from the we-used-to-wish-for-warmer-weather dept.
Ocean temperatures hit record high as rate of heating accelerates:
The heat in the world's oceans reached a new record level in 2019, showing "irrefutable and accelerating" heating of the planet.
The world's oceans are the clearest measure of the climate emergency because they absorb more than 90% of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuel burning, forest destruction and other human activities.
The new analysis shows the past five years are the top five warmest years recorded in the ocean and the past 10 years are also the top 10 years on record. The amount of heat being added to the oceans is equivalent to every person on the planet running 100 microwave ovens all day and all night.
[...]"We found that 2019 was not only the warmest year on record, it displayed the largest single-year increase of the entire decade, a sobering reminder that human-caused heating of our planet continues unabated," said Prof Michael Mann, at Penn State University, US, and another team member.
Journal Reference:
Cheng, L., Abraham, J., Zhu, J. et al. Ocean Temperatures Hit Record High as Rate of Heating Accelerates Adv. Atmos. Sci. (2020) 37: 137. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-020-9283-7
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @09:05PM (1 child)
Since the amount of heat being added to the oceans is equivalent to every person on the planet running 100 imaginary microwave ovens all day and all night, just get everyone to run 100 imaginary air conditioners all day and all night.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @11:36PM
I'll contribute by dumping my 30 year old broken ass air conditioner into the nearest ocean.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Tuesday January 14 2020, @09:06PM (7 children)
How much of this heating is caused by robots?
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @09:12PM (6 children)
The report shows that 27% of the warming is caused by power and HVAC used in data centers (Google, Facebook and the like)... do advertising robots count?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 14 2020, @09:30PM (5 children)
How much is caused by cryptocurrency farms?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 14 2020, @09:33PM (4 children)
Not that much. About the same as the entire city of las vegas, which is a lot for a pointless idea with no real value, but less than all the millions of computers and tvs running netflix put together.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 14 2020, @09:54PM
What happened to all the statistics about Bitcoin (alone) consuming more electricity than Switzerland? Then factor in all the alt-coins, etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:25PM (1 child)
I would put good money on the average bitcoin miner consuming lots more power than the average netflix device. Especially, considering the huge use of tablets / phones for watching Netflix. Even then, I would imagine the average user is more likely using a Roku type device as opposed to a full-fledged Desktop computer. So, it's entirely possible that for every bitcoin miner you could have a hundred or more netflix devices using the same amount of power.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @11:37PM
For every bitcoin miner you have thousands to tens of thousands of users with thin clients.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @11:41PM
So says the cancer research who can't understand the armitage doll model of carcinogenesis... I assure you 100% of your work has been worthless reading of tea leaves, or worse, i you have trouble with that one.
I can just imagine you finding all thesignificant correlations between genes and then there are too many so you say "lets make .00005 the new significance level instead of 0.0005!"
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @09:07PM (16 children)
... and tell her to glare at the ocean until it cools down.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:11PM (11 children)
Ok boomer.
(Score: 3, Funny) by RS3 on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:26PM (9 children)
It's the lamest insult I've ever heard of. Does that really insult anyone? Or does it just make the millennial feel better about his hateful emo self? I think the whole thing was promulgated by boomers to give annoying adolescent 20-somethings something to quench their malice. The whole thing is pretty amusing.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @11:27PM (4 children)
It's not an insult. It's a dismissal.
Your opinions have been heard.
Your actions have been observed.
You can go now.
The rest of us have work to do.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday January 15 2020, @01:52AM (1 child)
Good point, but bad idea. "Oh, they don't care about us. Might as well crank up the AC and vote to keep coal plants open, live it up until we die, and let these young ingrates sear on the outside to seal in their own juices to stew in."
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:14PM
Considering that that's what they were doing already?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Coward, Anonymous on Wednesday January 15 2020, @02:15AM
It's like when kids close their ears and sing "La La La".
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:14AM
Ok, boomer.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @11:49PM (1 child)
Not the same AC, but:
It's the lamest insult I've ever heard of. Does that really insult anyone? Or does it just make the boomer feel better about his grumpy old self? I think the whole thing was promulgated by millenials to give annoying geriatric 60-somethings something to quench their malice. The whole thing is pretty amusing.
