companies and a couple of private sector generating companies. The idea was to create this competitive market and reduce electricity prices. The exact opposite happened and after 50 years of slowly falling electricity prices under the state owned system, in the 1990s prices started rising relentlessly and we never seem to have quite enough generation to get through difficult periods. The whole system is complicated and seems contrived.
The postal service remains a state owned corporation, so it hasnt been privatised but its required to make a profit. It provides an ok service.
Public transport has been privatised and is pretty dreadful.
What to make of all this? I admit I have an intuitive attraction towards central state ownership and planning, but its very clear from history that this doesnt work well with the provision of industrial products and food. Capitalism and private ownership does a better job probably due to the competition and efficieny of the model. Socialist countries do a decent job with government ownership of certain services like education and healthcare. Government owned and run education ( at least at primary and secondary school level) makes sense to me because it ensures everyone has good access to education and means you can control what is taught and ensure its not complete bunk like creationism.
Where capitalism seems to go a bit wrong is with natural services monopolies like the provision of water and power. Privatisations havent been a great success. You get the classic problems of local monopolies under investing and over charging. At least if councils own the water supply you can vote out bad councils but with private sector provision the companes are only accountable to shareholder who may only care about profits, and not even live in the country. This could be rectified with tough regulation, but right wing governments are reluctant to do this. Privatisation can work for these these things but it needs tough regulation.
But anyway, it just seems to me one good model is where the private sector provides food, and consumer goods and financial services and the state sector provides at least basic education and healthcare and possibly monopoly services like water and power. It also depends on the size of a country: America is so large it has quite a good competitive private health sector but in smaller countries this is not always feasible, so government ownership may make more sense.
It seems to me the main challenge is regardless of who owns something like the water supply this is a natural monopoly so the provider must be strictly regulated, whether private sector or the government itself. Its an absolute essential of life so price gouging or profiteering is utterly unaccepetable. I would not want to see the water supply in NZ privatised especially after seeing the results in the UK..
Mr. Know It Allsays
David on 7 Nov.: “….I tremble at the thought of what is coming…”
That sounds serious! Tell us what is coming so we can prepare for it.
And if we can get BPL and Paul Pukite to tell us what is going to happen to Ukraine when Putin’s puppet takes office, perhaps we can prepare for that also.
Adam Leasays
Nigelj: In the UK, I get the impression that the general feeling is that services essential to life (eg energy, water) or essential to the functioning of society (eg railways) should be run by the government and it should be accepted that we all need to contribute to their upkeep through taxes. What the UK has done is assume these services can be run as a profit making business when on their own they cannot make a profit, so when in private hands, the government has to subsidise them and profits are given to shareholders instead of being re-invested back into improving the service. The government subsidises the UK’s privatised rail network more than when it was under government ownership yet train fares are very high, and the UK now has the worlds most expensive electricity, and a part of that is because in 2015, when the conservatiove government realised its popularity was dwindling, tried to win votes back by “cutting the green crap” (which was framed as causing the high energy prices), which did win votes back. The net result being the UK is more heavily dependant on imported natural gas (pushing energy prices up), and with the worst housing stock in Europe for leaking heat, this has put even more people in fuel poverty.
Dharmasays
By Gavin Schmidt and Zeke Hausfather
Dr. Schmidt is a climate scientist in New York City. Dr. Hausfather is the climate research lead at Stripe and a research scientist at Berkeley Earth.
Nov. 13, 2024
We Study Climate Change. We Can’t Explain What We’re Seeing.
The earth has been exceptionally warm of late, with every month from June 2023 until this past September breaking records. It has been considerably hotter even than climate scientists expected. Average temperatures during the past 12 months have also been above the goal set by the Paris climate agreement: to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels.
We know human activities are largely responsible for the long-term temperature increases, as well as sea level rise, increases in extreme rainfall and other consequences of a rapidly changing climate. Yet the unusual jump in global temperatures starting in mid-2023 appears to be higher than our models predicted
Nearly every month since June 2023 has been record-breakingly hot –we remain far from a consensus explanation even more than a year after we first noticed the anomalies. And that makes us uneasy.
Why is it taking so long for climate scientists to grapple with these questions? It turns out that we do not have systems in place to explore the significance of shorter-term phenomena in the climate in anything approaching real time. But we need them badly. It’s now time for government science agencies to provide more timely updates in response to the rapid changes in the climate.
We think that a goal of analyzing data in under six months is achievable if the data-gathering and climate-modeling labs prioritize it. This entails a small shift by the U.S. agencies, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Energy, and international agencies such as Copernicus, the European climate service provider, toward sustained funding instead of one-off research grants.
Some of the unease that people feel about climate change comes from a sense that things are out of our control — that the climate is changing faster than we can adapt. However, many of the most dire risks lie not with the most likely outcomes but in the worst-case possibilities
While browsing the web, I found this: https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/the-crisis-report-92
This claim stuck out to me:
>The Rate of Warming seems to have increased to +0.5°C/decade in response to the change in the planetary albedo.
The way Mr. Crim arrived at this conclusion is by subtracting A.D 2014 GMST from A.D 2024 GMST. Does this, as well as his other claims (like >5°C by 2100, +0.55°C of warming in A.D 2023 coming from aerosol reductions etc.), hold up to scrutiny? I’ve seen this guy’ posts being used as sources several times at this point, but I find them difficult to read due to constant yapping about “climate moderates”, onslaught of graphs and shouty caps.
[Response: No. this kind of ‘trend analysis’ is just tracking noise. -gavin]
Dharmasays
[ response – yes, Crim’s articles are difficult to read due to constant yapping about “climate moderates”, onslaught of graphs and shouty caps. HIs commentary is hard to read, though many seem to get a lot out of it, as per the comments sections – https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/the-crisis-report-97/comments ]
Compare with 08 October 2024 BioScience article –
Scientists have issued yet another clarion call regarding our seemingly unstoppable momentum toward climate catastrophe. In a recent article, The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth, some of the world’s leading climate scientists lay it out.
“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis . . . For half a century, global warming has been correctly predicted even before it was observed—and not only by independent academic scientists but also by fossil fuel companies.
“Despite these warnings, we are still moving in the wrong direction; fossil fuel emissions have increased to an all-time high, the 3 hottest days ever occurred in July of 2024, and current policies have us on track for approximately 2.7 degrees Celsius peak warming by 2100.
“Tragically, we are failing to avoid serious impacts, and we can now only hope to limit the extent of the damage. We are witnessing the grim reality of the forecasts as climate impacts escalate, bringing forth scenes of unprecedented disasters around the world and human and nonhuman suffering. We find ourselves amid an abrupt climate upheaval, a dire situation never before encountered in the annals of human existence. We have now brought the planet into climatic conditions never witnessed by us or our prehistoric relatives within our genus . . . “
The scientists spell out the gory details, illustrating our global wrong way direction.
“Fossil fuel consumption rose by 1.5% in 2023 relative to 2022, mostly because of substantial increases in coal consumption (1.6%) and oil consumption (2.5%).”
“Global tree cover loss rose from 22.8 megahectares (Mha) per year in 2022 to 28.3 Mha per year in 2023, reaching its third-highest level; this was at least partly because of wildfires, which caused tree cover loss to reach a record high of 11.9 Mha.”
“Annual energy-related emissions increased 2.1% in 2023, and are now above 40 gigatons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent for the first time . . . the concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane are at record highs. . . Carbon dioxide levels were recently observed to be surging . . . Furthermore, the growth rate of methane emissions has been accelerating, which is very troubling . . . Nitrous oxide is also at a record high; annual anthropogenic emissions of this potent long-lived greenhouse gas have increased by roughly 40% from 1980 to 2020.”
“Surface temperature is at a record high, and 2024 is expected to be one of the hottest years ever recorded. Each 0.1°C of global warming places an extra 100 million people (or more) into unprecedented hot average temperatures.”
To the credit of this group, led by William Ripple of Oregon State University, they place the situation in the overall context of ecological overshoot.
“Global heating, although it is catastrophic, is merely one aspect of a profound polycrisis that includes environmental degradation, rising economic inequality, and biodiversity loss. Climate change is a glaring symptom of a deeper systemic issue: ecological overshoot, where human consumption outpaces the Earth’s ability to regenerate. Overshoot is an inherently unstable state that cannot persist indefinitely. As pressures increase and the risk of Earth’s climate system switching to a catastrophic state rises. more and more scientists have begun to research the possibility of societal collapse.”
“In a world with finite resources, unlimited growth is a perilous illusion. We need bold, transformative change: drastically reducing overconsumption and waste, especially by the affluent, stabilizing and gradually reducing the human population through empowering education and rights for girls and women, reforming food production systems to support more plant-based eating, and adopting an ecological and post-growth economics framework that ensures social justice.”
Will the world listen? Has it listened to decades of such clarion calls? A new United Nations report assesses climate plans of the world’s nations. UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell states, ”The report’s findings are stark but not surprising – current national climate plans fall miles short of what’s needed to stop global heating from crippling every economy, and wrecking billions of lives and livelihoods across every country.”
Even if all plans are fully implemented, a highly uncertain proposition, climate pollution would only be reduced 2.6% from 2019 levels by 2030, compared to the 43% needed to hold global heating below 1.5°C, a limit beyond which climate disruption sharply accelerates.
Julian,
The manic blather of Richard Crim you reference kicks off with a screen-shot from the Uni of Maine’s ReAnalyser. The particular ReAnalyser page presented is said to show “The f**king oceans are WARMING UP! In FREAKING October! When they should be losing HEAT.”
The data is actually shown only to Sept 26th and a September “heating up” is not unprecedented (for instance 1986 or 2012). But I would suggest the manic blather is more to do with the final few days of data presented in the screen-shot, showing the 2024 data with a suddenly up-tick and rising up above the 2023 “bananas” values. Yet if you were to visit the same ReAnalyser webpage today, there is no up-tick within the latter half of September. 2024. The webpage does explain, describing the data it presents (NOAA Optimum Interpolation SST (OISST) version 2.1) saying “Data are preliminary for about two weeks“[Their bold]
(A different version of SST60N-60S data is featured on the SST page of the Copernicus ClimatePulse website with the preliminary data restricted to the last data point.)
The postings of Richard Crim can be exceeding extreme. His Report#94 uncritically accepts the ECS=8ºC of Judd et al (2024)and sees it trumping all previous ECS assessments. His Report#96 predicts a collapse in world population, warning that “By 2050, I think the global population will be under 1 Billion.”
Richard Crim is conscious of such talk being contentious. His Report#93 cites one of our hosts, writing “Dr. Mann has stated that he regards “Doomism” as a form of mental illness” before then agreeing with Ripple et al (2024) ‘The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth’ and pointing out Dr Mann is a co-author. Sadly, Richard Crim didn’t think to refer to Ripple et al when tapping out subsequent posts.
Juliansays
MAR,
I’m relieved that I’m not the only one thinking his analyses are quite extreme. I may not be a climate scientist, but I try to carefully read the actual papers and piece together a bigger picture. My main issue with his analyses is that they tend to omit a lot of nuance (i.e. the story behind AESS estimates by Judd et al. (2024) that I forgot to thank you about), focusing instead on ad Hominems and worst-case scenarios (not that the latter ones aren’t possible, just sayin’). I do broadly agree with him on some points, like population and economic contraction later this century or IPCC underestimating, but as far as actual science is concerned, I don’t find his predictions believable. His comment section also seems like an echo-chamber.
P.S
Perhaps for Gavin – is it only me (MS Edge), or does the comment section formatting break past the first page? I’ve never used WordPress, but I’m a programmer/sysadmin by training, so maybe I could help.
Dharmasays
Is limiting the temperature increase to 1.5°C still possible?
Glen P. Peters, CICERO Center for International Climate Research, Oslo, Norway.
But, there remains two get-out-of-jail cards
A new hope
Crossing 1.5°C is not the time to give up, but the time is to roll up our sleeves and work harder. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/29768659241293218
Shared with a heavy sigh. Because if this is the best we can do in tis moment then there is no hope.
Killiansays
Everyone happy 1. temp anomalies aren’t falling, and 2. CO2 is rising @ 4 ppm/yr in ’23 and ’24?
23.16 ppm #CO2 in OUR PLANET’S AIR on Nov. 11 2024
Up 3.72 ppm from 419.44 a year ago
432.34 ppm #CO2 in the planet’s air for the 45th week of 2024
Up from 419.38 one year ago
423.57 ppm #CO2 in OUR PLANET’S AIR on Nov. 10 2024
Up 4.13 ppm from 419.44 a year ago
All via @CO2_earth.
The continued high tmp anomalies and elevated CO2 ppm additions all reinforce the 2014-2016 initiation of a major climate tipping point which we are still in the middle of, IMNSHO.
Serious question I realize I had never asked: At what point is a tipping point over? Do we think of it as the entire period of instability before reaching a new state, or just the period triggering the tipping point with what follows until the new equilibrium is reached merely the effects of the tipping point?
Cheers
Piotrsays
Killian Everyone happy 1. temp anomalies aren’t falling, and 2. CO2 is rising @ 4 ppm/yr in ’23 and ’24?
The only ones “happy” with that would be found in two groups:
– the subset of the deniers – those of the “CO2 is good for us” type
– the internet doomers – for their tears are crocodile. If you scratch the surface – the worse for the Earth, the better for their ego: in the absence of any substantial real life achievements, their ego needs be propped up by considering oneselves unappreciated prophets, who could see what everybody else failed – “ I have been saying it here for well over 10 years”, and yet the scientists “never listen to me“.
John Pollacksays
Tomáš,
Thank you for your questions. I have moved my reply to a new position, because the old thread was becoming hard to add to.
TK: Many thanks for your explanation of the “heat domes” mechanism.
Have I understood correctly that the atmospheric circulation that establish in such situation resembles that of atmospheric circulation above hot deserts like Sahara or Arabian Peninsula?
JP: Yes, the circulation in a “heat dome” in general does resemble that above the hot deserts in the summer. It is important to remember that the earlier discussion on this topic was referring to extreme heat waves in areas that are normally not as hot as these deserts. So, those heat domes would be on a smaller scale and less stable in location than over the large deserts.
TK: If so, I would like to ask a few questions regarding our options for mitigating it:
1) There are modelling experiments suggesting that massive solar power exploitation in such hot deserts should, paradoxically, bring more precipitation thereto:
Is it possible to infer therefrom that massive installation of dark solar panels (that could power air condition during heat dome situations without further contribution to greenhouse gas emissions) would even itself bring some relief, perhaps by helping sea breeze to come and cool the hot coastal cities?
JP: No. In general I do not think that this strategy would bring relief. It depends on modifying the regional circulation of a heat dome by injecting extra heat from dark solar panels. So, you are making a very hot situation even hotter, and then depending on changes in the atmospheric circulation to bring extra relief.
Enhancing a sea breeze would cool the most extreme temperatures (but would raise temperatures in the region downwind of the solar panels.) However, these oceans are very warm, and there is also extreme humidity. There will be a zone where the (absolute) humidity is very high and temperatures are still quite high. In this zone, the combination of high temperature and humidity can be so extreme that it threatens human survival. For example, this happens now – without the very large arrays of solar panels – near the shores of the Persian Gulf, and also in India and Pakistan before the monsoon arrives.
TK: 2) Let us, for a comparison, imagine another mode of solar energy exploitation in the same situation, the mode characterized by conversion of the unexploited (“waste”) absorbed solar energy into latent heat instead of the sensible heat. Is it possible that even though there would have been no surface cooling by the “oasis effect” because the latent heat would have absorbed merely the excessive heat released by solar panels, the rising water vapour could still somehow break the “heat dome” situation – perhaps, at least in coastal regions, by interacting with the sea breeze to form clouds and, maybe, to bring some precipitation that might cool the hot region a little bit?
JP: No. In general, the water vapor will not rise very far, because the air within a heat dome is descending from aloft, on the average. What you would have instead is a situation where the surface is still very hot, but the latent heat has increased. This would be even more difficult for the local residents to tolerate. The extra latent heat will probably be released someplace where it can actually rise, probably at the edge of the heat dome, or over mountains. There, it would generate extra flooding rains and severe thunderstorms.
