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Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change


donsutherland1
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16 minutes ago, bluewave said:

Same story….


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-22/n-j-amps-up-wind-fight-overriding-beach-towns-balking-at-farms

Offshore wind farm developers are finding one more thing in common with the fossil fuel industry: community backlash on both sides of the Atlantic.

Much like the resistance to fracking in parts of the U.S. and the U.K., oceanfront towns have fought against power lines running ashore from wind farms, even as the massive turbines themselves are mostly out of sight. 
 

https://pressofatlanticcity.com/news/local/ocean-city-mayor-wind-turbines-should-not-be-seen-from-beach/article_8e634b9c-35d5-11ec-be77-1fb09d4a7bec.html


OCEAN CITY — Mayor Jay Gillian has called on regulators to ensure wind turbines could not be seen from the beach, a change that would require a major realignment for a billion-dollar offshore energy project.

Got a kick out of this one. One solution is to let the ocean continue to rise, allowing the Ocean City beach to recede far enough so the wind farms can't be seen. ;)

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Looks like Canada has agreed not to dig up this carbon

https://twitter.com/i/events/1458571860183064576

 

Beneath Canada’s wilderness is a massive carbon reservoir that’s been accumulating for some 10,000 years – what happens if it’s disturbed? New research reveals what scientists have learned about the scale and distribution of a massive carbon reservoir lying just below the surface in wilderness areas across the country — and what’s at stake for the planet if it’s disturbed

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12 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

Looks like Canada has agreed not to dig up this carbon

https://twitter.com/i/events/1458571860183064576

 

Beneath Canada’s wilderness is a massive carbon reservoir that’s been accumulating for some 10,000 years – what happens if it’s disturbed? New research reveals what scientists have learned about the scale and distribution of a massive carbon reservoir lying just below the surface in wilderness areas across the country — and what’s at stake for the planet if it’s disturbed

Good morning Liberty. Thank you for another “I (me) personally need to learn more” post. Peat farming has been going on for centuries? To what effect? How many of us, without thought buy/use peat moss. I’m beginning to wonder if our naturally recurring cycles in climate have more to do with natural, perhaps geological, disruptions of these reservoirs…. The planet will force a balance, I hope some of us survive it. As always ….

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Just now, rclab said:

Good morning Liberty. Thank you for another “I (me) personally need to learn more” post. Peat farming has been going on for centuries? To what effect? How many of us, without thought buy/use peat moss. I’m beginning to wonder if our naturally recurring cycles in climate have more to do with natural, perhaps geological, disruptions of these reservoirs…. The planet will force a balance, I hope some of us survive it. As always ….

Thats a good point.  I actually used to buy a lot of peat moss.  Another thing that has a negative impact is leaving pumpkins around after Halloween.  I read that pumpkins release a high amount of methane so we need to smash them so that doesn't happen after we're done with them.

 

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Do any of you actually own solar panels?  The prior owner of my home installed solar in 2013,  I moved in here in 2016.  I have 68 panels on my roof. From 2013-2016, they produced over 22,000 kWh of power.  Now, only 8 years later, I am getting around 17,000 kWh of power per year.  I had an issue late last year, and when the company came out, they told me that my panels and inverter boxes are already outdated.  It took months for them to get the parts they needed to fix it.  With such a huge decrease in efficiency and how outdated things are in just 8 years, I feel that solar on a massive scale would require constant upgrades to keep up with newer tech and also frequent changing out to new panels in order to keep up with the current demand.  That isn't even considering higher demand, which would need more and more panels installed.  They can tell you that panels last 25 years, but it seems like efficiency, at least for their highest output, only lasts maybe 5 years then there is a steady decrease year to year. 

