Climate change

[y66]

From Julian Lee at Bloomberg:

 

President Vladimir Putin needs to go green quickly to stop the permafrost from melting, so that Russian oil and gas companies can keep pumping the hydrocarbons that are warming the planet and making the permafrost melt.

 

Even I’m struggling with the warped logic of that one, but it’s the conclusion I’ve reached from Russia’s sudden ratification of the Paris climate accord and from reading the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

 

Until now, climate change has been seen as a “good thing” for Russia — at least in part. Warming waters have opened up the Northern Sea Route across the top of the country and made it practical, if not necessarily economic, to search for and exploit oil and gas resources beneath the Arctic seas. Who remembers the Shtokman gas project?

 

Yet the warming that is opening up the Arctic seas may be starting to have a less beneficial effect on the frozen landmass of northern Russia, the heartland of the country’s oil and gas development and production.

 

Read the whole thing.

[y66]

From Loren Sommer at NPR (KQED):

 

When California's historic five-year drought finally relented a few years ago the tally of dead trees in the Sierra Nevada was higher than almost anyone expected: 129 million. Most are still standing, the dry patches dotting the mountainsides.

 

But some trees did survive the test of heat and drought. Now, scientists are racing to collect them, and other species around the globe, in the hope that these "climate survivors" have a natural advantage that will allow them to better cope with a warming world.

 

On the north shore of Lake Tahoe, Patricia Maloney, a UC Davis forest and conservation biologist, hunts for these survivors. Most people focus on the dead trees, their brown pine needles obvious against the glittering blue of the lake. But Maloney tends not to notice them.

 

"I look for the good," she says. "Like in people, you look for the good, not the bad. I do the same in forest systems."

 

Maloney studies sugar pines, a tree John Muir once called the "king" of conifers. "They have these huge, beautiful cones," she says. "They're stunning trees."

 

The sugar pines on these slopes endured some of the worst water stress in the region. Winter snowpack melts fastest on south-facing slopes, leaving the trees with little soil moisture over the summer. That opens the door for the trees' tiny nemesis, which would deal the fatal blow.

 

"Here you have some really good mountain pine beetle galleries," Maloney says, as she peels the bark off a dead sugar pine to show winding channels eaten into the wood. "Like little beetle highways."

 

Pine beetle outbreaks are a normal occurrence in the Sierra. As the beetles try to bore into the bark, pine trees can usually fight them off by spewing a sticky, gummy resin, entrapping the insects. But trees need water to make resin.

 

During the drought, "the tank ran dry, and they weren't able to mobilize any sort of resin," Maloney says.

 

But next to this dead tree, Maloney points to one towering above, the same exact species, that has healthy green pine needles. Somehow, it was able to fight the beetles off and survive the drought. As she's found more and more of these survivors, Maloney has studied them, trying to figure out their secret.

 

"What we found is that the ones that were green, like this one, were more water-use efficient than their dead counterparts," she says.

 

In other words, the survivors had an innate ability to do more with less.

 

Individual members of any species can vary dramatically, something tied to genetic differences. That diversity comes in handy when environmental conditions change.

 

The drought, heat and beetle outbreaks in recent years put extreme pressure on sugar pines, creating a natural experiment that weeded out all but the toughest.

 

"I think what we're seeing is contemporary natural selection," Maloney says.

 

Now, she's trying to ensure their descendants survive.

 

Inside a greenhouse at her Tahoe City field station, Maloney shows off a sea of young green trees in their own containers. These 10,000 sugar pine seedlings grew from seeds Maloney and her team collected from 100 of the surviving sugar pines.

 

Over the next year, these young trees will be replanted around Lake Tahoe, both on national forest and private land. The hope is the trees, due to their genetics, will be better able to handle a warming climate, more extreme droughts and more frequent beetle outbreaks.

 

"These survivors matter," Maloney says. She plans to study the genetics of these trees as they grow, research that could help in other climate-threatened forests.