TK: 3) Is it possible to compare these two options simply by using your meteorological expertise and weather forecaster experience?
JP: I have given you a generalization here. There may be situations where one option or the other would bring some improvement. However, both have risks of severe consequences by producing an intolerable combination of heat and humidity. Local modeling (such as the WRF used in the first study) is important to understand the details. Topography also makes an important difference. However, the average conditions produced by even an accurate model may not adequately capture the life-threatening consequences in the hot situations when the average does not prevail.
TK: 4) Should a such assessment be difficult, might these theoretical scenarios deserve a comparison by a modelling study?
JP: The modeling studies will help us understand the meteorological factors involved. However, it is also important to consider practical effects. These include remote effects, because in general it is not possible to modify the weather in one place without affecting it elsewhere. People whose weather is not improved will object, and conflicts will arise. (These days, a conflict involving the placement of solar panels might result in the large-scale destruction of those panels.) It would also include the demand on resources to make a large-scale surface modification, and the economic effects of making those modifications, or attempting to do so.
Thank you very much for your detailed explanation!
It appears that it is not easy to prevent and/or mitigate the heat domes, and that massive solar energy exploitation in urban areas can be even counter-productive in this respect.
Do I understand correctly that making the buildings and other infrastructure therein more reflective for sunlight might be a more promising approach?
Greetings
Tomáš
John Pollacksays
Tomáš, you are correct. Heat domes are quite difficult to mitigate. They are impossible to prevent, since they are part of the normal atmospheric circulation.
Urban heat islands are on a much smaller scale than heat domes. They can be mitigated. Yes, making buildings and other infrastructure light colored or reflective can be a good approach. Another is to make sure that darker surfaces contribute to the environment in another way. Although trees are relatively dark, they also produce shade and reduce urban heating. Solar panels can be deployed over areas that are already dark, such as roofs or parking lots, thereby generating extra energy.
I must admit that so far, I thought that there is basically no difference between hot deserts and urban heat islands. Although the deserts and the urban heat islands may be similar from hydrological perspective, I was not aware of the important difference in atmospheric circulation thereabove.
To be sure that I understood the explanation correctly, I will try to summarize it as follows:
Specifically, hot deserts are supplied with descending dry air coming from lower latitudes, whereas in urban heat islands, mostly located outside desert regions, this feature may be generally absent. It may, however, occur temporarily also in quite high latitudes, typically just during the heat dome situations. Am I right?
I will need a few days to process this learning, I think.
Best regards
Tomáš
John Pollacksays
Tomáš,
Your description is essentially correct. The temperate latitude heat domes are on a smaller scale than the big ones over the deserts, and less permanent. The urban heat islands are a lot smaller than the heat domes. This is what makes it possible to modify the temperatures in an urban area, but it would be too difficult to do it for the entire heat dome.
I would like to ask a few additional questions, focused on the most dangerous situations when the heat wave air in the surface layer is not only hot but has, in parallel, also a high relative humidity.
1) You mentioned India and Pakistan before monsoon and Gulf of Persia. I suppose that in the first case, the hot descending air evaporates the water available in soils and vegetation from the preceding wet period. In case of the Gulf of Persia, where comes the humidity from? Is it the “sea breeze”?
2) If so, what it the difference e.g. in case of the sea breeze from the Red Sea which, if I understood the article about massive solar energy exploitation in Arabian Peninsula correctly, is still significantly colder than the hot air above the land?
3) It was my feeling that in the article, the sea breeze was considered as a desirable cooling mechanism for the shore regions, without any fear of an interaction with the “heat dome” above the peninsula which could potentially become dangerous for people living therein. Is the situation in the Red Sea shore region different from the situation around the Gulf of Persia, or have the authors of the article just put the aspect of possibly dangerous extreme wet heat aside?
Thank you in advance for additional comments that could make the different outcomes in seemingly similar situations more understandable for a layman like me.
Greetings
Tomáš
Piotrsays
Re: John Pollack’s answer to Tomas Kalisz:
John, the post you have answered was a bait by the resident anything but mitigation of GHGs troll, in his attempt to revive his idiotic Sahara irrigation scheme he has been pushing here for well over a year, as a viable alternative to GHG mitigation.
Although you answered all his 4 points, basically: “it’s the opposite to what you think”, it won’t stop him – he will profusely thank you, and then IGNORE all you have said, and will keep posting follow-up questions looking for a way to undermine your rejection of his 4 points. See also:
Wikipedia: “Sealioning: is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity (“I’m just trying to have a debate”), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter. It may take the form of “incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate”,[5] and has been likened to a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings. The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki:” https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/56/%22The_Terrible_Sea_Lion%22._Wondermark_comic_strip_No._1062_by_David_Malki_%2819_September_2014%29.png
John Pollacksays
Piotr,
You may well be right, and I take it as a warning. However, TK asked reasonable questions and provided good peer-reviewed references to back them. Since they are within my area of competence, I think it is worthwhile to explore them a little. Their science content is quite a bit higher than in my previous exchange about extreme temperatures. If it fades out, or gets lost in trivia, I will let the thread go..
Gavin, you were quoted in The Economist’s “Artificial intelligence is helping improve climate models”:
“Others are more sceptical that ai methods used in short-term weather forecasting can be successfully applied to the climate. “Weather and climate are both based on physics,” says Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist who runs nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, but pose different modelling challenges. For one thing, the available data are rarely of the same quality. For weather forecasting, huge swathes of excellent data are generated every day and, therefore, able to continuously validate the previous day’s predictions. Climate models do not enjoy the same luxury. In addition, they face the challenge of simulating conditions more extreme than any previously observed, and over centuries rather than days.”
Seems to me they left your quote unfinished. Was there more context that you’d like to share? Thanks!
Alan Smithee,
Your quote from that Economist article ‘Artificial intelligence is helping improve climate models’ reminds me of a comment I ended-up never posting up-thread. (The Economist article is apparently viewable on a free trial, perhaps if that freebee has not already been expended.)
Up-thread there was some to-&fro about the merits of web-head Sabine Hossenfelder.
Her rather simplistic take on climatology does include the assertion that things are much worse than the IPCC ARs suggest and this assertion rests pretty-much entirely on one paper: Williams et al (2020) ‘Use of Short-Range Forecasts to Evaluate Fast Physics Processes Relevant for Climate Sensitivity’.
Sabine Hossenfelder rightly pointed-out Williams et al (2020) has not made much of a splash. @10:30 in her video entitled ‘I wasn’t worried about climate change. Now I am.’ Sabine Hossenfelder pointed to the paper showing as having just “13 citations” at the time of the video. It today shows “14 citations” with Google Scholar putting it at 26, of which none appear to describe any of the further research into the Williams et al result which Sabine Hossenfelder found compelling and necessary.
Williams et al (2020) suggests the HadGEM3-GC3.1 model with an ECS=5.5ºC and revised aerosol & cloud schemes gives more realistic modelling with weather data than managed by HadGEM3-GC2 with ECS=3.2ºC. And, of course, nailing ECS would be good.
with many other reports about scientists saying temps will be surely closer to +3c by 2100 given current trends. an apparent majority above +2.7C iirc. There’s so much data so many quotes does anyone actually ever keep up? I do not.
Meanwhile CO2 ppm hits new all time growth records above 3ppm per year. There is a ref for that somewhere, or is it everywhere. Who knows? And does anyone even care anymore?
Everyone knows the reductions called for at the COP are not happening. Emissions keep increasing. Maybe sinks are faltering as well, maybe maybe not depends who you ask. What you read.
some see doom others see agency. climate scientists need more ‘operational’ data apparently (whatever that is or means, or if it is even possible)
net zero requires CDR and putting it in geological formations forever .. or at least 1000 years according to another hypothetical recent study posted here. I say hypothetical because it’s outright unproven it can be done at the scale required. claimed is needed.
So we net zero and still temps and impacts are ongoing for a 1000 years. no one really knows. no one can really say. the only guarantee is that more and more papers will be published and then criticised or ,lauded, or both at the same time.
And so here we are. Isn’t it grand? And why was it so warm last year? and this year again? Oh, doesn’t matter. Everything is fine and is in good hands. Someone somewhere knows what they’re doing I’m sure of it. Certain of it, well no, we can’t ever say we’re certain of anything – except that thousands more climate papers will be published … and we’ll have a COP meeting every year from now to eternity no doubt..
QUOTE
Yet the 1.5C target now appears to be simply a rhetorical, rather than scientifically achievable, one, bar massive amounts of future carbon removal from as-yet unproven technologies. “I never thought 1.5C was a conceivable goal. I thought it was a pointless thing,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at Nasa. “I’m totally unsurprised, like almost all climate scientists, that we are shooting past it at a rapid clip.
“But it was extremely galvanizing, so I was wrong about that. Maybe it is useful; maybe people do need impossible targets. You shouldn’t ask scientists how to galvanize the world because clearly we don’t have a fucking clue. People haven’t got a magic set of words to keep us to 1.5C, but we have got to keep trying.
“What matters is we have to reduce emissions. Once we stop warming the planet, the better it will be for the people and ecosystems that live here.”
======
and Zeke adds–
“The goal to avoid exceeding 1.5C is deader than a doornail. It’s almost impossible to avoid at this point because we’ve just waited too long to act,” said Zeke Hausfather, climate research lead at Stripe and a research scientist at Berkeley Earth. “We are speeding past the 1.5C line an accelerating way and that will continue until global emissions stop climbing.”
Last year was so surprisingly hot, even in the context of the climate crisis, that it caused “some soul-searching” among climate scientists, Hausfather said. In recent months there has also been persistent heat despite the fading of El Niño, a periodic climate event that exacerbated temperatures already elevated by the burning of fossil fuels.
“It’s going to be the hottest year by an unexpectedly large margin. If it continues to be this warm it’s a worrying sign,” he said. “Going past 1.5C this year is very symbolic, and it’s a sign that we are getting ever closer to going past that target.”
===============
What I wonder about is – do climate scientists even have ‘Souls’? Isn’t that outside their areas of expertise? :-)
Dharmasays
Gavin says – “we have to reduce emissions.”
That is not an action plan – it is a motherhood statement being made by climate scientists for over 45 years at least by now. Climate scientists including all those ‘experts’ who organize or contribute to the IPCC do not have a clue how to solve the problem of climate change let alone how to successfully and permanently reduce emissions.
Climate Scientists are unqualified for the task. Listen to Gavin tell you the real truth of it. The IPCC and Climate Scientists overall don’t have “a fucking clue” what to do or how to do it!
Mythical mathematical inputs and thousands of online articles or interviews by climate scientists about of non-existent CDR fictions are not real. Everything based on these fictions are equally a fiction – such as staying below 1.5C or 2C GMST limits and Net Zero goals or targets — none of these are real or legitimate solutions to anything.
False assertions by climate scientists that xyz people who point out the absolutely obvious lack of action the failing of limits targets and goals alongside the ongoing rapid rise in GHG emissions and GMSTs and SSST and all the other indicators of global warming are dangerous ill-informed unscientific “doomers or doomists or anti-science trolls” who should be run out of social media platforms are also illegitimate unfounded mystical thinking no matter how many awards or published books to their name or science degrees the climate scientists might have.
The UNFCCC and the COP meetings are failures because of all the bunkem fed into them by both climate science deniers by bad political-corporate actors as well climate scientists and the failed IPCC process.
“You shouldn’t ask scientists how to galvanize the world because clearly we don’t have a fucking clue.” by Gavin Schmidt
100% True and Correct!
My angry frustrated waste of time rage for today and the week. Please carry on regardless.
Dharmasays
Even NPR is onto it now.
By far, this is the most important flaw in the Paris Agreement, and yet scientists talk about 1.5C as if they know what they’re talking about.
November 18, 2024
“surprisingly, Betts says, nowhere in the Paris Agreement does it define how to measure the Earth’s increasing temperature.”
To account for that natural temperature wobble, the IPCC suggests looking at averages over a 20-year period. That requires looking backwards at years of global average temperature data, like the WMO report, while also looking forward using climate models to predict future rise.
Using those methods, scientists calculate that 2023 was 1.31 C hotter than the pre-industrial period.
But there’s a problem, says Nathan Gillett, a climate scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada: that approach is inherently backward-looking. Even if warming progresses past 1.5 C, “We won’t be able to say that until after we passed it,” he says.
Reminds me of being up schitts creek in a barbed wire canoe … or lost in the jungle on a new moon night
Nigeljsays
“But there’s a problem, says Nathan Gillett, a climate scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada: that approach is inherently backward-looking. Even if warming progresses past 1.5 C, “We won’t be able to say that until after we passed it,” he says.”
Sounds right. However it doesnt really change the need to mitigate the climate problem and get to net zero emissions with urgency. I would say its still theoretically possible to get to net zero emissions by 2035 (which will be keeping warming under somewhere around 1.5 degrees), but it looks impossible in reality. Given the timeframes left it would require the world going on a near war footing of renewables energy production and / or other strategies and requring quite high carbon taxes or centralised control of the economy, and an awakening of by the general public where they make very substantial lifestyle changes.
This is resited for many reasons, and hasnt happened by now so its not clear why it would happen over the next decade or so, because its only going to get harder especially if its left to the last minute. Unless a heatwave kills millions of people and really shocks people into making changes, but climate change is more of a phenomenon similar to the parable of the frog slowly boiling alive. Even keeping warming under 2 degrees by net zero by 2050 looks incredibly challenging. And so things arent looking great. This is not a reason to give up on mitigation and and promoting mitigation because every bit will help reduce climate change impacts even if we dont meet the exact ideal goals we want, but its how it seems to me.
Peter Roessinghsays
I have a question for the people here, It is about the consequences of global warming, and not about the mechanisms that are the central topic on this site. Yet there are still many people here that probably have relevant knowledge.
So what is the general position here, will we have a semi-normal function economy at 3 degree C temperature increase, as mainstream economist seem to assume?
Dharmasays
Seeing no one else replied – “will we have a semi-normal function economy at 3 degree C temperature increase” ?
2) Interesting entertainment –instead of opera the fossil fuek magnates get to see renewable energy hippies being punched while poor countries beg the magnates for money:
“ The United Nations’ COP climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and need an urgent overhaul, key experts including a former UN secretary general and former UN climate chief have said.” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2lknel1xpo
Thanks for that Susan, I’ll read the linked journal article when I have a moment. I’m giving a talk next year to my Rotary group about climate change, the science, the evidence/trends so far and the projections, so articles like that are useful for providing content.
Mr. Know It Allsays
44% and 45%? Laughable. No possibility they could calculate the attribution to that level of accuracy. This kind of nonsense is one reason a lot of people don’t believe the CC hysteria.
Dharmasays
Agreed. Ludicrous. An unnecessary and self-serving waste of time and resources.
Barton Paul Levensonsays
KIA: 44% and 45%? Laughable. No possibility they could calculate the attribution to that level of accuracy.
BPL: Just because you don’t understand how they didn’t doesn’t mean they’re lying. It just means you’re ignorant and don’t want to learn.
(and I would guess there are error bars if you dig into it)
Nigeljsays
KIA said “Huge numbers of middle class believers can afford to go solar.”
Clearly, and I agree they should make some more efforts to do this, but you completely missed the point of what I said. I will give it one last try. Many people cant afford to go soilar and we will always need some central provision of renewable electricity generation for things like industry. It wont happen due to “free markets” because they have a dreadful record of fixing environmental problems. It will require the government subsidising renewable energy or using emissions trading schemes or carbon taxes. The ozone hole was not fixed by free markets. It was reduced by a cap and trading scheme.
Your problem is you let your almost paranoid levels of suspicion of “government” get in the way. Im a bit more balanced I hope. Im certainly of the view that some scepticism of government is healthy but we have to use governments to fix certain types of problems. Free marktets and capitalism do some things well like the efficient production of industrial goods, but they dont price externalities, and they have a terrible record of causing environmental problems and not taking responsibility for fixing or mitigating those problems. They pollute with utter impunity.
