Green Group discussion

We've been talking about Arctic researchers getting their references erased, in the thread on the Trump situation.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19...

Only natural that the funding should find itself cut for Arctic research.

Here's the item on the references being erased:

Victoria Herrmann, arctic researcher, says President Trump is deleting her citations.
We understand he's not doing it personally, but he is the cause.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...

" The consequences of vanishing citations, however, pose a far more serious consequence than website updates. Each defunct page is an effort by the Trump administration to deliberately undermine our ability to make good policy decisions by limiting access to scientific evidence.
We’ve seen this type of data strangling before.
Just three years ago, Arctic researchers witnessed another world leader remove thousands of scientific documents from the public domain. In 2014, then Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper closed 11 department of fisheries and oceans regional libraries, including the only Arctic center. "

The UN is taking climate change seriously and promoting natural methods of cooling cities and homes.
This article looks at tree corridors and green roofs in the second largest city in Colombia. Medellín was heating up so planners created tree corridors in areas that were bare. Residents feel a drop in temperature of two degrees.

https://www.unenvironment.org/news-an...

This was from a 2013 report to the UN.

"Even with a warming scenario of under 2°C by 2050, Africa's undernourished would increase 25 - 90 per cent. Crop production will be reduced across much of the continent as optimal growing temperatures are exceeded. The capacity of African communities to cope with the impacts of climate change will be significantly challenged."

"Adaptation costs for Africa could reach approximately USD $ 350 billion annually by 2070 should the two-degree target be significantly exceeded, while the cost would be around USD $150 billion lower per year if the target was to be met."

The article doesn't say who would be spending that money, given that richer countries are having their own climate change problems.

"To meet the adaptation costs estimated in the report for Africa by the 2020s, funds disbursed annually would need to grow at an average rate of 10-20 per cent a year from 2011 to the 2020s.
There is currently no clear, agreed pathway to provide these resources."

A quote: " Africa cannot risk failure of implementing serious adaptation measures, especially with Africa's predicted population rise of 2 billion by 2050 and the current ecosystem degradation trajectory,"

And a good outline of loss of food plants, fish, freshwater etc and sea level rise with each degree of warming. I recommend the read, it's not a long article.

https://www.unenvironment.org/news-an...

Planting a lot of different kinds of trees and not ever cutting them down might be a good place to start for every country.

The changes in rainfall are very uncertain. Some places projected to get more while others get less. But it isn't clear who gets more and who gets less. It is certain that whoever gets more rain will get a lot more of it. I would like to see where it will be increasing and where it will be decreasing and what calculations are being used to determine these projections.

At some point the amount of global rainfall could become so excessive that it will be more likely to rain rather than not rain which could decrease the areas that are currently in projected drought conditions.

Recent past history that has been well researched points to drought as a main component in the downfall of past civilizations. The problem is that what happened in the past might not be what is going to happen in the future. I think that old weather patterns are being used to project where the rain is going to fall and those old patterns aren't what's going to happen.

Too much rainfall can be just as destructive as droughts. I'm still not convinced that the areas not getting enough rainfall are going to decrease while the areas getting rain will get more and more of it. If the rain does continue to track in the same places than those areas will be just as destroyed as the places that get no rain.

This is an excellent article on making the atmosphere more reflective of sunlight by spraying sulphur particles at height. I haven't seen it better explained with the various pros and cons, anywhere else.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2...

" By the end of the century special planes like this will be making 300,000 flights a year to deliver millions of tonnes of sulfate particles to reflect sunlight.
It's a last-ditch effort to save the world from dangerous warming because we haven't been able to get our greenhouse emissions under control.
You might think this giant planetary sunshade sounds far-fetched, but some scientists starting to research this technology think we may well need such "a brutally ugly technical fix".
However others argue that such a speculative technology — known as "stratospheric aerosol injection" — poses even greater risks than climate change itself. "

And of course, my main worry would be that the oil giants and those they fund, think we can spray sulphur, so carry on with business as usual.

