MESO-Rx
Anabolic Steroids
Climate Change
- Thread starter Michael Scally MD
- Start date
coffeesudoku
New Member
Great stuff
405.83 parts per million (ppm) CO2 in air 04-Feb-2016. Keeling_Curve on Twitter
Going Beyond 'Dangerous' Climate Change
Public lectures and events: media player - Public lectures and events - Channels - Video and audio - News and media - Home
Speaker(s): Professor Kevin Anderson
Chair: Professor Tim Dyson
Recorded on 4 February 2016 at Old Theatre, Old Building
Despite high-level statements to the contrary, there is little to no chance of maintaining the global mean surface temperature increase at or below 2 degrees Celsius. Moreover, the impacts associated with 2°C have been revised upward sufficiently so that 2°C now more appropriately represents the threshold between 'dangerous' and 'extremely dangerous' climate change.
Kevin Anderson will address the endemic bias prevalent amongst many of those building emission scenarios to underplay the scale of the 2°C challenge. In several respects, the modeling community is actually self-censoring its research to conform to the dominant political and economic paradigm. However, even a slim chance of 'keeping below' a 2°C rise now demands a revolution in how we consume and produce energy. Such a rapid and deep transition will have profound implications for the framing of society, and is far removed from the rhetoric of green growth that increasingly dominates the climate change agenda.
Kevin Anderson (@KevinClimate) is Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester.
Tim Dyson is Professor of Population Studies in the Department of International Development at LSE.
The Department of International Development (@LSE_ID) promotes interdisciplinary post-graduate teaching and research on processes of social, political and economic development and change.
Public lectures and events: media player - Public lectures and events - Channels - Video and audio - News and media - Home
Speaker(s): Professor Kevin Anderson
Chair: Professor Tim Dyson
Recorded on 4 February 2016 at Old Theatre, Old Building
Despite high-level statements to the contrary, there is little to no chance of maintaining the global mean surface temperature increase at or below 2 degrees Celsius. Moreover, the impacts associated with 2°C have been revised upward sufficiently so that 2°C now more appropriately represents the threshold between 'dangerous' and 'extremely dangerous' climate change.
Kevin Anderson will address the endemic bias prevalent amongst many of those building emission scenarios to underplay the scale of the 2°C challenge. In several respects, the modeling community is actually self-censoring its research to conform to the dominant political and economic paradigm. However, even a slim chance of 'keeping below' a 2°C rise now demands a revolution in how we consume and produce energy. Such a rapid and deep transition will have profound implications for the framing of society, and is far removed from the rhetoric of green growth that increasingly dominates the climate change agenda.
Kevin Anderson (@KevinClimate) is Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester.
Tim Dyson is Professor of Population Studies in the Department of International Development at LSE.
The Department of International Development (@LSE_ID) promotes interdisciplinary post-graduate teaching and research on processes of social, political and economic development and change.
A hand full of people can hold the planet hostage: Supreme Court Puts Obama's Clean Power Plan on Hold
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/supreme-court-puts-obamas-clean-power-plan-hold-36820011
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/supreme-court-puts-obamas-clean-power-plan-hold-36820011
IMO, if 410 is reached this year we are fucked. This will be known within the next few months. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/monthly.html
February 09: 404.41 ppm
February 08: 406.27 ppm
February 07: Unavailable
February 06: 405.98 ppm
February 05: 405.60 ppm
February 09: 404.41 ppm
February 08: 406.27 ppm
February 07: Unavailable
February 06: 405.98 ppm
February 05: 405.60 ppm
Facts about flying you shouldn't miss
http://germanwatch.org/klak/flug04e.pdf
http://germanwatch.org/klak/flug04e.pdf
Supermodels Erin Heatherton, Caroline Lowe, and Hannah Ferguson are so hot that it’s possible they may be contributing significantly to global warming. That’s why they’re doing their part to raise awareness of climate change by getting photographed in bikinis in environments affected by drought, rising sea levels, and melting ice caps.