(Score: 5, Funny) by RS3 on Wednesday January 15 2020, @01:31AM
You got it! Very good. Now run along and vape.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @03:39AM
Indignant boomercel is crying on the inside.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:51PM
Ok boomer [cnn.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:56PM
Mod parent up... he's a special little snowflake who deserves recognition.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 15 2020, @03:02AM (3 children)
Daily reminder that an autistic teenager is giving you shit-aneurysms...because she's correct. You have, quite literally, gotten owned by a little girl.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:51AM (1 child)
Yeah, we're all Samsons to any Delilah that happens along; it's one of the side effects of testosterone poisoning.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 15 2020, @05:19AM
Is it? I thought it was a side effect of being a whiny little manlet with a stomach full of bile and a head empty of ideas.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Wednesday January 15 2020, @06:56AM
Maybe you're the one who got owned by her.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Captival on Tuesday January 14 2020, @09:22PM (15 children)
Every place on the planet is warming at twice the rate of every other place. [wattsupwiththat.com]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday January 14 2020, @09:43PM
There are only sixteen places on the planet then, according to your source.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:00PM (10 children)
Dumbass shill who's paid hundreds of thousands a year to lie to you lies to you.
In what fucking psychotic-ass world is spain's rate of change being "50 percent superior to the average of nations in the northern hemisphere" "Hotter than everywhere else".
I'll tell you where, straight up Watt's ass. That's a flagrant lie to fool extremely stupid people. Are you an extremely stupid people, Capitval?
How many predictions has this dumbass made around that time frame that have been overwhelmingly proven wrong by only a few years' time. Let's see, from just 2008..., as I'd like at least a decade to show how wrong he is. So you can see I'm not skipping any predictions [wattsupwiththat.com]
Oh wow, only 8 of the 10 hottest years have happened since cooling was portended, what a well validated hypothesis from someone who's not full of shit.
The Ice in Greenland is Growing [wattsupwiththat.com]
Weird that, today it's at the smallest extent of any winter in history [nsidc.org] since it was growing so much. We just missed the signal in this one's noise, I'm sure.
Met Office recycles last years PR: 2009 to be one of the warmest on record [wattsupwiththat.com]
Weird that 2009 turned out to be the hottest ever at the time. Gosh, I'm sure his underlying beliefs are sound and it was just a coincidence he rejected this one totally accurate prediction
Temperatures could drop to 50 below zero in parts of Alaska [wattsupwiththat.com]
Now, I couldn't find any evidence of this actually happening at any alaska weather stations in 2008 In this somewhat bare historic record, even confusing weather for cliamte, he can't make an accurate fucking prediciton. Err. I mean. Surely just missing data
Pielke Sr. takes on the London Times over erroneous climate reporting – says "warming has stopped for at least 4 years" [wattsupwiththat.com]
I'm sure the very next year being the hottest ever and the proceeding decade getting hotter was just a mistake. Roger Pielke Sr. just got his sunspot magic wrong. He needs to ask the spirits again.
God, I can't even get out of the last couple days of 2008 before I'm just exhausted of trying to pretend. I was intended to get a week's worth of stories, but I'm so tired of it. He's not acting in good faith. A sensible person would have learned from making so many so wrong predictions. You're a sesnsible person right?
This isn't cherry picking. Every word out of Watt's mouth, in the most generous possible interpretation is totally and completely wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:07PM (2 children)
I dont get it.... his post I do get thou.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:13PM
Watt of Watt's Up With That is a paid shill, and only stupid people believe a word out of his mouth.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:19PM
Thou is Yoda.
Get you do not!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:30PM
My link to alaska weather data got eaten by the formatting gremlin [wunderground.com]
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Wednesday January 15 2020, @02:49AM (5 children)
Oh well, Al Gore makes millions playing the same game. In fact, Watts' record is not bad when he points out Gore's errors.
Gore (2006): Within the decade there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro. [youtube.com]
Debunking (2018): Greatest Snowfall on Kilimanjaro Glaciers in Years [glacierhub.org]
Gore (2006): Within 15 years this will be the Park formerly known as Glacier. [youtube.com]
Debunking (2019): Glacier National Park is replacing signs that predicted its glaciers would be gone by 2020 [cnn.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 15 2020, @01:34PM (3 children)
No dumbasses come by and link al gore in every thread to shit it up do they? no they link the fucking journal of atmospheric sciences
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Wednesday January 15 2020, @02:16PM (2 children)
Appeal to authority is not an argument.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 15 2020, @02:54PM (1 child)
No, but a lazy ass tu quoque that doesn't even address a true fucking point is?
Come on with that intellectually vacuous fallacy spotting bullshit. You know as well as I do that the rigor of this particular paper is quite high, because you can read the fucking methodology section.
You don't, of course, for reasons that elude me, but your high horse isn't even reach knee level right now, my dude.
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:18PM
I linked to an article that shows a huge scientific miss that anyone can appreciate. Signs were put up at a National Park that had to be taken down again because climate-model-based predictions were wrong.
