Is Global Warming becoming unstoppable?

[basilio]

@basilio my guess is people are going to be in for a shock, I may be wrong but reading all the information I can on what Australia is doing, I think we are a lot further down the track than people are being told or realise.
Time will tell.
With regard the elderly lady in the photo, good on her, she certainly is getting a better response, than the girl burning a pram IMO. Or the old bloke the other day, spray painting graffiti, that tax payers are going to have to pay for the removal.

Did you read the rest of the story SP ? Cause if you did..

 

[basilio]

This analysis gives an excellent picture of what we need to do collectively if we are going to minimise the effects of global heating.

The IPCC report is a massive alert that the time for climate action is nearly gone, but crucially not gone yet​

Greg Jericho

Australia cannot afford another election campaign that views the science of climate change as something we can ignore

An aerial view of cattle on a dry paddock in drought-hit Quirindi in NSW, in 2018. The IPCC report noted that with a 2C rise, extreme temperature events would increase in occurrence. Photograph: Glenn Nicholls/AFP/Getty Images
Thu 12 Aug 2021 13.09 AEST
Last modified on Thu 12 Aug 2021 13.24 AEST

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...arly-gone-but-crucially-not-gone-yet#comments
21
The latest IPCC report released on Monday essentially lets the world know just how big a hole it has gotten itself into. The good thing is it also lets us all know how we can get out. The problem of course is that when you are in a hole, the first thing you have to do is stop digging.

Lest there still be any misunderstanding – whether it be through ignorance or due to listening to those in the media and politics who seek to mislead – the climate right now is warmer than it has been in modern human history.

The latest IPCC report makes is clear that annual temperatures now are warmer than they were during “the warmest multi-century period in at least the last 100,000 years”. That period stretches back to a time when homo sapiens were still able to bump into neanderthals and wonder who would go extinct first.
If we look at the common era of the past 2020 years, the temperature now is almost 1 degree warmer than it ever has been in that duration:

Click here if you cannot view the graph
And I’m sorry to say, the cause isn’t sunspots, or movements of the planet or wiggles in the space-time continuum.
Nope, the reason the world is warmer now is people:

Click here if you cannot view the graph

 

[basilio]

Excellent story on the directions we need to take to obtain future metals.

Where and how will we get the metals to feed our future technology needs?​

ABC Science
/
By environment reporter Nick Kilvert
Posted 8h ago8 hours ago, updated 5h ago5 hours ago

The US has ramped up investment in wind energy to meet its emissions goals.(
Supplied: Blue Economy CRC
)
Sh

If you had a tonne of ore from a gold mine, and a tonne of iPhones, which is likely to contain more gold? What about silver?

You've probably guessed the reason for the question is that the answer is surprising. And yes, in both cases, it's the devices that are a richer source of the precious metals.

In fact, the metals for all Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic medals came from recycled e-waste.
Over two years, the organisers gathered enough gold, silver and bronze from small electronic devices to make the almost 5,000 medals awarded to the athletes.

And it's not just our computers and phones.

Everything from electric cars to wind turbines and solar panels — things we need to transition the world to net-zero emissions — require an array of metals, like silver, palladium, platinum, copper, aluminium and rare-earths, such as neodymium.
So where will we get them from? Will we have enough? And what role can recycling and reuse play in ensuring we can supply our technology needs into the future?

Rare metals needed to fuel our high-tech future are in our hands right now

Transitioning the world to clean energy is going to require a huge amount of different types of metals. But do we have enough, where will we get them from, and what impact will that have on the environment?

www.abc.net.au

 

[sptrawler]

Did you read the rest of the story SP ? Cause if you did..

Yes I did, apologies if I've taken awhile responding, grandad duties.
The issue of climate change is huge and every intelligent person knows it, to think that politicians don't, is arrogance on people's part IMO.
The reality is, if an unstructured, unplanned charge to zero emissions causes a breakdown in society or mass failures in any of our systems, be they dealing with effluent, water, electricity, hospitals or any other essential service, our society will descend into anarchy very quickly.
People using social disobedience, to push an agenda that is already acknowledged, do nothing to further the cause IMO.
They IMO are using a cause as an excuse to behave badly, I would expect when this issue runs it's course, the very same people will be chaining themselves to bulldozers, that are trying to build the dams for pumped storage.
Just my opinion.

 

[rederob]

The reality is, if an unstructured, unplanned charge to zero emissions causes a breakdown in society or mass failures in any of our systems, be they dealing with effluent, water, electricity, hospitals or any other essential service, our society will descend into anarchy very quickly.

