Is anybody actually doing anything about climate change?

[James R]

I find it so odd that climate change has become a republican/democratic thing.

In general, being connected to the real world, as opposed to being connected to a world of "alternative facts", has become a Democrat/Republican thing, these days.

 

[Ken Fabian]

Also agreed. But to be fair, they are so cost effective in part due to the work done in the past to fund research, fund demonstration projects and provide incentives to get to mass production quantities. No one person makes a big difference, but a lot of people over decades do.

Funding R&D can be a bit serendipitous, not necessarily delivering what is sought but sometimes delivering more than expected. It is rarely a waste of money, although - cynical of me - early funding of RE seemed to me more like empty gestures of appeasement to growing community climate concerns as the easy alternative to committing to the hard and potentially problematic as well as unpopular massive worldwide expansion of nuclear. I think having the largest bloc of support for nuclear (Right-Conservative) turn Denier and oppose climate action had a much bigger impact on any possibility of mass nuclear for climate than fringe anti-nuclear activism; Greenpeace could never persuade the captains of commerce and industry to oppose nuclear nearly so effectively as climate science denial induced them to fail to support it.

I suspect there was strong conviction early on within mainstream politics that RE would not deliver anything useful and I think there was a give em enough rope undercurrent to supporting it; having RE funding widely perceived as a complete waste of money was, for some, a desirable outcome. Plus, as a bonus, it reinforced perceptions of the climate problem being a fringe issue for, by, about Environmental protest movements, about appeasing them - a much softer target for the doubt, deny, delay crowd to whip up opposition against than the world's leading science agencies. But within some political parties and within government departments as well as science agencies a core of people taking the climate problem serious persisted plus there were scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs who saw genuine potential in wind and solar power - and their efforts are much appreciated.

I don't think the nuclear route would have done it better, with so many points where it can stall or be stalled. I do not believe that in the absence of anti-nuclear environmentalism Right-Conservative politics would have abandoned absolute support for fossil fuels or that FF interests would not have pursued Doubt, Deny, Delay politics to stop low emissions energy, ie nuclear energy, just more openly anti-nuclear.

Now... solar is going to keep eating it's lunch in most regions in the world and the hours of each day, days of each week, months of each year when earnings of nuclear plants are below cost will only keep growing; an already too expensive option is only going to find it harder to achieve commercial profitability.

 

[Ken Fabian]

You forgot
5). It's getting colder where I live, stupid.

Looked for places that are getting colder on GISS maps. So you live near the Weddell Sea in Antarctica? Cool!

Or maybe you've just had colder than average Winter in a place that is experiencing overall warmer average conditions?

(This is the past 5 years, so the vagaries of one year won't deceive, compared to mid-20th century temperatures -

 

[Seattle]

Looked for places that are getting colder on GISS maps. So you live near the Weddell Sea in Antarctica? Cool!

Or maybe you've just had colder than average Winter in a place that is experiencing overall warmer average conditions?

(This is the past 5 years, so the vagaries of one year won't deceive, compared to mid-20th century temperatures -

Calm down...

 

[exchemist]

Looked for places that are getting colder on GISS maps. So you live near the Weddell Sea in Antarctica? Cool!

Or maybe you've just had colder than average Winter in a place that is experiencing overall warmer average conditions?

(This is the past 5 years, so the vagaries of one year won't deceive, compared to mid-20th century temperatures -

Seattle was adding to @billvon’s list of the arguments one comes across from climate change deniers.

sculptor does this, e.g. they’ve got snow in Brazil so global warming must be a lefty ecowarrior scam, er, blah blah…..watts up…….blah [repeat and fade]……. :-

Record cold and snow in Brazil

Before you fly too close to the sun young icarus: Perhaps you would be well served by contemplating the myriad other cycles which effect climate? (more on that later) and, as/re If you would specify a particular cycle, you would be more likely to get a more specific answer. Did you mean the...

www.sciforums.com

 

[billvon]

Looked for places that are getting colder on GISS maps. So you live near the Weddell Sea in Antarctica? Cool!

If you look over small enough regions and over small enough timeframes there's always somewhere that's cooling. San Diego, for example, has had a cooler than average spring - and lots of clouds.

 

[billvon]

Now... solar is going to keep eating it's lunch in most regions in the world and the hours of each day, days of each week, months of each year when earnings of nuclear plants are below cost will only keep growing; an already too expensive option is only going to find it harder to achieve commercial profitability.