January NASA data: hottest January, biggest increase over previous record and hottest anomaly for any month ever. Last January Was the Hottest Global Temperature Anomaly In Recorded History
Oxford’s Halley Professor on How the Climate Challenge Could Derail a Brilliant Human Destiny
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2...ate-challenge-could-derail-humanitys-destiny/
Here’s Pierrehumbert’s “Your Dot” contribution, tying together these elements:
The day of the release of the spectacular LIGO gravitational wave discovery is a good time to be pondering human destiny, the great things we can achieve as a species if only we don’t do ourselves in, and the responsibility to provide a home for future generations to flourish in. It is beyond awesome that we little lumps of protoplasm squinting out at the Universe from our shaky platform in the outskirts of an insignificant galaxy can, after four decades of indefatigable effort, detect and characterize a black hole merger over a billion light years away.
This is just one of the most dramatic examples of what we are capable of, given the chance to be our best selves. In science, I’d rate the revolution in detecting and characterizing exoplanets way up there as well. There’s no limit to what we can accomplish as a species.
But we have to make it through the next two hundred years first, and this will be a crucial time for humanity. This is where Destiny Studies and our paper on the Anthropocene come together. The question of why we should care about the way we set the climate of the Anthropocene is far better answered in terms of our vision for the destiny of our species than it is in terms of the broken calculus of economics and discounting.
For all we know, we may be the only sentience in the Galaxy, maybe even in the Universe. We may be the only ones able to bear witness to the beauty of our Universe, and it may be our destiny to explore the miracle of sentience down through billions of years of the future, whatever we may have turned into by that time. Even if we are not alone, it is virtually certain that every sentient species will bring its own unique and irreplaceable perspectives to creativity and the understanding of the Universe around us.
Thinking big about our destiny, think of this: the ultimate habitability catastrophe for Earth is when the Sun leaves the main sequence and turns into a Red Giant. That happens in about 4 billion years. However, long before that — in only about 500 million years — the Sun gets bright enough to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect and turn us into Venus, sterilizing all life on Earth. We waste half the main sequence lifetime of the Sun.
However, if we last long enough, technology will make it easy to block enough sunlight to save the Earth from a runaway, buying us another 4 billion years of habitability. That’s the only kind of albedo-modification geoengineering I could countenance, and by the time that is needed, presumably we’ll have the wisdom to deploy it safely and the technology to make it robust.
But we have to make it through the next 200 years first.
If we do what humanity has always done in the past, we’re likely to burn all the fossil fuels, and then have a hard landing at a time of high population, with an unbearable climate posing existential risks, at just the time when we’re facing the crisis fossil fuels running out. That will hardly make for ideal conditions under which to decarbonize, and there is a severe risk civilization will collapse, leaving our descendants with few resources to deal with the unbearable environment we will have bequeathed them.
It’s been pointed out that fossil fuels came in just about when we had run out of whale oil, but the whales had been hunted to the brink of extinction when that happened. If we do the same with coal, it’s not going to make for a pretty transition. With regard to the Anthropocene, it’s true that given a thousand years or so — if technological civilization survives — it becomes likely that we would develop ways to remover CO2 from the atmosphere and accelerate the recovery to more livable conditions. But if things get bad enough in the next two hundred years, we may never have that chance.
The alternative future is one where we decide to make the transition to a carbon-free economy before we’re forced into it by the depletion of fossil fuels. We’re going to run out anyway, and will need to learn to do without fossil fuels, so why not get weaned early, before we’ve trashed the climate? If we do that, we might not just buy ourselves a world, but a whole Universe.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2...ate-challenge-could-derail-humanitys-destiny/
Here’s Pierrehumbert’s “Your Dot” contribution, tying together these elements:
The day of the release of the spectacular LIGO gravitational wave discovery is a good time to be pondering human destiny, the great things we can achieve as a species if only we don’t do ourselves in, and the responsibility to provide a home for future generations to flourish in. It is beyond awesome that we little lumps of protoplasm squinting out at the Universe from our shaky platform in the outskirts of an insignificant galaxy can, after four decades of indefatigable effort, detect and characterize a black hole merger over a billion light years away.
This is just one of the most dramatic examples of what we are capable of, given the chance to be our best selves. In science, I’d rate the revolution in detecting and characterizing exoplanets way up there as well. There’s no limit to what we can accomplish as a species.