Your comment ignores REALITY.
The writing has been on the wall for a very long time.
Bipartisan agreement years back put a price on carbon and our CO2 levels dropped appreciably. Our economy and services ran like clockwork, and our society was not impacted.
We are over 18 months into a pandemic and our economy is still ok, with our stock market at record highs. Lockdowns have not broken the fabric of society and all our essential services are running fine. Your idea has zero foundation.
Morrison poured $hundreds of billions into a pandemic response and SFA into addressing climate change.

People using social disobedience, to push an agenda that is already acknowledged, do nothing to further the cause IMO.

As @basilio's link pointed out, they say they hear our concerns but continue to pay lip service. What has to happen for them to act?

They IMO are using a cause as an excuse to behave badly, I would expect when this issue runs it's course, the very same people will be chaining themselves to bulldozers, that are trying to build the dams for pumped storage.

I think you have that back to front. Government has behaved appallingly, yet they claim to understand what is happening. It is reprehensible that they do nothing, and are hypocrites of the highest order.

 

[sptrawler]

As I always say, time will tell.
It was only 10 years ago Australia was producing solar panels, now we have the very same people who let them shut down the manufacturing, complaining we should be making them here.
The same people bemoaned the closing of the car industry, yet put the wheels in motion that brought about its demise.
Life is full of pessimists, yet life goes on, then the pessimists find the next issue to be pessimistic about.
One day the pessimists will be right, that is the law of averages.
I on the other hand am optimistic that Canberra is actually aware of the issues and is addressing it in an orderly manner, I'm not that worried that they aren't on the media every day giving yet another pointless announcement, just so they can keep speech writers and journalists employed. ?
There is only one or two that don't accept reality IMO, but have endless amount of energy to try and convince all and sundry, that they alone know the "truth", on almost all issues.

 

[Smurf1976]

An interesting article on clothing, the part that caught my attention other than the mountain of clothes in Africa, was the statistics on clothing.

That is one area where the power really is in the hands of consumers.

Just don't buy clothing that falls apart after being worn twice and don't throw away perfectly good stuff.

That doesn't need government to legislate, it doesn't need something to be invented and it doesn't need extensive infrastructure built. The power's firmly in the hands of consumers to reject this stuff.

 

[sptrawler]

That is one area where the power really is in the hands of consumers.

Just don't buy clothing that falls apart after being worn twice and don't throw away perfectly good stuff.

That doesn't need government to legislate, it doesn't need something to be invented and it doesn't need extensive infrastructure built. The power's firmly in the hands of consumers to reject this stuff.

The sad part it doesnt fit the rhetoric, the whole issue is the Govmnts fault, those who are doing the complaining dont want to change their consumerism habits, they just want the Govnmt to make it carbon neutral.lol
Absolute Fwits.
If I was the Govmnt, Id say fine we will shut down all coal generation by 2030.
So now we want firm commitment of 40Gw of renewables by 2025 and 60Gw of storage by 2027.
Then let the media run with it, trying to reason with them isnt working, so give them what they want, a dose of reality.
Easy really.

 

[sptrawler]

Comes down to what the objective is.

Neither Europe nor the USA are presently planning to go fully renewable. They're planning to go more renewable but they're not doing it so that it scales to 100%.

Hence the massive new investment in natural gas supply to Europe, the ramping up of gas in the US and so on. Nord Stream 2, with the capacity to supply an additional 55 billion cubic metres of gas annually, isn't being built without confidence that the future involves more gas not less.

Where the likes of Snowy 2.0 comes in is if, hypothetically, we wanted to go 100% renewable.

Here's a full year's worth of wind and solar generation for Victoria:

View attachment 128886

Look closely at the winter months and note that, assuming a shift from fossil fuels to electricity for heating, that's the time when consumption will be highest.

Doing that without bulk storage in some form, storage that can be discharged on multiple consecutive days without recharging, and some serious interstate transmission capacity is hugely problematic. Not impossible but it would take massive overbuilding to get those very low days' production up to match demand, noting that demand is set to rise not fall as the direct use of fossil fuels shifts to electricity.

What happened there at the beginning of July isn't a freak occurrence, there's been at least one equivalent scenario each year for as long as we've had significant wind and solar in the grid so it's likely to keep happening. For that matter look closely at June this year, or late April 2021, October 2020 or August 2020 and it's much the same. Multiple consecutive days of very poor wind and solar yield.

The EU and USA solution to that problem is to burn natural gas. That being Russian natural gas in the EU's case hence the politics with the US around it.

Those advocating Snowy 2.0 and similar projects are essentially advocating the use of stored renewable energy to fill those gaps rather than using gas.

