Green Group discussion

Microsoft has a news feed, which I have never looked at but I am sure others do. They collect news stories from other organisations and republish, paying for content. They had AP (Associated Press) journalists to do this work and now those journalists are being sacked and replaced by AI.

"One staff member who worked on the team said: “I spend all my time reading about how automation and AI is going to take all our jobs, and here I am – AI has taken my job.”

The individual added that the decision to replace humans with software was risky, as the existing staff were careful to stick to “very strict editorial guidelines” which ensured that users were not presented with violent or inappropriate content when opening their browser, of particular importance for younger users."

"Manual curation of news stories also ensured that headlines were clear and appropriate for the format, while encouraging a spread of political opinions and avoiding untrustworthy stories, while highlighting interesting articles from smaller outlets."

From now on, will AI put climate change on top or a celebrity party?


https://www.irishtimes.com/business/t.....

It will be very interesting to see what happens.

Encouraging a spread of political opinions and highlighting interesting articles from smaller outlets could also promote untrustworthy stories.

Not only can the stories and articles change but the audience who is reading the stories and articles can change. The results could be shown to people not even interested in climate change.

Last fall google changed their algorithm to promote original sources over material that was apparently simply being recirculated. The result was that the book site, smashwords.com, that I distribute my books on for free all year round went from the top of the first page of search results to 5 or 6 pages back or even further back. Amazon and google stayed on the first page. As the weeks went by the site gradually moved back towards the bottom of the first 2 or 3 pages. After a few months it was back on the first page of search results.

This is a major site for indie authors to publish and distribute their books. There are half a million books on it. It competes against amazon and offers a good alternative to amazon. The people seeing the search results for my books in the old google algorithm were downloading them at the rate of 2 to 5 a day. After the change, the results being seen by the group of searchers is resulting in the download rate of 10 to 12 free downloads per month.

This has remained constant. It is almost as if the people seeing the search results were people who don't download free eco science fiction books that don't glorify the human perspective. [All that I can lay my hands on, is mine to take and do with it as I please]. Maybe it is only ushering in people who aren't interested in downloading anything but mainstream topic books in the first place, such as romance or hero oriented stories.

Or maybe only mainstream authors, with indie authors taking a back seat as their work is not considered to be "original material", whatever that is, just as the whole smashwords web site was originally given a back seat to amazon and google.

I wasn't aware of this effect Robert. Maybe you could report this in the authors thread, and other authors could discuss it there?
I take your point that stories about climate change may come from many sources - I tend to trust the ones from colleges, NASA and so on.

NASA tells us the results from GRACE about the shift of mass as ice melts in glaciers and ice caps.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.ph...

One has to wonder how the shifting mass of water effects faults in the Earth's crust responsible for or able to produce earthquakes.

Well, the majority of the water is always going to be in the oceans. Certainly isostatic rebound happens because the weight of ice lifts. The land under it rises so is free to move if there happens to be a fault, volcano or other issue buried and lurking.

One of the features of on rushing severe weather storm fronts that had been muted over the last few years was the appearance of a very noticeable bow wave at the front of a very fast moving storm front. They are called Derechos. The outward extending bow wave was created by the fastest winds being located in the center of the front wave of severe weather.

With the storms getting bigger the increased energy was dispersing along the entire front line of the sever weather, thus blunting the bow wave formation. This resulted in a storm front speeding through at a general speed of 50 to 60 miles per hour all along the front line.

Today there is a fast approaching severe storm front. The length of the front wave is much shorter than the usual long strung out front line. The severe weather line is approaching at a speed of 80 to 90 miles per hour in the center of the lower half of the front line, which is bowing outward.

The upper half of the storm front is approaching at a much slower rate. The lower half of the line is overloaded with lightning strikes, the upper half is absent of any noticeable lightning activity.

The font line was two hundred and forty miles long, with winds hitting 90 mph in the center of the line. Half a million people had their electric power extinguished in 2 hours. It then went on out into the ocean.

I feel like Cassandra again. The CO2 level in the atmosphere reached 417.1. This is alarming. It requires drastic action.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weathe...

I am beginning to think that when global concerns are only practiced within strict country boundary lines, what ever is trying to be accomplished, isn't going to happen. Probably the next stop in this twilight zone is Fahrenheit 451.