But we have to make it through the next two hundred years first, and this will be a crucial time for humanity. This is where Destiny Studies and our paper on the Anthropocene come together. The question of why we should care about the way we set the climate of the Anthropocene is far better answered in terms of our vision for the destiny of our species than it is in terms of the broken calculus of economics and discounting.
For all we know, we may be the only sentience in the Galaxy, maybe even in the Universe. We may be the only ones able to bear witness to the beauty of our Universe, and it may be our destiny to explore the miracle of sentience down through billions of years of the future, whatever we may have turned into by that time. Even if we are not alone, it is virtually certain that every sentient species will bring its own unique and irreplaceable perspectives to creativity and the understanding of the Universe around us.
Thinking big about our destiny, think of this: the ultimate habitability catastrophe for Earth is when the Sun leaves the main sequence and turns into a Red Giant. That happens in about 4 billion years. However, long before that — in only about 500 million years — the Sun gets bright enough to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect and turn us into Venus, sterilizing all life on Earth. We waste half the main sequence lifetime of the Sun.
However, if we last long enough, technology will make it easy to block enough sunlight to save the Earth from a runaway, buying us another 4 billion years of habitability. That’s the only kind of albedo-modification geoengineering I could countenance, and by the time that is needed, presumably we’ll have the wisdom to deploy it safely and the technology to make it robust.
But we have to make it through the next 200 years first.
If we do what humanity has always done in the past, we’re likely to burn all the fossil fuels, and then have a hard landing at a time of high population, with an unbearable climate posing existential risks, at just the time when we’re facing the crisis fossil fuels running out. That will hardly make for ideal conditions under which to decarbonize, and there is a severe risk civilization will collapse, leaving our descendants with few resources to deal with the unbearable environment we will have bequeathed them.
It’s been pointed out that fossil fuels came in just about when we had run out of whale oil, but the whales had been hunted to the brink of extinction when that happened. If we do the same with coal, it’s not going to make for a pretty transition. With regard to the Anthropocene, it’s true that given a thousand years or so — if technological civilization survives — it becomes likely that we would develop ways to remover CO2 from the atmosphere and accelerate the recovery to more livable conditions. But if things get bad enough in the next two hundred years, we may never have that chance.
The alternative future is one where we decide to make the transition to a carbon-free economy before we’re forced into it by the depletion of fossil fuels. We’re going to run out anyway, and will need to learn to do without fossil fuels, so why not get weaned early, before we’ve trashed the climate? If we do that, we might not just buy ourselves a world, but a whole Universe.
No Winter For the Arctic in 2016 — NASA Marks Hottest January Ever Recorded
http://robertscribbler.com/2016/02/18/no-winter-for-the-arctic-in-2016-nasa-marks-hottest-january-ever-recorded/
http://robertscribbler.com/2016/02/18/no-winter-for-the-arctic-in-2016-nasa-marks-hottest-january-ever-recorded/
In Zika Epidemic, a Warning on Climate Change
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/world/americas/in-zika-epidemic-a-warning-on-climate-change.html
The global public health emergency involving deformed babies emerged in 2015, the hottest year in the historical record, with an outbreak in Brazil of a disease transmitted by heat-loving mosquitoes. Can that be a coincidence?
Scientists say it will take them years to figure that out, and pointed to other factors that may have played a larger role in starting the crisis. But these same experts added that the Zika epidemic, as well as the related spread of a disease called dengue that is sickening as many as 100 million people a year and killing thousands, should be interpreted as warnings.
Over the coming decades, global warming is likely to increase the range and speed of the life cycle of the particular mosquitoes carrying these viruses, encouraging their spread deeper into temperate countries like the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/world/americas/in-zika-epidemic-a-warning-on-climate-change.html
The global public health emergency involving deformed babies emerged in 2015, the hottest year in the historical record, with an outbreak in Brazil of a disease transmitted by heat-loving mosquitoes. Can that be a coincidence?
Scientists say it will take them years to figure that out, and pointed to other factors that may have played a larger role in starting the crisis. But these same experts added that the Zika epidemic, as well as the related spread of a disease called dengue that is sickening as many as 100 million people a year and killing thousands, should be interpreted as warnings.
