2882

Some music, a first for this thread i believe :) But it is all in the song.

2883

‘Ocean acidification slowing coral reef growth, study confirms’:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/24/ocean-acidification-slowing-coral-reef-growth-study-confirms

Coral reefs are having their growth stunted by ocean acidification caused by global warming, new research has confirmed.

For the first time, scientists conducted an experiment on a natural coral reef which involved altering sea water chemistry to mimic the effect of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The results provide strong evidence that ocean acidification linked to greenhouse gas emissions is already slowing coral reef growth, the team claims.

Without “deep cuts” in greenhouse gas emissions, the world’s coral reefs may not survive into the next century, scientists say.

Carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean where it reacts with seawater to increase acidity.

If the water becomes too acid it dissolves away the calcium carbonate corals that molluscs and creatures such as crabs and lobsters need to build their shells and stony skeletons.

Although previous studies have demonstrated large scale declines in coral reefs in recent decades, the reason for the trend has been harder to pinpoint.

Acidification is one possible cause, but others include warming, pollution and over-fishing.

To investigate the role played by greenhouse gas emissions, the US scientists manipulated the acidity of seawater flowing over a section of the Great Barrier Reef off Australia’s One Tree Island.

Bringing the reef’s pH value – a measurement of acidity or alkalinity – closer to what it would have been in pre-industrial times increased the rate at which calcium carbonate was deposited to grow hard coral exoskeletons.

Lead researcher, Dr Rebecca Albright, from the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC, said: “Our work provides the first strong evidence from experiments on a natural ecosystem that ocean acidification is already slowing coral reef growth.

“Ocean acidification is already taking its toll on coral reef communities. This is no longer a fear for the future; it is the reality of today.”

The research is reported in the latest issue of the journal Nature.

‘More aggressive climate policies could save the US $1 trillion each year’:

One of the obstacles to making the case for environmental policies is that the financial cost of an action can be easy to calculate, while the benefits can be much more difficult to fully quantify. Good deals can be made to sound like money pits when the costs are emphasized without the context of the benefits.

When it comes to action on climate change, there has been some effort to put numbers on the costs and benefits of certain courses of action. But a new study from Drew Shindell and Yunha Lee of Duke University and NASA’s Greg Faluvegi looks at the benefits of more aggressive US actions—ones that could actually put us on the path to meeting the goal of limiting climate change to less than 2ºC warming. While the 2ºC limit is the stated goal of international negotiations, it is quickly slipping out of reach. So what would happen if the US went for it?

The researchers look at a scenario in which the US cuts emissions to 40 percent below their current levels by 2030, focusing on energy and transportation. That’s a trajectory that would ultimately fulfill the US contribution to meeting a 2ºC goal, assuming it were continued. But for the purposes of this study, emissions stay steady after 2030 so that we’re purely talking about the benefits of actions in the next 14 years. This isn’t just about CO2—all the other air pollutants that are emitted from the same smokestacks and tailpipes were analyzed as well.

In terms of the impact on temperatures, things are a little more complicated than you might guess. Globally, the average temperature was around 0.1ºC lower than a business-as-usual world in 2030, and that effect grew to about 0.4ºC by 2100. The average summer temperature in the US would actually increase in the short-term as a result of emissions cuts, although that’s mostly because this is a hypothetical scenario where no other nation makes reductions. Some of the global warming from our greenhouse gas emissions is offset by cooling from tiny light-reflecting particles called aerosols that are also released by fossil fuel burning.

While CO2 stays in the atmosphere for the long haul, aerosols come back down with rain. Cleaning up your emissions means almost immediately losing some of that aerosol “shade."

That’s a local phenomenon, so the virtual United States feels the full warming force of its aerosol reductions. But, in this scenario, it only experiences the cooling force of its own greenhouse gas cuts (since the authors assume nobody else is acting). In a world where everyone cleans up their emissions, all the greenhouse gas cuts add together. So while this simulated scenario is unrealistic, the researchers note that it does highlight “the value of international cooperation”.

In any case, even US cuts on their own have a net cooling influence long before the end of the century. In the meantime, cleaning up aerosol emissions does have some impact on temperature and precipitation—just as emitting aerosols did in the first place.