No question it needs to be global. Personally, I feel it includes rich and poor, no matter how unfair that is.

The Guardian tells us of a report.

"according to financial thinktank Carbon Tracker"

"The report predicts a 2% decline in demand for fossil fuels every year could cause the future profits of oil, gas and coal companies to collapse from an estimated $39tn to just $14tn.

It warns that a blow to fossil fuel companies could send shockwaves through the global economy because their market value makes up a quarter of the world’s equity markets and they owe trillions of dollars to the world’s banks.

Kingsmill Bond, the author of the report, said: “Now is the time to plan an orderly wind-down of fossil fuel assets and manage the impact on the global economy rather than try to sustain the unsustainable.”

The report says the world is “witnessing the decline and fall of the fossil fuel system” owing to the quicker-than-expected growth of clean energy alternatives coupled with the collapse in demand for fossil fuels amid the pandemic."

https://www.theguardian.com/business/...

Two extraordinary films of landslides in Norwegian fjords. Houses, caravans, trees, roads - slump and slide into the sea. Then the houses, being wood, float for a bit.

The second video which is an earlier occasion is more dramatic because the cameraperson has actually gone to investigate an early landslide - and probably to check if anyone is in danger. They run back and show us the rest.

https://gizmodo.com/surreal-landslide...

We don't get a definitive answer as to whether this is caused by permafrost melting. But the clay doesn't look like it's a frozen block of ice.

"Writing in the AGU’s Landslide Blog, University of Sheffield geologist Dave Petley described the incident as a quick clay landslide.

“Quick clays are glaciomarine materials that have strange properties,” wrote Petley. “When disturbed they are very weak—indeed their behaviour is similar to that of a fluid. But undisturbed they are much stronger, primarily because of the role of salt, which glues the particle structure together. When this structure is disturbed, the quick clay rapidly weakens, allowing these spectacular landslides to form.”

During the initial stage, “the landslide appears to have occurred as a coherent raft,” added Petley."

Even though we are 8 billion strong, counting feet, not taking into account ideological differences, we seem to be herded along a path not of our own choices.

We are experiencing pressure from the increasingly antagonistic weather to change the way we do things, which we are changing regardless of why it is happening.

If the Natural World's biodiversity benefits in a positive way from the spread of covid 19, will/can the Natural World naturally produce similar products to boost its positive balance sheet?

Will the financial industry abandon their carte blanche support of the petroleum industry and instead take possession of something they already own in the first place as a way of protecting their own interests?

Groups which campaign against fossil fuel companies have been extensively targeted by hackers for hire, according to a new report. This article mentions the ExxonKnew campaign which highlights the way that Exxon had information relating to climate change caused by fossil fuel use, but hid it for years.
Thanks to Canadian digital watchdog group Citizen Lab for their work.

https://www.ecowatch.com/computer-hac...

US could be running on 90% carbon-free power by as early as 2035. I have to ask you - why not?

https://www.ecowatch.com/clean-energy...

Here is the report from the University of Berkeley.

https://www.2035report.com/

They say:
"Most studies aim for deep decarbonization of electric power systems by 2050, but this report is the first to show we can get there in half that time with the latest renewable energy and battery cost data.

The United States can achieve 90% clean, carbon-free electricity nationwide by 2035, dependably, at no extra cost to consumers, and without new fossil fuel plants. But without robust policy reforms, most of the potential to reduce emissions and increase jobs will be lost.

On the path to 90% over the next 15 years, we can inject $1.7 trillion into the economy, support a net increase of more than half a million energy sector jobs each year, and reduce economy-wide emissions by 27%. This future also retires all existing coal plants by 2035, reduces natural gas generation by 70%, and prevents up to 85,000 premature deaths by 2050."

The NYT gives us a simple and dramatic graph showing the drop in carbon emissions by major countries, due to lockdown. And how the emissions are rebounding, because people still drive the same cars and run the same factories.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...

And people are doing this with joy on their collective faces because we are finally getting back to "normal." They still have not learned that normal was a failure. Normal brought us to this point.

Don't be fooled by the trick of using the lack of direct evidence of the transmission of animal viruses to people to prove that it isn't happening. The idea that if something can't be proved to human beings, then it isn't happening, is based on ignorance, not on common sense.