Personally I'm firmly in the latter camp that going fully renewable is what we ought to be doing but I'm also well aware it won't actually happen, at least not within my lifetime. In practice it looks like we'll build as much bulk storage as the political process can deliver and fill the rest with open cycle gas turbines and perhaps a few large internal combustion plants running on a mix of local natural gas, imported LNG and diesel.

That's what the private players with $ billions are backing and realistically they're not likely to blow their money, gas isn't going away anytime soon.

My own view for the record could be summarised as:

Do not build new fossil fuel power generating capacity.

Electrify everything in an orderly manner. Eg I'm not suggesting we ban petrol cars but let's get new ones to be electric ASAP, thus bringing an orderly demise of petrol. Same concept with everything where technology permits the adoption of an electrically powered solution.

Don't put renewable energy infrastructure in places where it's going to harm endangered species or destroy unique environments etc. The principle being to avoid impacts of significance that can't be reversed at a later time.

If the land involved is generic and of no unique value and/or if the impact is readily reversible then quite simply we have to accept that some environmental impact from building renewable energy infrastructure is unavoidable, we can't say no to everything, and just get on and build it for the greater good. If society a century from now needs to dismantle some by then obsolete infrastructure and plant some common trees or grasses on the land in order to return it to natural condition well that's a pretty minor problem for us to be handing them versus cooking the planet.

Acknowledged that others will have different priorities but my own view is firmly that the need to reduce emissions is more important than any other impact if it's reversible. Only if the other impact is irreversible, for example nuclear waste or impacts on endangered species, is there anything to debate in my personal view.

I liked your post smurf as we seem to be always on the same page, and I agree with you.
But I know my other half would freak if she thought it was ok to to cover thousands of square klm to facilitate humans indulging themselves, at the cost of habitat of creatures that will die, so we can indulge.lol
Walking the knife edge is difficult, everyone wants a clean country, everyone wants their luxuries, everyone wants their mobile phone, everyone wants their 65" tv, everyone wants to be able to turn a light on at the flick of a switch.
They just want it to be clean, cheap and not cause any dramas.lol
IMO just do it, if it puts the price of electricity up to $4/kwhr so be it, suck it up princess.
Smurf you and I are smart enough to get off grid.lol Or at least become cost neutral.
The other thing would be businesses wouldnt be able to afford their electricity, big business would move to low energy cost countries, but we could sit back with a satisfied look on our faces.lol

 

[sptrawler]

I think it is time for me to to sign off, till after the election. Sayonara

 

[rederob]

As I always say, time will tell.

That boat well and truly sailed with the 2013 IPCC Report, while the four before it outlining what was likely to happen.
So 8 years later you think we don't already know?

It was only 10 years ago Australia was producing solar panels, now we have the very same people who let them shut down the manufacturing, complaining we should be making them here.

Not relevant.

The same people bemoaned the closing of the car industry, yet put the wheels in motion that brought about its demise.

Not relevant.

Life is full of pessimists, yet life goes on, then the pessimists find the next issue to be pessimistic about.

Perhaps you need a reality check because the bush fires and catastrophic flooding in the northern hemisphere taking place over recent months make it obvious that our planet's climate is out of whack.

One day the pessimists will be right, that is the law of averages.

Sorry, you keep missing the boat.

I on the other hand am optimistic that Canberra is actually aware of the issues and is addressing it in an orderly manner,

You can show us how they are doing this, can you?

There is only one or two that don't accept reality IMO, but have endless amount of energy to try and convince all and sundry, that they alone know the "truth", on almost all issues.

Are you hiding in a bunker?

There is a moot question about who is responsible. Those who did nothing or those who enabled them?

 

[rederob]

That is one area where the power really is in the hands of consumers.

Just don't buy clothing that falls apart after being worn twice and don't throw away perfectly good stuff.

That doesn't need government to legislate, it doesn't need something to be invented and it doesn't need extensive infrastructure built. The power's firmly in the hands of consumers to reject this stuff.

That line of argument does not work in a consumer driven world and never has.
Moreover, there is absolutely nothing wrong with giving to charity clothes that can be recycled into rags, or perfectly good clothes that can end up in op shops.
That said, we no longer drop of at charity bins as some were associated with scams. Our local op shop sorts what's dropped off and dumps what's no good (and it goes direct to our nearest landfill).