When nature does something in the world there are a series of steps that take place and a multitude of substances involved with all kinds of interactions. That's the way the natural world works.

People thinking that they can replace a series of steps by simply pumping 1 substance into the world and magically fix the situation are way off base, not even close. This has already been proved over and over again. If we want to stop the damage we have to get off the path we are on. The longer we believe the world is too busy to be stopped so things can be changed the longer things will continue the way they are.

The sulfur has to be mined and processed and right there the first missteps will happen. Lowest bidder. Easiest most shortcut loaded way of processing the sulfur.

Unless the planes are solar powered planes they will be adding exhaust to the atmosphere. Solar powered planes would be good but can't carry enough to do the job. It would be a huge payout if a solar powered plane company got the contract. But it would still be a bad idea.

Instead of people changing their ways they want to pump 1 more chemical into the natural world to beat the natural world into submission. This is why we are in the position we are in. The bottom line is some one is going to make money from this. It is not being done to make things better at any cost, profit or not, but is being done so someone can make a profit off of it and the profit will dictate who does it or what is used or how it is done. As soon as monetary profit enters the picture the whole idea becomes polluted.

About 10 years ago people want to dump iron oxide powder (basically rusted iron) off the back of ocean traversing ships into the ocean on the theory that the iron would act as a nutrient to help the beneficial bacteria grow, such as the cyanobacteria that recycle carbon dioxide into oxygen. The plan totally overlooked the fact that the ocean waters were deficient in many things besides the iron. The logic could be similar to give a starving person vitamins instead of food and expecting them to get better.

To compound the issue the aerosol solution would open the door to spraying more chemicals into the air, not less. The political implications are easy to see. People would have to pay to be protected. People that aren't appreciated wouldn't get the service. Any problems that arise would be no one's responsibility. The list of things that would and could go wrong is probably endless.

Sadly I believe you are right.

Heat hits the headlines again in Europe.
London has been up to 31 degrees.
Much of mainland Europe near or over 40 degrees.
Centigrade.

https://www.ecowatch.com/europe-brace...?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe...

The heat map ran out of reds, so the makers had to re-use the purple normally at the opposite end of the scale.

BBC says:
" France set an all-time high-temperature record of 46C, according to the WMO, and new June highs were set in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Andorra, Luxembourg, Poland and Germany.

Is climate change to blame?
Linking a single event to global warming is complicated. While extreme weather events like heatwaves occur naturally, experts say these will happen more often because of climate change.

Records going back to the late 19th Century show that the average temperature of the Earth's surface has increased by about one degree since industrialisation.

A climatology institute in Potsdam, Germany, says Europe's five hottest summers since 1500 have all been in the 21st Century.

Scientists are concerned that rapid warming linked to use of fossil fuels has serious implications for the stability of the planet's climate. "

Oh, this is not good.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/irela...

" A free trade deal is being negotiated between the EU and the Mercosur countries – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. But on Monday, Irish farmers’ organisations backed an Oireachtas committee report which warned the State’s plan for the beef sector could be forgotten if the trade deal failed to exclude South American beef. "

https://www.independent.ie/business/f...

IFA President Joe Healy:
" The ‘turning a blind eye’ approach to double standards and environmental degradation in Brazil is indefensible. It makes an utter mockery of the pledge that this EU Commission signed when it took up office in 2014 to uphold EU legislation,” he said.

“This deal represents a backroom deal with big business and kowtows to the likes of Mercedes and BMW in their drive to get cars into South America. It is a disgraceful and feeble sell out of a large part of our most valuable beef market to Latin American ranchers and factory farm units,” he said. "

https://www.irishcentral.com/business...

" Considered big wins for Europe are the slashing of duties on cars and car parts exported to South America. There will also be improved market access for EU chemicals, machinery, textiles wine and cheese.

But farmers, and in particular Irish farmers already suffering fears of how much Brexit will affect exports to Britain, will be put under the cosh by the Mercosur deal.

Ireland is the fifth largest beef exporter in the world and the largest in Europe. Ninety percent of Irish beef is exported, a €3 billion business in annual revenues.

The prospect of an Argentinean steak selling in a French supermarket at 50 percent less than the Irish equivalent is real. "

Sounds like they are saying that breaking even should be considered to be a positive thing. It looks like South America will be selling cheaper beef in Europe while Europe sells cheaper beef in Asia. Apparently Ireland will sell environmentally raised beef to countries that want it while it imports beef raised without regards to environmental concerns.

How can Irish farmers be told by the EU they should be greener when the EU is contributing to rainforest destruction to raise beef elsewhere? Hypocrisy!

Oh, and the South American meat has not been allowed here because it potentially carries foot and mouth, a frequent illness to break out in SA. Just like rabies, the English Channel and Irish Sea kept the diseases off these islands. They are on the European continent all right.

I like to use the description Global Change instead of Global Warming. It stops instant arguments of whether it is warming or not but still says things are changing and not for the better, as plenty of people who don't think it is warming or think this has happened before will agree that things are definitely getting worse.

Global change also has a much larger collection of subjects included within it. We have to address the problems and the consequences have already started. It would be better to start solving problems now. The solutions will eventually illuminate the causes.

Economics is still the guiding light as the Irish beef dealings show but at the same time, economics has the power of bulldozers behind it, building or wrecking things. Texas now has more wind power generated electricity than coal powered electricity. Of course Texas is a huge oil producer but it shows how the center of the petroleum industry is going where the money is and the money is not going to coal.

What constitutes a change in weather trends is a very hazy subject. While it is hard to convince some people why something happened, such as a big storm, higher temperatures, more wind damage per storm, more rain, when past records show bigger events. Nothing can be said about past records being bigger because they have been. But that is not the most important thing that has changed. The frequency of the events has become more often. Much more often. In fact it is now way too often such that people can hardly miss the increased number of events no matter what they believe.

The damage can't be hidden when it can be seen everywhere. When things aren't damaged it can be hard to determine what happened or how the events will effect anything. But when a physical thing is damaged beyond use there is no wondering about what happened.

The big problem is that the increased frequency of events is far from over. It is only just beginning. Again, it is more important for people to start helping each other pick up the pieces after each event. Eventually people will catch on to this as it will stop the orderly flow of economics which will get the attention of those controlling the bulldozers.

After the last round of summer rain storms, where some localized areas looked exactly like Hurricane Sandy had come through again, the NYC TV news channel showed a "weather" map that had over 300 instances of reported storm damages from water, lightning, wind, downed trees, power outages. Usually that kind of map is used to show where the lightning strikes happened. Ironically, There were around 150 instances of severe weather alerts in the NYC area for 2018. 7 months into 2019 and there have been a little over 300 instances of severe weather alerts.

No matter what is driving the weather, or what caused it to happen, or where it started, the damage done at the end of the day is plainly evident and won't disappear by itself. The number of "damage" days is increasing and they will have to paid for, either by rebuilding, relocating, or walking away leaving a pile of rubble. Walking away from the new flood prone areas might be the best idea for now. But that means paying people to relocate, not making people pay to relocate. Another one of those instances where a profit can't be made because it is a cost of past practices that now has to be paid.

Chaos is the new normal.

That would be a good description and we are all playing catch up.

Records for heat broken across western Europe.

https://www.independent.ie/world-news...

Constructing with timber is being touted as a good way to lock up carbon. Provided we then plant more trees. This excellent article looks at modern buildings being made with a strong manufactured kind of timber called Cross-laminated timber, or CLT, which has many other advantages, mainly replacing or reducing concrete and steel.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190...