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10 minutes ago, FPizz said:

Do any of you actually own solar panels?  The prior owner of my home installed solar in 2013,  I moved in here in 2016.  I have 68 panels on my roof. From 2013-2016, they produced over 22,000 kWh of power.  Now, only 8 years later, I am getting around 17,000 kWh of power per year.  I had an issue late last year, and when the company came out, they told me that my panels and inverter boxes are already outdated.  It took months for them to get the parts they needed to fix it.  With such a huge decrease in efficiency and how outdated things are in just 8 years, I feel that solar on a massive scale would require constant upgrades to keep up with newer tech and also frequent changing out to new panels in order to keep up with the current demand.  That isn't even considering higher demand, which would need more and more panels installed.  They can tell you that panels last 25 years, but it seems like efficiency, at least for their highest output, only lasts maybe 5 years then there is a steady decrease year to year. 

I'd hope the newer technology would last longer.  It's sort of like LCD panels, I was an early adopter and bought one in 2000 and it only lasted like 3 years lol.  The tech improved and the ones I bought in 2010 are still going strong (knock on wood lol)

I've even read that there is new tech in the works which can have solar panel tech embedded directly into paint!  So basically all you would have to do if you ever needed it to be redone, is just put a new coat of this paint on your house.  That tech is just in early development right now, but it's the kind of thing we could see in the future.

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8 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

they cant claim economic hardship because renewables are price competitive with fossil fuels and dont kill you or destroy the planet

 

Yes... but, they are using that argument against the majority population, where is inscrutably insufficient of measure or mental pedigree to analytically parse and categorize ... a processing that needs to happen in order for the individual ( and the integrals of masses, therefrom ...) to go, "wait a seconds -"

 

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26 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Yes... but, they are using that argument against the majority population, where is inscrutably insufficient of measure or mental pedigree to analytically parse and categorize ... a processing that needs to happen in order for the individual ( and the integrals of masses, therefrom ...) to go, "wait a seconds -"

 

yep, it's basically a form of brainwashing when you hear something enough times you tend to believe it, no matter how irrational it is.

 

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1 hour ago, LibertyBell said:

I'd hope the newer technology would last longer.  It's sort of like LCD panels, I was an early adopter and bought one in 2000 and it only lasted like 3 years lol.  The tech improved and the ones I bought in 2010 are still going strong (knock on wood lol)

I've even read that there is new tech in the works which can have solar panel tech embedded directly into paint!  So basically all you would have to do if you ever needed it to be redone, is just put a new coat of this paint on your house.  That tech is just in early development right now, but it's the kind of thing we could see in the future.

I'm all for it, I'm just a bit skeptical of a massive distribution of it and it actually producing at 100% efficiency for say 25 years.  The rate of decline and efficiency of them concerns me.  Even if they decline 10% over the first 10 years (which I actually think it would be higher), that is a massive loss of power which the only way to keep up with that loss is to incorporate more or replace them with new ones.  I think the cost is going to be much higher than expected.  

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3 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

Thats a good point.  I actually used to buy a lot of peat moss.  Another thing that has a negative impact is leaving pumpkins around after Halloween.  I read that pumpkins release a high amount of methane so we need to smash them so that doesn't happen after we're done with them.

 

Wouldn't the pumpkins release the methane faster (but the same total in the end) when smashed?   more surface area upon which the decay can get started.
Related, a bit because it's organic material, to peat moss mining - check out all the "What do you do with all the leaves?" posts on the New England subforum.  All those nutrients and organic matter freely available but getting blown into the woods where their main function is to make it hard for young trees to seed in, or riding to the landfill in plastic bags.

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1 hour ago, tamarack said:

Wouldn't the pumpkins release the methane faster (but the same total in the end) when smashed?   more surface area upon which the decay can get started.
Related, a bit because it's organic material, to peat moss mining - check out all the "What do you do with all the leaves?" posts on the New England subforum.  All those nutrients and organic matter freely available but getting blown into the woods where their main function is to make it hard for young trees to seed in, or riding to the landfill in plastic bags.