The only thing that has worked is dragging corporations kicking and screaming through the courts and the only winners are lawyers, or governmnet regulation with penalties, and things like cap and trade schemes. Deal with it. Live with it. Or come up with a better way but nobody else has and I doubt you would.
Mr. Know It Allsays
Nigel said: “Clearly, and I agree they should make some more efforts to do this,…..”
My reply: For the next 4 years, probably 12 more years, the federal government in the US is not going to be doing a lot on AGW, but that is not totally bad news since the US only contributes 11.3% of global GHGs:
In the US, reduction of GH gases will be up to the states and to individuals for the near future. For the rest of the world, which contributes 88.7% of all GH gases, they can use any government or private enterprise schemes they want to reduce GH gases.
Thems the facts.
Dharmasays
Thems the distortions and the disinformations and never-ending manipulations thems is. :-)
Barton Paul Levensonsays
KIA: For the next 4 years, probably 12 more years, the federal government in the US is not going to be doing a lot on AGW, but that is not totally bad news since the US only contributes 11.3% of global GHGs
BPL: Other people are also peeing in the pool, so it’s okay if I pee in the pool.
Piotrsays
KiA: “ For the next 4 years, probably 12 more years, the federal government in the US is not going to be doing a lot on AGW, but that is not totally bad news since, the US only contributes 11.3% of global GHGs:”
despite being only 4.2% of the global population. For a comparison India contribute 7.8% GHGs having 17.8% of the population.
So your original sentiment in an honest form should have read:
“honest KiA”: For the next 4 years, probably 12 more years, the federal government in the US is not going to be doing a lot on AGW, but that is not totally bad news since 1 American is more deserving than 25 Indians.
:
Dharmasays
I assume no else accepts that “reducing emissions” is not an action or even a goal but a mystically based hoped for result of a multitude of other actions founded upon a massive change in human values first. A change that is not coming.
@Peter Roessingh gave an article ref – “Climate Change’s Crippling Costs”
Again I see this as another example of incorrect framing of the meta/poly crisis problems humanity is facing.
It should have read instead – “The Global Economy’s Crippling Costs” – with the article should mentioned the main drivers of humanity’s endless economic growth and unlimited greed. But unfortunately this is where things are at. The problem is not climate change but humanity, ourselves, collectively and individually to varying degrees of scale. But so very few are able to hear the truth of these things with a degree of denial far greater and entrenched than the cohort of western society who deny climate science and global warming. Or those who simplistic describe the problem as being the fault of all the fossil fuel corporations fault. Simplistic to the point of being irrational and or delusional in the extreme about the real problems and their causes.
WB economist Dr. Daly said: “great, now draw a box around this and label it: The Environment.” The obvious point is that all economic activity takes place inside the environment. — but there is no recognition of any absolute scarcity limiting the scale of the macroeconomy.”
Like olden astronomers relied on a model of the universe with lots of figures to show that the sun and all the planets revolved around the Earth, modern economists use models to show that all the planet’s resources revolve around human desire. And you know the funny thing? Both models work. They’re not good, but for the time, they’re good enough.
The geocentric model actually tells you where the celestial bodies will be in the sky pretty accurately. Most planetariums still use the geocentric model to project. As the old quote goes, all models are wrong, but some models are useful. And indeed, the greedcentric model of the world is useful for making some people rich and giving poor people color TVs to watch the rich people on. But at some point the model outlives the utility, ie when you run into the border of the box.
– This is a pretty big fucking miss, which is why our environment rapidly fading into oblivion.
– In the economic system we live under, inputs (resources) are considered infinite and the outputs (waste) are not considered at all. This is wildly profitable, and also wildly false. It doesn’t matter how much math you do within this model. It does not match with the real world. We laugh at people that believed the sun went around the Earth, but we’re the greater fools.
– To take just one example, the belief in an ‘EV Revolution’ is still a belief within the same faulty model. I started by comparing modern economists to geocentric astronomers, but that’s unfair. A geocentric astronomer can still tell you what’s going on in the sky, while greedcentric economists have no idea why shit is heating up.
-The grave danger is that economists are the only ‘scientists’ our leaders listen to, and they’re not scientists at all. Yes some economists like Daly betray the faith and try to follow common sense, but they are few and far. Why are economists such dicks?
– – Now we’re in the modern period where we’re fracking the last veins of fuel like a desperate junkie and our waste products are choking us. But we’re still using the same ‘classical’ models, which are founded on ignorant and lazy assumptions.
– According to these models, the answer is to continue growth with ‘renewables’ but this is like switching from heroin to codeine. I mean, OK, but this is not the same thing as stopping your addiction.
– Media, financial, and political [and science] elites laugh at common fallacies and superstitions while perpetrating the most dangerous fraud of all. That fraud is mainstream economics, which we are presently drowning in. It is the governing wisdom of the day, and it’s not wise at all. That’s how, economically, we’re fucked.
Read A Book!
Herman Daly, Beyond Growth
Tom Murphy, Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet
Simon P. Michaux, Replacing Fossil Fuels
ref again https://indi.ca/how-economically-were-fucked/
When ‘classic economics’ appeared there were under 2 billion people on earth. When neoliberal economics appeared as the new religion of hyperactive myth for humanity there was only about 4 billion. Today there are 8 billion souls and increasing. The prognosis is equivalent to jumping out of a plane at 10,000 feet without a parachute. The end result is obvious. It’s common sense.
A couple of related anecdotes
There is a new doco on Netflix worth considering called – “Buy Now! The shopping conspiracy” (enviro/climate/waste/greed) including the Amazon.com model impacts.
via X – short video – This is BYD China starting phase 5, 6, 7 & 8 out of its expansion in Zhengzhou at the same time. Built next to Zhengzhou land port. Just watch the number of construction & engineering vehicles + the raw size of this area. BYD’s scale & ability to build up massive factories is quite mind blowing. https://nitter.poast.org/tphuang/status/1859059455754743967#m
Try and imagine that being replicated across China and the world.
BYD Zhengzhou is massive. You can see this expansion via satellite imagery, just in November. Here’s Tesla’s largest giga factory in Texas, for scale image That blue line is 2 miles wide. https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGc0DZJ3bcAIrbvB.jpg
Misc related ex china https://nitter.poast.org/tphuang
BYD is also expanding its Shaoxing battery factory. Phase 1 of 15 GWh is already in production Phase 2 of 15 GWh will start production next yr Phase 3 factory expects to start construction soon Yes, BYD is really expanding its battery production.
Ppl complain abt “subsidies” offered to BYD. 1st, they are not specific to BYD. Local govt are willing to build infrastructure to any co willing to hire a lot of ppl. 2nd, local govts are fiercely competitive in offering cheaper rural lands & build out infrastructure to support new factory & production. Tesla experienced it in Shanghai. BYD gets this reception everywhere it goes
Reporting from Zhengzhou show a new international land port (linked to rest of China & China-Europe rail) will be complete by 06/30
Zhengzhou started supercharger city construction. Adding 85k chargers this yr for total of > 200k chargers
People’s Daily reporting from BYD’s battery factory in Manaus, Brazil deep in the Amazons
BYD Wuwei Battery base is adding another 6 battery PACK production line by the end of the yr to reach 10 lines. BYD is in negotiation w/ Chery to supply more batteries to Chery.
Video- Shenzhen celebrating BYD’s 30th birthday with a huge display of 2024 drones
Heavy Duty Truck sales in Oct show > 8000 NEV sales, accounting for as much as 18% of mkt. CNG HDTs had just 8880 sales. So NEVs growing, CNGs dropping & diesel staying flat. HDT NEV penetration is growing like PV mkt back 3-yrs ago.
SWEDEN- “Northvolt said in its Chapter 11 filing that as of Thursday, it had only $30mn of cash left, enough to support its operations for one week.”
Video – In the Taklamakan Desert of Xinjiang, China, unmanned machinery assists humans in tree planting work.
The above is a snapshot of what unlimited endless growth looks like. Or at least only part of the story. It doesn’t show the waste output or the environmental destruction or the increasing global temperatures and effects longer term.
Nigeljsays
Regarding Electric Vehicles. I acknowledge that with some people there is an element of ‘greed’ and status display in the buying of EV’s, but I would suggest that for most people they are just a way of getting to work in the big city, and for many people other options to using cars are not realistic. In the longer term we might be able to rebuild cities as walkable cities, but this will obviously take a lot of time and resources. We have to deal with situations as they are currently as we find them.
The following is a highly detailed evaluation of lithium reserves: “Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles? The world has enough lithium, but we need to scale up production this decade.” Its by Hannah Ritchie, an environmental scientist.. Refer:
Noting “with some people there is an element of ‘greed’ and status display in the buying of EV’s” is not the takeaway message I imagined would be grokked from the source info provided.
As Hannah says: “When we really want something, we get good at finding it.”
Very true. But that is not a good thing in itself. Currently the Chinese are the best at finding Fish. Globally humans have become increasingly good at it for hundreds of years. Then there’s things like coal, oil and natural gas. We’re good as a species at finding all that too.
So? Is mining Lithium a sustainable activity for humanity? And who decides Hannah is right and offering the right information to the world? Or Dr Daly for that matter.
Mr. Know It Allsays
Dharma said: “The prognosis is equivalent to jumping out of a plane at 10,000 feet without a parachute. The end result is obvious…..”
My reply: Sometimes the obvious result doesn’t happen:
Quote from the Dr. Daly article: “– According to these models, the answer is to continue growth with ‘renewables’ but this is like switching from heroin to codeine. I mean, OK, but this is not the same thing as stopping your addiction.”
My reply: How does he think we should heat our homes, power industries, power transportation, and on and on and on. He sounds like a follower of the discredited Malthusian theory.
The truth is that humans have created many problems in the past. We solve them one way or another, because we have no other choice. Time to put on the big boy pants, act like Elon and build something to help the AGW problem. Or be like Trump and build nice comfy buildings for humans to enjoy. Do not look to government to solve AGW. Do it yourselves, and start NOW.
The Pilgrims, early settlers in North America, started out using a socialist model of governance. It failed as it does everywhere it is tried because it does not account for human behavior. Early American History as written in Pilgrim leader William Bradford’s journal, and told by the late, great El Rushbo:
The exceptions prove the rule. My metaphor analogy stands on solid ground – even if it is about falling from the sky. The Pilgrims, the Puritans etc immigrating to new england were all delusional psychopaths in my view of history. This is your “yardstick” for decision making today? The Salem witch trials? A “socialist model of governance”? No, that’s pure bullshit! Do better. :-)
As for Dr Daly, read his book/s. You are wasting your life to grab snippets from a social media comment and then try to generate an “argument” against it aka throwing shit at a wall and hoping some of it will stick. But you do you.
Barton Paul Levensonsays
KIA: He sounds like a follower of the discredited Malthusian theory.
BPL: Malthus hasn’t been discredited. I doubt you’ve read him.
Dharmasays
‘Human-made mass outweighs all living biomass now’
Nate Hagens remains kind of optimistic or at least hopeful. Hard to tell. Short video 30 minutes
The Battles [or Polarities] of Our Time | Frankly 76 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkqKB-pF4no
“Last night I recorded a long, intense, heavy, and I think interesting ‘Frankly’ – Long because I have a lot to say; intense, heavy, and interesting because those are the times we live in.”
I’ll add the morning after another word pairing that is the battle, and that is the battle of our language. These really aren’t battles, they are polarities which are to be navigated and hopefully harmonized.
In today’s Frankly, Nate describes some of the battles – or polarities – of our time: the tensions and dichotomies we face from the global macro level all the way down to the level of individual metacognition. Nate reflects on how each of these polarities contribute in their own unique way to the overarching battle of power versus life
What are the key polarities that define this wider struggle between power and life? And how might we navigate these tensions in the trade off between who we have become and who we might yet be, as individuals and as humanity as a whole?
Now comes the real work for pro-social, pro-future, systems-aware humans. [end quote]
show notes refs transcript https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/76-the-battles-of-our-time
Frankly, I think he is seriously depressed and fast losing all hope of a future for civilization or humanity
Mr. Know It Allsays
‘Human-made mass outweighs all living biomass now’
Science question:
Have humans “made” ANY mass? Or just built things with materials (mass) found on earth?
Dharmasays
Reply to Mr. Know It All
Yes, you are correct on the semantics could be confusing to some. Let’s improve it then shall we?
“”All human-built, constructed, refined, mined, and refabricated materials outweigh all living biomass in existence now””
Is that better more clear correct and acceptable to you now Mr. Know It All?
The statement “All human-built, constructed, refined, mined, and refabricated materials outweigh all living biomass in existence now” reflects a finding from a 2020 study published in Nature. The research highlights a profound shift in the Earth’s balance: the mass of anthropogenic materials (human-made objects like concrete, plastic, metal, and asphalt) has surpassed the total biomass (all living organisms such as plants, animals, and microorganisms).
Key Points from the Study:
Anthropogenic Mass:
Refers to all the materials humans have produced, including infrastructure, buildings, roads, and manufactured goods.
Estimated to double every 20 years due to rapid industrialization and consumption.
Biomass Decline:
Global living biomass has decreased due to deforestation, land-use changes, and other human activities.
Total biomass is estimated to be around 1.1 teratonnes (1.1 trillion metric tonnes), primarily composed of plants.
Tipping Point:
Around the year 2020, the mass of human-made materials (approximately 1.1 teratonnes) equaled and then exceeded the biomass for the first time in Earth’s history.
Implications:
This milestone underscores humanity’s significant impact on the planet’s ecosystems and natural cycles.
It highlights the urgency of sustainable practices to mitigate environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity.
Broader Context:
This discovery is a stark indicator of the Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch characterized by the dominant influence of human activity on Earth’s systems.
Possible Human Responses:
– Awe at humanity’s transformative capacity coupled with concern about environmental sustainability.
– Calls for greater awareness and action toward reducing waste, recycling, and protecting natural ecosystems.
– Obliviousness
Dharmasays
Your average retired western guy, Walt is an ex-businessman, an expat Brit living in China now. Giving the big question a shot. I think does a very good job. Walt cares. I also think he is a good down to earth communicator with a great bedside manner. It’s why I suggested to him ona blog forum months ago to start his own substack, and he did.
Part of a reader’s comment went like this-which makes enormous sense to me too-
8 billion people are a tough nut to crack :)
The scale of the problem coupled with the scale of the people needed to solve it exceeds our known problem solving (or implementation) techniques. So i think we will muddle through, trying different solutions at different scales, and, in the end, nature will have her way. Its what we have always done because its really all we can do :)
Human groups only unite at the precipice. I can appreciate the desire to avoid the precipice, to solve the ‘problem’ before its ‘too late’. here nature can guide us: she (Nature) is not top down, she is bottom up. What saves a species in an extinction event is the small little subset that survives, the ones who are ‘just variant enough’ to escape the full force of the bad conditions.
Humans have been through at least one bottleneck, where we got down to about 1000. They didn’t solve the big problem; they found a niche where the conditions were survivable (with appropriate adaptation). Without them, we wouldn’t be here.
If we build a million geoships* per year, all over the world, it won’t save the planet – but it might save humanity. If 8000 people know how to make a food forest, given the right conditions, we might just make it through.
20 years ago, these problems would keep me up at night. now I sleep like a baby :)
Dharmasays
zebra says
22 Nov 2024 at 5:59 AM
Here’s another anecdotal comment by an everyday person on Population and possible means of addressing it. They are not alone but of course such agreed actions are extremely unlikely to be implemented by any nation or collectively via the UN or some other global treaty mechanism.
“A comprehensive global policy under an emergency legally binding United Nations direction would include:
A legally binding, global one-child-per-family policy.
Prioritizing universal women’s rights, with education programmes focusing on smaller families and the importance of choosing not to have children.
Universal access to contraception and safe abortions for all.
Halting immigration to wealthy nations with high per capita energy and resource consumption, particularly in the Western world.
This is a global crisis that requires a universal response rooted in science and mathematics, not emotional or power-driven ideologies or nationalist exceptionalism.”
[To which Walt added – means-tested free or subsidised contraception. ]
Good to know not everyone is asleep and distracted by ‘shiny baubles.’ Unfortunately it is not the wise who are making our decisions for those of us who are incapable of rational common sense.
Dharmasays
Jagadish Vasudev, known widely as Sadhguru, at COP29.
BAKU, Nov 16 2024 (IPS) – A sudden flurry of activity as Jagadish Vasudev, known widely as Sadhguru, emerges from an interview room in the COP29 media centre. It’s early days of the conference and there is energy and excitement at the venue in Baku.
Inter Press Service: Sadhguru, climate change has been a known crisis for over four decades. Yet despite numerous conferences and terms like loss and mitigation and climate finance, we’re still facing rising temperatures, floods, and droughts. Why are we not succeeding? Are we missing the right approach?
Sadhguru: “Succeeding in what, exactly? The problem is that there’s no clear, actionable goal. We talk about economic development, which many nations pursue without pausing to consider its impact on the planet. At the same time, those who have already achieved a certain quality of life tell others not to follow the same path. It’s a paradox. We tell people to give up hydrocarbons—coal, oil—yet offer no viable alternatives. If we shut off hydrocarbons today, this very conference wouldn’t last ten minutes!
We’re all focused on what to give up but lack sustainable, scalable alternatives. Solar, wind, and similar sources only cover a tiny fraction of our energy needs—less than 3 percent. For real change, we need technology that provides clean, non-polluting energy, but we’re far from that. Nuclear energy is a powerful option, yet there’s too much activism and fear surrounding it. Meanwhile, electric cars, often touted as solutions, don’t really address ecological well-being; they just reduce urban air pollution.”
Sadguru’s main Save Soil + Climate Change action website
52% Of agricultural soils are already degraded
Save Soil is a global movement to address the soil crisis by uniting people across the globe to stand up for soil health, and support leaders of all nations in actioning policies toward increasing organic matter in agricultural soil.
The Solution
Bring back at least 3-6% organic matter in the soil–By bringing the land under shade from vegetation & enriching the soil through plant litter and animal waste. https://consciousplanet.org/en/save-soil
One does not need to be a scientist to understand what needs to be done to address the causes of climate change and global warming. The solutions are often rooted in common sense and basic principles of sustainability: reducing dependency on fossil fuels, transitioning to cleaner energy sources, protecting natural ecosystems, and curbing wasteful consumption.
As Sadhguru insightfully points out, the challenge lies in offering practical, scalable alternatives rather than focusing solely on what must be given up. While scientific advancements and policy shifts are vital, real change begins with acknowledging the paradox of pursuing development at the planet’s expense and addressing the systemic barriers to adopting clean, efficient technologies. This is as much about aligning priorities and making informed choices as it is about technological innovation or scientific expertise.
Dharmasays
IPS: And what about faith? Can it play a role in addressing the climate crisis?
Sadhguru: Let’s not focus on faith in the context of climate change. It’s our responsibility to act. When things go wrong due to human error, people often call it fate or God’s will. But this crisis is of our making. And the crisis we talk about isn’t the planet’s—it’s a crisis for human survival.
Life on Earth relies on delicate interconnections, from insects to microbes. If these were wiped out, life on the planet would soon collapse. Ironically, if humans disappeared, the planet would thrive.
This is the perspective we need: climate change threatens our existence, not the Earth’s.
Dharmasays
Some interesting news :
Considering a country’s current emissions doesn’t give the whole picture of its climate responsibility, though. Carbon dioxide is stable in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. That means greenhouse gases from the first coal power plant, which opened in the late 19th century, are still having a warming effect on the planet today.
Adding up each country’s emissions over the course of its history reveals that the US (330 mln pop.) has the greatest historical contribution—the country is responsible for about 24% of all the climate pollution released into the atmosphere as of 2023. While it’s the biggest polluter today, China (1400 mln pop.)comes in second in terms of historical emissions, at 14%.
If the EU’s member states (450 mln pop.) are totaled as one entity, the group is among the top historical contributors as well. According to an analysis published November 19 by the website Carbon Brief, China (with 3 times the population) passed EU member states in terms of historical emissions in 2023 for the first time. https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/11/20/1107015/global-climate-emissions/
SubStacker Richard Crim was recently referenced here about his “climate science and collapse analysis.” Apparently he is neurodivergent – which may explain part of the lack of understanding of where he is coming from versus the norms. Neurodivergent includes Asperger or Autism syndrome etc.
Formerly considered a problem or abnormal, scientists now understand that neurodivergence isn’t inherently an issue for the individual and that it has a large societal benefit. Not all presentations of neurodivergence are a disability, like synesthesia, but all are a difference in how the brain works.
With this shift, practitioners are no longer treating neurodivergence as inherently an illness. They are instead viewing them as different methods of learning and processing information, some of which become disabilities in an inaccessible and ableist society.
-This article defines neurodiversity and provides examples. It also teaches you how to find out if you’re neurodivergent and describes what it’s like to be neurodivergent. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-neurodivergence-and-what-does-it-mean-to-be-neurodivergent-5196627
Dharmasays
7 mins video reprt
#cop29 — part of a “bullshit process” a delegate just told me….. by Mathew Carr https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1kvKpbaoabVJE
summary anecdotes first hand goes – the rich people of G20 the anglo saxons will never pay up for the damage they have done to the world by their use of fossil fuels even though they agreed since 1992 and repeatedly after. they damage they exploit and they can’t share. Once they have the money that’s it.
running a day over time, Baku is just more of the same.
Who is this insistently offering up a YouTube video for me?
It’s called ‘Climate Change: The Facts 2025’.
A bunch of antipodean jokers called the IPA have launched a new book of that name just in time for Xmas. On the YouTube video some apparently-cancelled fella who, golly, surely not, surely it isn’t the late great Sir Les Patterson, the renowned Ozzy Minister for Drought, Inland Drainage & Rodent Control headlining the launch event? It sure looks like him!! The fella is telling the world how “there are things you will read in this book that even your grandmother wouldn’t tell you” (and presumably at some stage, if you watch to the end, adding Les’s more famous quote “If you have to explain satire to someone, you might as well give up.”).
The jokers contributing to this alt-fact-filled book (modestly priced I’m sure) are thin on the ground for this, the fifth outing of ‘Climate Change: The Facts’. Previously published versions featured such greats of the comedy circuit as Dickie Lindzen, Willie man-man Soon, Cap’n Willard Watts, the hockey-stick-averse Ross McKitrick, twit-about-town wee Jimmy Delingpole and good ol’ Roy Spencer; all absent this time. But I see it does feature crazy-kid Chris Monckton back again. He last appeared in their first book back in 2010, so maybe there are at least some of the old dazzling jokes, humour-filled hoaxes & physics-defying fantasies to amuse the reader.
Dharmasays
In Serbia, the EU’s Green Deal is fuelling pollution and human rights abuses
Publication date: 21 November 2024
Lithium mining in Serbia pits locals against corporate giants like Rio Tinto and the EU’s green ambitions. With water supplies at stake and authoritarian tactics on the rise, the conflict in the Jadar River valley reveals the human cost of the energy transition
Serbians have been standing up to lithium miners in their country for years. These include Rio Tinto, one of the largest extraction companies in the world, which critics accuse of collaborating with the European Union to turn Serbia into a mining colony. “This project is putting public safety at risk”, opponents say.
The extraction of resources like oil, gas, cobalt and nickel is linked to numerous problems, from expropriation and displacement of local populations, to pollution of water and soil. Governments regularly resort to authoritarian tactics and human rights violations to suppress protests and push forward with unpopular projects. Multinational corporations exploit free trade agreements and put their own interests and profits ahead of the wishes of local populations.
more https://www.tni.org/en/article/in-serbia-the-eus-green-deal-is-fuelling-pollution-and-human-rights-abuses
There are no straight lines. Everything is connected, interconnected and directly connected. Everything is unsustainable today – 3 x Earth would be insufficient.
Mr. Know It Allsays
Quoting Paul Pukite: “Cripes, I’m listening to MSNBC this morning and they claim that if only Harris had catered to a few more Midwest swing-state voters by softening on some issues, ignoring that the bullies in charge gerrymandered the districts, guaranteeing a Republican outcome independent of any issue. This is automatic gatekeeping, something that Piotr can only aspire to.”
I agree. I’m tired of the gerrymandering malarkey. In the blue ship hole where I live, Republicans don’t have a chance because the Dems are just as good at it as the Rs. I propose that to solve this problem, we make the EC votes based on county results. One EC vote per county. What do you think? For example the Nov 5 race for Prez would have looked like this:
PS Gerrymandering only affects state legislature elections, and elections for US House seats, not elections for US Senate or President.
Ray Ladburysays
Uh, actually, no. Gerrymandering does affect elections for the Senate and the President because it allows a minority to set the rules for those elections. It determines which areas will have a surfeit of polling places and which ones will have long lines where anyone who tries to give you a bottle of water is arrested.
Barton Paul Levensonsays
KIA: I propose that to solve this problem, we make the EC votes based on county results. One EC vote per county.
BPL: That would weight elections so heavily to rural voters that they would have dozens or hundreds of times more impact than urban voters. No. Sorry. No way.
Dharmasays
About US Presidential Elections:
KIA: I propose that to solve this problem, we make Electoral College (EC) votes based on county results—one EC vote per county.
BPL: That would give rural voters an outsized impact, dozens or even hundreds of times more than urban voters. No. Sorry, no way.
How about we apply some democratic justice and rational logic instead? It’s time to eliminate the EC altogether with a Constitutional Amendment.
Such an amendment would ensure that every vote counts equally, no matter where someone lives. It would put an end to the gerrymandering and manipulation surrounding “swing states,” where, for example, Republican votes in New York or Democratic votes in Indiana are effectively worthless.
We could implement a fairer system, such as:
First-past-the-post: The candidate with the most votes wins outright.
Run-off elections: A second round of voting ensures majority support.
Ranked-choice voting: Voters list their preferences (e.g., Candidate #1, #2, #3) so their vote can transfer if their top choice doesn’t win.
These systems are straightforward and already used in many other democracies—why not here? The current EC system undermines the democratic process, disenfranchises voters, and skews representation in both the Senate and the House. Many voters opt out entirely because they know their votes won’t make a difference in deciding the President.
This systemic disenfranchisement is as unjust and unethical as historical exclusions based on race or gender. It’s long overdue for reform.
In addition:
House districts must be drawn by an independent Federal Election Commission operating under consistent rules nationwide, not by partisan state officials with self-serving agendas.
Voter registration, absentee voting, and election laws should also follow the same standardized rules in every state.
Equality under the law and practical, transparent processes should rule supreme. Fix these glaring flaws, and maybe—just maybe—you’ll start electing leaders worthy of the office instead of the inept and corrupt figures who dominate today.
Unfortunately talking to Americans is equivalent to screaming at a concrete wall and expecting it to understand.
Piotrsays
KiA: “I propose that to solve this problem, we make the EC votes based on county results. One EC vote per county.”
In the US presidential election – the votes of about 83% of Americans are WORTHLESS (in all non-swing states it DOES NOT matter whether you vote D or R), so the winner is decided by the 17% of voters living in the swing states, and the candidates try to outbid each other in the promises of the largesse for these voters (at the expense of the policies benefitting the 83%). Talk about the tail wagging the dog.
In a democracy – each voter has the same influence on the outcome. In the US- the votes of 83% are meaningless, and the votes of only 17% decide. KiA sees it, and think “Golly, I like what I see – and I want me more of that!” and offers his “modest proposal” that would see …. a further increase in the % of Americans whose vote does not count. Make America Great AGAIN, eh?
Dharmasays
Looking at Australia and the US – it’s not cheap, unreliability pushes all supply prices up
doco report 1 hr – The Real Cost of Net Zero: The shocking truth of the renewable energy push https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbxpieEQ7bc
maybe an inconvenient truth. gas is the ultimate back stop for an unreliable electricity system one that people expect is going to have to ~treble in size in coming decades where to from here?
Ray Ladburysays
Mr, KIA, just when I think you can’t possibly top your last stupid comment, you leave me holding your beer. Now you want to give the vote to acres rather than people.
John Pollack says
13 Nov 2024 at 1:37 PM
If I were planning climate resiliency measures for extreme heat in the Sydney Australia region in the face of rising GMST, I would have little concern that temperatures in the western suburbs would reach 60C in the next several decades.
I cannot imagine being any more off the mark with a comment like that.
AS JP said earlier to Geoff – John Pollack: – “Unfortunately, they don’t shed any light on the physical mechanism(s) that would be required to generate a +12C mid latitude increment in extreme summer temperatures from a +4C change in GMST. This is the exaggeration I am referring to.”
The whole thing is about what might happen in western Sydney and other places already experience extreme heatwaves in a +1.2C GMST world later in a hypothetical +4c GMST anomaly world — that is most likely to be at least A CENTURY FROM NOW — what JP is focusing on and talking about has nothing to do with either Geoff or the fairly sensible thoughtful article he quoted and referenced for general consumption.
And to Nigelj says
13 Nov 2024 at 2:34 PM
First you give a quote of mine which was said 3 days before the short quotes you take from JP then claim he was already addressing my concern. Very creative (smile)
Pitman is an expert on the topic and he makes a lot of good logical sense. If people are curious, such as JP, then he should go read what Pitman says on the topic in his commentaries and published papers, and others as well. What Geoff shared was useful and quite interesting information. It included several refs. I looked at them. Then I add some extra information myself. eg about Australia warming X1.5 faster than the rest of the world on average. And today I added some info about the difference made by higher humidity on warming impacts effects. Seems at least tangentially related to Canadian and western Sydney heatwaves in coming decades and a century from now (god help them all when that time arrives).
I have a serious complaint. Can we please stop conflating the word “uncountable” with the word “countless”?
Please accuracy is important. Paul P used the world “uncountable” in his text all those years ago now. These countable errors need to stop.
Darma: ” I have a serious complaint. Can we please stop conflating the word “uncountable” with the word “countless”? Please accuracy is important. Paul P used the world “uncountable” in his text all those years ago now. These countable errors need to stop.”
Reality: Paul P, “all those years ago (14 Oct 2021):
“ long range predictions of the next El Nino or La Nina [could] therefore save countless lives”
So Darma fabricated a quote to use it to attack opponents for what …he has just done. An internet troll
in a nutshell.
Can you prove it though?
Darma “ Can you prove it though?
are you talking to me ? If yes, which part of giving you both the date (14 Oct 2021) and the author (Paul Pukite) of the RC post in which he wrote about “saving COUNTLESS lives”, I quote:
” Paul P, 14 Oct 2021: “ long range predictions of the next El Nino or La Nina [could] therefore save countless lives””
is not enough a proof of you?
Particularly, that you do not apply the same standards of proof to yourself – heck – you apply ZERO
standards to yourself – THE ONLY PROOF you apparently need is …that … you said so, as in:
– Paul P used the world “uncountable” in his text all those years ago now .
And you presented it as an unquestionable fact, so unquestionable that you built on that
your pontification toward your opponents:
– “I have a serious complaint”
– “Can we please stop conflating the word “uncountable” with the word “countless”?”
– Please accuracy is important.
– Paul P used the world “uncountable” in his text all those years ago now .
– These countable errors need to stop. ” (c) Darma Nov14.
Commercial Operations Start For World’s ‘Largest’ Offshore Solar PV Project
CHN Energy of China has commissioned a 1 GW floating solar PV project in China as the world’s largest offshore solar power plant
It integrates fish farming with solar PV generation, expected to serve as a model for other large-scale projects of this scale
The company recently also energized a 3 GW solar power plant in a coal mining subsidence area in China
China’s state-owned energy firm China Energy Group (CHN Energy) has grid-connected a 1 GW offshore floating solar power plant in China, calling it the world’s 1st and largest of its kind open-sea offshore solar PV project.