The journalist: " Tim Smedley is a sustainability writer, based in the UK. His first book is Clearing the Air: The Beginning and the End of Air Pollution. "
Tim Smedley
Clearing the Air: The Beginning and the End of Air Pollution

Here is the Wikipedia page on the Cross laminated timber.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-l...

Lots of nice little link images and terms like Plyscraper.

More and more uses are being made of "lumber" by products. The pellets for wood burning stoves and the power industry are made from "scrap" wood products. Three times the amount used in the country is exported. The whole tree is being processed. So long as we plant 3 times the amount of trees we cut down and don't cut those down within our lifetimes, it is a practical solution. The planted trees have to represent a biodiverse environment. The biodiversity of trees is part of the sum of the parts is greater than the whole concept. We also need to plant trees in places that are far from where the trees are being cut down.

My husband Allan told me about a man in China who took carbon out of the air with a vacuum cleaner and made a brick. But I looked it up and...

https://globalnews.ca/news/2373300/ar...

400 hours of running uses a lot of coal-powered electricity. Maybe if this was done with solar.

It would be interesting to analyze the dust where we work, live, hangout. One new ingredient it didn't have in it 50 years ago is plastic.

Salmon, both wild and farmed, are not coping well with warmer waters.

The North American Atlantic salmon is all but extinct due to overfishing and habitat destruction, so this just looks at Pacific salmon species.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29...

Relevant book:
Upstream: Searching for Wild Salmon, from River to Table

I only recently "discovered" that the amount of farmed fish is on par with the amount of natural fish we eat. Some articles say more of it is farmed than natural.

It's a shame we don't raise and release an equal or larger amount of farmed "unmodified" seafood back into the wild in areas where it naturally belongs.

Real solutions we can do now are right in front of us and yet because of money, those solutions are never practiced, and that only creates more expensive non problem solving practices.

Maybe one of the solutions will be edible plastic. Peel the wrapping off the flavored container, cut it up into bite sized "chips", microwave and eat. I'm sure the profiteers would go for that.

Releasing ... sea lice.

Let's plant some trees.
Ethiopia planted millions in one day.

https://www.independent.ie/world-news...

I don't cut down a lot of stuff in the yard. It's surprising to see how many things pop up that you don't see anywhere else nearby. The tree seedlings like to grow in clusters. Moving them around usually results in disaster. I guess they use the strength in numbers figuring if it's such a god spot, then at least one, or maybe a few will survive.

Climate change has brought wildfires to Siberia.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31...

Climate change: UK's 10 warmest years all occurred since 2002.

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

" ...the Met Office confirmed this week that the UK's hottest temperature ever - 38.7C (101.7F) - was recorded on Thursday in Cambridge...
"We expect that extremely cold years nowadays like 2010 aren't as extreme as the cold years in the past, but the warm years are more extreme than the equivalent from 50-100 years ago," Dr McCarthy told BBC News...
"When it comes to rain, six of the 10 wettest years in the UK have occurred since 1998.
Over the last decade, our hot and cold seasons have been getting wetter than the long-term average with the summers seeing 13% more rain while the winters going up by 12%. "

We see the increased rain in winter months, or what once were winter months, it just isn't cold enough or long enough to snow. It keeps warming up each time it gets cold. 50 years ago the average winter day temperature was at freezing or lower. The ground, ponds, streams stayed frozen all winter long. Now it is the opposite, average winter temperature is above freezing. A soon as the ice turns black, people skate on it, because it might melt before it gets any thicker. 50 years ago no one ever skated on black ice. Everyone waited until it turned gray, which didn't take long at all, maybe a week.

Oil and plastics industries are running out of new hires.

Oil Has a Millennial Problem as Talent Pipeline Trickles

"For decades, science and engineering graduates have been natural recruits for the oil and gas industry, but that trend has been waning in recent years, raising questions for the industry. Members of the plastics industry have expressed similar concerns about recruiting Millennial workers.