There's also a scaling issue. Nuclear power isn't even doable at very small scales (i.e. under a megawatt) with any level of safety or profitability. And at large scales it is hugely expensive and time consuming - the Vogtle plant was tens of billions over budget and took 20 years from planning to operation. Finding that middle ground where schedule, scale and profitability intersect is difficult.

Solar, meanwhile, works as well to power a ten watt roadside phone as providing 100 megawatts in the desert. And you can small/medium systems in weeks rather than years. And it just keeps getting cheaper. (Although the new tariffs will change that - but that's a whole nuther discussion.)

 

[Ken Fabian]

Calm down...

If what I responded to was intended as irony/sarc I missed it.

 

[sculptor]

trees/forests are doing something
go trees---yay forests the young forests are cooling the US southeast while "the globe is warming".
this link has pictures:

Very cool: trees stalling effects of global heating in eastern US, study finds

Vast reforestation a major reason for ‘warming hole’ across parts of US where temperatures have flatlined or cooled

www.theguardian.com

 

[Seattle]

If what I responded to was intended as irony/sarc I missed it.

It was intended to add to the list of what people say, which was the whole point of Billvons list.

 

[billvon]

trees/forests are doing something
go trees---yay forests the young forests are cooling the US southeast while "the globe is warming".

The downside of that is that trees cool an area via transpiration - putting groundwater into the air. This worsens droughts where the trees are and leads to larger/more violent precipitation events elsewhere.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

 

[sculptor]

The downside of that is that trees cool an area via transpiration - putting groundwater into the air. This worsens droughts where the trees are and leads to larger/more violent precipitation events elsewhere.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

CO2 is plant food
the higher the CO2 content the less the plants have to open the stomata(or they need fewer stomata)
the less the plants open the stomata the less the transpiration
the less the transpiration the less groundwater is needed or consumed

trees do not cause droughts!
in nature-----nothing stands alone

caveat
planting forests where forest once existed usually works well
planting forests where they did not previously exist is a tad more dicey.
(see the attempts to forest the great plains)

 

[Ken Fabian]

It was intended to add to the list of what people say, which was the whole point of Billvons list.

An oops from me. Sorry.

 

[billvon]

CO2 is plant food

So is chlorine. But I bet you wouldn't want more in your air.

the less the transpiration the less groundwater is needed or consumed

So CO2 does NOT cause plants to grow? You're starting to contradict yourself here.

Either CO2 causes plants to grow more (being plant food and all) and results in more transpiration from more trees, or CO2 causes less transpiration overall in which case there's less cooling. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

 

[Ken Fabian]

A return to the discussion after previous embarrassment...

trees/forests are doing something
go trees---yay forests the young forests are cooling the US southeast while "the globe is warming".
this link has pictures:

Very cool: trees stalling effects of global heating in eastern US, study finds

Vast reforestation a major reason for ‘warming hole’ across parts of US where temperatures have flatlined or cooled

www.theguardian.com

I can't see how reforestation can achieve much more than compensate for the emissions from, and reverse local climate effects of, past deforestation.

A lot (most?) of the revegetation that is happening now is not planned and planted, it is what happens with stopping the factors that prevent it regrowing (intensive farming somewhere resulting in abandoned farms, removing grazing herds). I think if we just take goats out of large areas in Africa, Middle East, Central Asia and we would get a lot of revegetation and do it more successfully than any deliberate planting.

Changes to rainfall patterns from global warming probably makes a lot more difference than greening from higher CO2 or (so far) from temperature changes, like the example of the East of the US getting greener because it has gotten more rain. Which vegetation return does affect rainfall in turn - but I don't think most, let alone all that regrowth can be attributed to planting trees or all the higher rainfall to the trees.

A lot of what is being claimed here in Australia as carbon offsets is vegetation recovery that happens anyway - with vegetation losses when those happen naturally (or from climate change) not being counted. Starting a carbon offset scheme during the dry times when vegetation and biomass is in at a natural low (assessing soil carbon and biomass then) will look a lot better than any begun during the wet times. Like stealing the land use sector's emissions successes to excuse fossil fuels' failures I think that kind of embedded cheating is a travesty.

CO2 "reduction" by reforestation means achieving a permanent increase in global biomass compensating for continuing fossil fuel use on top of land use emissions is a whole lot bigger than changing global biomass can deal with. We may well get an enduring rise in global biomass from warming but I still think the most of that will be from rainfall changes, which a warmer atmosphere will cause.

But not everywhere; more water vapor in warmer atmosphere gives heavier rainfall where conditions for precipitation occur reliably; in arid climates warmer atmosphere means it takes more water vapor to reach the 100% humidity needed for rainfall to happen, ie will cause dryer conditions. As someone living where drought is already the most economically damaging climate phenomena having reduced rainfall AND higher temperatures AND high bushfire risks is not something I would wish on anyone.