If the temperature results are complicated, the human health impacts are a little more straight-forward. Transportation emissions cuts translate into an estimated 120,000 fewer premature deaths due to air quality by 2030 and average about 14,000 fewer early deaths per year after that. Energy emissions cuts do even more, preventing some 175,000 premature deaths by 2030 and 22,000 per year after that.

That’s worth something like $250 billion per year, according to one measure of what it costs to extend life. And it doesn’t even include things like the savings from fewer emergency room visits from asthma attacks. Using one attempted estimate of the broader global value of emissions reductions (both for direct health impacts and climate change), the authors calculate about $1 trillion per year in benefits for these simulated changes to US emissions.

The problem here is the cost HAS to be felt in the private sector, and in particular the sectors we all know are driving the CO2 increases, and until that happens, in the usa specifically, nothing much will change.

2884

That’s worth something like $250 billion per year, according to one measure of what it costs to extend life.

It’s “pulled out of your ass” artificial value calculations like that which breed skepticism.

If the only consideration was “saving money” (which would be pretty damned immoral) based upon lifespan effects, that same would analysis lead to the conclusion that not extending lives actually saves $$ through reduced healthcare costs. And no determination of the monetary cost of a warmer climate can be taken seriously using such a simplistic parameter for cost - you’d have to factor in the increased costs of drought as well as the benefits on agriculture of a warmer climate; the reduced heating costs and increased cooling costs; transportation cost reductions, etc., as well as the indirect effects those changes would have on greenhouse gas emissions, possible variations in crime.

2885

A division of Citibank did an economic analysison transitioning to a low carbon economy. It’s long, but most studies done in this area arrive at similar conclusions: Doing so is by far a net positive.

2886

It’s a much more interesting study, despite the inherent bias of being conducted by a bank’s energy group which has a significant financial stake in alternative energy financing and development.

Even then, it indicates that Europe and North America (and northern asia, particularly Russia) experience a net economic benefit from a warmer climate, which doesn’t offset the significant costs/damages inflicted upon Africa and Southern Asia (unsure why South America isn’t also in that bucket), but it shows some of the difficulties in motivating action, when some of the largest fossil fuel economies (Russia and Canada, in particular) would economically benefit from global warming. If those countries acted solely in their national interest, they’d seek to accelerate, not reduce, global warming. Fortunately the western countries don’t think like that. Russia though…

2887

‘Fossil fuel use must fall twice as fast as thought to contain global warming - study’:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/25/fossil-fuel-use-must-fall-twice-fast-thought-contain-global-warming

Climate scientists have bad news for governments, energy companies, motorists, passengers and citizens everywhere in the world: to contain global warming to the limits agreed by 195 nations in Paris last December, they will have to cut fossil fuel combustion at an even faster rate than anybody had predicted.

Joeri Rogelj, research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, and European and Canadian colleagues propose in Nature Climate Change that all previous estimates of the quantities of carbon dioxide that can be released into the atmosphere before the thermometer rises to potentially catastrophic levels are too generous.

Instead of a range of permissible emissions estimates that ranged up to 2,390 bn tons from 2015 onwards, the very most humans could release would be 1,240 bn tons.

In effect, that halves the levels of diesel and petrol available for petrol tanks, coal for power stations, and natural gas for central heating and cooking available to humankind before the global average temperature – already 1C higher than it was at the start of the Industrial Revolution – reaches the notional 2C mark long agreed internationally as being the point of no return for the planet.

In fact, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change summit in Paris agreed a target “well below” 2C, in recognition of ominous projections − one of which was that, at such planetary temperatures, sea levels would rise high enough to submerge several small island states.

'Electric cars ‘will be cheaper than conventional vehicles by 2022’:

Electric cars will be cheaper to own than conventional cars by 2022, according to a new report.

The plummeting cost of batteries is key in leading to the tipping point, which would kickstart a mass market for electric vehicles, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) analysts predict.

The large-scale roll-out of electric vehicles (EVs) is seen as vital in both cutting the carbon emissions that drive climate change and in dealing with urban air pollution, which leads to many premature deaths every year. But, despite subsidies in many countries, EVs remain more expensive than conventional cars and the limited range of battery-only cars is still a concern. Currently, just 1% of new cars sold are electric.