 

And Maloney's not alone in searching for species that can handle the warming climate.

 

"Evolution is a tool that we can bring to bear in helping us get through this future," says Steve Palumbi, a biology professor at Stanford University, who has been looking for coral that can handle heat.

 

Coral reefs are bleaching and dying as oceans warm, so Palumbi is growing surviving corals in the hope they can build new reefs full of "super corals." Reefs aren't just tourist attractions, he says. They're also biodiversity hotspots that protect coastlines from flooding by absorbing wave energy.

 

"If it gives us another decade, if it gives us another two generations, that'll be good, we'll take it," he says. "I see these next 80 years as the time where we have to save as much as possible."

 

But beyond that, it gets trickier, given the rate the climate is changing.

 

"The question in the future is: When the environment changes and it changes really fast, can these populations keep up?" he asks. "How fast can they adapt? How much help will they give us in keeping those ecosystems going?"

 

Ultimately, Palumbi says, the best solution for these species is for humans to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases. In the meantime, scientists are trying to buy them a little more time.

[y66]

From Climate Change Will Cost Us Even More Than We Think by Naomi Oreskes and Nicholas Stern at NYT:

 

Dr. Oreskes is a professor of the history of science at Harvard. Professor Stern is chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

 

Economists greatly underestimate the price tag on harsher weather and higher seas. Why is that?

For some time now it has been clear that the effects of climate change are appearing faster than scientists anticipated. Now it turns out that there is another form of underestimation as bad or worse than the scientific one: the underestimating by economists of the costs.

 

The result of this failure by economists is that world leaders understand neither the magnitude of the risks to lives and livelihoods, nor the urgency of action. How and why this has occurred is explained in a recent report by scientists and economists at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

 

One reason is obvious: Since climate scientists have been underestimating the rate of climate change and the severity of its effects, then economists will necessarily underestimate their costs.

 

But it’s worse than that. A set of assumptions and practices in economics has led economists both to underestimate the economic impact of many climate risks and to miss some of them entirely. That is a problem because, as the report notes, these “missing risks” could have “drastic and potentially catastrophic impacts on citizens, communities and companies.”

 

One problem involves the nature of risk in a climate-altered world. Right now, carbon dioxide is at its highest concentration in the atmosphere in three million years (and still climbing). The last time levels were this high, the world was about five degrees Fahrenheit warmer and sea level 32 to 65 feet higher. Humans have no experience weathering sustained conditions of this type.

 

Typically, our estimates of the value or cost of something, whether it is a pair of shoes, a loaf of bread or the impact of a hurricane, are based on experience. Statisticians call this “stationarity.” But when conditions change so much that experience is no longer a reliable guide to the future — when stationarity no longer applies — then estimates become more and more uncertain.

 

Hydrologists have recognized for some time that climate change has undermined stationarity in water management — indeed, they have declared that stationarity is dead. But economists have by and large not recognized that this applies to climate effects across the board. They approach climate damages as minor perturbations around an underlying path of economic growth, and take little account of the fundamental destruction that we might be facing because it is so outside humanity’s experience.

 

A second difficulty involves parameters that scientists do not feel they can adequately quantify, like the value of biodiversity or the costs of ocean acidification. Research shows that when scientists lack good data for a variable, even if they know it to be salient, they are loath to assign a value out of a fear that they would be “making it up.”

 

Therefore, in many cases, they simply omit it from the model, assessment or discussion. In economic assessments of climate change, some of the largest factors, like thresholds in the climate system, when a tiny change could tip the system catastrophically, and possible limits to the human capacity to adapt, are omitted for this reason. In effect, economists have assigned them a value of zero, when the risks are decidedly not. One example from the report: The melting of Himalayan glaciers and snow will both flood and profoundly affect the water supply of communities in which hundreds of millions of people live, yet this is absent from most economic assessments.

