Study Finds Knowing the Earth’s Energy Imbalance is Critical in Preventing Global Warming July 4, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) The imbalance of energy on Earth is the most important metric in order to gauge the size and effects of climate change, according to a new study published today in the first issue of Environmental Research: Climate, a new open access journal.
Distinguished scholar at the National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and highly cited lead author Kevin Trenberth together with climate scientist and co-author Lijing Cheng have made a new complete inventory of all the various sources of excess heat on Earth. He studied energy changes from the atmosphere, ocean, land, and ice as climate system components from 2000 to 2019 and compared this to the radiation at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere to find the imbalance.
“The net energy imbalance is calculated by looking at how much heat is absorbed from the Sun and how much is able to radiate back into space,” explains Trenberth, who’s paper was published today, “it is not yet possible to measure the imbalance directly, the only practical way to estimate it is through an inventory of the changes in energy.”
Understanding the net energy gain of the climate system from all origins, how much extra energy there is and where it is redistributed in the Earth system is vital to inform and thus address the climate crisis. Previously, the focus of climate research has been on the rise of the global mean surface temperature on Earth. However, this is just one outcome of the total energy imbalance faced on Earth.
Excess energy affects weather systems, directly increasing the number or intensity of extreme weather events such as heavy rains and flooding, hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires. Weather events move energy around and help the climate system to get rid of energy by radiating it into space, which also affects the rise in temperature globally. The study further revealed that 93% of extra heat from the imbalance ends up in the Earth’s oceans, increasing their overall temperature and sea level which resulted in 2021 being the hottest global ocean recorded year to date.
This is how we solve climate change. We remove the co2 from the atmosphere and learn to manage our climate system.
This is part of how we solve climate change, but only part. The other part is that we stop putting so much dang blasted carbon into our atmosphere!
I'm sorry, but reading your posts I believe your theory is to just try and remove carbon until we finally nail the twisty puzzle that is fusion, but the hard truth is that carbon capture can't scale up in time and we can't wait for fusion, we need to move off of fossil fuels, and we need to do it now.
(Of course we won't, and thus we will suffer and millions will die because of that - but doesn't change that we need to do it.)
‘Putin rubbing hands with glee’ after EU votes to class gas and nuclear as green
Wed 6 Jul 2022
The European parliament has backed plans to label gas and nuclear energy as “green”, rejecting appeals from Ukraine and climate activists that the proposals are “a gift to Putin”.
The vote was a “dark day for the climate”, said one senior MEP, while experts warned the EU had set a dangerous precedent for other countries to follow.
The row began late last year with the leak of long-awaited details on the EU’s green investment guidebook, intended to help investors channel billions to the clean power transition.
The European Commission decided that some gas and nuclear projects could be included in the EU taxonomy of environmentally sustainable economic activities, subject to certain conditions.
Under the plans, gas can be classed as a sustainable investment if “the same energy capacity cannot be generated with renewable sources” and plans are in place to switch to renewables or “low carbon gases”. Nuclear power can be called green if a project promises to deal with radioactive waste.
Climate models may be significantly underestimating how extreme precipitation will become in response to a rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, a new Yale-led study finds.
It all comes down to raindrop physics, researchers Ryan Li and Joshua Studholme explain in the journal Nature Climate Change. Even a slight change in the percentage of each falling raindrop to reach the Earth's surface can mean the difference between a climate of light drizzles and one that creates unprecedented deluges.
Yet for now, many climate projections seem to be underestimating future floods, the researchers say.
"Whether the rain a cloud produces over its lifetime will increase or decrease in warmer climates is a research question from over half a century ago. We are still searching for the answer," said Li, a graduate student in Yale's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and first author of the new study.
The Great Carbon-Capture Debate by Nancy Averett
July 4, 2022
Introduction:
(Food & Environment Reporting network) One farmer dogged pipeline surveyors as they traversed his southwestern Iowa fields, peppering them with unwelcome questions about their proposed project. Another cornered Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds at a fundraising event. A third painted “No Carbon Pipeline” on a semi-trailer and parked it at the intersection of two county roads. These and other activists – an unlikely mix of Bernie Bros, Fox News devotees, Women’s March veterans, and at least one Q-Anon follower – meet weekly on Zoom to plot strategy, write letters to the editor, and leave angry voicemails with state legislators.
In a state that ranks number one in corn production, with 57 percent of that crop going to ethanol, rocking the agricultural boat has been, historically, rare. But that era appears to be over. As Jess Mazour, conservation coordinator for the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club, puts it, these protests are “the biggest thing to happen to Iowa in a long time.”
At issue are proposals to build three separate pipelines across the state. Each would transport liquified carbon dioxide — collected from the smokestacks of ethanol refineries — to North Dakota and Illinois, where the carbon would be pumped underground and stored indefinitely. The pipeline companies, whose backers include the grain merchant ADM, farm equipment company John Deere, and the oil company Valero — plus the agribusiness millionaire and Iowa Republican king-maker Bruce Ratstetter — claim that carbon capture and sequestration (known as CCS) will help fight climate change by annually removing 30 million tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide across the five-state region where the pipelines will run. That’s the equivalent of taking about 6 million gasoline-powered cars off the road for one year. It will also help Iowa’s corn farmers, they say, by lowering ethanol’s carbon footprint and making the product eligible for California’s low-carbon fuel standard, which was designed to decrease the carbon intensity of that state’s transportation sector and improve its air quality.
But for many Iowans, these “win-win” claims ring hollow. A coalition of about 1,000 people organized by the Sierra Club — about 200 of them meet online weekly — is suspicious of the companies’ motives and concerned about the potential for pipeline leaks, which could send asphyxiating plumes into the air.
UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations estimated Monday that the world’s population will reach 8 billion on Nov. 15 and that India will replace China as the world’s most populous nation next year.
In a report released on World Population Day, the U.N. also said global population growth fell below 1% in 2020 for the first time since 1950.
According to the latest U.N. projections, the world’s population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and a peak of around 10.4 billion during the 2080s. It is forecast to remain at that level until 2100.
The report says more than half the projected increase in population up to 2050 will be concentrated in just eight countries: Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania.
The report, “World Population Prospects 2022,” puts the world's population at 7.942 billion now and forecasts it will reach 8 billion in mid-November
Nanotechandmorefuture wrote: ↑Tue Jul 12, 2022 8:34 amUN projects world population will reach 8 billion on Nov. 15
By Edith M. Lederer Associated Press
July 12, 2022, 1:32 AM
UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations estimated Monday that the world’s population will reach 8 billion on Nov. 15 and that India will replace China as the world’s most populous nation next year.
In a report released on World Population Day, the U.N. also said global population growth fell below 1% in 2020 for the first time since 1950.
According to the latest U.N. projections, the world’s population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and a peak of around 10.4 billion during the 2080s. It is forecast to remain at that level until 2100.
The report says more than half the projected increase in population up to 2050 will be concentrated in just eight countries: Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania.
The report, “World Population Prospects 2022,” puts the world's population at 7.942 billion now and forecasts it will reach 8 billion in mid-November
Weirdest thing, I have a memory from like middle school back in the late 90s/early 00s of us reaching this 8 billion milestone. Am I just misremembering? Or was that the time we hit 7 billion? Swear to god I've spent most my life now at this point thinking there were already over 8 billion of us.
Research Links National-level Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Warming and Resulting Economic Damage
July 12, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) A sound scientific basis exists for climate liability claims between individual countries, according to a Dartmouth study.
The study is the first to assess the economic impacts that individual countries have caused to other countries through their cumulative national-level contributions to global warming. The research draws direct connections between national emissions of heat-trapping gases to losses and gains in gross domestic product in 143 countries for which data are available.
The study, published in the journal Climatic Change, provides an essential basis for nations to make legal claims for economic losses tied to emissions and warming.
“Greenhouse gases emitted in one country cause warming in another, and that warming can depress economic growth,” said Justin Mankin, an assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth and senior researcher of the study. “This research provides legally valuable estimates of the financial damages individual nations have suffered due to other countries’ climate-changing activities.”
Among the data, the research found that a small group from the world’s leading national emitters of greenhouse gases have caused $6 trillion in global economic losses through warming caused by their emissions from 1990 to 2014.
caltrek's comment: Actually, this is a good argument for regulatory controls on greenhouse gas industries. The absence of effective controls opens up the industry for recovery of damages caused by their emissions. A good way to achieve socialist goals!
