Climate Change(d)?

[Loren Pechtel]

Oh noes!!!!111!!!1!!111!1!!!!!1111

Scientists have delivered a “final warning” on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert. The comprehensive review of human knowledge of the climate crisis took hundreds of scientists eight years to compile and runs to thousands of pages, but boiled down to one message: act now, or it will be too late. Kaisa Kosonen, a climate expert at Greenpeace International, said: “This report is definitely a final warning on 1.5C.”

Teh Gruaniad

An end of times, rapture like cult.

Look at the historical record.

8C = Permian-Triassic extinction

The high case estimates for CO2 induced warming are 6C--and that doesn't include methane hydrates because we don't have a good enough picture of how they'll react. I have seen worst-case estimates of another 9C from them.

 

[Elixir]

Oh noes!!!!111!!!1!!111!1!!!!!1111

Scientists have delivered a “final warning” on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert. The comprehensive review of human knowledge of the climate crisis took hundreds of scientists eight years to compile and runs to thousands of pages, but boiled down to one message: act now, or it will be too late. Kaisa Kosonen, a climate expert at Greenpeace International, said: “This report is definitely a final warning on 1.5C.”

Teh Gruaniad

An end of times, rapture like cult.

Look at the historical record.

8C = Permian-Triassic extinction

The high case estimates for CO2 induced warming are 6C--and that doesn't include methane hydrates because we don't have a good enough picture of how they'll react. I have seen worst-case estimates of another 9C from them.

Methane hydrates are probably more of a threat to produce a mega-tsunami than a warming calamity. There is evidence that it has happened in the past. There is no doubt about the potential. I’d hope that the increased pressure of sea level rise would help offset the instability created by warming. But if it doesn’t, no coastal city is safe.

 

[lpetrich]

Let's go back to the Permo-Triassic boundary.

Nearly all the Earth's continental landmass was fused into one big continent: Pangaea ("all lands"). The main exceptions were South China and Southeast Asia. There were also volcanic island arcs that later got swept up by the continents as they drifted.

One of these arcs was later swept up by the later North American plate, making California, Oregon, Washington State, and British Columbia. So my current home was once some island in the middle of the ocean, an island much like the Caribbean islands or the Aleutian islands.

Another island arc was later swept up to make parts of Southwest and Central Asia.

The southeastern US was near the equator, and Britain was at low northern latitudes. But Australia was at high southern latitudes, like Antarctica.

Pangaea would have made possible a super long road trip, from Australia to North China, with nearly all of it possible on dry land, or at worst, shallow seas. But much of Pangaea's interior was likely very arid, much like the present-day Central Asian deserts, from water raining out as air traveled inwards.

 

[lpetrich]

The Permo-Triassic mass extinction was the biggest in the Phanerozoic, and likely one of the biggest in our planet's history. Some 81% of marine species went extinct, along with some 70% of land vertebrates, especially large herbivores, and some large fraction of insects. Land plants also had a big extinction, enough to reduce ground cover enough to make some streams go from straight to braided.

Marine invertebrates suffered especially bad, especially those with CaCO3 (limestone) shells and slow metabolism.

Trilobites - all gone. Eurypterids (sea scorpions) - all gone. Crinoids (sea lilies) - only 2% survived. Brachiopods (lamp shells) - only 4% survived. Ammonites (a sort of shelled squid) - only 3% survived (they would be done in by the K-Pg disaster). Bivalves - 41% survived (they did very well). Gastropods (snails, slugs) - only 2% survived.

Brachiopods and bivalves have coexisted since the Cambrian, and they invented their paired shells separately. Brachiopods: dorsal-ventral, bivalves left-right. Brachiopods were very common in the Paleozoic, but after the P-Tr mass extinction, bivalves became much more common than them.

What caused this great disaster? That is still obscure, but an important feature of it was severe global warming, something like 8 C overall, 6 C near the equator, and more near the poles. Along with that warming was an increase of atmospheric CO2 to 2000 ppm, roughly 5 times the present value (415 ppm, just before the Industrial Revolution: 280 ppm). This meant global warming, oceanic acidification, and reduced oxygen in the oceans from that warming.

8 C = 14 F - what a hothouse our planet was during that disaster.

 

[lpetrich]

I'll now look at where was everybody during the Permo-Triassic mass extinction.

Humanity's ancestors were reptile-mammal transitional forms (mammal-like reptiles, protomammals?). What our ancestors were like back then can be seen in Morganucodon, an animal that lived some 205 - 165 million years ago. It was roughly the size of a common rat, and it looked much like one. Though likely furry, it laid eggs, like monotremes today (platypus, spiny anteater). Live-bearing did not emerge until the mid-Jurassic.

Morganucodon's dentition was generalized mammalian, with incisors, canines, premolars, and molars. The canines were fangs, and the premolars and molars had multiple cones in them.