Some technical article about ocean heat content or whatever you're referring to doesn't cut the mustard against that. Like it or not, science requires falsifiable predictions. Otherwise you're just going through the motions.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:20PM
Gore is a self-serving asshole. That doesn't mean all of the other climate research being done is wrong.
I have a relative that works for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. He spends months at a time out at sea taking temperature readings from sensor buoys that measure the temperature at the surface and then down every 50 feet or so to the ocean floor, all over the Pacific Ocean. Temperatures have been going up, consistently, all over the ocean for years.
But Exxon, Peabody Energy, the rulers of Saudi Arabia, hundreds of others, and their puppets have spent hundreds of millions on propaganda to convince us nothing is wrong. The earth is a huge fucking chunk of rock and water, it seems impossible to believe humanity could affect the global temperature averages. But consider: the total energy output by all explosives in World War 2, including the two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan, is around 3.5 TWh. Humanity is currently consuming 113,000 TWh per year. Yeah, the earth is huge - but do you really think we can consume 32,000 times the explosive energy output of all of World War 2 every year without affecting the global climate? Or the most powerful volcanic eruption in human history, Mount Krakatoa - 232 TWh. So humanity uses the same energy as 487 Krakatoan eruptions every year.
Fuck you and your Gore reference. He's a dick and I hate him too. That doesn't mean climate change is a myth.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:30PM (2 children)
Yes, I saw that at the department of redundancy department.
So we've achieved a perpetual heat engine? So if we can just make use of the heat, we're all set, no?
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:54PM (1 child)
An accurate title for that article: These sixteen places are warming up faster than average.
Doesn't sound so shocking, does it?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:56AM
Buzzkill! But seriously, sad that there are people who don't think it through.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:07PM (13 children)
As is often the case with these AGW scare articles, which are mainly intended to bolster grant funding, there's a fundamental flaw. You don't even need to read the article: the author list is sufficient to see the problem is faulty equipment. While AliExpress thermometers are quite inexpensive and work well when you get them, they're known to fail gradually over time resulting in higher and higher temperature readings. That explains their results conclusively and without needing to get into sky-is-falling mode.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:37PM (8 children)
But they're priests^Wscientists, don't you believe the religion^Wscience?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:40PM (7 children)
They said it was irrefutable!
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:50PM (6 children)
Well I don't see you refuting it....
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:53PM (5 children)
You can tell by the way they pretend climate scientists are somehow religious leaders, and somehow can't be criticized.
I think it might be something they say on Fox News.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:57PM
It's their superpower: Projection [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @08:21AM (3 children)
So let me get this straight. The earth spins but we cant feel it, The stars change but we can't see it. The earth is moving but you can't tell even though it is very fast. But people who write stuff down and use math to construct a fact based worldview out of theoretical equations that negate our senses are better than you or I?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday January 15 2020, @08:45PM (2 children)
Are you going to argue for a flat earth?
Because that would be really funny.
Oh, and if you look up and pay attention at night you can see the stars change. If you travel from the Southern hemisphere to the northern you can see the stars change too. It's not hard to do either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @11:26PM (1 child)
No, the the *ocean* is flat. Trust your senses. If you look through anything curved (ie, a lens) it makes an object appear curve even if not. This is why the ocean may appear curved in pictures (where the image was passed through a curved camera lens) or in first person (where the image passes through your curved eyeball. You can see it in the name of the organ: eyeBALL. Balls are curved.
This is all backed up by the theory of relativity. Things only *seem* curved but objects traveling around them go in a straight line. It is all an illusion:
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/3009/how-exactly-does-curved-space-time-describe-the-force-of-gravity [stackexchange.com]
So the oceans are flat, but the local geometry is curved. Perhaps we can agree on that.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 16 2020, @08:45PM
I'm still confused.
Should I trust my senses because the ocean looks flat, or not trust my senses because my curved eyeball makes the ocean look curved?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @02:04AM (3 children)
Why don't you get your lazy ass out of your parents basement and measure the entire temperature profile of the oceans?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:44AM (1 child)
Because space is not real. The earth is not flat, but it is like a round grape floating in a flat vast ocean. Thus, there is no room for space in reality, only electrone and electrone holes that destroy one instant of time for each annihilation event.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday January 15 2020, @08:49PM
Wow, that is mental.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @05:08PM
And the effect acidification is having on fish. [nofrakkingconsensus.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by EJ on Wednesday January 15 2020, @01:13AM (4 children)
In the time this has happened, I have made the following changes:
1. Moved closer to work (I live half as far away as I did, and my commute is now 1/3 the duration)
2. Reduced the amount of yearly travel (vacations, etc.)
3. Vastly increased the efficiency of my house
4. Reduced the amount of non-work driving (I only go out on the weekends if critical, and I do most of my shopping on the way home from work, since I pass all important shops on my commute)
5. Still did not have any children***
I feel like there should be some MASSIVE reward for people who forego reproduction, since it's an exponential decrease in a person's lifetime carbon footprint. Mine is completely bounded.
