Octopus Overlords

Rip wrote:In other news how about that climate change caused drought flood in California.

A March 30 report from Greenpeace associates the Apple iPad with global warming, as the activist organization seeks to raise new questions about the environmental effects of cloud computing.

The term suggests a move to put less-robust devices in the hands of consumers, eliminating the need for massive data storage or processing power by instead storing information or running applications in "the cloud" through an Internet connection, as Google does with its widely used Gmail and Google Docs services. The reality of these services, however, involves an intense demand for energy at the server farms powering each company's cloud.

According to Greenpeace, if "data centers and telecommunication networks, the two key components of the cloud," continue to grow at current rates, by 2020 they'll consume "over half the current electricity consumption of the United States-or more than France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined."

"As the cloud grows, the IT industry's appetite for energy will only increase, so the industry must become strong advocates for renewable energy solutions and strong laws that cut global warming pollution," Casey Harrell, a Greenpeace International campaigner, said in a statement.

DOS=HIGH wrote:We’ve already achieved 100 percent renewable energy at all of our data centers, at our facilities in Austin, Elk Grove, Cork, and Munich, and at our Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino. And for all of Apple’s corporate facilities worldwide, we’re at 75 percent, and we expect that number to grow as the amount of renewable energy available to us increases. We won’t stop working until we achieve 100 percent throughout Apple.

Yep, a few little steps to make Greenpeace happy and market it so well that you had no idea your previous post was no longer relevant.

Yesterday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released Part 2 of its Assessment Report. Part 1 came out in September 2013 and showed unequivocally that climate change is real, and human influence is the root cause. Part 2 deals with the impacts of climate change, and what might be done to minimize the effects. The technical summary is an interesting if depressing read. It concatenates the results from scientific journals in the field, giving what is essentially the position of the scientific community on the issues.

The scope of the report is very broad, going over the climate change impact on the planet’s physical systems (oceans, coasts, weather, and so on) as well as the biosphere (humans, animals, agriculture) and human society, and then discussing how we must adapt to and manage/mitigate these risks.

Let me be clear: The report plainly states the world is warming, the climate is changing, and we already see the impacts today. Now. It also goes into detail on projections for the future, and the great majority of them are grim.

Enough wrote:Here's a great statewide summary for Colorado of climate change I came across doing my job that I thought folks might find interesting here.

Observed climate trends in Colorado 14 15

• In Colorado, statewide annual average temperatures have increased by 2°F over the 16 past 30 years and 2.5°F over the past 50 years. Warming has been observed over these 17 periods in nearly all parts of the state. 18

• No long ‐ term trends have been detected in annual precipitation for Colorado, even 19 considering the relatively dry period since 2000. 20

• Snowpack, as measured by April 1 snow ‐ water equivalent (SWE), has been mainly 21 below ‐ average since 2000 in all eight major Colorado river basins, though a long ‐ term 22 trend has only been detected in one basin. 23

• The timing of snowmelt and peak runoff has shifted earlier in the spring by 1 ‐ 4 weeks 24 across Colorado’s river basins over the past 30 years, due to the combination of lower 25 SWE since 2000, the warming trend in spring temperatures, and enhanced solar 26 absorption from dust ‐ on ‐ snow. 27

• The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) shows a trend towards more frequent soil ‐ 28 moisture drought conditions in Colorado over the past 30 years, reflecting the 29 combination of the warming trend and below ‐ average precipitation since 2000. 30

• Tree ‐ ring records and other paleoclimate indicators for Colorado show multiple 31 droughts prior to 1900 that were more severe and sustained than any in the observed 32 record

LordMortis wrote: Still while it is too cold I won't complain too much. I would want to live in droughts and earthquakes and hurricanes and heat waves and dust bowls and drying rivers.

Scientists have discovered a hole in the atmosphere that allows ozone-depleting compounds and other chemicals to bypass the atmosphere’s natural “washing machine” layer.

The lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere, known as the troposphere, is full of hydroxyl (OH) radicals which are known as the detergent of the atmosphere. This is because OH is highly reactive and can break down all sorts of pollutants, chemicals and natural substances emitted by living organisms including humans, plants, animals, fungi, and microbes. The substances become water soluble and are washed out of the troposphere during rainstorms.

But when scientists sent weather balloons through the troposphere over the tropical Western Pacific, they discovered a 9-mile-high hole in this protective OH shield that extends over several thousand square miles. Because it has only just been discovered, researchers are as yet unsure what causes this hole. But by letting certain chemicals escape into the upper levels of the atmosphere, the OH gap could contribute to depletion of the ozone layer over the polar regions and influence worldwide climate.
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The discovery of the hole has already helped solve a discrepancy in our understanding of the atmosphere. Measurements of ozone depletion have long been known to be more than they should from our theoretical models. When researchers put an OH hole into their simulations, the theoretical ozone depletion much more closely matched real-world data.

A new study just released by the Union of Concerned Scientists shows that of the three major cable news networks, in 2013 Fox News far and away was the worst at covering news about climate change: More than 70 percent of their coverage contained misleading statements about it....