Exploiting distressed animal populations is taken for granted, is the norm, but isn't normal.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-envi...

Chevron which is an oil company appears to be paying a PR company, to claim the environmental movement is race-biased against communities of colour.

That's according to a press release sent out by the PR staff: thanks, Gizmodo. Some strong language.

"In brief, E&E News received an email from CRC Advisors, a low-profile PR outfit that supports conservative causes and corporations, in which the firm took a kernel of truth (that traditional environmental groups are mostly white) and then spun it to suggest the Green New Deal is designed to hurt minorities. Oh, and that environmental groups who support it were frauds. It included quotes from two Black conservatives: Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state and Trump campaign advisor; and Derrick Hollie, a former ad executive who runs a nonprofit that E&E News helpfully notes had its tax-exempt status revoked “because it repeatedly failed to file required annual reports.” The email also included a line at the end: “If you would rather not receive future communications from Chevron, let us know by clicking here.”

Oops.

Chevron denied involvement with the campaign, and CRC Advisors chalked it up to a “clerical error.” But E&E spoke with Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor who has deeply studied the climate denial playbook, who said “Chevron’s fingerprints appear to be on this.” "

https://earther.gizmodo.com/big-oil-i...

The effects of human activity on rivers exceeds that of climate change, and makes the river less able to absorb the effects of climate change.

"For example, the team reviewed past research on the drivers of flooding in the Mekong River Delta in Southeast Asia, which supports about 18 million people and a vast rice agricultural area. These studies suggest that delta subsidence—or sinking—because of groundwater extraction beneath the delta is now more of a problem, as the region receives far less sediment because of sediment trapping behind upstream dams and large-scale mining of sand from the bed of the delta's channels.

"The scale of the effects of sediment starvation and subsidence in driving increased flood risk is currently far greater than sea-level rise generated by global climate change," Best said. "But when all of these pressures are combined, there is now a real risk that we could cross a major tipping point in the next 10-20 years.""

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-human-r...

More information about how delta systems work physically and how major storms affect them.

"Professor Darby commented: "These results are very significant because the Mekong's sediment load is already declining as a result of upstream damming and other human impacts such as sand mining. Understanding the role played by changes in tropical cyclone climatology gives us a broader knowledge of the threats facing this delta and others like it around the world."

The research has implications globally because other major rivers such as the Ganges (India/Bangladesh), Yangtze (China) and Mississippi (USA) have catchments that are regularly struck by tropical storms. Some 500 million people live and work in the world's major river deltas. This study indicates that changes in storm climatology, even in the river catchments far upstream of the deltas themselves, must also be considered when evaluating their future vulnerability to sea-level rise."

https://phys.org/news/2016-10-scienti...

This story looks at similar factors on the Yellow River and Mississippi. At the start we get a lovely image from space of the bird's-foot delta shape.

"But looming threats to the Yellow River Delta include the sinking, or subsidence of land caused in large part by a move from rice farming to aquaculture—raising fish and shrimp, he said. The land in some areas there is sinking by 10 inches per year as groundwater is pumped to the surface.

"The rate of subsidence there is amazingly high—the ground can sink 3 feet in 4 years and affect infrastructure like buildings and roads," Syvitski said. "But more importantly, lowering the land surface makes it much more exposed to the ocean environment, including storm surges from hurricanes and tsunamis."

The two major river deltas in the United States are the Mississippi River Delta in Louisiana and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in California. While the Sacramento-Joaquin Delta has significant issues with agricultural, industrial and urban pollution and subsidence, things are more dire in the Mississippi River Delta, where a football field-sized chunk of wetlands disappears every hour, said Syvitski. There are more than 40,000 dams 20 feet or higher on the Mississippi River system."

https://phys.org/news/2016-02-world-l...

A study of volcanic rocks in Siberia has shown that magma burning vast amounts of coal, caused one of the Great Extinction Events.

"A team of researchers led by Arizona State University (ASU) School of Earth and Space Exploration professor Lindy Elkins-Tanton has provided the first ever direct evidence that extensive coal burning in Siberia is a cause of the Permo-Triassic Extinction, the Earth's most severe extinction event. ...