Each child you have should cause a carbon-tax penalty for certain types of luxuries. Maybe you get a free credit for one or two kids, but anything beyond that should cause severe penalties.
Just like Bob Barker used to say on The Price is Right: "Spay and neuter your humans."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @03:38PM
Here's your sticker.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:31PM
The problem is there are no rewards available for reducing your carbon footprint. The costs are externalized, and any attempt at all to internalize it (via, say, carbon credits), people have an epic meltdown over government cash grabs, etc.
My dad is like that. He has a total mental break every time there is the merest suggestion that something might cost him a little more, no matter how insignificant. He also resents the parasitic government stealing HIS money to waste on unimportant crap like... oh... schools, libraries, etc.
IMO that's the root of climate change denial. People who absolutely refuse to take responsibility for the situation, no matter how indirectly, and are resentful at the suggestion that they might be abusing their environment, no matter how inadvertently and unknowingly, and would rather the world burn (literally) than experience that mental discomfort.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:37PM
You've reduced emissions by 58.6 tons COe, per kid.
Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children [theguardian.com]
(as have we)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:27PM
No amount of individual responsibility will solve this problem. I commend your dedication. I have kids, and I love them more than anything, but if I had been thinking more clearly twenty years ago we would have adopted children instead of contributing to the population.
But 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. Short of voluntary human extinction, no mass movement by individuals will offset that kind of damage.
I posted up-thread: humanity consumes more than 113,000 TWh of power per year, equivalent to 32,000 times all of the explosive energy - including nukes - released in World War 2 or equivalent to 487 times the explosive power of the Mount Krakatoa eruption, the largest volcanic eruption in human history. That's per year, so we're affecting the planet like 487 colossal eruptions per year, every year. Skipping flights or going vegan ( https://get-green-now.com/vegan-lifestyle-carbon-footprint/ [get-green-now.com] ) aren't going to fix it. They're still worth doing, but don't consider the problem solved.
We are going to save our species with serious policy changes, or not at all.
(Score: 2) by corey on Wednesday January 15 2020, @01:20AM (13 children)
Time to start thinking of a solar shade at a Lagrange point between Earth and the Sun. We need to minimise the energy going into the system after the tipping points have been surpassed.
In Australia we have experienced the worst fire season by a country mile on record, and our govt still doesn't want to talk about, or link it to, global warming. I guess it wasn't that long ago that our PM brought a lump of coal into Parliament and waved it around mocking the opposition with it. Telling. He wasn't PM then and shouldn't be now.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday January 15 2020, @02:10AM (6 children)
Problem with a reflector that big...it acts like a solar sail.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:34AM (5 children)
Just how big are we talking? I'm not sure that's even feasible. Wouldn't it need to be the size of a small moon at the minimum? In any case, if the side facing the sun collects energy, then it's enough energy most likely to support station keeping thrusters.
I'm seriously interested in calculating just how much area you would need to reduce the sunlight hitting the planet by any significant amount. I don't think creating too much shade is a good idea anyways. It would affect the eco systems dramatically. It would need to be larger and full of "pin holes" to control opacity.
Anything that big is only something that will happen once we are collecting metals from the asteroid belts and bringing them back to Earth or Moon orbit for processing. Sounds like something that would take decades to build, even fully automated.
Probably pretty useful in millions of years when the sun starts undergoing changes, but not in the immediate future.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 15 2020, @05:57AM (4 children)
Wonderful idea, love it.
To make it even better, let's make those thrusters photonic; this way you don't need to organize periodic refueling with propellant or reaction stuff. When you need to compensate for the momentum taken from one incoming photon, you just emit another one with the same energy in the opposite direction (very large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:30AM (3 children)
I think the very large grin means that the only way to stop the movement is to cancel it out by being transparent right? You're funny :)
That got me thinking though. Could you create a sail that just bent the light towards the sides of the Earth, at discrete points? If it emitted the energy towards the sides, it could be used like tacking in sailing? Carefully balanced it might maintain position?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 15 2020, @08:31AM (2 children)
Think a bit, tacking works on sailing due to the interaction of the boat with the water; further, changing the sail orientation is still a thing that requires energy expenditure.