No because they are turned into compost:

https://www.westsuburbanliving.net/perspectives/smash-don-t-trash/article_32053aec-1626-11eb-882e-eb78ef440ff2.html

 

Smashing pumpkins is neither just the name of a band or just for quirky enjoyment — these squashes are being squashed for a serious reason. When millions of pounds of post-Halloween pumpkins land in landfills nationwide, they release harmful methane gas. But thanks to SCARCE, in the past six years about 380 tons of pumpkins have instead been composted.

“This is an opportunity to reduce our impact on climate change,’ notes McKeen,

particularly since Illinois is the number one producer of the orange gourds nationwide. 

Pumpkins are largely comprised of water, which can leech methane gas into landfills and then to rivers and streams. On the other hand, composted pumpkins create a positive result: they improve soil for planting.

 

“Pumpkins are in the top 50 most nutrient-rich vegetables in the world. When they’re composted into the soil, you don’t need as many synthetic herbicides or fertilizers that flow into our streams,” says McKeen. “It’s a win, win, win, win, win.” 

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1 hour ago, tamarack said:

Wouldn't the pumpkins release the methane faster (but the same total in the end) when smashed?   more surface area upon which the decay can get started.
Related, a bit because it's organic material, to peat moss mining - check out all the "What do you do with all the leaves?" posts on the New England subforum.  All those nutrients and organic matter freely available but getting blown into the woods where their main function is to make it hard for young trees to seed in, or riding to the landfill in plastic bags.

Seeing how we're now getting research showing how microplastics could be a major health issue the less we use plastic bags the better.

 

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21 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

yep, it's basically a form of brainwashing when you hear something enough times you tend to believe it, no matter how irrational it is.

 

Yeeeah ... the 'mental conditioning' you're mentioning is more after the fact, though - a subsequent consideration, sure.  To mold the minds of ...shall we say,  lesser orders, doesn't exactly take a "Clockwork Orange" classic. I was speaking to the dilemma of unequal intellectual ownership. Getting into the why? That [ probably/actually] requires a whole 'nother multi-disciplined approach - LOL.  But among a myriad of consequences, manipulation is certainly one of those. 

I mean it's a fuzzy distribution out there where sociological constraints both positively and negatively re-enforce biology of I.Q. - in both directions, too.   Good luck... 

Causes aside, at any given scalar point in time, civility is comprised of "intelligence-variance" that is vast.  I described this the other day ? The distinction between dolphin to dolphin, and chimp to chimp, are there ... but tend to be nuanced. Whereas in humans those differences are hugely demonstrative.  The distribution is not ubiquitous, and when smaller segments out-wit the whole of any system... that comes with decidedly more serious consequences - particularly when [tongue in cheek] "moral flexibility" is far in way more ubiquitous in human nature than adherence to any doctrine in that matter.  If one thinks otherwise, they are in the "lesser order"  

We could get into the philosophy of 'what is intelligence,' too.  Heh, burn incense over it. But keeping it simple: most cannot, will not, or are natively just not capable of neuroplasticizing their way to the likes of Mozart, a shimmering genius [ likely ] inept in the company of Einstein. Neither of whom were very interested in being "Jack The Ripper" ...And sometimes in between these extremes, there are those that painted frescoes, and wrote about the soul.  Meanwhile, "densely" packed in between the gaps of these rarer examples? - the toiling quagmire of everyone else, where perceptions of urgency and needs turns the Globe.  

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7 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Yeeeah ... the 'mental conditioning' you're mentioning is more after the fact, though - a subsequent consideration, sure.  To mold the minds of ...shall we say,  lesser orders, doesn't exactly take a "Clockwork Orange" classic. I was speaking to the dilemma of unequal intellectual ownership. Getting into the why? That [ probably/actually] requires a whole 'nother multi-disciplined approach - LOL.  But among a myriad of consequences, manipulation is certainly one of those. 

I mean it's a fuzzy distribution out there where sociological constraints both positively and negatively re-enforce biology of I.Q. - in both directions, too.   Good luck... 

