The World Meteorological Organization issued a press release about its annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin:
Globally averaged concentrations of CO2 reached 403.3 parts per million in 2016, up from 400.00 ppm in 2015 because of a combination of human activities and a strong El Niño event. [...]
[...] Since 1990, there has been a 40% increase in total radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate - by all long-lived greenhouse gases, and a 2.5% increase from 2015 to 2016 alone, according to figures from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration quoted in the bulletin.
[...] Atmospheric methane reached a new high of about 1 853 parts per billion (ppb) in 2016 and is now 257% of the pre-industrial level.
BBC News reported:
"The 3 ppm CO2 growth rate in 2015 and 2016 is extreme - double the growth rate in the 1990-2000 decade," Prof Euan Nisbet from Royal Holloway University of London told BBC News.
[...] Another concern in the report is the continuing, mysterious rise of methane levels in the atmosphere, which were also larger than the average over the past ten years.
The Aliso Canyon gas leak happened in 2016.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @10:43AM (11 children)
... seems like some of them couldn't hold the change and broke. On to the next point of resistance.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @12:01PM (10 children)
Look at "these empirical expressions", specifically the superlogarithmic ones, and applaud the ingenuity. :)
And be sure to never accept extraordinary numbers on faith. ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:36PM (9 children)
By superlogarithmic do you mean the inverse of tetration? I don't see that in those equations.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:36PM (5 children)
By superlogarithmic do you mean the inverse of tetration? I don't see that in those equations.
Nope, by "superlogarithmic" he's indicating he doesn't know WTF he's talking about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @08:23PM (4 children)
If you think you do know shit, do explain how approximating logarithms by square roots work and where it ceases to.
Or do quit jawing.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 02 2017, @09:51PM (3 children)
I don't need to because those expressions do not contain super logarithms.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 02 2017, @10:53PM (1 child)
I'll also point out that radiative forcing factors have nothing to do with the topic at hand which is c02 concentrations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @03:49PM
Submitter quoted "a 40% increase in total radiative forcing" from the WMO press release.
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Friday November 03 2017, @12:52AM
Look, up there! Is it a sine? Is it a cosine? No, it's Superlogarithm!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 03 2017, @01:30AM (2 children)
It means increases faster asymptotically than the logarithm function, such as those square roots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @04:30PM (1 child)
One might guess that that could be the intended meaning. Did you post the original critique?
I don't have expertise in this topic, but I see that a December 2016 paper [wiley.com] in Geophysical Research Letters, which is peer-reviewed, also uses equations which have a square root dependence on the concentration when calculating the radiative forcing for N2O and CH4 (see Table 1); for CO2 they use an equation with a logarithmic dependence on the concentration, just as the IPCC did. The original critique ridicules the IPCC without explicitly stating why its methodology is invalid.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:06PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @11:01AM (8 children)
What about other plants? What is the percentage of Oxygen Violet? Of Nitrogen Daisy? Or of Ethanol Tulip?
(Score: 5, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday November 02 2017, @11:31AM (4 children)
Oh down south in the Dixie,
In the deeps of Tennessee
There's a girl that I admired
just as pretty as can be
Her eyes as soft as redwood
Her hair like golden sun
Her lovely lips as red as fire
I was sure she was the one
But then one day I realised
That our love would have to pass
When I realised just how foul and dire
were the gasses from her ass
Oh Methane Rose...
Oh Methane Rose...
You're as pretty as a girl could be
from your head down to your toes
Oh Methane Rose...
Oh Methane Rose...
You're a pleasure to the eyeballs
but offensive to the nose
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @11:56AM (3 children)
Did you wrote it on the whim, just now, as a pun at the TFA ?
My hat off to you!
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday November 02 2017, @12:30PM (2 children)
Thanks. Feel free to make up more verses, everyone...
As graceful as an antelope
As peaceful as a lamb
As flatulent as a pickup truck
with a poorly fitted cam...
(Score: 4, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:23PM (1 child)
One night I did invite her
To sleep between my sheets
But my joy was interrupted
By her bowel's fetid bleats!
And even when I kiss her
A kind and tender smooch
The noise and smell alert me
This can't be blamed on the pooch!
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday November 02 2017, @07:34PM
She did say "get down on me"
Yet past the navel to there
it couldn't be said more clearly
her biggest issue wasn't the hair.