Over the coming decades, global warming is likely to increase the range and speed of the life cycle of the particular mosquitoes carrying these viruses, encouraging their spread deeper into temperate countries like the United States.
Bill Gates Just Released The Math Formula That Will Solve Climate Change
Bill Gates Just Released The Math Formula That Will Solve Climate Change
He punctuates his letter with a simple mathematical equation he concocted that underscores the need for what he calls an “energy miracle”.
P x S x E x C = CO2 (carbon dioxide output).
It’s a neat little formula because it drives home the point: that for all the Paris climate talks and more affordable Teslas, environmental incrementalism is somewhat pointless. In the equation, P = population; S = services used by people; E= the energy needed to power those services; and C equals the carbon dioxide created by that energy. Population is of course trending ever-higher, as are the services people demand, especially in the developing world which has barely scratched the surface in terms of cars and air conditioning and other modern basics. Those two factors swamp progress in energy efficiency. Gates points out that scientists are calling for an 80 percent drop in carbon emissions by 2050 (and a total end by 2100) to stave off the most dramatic effects of climate change, yet even with more efficiency, the growth in population and services means that emissions will instead jump by 50%.
Math 101: the only way to get to zero carbon dioxide output is to drop one of those inputs to zero. Since eliminating any carbon byproduct of energy is preferable to a complete human die-off or a stone age suite of services, that’s the only path. Shaving at the margins simply won’t get the job done; only a moonshot solution that provides unlimited clean energy will stave off environmental (and thus, economic) catastrophe.
“Unless emissions get to zero, you’re just not going to get there,” says Gates.
...
No Bill Gates, We Don’t Need ‘Energy Miracles’ To Solve Climate Change
No Bill Gates, We Don’t Need ‘Energy Miracles’ To Solve Climate Change
Bill Gates: the energy breakthrough that will “save our planet” is less than 15 years away
Bill Gates: the energy breakthrough that will "save our planet" is less than 15 years away
Bill Gates Just Released The Math Formula That Will Solve Climate Change
He punctuates his letter with a simple mathematical equation he concocted that underscores the need for what he calls an “energy miracle”.
P x S x E x C = CO2 (carbon dioxide output).
It’s a neat little formula because it drives home the point: that for all the Paris climate talks and more affordable Teslas, environmental incrementalism is somewhat pointless. In the equation, P = population; S = services used by people; E= the energy needed to power those services; and C equals the carbon dioxide created by that energy. Population is of course trending ever-higher, as are the services people demand, especially in the developing world which has barely scratched the surface in terms of cars and air conditioning and other modern basics. Those two factors swamp progress in energy efficiency. Gates points out that scientists are calling for an 80 percent drop in carbon emissions by 2050 (and a total end by 2100) to stave off the most dramatic effects of climate change, yet even with more efficiency, the growth in population and services means that emissions will instead jump by 50%.
Math 101: the only way to get to zero carbon dioxide output is to drop one of those inputs to zero. Since eliminating any carbon byproduct of energy is preferable to a complete human die-off or a stone age suite of services, that’s the only path. Shaving at the margins simply won’t get the job done; only a moonshot solution that provides unlimited clean energy will stave off environmental (and thus, economic) catastrophe.
“Unless emissions get to zero, you’re just not going to get there,” says Gates.
...
No Bill Gates, We Don’t Need ‘Energy Miracles’ To Solve Climate Change
No Bill Gates, We Don’t Need ‘Energy Miracles’ To Solve Climate Change
Bill Gates: the energy breakthrough that will “save our planet” is less than 15 years away
Bill Gates: the energy breakthrough that will "save our planet" is less than 15 years away
Last edited:
Fossil fuel use must fall twice as fast as thought to contain global warming – study
Fossil fuel use must fall twice as fast as thought to contain global warming - study
Climate scientists have bad news for governments, energy companies, motorists, passengers and citizens everywhere in the world: to contain global warming to the limits agreed by 195 nations in Paris last December, they will have to cut fossil fuel combustion at an even faster rate than anybody had predicted.
Joeri Rogelj, research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, and European and Canadian colleagues propose in Nature Climate Change that all previous estimates of the quantities of carbon dioxide that can be released into the atmosphere before the thermometer rises to potentially catastrophic levels are too generous.
Instead of a range of permissible emissions estimates that ranged up to 2,390 bn tons from 2015 onwards, the very most humans could release would be 1,240 bn tons.
…
Rogelj J, Schaefer M, Friedlingstein P, Gillett N, van Vuuren D, Keyfitz N, Allen, M, Knutti R. Differences between carbon budget estimates unravelled. Nature Climate Change. 2016;6:245-52. http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v6/n3/full/nclimate2868.html
Several methods exist to estimate the cumulative carbon emissions that would keep global warming to below a given temperature limit. Here we review estimates reported by the IPCC and the recent literature, and discuss the reasons underlying their differences. The most scientifically robust number — the carbon budget for CO2-induced warming only — is also the least relevant for real-world policy. Including all greenhouse gases and using methods based on scenarios that avoid instead of exceed a given temperature limit results in lower carbon budgets. For a >66% chance of limiting warming below the internationally agreed temperature limit of 2 °C relative to pre-industrial levels, the most appropriate carbon budget estimate is 590–1,240 GtCO2 from 2015 onwards. Variations within this range depend on the probability of staying below 2 °C and on end-of-century non-CO2 warming. Current CO2 emissions are about 40 GtCO2 yr−1, and global CO2 emissions thus have to be reduced urgently to keep within a 2 °C-compatible budget.
Fossil fuel use must fall twice as fast as thought to contain global warming - study
Climate scientists have bad news for governments, energy companies, motorists, passengers and citizens everywhere in the world: to contain global warming to the limits agreed by 195 nations in Paris last December, they will have to cut fossil fuel combustion at an even faster rate than anybody had predicted.
Joeri Rogelj, research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, and European and Canadian colleagues propose in Nature Climate Change that all previous estimates of the quantities of carbon dioxide that can be released into the atmosphere before the thermometer rises to potentially catastrophic levels are too generous.
Instead of a range of permissible emissions estimates that ranged up to 2,390 bn tons from 2015 onwards, the very most humans could release would be 1,240 bn tons.
…
Rogelj J, Schaefer M, Friedlingstein P, Gillett N, van Vuuren D, Keyfitz N, Allen, M, Knutti R. Differences between carbon budget estimates unravelled. Nature Climate Change. 2016;6:245-52. http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v6/n3/full/nclimate2868.html
Several methods exist to estimate the cumulative carbon emissions that would keep global warming to below a given temperature limit. Here we review estimates reported by the IPCC and the recent literature, and discuss the reasons underlying their differences. The most scientifically robust number — the carbon budget for CO2-induced warming only — is also the least relevant for real-world policy. Including all greenhouse gases and using methods based on scenarios that avoid instead of exceed a given temperature limit results in lower carbon budgets. For a >66% chance of limiting warming below the internationally agreed temperature limit of 2 °C relative to pre-industrial levels, the most appropriate carbon budget estimate is 590–1,240 GtCO2 from 2015 onwards. Variations within this range depend on the probability of staying below 2 °C and on end-of-century non-CO2 warming. Current CO2 emissions are about 40 GtCO2 yr−1, and global CO2 emissions thus have to be reduced urgently to keep within a 2 °C-compatible budget.
Last edited:
“The Old Normal Is Gone”: February Shatters Global Temperature Records
“The Old Normal Is Gone”: February Shatters Global Temperature Records
Using unofficial data and adjusting for different base-line temperatures, it appears that February 2016 was likely somewhere between 1.15 and 1.4 degrees warmer than the long-term average, and about 0.2 degrees above last month—good enough for the most above-average month ever measured. (Since the globe had already warmed by about +0.45 degrees above pre-industrial levels during the 1981-2010 base-line meteorologists commonly use, that amount has been added to the data released today.)
“The Old Normal Is Gone”: February Shatters Global Temperature Records
Using unofficial data and adjusting for different base-line temperatures, it appears that February 2016 was likely somewhere between 1.15 and 1.4 degrees warmer than the long-term average, and about 0.2 degrees above last month—good enough for the most above-average month ever measured. (Since the globe had already warmed by about +0.45 degrees above pre-industrial levels during the 1981-2010 base-line meteorologists commonly use, that amount has been added to the data released today.)
Similar threads