 

[sculptor]

A return to the discussion after previous embarrassment...



I can't see how reforestation can achieve much more than compensate for the emissions from, and reverse local climate effects of, past deforestation.

A lot (most?) of the revegetation that is happening now is not planned and planted, it is what happens with stopping the factors that prevent it regrowing (intensive farming somewhere resulting in abandoned farms, removing grazing herds). I think if we just take goats out of large areas in Africa, Middle East, Central Asia and we would get a lot of revegetation and do it more successfully than any deliberate planting.

Changes to rainfall patterns from global warming probably makes a lot more difference than greening from higher CO2 or (so far) from temperature changes, like the example of the East of the US getting greener because it has gotten more rain. Which vegetation return does affect rainfall in turn - but I don't think most, let alone all that regrowth can be attributed to planting trees or all the higher rainfall to the trees.

A lot of what is being claimed here in Australia as carbon offsets is vegetation recovery that happens anyway - with vegetation losses when those happen naturally (or from climate change) not being counted. Starting a carbon offset scheme during the dry times when vegetation and biomass is in at a natural low (assessing soil carbon and biomass then) will look a lot better than any begun during the wet times. Like stealing the land use sector's emissions successes to excuse fossil fuels' failures I think that kind of embedded cheating is a travesty.

CO2 "reduction" by reforestation means achieving a permanent increase in global biomass compensating for continuing fossil fuel use on top of land use emissions is a whole lot bigger than changing global biomass can deal with. We may well get an enduring rise in global biomass from warming but I still think the most of that will be from rainfall changes, which a warmer atmosphere will cause.

But not everywhere; more water vapor in warmer atmosphere gives heavier rainfall where conditions for precipitation occur reliably; in arid climates warmer atmosphere means it takes more water vapor to reach the 100% humidity needed for rainfall to happen, ie will cause dryer conditions. As someone living where drought is already the most economically damaging climate phenomena having reduced rainfall AND higher temperatures AND high bushfire risks is not something I would wish on anyone.

agree about the goats---and sheep
iceland was once forested --- and then came the people who cut down the trees and then came the sheep who eat any new seedlings---
ok
so, i own a few icelandic wool sweaters
knowledge does not always transcend to action
oops

It seems that reforestation works best where there were forest in the past
and we had the ccc planting millions of trees in the 1930s
I have a small acreage that was forested when the homesteader Alonzo Denison got here in 1834'and
He spent many a weary month cutting down the trees and pulling the stumps so that he could farm
the land is on a slope and after 150 years of farming the once rich forest soil was degraded
so, i crawled around on my hands and knees and planted trees
and now, i have shade and singing birds and squirrels and chipmunks and firewood
and the trees keep it cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter

the best time to plant a tree is 33 years ago, the second best time is now

 

[Ken Fabian]

Where I live has been subject to human occupation before and after the last glacial maximum and has been fire prone for a lot longer than that. Regrowth Eucalyptus woodlands that is quite different to what Europeans found, that was regularly and irregularly set on fire. We are still grappling with how to manage the fire risks after that stewardship was broken, fire risks that global warming appear to be exacerbating. It is currently in a post fire stage of exceptional growth, more prolific from weather swinging wetter for a few years now - a lot of vegetation that will inevitably become bushfire fuel when the weather swings dry for a few years - and that cycle is made more extreme for the loss of traditional burning practices that reduced overall fire intensities by increasing their frequencies. Having that poorly managed cycle turn more extreme is very concerning.

Mowing (you can't NOT), slashing, fire breaks, burning piles of leaf litter, burning off where it is possible, when it is safe. Dedicated water tanks for fire fighting, a sprinkler system and knowing if conditions are bad enough even that won't be enough (and an evacuate order could come and no-one to start it). The workload devoted to risk reduction around here is serious and it costs a lot of time and money too. We're not denied insurance but it's getting expensive.

For larger areas forest owners and managers fire risks are a big deal and for several reasons warming seems likely to make it harder, require more equipment and labour. We've had about 1.5C of warming from 1C of global rise. 3C could go well above 4C and when it comes to times of drought and heatwave and extreme fire danger conditions that much hotter is going to do things to bushfires that have never been seen before, not even in the whole 60,000 years of human occupation.

Apart from the obvious, that hotter means drier means worse fires the effects of warmer cool season conditions are doing things we don't want too. Used to be common practice, aping aboriginal practices, to wait for a cool, clear night and light up and by early morning a blanket of dew and frost would usually put it out. Now it might not get cool enough, the fires can't be relied on to go out so readily on their own; more vigilance, more labour, more equipment is needed. Over time more people have moved into fire prone areas, who do not have knowhow and equipment and confidence, who have a natural reluctance to light fires that could escape and cause damage to others, that could lead to legal trouble. Or get people killed. The risks of fires escaping control, even in cool seasons are raised with global warming. And yet not burning off can be life endangering. It dismays me to hear fellow Australians, neigbors, shrug off the heightened risks from warmer temperatures - "We've always had fires".

So forests in Australia need management - dangerous to pull the livestock off and let nature take it's course

 

[parmalee]

I probably ought to have phrased my query in the OP differently, but it is what it is. IOW I was speaking more to behavioral changes en masse than whether or not "we've got men on the job." Think Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons wherein technological approaches alone, without behavioral adaptation, might even further exacerbate the problems.

You are in denial about the climate crisis. We all are, argues the American scholar Tad DeLay. Right-wing climate deniers are not the only ones with a problem, he says when we speak in early June after the release of his book, Future of Denial. For denial doesn’t only amount to rejecting the evidence, he argues – it also consists of denying our role in the climate crisis; absolving ourselves through “carbon offsets, hybrid cars, local purchases, recycling”. And in this, far more of us are implicated.

In some ways, this argument might not seem all that new. Multiple authors have pointed out that green capitalism, not rightwing deniers of the crisis, is our greatest obstacle to properly confronting the problem. DeLay agrees. The difference is the lens he brings to it – using psychoanalysis to explain the mechanisms behind denial.

'What if there just is no solution?' How we are all in denial about the climate crisis (Guardian article/interview) <<<

DeLay (Tad DeLay--great name!) argues that while we rightly criticize the deniers, mostly conservative/right-wing, who dispute the actual existence, causes, and/or significance of climate change, we largely ignore the other forms of denial which vastly more are prone to. Carbon offsets, for instance, are not unlike papal indulgences, except they are far more insidious: indulgences were merely a grift, offsets provide cover or "absolution" for very real damages being done.

As far as tech solutions and strategies go, they're only effective when they are widely available and widely used. For instance, evaporative coolers were mentioned earlier in this thread. Obviously, they only work in certain environments (dry, arid), but where they do work--cities like Phoenix or Las Vegas, in the United States--they are far less damaging than air conditioning: they're cheap, they consume very little energy, they contribute very little ambient heat, and they are very easy to service and maintain. As far as "tech" goes, swamp coolers are about as simple as it gets. Moreover, they've been around forever. In Phoenix, it's estimated that about fifty percent of homes have an evaporative cooler; however, fewer than half of these are estimated to be used at all. Why? Well, some HOAs actually ban them for one. (Or at least they used to. I haven't lived in that cultural shithole in over 30 years, so I don't keep up with the particulars.) But there's also some weird stigma surrounding them, they smell funny or something. I don't know

 

[Ken Fabian]

parmalee - I don't think en masse behavioral change -"you care so much, you fix it" (because enough people care enough) - was ever going to fix it no matter that environmentalists sought to build public awareness and encourage individuals to make a difference by their choices. Seems more like that made the corollary "I don't care, I don't have to" the winner by default.

We might overwhemingly agree that stealing is bad but we don't dare rely on that widely held sentiment to prevent stealing because we know it doesn't, yet probably more people would agree with stealing=bad than for emissions and global warming=bad. People are quite bad at figuring the odds of things; pigeons do better with the Monty Hall problem for example than people do. Daniel Kahnemann overturned the economist belief that people are capable of choosing right if they have sufficient information when no, it isn't straightforward like that at all - and there are powerful interests with trillions in future revenues at stake, people for whom their wealth is their defense against and adaptation to global warming, who use all the means available to influence both popular opinion and government policy. Not so much that they are deniers as their assessments of what is best for them is made from considering how climate policies impact their costs, competitiveness and profitability ie nothing to do with whether climate science is correct or not. Having more of commerce and industry with direct interest in the things that can help is a good thing. Green capitalism - responsible capitalism - looks much better than the alternative.

I think I have always believed fundamental legal principles around responsibility and accountability around things that cause harms should apply to commerce and industry, modified by being practical given the degree of dependence on fossil fuels that has developed; the option for businesses to change should be more explicitly presented as the alternative to legal accountabilty and culpability. I believe Governments - the people holding the highest Offices - have duties of care that include taking the top level expert advive (that governments asked for in order to make informed decisions) seriously and not simply choose to deliberately mislead the public with misinformation and alarmist fears. Naive of me, but hey!

Having those people evade their responsibilities and pass the issue to public opinion to decide - not just to decide what to do about it but whether the science it is based on is true at all - looks like serious negligence at the highest levels at best and brazenly corrupt at worst.

I can't see achieving such profound change in people's attitudes that we can trust it to fix anything this big, no matter that I think notion of changes to human societies making us more aware, more satisfied with sufficiency plus those intangible kinds of wealth over conspicuous consumption would be a good thing. I don't think degrowth would be wrong, just too unpopular.

Building an excessive abundance of clean energy looks like both the best we can do as well as the least cost - and that is a hell of a step up for emerging optimism (or reduced pessimism). That optimism is built on the rise of 'green' capitalist industries. Watch them, require responsibility and accountability of them yes, but to suggest they will make things worse? I disagree.

 

[parmalee]

parmalee - I don't think en masse behavioral change -"you care so much, you fix it" (because enough people care enough) - was ever going to fix it no matter that environmentalists sought to build public awareness and encourage individuals to make a difference by their choices. Seems more like that made the corollary "I don't care, I don't have to" the winner by default.

We might overwhemingly agree that stealing is bad but we don't dare rely on that widely held sentiment to prevent stealing because we know it doesn't, yet probably more people would agree with stealing=bad than for emissions and global warming=bad. People are quite bad at figuring the odds of things; pigeons do better with the Monty Hall problem for example than people do. Daniel Kahnemann overturned the economist belief that people are capable of choosing right if they have sufficient information when no, it isn't straightforward like that at all - and there are powerful interests with trillions in future revenues at stake, people for whom their wealth is their defense against and adaptation to global warming, who use all the means available to influence both popular opinion and government policy. Not so much that they are deniers as their assessments of what is best for them is made from considering how climate policies impact their costs, competitiveness and profitability ie nothing to do with whether climate science is correct or not. Having more of commerce and industry with direct interest in the things that can help is a good thing. Green capitalism - responsible capitalism - looks much better than the alternative.

Yeah, by and large it's probably better than the alternative--or, at least, the alternatives we are presented with.

Interestingly, a few years back in the U.S., Bernie Sanders and the Green New Deal made considerable strides. I mean, everybody knew it was going to be quashed eventually: neither the right-wing nor the liberals would ever allow that "nonsense" to take root. It was just weird that they waited for so long to quash it.

Last year, Marc Maron interviewed Naomi Klein for his podcast. In his prefatory remarks, he stated that climate change and fascism are the only things that matter today (or something to that effect). With the global resurgence of fascism, my uncertainty over whether green capitalism is indeed the "better alternative" only grows.

Again, taking carbon offsets as an example: even when approached in good faith, they are of dubious value. As it is, you've got a bunch of companies buying up forests in Indonesia that were never at risk of being chopped down in the first place. That's not unlike big oil encouraging plastic use because it's recyclable. Sure, sometimes. Seldom is it actually worth recycling and very seldom is it actually recycled.

I think I have always believed fundamental legal principles around responsibility and accountability around things that cause harms should apply to commerce and industry, modified by being practical given the degree of dependence on fossil fuels that has developed; the option for businesses to change should be more explicitly presented as the alternative to legal accountabilty and culpability. I believe Governments - the people holding the highest Offices - have duties of care that include taking the top level expert advive (that governments asked for in order to make informed decisions) seriously and not simply choose to deliberately mislead the public with misinformation and alarmist fears. Naive of me, but hey!

Having those people evade their responsibilities and pass the issue to public opinion to decide - not just to decide what to do about it but whether the science it is based on is true at all - looks like serious negligence at the highest levels at best and brazenly corrupt at worst.

I can't see achieving such profound change in people's attitudes that we can trust it to fix anything this big, no matter that I think notion of changes to human societies making us more aware, more satisfied with sufficiency plus those intangible kinds of wealth over conspicuous consumption would be a good thing. I don't think degrowth would be wrong, just too unpopular.

Building an excessive abundance of clean energy looks like both the best we can do as well as the least cost - and that is a hell of a step up for emerging optimism (or reduced pessimism). That optimism is built on the rise of 'green' capitalist industries. Watch them, require responsibility and accountability of them yes, but to suggest they will make things worse? I disagree.

I think they have the potential to make things worse by offering false hope and by selling on maintenance of the status quo, at the very least. But I absolutely agree as regards changing people's attitudes and entrusting the public with these matters. De-growth and the sacrifice that entails is never gonna fly.