More of the world's coastal glaciers are melting faster than ever, but exactly what's triggering the large-scale retreat has been difficult to pin down because of natural fluctuations in the glaciers' surroundings. Now, researchers at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) and Georgia Tech have developed a methodology that they think cracks the code to why coastal glaciers are retreating, and in turn, how much can be attributed to human-caused climate change. Attributing the human role for coastal glaciers—which melt directly into the sea—could pave the way to better predictions about sea level rise.
So far, scientists have tested the approach only in computer models using simplified glaciers. They found that even modest global warming caused most glaciers to melt, or retreat.
The next step, the researchers said, is for scientists to simulate the coastal glaciers of a real ice sheet, like Greenland's, which holds enough ice to raise sea level by about 22 feet (7 meters). That will reveal whether they are retreating due to climate change and help predict when major ice loss might next occur.
"The methodology we're proposing is a road map towards making confident statements about what the human role is [in glacial retreats]," said glaciologist John Christian, who is a postdoctoral researcher at both The University of Texas at Austin and Georgia Tech. "Those statements can then be communicated to the public and policymakers, and help in their decision making."
Over recent decades, coastal cities in the U.S. have experienced significant increases in floods that occur during high tide, which create dangerous driving conditions, road closures, groundwater contamination and other safety issues. Climate change and sea level rise have facilitated more of these high-tide floods, according to new research in AGU's Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans.
Multiple processes contribute to high-tide flooding, also called "nuisance flooding" or "sunny-day flooding," depending on tides and local wind and pressure conditions, as well as larger-scale phenomena like El Niño/La Niña. But little is known about how these factors work in concert to cause regional high-tide flooding.
Their analyses also revealed that as sea level has risen, the number of co-occurring factors needed to cause a high-tide flood has dropped from three or four to two, or even one. Simply put, in many coastal cities, fewer things need to go wrong for a high-tide flood to hit.
"When I started my career 15 years ago, I don't think we had a name for what now we know as high-tide flooding," says Thomas Wahl, a coastal engineer at the University of Central Florida and coauthor of the new study. "It is an emerging issue and one of the immediate consequences of rising sea levels."
The high heat and low water conditions produced by global warming weaken pine trees' resistance to disease by hindering their ability to mount an effective defense at the same time that pathogenic fungi in their tissues become more aggressive, new research suggests.
The study is the first to simultaneously examine metabolic gene expression in both host trees and the pathogens attacking them under normal and climate-change conditions. The findings help explain the mechanisms behind what has become a well-known fact: The warming world makes trees more susceptible to disease.
The study was conducted on Austrian pines, which are native to southern Europe and used ornamentally in the United States. Researchers tested climate change conditions' effects on the trees after infection by two related fungi that have killed large swaths of these pines over time.
Voters See a Bad Economy, Even if They're Doing OK
Source: New York Times
The fastest inflation in four decades has Americans feeling dour about the economy, even as their own finances have, so far, held up relatively well.
Just 10 percent of registered voters say the U.S. economy is “good” or “excellent,” according to a New York Times/Siena College poll — a remarkable degree of pessimism at a time when wages are rising and the unemployment rate is near a 50-year low. But the rapidly rising cost of food, gas and other essentials is wiping out pay increases and eroding living standards.
Americans’ grim outlook is bad news for President Biden and congressional Democrats heading into this fall’s midterm elections, given that 78 percent of voters say inflation will be “extremely important” when they head to the polls.
It could be bad news for the economy as well. One long-running index of consumer sentiment hit a record low in June, and other surveys likewise show Americans becoming increasingly nervous about both their own finances and the broader economy.
Nanotechandmorefuture wrote: ↑Tue Jul 12, 2022 8:34 amUN projects world population will reach 8 billion on Nov. 15
By Edith M. Lederer Associated Press
July 12, 2022, 1:32 AM
UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations estimated Monday that the world’s population will reach 8 billion on Nov. 15 and that India will replace China as the world’s most populous nation next year.
In a report released on World Population Day, the U.N. also said global population growth fell below 1% in 2020 for the first time since 1950.
According to the latest U.N. projections, the world’s population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and a peak of around 10.4 billion during the 2080s. It is forecast to remain at that level until 2100.