Yet I tried, for I was dumb,
young, foolish, need exercise,
labored hard with teary eyes,
for two days my tongue was numb
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @12:34PM (2 children)
📈 not 🌹
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @01:45PM (1 child)
Is there already an Emoji for "Whoosh"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @06:12PM
💨? I wanted to explain, not insult.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @12:03PM (4 children)
It is not a mystery that of recent permafrost in Arctic thaws and great amount of methane previously sequestered in it is bubbling out. I don't know if there is even a theoretical possibility that anything could be done about it.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @01:49PM (1 child)
There is. All we have to do is to start a global thermonuclear war. This will cause a nuclear winter and thus stop the Arctic thaws.
As a bonus, you'll not have to worry about too much anthropogenic emission afterwards.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 02 2017, @11:23PM
There is. All we have to do is to start a global thermonuclear war. This will cause a nuclear winter and thus stop the Arctic thaws.
Turns out Trump wasn't lying when he said "“I am, to a large extent, an environmentalist,"
He's just exploring the North Korean path to ending Global Warming.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 02 2017, @11:19PM (1 child)
It is not a mystery that of recent permafrost in Arctic thaws and great amount of methane previously sequestered in it is bubbling out.
That hasn't really been observed in the wild yet so it shouldn't be much of a driver right now.
We do know that oil & gas emissions are higher than previously thought, though. [theguardian.com]
And, agricultural emissions are also higher than previously thought. [theguardian.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @12:19AM
(source [www.cbc.ca])
video made by University of Alaska researchers on a frozen lake near Fairbanks [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @12:08PM (7 children)
we have woken the beast, from now on it will make little difference how much CO2 and CH4 we emit ourselves :(
Next: prepare for rapid rise of the sea level.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @12:38PM
And catastrophic storm surges, don't forget them.
You mean our Runaway [soylentnews.org]?
That's tough, you better try driving into a wall next time.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @01:08PM (4 children)
If we really are at the top of the cycle (which it looks like +/- 10k years or so[1]), I think the expectation is for icecaps to melt to a greater extent thus leading to the flooding you mention. However, this should lead to more moisture -> increased precipitation -> bigger snowfalls -> increased albedo -> glacial period. I don't think anyone has worked it out precisely though, so it is difficult to test.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_420ky_4curves_insolation.jpg [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Snow on Thursday November 02 2017, @03:23PM (3 children)
Meh, it's not that hard to test. We are doing it right now. Just wait and see!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:11PM (2 children)
A proper test requires a control group. I wonder where you get that from.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @07:16PM (1 child)
How did any astronomy ever get done in your world?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @04:31PM
or cosmology :)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 03 2017, @01:37AM
That's certainly not going to make me want climate change mitigation more. Still I have to wonder, how exactly is runaway climate change supposed to differ from the non-runaway version?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:26PM (2 children)
Our most handsome politicians are going to have to get together and hire a bunch of suckers to go collect an ice cube from a passing comet and drop it into the ocean to cool everything down. And each year, we'll use a bigger ice cube. Thus solving the problem once and for all.
ONCE AND FOR ALL!
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:37PM (1 child)
Ah, but those ice cubes consist of water and thus will raise the sea level.
Ah, wait, I know. We must use dry ice! :-)
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:51PM
noooooooooooooo....
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:58PM (1 child)
The HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, A/C) industry has been pressed to monitor for dangerous gases, particularly carbon monoxide and combustion byproducts from gas furnaces. Over the decades, gas furnaces have caused a number of tragic deaths, with leaks from them poisoning and suffocating entire families while they slept. Some decades ago, perhaps the 1980s, CO2 was put on the watchlist, with studies showing that indoor CO2 levels in a classroom full of kids could easily go over 1000 ppm, even 1200 ppm, if the room was not well ventilated, and that everyone's concentration would suffer when it did. Bad effects were noticed as low as 600 ppm.
We were given a CO2 sensor to test around that time. As I recall, the instructions said that 280 ppm was the base line. I never saw it less than 300 ppm, even when kept outside for days at a time. It got close a few times, maybe 310 ppm, but most of the time it stubbornly hung near 350 ppm. Meantime, Los Angeles mandated that classrooms not allow CO2 to go higher than some level, think it was 800 ppm, preferably no more than 600 ppm. But the outdoor air there was already close to 600 ppm thanks largely to their epic traffic jams and the local topography which makes air slow to circulate through the area. Made it extremely difficult to keep the indoor CO2 down with ventilation only. To actually filter CO2 from the air with some sort of absorbing material as used in manned space missions, would have been highly, budget bustingly costly, as well as hopeless, and wasn't tried.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 02 2017, @10:56PM
C02 is heavier that air.
Just move the kids upstairs, problem solved!
(Score: 2) by ledow on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:12PM (13 children)
That's great and everything.
What would you like us to do?
I mean, really?
Let's just take it on trust, depending on how much trust you think you need to put in "the entire world's scientific community".
You're right.
Great.
Now what?
Change a lightbulb or two? Stop talking nonsense. Stop driving diesel cars? Well... get on with it then. Stop consuming electricity from the grid and just use local solar? Legislate that.
And then, please predict a) Impact of following that advice, to the letter, perfectly and immediately on the world vs b) not doing anything / doing exactly what we're doing now.
What results in more deaths? What results in worse overall human condition? What drains resources quickest? What resources will expire to do so?
Because, after years of discussion about this, I have yet to see a single, solitary move towards either fixing it, preventing it, offsetting against it, or preparing for it.
Sure, we can guess that our changes might help, but let's just assume they don't. What do we do? Who dies in the flood that hits the coastal regions versus who dies of starvation / exposure if we don't have the energy to farm and manufacturer like we currently do?
Because, to be honest, I don't think we have ANY CLUE AT ALL about those answers. Which means that making any kind of judgement along the "it's bad" lines which affects public policy is either a) doing nothing or b) actually working in the wrong direction and wasting resources we could have used elsewhere.
It's like a stewardess walking into the cockpit of a plane, seeing a red-light on a control panel he/she doesn't understand, and then getting everyone to jump out of the plane. Rather than saying "Er... that light... is that important" and then having people who know talk through the consequences.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:43PM (2 children)
For example, not a single human will die if you Americans stop using your car to get to the shop just around the corner, wasting tons of fossil fuel. Indeed, with less cars needlessly on the road, less people will die.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @06:41PM
False. Our shops aren't located "just around the corner" unfortunately they're rather far away. And many Americans would not survive a walk to the store and back.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Thursday November 02 2017, @09:51PM
So we all stop using cars.
Does that stop the process? Likely not.
Does that mean that we now have to source all food etc. locally? Yes. Are there areas of the country that therefore now cannot obtain food like they have in modern times but only by travelling miles by some other method?
Does that increase cost of food, cost of transport, cost of the logistics, perishability of food? Yes.
So... who suffers? How many? How much? Did they need to? Will that actually REVERSE or PREVENT anything worse happening?
You can be as facetious as you like, the fact is that "less cars on the road" = "less people die" isn't at all obviously correlative. How many more old people will struggle, suffer and die prematurely compared to those who can just jump in a car and go to the store and/or afford only the food that's mass produced and brought near their town?
Or you could stab at solutions without actually performing data, studies, investigating alternatives, etc. like I'm complaining about and just say "stop using cars" without thoughts of the knock-on effects.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @06:14PM
Most people can probably knock 20% off their emissions with a few small changes. Looking up carbon footprint calculator can help give you a idea what changes might be most effective. You probably save some money and be healthier from the changes as well. Things like walking or cycling when practical, putting on an extra layer before turning the heating on, eating less meat, consider energy efficiency when buying new stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @06:31PM
> What would you like us to do?
You may well ask this question, because the story isn't advocating for a specific action.
> It's like a stewardess walking into the cockpit of a plane, seeing a red-light on a control panel he/she doesn't understand, and then getting everyone to jump out of the plane. Rather than saying "Er... that light... is that important"
I think it's more like the latter, or more like saying "it looks like there's a problem here."
> Because, after years of discussion about this, I have yet to see a single, solitary move towards either fixing it, preventing it, offsetting against it, or preparing for it.
Everybody talks about the climate, but nobody does anything about it, right?
> Because, to be honest, I don't think we have ANY CLUE AT ALL about those answers.
Thank you for your honesty.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday November 02 2017, @10:27PM (3 children)
Legislate one child per family for a few generations. Really.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 03 2017, @01:42AM (2 children)
Unless you're including Africa and Asia in that legislation, it'll be a waste of time.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday November 03 2017, @02:47AM (1 child)
It would be, so of course I am.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 03 2017, @12:06PM
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday November 02 2017, @11:37PM (3 children)
So that concern sounds great in theory, except for one small problem: Those that are talking through the consequences right now are making oodles of money from the very behaviors that are causing the problem. So they don't want to change a damn thing, never mind what happens to New Orleans and New York and Houston and Miami and a bunch of other places.
Some things you can do that will definitely make a (tiny) difference in the right direction, in rough order of priority:
1. Buy less stuff, and fix the stuff you have rather than replacing it when possible. Re-purpose stuff you have as well, rather than buying more stuff. That's really the biggest thing you can do.
2. Assuming you're from the USA, shift your diet to more plants, less meat. And have a preference for what you can get at farmers' markets or local farms and what's in season locally versus stuff you imported from Brazil or something.
3. Double-check your home insulation. If it's old, take steps to improve it. You can get a professional assessment from someone with an infrared camera if you have some cash to put into it. And this will save you money on heating fuel, gasoline, and electricity if you have air conditioning.
4. If it's cold, keep your home a bit colder, say, 65F instead of 70F. If it's warmer, keep your home warmer, say, 75F or 80F. This will also save you money.
5. Drive less by car-pooling, combining trips, using public transportation systems (including planes, trains, and buses), biking, or even walking more. This will also often save you money.
6. Avoid fast food and chain restaurants. Yes, that means you'll probably be eating out less, which will save you money (sensing a theme here?).
7. If you're in an environment where you can, plant trees on your property.
8. If you're in an environment where you can, set up a vegetable garden. Can't get more locally grown than "6 steps out my back door". Oh, and these vegetables are bargain-priced compared to what you'd pay at a store.
If you want to go for more extreme measures, a good place to look is some of the stuff back-to-the-land hippies were trying [amazon.com] in the 1970's oil crisis. One of the projects on my personal list of things to try is a solar stove and oven, which uses reflective surfaces pointed at the sun to create a hot focal point that can be used for cooking. They also have designs for windmills, waterwheels, and similar kinds of projects. Now, the materials for these kinds of things aren't free, nor are they carbon-free, but they might well reduce how much carbon you're using regularly once you've built them. Also, depending on where you are, getting solar power for your home may be as easy as a phone call to a solar power company and signing some paperwork: My dad did this a few years ago, and as a result has $0 electric bills in exchange for occasionally having to clean off his panels.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday November 03 2017, @09:08AM (2 children)
So... again... such measures are culled from the news.
And what's the alternative? What if you don't? What do you think 1 million people fixing their toasters rather than buying new toasters is going to do to the global energy usage / pollution creation? Would it even be measurable? I'm not sure it would.
The rest of your advise is of the same ilk. Cut down. Fine. Let's ALL cut down. 7 billion people. What are the knock-on effects of this idyllic scenario? Does it actually stop the pollutants? Does it reverse the change? Is the impact of what it reverses worse, say, than McDonald's going out of business in terms of jobs, people's welfare, taxation, etc.? What about the old ladies turning their heating down and suffering greater medical expense in the process? What about their health overall being forced to move to less readily-nutritious and digestible foods to plants and vegetables while fighting against cold and unable to use their car to get to the shops/hospital/doctors?
Though it's nice to THINK all that you listed would make a difference, there's no actual evidence that it does. And certainly nobody's bothered to investigate - in earnest - the knock-on effects and their causes. How many die through not having readily available mass-produced food, freezing in their little hovel, not being able to get places, losing their jobs and - what? Taxation on "new" products rather than spare parts and repair tools?
Again, it's a nice rhetoric but you're just echoing news items rather than scientific modelling outcomes. Though we can say "Yep, that'll reduce pollution if we do that" (I have no doubt), would it actually decrease it by anything of significance? Would it actually change the situation? Would you get that worldwide, instantaneous co-operation (nope? More likely a form of anarchy?)? What would be the overall impact on the humans you do affect? The studies on this are few, far between, inconclusive and it is NOT SCIENTIFIC to recommend a course of action without modelling its effects on more than just the one variable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @04:41PM (1 child)
In my country, we have a saying, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. What it means is: when one insists on perfection, one may never begin a task, or may never finish a task one has begun.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Saturday November 04 2017, @06:42PM
I have a saying.
Think things through at least a little bit first.
Of course you can't predict the entirety of the future but NOBODY seems to have given any thought to the consequences of the actions proposed, outside the scope of "it reduces greenhouse emissions" - not even as far as "what would it mean for people to make that change even if you could persuade them?"