However, the analysis published by BNEF on Thursday predicts that the total cost of ownership – combining purchase price and running costs – of battery-only cars will dip below those with internal combustion engines in 2022, even if the conventional cars improve their fuel efficiency by 3.5% a year.

Surely a lot of this is down to the manufacturing process(and EV is functionally much more simple than a combustion engine etc), and also government not putting the brakes on the green industry?

2888

Interesting Vox article on the cost structure for nuclear plant construction. I am shocked, shocked that having a wide array of constantly-changing standards with a leavening of lawsuits drives up costs substantially.

It definitely seems like it’s the social and politics angle that’s prevented nuclear from making a much greater contribution.

2889

Of course it has. I mean, you only need to think about it to immediately realize the absurdity of people saying the costs keep going up. They keep going up because laws and lawsuits continue to hamper their development.

The technology itself has clearly become dramatically safer and cheaper. Because it’s technology, and that’s what technology does.

The same goes for things like construction time. Modern reactors like the AP1000 are inherently simpler, and thus more easy to construct than earlier reactor designs (while also being dramatically safer and cheaper to operate).

Nuclear power can solve our carbon problem TODAY, and yet it does not because many of those who complain about carbon also prevent the widespread adoption of nuclear power.

2890

A lot of people are far more afraid of nuclear waste disposal, nuclear accidents, securing nuclear facilities from terrorists, potential access to dirty bomb materials at power plants or disposal sites, etc. than they are a 1 degree change in temperature in 100 years. Nuclear is just scarier, which is one of the reasons it hasn’t been embraced as a solution.

2891

Sad but entirely true, Desslock.

2892

Yep. Fukushima and Chernobyl are a lot more tangible than long-term climate change.

2893

I have a frustrating relationship with nuclear power. In principle I agree with you that it’s cleaner and more efficient and I want to be fully on the nuclear bandwagon (well, looking past the not insignificant issue of nuclear waste but the lesser of many evils and etc) but in my neck of the woods Vermont Yankee had to close down due to mismanagement and neglect and it sounds like Indian Point is on a similar path. If we could trust the giant profit driven corporations that run these plants to manage them responsibly I’d be fully on your side but the pattern of neglect is troublesome and the lawsuits were unfortunately necessary to protect public safety in the case of Vermont Yankee.

2894

But that’s what’s so lame about all this.

The end result is that anti nuclear folks don’t even really want to pursue meaningful improvement in things like regulations, because then you remove the only real opposition to nuclear power. They want it to go away completely.

But does anyone here feel that somehow regulation of nuclear power is somehow impossible? Of course not.

We could do it right , if we wanted. And it doesn’t require any technological advancement. It simply requires will. And yet for decades now we haven’t done it.

2895

Well i suppose if you don’t have any property in a low lying coastal region, or business situated there, don’t live in a region currently going through increased wildfire or extreme weather events, and are someone that in general does not care what is happening to other people, or the near future of the human race, including your own children’s future, probably don’t hold any real Christian values (or other religions values about consideration for your fellow man) then yeah sure i suppose it is easy to be complacent about the issues of AGW?

2896

Even you must realize, on some residual level, that you’re completely, utterly insane, right? Seriously, how do you manage to still exist? What do you create or what services do you provide that anyone could possibly value?

Fortunately humans remain sufficiently empathetic and altruistic to subsidize and protect the existence of people like yourself who would have otherwise died in isolation in some run down institution or in some alley squalor, wearing nothing but moth-eaten underroos and chewing rocks and pine needles, frothing and even more demented, in a hapless attempt to discern the difference between muck and nourishment.

Never encountered anyone as damaged and broken as you.

2897

Desslock, how much do you spend on bibs?
Or do you have a different strategy for containing the drool?

2898

Just tissues for the tears of laughter, dude. You have to just laugh at absurdity.

2899

Cleve?

2900

I keep thinking we’ve reached peak Desslock, but then welp.

2901

Reminder that it to an individual who responded to “nuclear power is scary to a lot of people” by actually calling people heathens, who also don’t value their own children, and are misanthropic, and don’t appreciate the owners of beach house hot dog stands…all in the same sentence.

Again, that was in response to “nuclear power is scary to a lot of people.” Sorry if I wasn’t sufficiently tender to the neighborhood’s batshit lunatic.