The offshore PV installation has come up 8 km off the eastern coast of Dongying City in China’s Kenli district in Shandong province. CHN Energy has put up 2,934 PV platforms installed using large-scale offshore steel truss platform fixed pile foundations.
On completion, the 1 GW project is expected to generate 1.78 billion kWh annually. It will be equivalent to meeting the annual electricity needs of around 2.67 million urban residents in China.
Recently, the company also energized a 3 GW solar power plant, calling it China’s largest single-capacity PV power plant built in a coal mining subsidence area. It was grid-connected on November 5, 2024. enough to power 2 million households, according to CHN.
https://taiyangnews.info/markets/worlds-largest-offshore-solar-power-plant-in-china
Should I assume the US will sanction this solar energy group entity or maybe even try to blow up the interconnector cable to the mainland lest China be seen as doing something successful again?
Recent musings:
The Crisis of Our Time: Economic Anarchy, Global Power Shifts, and the Path Toward a Sustainable Future
https://substack.com/home/post/p-151682579
My reaction to the link. Capitalism has its flaws. Most of these can be rectified with an interventionist government..
Socialism has been tried many times and has failed. As Einstein said don’t keep trying the same experiment and expecting different results. I do think we need a new system beyond Capitalism or socialism but we don’t have a workable plan yet.
I feel Israel has not done enough to protect Palestinian civilians. Trouble is the Jewish vote in america can swing elections so no Party wants to upset the Israeli people.
Seems like everything everywhere all at once.
Well every particular thing, including collections of things, fail sooner or later. That’s why dogmas suck so hard. I’d say spare me your -izzums, but any old heuristic port in a storm, I guess. How did we get here? A lack of collective imagination, no doubt.
Hey, how about that climate, eh?
(Yeah, ‘they’ ought to do something about that, Welp, time to make the doughnuts.)
Nigelj,
Albert Einstein is the world-famous physicist. This article was originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949). It was subsequently published in May 1998 to commemorate the first issue of MR‘s fiftieth year. —The Editors
Why Socialism?
by Albert Einstein
Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.
https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
Enjoy!
Like Albert said more or less: Don’t keep trying the same experiment-doing the same things-over and over and over again, and expecting different results. That’s the definition of insanity.
Then the idea of the US, the IPCC, publications by climate scientists and COP29 came to mind. Why?
Dharma, thanks for Einstein’s original essay highlighting the problems of capitalism and promoting socialism. Its interesting that his essay was written in 1949 when it appeared that the grand socialist experiments in the USSR and China and lesser attempts elsewhere might actually have worked, but by the 1970s s they were all failing badly and were generally hated and were mostly abandoned. I wonder what Einsten would have thought about all that. I have grown sceptical of socialism, although publicly owned services like schools and provision of income support for the unemployed and elderly makes perfect sense and has practical justifications .
If we keep repeating capitalism in the same form as currently Im sure you are right the outcomes would be the same. But we can make pragmatic changes to capitalism to make it more socially fair and more environmentally sustainable. Im less sure that we can make pragmatic canges to socialism that would make it workable.
Regarding “dont keep doing the same experiment and expect different results.” The IPCC reports havent exactly galvanised the world into taking climate change seriously and fixing the problem, yet they keep turning out the same sorts of reports, expecting things will change. Unfortunately in this instance I dont think that the IPCC reports are the problem or writing them differently would make very much difference. The problems are people dont want to listen, dont want to make sacrifices, and dont see the climate change problem as a priority due to a whole lot of psychological reasons and being worn down by denialist lies. That said the IPCC reports are a bit overly ‘nuanced.’
The Democrats do seem to be losing a few elections and yet they keep on with much the same election policies and election strategies expecting things will change. Its hard to know why they do this. I doubt going hard left will win them any elections, but they have become a bit too centrist and left climate change out of this campaign, and that made them look ready to sacrifice any policy on a whim. There have also been some silly ideas and vote losers like suggesting defunding the police and letting in far too many immigrants per year. The Democrats have been unfairly blamed for the inflation which originated in 2020 with a time delay, so that didnt help.. But IMHO they are still infinitely preferable to the GOP or Trump.
Thanks for the reply nigelj. May I recommend you re-read the article @ https://substack.com/home/post/p-151682579 ?
Nigelj: I tend to agree with you that a hybrid of socialism and capitalism is probably optimal, and here in the UK amongst other countries, have gone too far down the road of neo-liberal capitalism.
The main problem with capitalism is that externalised costs do not appear on the balance sheet, so the optimal way to make profit is cut costs to the bone and dump the consequences on someone else (or society). This degrades quality of life for those others. This is why some form of regulation is needed. We have seen in the UK the fallacy of assuming government is bad and private is good with the dreadful outcomes of privatisation of postal services, energy, water and public transport. Thames Water is facing administration which, given water is an essential resource, will require the government to use taxpayers money to take over and put in the much needed investment in the infrastructure. Yes the government, which the neo-liberal capitalists insist is wasteful and inefficient is expected to bear the cost (through taxpayers) of the failure of the private sector. Hypocrisy at its worst.
Adam Lea,
I do indeed favour a hybrid system that is essentially capitalist but combines elements of socialism. Sweden, Norways and Finland do this quite well as you may be aware. They put childrens best interests at the centre of decion making, and use whatever capitalist or scoialist tools seem useful to that end. Quite an interesting philosophy.
The main problem of capitalism is indeed externalised costs and the need for regulation to fix that. Of course there are different approaches from simple regulatory limits to cap and trade schemes and taxation schemes like carbon taxes. They can all work and it probably depends on which is the most politically viable. However the problem with cap and trade schemes is they are very opaque and so its possible for right wing governmnets sceptical of the climate problem to minimse the effectiveness of the schemes while saying to the public look we have this scheme that will fix the problem.
In New Zealand the water supply is still provided by local government. Prices are cheap but there has been under investment in upgrading aging infrastructure. But that would likely happen also if it was privatised. Water supply is a “natural monopoly” and regardless of who owns the asset it thus needs strong regulation.
The electricity system used to be completely government owned and did quite a decent job. In the 1980s it was turned into a state ownded corporation called Electricorp which also did quite a good job. Then in the 1990s the conservative governmnet broke up electricorp into a state owned lines company, and a couple of partly state owned corporatised generating companies and a couple of private sector generating companies. The idea was to create this competitive market and reduce electricity prices. The exact opposite happened and after 50 years of slowly falling electricity prices under the state owned system, in the 1990s prices started rising relentlessly and we never seem to have quite enough generation to get through difficult periods. The whole system is complicated and seems contrived.
The postal service remains a state owned corporation, so it hasnt been privatised but its required to make a profit. It provides an ok service.
Public transport has been privatised and is pretty dreadful.
What to make of all this? I admit I have an intuitive attraction towards central state ownership and planning, but its very clear from history that this doesnt work well with the provision of industrial products and food. Capitalism and private ownership does a better job probably due to the competition and efficieny of the model. Socialist countries do a decent job with government ownership of certain services like education and healthcare. Government owned and run education ( at least at primary and secondary school level) makes sense to me because it ensures everyone has good access to education and means you can control what is taught and ensure its not complete bunk like creationism.
Where capitalism seems to go a bit wrong is with natural services monopolies like the provision of water and power. Privatisations havent been a great success. You get the classic problems of local monopolies under investing and over charging. At least if councils own the water supply you can vote out bad councils but with private sector provision the companes are only accountable to shareholder who may only care about profits, and not even live in the country. This could be rectified with tough regulation, but right wing governments are reluctant to do this. Privatisation can work for these these things but it needs tough regulation.
But anyway, it just seems to me one good model is where the private sector provides food, and consumer goods and financial services and the state sector provides at least basic education and healthcare and possibly monopoly services like water and power. It also depends on the size of a country: America is so large it has quite a good competitive private health sector but in smaller countries this is not always feasible, so government ownership may make more sense.
It seems to me the main challenge is regardless of who owns something like the water supply this is a natural monopoly so the provider must be strictly regulated, whether private sector or the government itself. Its an absolute essential of life so price gouging or profiteering is utterly unaccepetable. I would not want to see the water supply in NZ privatised especially after seeing the results in the UK..
David on 7 Nov.: “….I tremble at the thought of what is coming…”
That sounds serious! Tell us what is coming so we can prepare for it.
And if we can get BPL and Paul Pukite to tell us what is going to happen to Ukraine when Putin’s puppet takes office, perhaps we can prepare for that also.
Nigelj: In the UK, I get the impression that the general feeling is that services essential to life (eg energy, water) or essential to the functioning of society (eg railways) should be run by the government and it should be accepted that we all need to contribute to their upkeep through taxes. What the UK has done is assume these services can be run as a profit making business when on their own they cannot make a profit, so when in private hands, the government has to subsidise them and profits are given to shareholders instead of being re-invested back into improving the service. The government subsidises the UK’s privatised rail network more than when it was under government ownership yet train fares are very high, and the UK now has the worlds most expensive electricity, and a part of that is because in 2015, when the conservatiove government realised its popularity was dwindling, tried to win votes back by “cutting the green crap” (which was framed as causing the high energy prices), which did win votes back. The net result being the UK is more heavily dependant on imported natural gas (pushing energy prices up), and with the worst housing stock in Europe for leaking heat, this has put even more people in fuel poverty.
By Gavin Schmidt and Zeke Hausfather
Dr. Schmidt is a climate scientist in New York City. Dr. Hausfather is the climate research lead at Stripe and a research scientist at Berkeley Earth.
Nov. 13, 2024
We Study Climate Change. We Can’t Explain What We’re Seeing.
The earth has been exceptionally warm of late, with every month from June 2023 until this past September breaking records. It has been considerably hotter even than climate scientists expected. Average temperatures during the past 12 months have also been above the goal set by the Paris climate agreement: to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels.
We know human activities are largely responsible for the long-term temperature increases, as well as sea level rise, increases in extreme rainfall and other consequences of a rapidly changing climate. Yet the unusual jump in global temperatures starting in mid-2023 appears to be higher than our models predicted
Nearly every month since June 2023 has been record-breakingly hot –we remain far from a consensus explanation even more than a year after we first noticed the anomalies. And that makes us uneasy.
Why is it taking so long for climate scientists to grapple with these questions? It turns out that we do not have systems in place to explore the significance of shorter-term phenomena in the climate in anything approaching real time. But we need them badly. It’s now time for government science agencies to provide more timely updates in response to the rapid changes in the climate.
We think that a goal of analyzing data in under six months is achievable if the data-gathering and climate-modeling labs prioritize it. This entails a small shift by the U.S. agencies, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Energy, and international agencies such as Copernicus, the European climate service provider, toward sustained funding instead of one-off research grants.
Some of the unease that people feel about climate change comes from a sense that things are out of our control — that the climate is changing faster than we can adapt. However, many of the most dire risks lie not with the most likely outcomes but in the worst-case possibilities
Comments 1123
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/13/opinion/climate-change-heat-planet.html
Dark Matter: Unseen Forces Shaping Our Climate and Future
October 29, 2024|Art Berman
https://www.artberman.com/blog/dark-matter-unseen-forces-shaping-our-climate-and-future/
While browsing the web, I found this:
https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/the-crisis-report-92
This claim stuck out to me:
>The Rate of Warming seems to have increased to +0.5°C/decade in response to the change in the planetary albedo.
The way Mr. Crim arrived at this conclusion is by subtracting A.D 2014 GMST from A.D 2024 GMST. Does this, as well as his other claims (like >5°C by 2100, +0.55°C of warming in A.D 2023 coming from aerosol reductions etc.), hold up to scrutiny? I’ve seen this guy’ posts being used as sources several times at this point, but I find them difficult to read due to constant yapping about “climate moderates”, onslaught of graphs and shouty caps.
[Response: No. this kind of ‘trend analysis’ is just tracking noise. -gavin]
[ response – yes, Crim’s articles are difficult to read due to constant yapping about “climate moderates”, onslaught of graphs and shouty caps. HIs commentary is hard to read, though many seem to get a lot out of it, as per the comments sections – https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/the-crisis-report-97/comments ]
Compare with 08 October 2024 BioScience article –
Scientists have issued yet another clarion call regarding our seemingly unstoppable momentum toward climate catastrophe. In a recent article, The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth, some of the world’s leading climate scientists lay it out.
“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis . . . For half a century, global warming has been correctly predicted even before it was observed—and not only by independent academic scientists but also by fossil fuel companies.
“Despite these warnings, we are still moving in the wrong direction; fossil fuel emissions have increased to an all-time high, the 3 hottest days ever occurred in July of 2024, and current policies have us on track for approximately 2.7 degrees Celsius peak warming by 2100.
“Tragically, we are failing to avoid serious impacts, and we can now only hope to limit the extent of the damage. We are witnessing the grim reality of the forecasts as climate impacts escalate, bringing forth scenes of unprecedented disasters around the world and human and nonhuman suffering. We find ourselves amid an abrupt climate upheaval, a dire situation never before encountered in the annals of human existence. We have now brought the planet into climatic conditions never witnessed by us or our prehistoric relatives within our genus . . . “
The scientists spell out the gory details, illustrating our global wrong way direction.
“Fossil fuel consumption rose by 1.5% in 2023 relative to 2022, mostly because of substantial increases in coal consumption (1.6%) and oil consumption (2.5%).”
“Global tree cover loss rose from 22.8 megahectares (Mha) per year in 2022 to 28.3 Mha per year in 2023, reaching its third-highest level; this was at least partly because of wildfires, which caused tree cover loss to reach a record high of 11.9 Mha.”
“Annual energy-related emissions increased 2.1% in 2023, and are now above 40 gigatons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent for the first time . . . the concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane are at record highs. . . Carbon dioxide levels were recently observed to be surging . . . Furthermore, the growth rate of methane emissions has been accelerating, which is very troubling . . . Nitrous oxide is also at a record high; annual anthropogenic emissions of this potent long-lived greenhouse gas have increased by roughly 40% from 1980 to 2020.”
“Surface temperature is at a record high, and 2024 is expected to be one of the hottest years ever recorded. Each 0.1°C of global warming places an extra 100 million people (or more) into unprecedented hot average temperatures.”
To the credit of this group, led by William Ripple of Oregon State University, they place the situation in the overall context of ecological overshoot.
“Global heating, although it is catastrophic, is merely one aspect of a profound polycrisis that includes environmental degradation, rising economic inequality, and biodiversity loss. Climate change is a glaring symptom of a deeper systemic issue: ecological overshoot, where human consumption outpaces the Earth’s ability to regenerate. Overshoot is an inherently unstable state that cannot persist indefinitely. As pressures increase and the risk of Earth’s climate system switching to a catastrophic state rises. more and more scientists have begun to research the possibility of societal collapse.”
“In a world with finite resources, unlimited growth is a perilous illusion. We need bold, transformative change: drastically reducing overconsumption and waste, especially by the affluent, stabilizing and gradually reducing the human population through empowering education and rights for girls and women, reforming food production systems to support more plant-based eating, and adopting an ecological and post-growth economics framework that ensures social justice.”
Will the world listen? Has it listened to decades of such clarion calls? A new United Nations report assesses climate plans of the world’s nations. UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell states, ”The report’s findings are stark but not surprising – current national climate plans fall miles short of what’s needed to stop global heating from crippling every economy, and wrecking billions of lives and livelihoods across every country.”
Even if all plans are fully implemented, a highly uncertain proposition, climate pollution would only be reduced 2.6% from 2019 levels by 2030, compared to the 43% needed to hold global heating below 1.5°C, a limit beyond which climate disruption sharply accelerates.
The world is clearly not getting it.
— from https://theraven.substack.com/p/on-the-brink-of-an-irreversible-climate
— about
The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth
William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Jillian W Gregg, Johan Rockström, Michael E Mann, Naomi Oreskes, Timothy M Lenton, Stefan Rahmstorf, Thomas M Newsome, Chi Xu …
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biae087/7808595
The latest from Crim #97
https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/the-crisis-report-97
and another reminder it is a polycrisis not only a climate crisis
“Our findings thus question the feasibility of a global and fast low-carbon energy transition.”