(Bloomberg)"
The site had a link but there were so many cookie notices and how many articles I could read notices, I gave up as a bad job.

Remember that article where it said representatives of the plastic industry were saying that it was getting harder to get people to love plastic as a way of getting them to use it. Perhaps that lack of "love" extends to the people who participate in the making of plastic as well.

" July 2019 was the warmest month globally ever recorded, according to data released on Monday by the European Union's climate change agency. "
https://www.ecowatch.com/hottest-mont...

More American scientists being suppressed, de-funded or oppressed until they leave the job. With the US Department of Agriculture.

https://www.ecowatch.com/scientist-qu...

The nice people at Phys.org are wondering if climate change could trigger more mega droughts in the American Southwest like those in the 9th - 15th centuries.

https://phys.org/news/2019-07-climate...

"57 Dead, 18,000 Hospitalized in Japan Heat Wave"

https://www.ecowatch.com/japan-heat-w...?

" The historic Alaskan summer that saw record high temperatures, warmer seas, and a once in a lifetime heat wave, has caused the sea ice to vanish.
The phenomenon does not mean that the ice won't return. It should return in the fall as the Arctic moves away from the sun and the temperatures start to drop again. Alaska has seen a complete ice melt before, as recently as two years ago, but it has never vanished this early. "

https://www.ecowatch.com/alaska-sea-i...

'Horrible' heat in Spain.

https://www.costa-news.com/latest-new...

The extreme values are becoming less random, cold, hot, wet, dry, with the wind patterns pushing them around. If the wind becomes random it might alleviate the impact in some areas. If the wind becomes set in its ways it could severely impact areas as it continually delivers the same things. It still looks like places where it rains, it is raining more, but where it doesn't rain, can't tell if it is raining more or less. Too soon to tell if the rain coverage areas are spreading out as the volume of rain is increasing.

"NASA's ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) has imaged the stress on Costa Rican vegetation caused by a massive regional drought that led the Central American nation's government to declare a state of emergency on July 23.

Parts of Costa Rica have received 75% less rainfall than normal in the drought, which is the result of abnormal weather patterns accompanying an El Niño that began in November 2018. The drought's effects were already visible to ECOSTRESS in February 2019, as the image shows."

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

UN and IPCC report that Big Agri is devastating the soil. This is causing the release of climate change gases instead of trapping them.
Change in agriculture has to happen to keep our planet from overheating.

https://www.rte.ie/news/environment/2...

Scotland is planting trees at a cheering rate.

https://forestry.gov.scot/news-releas...

Without knowing the historical record of droughts, it does appear that some areas, like Costa Rica or southeast Asia where one would normally think of as being a wet environment are having increasing worse drought conditions. Where I am we seem to be getting more rain but it could quit for awhile ending up normal rainfall or below average. We get downpours that don't last long but they do soak the ground letting all kinds of wild plants grow. One thing is certain, every storm leaves scattered severe damage in its wake.

12 years to save us from climate change extremes has become 18 months as leaders and governments are now drawing up their national plans for the next decade.

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

"At least 28 people have been killed and more than a million forced from their homes as Typhoon Lekima hit China, according to state media. "

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-c...

This storm was designated a supertyphoon but downgraded to typhoon just before landfall.

The increased amount of rainfall that goes with storms now makes the super typhoon or category 4 or 5 label not quite the same kind of warning as it used to be. Perhaps adding a rainfall component and the area covered by the storm to the rating might be needed. Say like Category 1 with X amount of rain or flooding to distinguish a Category 1 that covers a small area with light rain fall that is not as dangerous.

Storm Dorian heading for Florida, likely to strike centre of land mass as a Cat 4 hurricane. NASA has been watching it develop.

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

Sago palms - cycads - are now blooming in the UK for the first time in 60 million years.

https://www.sciencealert.com/climate-...

Hurricane Dorian is stalling over Bahamas - maybe a warming Arctic provides less contrast and so less motive force.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03...