Causes aside, at any given scalar point in time, civility is comprised of "intelligence-variance" that is vast.  I described this the other day ? The distinction between dolphin to dolphin, and chimp to chimp, are there ... but tend to be nuanced. Whereas in humans those differences are hugely demonstrative.  The distribution is not ubiquitous, and when smaller segments out-wit the whole of any system... that comes with decidedly more serious consequences - particularly when [tongue in cheek] "moral flexibility" is far in way more ubiquitous in human nature than adherence to any doctrine in that matter.  If one thinks otherwise, they are in the "lesser order"  

We could get into the philosophy of 'what is intelligence,' too.  Heh, burn incense over it. But keeping it simple: most cannot, will not, or are natively just not capable of neuroplasticizing their way to the likes of Mozart, a shimmering genius [ likely ] inept in the company of Einstein. Neither of whom were very interested in being "Jack The Ripper" ...And sometimes in between these extremes, there are those that painted frescoes, and wrote about the soul.  Meanwhile, "densely" packed in between the gaps of these rarer examples? - the toiling quagmire of everyone else, where perceptions of urgency and needs turns the Globe.  

I've always wondered the same about humanity.  Is a human much more likely to become a serial killer, for example, because with our complex minds with so many interacting parts, there is much more that can go wrong?  That also makes me wonder if there is a physical cap on how much evolution can do beyond which intelligence actually becomes a handicap and a barrier to further evolution.  

Mozart and Einstein are amazing, but we have some people even today who don't get enough attention for the magnificent things they do.  I introduce you to this little girl, who creates new universes in her own mind and describes them through the world of music!

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alma-deutscher-60-minutes-the-prodigy-whose-first-language-is-mozart-2019-08-11/

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alma-deutscher-watch-a-prodigy-create-from-four-notes-in-a-hat-60-minutes-2019-08-11/

 

Isn't she absolutely amazing, John?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma_Deutscher

 

Alma Elizabeth Deutscher (born 19 February 2005) is a British composer, pianist and violinist. Deutscher composed her first piano sonata at the age of five. At seven, she completed a short opera The Sweeper of Dreams. Aged nine, she wrote a concerto for violin and orchestra. At the age of ten, she wrote her first full-length opera, Cinderella, which had its European premiere in Vienna in 2016 under the patronage of conductor Zubin Mehta. The U.S. premiere a year later at Opera San Jose[1] was released on DVD by Sony Classical. Deutscher’s piano concerto was performed when she was 12. She made her debut at Carnegie Hall in 2019.

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So we have both the good and bad of complex creative minds.  When does it reach the point where the bad outweighs the good and evolution randomly charts a different path for us?  How common is this in the universe/multiverse? hmmmm.

and what you mentioned about the unequal distribution of intellectual "property" for lack of a better word, is why I sometimes question the value of democracy in the face of existential threats.

 

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Excellent article right here

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/14/cop26-last-hope-survival-climate-civil-disobedience

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/14/cop26-last-hope-survival-climate-civil-disobedience

 

So does this mean we might as well give up? It does not. For just as the complex natural systems on which our lives depend can flip suddenly from one state to another, so can the systems that humans have created. Our social and economic structures share characteristics with the Earth systems on which we depend. They have self-reinforcing properties – that stabilise them within a particular range of stress, but destabilise them when external pressure becomes too great. Like natural systems, if they are driven past their tipping points, they can flip with astonishing speed. Our last, best hope is to use those dynamics to our advantage, triggering what scientists call “cascading regime shifts”. Cop26: deadline for agreeing crucial climate deal passes but negotiations set to continue – as it happened Read more A fascinating paper published in January in the journal Climate Policy showed how we could harness the power of “domino dynamics”: non-linear change, proliferating from one part of the system to another. It points out that “cause and effect need not be proportionate”, a small disturbance, in the right place, can trigger a massive response from a system and flip it into a new state. This is how the global financial crisis of 2008-09 happened: a relatively minor shock (mortgage defaults in the US) was transmitted and amplified through the entire system, almost bringing it down. We could use this property to detonate positive change.