Siberian Traps, a region of volcanic rock in Russia. The massive eruptive event that formed the traps is one of the largest known volcanic events in the last 500 million years. The eruptions continued for roughly two million years and spanned the Permian-Triassic boundary. Today, the area is covered by about three million square miles of basaltic rock.

This is ideal ground for researchers seeking an understanding of the Permo-Triassic extinction event, which affected all life on Earth approximately 252 million years ago. During this event, up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species became extinct.

Calculations of sea water temperature indicate that at the peak of the extinction, the Earth underwent lethally hot global warming, in which equatorial ocean temperatures exceeded 104 degrees Fahrenheit. It took millions of years for ecosystems to be re-established and for species to recover.

Among the possible causes of this extinction event, and one of the most long-hypothesized, is that massive burning coal led to catastrophic global warming, which in turn was devastating to life. To search for evidence to support this hypothesis, Elkins-Tanton and her team began looking at the Siberian Traps region, where it was known that the magmas and lavas from volcanic events burned a combination of vegetation and coal."

Read the full story of the work here, or in Geology.
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-coal-bu...

I was wondering about the relationship between the amounts of coal in the Siberian fields compared to the amounts of hydrocarbon products that we regularly pull out of the Earth. The original situation was a centralized source over a period of time, our situation is a decentralized source, while probably a shorter period of time, is taking a lot less time to be dispersed globally.

I imagine the coal fires didn't last 2 million years, unless it was sporadic eruptions with meandering lava flows in areas with coal deposits. A couple of hundred miles sounds big until it is related to the size of all the deposits we are tapping into. A lot of the hydrocarbons are burned directly, while others are made into products that can also be burned as garbage, or it ends up back in the ground, where it interacts with the environment in a number of ways. The plastic "fill" in the oceans, from micro bits to big chunks, has to be changing the thermal and reflectivity properties of the ocean water.

Once a coal deposit starts on fire it can burn for a long time powered by its own fire. There 38 known fires burning in Pennslyvania from mining situations. Uncontrolled fires in coal deposits that are being mined are all around the world. Apparently in some instances, once the fire starts, it doesn't have to stop until all the coal is gone. One fire in PA, the Centralia Fire, burning since 1962, is expected to last another 100 years. The town had to be abandoned because of unsafe conditions, such as pockets of poisonous gasses, smoke, heat, and unstable ground.

We may be getting somewhere. Gizmodo tells me:

"Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced on Wednesday that he’s suing ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute because the three firms deceived customers about the climate crisis. This is the first lawsuit of its kind to name API and Koch Industries, and it takes a novel approach by suing them solely for the lies they told.

The consumer fraud lawsuit alleges that the companies engaged in a multi-decade “campaign of deception,” hiding the fact that they understood as early as the 1950s that oil and gas production contributes to climate breakdown and still chose to extract, market, and sell the fuels.
It includes claims for fraud, failure to warn and violations of Minnesota statutes on consumer fraud, deceptive trade practices and false statements in advertising. As retribution, it calls for Minnesotans to be compensated for their losses and for the defendants to fund a public education campaign about the dangers of climate change."

https://earther.gizmodo.com/exxon-koc...

Let's read that again:

"As retribution, it calls for Minnesotans to be compensated for their losses and for the defendants to fund a public education campaign about the dangers of climate change.""

Record breaking lighting suspended in the sky for seventeen seconds over Argentina. This apparently covered 400 miles. Apart from obvious dangers to people, animals and property, lightning is a major source of wildfires.

https://earther.gizmodo.com/record-br...

"“These are extraordinary records from single lightning flash events. Environmental extremes are living measurements of what nature is capable [of], as well as scientific progress in being able to make such assessments,” Randall Cerveny, chief rapporteur of weather and climate extremes for WMO, said in a statement."

The more we find out about ordinary things, the less simple things become. When a really long in the air bolt does happen to hit the ground I wonder if it just hits anywhere or is still looking for an electric charge attracting site.

You would need to ask a physics student.

The temperature in the high Arctic is alarming scientists and brushfires have started early.

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-arctic-...

The Siberian heat wave has gotten almost no attention, yet it is probably more serious than all other stories.

There is a lot of permafrost covered ground, around 23 million square kms. The glaciers cover around 15 million square kms and the polar regions cover around 15 million square kms.