 

[IFocus]

This surprisingly pretty much nails it SP look away

The Project Exclusives - Network Ten

ten play

10play.com.au

 

[rederob]

This surprisingly pretty much nails it SP look away

The Project Exclusives - Network Ten

ten play

10play.com.au

Morrison wants to blame developing nations for the problem because they are increasing CO2 emissions.
He forgets that if Australia had China's population then our CO2 emissions would be more than twice that of China. The concept of equality eludes him.
Blaming China has been de riguer of late, but when you look at the data it turns out that China has been a stand-out in relation to continued comparative improvement of global performance on emissions.
This chart maps energy intensity (total energy consumption per unit of GDP) changes over the past 30 years for Australia, USA, UK and China:

An important subset to consider is the energy intensity of production. Although China has increasingly become the factory for the rest of the world, its per capita consumption of energy is comparatively low. In the USA for example the most recent data I could find showed less than 20% of its energy went into manufacturing, construction and mining related industries, compared to over 57% in China. If we compared China and Australia at that time, our per capita CO2 emissions were over twice that of China although China was devoting twice as much energy to production.

 

[basilio]

This is a game breaker. If the Gulf Stream fails the worlds climate will just go haywire within a few years.

Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse

A shutdown would have devastating global impacts and must not be allowed to happen, researchers say

www.theguardian.com

The Gulf Stream is at risk of collapse. If it does, the global results would be catastrophic

You've heard of the invisible hand of the market, the supposedly unseen force that drives an economy. Well, meet the unseen hand of the weather: the Gulf Stream. The powerful current that runs through the Atlantic Ocean helps to regulate…

www.mic.com

 

[basilio]

Excellent overview of the main points of the IPCC Sixth assessment . As usual very measured.

 

[Joules MM1]

largest water dam that supplies fresh water to 25MM people declares "official water shortage"

..after 22 year drought, huh?

U.S. declares first Western reservoir water shortage, triggering cuts

U.S. officials for the first time on Monday declared an official water shortage for the massive Lake Mead reservoir, triggering supply cuts to parts of the drought-stricken Southwest, as 10 Western governors appealed for federal drought disaster aid.

www.reuters.com

 

[Joules MM1]

July was the hottest month on Earth since record-keeping began 141 years ago, and June was the hottest month on record in the continental U.S., according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This was the third time in less than a decade, and the latest date in the year on record, that the National Science Foundation’s Summit Station had above-freezing temperatures and wet snow.

There is no previous record of rainfall at this location, which reaches 3,216 meters (10,551 feet) in elevation, said the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the first to report the findings.

Scientists said the temperatures increased starting at 5 a.m. local time on Aug. 14 when warm air and moisture came from the south. Rain was observed for the next several hours.

The Summit Station, which was first established in 1989 as a drill site, is the only high-altitude and high-latitude inland year‐round observation station in the Arctic. According to the station's website, it sits at the top of the Greenland ice sheet and is over 400 kilometers from the nearest point of land. https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/rainfall-greenlands-ice-sheet-summit-first-time-record

 

[sptrawler]

The W.A Government dipping their toe into wave energy again, hopefully something comes of this one.

WA commits $1.5m to wave energy study off south coast

The possibility of harnessing the power of WA's rugged coastline for wave energy will be explored in the latest chapter of energy investment off Albany.

www.abc.net.au

The last venture

Taxpayers wave goodbye to $2.6 million as troubled WA energy project scrapped

The WA Government cancels a $16 million deal with Carnegie Clean Energy for a wave farm off the state's south coast amid growing uncertainty about the company's future, but denies it has broken a key election promise.

www.abc.net.au

 

[Investoradam]

Excellent story on the directions we need to take to obtain future metals.

Where and how will we get the metals to feed our future technology needs?​

ABC Science
/
By environment reporter Nick Kilvert
Posted 8h ago8 hours ago, updated 5h ago5 hours ago
View attachment 128905
The US has ramped up investment in wind energy to meet its emissions goals.(
Supplied: Blue Economy CRC
)
Sh

If you had a tonne of ore from a gold mine, and a tonne of iPhones, which is likely to contain more gold? What about silver?

You've probably guessed the reason for the question is that the answer is surprising. And yes, in both cases, it's the devices that are a richer source of the precious metals.

In fact, the metals for all Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic medals came from recycled e-waste.
Over two years, the organisers gathered enough gold, silver and bronze from small electronic devices to make the almost 5,000 medals awarded to the athletes.

And it's not just our computers and phones.

Everything from electric cars to wind turbines and solar panels — things we need to transition the world to net-zero emissions — require an array of metals, like silver, palladium, platinum, copper, aluminium and rare-earths, such as neodymium.
So where will we get them from? Will we have enough? And what role can recycling and reuse play in ensuring we can supply our technology needs into the future?

Rare metals needed to fuel our high-tech future are in our hands right now

Transitioning the world to clean energy is going to require a huge amount of different types of metals. But do we have enough, where will we get them from, and what impact will that have on the environment?

www.abc.net.au

The abc peddling the propaganda for the large corporations. I mean nothing speaks clean aboutdigging endless toxic products out of the ground to make something to ineffective at a wind mill.