 

It is not hard to envisage a low-carbon economy in which everything else falls apart. The end of fossil fuels will not, by itself, prevent the extinction crisis, the deforestation crisis, the soils crisis, the freshwater crisis, the consumption crisis, the waste crisis; the crisis of smashing and grabbing, accumulating and discarding that will destroy our prospects and much of the rest of life on Earth. So we also need to use the properties of complex systems to trigger another shift: political change. ‘Green growth’ doesn’t exist – less of everything is the only way to avert catastrophe George Monbiot George Monbiot Read more There’s an aspect of human nature that is simultaneously terrible and hopeful: most people side with the status quo, whatever it may be. A critical threshold is reached when a certain proportion of the population change their views. Other people sense that the wind has changed, and tack around to catch it. There are plenty of tipping points in recent history: the remarkably swift reduction in smoking; the rapid shift, in nations such as the UK and Ireland, away from homophobia; the #MeTooMeToo_v3.png movement, which, in a matter of weeks, greatly reduced the social tolerance of sexual abuse and everyday sexism. But where does the tipping point lie? Researchers whose work was published in Science in 2018 discovered that a critical threshold was passed when the size of a committed minority reached roughly 25% of the population. At this point, social conventions suddenly flip. Between 72% and 100% of the people in the experiments swung round, destroying apparently stable social norms. As the paper notes, a large body of work suggests that “the power of small groups comes not from their authority or wealth, but from their commitment to the cause”. Advertisement Another paper explored the possibility that the Fridays for Future climate protests could trigger this kind of domino dynamics. It showed how, in 2019, Greta Thunberg’s school strike snowballed into a movement that led to unprecedented electoral results for Green parties in several European nations. Survey data revealed a sharp change of attitudes, as people began to prioritise the environmental crisis. Fridays for Future came close, the researchers suggest, to pushing the European political system into a “critical state”. It was interrupted by the pandemic, and the tipping has not yet happened. But witnessing the power, the organisation and the fury of the movements gathered in Glasgow, I suspect the momentum is building again. Social convention, which has for so long worked against us, can if flipped become our greatest source of power, normalising what now seems radical and weird. If we can simultaneously trigger a cascading regime shift in both technology and politics, we might stand a chance. It sounds like a wild hope. But we have no choice. Our survival depends on raising the scale of civil disobedience until we build the greatest mass movement in history, mobilising the 25% who can flip the system. We do not consent to the destruction of life on Earth.
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8 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

Goes along with my thinking, overpopulation is one of the largest problems humans face and we need to keep it at 10 billion or under

 

https://www.livescience.com/16493-people-planet-earth-support.html

Japan, whose population is falling,  has been the precursor country for all of the industrialized world, in Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Their populations too are aging, with way below replacement birth rates. China and increasingly India are on the same trajectory

Overpopulation is getting to be a regional issue, mostly in Muslim communities.

 

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3 hours ago, etudiant said:

Japan, whose population is falling,  has been the precursor country for all of the industrialized world, in Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Their populations too are aging, with way below replacement birth rates. China and increasingly India are on the same trajectory

Overpopulation is getting to be a regional issue, mostly in Muslim communities.

 

Yep with higher education rates the birth rate drops....based on UN estimates population will stabilize around 10 billion by 2050

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18 hours ago, jconsor said:

 

N/A has exhibited a warming but also offsets that have been asynchronous with the Global signal ... with cold loading specifics off the NE Pac circulation mode that is favoring mid latitudes over the continent; it is 'intuitive' to see why those regions 'might' have a cool bias relative to the whole planet..

Not sure what the total conversation facet was that led to the above exchange - or if these counterpoints were taken out of a bigger context... etc.  But, I have noted in the past that since 2000 and looking at the monthly publications from NASA et al and climate watch, N/A cool pools relative to the whole have occurred some 2/3rds of the months - it's probably related to that ...  interesting -

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