 

A third and terrifying problem involves cascading effects. One reason the harms of climate change are hard to fathom is that they will not occur in isolation, but will reinforce one another in damaging ways. In some cases, they may produce a sequence of serious, and perhaps irreversible, damage.

 

For example, a sudden rapid loss of Greenland or West Antarctic land ice could lead to much higher sea levels and storm surges, which would contaminate water supplies, destroy coastal cities, force out their residents, and cause turmoil and conflict.

 

Another example: increased heat decreases food production, which leads to widespread malnutrition, which diminishes the capacity of people to withstand heat and disease and makes it effectively impossible for them to adapt to climate change. Sustained extreme heat may also decrease industrial productivity, bringing about economic depressions.

 

In a worst-case scenario, climate impacts could set off a feedback loop in which climate change leads to economic losses, which lead to social and political disruption, which undermines both democracy and our capacity to prevent further climate damage. These sorts of cascading effects are rarely captured in economic models of climate impacts. And this set of known omissions does not, of course, include additional risks that we may have failed to have identified.

 

The urgency and potential irreversibility of climate effects mean we cannot wait for the results of research to deepen our understanding and reduce the uncertainty about these risks. This is particularly so because the study suggests that if we are missing something in our assessments, it is likely something that makes the problem worse.

 

This is yet another reason it’s urgent to pursue a new, greener economic path for growth and development. If we do that, a happy ending is still possible. But if we wait to be more certain, the only certainty is that we will regret it.

[hrothgar]

Remember a few mothes back when one of the resident trolls was explaining that Trump was doing such a good job combatting air pollution and folks pointed out that he was looking at old data?

 

Well guess what, the charts have been updated!

 

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EHpDqBnXkAEu4RH?format=jpg&name=900x900

[Al_U_Card]

Won't somebody do something about those evil fossil fuel racketeers? Damn those Rockefellers and their meddling ways!

 

This documentary will remain free to the end of the month so, enjoy if you can... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPax7r7Kv2c&t=136s

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPax7r7Kv2c&t=136s

[y66]

America's biggest and most innovative economy is struggling to keep the lights on and to manage the effects of climate change. Story by Tyler Cowen at Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-28/california-wildfires-blackouts-how-can-this-happen-in-america?srnd=opinion

 

Meanwhile, researchers at Climate Central, have developed a more accurate way of calculating land elevation based on satellite readings, a standard way of estimating the effects of sea level rise over large areas, and found that the previous numbers were far too optimistic: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

[Al_U_Card]

Just more of the same from those denialist hotbeds of Princeton, Yale, Harvard, NASA and yes, The IPCC itself:

 

 

UN Solar Particle Forcing For 2022 (CMIP6): https://solarisheppa.geomar.de/cmip6

Princeton on Clouds: https://www.princeton.edu/news/2018/0...

Yale's Cold Climate Bomb: https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-a-...

Harvard Ocean Data Condemnation: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.04843.pdf

NASA Cloud Page: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/br... [The ultimate smackdown of climate discourse in public today]

 

here is the resume in video form

 

Weather may be weather but the climate has always been a known unknown...

[Winstonm]

It's hard to bury your head in the sand when the beach is under water.

[Al_U_Card]

It's hard to bury your head in the sand when the beach is under water.

Perhaps the recent temps in Oklahoma have frozen that sand? Either way, much like our weather 60 years ago, Venice is in a similar cycle?

 

"The waters in Venice peaked at 1.87m (6ft), according to the tide monitoring centre. Only once since official records began in 1923 has the tide been higher, reaching 1.94m in 1966."

 

But no taxes or grants for weather but "climate change" is the latest teat to suck from.... and it sure does suck ;)

[Al_U_Card]

Speaking of being under water, all that terrible CO2 is fertilizer and the stuff of life, you say? Duke University seems to agree, as their study of plankton and tuna feeding rates seems to show that with more food, you eat more. Oh noes! Whatever shall we do?

 

Just when you thought it wasn't safe to go back in the water...

[johnu]

Speaking of being under water, all that terrible CO2 is fertilizer and the stuff of life, you say? Duke University seems to agree, as their study of plankton and tuna feeding rates seems to show that with more food, you eat more. Oh noes! Whatever shall we do?

 

Just when you thought it wasn't safe to go back in the water...

I think it is just wonderful that you are finally using your degree in Climatology from Trump University.

[johnu]

Just more of the same from those denialist hotbeds of Princeton, Yale, Harvard, NASA and yes, The IPCC itself:

 

 

UN Solar Particle Forcing For 2022 (CMIP6): https://solarisheppa.geomar.de/cmip6

Princeton on Clouds: https://www.princeton.edu/news/2018/0...

Yale's Cold Climate Bomb: https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-a-...

Harvard Ocean Data Condemnation: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.04843.pdf

NASA Cloud Page: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/br... [The ultimate smackdown of climate discourse in public today]

 

here is the resume in video form

 

Weather may be weather but the climate has always been a known unknown...

Did you actually have to go to classes at Trump University to get your degree in Climatology?

 

A bunch of links, most of them broken, and no clear analysis of how those results fit in with climate science. I didn't really expect much more from you, but you are embarrassing your prestigious alma mater.

[Al_U_Card]

A bunch of links, 3 OF THEM (BROKEN ON POSTING?)

 

FYP

 

https://solarisheppa.geomar.de/cmip6

 

https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/rossow_01/computer.html

 

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019GL084385

 

https://nicholas.duke.edu/news/changes-tunas-carbon-ratios-signal-global-shift-oceanic-food-web

 

https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-a-wayward-arctic-current-could-cool-the-climate-in-europe

 

FMP (hopefully) as Sinclair Lewis's famous quote also applies to those disinterested in changing opinions with (new) facts.

[hrothgar]

 

https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-a-wayward-arctic-current-could-cool-the-climate-in-europe

 

 

Al, just how ***** stupid are you?

Do you even bother to read any of the content that you copy and paste onto the forums?

 

Case in point: The Yale article is describing the effect that a massive amount of fresh water melting from the ice caps in Greenland and the Arctic might have on the climate in Europe. You've spent years claiming that these ice caps are growing.

 

Moreover, no one claims that the impact of global climate change is uniform. On average, world wide temperatures are expected to increase significantly. However, its entirely possible that some areas might experience cooling. (Case in point, North America has experienced some extremely cold winters over the last decade because the polar vortex is collapsing)

 

And it's not like these dramatic temperature decreases in Northern Europe are likely going to be any better than the heat waves that have been devastating Spain and France over the past few summers.

[y66]

From the glass-fronted living room of his house in Ober-Ramstadt, Günther Schulz points towards the wooded hills that rise on the other side of the valley. It is a fine view, but one that will soon be transformed. 

 

Over the next few months, workers will cut down a section of forest, pour a concrete base and assemble a pair of wind turbines whose blades will reach 200m into the sky. 

 

For Mr Schulz, who has campaigned tirelessly against the project for years, the masts are an environmental abomination, a danger to birdlife and a threat to groundwater. 

 

They are also, in his mind, the symbol of a much greater problem: the failure of the Energiewende, Germany’s much-vaunted shift from nuclear and coal power to renewable energy: “We have more than 30,000 wind turbines in Germany now and we can’t build any more. This has to stop,” he said. 

 

In Ober-Ramstadt, a small town south of Frankfurt, his battle against wind power may have been lost. But the broader war is swinging Mr Schulz’s way. Construction of new wind parks in Germany has collapsed over the past year, not least in response to growing resistance from local activists. 

 

In the first nine months of 2019, developers put up 150 new wind turbines across the country with a total capacity of 514MW — more than 80 per cent below the average build rate in the past five years and the lowest increase in capacity for two decades. 

