Octopus Overlords

Isgrimnur wrote: Sat May 18, 2019 1:31 am When sea levels rise, the ones with the boats are sitting pretty.

Fireball wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 1:02 pmThere's really no hope on this one.

Paingod wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 2:34 pm

Fireball wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 1:02 pmThere's really no hope on this one.

Your name, our planet.

Everyone over 80:
Everyone under 20:

Fireball wrote:When I think about climate change, I rage with hatred towards my parents and everyone of their generation. And then I think about how my fiancé and I probably shouldn't adopt a child or do anything to encourage another child to exist in the world. And then I think about killing myself. And then I try to think about something else.

There's really no hope on this one.

The recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer relies on the continued decline in the atmospheric concentrations of ozone-depleting gases such as chlorofluorocarbons1. The atmospheric concentration of trichlorofluoromethane (CFC-11), the second-most abundant chlorofluorocarbon, has declined substantially since the mid-1990s2. A recently reported slowdown in the decline of the atmospheric concentration of CFC-11 after 2012, however, suggests that global emissions have increased3,4.

CFC-11 makes a very efficient "blowing agent" for polyurethane foam, helping it to expand into rigid thermal insulation that's used in houses to cut energy bills and reduce carbon emissions.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Wednesday the Democratic National Committee informed him it will not dedicate one of its presidential primary debates to the issue of climate change.

The decision comes despite a furious push from progressive and environmental advocates for a climate change debate, as well as strong support across the Democratic ideological spectrum. At least half a dozen Democratic candidates, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and former Obama cabinet official Julián Castro, have backed the idea.

Smoove_B wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2019 7:31 pm DNC doesn't think climate change is worth debating

Fireball wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 10:41 am

Smoove_B wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2019 7:31 pm DNC doesn't think climate change is worth debating

Single-issue debates are generally a bad idea.

Kraken wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 10:59 am

Fireball wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 10:41 am

Smoove_B wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2019 7:31 pm DNC doesn't think climate change is worth debating

Single-issue debates are generally a bad idea.

Especially when nobody takes the opposing side.

Kraken wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 10:59 am Especially when nobody takes the opposing side.

Steffen Olsen, a scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute, was on a routine mission in northwest Greenland to retrieve oceanographic and weather monitoring tools placed by his colleagues on sea ice when he ran into a problem.

He couldn't see them -- the usually flat white sea ice was covered in water, the result of flooding from Greenland's ice sheet, the second largest on the planet.

The incredible photo he took, of sled dogs ankle deep in a wide expanse of light blue water, quickly went viral, destined to join pictures of starving polar bears, shrunken glaciers, stranded walruses and lakes turned bone dry in the pantheon of evidence of our ongoing climate catastrophe.
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Scientists have been predicting a record year for melting on the Greenland ice sheet for months, and the amount of ice already being lost this early in the summer suggests they're right.

The effect is also cumulative -- the more ice lost early in the summer causes greater melting as the weeks go on. This is because white snow and ice reflect the sun's rays back into space, reducing the amount of heat absorbed and keeping the ice cold. The less ice there is, the less heat is reflected, and the more melting occurs.
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Since 1972, ice loss from Greenland alone has added 13.7 millimeters (about half an inch) to the global sea level, a recent study estimates. The island's ice sheet is the leading source of water added to the ocean every year.

The British research submarine Boaty McBoatface has made an impressive debut in the scientific arena, discovering a significant link between Antarctic winds and rising sea temperatures on its maiden outing.
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The task saw McBoatface travel 180 kilometers (112 miles) through mountainous underwater valleys in Antarctica, measuring the temperature, saltiness and turbulence in the depths of the Southern Ocean.

Its findings, published in the journal PNAS on Monday, revealed how increasingly strong winds in the region are causing turbulence deep within the sea, and as a result mixing warm water from middle levels with colder water in the abyss.

That process is causing the sea temperature to rise, which in turn is a significant contributor to rising sea levels, scientists behind the project said.

Antarctic winds are growing in strength due to the thinning of the ozone layer and the build-up of greenhouse gases, but their impact on the ocean has never been factored in to climate models.
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"The data from Boaty McBoatface gave us a completely new way of looking at the deep ocean -- the path taken by Boaty created a spatial view of the turbulence near the seafloor," Eleanor Frajka-Williams of the center said in a statement.

"This study is a great example of how exciting new technology such as the unmanned submarine 'Boaty McBoatface' can be used along with ship-based measurements and cutting-edge ocean models to discover and explain previously unknown processes affecting heat transport within the ocean," added Povl Abrahamsen of the British Antarctic Survey.

Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.

A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said they were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers had destabilized the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for millennia.

“What we saw was amazing,” Vladimir E. Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the university, told Reuters by telephone. “It’s an indication that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more years.”

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday said states can set their own carbon emissions standards for coal-fired power plants -- a rule that the agency itself says could result in 1,400 more premature deaths by 2030 than the Obama-era plan it will replace.

The move fulfills part of President Donald Trump's promise to help the coal industry, but will likely face court challenges from environmental groups and several states who see the rollback as detrimental to clean air and efforts to fight the climate crisis.

Former President Barack Obama's plan, if implemented, would have prevented 3,600 premature deaths a year, 1,700 heart attacks and 90,000 asthma attacks, according to analysis conducted by the EPA under his tenure.