2021 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261921011673
Julian,
The manic blather of Richard Crim you reference kicks off with a screen-shot from the Uni of Maine’s ReAnalyser. The particular ReAnalyser page presented is said to show “The f**king oceans are WARMING UP! In FREAKING October! When they should be losing HEAT.”
The data is actually shown only to Sept 26th and a September “heating up” is not unprecedented (for instance 1986 or 2012). But I would suggest the manic blather is more to do with the final few days of data presented in the screen-shot, showing the 2024 data with a suddenly up-tick and rising up above the 2023 “bananas” values. Yet if you were to visit the same ReAnalyser webpage today, there is no up-tick within the latter half of September. 2024. The webpage does explain, describing the data it presents (NOAA Optimum Interpolation SST (OISST) version 2.1) saying “Data are preliminary for about two weeks“[Their bold]
(A different version of SST60N-60S data is featured on the SST page of the Copernicus ClimatePulse website with the preliminary data restricted to the last data point.)
The postings of Richard Crim can be exceeding extreme. His Report#94 uncritically accepts the ECS=8ºC of Judd et al (2024)and sees it trumping all previous ECS assessments. His Report#96 predicts a collapse in world population, warning that “By 2050, I think the global population will be under 1 Billion.”
Richard Crim is conscious of such talk being contentious. His Report#93 cites one of our hosts, writing “Dr. Mann has stated that he regards “Doomism” as a form of mental illness” before then agreeing with Ripple et al (2024) ‘The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth’ and pointing out Dr Mann is a co-author. Sadly, Richard Crim didn’t think to refer to Ripple et al when tapping out subsequent posts.
MAR,
I’m relieved that I’m not the only one thinking his analyses are quite extreme. I may not be a climate scientist, but I try to carefully read the actual papers and piece together a bigger picture. My main issue with his analyses is that they tend to omit a lot of nuance (i.e. the story behind AESS estimates by Judd et al. (2024) that I forgot to thank you about), focusing instead on ad Hominems and worst-case scenarios (not that the latter ones aren’t possible, just sayin’). I do broadly agree with him on some points, like population and economic contraction later this century or IPCC underestimating, but as far as actual science is concerned, I don’t find his predictions believable. His comment section also seems like an echo-chamber.
P.S
Perhaps for Gavin – is it only me (MS Edge), or does the comment section formatting break past the first page? I’ve never used WordPress, but I’m a programmer/sysadmin by training, so maybe I could help.
Is limiting the temperature increase to 1.5°C still possible?
Glen P. Peters, CICERO Center for International Climate Research, Oslo, Norway.
But, there remains two get-out-of-jail cards
A new hope
Crossing 1.5°C is not the time to give up, but the time is to roll up our sleeves and work harder.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/29768659241293218
Shared with a heavy sigh. Because if this is the best we can do in tis moment then there is no hope.
Everyone happy 1. temp anomalies aren’t falling, and 2. CO2 is rising @ 4 ppm/yr in ’23 and ’24?
23.16 ppm #CO2 in OUR PLANET’S AIR on Nov. 11 2024
Up 3.72 ppm from 419.44 a year ago
432.34 ppm #CO2 in the planet’s air for the 45th week of 2024
Up from 419.38 one year ago
423.57 ppm #CO2 in OUR PLANET’S AIR on Nov. 10 2024
Up 4.13 ppm from 419.44 a year ago
All via @CO2_earth.
The continued high tmp anomalies and elevated CO2 ppm additions all reinforce the 2014-2016 initiation of a major climate tipping point which we are still in the middle of, IMNSHO.
Serious question I realize I had never asked: At what point is a tipping point over? Do we think of it as the entire period of instability before reaching a new state, or just the period triggering the tipping point with what follows until the new equilibrium is reached merely the effects of the tipping point?
Cheers
Killian Everyone happy 1. temp anomalies aren’t falling, and 2. CO2 is rising @ 4 ppm/yr in ’23 and ’24?
The only ones “happy” with that would be found in two groups:
– the subset of the deniers – those of the “CO2 is good for us” type
– the internet doomers – for their tears are crocodile. If you scratch the surface – the worse for the Earth, the better for their ego: in the absence of any substantial real life achievements, their ego needs be propped up by considering oneselves unappreciated prophets, who could see what everybody else failed – “ I have been saying it here for well over 10 years”, and yet the scientists “never listen to me“.
Tomáš,
Thank you for your questions. I have moved my reply to a new position, because the old thread was becoming hard to add to.
TK: Many thanks for your explanation of the “heat domes” mechanism.
Have I understood correctly that the atmospheric circulation that establish in such situation resembles that of atmospheric circulation above hot deserts like Sahara or Arabian Peninsula?
JP: Yes, the circulation in a “heat dome” in general does resemble that above the hot deserts in the summer. It is important to remember that the earlier discussion on this topic was referring to extreme heat waves in areas that are normally not as hot as these deserts. So, those heat domes would be on a smaller scale and less stable in location than over the large deserts.
TK: If so, I would like to ask a few questions regarding our options for mitigating it:
1) There are modelling experiments suggesting that massive solar power exploitation in such hot deserts should, paradoxically, bring more precipitation thereto:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/hydr/23/1/JHM-D-20-0266.1.xml
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020GL090789
Is it possible to infer therefrom that massive installation of dark solar panels (that could power air condition during heat dome situations without further contribution to greenhouse gas emissions) would even itself bring some relief, perhaps by helping sea breeze to come and cool the hot coastal cities?
JP: No. In general I do not think that this strategy would bring relief. It depends on modifying the regional circulation of a heat dome by injecting extra heat from dark solar panels. So, you are making a very hot situation even hotter, and then depending on changes in the atmospheric circulation to bring extra relief.
Enhancing a sea breeze would cool the most extreme temperatures (but would raise temperatures in the region downwind of the solar panels.) However, these oceans are very warm, and there is also extreme humidity. There will be a zone where the (absolute) humidity is very high and temperatures are still quite high. In this zone, the combination of high temperature and humidity can be so extreme that it threatens human survival. For example, this happens now – without the very large arrays of solar panels – near the shores of the Persian Gulf, and also in India and Pakistan before the monsoon arrives.
TK: 2) Let us, for a comparison, imagine another mode of solar energy exploitation in the same situation, the mode characterized by conversion of the unexploited (“waste”) absorbed solar energy into latent heat instead of the sensible heat. Is it possible that even though there would have been no surface cooling by the “oasis effect” because the latent heat would have absorbed merely the excessive heat released by solar panels, the rising water vapour could still somehow break the “heat dome” situation – perhaps, at least in coastal regions, by interacting with the sea breeze to form clouds and, maybe, to bring some precipitation that might cool the hot region a little bit?
JP: No. In general, the water vapor will not rise very far, because the air within a heat dome is descending from aloft, on the average. What you would have instead is a situation where the surface is still very hot, but the latent heat has increased. This would be even more difficult for the local residents to tolerate. The extra latent heat will probably be released someplace where it can actually rise, probably at the edge of the heat dome, or over mountains. There, it would generate extra flooding rains and severe thunderstorms.
TK: 3) Is it possible to compare these two options simply by using your meteorological expertise and weather forecaster experience?
JP: I have given you a generalization here. There may be situations where one option or the other would bring some improvement. However, both have risks of severe consequences by producing an intolerable combination of heat and humidity. Local modeling (such as the WRF used in the first study) is important to understand the details. Topography also makes an important difference. However, the average conditions produced by even an accurate model may not adequately capture the life-threatening consequences in the hot situations when the average does not prevail.
TK: 4) Should a such assessment be difficult, might these theoretical scenarios deserve a comparison by a modelling study?
JP: The modeling studies will help us understand the meteorological factors involved. However, it is also important to consider practical effects. These include remote effects, because in general it is not possible to modify the weather in one place without affecting it elsewhere. People whose weather is not improved will object, and conflicts will arise. (These days, a conflict involving the placement of solar panels might result in the large-scale destruction of those panels.) It would also include the demand on resources to make a large-scale surface modification, and the economic effects of making those modifications, or attempting to do so.
John Pollack
in Re to John Pollack, 17 Nov 2024 at 11:42 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/11/unforced-variations-nov-2024/comment-page-2/#comment-826983
Dear John,
Thank you very much for your detailed explanation!
It appears that it is not easy to prevent and/or mitigate the heat domes, and that massive solar energy exploitation in urban areas can be even counter-productive in this respect.
Do I understand correctly that making the buildings and other infrastructure therein more reflective for sunlight might be a more promising approach?
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomáš, you are correct. Heat domes are quite difficult to mitigate. They are impossible to prevent, since they are part of the normal atmospheric circulation.
Urban heat islands are on a much smaller scale than heat domes. They can be mitigated. Yes, making buildings and other infrastructure light colored or reflective can be a good approach. Another is to make sure that darker surfaces contribute to the environment in another way. Although trees are relatively dark, they also produce shade and reduce urban heating. Solar panels can be deployed over areas that are already dark, such as roofs or parking lots, thereby generating extra energy.
In Re to John Pollack, 17 Nov 2024 at 8:40 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/11/unforced-variations-nov-2024/comment-page-2/#comment-827007
Dear John,
Many thanks for your additional explanation.
I must admit that so far, I thought that there is basically no difference between hot deserts and urban heat islands. Although the deserts and the urban heat islands may be similar from hydrological perspective, I was not aware of the important difference in atmospheric circulation thereabove.
To be sure that I understood the explanation correctly, I will try to summarize it as follows:
Specifically, hot deserts are supplied with descending dry air coming from lower latitudes, whereas in urban heat islands, mostly located outside desert regions, this feature may be generally absent. It may, however, occur temporarily also in quite high latitudes, typically just during the heat dome situations. Am I right?
I will need a few days to process this learning, I think.
Best regards
Tomáš
Tomáš,
Your description is essentially correct. The temperate latitude heat domes are on a smaller scale than the big ones over the deserts, and less permanent. The urban heat islands are a lot smaller than the heat domes. This is what makes it possible to modify the temperatures in an urban area, but it would be too difficult to do it for the entire heat dome.
In Re to John Pollack, 20 Nov 2024 at 9:57 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/11/unforced-variations-nov-2024/comment-page-2/#comment-827157
Dear John,
I would like to ask a few additional questions, focused on the most dangerous situations when the heat wave air in the surface layer is not only hot but has, in parallel, also a high relative humidity.
1) You mentioned India and Pakistan before monsoon and Gulf of Persia. I suppose that in the first case, the hot descending air evaporates the water available in soils and vegetation from the preceding wet period. In case of the Gulf of Persia, where comes the humidity from? Is it the “sea breeze”?
2) If so, what it the difference e.g. in case of the sea breeze from the Red Sea which, if I understood the article about massive solar energy exploitation in Arabian Peninsula correctly, is still significantly colder than the hot air above the land?
3) It was my feeling that in the article, the sea breeze was considered as a desirable cooling mechanism for the shore regions, without any fear of an interaction with the “heat dome” above the peninsula which could potentially become dangerous for people living therein. Is the situation in the Red Sea shore region different from the situation around the Gulf of Persia, or have the authors of the article just put the aspect of possibly dangerous extreme wet heat aside?
Thank you in advance for additional comments that could make the different outcomes in seemingly similar situations more understandable for a layman like me.
Greetings
Tomáš
Re: John Pollack’s answer to Tomas Kalisz:
John, the post you have answered was a bait by the resident anything but mitigation of GHGs troll, in his attempt to revive his idiotic Sahara irrigation scheme he has been pushing here for well over a year, as a viable alternative to GHG mitigation.
Although you answered all his 4 points, basically: “it’s the opposite to what you think”, it won’t stop him – he will profusely thank you, and then IGNORE all you have said, and will keep posting follow-up questions looking for a way to undermine your rejection of his 4 points. See also:
Wikipedia: “Sealioning: is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity (“I’m just trying to have a debate”), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter. It may take the form of “incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate”,[5] and has been likened to a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings. The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki:”
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/56/%22The_Terrible_Sea_Lion%22._Wondermark_comic_strip_No._1062_by_David_Malki_%2819_September_2014%29.png
Piotr,
You may well be right, and I take it as a warning. However, TK asked reasonable questions and provided good peer-reviewed references to back them. Since they are within my area of competence, I think it is worthwhile to explore them a little. Their science content is quite a bit higher than in my previous exchange about extreme temperatures. If it fades out, or gets lost in trivia, I will let the thread go..
WRT CCS, this is a useful evaluation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlsjvKKugKI
TL;DR: not good enough, prone to hypocrisy.
For a snarkier shorter, amusing, and still useful evaluation of the corrupt forces and impracticality involved, this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSZgoFyuHC8
Gavin, you were quoted in The Economist’s “Artificial intelligence is helping improve climate models”:
“Others are more sceptical that ai methods used in short-term weather forecasting can be successfully applied to the climate. “Weather and climate are both based on physics,” says Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist who runs nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, but pose different modelling challenges. For one thing, the available data are rarely of the same quality. For weather forecasting, huge swathes of excellent data are generated every day and, therefore, able to continuously validate the previous day’s predictions. Climate models do not enjoy the same luxury. In addition, they face the challenge of simulating conditions more extreme than any previously observed, and over centuries rather than days.”
Seems to me they left your quote unfinished. Was there more context that you’d like to share? Thanks!
Alan Smithee,
Your quote from that Economist article ‘Artificial intelligence is helping improve climate models’ reminds me of a comment I ended-up never posting up-thread. (The Economist article is apparently viewable on a free trial, perhaps if that freebee has not already been expended.)
Up-thread there was some to-&fro about the merits of web-head Sabine Hossenfelder.
Her rather simplistic take on climatology does include the assertion that things are much worse than the IPCC ARs suggest and this assertion rests pretty-much entirely on one paper: Williams et al (2020) ‘Use of Short-Range Forecasts to Evaluate Fast Physics Processes Relevant for Climate Sensitivity’.
Sabine Hossenfelder rightly pointed-out Williams et al (2020) has not made much of a splash. @10:30 in her video entitled ‘I wasn’t worried about climate change. Now I am.’ Sabine Hossenfelder pointed to the paper showing as having just “13 citations” at the time of the video. It today shows “14 citations” with Google Scholar putting it at 26, of which none appear to describe any of the further research into the Williams et al result which Sabine Hossenfelder found compelling and necessary.
Williams et al (2020) suggests the HadGEM3-GC3.1 model with an ECS=5.5ºC and revised aerosol & cloud schemes gives more realistic modelling with weather data than managed by HadGEM3-GC2 with ECS=3.2ºC. And, of course, nailing ECS would be good.
now the scientists have created Geological Net Zero
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08326-8
and +1.5C not until 2030 in June seems pretty specific
How close are we to reaching a global warming of 1.5˚C?
https://apps.climate.copernicus.eu/global-temperature-trend-monitor/
or by zeke back in June in 2030 ish
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-what-record-global-heat-means-for-breaching-the-1-5c-warming-limit/
with +2c in 2048 ish
while there’s this report a couple of days ago.
World’s 1.5C climate target ‘deader than a doornail’, experts say
Scientists say goal to keep world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is not going to happen despite talks at Cop29 in Baku
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/18/climate-crisis-world-temperature-target
with many other reports about scientists saying temps will be surely closer to +3c by 2100 given current trends. an apparent majority above +2.7C iirc. There’s so much data so many quotes does anyone actually ever keep up? I do not.
Meanwhile CO2 ppm hits new all time growth records above 3ppm per year. There is a ref for that somewhere, or is it everywhere. Who knows? And does anyone even care anymore?
Everyone knows the reductions called for at the COP are not happening. Emissions keep increasing. Maybe sinks are faltering as well, maybe maybe not depends who you ask. What you read.
some see doom others see agency. climate scientists need more ‘operational’ data apparently (whatever that is or means, or if it is even possible)
net zero requires CDR and putting it in geological formations forever .. or at least 1000 years according to another hypothetical recent study posted here. I say hypothetical because it’s outright unproven it can be done at the scale required. claimed is needed.
