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Global Warming & Climate Change: The Phenomenon

hunck said:
Well well - notalotofpeopleknowthat is yet another one-man blog, run by one Paul Homewood, a retired accountant with



Another man with opinions aplenty but no expertise. I’ve added him to the list together with

Dailysceptic
Katie Hopkins
Wattsupwiththat
Orderorder/guidofawkes
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Man, you love a list. Mind you, to be fair so do I.
I'd better not publish mine on here though.
 
If they are not junk sites then they are valid sources of data. The geezer seems to be complaining about nothing.
 
eburacum said:
Crops were doing fine when the CO2 level in our atmosphere was 285 ppm, before industrialisation. The current level of CO2 is about 420 ppm. Lowering CO2 ppm from 420 back to 285 would not damage crops at all.
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Plants require a minimum of 150 ppm to survive (i.e. cling onto life). At such low levels they respire CO2, rather than photosynthesising oxygen.
A minimum of 300/330 ppm is required for plants to develop normally.
A level of 285 ppm meant that plant life was actually struggling. Just 'surviving' isn't 'thriving'.
It may partly explain why some parts of the world were desertified for a long time and are now becoming greener.

Also... there weren't 8 billion people to feed until recently. Crops back in the day were pretty sparse, but were generally enough to feed the world's population (with the occasional famine), because of the low population level.

Recent technical innovations and improvements in farming have greatly improved crop yields to levels that were unobtainable in 'olden times'. Selective breeding and GM have created crops that grow more efficiently, improved fertilisers have become available and greenhouse/polytunnel use combined with concentrated CO2 levels have made crops explode.

How do you think little old Holland has become the number 2 exporter of fruit and veg in the world? High levels of CO2.
 
All the water we have came with planet earth when it was formed and nature just recycles the water.

I am worried as the water evaporates with the rising temperatures , will the steam escape into space.

Is this what happened to Mars ?
 
If farmers are using polytunnels with elevated levels of CO2 they can continue to do so, even after CO2 levels are reduced.

There are plenty of C4 crops that can thrive in lower carbon dioxide levels, and I know some people who are working on genetic engineering to improve CO2 utilisation in C3 plants. But I suppose we can't rely on success in this field prematurely.

We con't run out of CO2 for another 500 million years, according to some estimates. After that Earth life will need to adapt significantly, but not yet.
 
eburacum said:
If farmers are using polytunnels with elevated levels of CO2 they can continue to do so, even after CO2 levels are reduced.
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A lot of farmers simply can't afford it in poorer parts of the world.
 
charliebrown said:
All the water we have came with planet earth when it was formed and nature just recycles the water.
I am worried as the water evaporates with the rising temperatures , will the steam escape into space.
Is this what happened to Mars ?
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Not really. Mars lost its water because the gravity is too low to retain hydrogen. Some water was retained on Mars because it was frozen, and now exists as ice on and below the surface.

On the other hand Venus almost certainly lost all its oceans because of steam-heat conditions in the atmosphere; a so-called wet greenhouse, which caused most of the hydrogen to be lost to space. What little hydrogen is left on the planet is enriched in deuterium because heavy water is retained more easily.
 
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Mythopoeika said:
A lot of farmers simply can't afford it in poorer parts of the world.
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If plants can still thrive at 300 ppm, then that should be the target. Still considerably down from 420 ppm.

C4 plants are generally found in the tropics, and can thrive in lower CO2 levels. Hopefully C4 respiration can be extended to a wider range of crops without affecting palatability, but this may not be possible.
 
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Still, I'm fairly confident we can science our way out of this mess, like Mark Watney on Mars. There are plenty of geoengineering possibilities that should help with this process, but quite often the most promising methods are opposed by environmentalists on principle. I'm not sure we can afford to reject any technologies that might help without a full appraisal.
 
eburacum said:
Still, I'm fairly confident we can science our way out of this mess, like Mark Watney on Mars. There are plenty of geoengineering possibilities that should help with this process, but quite often the most promising methods are opposed by environmentalists on principle. I'm not sure we can afford to reject any technologies that might help without a full appraisal.
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What geoengineering techniques are available that would not wreck the environment further?
I'm struggling to think of one.
I remember back in the early 70s reading one of my Dad's old Popular Science mags, which proposed the jetting of huge volumes of water across vast distances to cool North Africa and increase rainfall. Sounded great, but the cartoony illustrations made it less credible.
 
eburacum said:
Not really. Mars lost its water because the gravity is too low to retain hydrogen. Some water was retained on Mars because it was frozen, and now exists as ice on and below the surface.

On the other hand Venus almost certainly lost all its oceans because of steam-heat conditions in the atmosphere; a so-called wet greenhouse, which caused most of the hydrogen to be lost to space. What little hydrogen is left on the planet is enriched in deuterium because heavy water is retained more easily.
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Good point. Though Mars didn't (as we know) have any consumers of water, either in digestion or industry. The water might be recycled but, even then, there is a reduction.
It's not as easy as 'water in, water out'.
It's not a 'circular system' because of matter breakdown.
 
Increasing the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere would raise albedo and cool the planet, but water vapour is a greenhouse gas itself, so this would need to be carefully controlled.

Other methods of managing solar reflectance include dispersing aerosols in the upper atmosphere; chalk perhaps, or sulphur (sulphur could have other undesirable effects, so this would also need to be a balancing act). I'm quite interested in increasing the reflectance of the oceans and upper atmosphere using reflective balloons and flotation devices.

But the most promising idea to me is enhanced or artificial photosynthesis - if carbon can be removed from the atmosphere using sunlight, biology and chemistry, then we could hopefully maintain CO2 levels at whichever level we choose.
 
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Once the atmosphere of Mars was stripped away by the solar wind, the pressure became so low that any water that was on the surface boiled away to the upper atmosphere, where it was also stripped away by the solar wind.
 
eburacum said:
But the most promising idea to me is enhanced or artificial photosynthesis - if carbon can be removed from the atmosphere using sunlight, biology and chemistry, then we could hopefully maintain CO2 levels at whichever level we choose.
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Plant trees...?
 
Sure. Especially if they are genetically-engineered C4 trees, and/or trees that produce usable carbon-neutral fuel.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Once the atmosphere of Mars was stripped away by the solar wind, the pressure became so low that any water that was on the surface boiled away to the upper atmosphere, where it was also stripped away by the solar wind.
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That's right. Mostly the hydrogen was lost, while oxygen was retained on the surface as rusty-coloured oxides.
 
charliebrown said:
All the water we have came with planet earth when it was formed and nature just recycles the water.

I am worried as the water evaporates with the rising temperatures , will the steam escape into space.

Is this what happened to Mars ?
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We have an ozone layer that keeps that from happening. What happened to Mars is something we don't know yet. We don't even know if it ever had an atmosphere or oceans.
 
JahaRa said:
We have an ozone layer that keeps that from happening. What happened to Mars is something we don't know yet. We don't even know if it ever had an atmosphere or oceans.
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The various Martian landforms indicate that water was involved, similar to how Earths ravines, gullies, flood plains and deltas would indicate the standard erosion, transportation and deposition mechanics that formed a lot of Earths surfaces.

I think that not acknowledging this is having a safe bet.
 
JahaRa said:
We have an ozone layer that keeps that from happening. What happened to Mars is something we don't know yet. We don't even know if it ever had an atmosphere or oceans.
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According to this report

https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/what-happened-to-marss-water-it-is-still-trapped-there

around four billion years ago, Mars was home to enough water to have covered the whole planet in an ocean about 100 to 1,500 meters deep; a volume roughly equivalent to half of Earth's Atlantic Ocean. But, by a billion years later, the planet was as dry as it is today.

According to new research from Caltech and JPL, a significant portion of Mars's water—between 30 and 99 percent [big difference]—is trapped within minerals in the planet's crust. The research challenges the current theory that the Red Planet's water escaped into space.
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Some of it was lost to the atmosphere - they looked for traces of deuterium in the atmosphere but didn't find enough to show a lot of water escaping to space due to Mars' weak gravity, therefore a large amount of the water is still on the planet. They explain it by the trapping of water in minerals in the planet's crust.
 
The Acropolis in Athens is shut down as the the temperature reached 40 C or 104 F.

The extreme heat is crushing Europe and the UK as the the extreme heat is crushing the western U.S. and the Gulf of Mexico states including Florida.

Is there any end in sight ?

Has the world past the tipping point ?

Japan, India, suffering terribly as Morocco hits 47 C or 117 F.
 
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After 3,000 years of being stable, the Florida coral reef is dying because the water temperatures are over 90 F or 32 C.

The coral is turning white or dead.

This is a double concern because during hurricane season these warm waters are like a time bomb.
 
Colorado River Basin badly affected.

From 2000 to 2021, climate change caused the loss of more than 40 trillion liters (10 trillion gallons) of water in the Colorado River Basin—about equal to the entire storage capacity of Lake Mead—according to a new study that modeled humans' impact on hydrology in the region.

Without climate change, the drought in the basin most likely would not have reduced reservoir levels in 2021 to the point requiring supply cuts under the first-ever federally declared water shortage, according to the study, which was published in the journal Water Resources Research, which publishes original research on the movement and management of Earth's water.

"While we knew warming was having an impact on the Colorado Basin's water availability, we were surprised to find how sensitive the basin is to warming compared to other major basins across the western U.S., and how high this sensitivity is in the relatively small area of the basin's crucial snowpack regions," said Benjamin Bass, a hydrological modeler at the University of California-Los Angeles and lead author of the study.

"The fact that warming removed as much water from the basin as the size of Lake Mead itself during the recent megadrought is a wakeup call to the climate change impacts we are living today."

The Colorado River Basin, which is the area drained by the Colorado River and its tributaries, covers about 647,500 square kilometers (250,000 square miles) in seven states across the U.S. West and supplies water to about 40 million people, as well as supports agriculture and natural ecosystems. The regional drought that began in about 2000 is the driest period in 1,200 years and has reduced river flow and shrunk reservoirs, increasing concerns about water scarcity as the climate continues to change.

https://phys.org/news/2023-07-colorado-river-basin-lost-equal.html
 
https://www.axios.com/2023/07/24/heat-wave-expands-southwest-swelters
 

Like a hot tub: Water temperatures off Florida soar over 100 degrees, stunning experts​


https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weathe...a-soar-100-degrees-stunning-experts-rcna96163
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On Monday, as much of the country stewed in bubbling heat, a boiling milestone was hit — a buoy in Florida registered a jaw-dropping 101.1 degrees Fahrenheit water temperature.

This was on the heels of the same buoy in Manatee Bay registering 100.2 degrees on Sunday. For perspective, the average hot tub temperature is 100-102 degrees F.

While the readings would've been considered a possible outlier or sensor error, surrounding buoys recorded similarly high temperatures, with 99.3 F at Murray Key and 98.4 F at Johnson Key.

Another reason why these water temperature readings are being taken seriously is the fact that experts have been tracking the exceptionally warm water temperature readings that have ranged from 92-97 degrees since early July.
 
We used to burn our legs on the black vinyl seats in our parents 1970s Ford Cortinas, back in the day.
Have people still not realised that things get hot in the sunshine?
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Sharon Hill said:
https://www.axios.com/2023/07/24/heat-wave-expands-southwest-swelters
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The floor is lava.
 
We have had more days with temperatures over 100 degrees F this month than usual for Albuquerque, which has never been as hot a Phoenix. I think weather extremes will start becoming the norm. That being said, I think places like Phoenix could do some things to cut down on the heat. That city is many huge freeways with 4 lanes going each direction. If the streets were painted white it would cut down a few degrees of heat. You don't dare walk barefoot anywhere there.
 
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