Here's an animal that looks much like early mammals: the opossum. It looks like a big rat, and its dentition is much like Morganucodon's, with fangs and multicone back teeth. Yes, opossums have fangs.

Looking to before the P-Tr disaster, there is some evidence of hair in coprolites: fossilized dung, meaning that some predators ate some meals with hair on them. So hair goes back to the Late Permian at least.

Some other mammalian features go back to the Permian, like different-sized teeth. Dimetrodon, a mammal-like reptile which looked like a big lizard with a sail back and which lived in the Early Permian, was named after its two sizes of teeth. By the P-Tr disaster, some mammal-like reptiles / protomammals had started growing well-defined fangs, thus their name, cynodonts ("dog teeth").

We also have good fossil evidence of the transition from the reptilian multibone jawbone (mandible) to the mammalian single-bone one. The jawbone started out like the skull, several bones fused together, but in the lineage leading to mammals, the central bone, the dentary bone, grew larger and larger and the other bones got pushed back to the jaw joints. Morganucodon was almost there, and when this transition was complete, the extra bones became middle-ear bones.

 

[lpetrich]

Now for some other survivors of the P-Tr disaster.


The ancestor of the archosaurs (crocodilians, dinosaurs, birds, ...) looked much like lizards, as crocodilians still do. But by the mid-Triassic, the ancestors of dinosaurs had become bipedal, walking on their hind limbs. Many of their descendants, however, reverted to walking on all fours, especially the large herbivores. But some of them, the theropods, stayed bipedal, even when they grew very large, like tyrannosaurs. Some theropods stayed small, and some of them took to the air. Three closely-related species of them survived the K-Pg disaster, and we know them as birds.

The ancestor of lizards and snakes also looked like present-day lizards, and in the Cretaceous, some of them stopped growing legs and started growing long and thin, becoming snakes.

The ancestor of turtles back then looked rather lizardlike, but with a broadened body and flattened ribs. Some of its Late Triassic descendants started growing turtle shells, and they adjusted their embryonic development to get their shoulder bones inside their ribcages. By the Late Jurassic, turtles had split into two groups with different strategies for getting their heads in their shells, the hidden-necked ones (Cryptodira), which pull their heads inward, and the side-necked ones (Pleurodira), which turn their heads sideways.

I mentioned the lizard shape quite a bit here, and that shape is the ancestral tetrapod shape, evident in salamanders ("water lizard" amphibians), lizards proper, and crocodilians, and also in numerous extinct amphibians and reptiles, including ancestral ones.

Insects were plenty diversified, with early crickets and beetles and a lot more. But the first Lepidoptera (scaly wings) emerged not long after, as early moths. The first two-wing flies emerged around then also.

Also emerging not long later were hymenopterans, with the first ones (Xyelidae) living off of pinelike trees as larvae. Not long after, some of them took to laying their eggs on other arthropods, becoming parasitic wasps. Later in the Mesozoic, some of them turned their ovipositors (egg-laying tools) into stingers, while still remaining parasitic. But some of them ended up diversifying, becoming foragers and predators, like paper wasps, hornets, and yellowjackets. But in the Cretaceous, some of them took to eating flower pollen and nectar, and becoming hairy, to carry pollen on their bodies, becoming bees, and some of them took to living on the ground, becoming ants.


I'd mentioned bivalves vs. brachiopods earlier. Brachiopods were abundant in the Paleozoic, but they never recovered very much from this mass extinction, and bivalves took their place. That's why we eat clam chowder and not lampshell chowder.

 

[TSwizzle]

The zero carbon cultists in the UK want to destroy a protected area to put in a bus lane;

Hundreds of trees in an orchard designated as a habitat of principal importance in England should be felled to build a new busway to tackle climate change, councillors in Cambridgeshire voted on Tuesday. Huge public opposition to the felling of trees in Coton Orchard has led to thousands of people signing a petition calling for them to be saved. Coton Orchard contains about 1,000 trees and grows 26 varieties of apples, as well as pears and plums. Steve Oram, the orchard biodiversity manager at the People’s Trust for Endangered Species, has said unequivocally that the loss of such an orchard “cannot be compensated for”, she told councillors. The deputy leader of the council, Lucy Nethsingha, said the UN report published this week emphasised just how urgent it was to take steps to decarbonise our economies. She said: “Quality public transport links are a key part of decarbonisation … moving to a net zero economy cannot be done without changing the way we travel.”

Teh Gruaniad

An end of times rapture like cult.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Look at the historical record.

8C = Permian-Triassic extinction

The high case estimates for CO2 induced warming are 6C--and that doesn't include methane hydrates because we don't have a good enough picture of how they'll react. I have seen worst-case estimates of another 9C from them.