So we net zero and still temps and impacts are ongoing for a 1000 years. no one really knows. no one can really say. the only guarantee is that more and more papers will be published and then criticised or ,lauded, or both at the same time.
And so here we are. Isn’t it grand? And why was it so warm last year? and this year again? Oh, doesn’t matter. Everything is fine and is in good hands. Someone somewhere knows what they’re doing I’m sure of it. Certain of it, well no, we can’t ever say we’re certain of anything – except that thousands more climate papers will be published … and we’ll have a COP meeting every year from now to eternity no doubt..
More from The Guardian
“You shouldn’t ask scientists how to galvanize the world because clearly we don’t have a fucking clue”
Gavin Schmidt
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/18/climate-crisis-world-temperature-target
QUOTE
Yet the 1.5C target now appears to be simply a rhetorical, rather than scientifically achievable, one, bar massive amounts of future carbon removal from as-yet unproven technologies. “I never thought 1.5C was a conceivable goal. I thought it was a pointless thing,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at Nasa. “I’m totally unsurprised, like almost all climate scientists, that we are shooting past it at a rapid clip.
“But it was extremely galvanizing, so I was wrong about that. Maybe it is useful; maybe people do need impossible targets. You shouldn’t ask scientists how to galvanize the world because clearly we don’t have a fucking clue. People haven’t got a magic set of words to keep us to 1.5C, but we have got to keep trying.
“What matters is we have to reduce emissions. Once we stop warming the planet, the better it will be for the people and ecosystems that live here.”
======
and Zeke adds–
“The goal to avoid exceeding 1.5C is deader than a doornail. It’s almost impossible to avoid at this point because we’ve just waited too long to act,” said Zeke Hausfather, climate research lead at Stripe and a research scientist at Berkeley Earth. “We are speeding past the 1.5C line an accelerating way and that will continue until global emissions stop climbing.”
Last year was so surprisingly hot, even in the context of the climate crisis, that it caused “some soul-searching” among climate scientists, Hausfather said. In recent months there has also been persistent heat despite the fading of El Niño, a periodic climate event that exacerbated temperatures already elevated by the burning of fossil fuels.
“It’s going to be the hottest year by an unexpectedly large margin. If it continues to be this warm it’s a worrying sign,” he said. “Going past 1.5C this year is very symbolic, and it’s a sign that we are getting ever closer to going past that target.”
===============
What I wonder about is – do climate scientists even have ‘Souls’? Isn’t that outside their areas of expertise? :-)
Gavin says – “we have to reduce emissions.”
That is not an action plan – it is a motherhood statement being made by climate scientists for over 45 years at least by now. Climate scientists including all those ‘experts’ who organize or contribute to the IPCC do not have a clue how to solve the problem of climate change let alone how to successfully and permanently reduce emissions.
Climate Scientists are unqualified for the task. Listen to Gavin tell you the real truth of it. The IPCC and Climate Scientists overall don’t have “a fucking clue” what to do or how to do it!
Mythical mathematical inputs and thousands of online articles or interviews by climate scientists about of non-existent CDR fictions are not real. Everything based on these fictions are equally a fiction – such as staying below 1.5C or 2C GMST limits and Net Zero goals or targets — none of these are real or legitimate solutions to anything.
False assertions by climate scientists that xyz people who point out the absolutely obvious lack of action the failing of limits targets and goals alongside the ongoing rapid rise in GHG emissions and GMSTs and SSST and all the other indicators of global warming are dangerous ill-informed unscientific “doomers or doomists or anti-science trolls” who should be run out of social media platforms are also illegitimate unfounded mystical thinking no matter how many awards or published books to their name or science degrees the climate scientists might have.
The UNFCCC and the COP meetings are failures because of all the bunkem fed into them by both climate science deniers by bad political-corporate actors as well climate scientists and the failed IPCC process.
“You shouldn’t ask scientists how to galvanize the world because clearly we don’t have a fucking clue.” by Gavin Schmidt
100% True and Correct!
My angry frustrated waste of time rage for today and the week. Please carry on regardless.
Even NPR is onto it now.
By far, this is the most important flaw in the Paris Agreement, and yet scientists talk about 1.5C as if they know what they’re talking about.
November 18, 2024
“surprisingly, Betts says, nowhere in the Paris Agreement does it define how to measure the Earth’s increasing temperature.”
To account for that natural temperature wobble, the IPCC suggests looking at averages over a 20-year period. That requires looking backwards at years of global average temperature data, like the WMO report, while also looking forward using climate models to predict future rise.
Using those methods, scientists calculate that 2023 was 1.31 C hotter than the pre-industrial period.
But there’s a problem, says Nathan Gillett, a climate scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada: that approach is inherently backward-looking. Even if warming progresses past 1.5 C, “We won’t be able to say that until after we passed it,” he says.
That approach could obscure the true amount of warming, says Andrew Jarvis, a climate scientist at Lancaster University and an author of the new Nature Geoscience analysis.
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/18/nx-s1-5183222/1-5-celsius-global-warming-climate-change-cop29
Reminds me of being up schitts creek in a barbed wire canoe … or lost in the jungle on a new moon night
“But there’s a problem, says Nathan Gillett, a climate scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada: that approach is inherently backward-looking. Even if warming progresses past 1.5 C, “We won’t be able to say that until after we passed it,” he says.”
Sounds right. However it doesnt really change the need to mitigate the climate problem and get to net zero emissions with urgency. I would say its still theoretically possible to get to net zero emissions by 2035 (which will be keeping warming under somewhere around 1.5 degrees), but it looks impossible in reality. Given the timeframes left it would require the world going on a near war footing of renewables energy production and / or other strategies and requring quite high carbon taxes or centralised control of the economy, and an awakening of by the general public where they make very substantial lifestyle changes.
This is resited for many reasons, and hasnt happened by now so its not clear why it would happen over the next decade or so, because its only going to get harder especially if its left to the last minute. Unless a heatwave kills millions of people and really shocks people into making changes, but climate change is more of a phenomenon similar to the parable of the frog slowly boiling alive. Even keeping warming under 2 degrees by net zero by 2050 looks incredibly challenging. And so things arent looking great. This is not a reason to give up on mitigation and and promoting mitigation because every bit will help reduce climate change impacts even if we dont meet the exact ideal goals we want, but its how it seems to me.
I have a question for the people here, It is about the consequences of global warming, and not about the mechanisms that are the central topic on this site. Yet there are still many people here that probably have relevant knowledge.
I was recently at a (baffling) meeting with economist, and realised that it is assumed (following for instance Barrage & Nordhaus 2024, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2312030121 ), that even at 3 C global temperature increase our economic system will basically function as normal.
On the other (and much closer to my own feeling) I see things like https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2024/09/harvard-economic-impact-climate-change
So what is the general position here, will we have a semi-normal function economy at 3 degree C temperature increase, as mainstream economist seem to assume?
Seeing no one else replied – “will we have a semi-normal function economy at 3 degree C temperature increase” ?
Absolutely not.
1) Well, COP 29 appears to be a dress ball for fossil fuel magnates:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2024/nov/15/cop29-live-day-five-begins-with-demands-for-change-to-way-summits-are-run
2) Interesting entertainment –instead of opera the fossil fuek magnates get to see renewable energy hippies being punched while poor countries beg the magnates for money:
https://apnews.com/article/cop29-climate-baku-azerbaijan-796f5e8c62e361e5be892c7e17959d28
(Although someone could certainly make an interesting opera about COP 29 –maybe with some sounds of thunder as background )
3) Greta Thunberg read the Azerbaijan tea leaves and moved her political theater several hundred miles south to Georgia (the country)
4) Money quote from the host:
Fossil fuels a “gift from God”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/12/cop29-host-azerbaijan-brands-oil-and-gas-gift-from
5) Some deep geopolitical insights from the UN:
“ The United Nations’ COP climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and need an urgent overhaul, key experts including a former UN secretary general and former UN climate chief have said.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2lknel1xpo
Human-caused ocean warming intensified recent hurricanes, including all 11 Atlantic hurricanes in 2024
Researchers determined that 44% of the economic damages caused by Hurricane Helene and 45% of those caused by Hurricane Milton could be attributed to climate change.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2024/11/human-caused-ocean-warming-intensified-recent-hurricanes-including-all-11-atlantic-hurricanes-in-2024/
Thanks for that Susan, I’ll read the linked journal article when I have a moment. I’m giving a talk next year to my Rotary group about climate change, the science, the evidence/trends so far and the projections, so articles like that are useful for providing content.
44% and 45%? Laughable. No possibility they could calculate the attribution to that level of accuracy. This kind of nonsense is one reason a lot of people don’t believe the CC hysteria.
Agreed. Ludicrous. An unnecessary and self-serving waste of time and resources.
KIA: 44% and 45%? Laughable. No possibility they could calculate the attribution to that level of accuracy.
BPL: Just because you don’t understand how they didn’t doesn’t mean they’re lying. It just means you’re ignorant and don’t want to learn.
Hint: ANOVA
(and I would guess there are error bars if you dig into it)
KIA said “Huge numbers of middle class believers can afford to go solar.”
Clearly, and I agree they should make some more efforts to do this, but you completely missed the point of what I said. I will give it one last try. Many people cant afford to go soilar and we will always need some central provision of renewable electricity generation for things like industry. It wont happen due to “free markets” because they have a dreadful record of fixing environmental problems. It will require the government subsidising renewable energy or using emissions trading schemes or carbon taxes. The ozone hole was not fixed by free markets. It was reduced by a cap and trading scheme.
Your problem is you let your almost paranoid levels of suspicion of “government” get in the way. Im a bit more balanced I hope. Im certainly of the view that some scepticism of government is healthy but we have to use governments to fix certain types of problems. Free marktets and capitalism do some things well like the efficient production of industrial goods, but they dont price externalities, and they have a terrible record of causing environmental problems and not taking responsibility for fixing or mitigating those problems. They pollute with utter impunity.
The only thing that has worked is dragging corporations kicking and screaming through the courts and the only winners are lawyers, or governmnet regulation with penalties, and things like cap and trade schemes. Deal with it. Live with it. Or come up with a better way but nobody else has and I doubt you would.
Nigel said: “Clearly, and I agree they should make some more efforts to do this,…..”
My reply: For the next 4 years, probably 12 more years, the federal government in the US is not going to be doing a lot on AGW, but that is not totally bad news since the US only contributes 11.3% of global GHGs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions#GHG_emissions_by_country/territory
In pretty pictures:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions#/media/File:GHG_emissions_by_world_region,_1850-2021.png
In the US, reduction of GH gases will be up to the states and to individuals for the near future. For the rest of the world, which contributes 88.7% of all GH gases, they can use any government or private enterprise schemes they want to reduce GH gases.
Thems the facts.
Thems the distortions and the disinformations and never-ending manipulations thems is. :-)
KIA: For the next 4 years, probably 12 more years, the federal government in the US is not going to be doing a lot on AGW, but that is not totally bad news since the US only contributes 11.3% of global GHGs
BPL: Other people are also peeing in the pool, so it’s okay if I pee in the pool.
KiA: “ For the next 4 years, probably 12 more years, the federal government in the US is not going to be doing a lot on AGW, but that is not totally bad news since, the US only contributes 11.3% of global GHGs:”
despite being only 4.2% of the global population. For a comparison India contribute 7.8% GHGs having 17.8% of the population.
Furthermore – the India’s increase in emissions is very recent – the vast majority of the surplus CO2 in air today has accumulated since the preindustrial period: In CUMULATIVE emissions
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-which-countries-are-historically-responsible-for-climate-change/
the largest contributor, by far, USA: 20.3%. India – 3.4%
So your original sentiment in an honest form should have read:
“honest KiA”: For the next 4 years, probably 12 more years, the federal government in the US is not going to be doing a lot on AGW, but that is not totally bad news since 1 American is more deserving than 25 Indians.
:
I assume no else accepts that “reducing emissions” is not an action or even a goal but a mystically based hoped for result of a multitude of other actions founded upon a massive change in human values first. A change that is not coming.
@Peter Roessingh gave an article ref – “Climate Change’s Crippling Costs”
Again I see this as another example of incorrect framing of the meta/poly crisis problems humanity is facing.
It should have read instead – “The Global Economy’s Crippling Costs” – with the article should mentioned the main drivers of humanity’s endless economic growth and unlimited greed. But unfortunately this is where things are at. The problem is not climate change but humanity, ourselves, collectively and individually to varying degrees of scale. But so very few are able to hear the truth of these things with a degree of denial far greater and entrenched than the cohort of western society who deny climate science and global warming. Or those who simplistic describe the problem as being the fault of all the fossil fuel corporations fault. Simplistic to the point of being irrational and or delusional in the extreme about the real problems and their causes.
Here is yet another person trying to explain it to others the best they can in their own way-
https://indi.ca/how-economically-were-fucked/
When ‘classic economics’ appeared there were under 2 billion people on earth. When neoliberal economics appeared as the new religion of hyperactive myth for humanity there was only about 4 billion. Today there are 8 billion souls and increasing. The prognosis is equivalent to jumping out of a plane at 10,000 feet without a parachute. The end result is obvious. It’s common sense.
A couple of related anecdotes
There is a new doco on Netflix worth considering called – “Buy Now! The shopping conspiracy” (enviro/climate/waste/greed) including the Amazon.com model impacts.
The above is a snapshot of what unlimited endless growth looks like. Or at least only part of the story. It doesn’t show the waste output or the environmental destruction or the increasing global temperatures and effects longer term.
Regarding Electric Vehicles. I acknowledge that with some people there is an element of ‘greed’ and status display in the buying of EV’s, but I would suggest that for most people they are just a way of getting to work in the big city, and for many people other options to using cars are not realistic. In the longer term we might be able to rebuild cities as walkable cities, but this will obviously take a lot of time and resources. We have to deal with situations as they are currently as we find them.
The following is a highly detailed evaluation of lithium reserves: “Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles? The world has enough lithium, but we need to scale up production this decade.” Its by Hannah Ritchie, an environmental scientist.. Refer:
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/lithium-electric-vehicles
Noting “with some people there is an element of ‘greed’ and status display in the buying of EV’s” is not the takeaway message I imagined would be grokked from the source info provided.
As Hannah says: “When we really want something, we get good at finding it.”
Very true. But that is not a good thing in itself. Currently the Chinese are the best at finding Fish. Globally humans have become increasingly good at it for hundreds of years. Then there’s things like coal, oil and natural gas. We’re good as a species at finding all that too.
So? Is mining Lithium a sustainable activity for humanity? And who decides Hannah is right and offering the right information to the world? Or Dr Daly for that matter.
Dharma said: “The prognosis is equivalent to jumping out of a plane at 10,000 feet without a parachute. The end result is obvious…..”
My reply: Sometimes the obvious result doesn’t happen:
https://www.statista.com/chart/19708/known-occasions-where-people-survived-falls/
Quote from the Dr. Daly article: “– According to these models, the answer is to continue growth with ‘renewables’ but this is like switching from heroin to codeine. I mean, OK, but this is not the same thing as stopping your addiction.”
My reply: How does he think we should heat our homes, power industries, power transportation, and on and on and on. He sounds like a follower of the discredited Malthusian theory.
The truth is that humans have created many problems in the past. We solve them one way or another, because we have no other choice. Time to put on the big boy pants, act like Elon and build something to help the AGW problem. Or be like Trump and build nice comfy buildings for humans to enjoy. Do not look to government to solve AGW. Do it yourselves, and start NOW.
The Pilgrims, early settlers in North America, started out using a socialist model of governance. It failed as it does everywhere it is tried because it does not account for human behavior. Early American History as written in Pilgrim leader William Bradford’s journal, and told by the late, great El Rushbo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ-2akPZVWE
Now you know the rest of the story. Good day!