 

The sharp decline has raised alarm among political leaders, industry executives and climate campaigners. The German government wants renewables to cover 65 per cent of the country’s electricity needs by 2030, a key target in Berlin’s campaign to drive down greenhouse gas emissions and help combat climate change. 

 

It has pledged to shut down the last nuclear power plants in 2022 and phase out coal power by 2038. Without more wind turbines, Europe’s largest economy could soon face an unenviable choice: scrap the climate targets or risk running out of power. 

 

“For the fight against climate change, this is a catastrophe,” said Patrick Graichen, the director of Agora Energiewende, a think-tank in Berlin. “If we want to reach the 65 per cent renewables target we need at least 4GW of new onshore wind capacity every year. This year we will probably not even manage 1GW.” 

 

The problem was two-fold, he said: “The federal states have not made available enough areas for new wind turbines, and those that are available are fought tooth and nail by local campaigners.” 

 

Polls show that popular support for wind power remains high, though concern among politicians about a voter backlash is on the rise. One recent government move that angered the wind industry was a plan to enforce a minimum distance of 1,000m between wind masts and the nearest built-up area. According to Henrik Maatsch, energy expert at environmental group WWF,this would remove up to 40 per cent of available land for new turbines. “This has created huge uncertainty for the wind sector,” he said. 

 

The proposal has also caused a row inside the government itself - with the environment ministry demanding a less onerous approach.

 

The escalating fight has created strange alliances, with climate campaigners standing shoulder to shoulder with erstwhile enemies in the energy sector. A recent paper signed by both Greenpeace and the BDEW association of energy companies urged the government to relax planning and animal conservation laws to allow more wind parks.

 

“Right now it takes five to seven years before you even know whether you will be able to realise your project,” said Markus Krebber, the chief financial officer at RWE. “Germany should not forget that it is in competition with other countries when it comes to investment in renewables. Businesses can only spend their euro or dollar once. If you spend it in the US you know the plant will be up and running in a year’s time.” 

 

EnBW, the utility building the turbines in Ober-Ramstadt, has encountered similar problems. “Authorities are now more cautious when it comes to new approvals, and . . . more and more approvals are then taken to court,” said Andreas Pick, head of project development for onshore wind at EnBW. 

 

The projected shortfall cannot be compensated for by ramping up construction of solar plants and offshore wind, analysts say. The latter face serious infrastructure challenges: with current generation capacity, Germany’s transmission network can barely cope with the flow of electricity from the wind-intensive northern coast to population centres and industrial regions further south. There are plans to expand north-south grid connections, but those are due for completion in 2025 and 2026 at the earliest. 

 

Mr Schulz insisted his resistance to wind farms had nothing to do with climate change denial or aesthetic appeal. The problem, he argued, was that Germany had shifted its energy mix towards renewables — at great financial cost — without enhancing security of supply or achieving a meaningful reduction in carbon emissions. “The damage done by these wind installations is out of all proportion to the benefit,” he said. 

 

Every new wind mast that appeared on the horizon, he added, would only serve to turn popular opinion his way: “The more turbines are built, the more people come into contact with them and the more people will resist.” 

 

https://on.ft.com/2XpGsZf

[y66]

From Florida Keys Deliver a Hard Message: As Seas Rise, Some Places Can’t Be Saved by Christopher Flavelle and Patricia Mazzei at NYT:

 

KEY WEST, Fla. — Officials in the Florida Keys announced what many coastal governments nationwide have long feared, but few have been willing to admit: As seas rise and flooding gets worse, not everyone can be saved.

 

And in some places, it doesn’t even make sense to try.

 

On Wednesday morning, Rhonda Haag, the county’s sustainability director, released the first results of the county’s yearslong effort to calculate how high its 300 miles of roads must be elevated to stay dry, and at what cost. Those costs were far higher than her team expected — and those numbers, she said, show that some places can’t be protected, at least at a price that taxpayers can be expected to pay.

 

“I never would have dreamed we would say ‘no,’” Ms. Haag said in an interview. “But now, with the real estimates coming in, it’s a different story. And it’s not all doable.”