Methane hydrates are probably more of a threat to produce a mega-tsunami than a warming calamity. There is evidence that it has happened in the past. There is no doubt about the potential. I’d hope that the increased pressure of sea level rise would help offset the instability created by warming. But if it doesn’t, no coastal city is safe.

The increased pressure of sea level rise is trivial compared to the pressure they're already under. The question is how much is down there and how sensitive to temperature they are. They can let go catastrophically--that's what got the Deepwater Horizon.

 

[Elixir]

The math is beyond my pay grade, but I have read that the nature of methane hydrates/clathrates is such that the continental shelf deposits are hair trigger sensitive to changes in either temps or pressures.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The increased pressure of sea level rise is trivial compared to the pressure they're already under. The question is how much is down there and how sensitive to temperature they are. They can let go catastrophically--that's what got the Deepwater Horizon.

The math is beyond my pay grade, but I have read that the nature of methane hydrates/clathrates is such that the continental shelf deposits are hair trigger sensitive to changes in either temps or pressures.

My understanding is that it's a phase change situation--either the temperature + pressure makes it stable or not. Water provides good thermal conductivity (by convection--water actually doesn't carry heat too well) and a huge thermal mass. Push a deposit of it into a realm where it's not stable and it goes very fast. (Think of an ice cube sitting on a big chunk of copper at -1C vs at +1C.) To compound this as it goes it releases methane and the gas bubbles lower the water pressure above it, thus driving it farther from the equilibrium point. (Which is what got Deepwater Horizon--it happened underground, the methane took out a lot of the weight in the borehole. The system was designed expecting that weight to push down and when it went it approximated that weight pushing up.)

 

[TSwizzle]

White privilege at its whitist;

A Just Stop Oil protester tossed orange paint over a snooker table during a World Championship game, causing the match to be cancelled this evening. Two eco activists invaded the arena at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield shortly after play began, with a man interrupting the match between Robert Milkins and Joe Perry by jumping on the table where he released a packet of orange dye. The two protesters were Margaret Reid, 52, a former museum professional from Kendal, Cumbria, and Edred Whittingham, a 25-year-old Politics, Philosophy and Economics student at Exeter University.

Daily Mail

A rapture like cult.

 

[steve_bank]

What do you call torrential rain, blizzards, and floods in California?

Spoiler

A good start.

 

[TSwizzle]

The group told MailOnline: 'Millions of people watch the snooker. Millions of people have now seen our message. This is no time to be a spectator, fossil fuels are killing millions and pushing us closer to the collapse of human civilisation. We face crop failure, drought and starvation within a few short decades. It's time for everyone to join us in civil resistance or face the loss of everything we know and love. Which side are you on?'
In a separate statement the group said: '[The protesters] are demanding that the Government immediately stop all new UK fossil fuel projects and are calling on UK sporting institutions to step into in civil resistance against the Government's genocidal policies.'

They really are insane.

A rapture like cult.

It's a catastrophic 64 degrees in Santa Monica today. End of times!!111!!!11

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

White privilege at its whitist;

A Just Stop Oil protester tossed orange paint over a snooker table during a World Championship game, causing the match to be cancelled this evening. Two eco activists invaded the arena at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield shortly after play began, with a man interrupting the match between Robert Milkins and Joe Perry by jumping on the table where he released a packet of orange dye. The two protesters were Margaret Reid, 52, a former museum professional from Kendal, Cumbria, and Edred Whittingham, a 25-year-old Politics, Philosophy and Economics student at Exeter University.

Daily Mail

A rapture like cult.

Everyone remember when the Jonestown Cult poured orange paint on snooker tables as a defiant stand against the man?

 

[TSwizzle]

I guess China doesn't believe in The Science^TM

China has approved a major surge in coal power so far this year, prioritizing energy supply over its pledge to reduce emissions from fossil fuels, Greenpeace said Monday. The jump in approvals for coal-fired power plants, however, has fueled concerns that China will backtrack on its goals to peak emissions between 2026 and 2030 and become carbon-neutral by 2060. China relied on coal for nearly 60 percent of its electricity last year. A study released in February by Global Energy Monitor (GEM) said China last year approved the largest expansion of coal-fired power plants since 2015.

CBS

This obsession with "carbon" really needs to stop.

Catastrophic 70 degrees in Santa Monica today, oh the humanity!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I guess China doesn't believe in The Science^TM

China has approved a major surge in coal power so far this year, prioritizing energy supply over its pledge to reduce emissions from fossil fuels, Greenpeace said Monday. The jump in approvals for coal-fired power plants, however, has fueled concerns that China will backtrack on its goals to peak emissions between 2026 and 2030 and become carbon-neutral by 2060. China relied on coal for nearly 60 percent of its electricity last year. A study released in February by Global Energy Monitor (GEM) said China last year approved the largest expansion of coal-fired power plants since 2015.