The water is moderating the increasing temperatures around the Earth. The ice melting or permafrost melting is taking the edge off the change from a temperate climate to a warmer climate.

With the permafrost, the water soaked ground is also holding the heat in that the ground is collecting during the daytime, so the ground stays warmer at night. The same way a solar heated house is kept warm at night.

The article says what happens in the polar regions doesn't stay up there. What also happens is what happens in the lower latitudes also goes up to the polar regions. It is a mixing process that lets everything get everywhere even though it doesn't seem like that is what is happening. The areas of continuity are probably country sized so to people it seems like effects are not uniform but on a global scale it is widely covered. Like the swirls on cake icing, they aren't on every square millimeter, but the swirls of icing cover the whole cake.

The worse effect of the heat buildup in the upper latitudes is probably a toss up. The release of the stored up methane in the huge permafrost carbon sinks versus the changing of the jet streams, which cause us to get the weather we expect to get. Some places will luck out, getting enough rain and reasonable temperature swings, while others will get too little or too much.

A new, extremely full, model of data, showing how the Earth's temperature has been changing.
I recommend clicking on the image infographic because that way you get to see all the subterranean sources as well.

"global cooling began approximately 6,500 years ago when the long-term average global temperature topped out at around 0.7°C warmer than the mid-19th century. Since then, accelerating greenhouse gas emissions have contributed to global average temperatures that are now surpassing 1°C above the mid-19th century."

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-major-p...

The Young Scotswoman of the Year is an environmental campaigner.

https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/1...

The pandemic has been forcing change to oil companies.

" And the latest is Shell writing down $22 billion on its balance sheets, making it the latest oil company to acknowledge that things are probably not going back to the way they were.

The company announced it expected the dip in value to be driven by both its oil and gas sides of the business on Tuesday. The problem, for Shell and other fossil fuel companies big and small, is that the pandemic has cratered demand. The price of oil dipped into negative territory for a hot second in April, and the fallout has continued. Shell follows in the footsteps of BP, which did the whole write down thing in mid-June to the tune of $17.5 billion. The Shell announcement came the same week Chesapeake Energy, the company that led the fracking boom in the U.S., declared bankruptcy after years of riding high on debt.

While the coronavirus has certainly spurred the industry’s free fall, there are signs this may be the start of a permanent decline. Even before the pandemic, the fracking industry was looking at some bills coming due that it was in all likelihood going to be unable to pay. And Big Oil stocks that have traditionally led the stock market had lost ground. That was underscored this week when Tesla’s stock price surpassed Exxon’s. Symbolic? Sure. But these are signs in the real world oil ain’t coming back.

In May, Shell foreshadowed what was to come when its C-suite level executives told investors the coronavirus has caused “major demand destruction that we don’t even know will come back.” When the pandemic recedes, the climate crisis still looms large (hell, it’s looming large even as the pandemic rages). Digging up more oil and gas is simply not an option in the coming decade, and the world—and the oil industry—is increasingly waking up to that."

https://earther.gizmodo.com/shell-is-...

Digging up coal is in decline too. But a business Secretary doesn't seem to know that. This is from Inside Climate News, which corrects the factual errors in the statement.

"Joe Daniel, an energy analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, read Brouillette’s piece and had a reaction similar to mine. He took to Twitter to lay out what he saw as a litany of errors.

“Secretary Brouillette's arguments manage to be both incredibly disingenuous and incredibly misleading,” Daniel said. “It’s profoundly disappointing and deeply frustrating to see yet another government official mislead the public about our health, safety, and basic economics.”

I asked Daniel to tell me what he thinks leaders should be saying about the future of coal.

“Public officials and leaders in the policy world need to be honest with their constituents,” he said. “And that means recognizing that coal is in a managed decline and we need to create the necessary support system to support workers and have a worker-centric transition and maintain the local economy and healthcare system so that those people aren’t left behind.”"

https://insideclimatenews.org/campaig...

Another query I would have for the gentleman concerned: if coal is so essential to power America, as he thinks, why does America export so much of it?

FAQ sheet of US energy information administration.

"In 2019, the United States exported about 93 million short tons of coal to at least 50 countries.1
About 59% of total coal exports in 2019 were metallurgical coal and 41% were steam coal.