The exceptions prove the rule. My metaphor analogy stands on solid ground – even if it is about falling from the sky. The Pilgrims, the Puritans etc immigrating to new england were all delusional psychopaths in my view of history. This is your “yardstick” for decision making today? The Salem witch trials? A “socialist model of governance”? No, that’s pure bullshit! Do better. :-)
As for Dr Daly, read his book/s. You are wasting your life to grab snippets from a social media comment and then try to generate an “argument” against it aka throwing shit at a wall and hoping some of it will stick. But you do you.
KIA: He sounds like a follower of the discredited Malthusian theory.
BPL: Malthus hasn’t been discredited. I doubt you’ve read him.
‘Human-made mass outweighs all living biomass now’
Nate Hagens remains kind of optimistic or at least hopeful. Hard to tell. Short video 30 minutes
The Battles [or Polarities] of Our Time | Frankly 76
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkqKB-pF4no
“Last night I recorded a long, intense, heavy, and I think interesting ‘Frankly’ – Long because I have a lot to say; intense, heavy, and interesting because those are the times we live in.”
I’ll add the morning after another word pairing that is the battle, and that is the battle of our language. These really aren’t battles, they are polarities which are to be navigated and hopefully harmonized.
In today’s Frankly, Nate describes some of the battles – or polarities – of our time: the tensions and dichotomies we face from the global macro level all the way down to the level of individual metacognition. Nate reflects on how each of these polarities contribute in their own unique way to the overarching battle of power versus life
What are the key polarities that define this wider struggle between power and life? And how might we navigate these tensions in the trade off between who we have become and who we might yet be, as individuals and as humanity as a whole?
Now comes the real work for pro-social, pro-future, systems-aware humans. [end quote]
show notes refs transcript
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/76-the-battles-of-our-time
Frankly, I think he is seriously depressed and fast losing all hope of a future for civilization or humanity
‘Human-made mass outweighs all living biomass now’
Science question:
Have humans “made” ANY mass? Or just built things with materials (mass) found on earth?
Reply to Mr. Know It All
Yes, you are correct on the semantics could be confusing to some. Let’s improve it then shall we?
“”All human-built, constructed, refined, mined, and refabricated materials outweigh all living biomass in existence now””
Is that better more clear correct and acceptable to you now Mr. Know It All?
The statement “All human-built, constructed, refined, mined, and refabricated materials outweigh all living biomass in existence now” reflects a finding from a 2020 study published in Nature. The research highlights a profound shift in the Earth’s balance: the mass of anthropogenic materials (human-made objects like concrete, plastic, metal, and asphalt) has surpassed the total biomass (all living organisms such as plants, animals, and microorganisms).
Key Points from the Study:
Anthropogenic Mass:
Refers to all the materials humans have produced, including infrastructure, buildings, roads, and manufactured goods.
Estimated to double every 20 years due to rapid industrialization and consumption.
Biomass Decline:
Global living biomass has decreased due to deforestation, land-use changes, and other human activities.
Total biomass is estimated to be around 1.1 teratonnes (1.1 trillion metric tonnes), primarily composed of plants.
Tipping Point:
Around the year 2020, the mass of human-made materials (approximately 1.1 teratonnes) equaled and then exceeded the biomass for the first time in Earth’s history.
Implications:
This milestone underscores humanity’s significant impact on the planet’s ecosystems and natural cycles.
It highlights the urgency of sustainable practices to mitigate environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity.
Broader Context:
This discovery is a stark indicator of the Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch characterized by the dominant influence of human activity on Earth’s systems.
Possible Human Responses:
– Awe at humanity’s transformative capacity coupled with concern about environmental sustainability.
– Calls for greater awareness and action toward reducing waste, recycling, and protecting natural ecosystems.
– Obliviousness
Your average retired western guy, Walt is an ex-businessman, an expat Brit living in China now. Giving the big question a shot. I think does a very good job. Walt cares. I also think he is a good down to earth communicator with a great bedside manner. It’s why I suggested to him ona blog forum months ago to start his own substack, and he did.
Saving the Planet: a draft manifesto
https://waltking.substack.com/p/saving-the-planet-a-draft-manifesto
Part of a reader’s comment went like this-which makes enormous sense to me too-
zebra says
22 Nov 2024 at 5:59 AM
Here’s another anecdotal comment by an everyday person on Population and possible means of addressing it. They are not alone but of course such agreed actions are extremely unlikely to be implemented by any nation or collectively via the UN or some other global treaty mechanism.
Quote: from Debbie programme proposal October 17 2024
see https://waltking.substack.com/p/saving-the-planet-a-draft-manifesto
Good to know not everyone is asleep and distracted by ‘shiny baubles.’ Unfortunately it is not the wise who are making our decisions for those of us who are incapable of rational common sense.
Jagadish Vasudev, known widely as Sadhguru, at COP29.
BAKU, Nov 16 2024 (IPS) – A sudden flurry of activity as Jagadish Vasudev, known widely as Sadhguru, emerges from an interview room in the COP29 media centre. It’s early days of the conference and there is energy and excitement at the venue in Baku.
see the rest of it here
https://www.ipsnews.net/2024/11/climate-change-threatens-our-existence-says-indian-spiritual-leader-sadhguru/#google_vignette
Sadguru’s main Save Soil + Climate Change action website
52% Of agricultural soils are already degraded
Save Soil is a global movement to address the soil crisis by uniting people across the globe to stand up for soil health, and support leaders of all nations in actioning policies toward increasing organic matter in agricultural soil.
The Solution
Bring back at least 3-6% organic matter in the soil–By bringing the land under shade from vegetation & enriching the soil through plant litter and animal waste.
https://consciousplanet.org/en/save-soil
One does not need to be a scientist to understand what needs to be done to address the causes of climate change and global warming. The solutions are often rooted in common sense and basic principles of sustainability: reducing dependency on fossil fuels, transitioning to cleaner energy sources, protecting natural ecosystems, and curbing wasteful consumption.
As Sadhguru insightfully points out, the challenge lies in offering practical, scalable alternatives rather than focusing solely on what must be given up. While scientific advancements and policy shifts are vital, real change begins with acknowledging the paradox of pursuing development at the planet’s expense and addressing the systemic barriers to adopting clean, efficient technologies. This is as much about aligning priorities and making informed choices as it is about technological innovation or scientific expertise.
IPS: And what about faith? Can it play a role in addressing the climate crisis?
Sadhguru:
Let’s not focus on faith in the context of climate change. It’s our responsibility to act. When things go wrong due to human error, people often call it fate or God’s will. But this crisis is of our making. And the crisis we talk about isn’t the planet’s—it’s a crisis for human survival.
Life on Earth relies on delicate interconnections, from insects to microbes. If these were wiped out, life on the planet would soon collapse. Ironically, if humans disappeared, the planet would thrive.
This is the perspective we need: climate change threatens our existence, not the Earth’s.
Some interesting news :
Considering a country’s current emissions doesn’t give the whole picture of its climate responsibility, though. Carbon dioxide is stable in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. That means greenhouse gases from the first coal power plant, which opened in the late 19th century, are still having a warming effect on the planet today.
Adding up each country’s emissions over the course of its history reveals that the US (330 mln pop.) has the greatest historical contribution—the country is responsible for about 24% of all the climate pollution released into the atmosphere as of 2023. While it’s the biggest polluter today, China (1400 mln pop.)comes in second in terms of historical emissions, at 14%.
If the EU’s member states (450 mln pop.) are totaled as one entity, the group is among the top historical contributors as well. According to an analysis published November 19 by the website Carbon Brief, China (with 3 times the population) passed EU member states in terms of historical emissions in 2023 for the first time.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/11/20/1107015/global-climate-emissions/
The age of extinction
‘The land is tearing itself apart’: life on a collapsing Arctic isle
On Qikiqtaruk, off Canada, researchers at the frontier of climate change are seeing its rich ecology slide into the sea as melting permafrost ice leaves little behind
By Leyland Cecco, on Herschel Island–Qikiqtaruk
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/21/canada-arctic-herschel-island-qikiqtaruk-climate-permafrost-tundra-ecology-aoe
Trump’s science-denying fanatics are bad enough. Yet even our climate ‘solutions’ are now the stuff of total delusion -George Monbiot
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/21/donald-trump-science-climate-cop29-carbon-markets
SubStacker Richard Crim was recently referenced here about his “climate science and collapse analysis.” Apparently he is neurodivergent – which may explain part of the lack of understanding of where he is coming from versus the norms. Neurodivergent includes Asperger or Autism syndrome etc.
Formerly considered a problem or abnormal, scientists now understand that neurodivergence isn’t inherently an issue for the individual and that it has a large societal benefit. Not all presentations of neurodivergence are a disability, like synesthesia, but all are a difference in how the brain works.
With this shift, practitioners are no longer treating neurodivergence as inherently an illness. They are instead viewing them as different methods of learning and processing information, some of which become disabilities in an inaccessible and ableist society.
-This article defines neurodiversity and provides examples. It also teaches you how to find out if you’re neurodivergent and describes what it’s like to be neurodivergent.
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-neurodivergence-and-what-does-it-mean-to-be-neurodivergent-5196627
7 mins video reprt
#cop29 — part of a “bullshit process” a delegate just told me….. by Mathew Carr
https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1kvKpbaoabVJE
summary anecdotes first hand goes – the rich people of G20 the anglo saxons will never pay up for the damage they have done to the world by their use of fossil fuels even though they agreed since 1992 and repeatedly after. they damage they exploit and they can’t share. Once they have the money that’s it.
running a day over time, Baku is just more of the same.
Who is this insistently offering up a YouTube video for me?
It’s called ‘Climate Change: The Facts 2025’.
A bunch of antipodean jokers called the IPA have launched a new book of that name just in time for Xmas. On the YouTube video some apparently-cancelled fella who, golly, surely not, surely it isn’t the late great Sir Les Patterson, the renowned Ozzy Minister for Drought, Inland Drainage & Rodent Control headlining the launch event? It sure looks like him!! The fella is telling the world how “there are things you will read in this book that even your grandmother wouldn’t tell you” (and presumably at some stage, if you watch to the end, adding Les’s more famous quote “If you have to explain satire to someone, you might as well give up.”).
The jokers contributing to this alt-fact-filled book (modestly priced I’m sure) are thin on the ground for this, the fifth outing of ‘Climate Change: The Facts’. Previously published versions featured such greats of the comedy circuit as Dickie Lindzen, Willie man-man Soon, Cap’n Willard Watts, the hockey-stick-averse Ross McKitrick, twit-about-town wee Jimmy Delingpole and good ol’ Roy Spencer; all absent this time. But I see it does feature crazy-kid Chris Monckton back again. He last appeared in their first book back in 2010, so maybe there are at least some of the old dazzling jokes, humour-filled hoaxes & physics-defying fantasies to amuse the reader.
In Serbia, the EU’s Green Deal is fuelling pollution and human rights abuses
Publication date: 21 November 2024
Lithium mining in Serbia pits locals against corporate giants like Rio Tinto and the EU’s green ambitions. With water supplies at stake and authoritarian tactics on the rise, the conflict in the Jadar River valley reveals the human cost of the energy transition
Serbians have been standing up to lithium miners in their country for years. These include Rio Tinto, one of the largest extraction companies in the world, which critics accuse of collaborating with the European Union to turn Serbia into a mining colony. “This project is putting public safety at risk”, opponents say.
The extraction of resources like oil, gas, cobalt and nickel is linked to numerous problems, from expropriation and displacement of local populations, to pollution of water and soil. Governments regularly resort to authoritarian tactics and human rights violations to suppress protests and push forward with unpopular projects. Multinational corporations exploit free trade agreements and put their own interests and profits ahead of the wishes of local populations.
more
https://www.tni.org/en/article/in-serbia-the-eus-green-deal-is-fuelling-pollution-and-human-rights-abuses
There are no straight lines. Everything is connected, interconnected and directly connected. Everything is unsustainable today – 3 x Earth would be insufficient.
Quoting Paul Pukite: “Cripes, I’m listening to MSNBC this morning and they claim that if only Harris had catered to a few more Midwest swing-state voters by softening on some issues, ignoring that the bullies in charge gerrymandered the districts, guaranteeing a Republican outcome independent of any issue. This is automatic gatekeeping, something that Piotr can only aspire to.”
I agree. I’m tired of the gerrymandering malarkey. In the blue ship hole where I live, Republicans don’t have a chance because the Dems are just as good at it as the Rs. I propose that to solve this problem, we make the EC votes based on county results. One EC vote per county. What do you think? For example the Nov 5 race for Prez would have looked like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election#/media/File:2024_Presidential_Election_by_County.svg
That’s better! No more gerrymandering!
:)
PS Gerrymandering only affects state legislature elections, and elections for US House seats, not elections for US Senate or President.
Uh, actually, no. Gerrymandering does affect elections for the Senate and the President because it allows a minority to set the rules for those elections. It determines which areas will have a surfeit of polling places and which ones will have long lines where anyone who tries to give you a bottle of water is arrested.
KIA: I propose that to solve this problem, we make the EC votes based on county results. One EC vote per county.
BPL: That would weight elections so heavily to rural voters that they would have dozens or hundreds of times more impact than urban voters. No. Sorry. No way.
About US Presidential Elections:
KIA: I propose that to solve this problem, we make Electoral College (EC) votes based on county results—one EC vote per county.
BPL: That would give rural voters an outsized impact, dozens or even hundreds of times more than urban voters. No. Sorry, no way.
How about we apply some democratic justice and rational logic instead? It’s time to eliminate the EC altogether with a Constitutional Amendment.
Such an amendment would ensure that every vote counts equally, no matter where someone lives. It would put an end to the gerrymandering and manipulation surrounding “swing states,” where, for example, Republican votes in New York or Democratic votes in Indiana are effectively worthless.
We could implement a fairer system, such as:
First-past-the-post: The candidate with the most votes wins outright.
Run-off elections: A second round of voting ensures majority support.
Ranked-choice voting: Voters list their preferences (e.g., Candidate #1, #2, #3) so their vote can transfer if their top choice doesn’t win.
These systems are straightforward and already used in many other democracies—why not here? The current EC system undermines the democratic process, disenfranchises voters, and skews representation in both the Senate and the House. Many voters opt out entirely because they know their votes won’t make a difference in deciding the President.
This systemic disenfranchisement is as unjust and unethical as historical exclusions based on race or gender. It’s long overdue for reform.
In addition:
House districts must be drawn by an independent Federal Election Commission operating under consistent rules nationwide, not by partisan state officials with self-serving agendas.
Voter registration, absentee voting, and election laws should also follow the same standardized rules in every state.
Equality under the law and practical, transparent processes should rule supreme. Fix these glaring flaws, and maybe—just maybe—you’ll start electing leaders worthy of the office instead of the inept and corrupt figures who dominate today.
Unfortunately talking to Americans is equivalent to screaming at a concrete wall and expecting it to understand.
KiA: “I propose that to solve this problem, we make the EC votes based on county results. One EC vote per county.”
In the US presidential election – the votes of about 83% of Americans are WORTHLESS (in all non-swing states it DOES NOT matter whether you vote D or R), so the winner is decided by the 17% of voters living in the swing states, and the candidates try to outbid each other in the promises of the largesse for these voters (at the expense of the policies benefitting the 83%). Talk about the tail wagging the dog.
In a democracy – each voter has the same influence on the outcome. In the US- the votes of 83% are meaningless, and the votes of only 17% decide. KiA sees it, and think “Golly, I like what I see – and I want me more of that!” and offers his “modest proposal” that would see …. a further increase in the % of Americans whose vote does not count. Make America Great AGAIN, eh?
Looking at Australia and the US – it’s not cheap, unreliability pushes all supply prices up
doco report 1 hr – The Real Cost of Net Zero: The shocking truth of the renewable energy push
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbxpieEQ7bc
maybe an inconvenient truth. gas is the ultimate back stop for an unreliable electricity system one that people expect is going to have to ~treble in size in coming decades where to from here?
Mr, KIA, just when I think you can’t possibly top your last stupid comment, you leave me holding your beer. Now you want to give the vote to acres rather than people.