CBS

This obsession with "carbon" really needs to stop.

Catastrophic 70 degrees in Santa Monica today, oh the humanity!

China has the same problem as every other country--the leadership is taking too short a view. They're trying to keep the economy running now, if we crash and burn down the road they'll be dead by then.

 

[southernhybrid]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/...CrF4wWz&giftCopy=3_Independent&smid=url-share

Two and a half years of meager rain have shriveled crops, killed livestock and brought the Horn of Africa, one of the world’s poorest regions, to famine’s brink. Millions of people have faced food and water shortages. Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes, seeking relief. A below-normal forecast for the current rainy season means the suffering could continue.

Human-caused climate change has made droughts of such severity at least 100 times as likely in this part of Africa as they were in the preindustrial era, an international team of scientists said in a study released Thursday. The findings starkly illustrate the misery that the burning of fossil fuels, mostly by wealthy countries, inflicts on societies that emit almost nothing by comparison.

In parts of the nations hit hardest by the drought — Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia — climate hazards have piled on top of political and economic vulnerabilities. The region’s string of weak rainy seasons is now the longest in around 70 years of reliable rainfall records. But according to the study, what has made this drought exceptional isn’t just the poor rain, but the high temperatures that have parched the land.

A different picture emerged, however, when the researchers looked at both rainfall and evapotranspiration, or how much water leaves the soil because of warm temperatures. Their models showed that global warming had made combinations of high evapotranspiration and poor rainfall as severe as the recent spell at least 100 times as likely as they were before the Industrial Revolution.
Scientists are getting a much better grasp on the atmospheric conditions that lead the rains to fail above the Horn of Africa, and on how global warming might be affecting them.
In recent decades, when the Pacific Ocean has experienced La Niña conditions, the trade winds strengthen and push warm water from the ocean’s eastern end toward its western one. Heat builds up in the western equatorial Pacific around Indonesia, causing moist air to rise from the sea surface and form thunderstorms. This in turn affects the circulation of air above the Indian Ocean, which draws more moisture from the western end of that ocean toward the eastern end, and leaves less to fall as rain above the Horn of Africa.

But, don't worry. It's a lovely day in Santa Monica. Why should we care about how our excessive habits have harmed those poor dark skinned people in Africa? /s

 

[southernhybrid]

https://wapo.st/3LFpLnl

A new study shows an ancient ice sheet retreated at a startling 2,000 feet per day, shedding light on how quickly ice in Antarctica could melt and raise global sea levels in today’s warming world​

Don't worry. It's a lovely day in Santa Monica and those ice sheets are far away. Plus what the fuck do scientists know compared to our expert who usually only quotes from a news source that is about as accurate as The National Enquirer. Not to worry. It's all good. /s

Scientists monitor ice sheet retreat rates to better estimate contributions to global sea level rise. Antarctica and Greenland have lost more than 6.4 trillion tons of ice since the 1990s, boosting global sea levels by at least 0.7 inches (17.8 millimeters). Together, the two ice sheets are responsible for more than one-third of total sea level rise.
The rapid retreat found on the Eurasian Ice Sheet far outpaces the fastest-moving glaciers studied in Antarctica, which have been measured to retreat as quickly as 160 feet per day. Once the ice retreats toward the land, it lifts from its grounding on the seafloor and begins to float, allowing it to flow faster and increase the contribution to sea level rise.

“Ice sheets are retreating fast today, [especially] in Antarctica,” said Rignot, a scientist at the University of California at Irvine. “But we see traces in the seafloor that the retreat could go faster, way faster, and this is a reminder that we have not seen everything yet.”
Not all ice beds are susceptible to these extremely rapid rates of retreat. The study found the fastest melting occurred on the flattest areas of the ice bed.

 

[TSwizzle]

Don't worry. It's a lovely day in Santa Monica and those ice sheets are far away. Plus what the fuck do scientists know compared to our expert who usually only quotes from a news source that is about as accurate as The National Enquirer. Not to worry. It's all good. /s

I agree, Teh Gruaniad reporting on climate change is never accurate.

boosting global sea levels by at least 0.7 inches (17.8 millimeters).

Oh noes!!!! 0.7 inches?!!!!11!!!!1!

Do you really think that sea level doesn’t ever rise and fall?

It’s baffling that there are people who think that climate is static and never changes.

An end of times, rapture like cult.

It’s a catastrophic 62 degrees in Santa Monica today. Despite 0.7inch rise in sea level, Pacific Ocean has not encroached Third Street promenade so that’s a relief!!!

 

[Shadowy Man]

It’s baffling that there are people who think that climate is static and never changes.

I would indeed be baffled by people like that.

My body temperature isn’t static and fluctuates throughout the day. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be alarmed if it goes up to 102F.