 

The results released Wednesday focus on a single three-mile stretch of road at the southern tip of Sugarloaf Key, a small island 15 miles up Highway 1 from Key West. To keep those three miles of road dry year-round in 2025 would require raising it by 1.3 feet, at a cost of $75 million, or $25 million per mile. Keeping the road dry in 2045 would mean elevating it 2.2 feet, at a cost of $128 million. To protect against expected flooding levels in 2060, the cost would jump to $181 million.

 

And all that to protect about two dozen homes.

 

“I can’t see staff recommending to raise this road,” Ms. Haag said. “Those are taxpayer dollars, and as much as we love the Keys, there’s going to be a time when it’s going to be less population.”

 

The people who live on that three-mile stretch of road were less understanding. If the county feels that other parts of the Keys ought to be saved, said Leon Mense, a 63-year-old office manager at a medical clinic, then at least don’t make him pay for it.

 

“So somebody in the city thinks they deserve more of my tax money than I do?” Mr. Mense asked. “Then don’t charge us taxes, how does that sound?”

 

She suggested the county could offer residents a ferry, water taxis, or some other kind of boat during the expanding window during which the road is expected to go underwater during the fall high tides.

 

“If that’s three months a year for the next 20 years, and that gets them a decade or two, that’s perhaps worth it,” Ms. Haag said. “We can do a lot. But we can’t do it all.”

 

At a climate change conference in Key West on Wednesday, Roman Gastesi, the Monroe County manager, said elected leaders will have to figure out how to make those difficult calls.

 

“How do you tell somebody, ‘We’re not going to build the road to get to your home’? And what do we do?” Mr. Gastesi asked. “Do we buy them out? And how do we buy them out — is it voluntary? Is it eminent domain? How do we do that?”

 

Administrators and elected officials are going to have to start to rely on a “word nobody likes to use,” Mr. Gastesi said, “and that’s ‘retreat.’”

 

The county’s elected officials must now decide whether to accept that recommendation. The mayor of Monroe County, Heather Carruthers, said she hopes the cost of raising the roads turns out to be lower than what her staff have found, as the need for adaptation leads to better technology.

 

Still, Mayor Carruthers said, “We can’t protect every single house.”

 

Asked how she expected residents would respond, Mayor Carruthers said she expects pushback. “I’m sure that some of them will be very irate, and we’ll probably face some lawsuits,” she said. “But we can’t completely keep the water away.”

 

The odds of the county winning future possible lawsuits over the policy are unclear. The novelty of what the Keys’ officials are proposing is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that nobody can say for certain whether it’s legally defensible.

 

The law generally requires local governments to maintain roads and other infrastructure, because failure to do so will reduce the property value of surrounding homes, according to Erin Deady, a lawyer who specializes in climate and land-use law and is a consultant to the county on adapting to rising seas. But local officials retain the right to decide whether or not to upgrade or enhance that infrastructure.

 

What’s unclear, Ms. Deady said, is whether raising a road to prevent it from going underwater is more akin to maintaining or upgrading. That’s because no court has yet ruled on the issue.

 

“The law hasn’t caught up with that,” Ms. Deady said.

 

She said she thinks the county is within its rights to refuse to elevate the road at the end of Sugarloaf Key, so long as it’s transparent about the rationale for that decision. “At some point, there’s an economic consideration,” she said. “We can’t manage every condition.”

 

The debates over county spending and legal precedents will determine the future of Old State Road 4A, two lanes of asphalt tucked between mangroves that mostly obscure the water threatening it from all around. On a recent afternoon, the only signs of life on this road were the occasional passing car, along with the gates many of the road’s few residents have erected to keep unwanted visitors out of their driveways.

How do you tell somebody, ‘We’re not going to build the road to get to your home’? You tell 'em what the oil industry and Republicans have been telling them for decades: 'It's not happening.'

[johnu]

An article from earlier this year, but the topic has been revisited in several other articles this month.

 

The Ocean Is Running Out of Breath, Scientists Warn

 

In the past decade ocean oxygen levels have taken a dive—an alarming trend that is linked to climate change, says Andreas Oschlies, an oceanographer at the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, whose team tracks ocean oxygen levels worldwide. “We were surprised by the intensity of the changes we saw, how rapidly oxygen is going down in the ocean and how large the effects on marine ecosystems are,” he says.

 

It is no surprise to scientists that warming oceans are losing oxygen, but the scale of the dip calls for urgent attention, Oschlies says. Oxygen levels in some tropical regions have dropped by a startling 40 percent in the last 50 years, some recent studies reveal. Levels have dropped more subtly elsewhere, with an average loss of 2 percent globally.

The article reinforces the fact that even ocean dwelling plants and animals need oxygen (who would have thought?)

[Cyberyeti]

An article from earlier this year, but the topic has been revisited in several other articles this month.

 

The Ocean Is Running Out of Breath, Scientists Warn

 

 

The article reinforces the fact that even ocean dwelling plants and animals need oxygen (who would have thought?)

 

I thought PLANTS needed carbon dioxide and put out oxygen

[johnu]

I thought PLANTS needed carbon dioxide and put out oxygen

Do plants have to have oxygen to survive? Or can plants (other than the plants in wetlands) live without oxygen?

[fromageGB]

I'm not going back through all 170 pages, but recent entries seem all about the veracity of global warming rather than discussing solutions. OK, you don't need solutions if there is no problem, but assume for sake of discussion that climate change is happening, adversely, with a large and ever-growing human input of greenhouse gasses. What should "we" do about it?

 

There seem to be some odd ideas around. Is it really going to make any significant difference if we use LED bulbs rather than incandescent, or electric cars rather than oil-based fuels, or have wind turbines rather than coal power? I think not. The problem is the number of people in the world. Yes, you could make an impact if you shot all cows and pigs and we became vegan, but it would only delay the inevitable. Pursuing economic growth, which seems to be most peoples' strategy, is the wrong way to go. We need less (or negative) growth, and fewer numbers. Nobody seems to be talking about how we should bring down the world population to a sustainable figure. It might even be sustainable at the current level if we take action to stabilise it. But if we don't stop world population growing, you might just as well power your incandescents from a diesel generator, and enjoy the heatwave.

[hrothgar]

Nobody seems to be talking about how we should bring down the world population to a sustainable figure. It might even be sustainable at the current level if we take action to stabilise it. But if we don't stop world population growing, you might just as well power your incandescents from a diesel generator, and enjoy the heatwave.

 

I agree and think that we should start by killing off a bunch of old white English racists...

Its not like their productive members of society anymore.

I'm sure that their savings could be put to more productive use.

[Cyberyeti]

I agree and think that we should start by killing off a bunch of old white English racists...

Its not like their productive members of society anymore.

I'm sure that their savings could be put to more productive use.

 

tbf the old white English racists may be causing some of the issues, but are not living in the places where you have too many people in too little land (and that land will shrink with climate change) with insufficient food production, so it won't save those people.

[hrothgar]

tbf the old white English racists may be causing some of the issues, but are not living in the places where you have too many people in too little land (and that land will shrink with climate change) with insufficient food production, so it won't save those people.

 

One of the challenging issues with climate change is that the overwhelming majority of the costs will be born by people living in the third world while the its folks in the developed countries (most notably the United States) who dug us into this hole.

[Cyberyeti]

One of the challenging issues with climate change is that the overwhelming majority of the costs will be born by people living in the third world while the its folks in the developed countries (most notably the United States) who dug us into this hole.

 

Exactly, although Europe is dealing with this while the US isn't. The problem now is India/China as well as the US.

[Chas_P]

I agree and think that we should start by killing off a bunch of old white English racists...

 

So where are you planning to start the purge Slobodan?