U.S. coal exports—total and by top five destination countries in 2019
Million short tons Percentage of total coal exports
Total, all countries 92.85
Top five countries
India 12.83 14%
Japan 10.99 12%
The Netherlands 10.06 11%
Brazil 7.51 8%
South Korea 7.36 8%
Total for top five countries 48.76 53%
Note: The ports in The Netherlands are major sources for the transshipment of coal to other European nations. Therefore, a large portion of this volume may ultimately be consumed by other countries in Europe.
1 Preliminary data."

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.ph...

Just looking down the same Google page I asked about US exports. I'm also offered the coal exports for China, Russia, Australia, Canada and Indonesia. Seems like anyone who has this stuff wants rid of it.

Chesapeake Energy has filed for bankruptcy protection. Shale oil and gas.

Rather a startling personal insight here from Inside Climate News.

"Chesapeake Energy, once the biggest player in shale oil and gas, filed for bankruptcy protection on Sunday, providing the latest evidence that the country’s shale boom has yet to find a workable business plan.

When I saw news of the bankruptcy filing, I thought back to my one in-person encounter with Chesapeake’s founder and then-CEO, Aubrey McClendon. He spoke at a 2011 energy conference in Columbus, hosted by Ohio Gov. John Kasich, which I covered as the energy reporter for The Columbus Dispatch.

This was the event where McClendon said that shale gas “would be the biggest thing to hit Ohio since the plow.”

After his appearance on a panel discussion, he briefly spoke with the assembled reporters, and someone asked him what was, in hindsight, a very good question: How can you make money drilling for natural gas when the price of gas is so low?

His answer was that he would need to sell a lot of it.

He did sell a lot of it, but couldn’t make enough money to cover the mountains of debt he had amassed. He died in 2016 when he drove his SUV into a concrete wall, a day after he had been indicted by federal prosecutors for alleged violations of antitrust laws."

Same link as above, for the rest of the story.

https://insideclimatenews.org/campaig...

This is the key element.

"we need to create the necessary support system to support workers and have a worker-centric transition and maintain the local economy and healthcare system so that those people aren’t left behind."

Not only for coal but for any job eliminated by changes caused by climate change or policies. And you can throw in jobs eliminated by the internet as well. That kind of assistance can be the same or enabling the person or company to stay in business by being able to adapt to the changes created by the internet.

Having a health care system that automatically pays all expenses for costs incurred by infectious diseases would also go along way in tackling the rising mountain of problems associated with the changing climate conditions on all fronts, including changes caused by economic practices that have been implemented by the computerization of everything.

So many aspects of society are changing now, that people are no longer in control of everything that is happening. This will result in change, but it will be randomly applied with haphazard results.

Changes use to happen randomly and in discrete locations that kept everything looking like it could be managed. The randomness has disappeared as the time between random events has become so small as to be meaningless in terms of separating the events.

The changes also happen in multiple locations around the world effecting large areas regardless of virtual boundaries envisioned by humans as a means of controlling what happens.

The covid19 situation in the US shows in real time (weeks) the complete futility of letting everyone do what they want, which includes actions that have no validity, not based on science, represent reality, or common sense. This is just one kind of situation that illustrates the point that the world is globally connected on a short string but all the problems follow the same patterns.

With 8 billion people the fallout time from "bad" or poorly constructed solutions has been reduced from years to months, or even less.

Security companies have tagged internet locations as secure, insecure, or dangerous. The same "kind" of tags need to be placed on information located on the internet, that would indicate factual, speculative, or trash. By allowing anyone from politicians to TV personalities to Mr and Mrs Anyone to post information about the corona virus, it has set the world's response on a backwards course.

Places that have gotten through it might have to go through it all over again if they become surrounded by areas where the virus is being poorly managed or not being managed at all. The distance that separates exposure from non exposure could turn out to be hundreds of miles, not just six feet.

One thing is certain, the negative economic impact is the same whether it is caused by economic change, illness, riots, or natural disasters. With 8 billion people involved, the only way to handle the situation requires coordinated actions on social, economic, health, energy, food, jobs, and shelter. Something we have not yet figured out how to do.

Heatwaves have been occurring around the world more frequently since the 1950s and lasting longer. The cumulative heat degrees and days are countable.

Someone's counted them.