Maintaining position in the void of the space (no water resistance there) will require more energy than what you can capture from the Sun.
- If you don't interact with the photon, your sails stays where it is, but failed your "shading Earth" mission.
- If you absorb a photon, you get a kick from its momentum towards Earth - and there's no "water" your sail can push against to "stay in place"; on the plus side, you may use the absorbed energy to reorient the sail, but not to compensate the kick.
- If you reflect a photon, the kick you incur is gonna vary from "double the absorption kick" (if you reflect it back on the same direction but opposite sense) to almost zero (if you deflect it with just an-ant-boobs-ever-vanishing epsilon). In the first case, the "balancing" will result in the emission of more-than-two-photons-of-the-same-energy-just not directed at Earth. In the second case, your sail is gonna need to be humongous to offer a cross-section able to shade the entire Earth - imagine the energy consumption requires to tack your solar sail in the other direction to balance your position.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @03:45PM
The L1 point is on top of a "gravitational hill". You just put the sail slightly on the sunward side so that the photonic thrust matches and balances the downward drift. Yes, you are still going to need station-keeping thrusters, but the better your navigation the more you can balance things out and reduce their use.
Or if you use gyros to tilt it, you could eliminate the thrusters entirely. Reflect the light at 170 degrees instead of 180 and you have a small thrust that can take you wherever you want. Niven said it best in the integral trees: East takes you Out, Out takes you West, West takes you In, In takes you East. North and South bring you back.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @05:29PM
Then position it just beyond the Lagrange point where the sun's gravity exactly offsets the light pressure.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by evilcam on Wednesday January 15 2020, @03:01AM (5 children)
Ugh, Scomo and his cronies are such pieces of shit.
It's so frustrating that the solution is staring us right in the face:
1. Leave carbon sinks (esp. coal) in the ground
2. Transition aggressively away from CO2-emitting energy generation toward non-emitting energy generation (e.g. solar/wind/thermal/hydro)
3. Fire Scomo into the sun.
4. Create more carbon sinks (i.e. plant trees)
Every time I hear people whinge about "but what about jobs" I just can't comprehend the mental gymnastics to look at the above actions and think they're not going to create jobs...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @05:53AM (3 children)
I'm on-board but I don't think we can go fast enough. This recent disaster to me is also partially caused by poor handling of back burning. The fuel load accumulated to such a degree that created a massive chain reaction.
My mate's wife worked in the department that oversees the resourcing for this. They had about 100 vacancies open to fill to manage this. Guess what not only did they not fill it, they even downsized the department from 6 admin staff to 1.5 (half time for the .5) essentially signalling that this is not important. Well shit happened. Of course this is just this years problem.
The under management of the fuel load over the years accumulated to a tipping point. Mismanagement from the politicians to lobbying from greenies on "ZOMG back burning will cause climate change!". Well looks like no back burning just burnt a hell lot more and then some!
(Score: 2) by corey on Wednesday January 15 2020, @09:00AM (2 children)
Thing that frustrates me too, is that people want to burn more, clear trees more and even logging companies are suggesting we log native forests.
Are they so selfish that they don't even see that cutting trees down is what's creating this problem in the first place??
What we need is dense, moist forests that create cool microclimates that brings more rainfall to sustain those forests.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:09PM
We should be re-foresting every where we can, but dense moist forests are pretty much impossible west of the Great Dividing Range / South of Longreach. Sparse drought tolerant vegetation is the only option. It's just too flat to get enough rain. Short of cutting a 10km wide channel to below sea level from Karumba to Port Augusta and using the spoil to create mountains you are not going to increase rainfall appreciably.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:32PM
Loggers and coal miners understand the value of the environment in an abstract sense, but if you shut down their industry you just stopped their ability to pay the mortgage and put food on the table. And in most areas, their employers are the only job options available. When given the choice between 'right but homeless' and 'wrong', most people choose the first option and I can't blame them.
I'm a closet free-as-in-freedom software fanatic, and I work for a proprietary software company. I engage in the exact same kind of hypocrisy, though I think working on DRM is probably less of an immediate threat to humanity's survival than cutting forests and burning coal.
I really don't think we're going to solve these problems in a capitalist society. As long as the only employers in hundreds of locations are destroying the environment, you will find millions of voters that will invent excuses to ignore it.
(Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Wednesday January 15 2020, @06:01AM
Disagree. A shit have a potential positive value if you use it as a fertilizer.
ScoMo and cronies have a negative value, one for which I can't find anything to compensate with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford