newolder wrote:Albedo is defined as the ratio of reflected to received irradiance and runs from 0 (no reflectance) to 1 (total reflectance).

... Both clouds and ice reduce increase the average albedo of the planet.

Exactly. It would still trap heat in though where there is increased carbon in the atmosphere, though, no.

Yes, Cito was correct about that part and suffered some sort of hiccough in the final sentence of that post.

fisherman wrote:Why do you think fossil fuel output has dropped by almost half? Energy consumption from fossil fuels has barely slowed, despite all efforts to date.

Fossil Fuel Consumption.png

What claims are you saying the guy made, that have been blown out the water?
Will have to watch again, as, despite 6 years passing since the video was made, I doubt the physics has changed.

It feels as though we watched different videos.

ETA: Reading issue

I see you are talking about the UK, but also switch between fossil fuel use, and fossil fuel production. Production has dropped by a large amount as you say, though it seems an odd reference point, as I'm not sure what you take a drop in production to mean? A reduction in exploitable resources?

In the UK, according to the figures which were clearly posted

Edit: Too quick to reply issue

OK so now that's cleared away the drop in productions means that soemthing else has taken it's place. Coal is the worst polluter apparently, I'm going to assume oil after that and then natural gas. As we increase our solar and wind banks and move over to electric cars we'll need to use resources less.

newolder wrote:Yes, Cito was correct about that part and suffered some sort of hiccough in the final sentence of that post.

Yes, and albedo first to admit it.

Ba-dum-tssssh.

Otherwise, it would have reflected poorly.

This weeks New Scientist (page 6) (You need to login to get the full article)

What you need to know about the big UN climate report out this week

It appears that some political fiddling has been going on.

So can we limit warming to 1.5°C?
No.

It says that?
It does not use that word but an early draft leaked in February came as close as this kind of report will ever get: “There is very high likelihood that under current emission trajectories and current national pledges the Earth will warm more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” This was watered down in a later leaked draft, which instead waffled on about feasibility: “There is no simple answer to the question of whether it is feasible to limit warming to 1.5°C… because feasibility has multiple dimensions…”. Even this got cut from the final report.

Wait, scientific reports get watered down?
While the first drafts of IPCC reports are written by climate scientists, the final wording is the outcome of political negotiations among diplomats. We know from yet more leaks that the US was one of the countries trying to water it down.

The NS Leader doesn't pull any punches, either:
This may be our Last Chance

Somebody just press the button. That will solve everything. Earth's existence is of little importance there are plenty of others.

Yeah. As long as the rest if the biosphere is unaffected so that it can flourish without being fucked-up by humanity's selfish greed and ignorance.

Would be highly impossible. One Earth less would hardly be noticed. Who by?

Yep. Dreamland.

It will probably happen anyway. Why waste the time?

I don't think curbing the population is going to help if just 10% of the population are doing the vast majority of the damage. I did see an argument the other day which suggests that all we do by arguing for a reduction in the World's population is prepping ourselves for justifying blocking and allowing climate refugees to die when the time comes.

Alan B wrote:Yeah. As long as the rest if the biosphere is unaffected so that it can flourish without being fucked-up by humanity's selfish greed and ignorance.

Waggling the finger of moral responsibility at all of humanity might be meaningful if we'd invaded the planet from somewhere else, but that isn't the case. There isn't even anyone in particular to wag that finger at. Humans are just an endogenous product of the evolution of the planet, and there have been a number of endogenous mass extinctions in the past. That means you are assuming moral responsibility in humans, without any basis for doing so other than how much you enjoy waggling that finger. To assign moral responsibility with serious consequences, go with God. If you don't miss God, you probably won't miss doling out collective moral responsibility, either, except for the empty amusement of finger-waggling. Anything after that is just unfulfilled wish-thinking and profligate emotionalizing. When did we ever have any reason to believe in that good old "world without end"?

Animavore wrote:I don't think curbing the population is going to help if just 10% of the population are doing the vast majority of the damage. I did see an argument the other day which suggests that all we do by arguing for a reduction in the World's population is prepping ourselves for justifying blocking and allowing climate refugees to die when the time comes.

Is the big fear that someone will actually survive this mess? Whether or not there are survivors, there will still be among them folks who are just dying to sell moral responsibility. They'll still be told that it didn't work the last time, either. Bear as much moral responsibility as you can stand, and you can still keep your economic and political activities private for the time being.

Animavore wrote:I don't think curbing the population is going to help if just 10% of the population are doing the vast majority of the damage. I did see an argument the other day which suggests that all we do by arguing for a reduction in the World's population is prepping ourselves for justifying blocking and allowing climate refugees to die when the time comes.

That '10%' is mainly the result of industrial processes. The other '90%' will still be consuming animals that fart and belch methane and methane producing vegetation (rice). That is not negligible by any stretch of the imagination.

Cito di Pense wrote:...That means you are assuming moral responsibility in humans, without any basis for doing so other than how much you enjoy waggling that finger. ...

I think I was being sarcastic...

Animavore wrote:I don't think curbing the population is going to help if just 10% of the population are doing the vast majority of the damage. I did see an argument the other day which suggests that all we do by arguing for a reduction in the World's population is prepping ourselves for justifying blocking and allowing climate refugees to die when the time comes.

It's a ridiculous suggestion because nobody knows if the UK will be a desert in a hundred years or not. Any country, anywhere could be massively affected in the near future. You might wipe out a bunch of people in one country and then your country gets hit with a drought for the next 100 years and?

The fix is to make changes and make them faster. Build more win farms, solar farms - this isn't a hard thing to do. The drag are the fossil fuel company's trying to cling onto their power. There is nothing stopping us from fixing this quicker except billionaires.

It's worth considering as well that there are poor communities who have a massive impact because of population pressure, it's not just the rich driving big cars between air conditioned buildings that do all the damage.

Slash and burn farming is a real thing, stripping land bare then moving on, as is harvesting to the point of extinction. That kind of Ecosystem damage leads to domino effects. Population control drops the need for expansion, and turns the focus towards sustainability and quality of life rather than survival at all costs.

So yes the top 10% consume horribly, but some of the bottom 10% probably do direct damage on a large scale, which is largely driven by the pressures of population.

Teague wrote:Build more win farms, solar farms - this isn't a hard thing to do.

And use them for what? All energy consumption that does not store energy somewhere just ends up as heat -- there is no physical law less likely to be overthrown than the second law of thermodynamics. It's a necessity at this point that some energy production be used strictly for carbon sequestration. This is the only means of mitigating greenhouse gas pollution. Since one of the significant contributions to greenhouse gas pollution is the release of methane from arctic permafrost, the processes of GHG pollution are accelerating, and this is something we cannot blame directly on any particular means of energy production. Encouraging an increase in energy demand for the sake of an expanding economy is folly so I hope that is not the spirit of your comment. The really sad thing about the second law is that nobody can make a buck by turning waste heat into lego blocks on a global scale.

Sounds too good to be true?



There must be a giant hook or two the CEO of Carbon Engineering is neglecting to mention.

Hermit wrote:Sounds too good to be true?

A bit. The concept is not outlandish, but obviously it's going to take > 1 kJ of energy to produce 1 kJ of that HC fuel from water and atmospheric CO2. Turning a profit from that seems like it needs a bit of marketing, which is what the video is. More disturbing, the shill in that video (he's not a real scientist, and is just crowing about the fact that his fuel doesn't produce any soot when it's burned) is proposing combusting that with oxygen virtually immediately, which plainly is not a way to reduce the greenhouse gas content of the atmosphere. It's too late to be happy keeping it at a constant level.

Perhaps I missed the bit where he's proposing to bury the new fuel in the ground and not burn it; waiting a couple of centuries to start burning it again would be meaningful. I switched this one off halfway through. I've been to Squamish, BC. Lovely place. Right near the skiers' paradise at Whistler, which I would guess might be close to melting, now.