...hat is surprising is that in 2013 their coverage of climate change was actually better than it was in 2012, when a jaw-dropping 93 percent of their statements about it were misleading.

Pyperkub wrote:On the Good News side - Fox News is 23% less misleading regarding Climate Change:

Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term, a study shows, challenging the Obama administration's conclusions that they are a much cleaner oil alternative and will help combat climate change.

A $500,000 study paid for by the federal government and released Sunday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change concludes that biofuels made with corn residue release 7 percent more greenhouse gases in the early years compared with conventional gasoline.

While biofuels are better in the long run, the study says they won't meet a standard set in a 2007 energy law to qualify as renewable fuel.

Unagi wrote:what's that 'in the early years' part added on for?

The biofuel industry and administration officials immediately criticized the research as flawed. They said it was too simplistic in its analysis of carbon loss from soil, which can vary over a single field, and vastly overestimated how much residue farmers actually would remove once the market gets underway.

"The core analysis depicts an extreme scenario that no responsible farmer or business would ever employ because it would ruin both the land and the long-term supply of feedstock. It makes no agronomic or business sense," said Jan Koninckx, global business director for biorefineries at DuPont.

A peer-reviewed study performed at the Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory in 2012 found that biofuels made with corn residue were 95 percent better than gasoline in greenhouse gas emissions. That study assumed some of the residue harvested would replace power produced from coal, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but it's unclear whether future biorefineries would do that.

Liska agrees that using some of the residue to make electricity, or planting cover crops, would reduce carbon emissions. But he did not include those in his computer simulation.

Rip wrote:

Unagi wrote:what's that 'in the early years' part added on for?

It shows that in the later years it flips.

Rip wrote:The real story being not that in the big picture it is overall worse

Rip wrote:but that it isn't nearly what it has been advertised as. Particularly when you factor in the subsidies that make it economically feasible. Money that could have been spent elsewhere on something that would have had far better return for the investment.

Unagi wrote: I can see how a baby industry will need them, if we seriously want to be oil independent some day... but yeah, I'd like our money put to good use on that topic as well.

Herman Hum wrote:And there is more arctic ice this year than in many previous years.

A 120,000-year-old piece of Antarctic ice was dated using krypton rather than carbon dating. Krypton, a noble-gas element, was found to be more reliable when it came to finding how old the ice is, although the process is extremely difficult. The findings, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may be able to provide more accurate picture of ancient ice ages.

"The oldest ice found in drilled cores is around 800,000 years old and with this new technique we think we can look in other regions and successfully date polar ice back as far as 1.5 million years," Christo Buizert, a researcher at Oregon State University who is the study's lead author, said in a news release.
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Krypton dating resembles carbon dating since it measures the decay of a radioactive isotope. But unlike carbon-14 dating, krypton is a noble gas that is stable and has a half-life of about 230,000 years. Carbon dating is less reliable when it comes to ice since the isotope is produced in the ice itself by cosmic rays.

While krypton dating has been used for more than 40 years, it was difficult since Krypton-81 atoms are so few and difficult to count. It was only in 2011 when a new detector technology was developed did Kyrpton-81 dating become accessible to the larger scientific community.

The latest study used the detector along with a new Blue Ice Drill that allowed scientists to collect ice samples. Scientists used several 660-pound chunks of ice, melted them, and collected their air bubbles to krypton date them.

"The only problem is that there isn't a lot of Krypton in the air, and thus there isn't much in the ice, either. That's why we need such large samples to melt down," Buizert said.

Rip wrote:Speaking of misleading.

Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term, a study shows, challenging the Obama administration's conclusions that they are a much cleaner oil alternative and will help combat climate change.

A $500,000 study paid for by the federal government and released Sunday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change concludes that biofuels made with corn residue release 7 percent more greenhouse gases in the early years compared with conventional gasoline.

While biofuels are better in the long run, the study says they won't meet a standard set in a 2007 energy law to qualify as renewable fuel.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/ ... 1-04-02-59

Rip wrote:Flash: Climate scientists make conclusions that bolster the likliehood that more money will be thrown at climate science research. Film at eleven.

OSLO, May 12 (Reuters) - Vast glaciers in West Antarctica seem to be locked in an irreversible thaw linked to global warming that may push up sea levels for centuries, scientists said on Monday.

Six glaciers, eaten away from below by a warming of sea waters around the frozen continent, were flowing fast into the Amundsen Sea, according to the report based partly on satellite radar measurements from 1992 to 2011.

Evidence shows "a large sector of the West Antarctic ice sheet has gone into a state of irreversible retreat", said lead author Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Holman wrote:Marco Rubio just told me it's not my fault. That makes me feel good.

Pyperkub wrote:

Holman wrote:Marco Rubio just told me it's not my fault. That makes me feel good.

My question is - Why does that matter? Even if the climate change is natural, it's still going to have serious consequences for our habitat and we have the ability to do something about it.

It's kind if like saying cataclysmic asteroid strikes are natural, so if we see one coming we should do nothing because extinction events are natural...

Chaz wrote:Well, I suppose that the line of thinking for the "it's natural" argument is that since it's natural, then human action can't do anything to change it. Since we can't change it, then it's silly to spend money and effort imposing regulations that try to stop it.