"n Australia's worst heatwave season, an additional 80°C of cumulative heat was experienced across the country. In Russia and the Mediterranean, their most extreme seasons baked in an additional 200°C or more.

"Not only have we seen more and longer heatwaves worldwide over the past 70 years, but this trend has markedly accelerated," said lead author Dr. Sarah Perkins Kirkpatrick from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes.

"Cumulative heat shows a similar acceleration, increasing globally on average by 1°C-4.5°C each decade but in some places, like the Middle East, and parts of Africa and South America, the trend is up to 10°C a decade.""

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-heatwav...

Another look at the added heat, from an Australian perspective.

"In 2009, the heatwave that preceded Black Saturday killed 374 people. The economic impact on Australia's workforce from heatwaves is US$6.2 billion a year (almost AU$9 billion). And just last summer, extreme temperature records tumbled, contributing to Australia's unprecedented bushfire season.

Our new study – the first worldwide assessment of heatwaves at the regional scale—found heatwaves have become longer and more frequent since 1950. And worryingly, we found this trend has accelerated."....

"And cumulative heat is generally when the temperature above that threshold across all heatwave days are added up.

Let's say, for example, a particular location had a heatwave threshold of around 30℃. The "extra heat" on a day where temperatures reach 35℃ would be 5℃. If the heatwave lasted for three days, and all days reached 35℃, then the cumulative heat for that event would be 15℃.....

.....The global average sits at approximately two extra heatwave days per decade.

Alaska, Brazil and West Asia, however, have cumulative heat trends of a massive 4-5℃ per decade. And, for the vast majority of the world, the worst seasons occurred in the last 20 years."

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-world-e...

I think the wind is more responsible for the temperature of the weather than anything else. While it may not cause the temperature directly, it does push the air around which carries the heat or cold. That is why it can be very warm for a day or two in the winter. Seems like very cold air in the summer isn't happening. The winds are stronger now so they can push more air around quicker.

Another factor is the increasing amount of moisture in the air. While not all areas have increased moisture, and increased moisture way overhead can sail right by without ever touching the ground, the additional moisture means the air can carry more "weather", such as heat, humidity, or precipitation. The more water in the air, the more energy the air, or wind, can carry.

The same way carbon can be stored in carbon sinks, the global ice deposits lock up water, keeping it from entering into the day to day weather.

The melting polar regions, glaciers, and permafrost regions are unlocking new moisture to power the weather. Unfortunately the added moisture is not evenly distributed, the same way the fresh water from the melting polar ice is not immediately mixed in with the saltwater in the oceans but floats around, sometimes for years. The extra moisture is added to the global weather equation, changing the weather, and changes caused by extra moisture in the air can effect the weather in areas that are not seeing the extra moisture in the air.

NASA tells us how their satellites measure ocean rise. And it's rising.

"Measuring the height of the ocean gives scientists a real-time indication of how Earth's climate is changing, said Josh Willis, the mission's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The oceans absorb about 90% of the excess heat from the planet's warming climate. Seawater expands as it heats up, resulting in about a third of the modern-day global average sea level rise. Melting ice from land-based sources like glaciers and ice sheets accounts for the rest.

To understand how rising seas will affect humanity, researchers need to know how fast this is happening, said Willis. "Satellites are the most important tool to tell us this rate," he explained. "They're kind of a bellwether for this creeping global warming impact that's going to inundate coastlines around the world and affect hundreds of millions of people."

Currently, sea levels rise an average of 0.13 inches (3.3 millimeters) per year, more than twice the rate at the start of the 20th century. "By 2050, we'll have a different coastline than we do today," said Willis."

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.ph...

The water is not rising in a linear fashion because of currents, winds, and the freshwater not mixing into the salt water in homogenized fashion. This means some areas will see increases much greater than 3.3 millimeters per year, which has already started. Some areas will also see temporary decreases.

A storm surge can cancel out all the insulation of time and change the coast immediately and temporary raise the ocean levels to values that would show what the future could look like a hundred years from now.

The satellites work great for the measuring of the elevation of the water and the ice. Not so good for the depth of the ice. To get good depth measurements we would probably need to use extremely powerful radar signals scouring the ground and the water. That would put us in the same boat as the whales and dolphins and the powerful sonar signals that are pumped into the ocean for exploration and defense of navy ships. The current satellite based radar is very weak because it is coming from a satellite which doesn't have a lot of power to start with.