The report says more than half the projected increase in population up to 2050 will be concentrated in just eight countries: Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania.
The report, “World Population Prospects 2022,” puts the world's population at 7.942 billion now and forecasts it will reach 8 billion in mid-November
Weirdest thing, I have a memory from like middle school back in the late 90s/early 00s of us reaching this 8 billion milestone. Am I just misremembering? Or was that the time we hit 7 billion? Swear to god I've spent most my life now at this point thinking there were already over 8 billion of us.
It could be likely. I went to a decent middle school thank god but unless you were in Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate Programs you probably were not tuned into the climate change agenda then so I missed out due to being in regular classes. In my middle school 7th grade 911 happened. The fake "mandela effect" kicking in could account for that guesstimation on part of the world governments.
Now with tech it will be much easier to get the correct metrics of course.
Nanotechandmorefuture wrote: ↑Tue Jul 12, 2022 8:34 amUN projects world population will reach 8 billion on Nov. 15
By Edith M. Lederer Associated Press
July 12, 2022, 1:32 AM
Weirdest thing, I have a memory from like middle school back in the late 90s/early 00s of us reaching this 8 billion milestone. Am I just misremembering? Or was that the time we hit 7 billion? Swear to god I've spent most my life now at this point thinking there were already over 8 billion of us.
It could be likely. I went to a decent middle school thank god but unless you were in Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate Programs you probably were not tuned into the climate change agenda then so I missed out due to being in regular classes. In my middle school 7th grade 911 happened. The fake "mandela effect" kicking in could account for that guesstimation on part of the world governments.
Now with tech it will be much easier to get the correct metrics of course.
I wasn't even aware of climate change back then, and the way I remember people talking about it had nothing to do with climate. You must've been a couple years younger than me - I was in 8th grade when 9/11 happened and I had been held back a year (kindergarten of all grades). But I swear I remember the news on tv making a big deal of 8 billion people in...6th grade? Might've been 5th grade elementary actually...
NASA GISS
@NASAGISS
Jul 14
The monthly GISTEMP surface temperature analysis update has been posted. The global mean temperature anomaly for June 2022 was 0.91°C above the 1951-1980 June average. https://go.nasa.gov/2PakncL
AP source: Biden holds off on climate emergency declaration
Source: Associated Press
President Joe Biden will travel to Massachusetts on Wednesday to promote his efforts to combat climate change but will stop short of issuing an emergency declaration that would unlock federal resources to deal with the issue, according to a person familiar with the president’s plans.
Biden has been under pressure to issue an emergency declaration after Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., pulled out of negotiations over climate legislation. During his visit to Somerset, Mass., Biden could announce other steps on climate change but the White House has not released details.
The president has been trying to signal to Democratic voters that he’s aggressively tackling global warming at a time when some of his supporters have despaired about the lack of progress. He has pledged to push forward on his own in the absence of congressional action.
The person familiar with Biden’s intention to hold off on making an emergency declaration spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans publicly. It was not clear whether an emergency declaration remains under consideration...
Modified Rail Cars Can Clean Air of CO2 and Help Mitigate Climate Change July 20, 2022
Extract:
(EurekAlert) Rail systems around the world could help mitigate climate change and clean the air of CO2 by capturing the sustainable energy generated when trains break and decelerate.
US-based startup, CO2Rail Company have been working with a world-renowned team of researchers, including engineers from the University of Sheffield, to design Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology that removes carbon dioxide from the air, which can be used within special rail cars placed with already running trains in regular service.
The DAC rail cars work by using large intakes of air that extend up into the slipstream of the moving train to move ambient air into the large cylindrical CO2 collection chamber and eliminate the need for energy-intensive fan systems that are necessary with stationary DAC operations.
The air then moves through a chemical process that separates the CO2 from the air and the carbon dioxide free air then travels out of the back or underside of the car and returns to the atmosphere.
After a sufficient amount has been captured, the chamber is closed and the harvested CO2 is collected, concentrated, and stored in a liquid reservoir until it can be emptied from the train at a crew change or fuelling stop into normal CO2 rail tank cars. It is then transported into the circular carbon economy as value-added feedstock for CO2 utilisation, or to nearby geological landfill sites.