The Obama Clean Power Plan was set to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to the climate crisis, by up to 32% compared to 2005 levels by the same year.
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Obama's Clean Power Plan was challenged by several lawsuits from industry groups and conservative-led states. In 2016, the Supreme Court blocked the regulation, but some plants had already started to work on reducing pollution.

The new plan, which EPA is calling the Affordable Clean Energy rule, is designed to boost the struggling coal industry but also likely increase carbon emissions nationwide. EPA argues that any comparison to the Obama rule is incongruous because it was never implemented.

A senior EPA official said that comparing the CPP and the ACE role was a "fantasy" because the CPP was never fully implemented. He instead said that "market forces alone" are causing change, and it's not the agency's job to regulate energy emissions.

Zaxxon wrote: Tue Jun 18, 2019 10:19 pm Have I mentioned that we're totally fucked?

Temperatures climbed to 90 degrees in Anchorage, Alaska, on Thursday, breaking the all-time heat record for the northerly city.

Anchorage's previous record high (at least since 1952) was 85 degrees Fahrenheit, set on June 14, 1969.

The city of 300,000 people also had its hottest June ever, according to the National Weather Service. Average temperature for the month was 60.5 degrees, 5.3 degrees above normal. It was the 16th consecutive month with above-average temperatures.

It sounds simple enough to measure, but measurements are complicated by the fact that permafrost sort of compacts as the ice within it melts. So if you measure, say, the amount of carbon in a 3-meter-thick sample, any later samples can be denser, packing in more carbon and masking losses. To get around potential discrepancy, the researchers measured something that stays put: volcanic ash in the soil.

By referencing the carbon measurements against the ash content, you can work out how much carbon is lost from a cube of soil even as that cube gets squashed since the ash squashes along with it.

But the real upshot of this study is simply how rapidly carbon was being lost. The researchers say there's a good chance they're looking at an area going through a phase of rapid change that may not be true everywhere or at all times. Still, projecting a plausible diminishing rate of loss into the future would mean that something like 70% of the soil carbon would be lost by 2100. Contrast that with prevailing estimates of 5% to 15% by 2100 and it's clear that the new results are raising eyebrows.

Along the state's Gulf Coast, all 21 of the state's beaches have been shut down for swimming due to a blue-green harmful algal bloom (HAB), according to the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ).
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The toxic algae can cause rashes, stomach cramps, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting, the state agency warned.

Though the state says people can still use the sand portion of the beaches, they should avoid water contact or consumption of anything from the waters "until further notice."

The HAB was at least partly caused by the opening of the Bonnet Carre spillway in Louisiana, which has triggered "excessive" freshwater to the coastline, the Jackson Clarion Ledger reported.
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HABs aren't rare. In fact, every US coastal and Great Lakes state experiences them, the NOAA says. However, they are popping up with increasing frequency due to climate change and increasing nutrient pollution, according to the NOAA.

Isgrimnur wrote: Mon Jul 08, 2019 11:22 am HABs aren't rare. In fact, every US coastal and Great Lakes state experiences them, the NOAA says. However, they are popping up with increasing frequency due to climate change and increasing nutrient pollution, according to the NOAA.

LordMortis wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 2:21 pm But it's a year after year getting worse thing

Smoove_B wrote: Mon Jul 08, 2019 11:30 am Yeah, NJs largest freshwater lake has been closed indefinitely since a few weeks ago and locals are quite upset. There's usually a HAB in August, but because of all the rain we had in June, it was triggered much earlier. I have a feeling it's going to become the norm.

malchior wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 5:05 pm

Smoove_B wrote: Mon Jul 08, 2019 11:30 am Yeah, NJs largest freshwater lake has been closed indefinitely since a few weeks ago and locals are quite upset. There's usually a HAB in August, but because of all the rain we had in June, it was triggered much earlier. I have a feeling it's going to become the norm.

Suck it libs! Swim in the waters of freedom or go back to where you came from if you don't like it.

Kraken wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 2:01 pm New England has been gradually getting wetter over the past 30-40 years. That's not news. The 12 months ending in June were the wettest 12-month span in 124 years of record-keeping, and 2018 was the wettest calendar year. Rainfall in both cases was >20" above normal. That's news.

Paingod wrote: Wed Jul 17, 2019 6:33 am

Kraken wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 2:01 pm New England has been gradually getting wetter over the past 30-40 years. That's not news. The 12 months ending in June were the wettest 12-month span in 124 years of record-keeping, and 2018 was the wettest calendar year. Rainfall in both cases was >20" above normal. That's news.

Yeah. I'm excited for when Maine becomes a tropical rain forest, too. The summer heat and humidity up here is gross already, so we really need some more.

Within 60 years, hot days in the U.S. could be so intense that the current heat index can’t measure them.

The study averaged together projections from 18 hyper-local climate models between April and October over 30-year periods: a historical baseline (1971–2000), midcentury (2036–2065), and late century (2070–2099). The study showed generally that the Southeast and Southern Great Plains would bear the brunt of the extreme heat, experiencing heat that currently only occurs in the Sonoran Desert, in the Southwest

Areas in those regions would experience the equivalent of three months per year on average by mid-century that feel hotter than 105 degrees Fahrenheit, possibly as hot as 115 degrees, 125 degrees, or worse.