Coronavirus, economics, climate change, health and nature.

""We are experiencing the worst economic shock since the Great Depression, while at the same time we have experienced the greatest drop in greenhouse gas emissions since the burning of fossil fuels began," Dr. Malik said."

"The loss of connectivity imposed to prevent the virus spreading triggers an economic 'contagion', causing major disruptions to trade, tourism, energy and finance sectors, while easing environmental pressures most in some of the hardest-hit areas."

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-socio-e...

Crushed rock can be spread on fields to suck carbon out of the atmosphere.

Could help.

https://www.ecowatch.com/rock-dust-ca...

Jane Goodall talks about biodiversity loss, climate change, and the hope of youth.

https://www.ecowatch.com/jane-goodall...

Julia Steinberger talks about adding carbon to the atmosphere at a rate never before seen, so that we are heading for a warmer planet than existed for 15 million years.
She encourages us to fight for our lives.

https://medium.com/@JKSteinberger/cog...

"If CO2 is so correlated with climate, why are we not already experiencing the temperatures and sea levels of the Pliocene, and witnessed by faraway Homo Habilis, with their almost-human eyes? Professor Gavin Foster, co-author of the Nature study, puts it this way: “The reason we don’t see Pliocene-like temperatures and sea-levels yet today is because it takes a while for Earth’s climate to fully equilibrate (catch up) to higher CO2 levels and, because of human emissions, CO2 levels are still climbing. Our results give us an idea of what is likely in store once the system has reached equilibrium.”
Time lags for equilibration vary between Earth systems: climate temperatures will catch up with the Pliocene with in a few decades, sea levels within a few centuries. But it gets worse. Because not only have we left the agriculture-sheltering Holocene. Not only have we zoomed through Pliocene the span than 1 human lifetime (reminder: we have no evidence that the large scale agriculture we depend upon, in our billions, for survival, is possible in this new climate. Cheers.). We are still going. We are accelerating, in fact, with concentrations of CO2 increasing faster and faster every year."

She draws on a new science study reported in Nature and shows us some good graphs and we need to do a lot of scrolling for all those millions of years. Interesting read and I recommend you take a look.

I like how it says a few centuries for sea levels to fully rise, that is how long it takes for the poles to melt. Sounds highly optimistic. There are dozens of forces operating the climate that we experience. Some of them are on automatic pilot, such as the position of the Earth and other planets in the solar system which itself is a huge clock.

Then we have geological actions, such as volcanoes which have their own clocks with cosmic size time scales. Then we have the materials that are floating around, such as the gasses in the biosphere, which are the product of natural occurring events. It is possible that the actions of advanced life forms in the universe burning mass quantities of easy to get energy sources might be as automatic as the locust coming out every 17 years.

Anyway, humans have advanced both technologically and population wise to convert large amounts of stored up carbon back into carbon dioxide into the gas form. We have taken a place at the King's table by being able to monkey with one of the primary gasses (there are many more we have less effect on) to the point where our contributions are on a global scale and match or surpass the naturally occurring levels.

We have also been able to clear off huge amounts of natural ground cover, such as trees, imitating global size fires or other extreme climate conditions, so that we are also making a global size contribution in that area as well. We are sitting at the same table as Mother Nature and the other climate gods when it comes to the impact of our activities.

Another area where we have participated on a global size scale able to impact the climate is in how the planet is maintained by all the life that lives on it. Our impact imitates what happens when massive disease outbreaks ravage whole populations. We have done this by dramatically altering and eliminating millions of species who all had jobs to do on this planet and those jobs kept things running smoothly. When the jobs go undone, and we certainly aren't doing all the jobs of all the animals we have wiped out, this also effects the climate. The purpose of all life is to help all other life life survive. Otherwise the flame of life would go out. In other words, normally we are about as important as a bunch of daffodils when it comes to the meaning of life.

Our contributions could be out of sync with the way things generally play out which means we could be creating a new or otherwise hardly seen gateway into the inevitable world of climate change. This means we may not be able to use what has happened in the past as a guideline as to what can happen in the future. Hence the idea that the poles could melt a whole lot faster is not a baseless idea.