Climate Change 📍

🖼️ Photos 📽️ Videos

E.P.A. Data Shows Climate Change’s Impact on Americans – The New York Times

|

E.P.A. Data Shows Climate Change’s Impact on Americans – The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Wildfires are bigger, and starting earlier in the year. Heat waves are more frequent. Seas are warmer, and flooding is more common. The air is getting hotter. Even ragweed pollen season is beginning sooner.

Climate change is already happening around the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency said on Wednesday. And in many cases, that change is speeding up.

Why the 2060s Are So Important to Climate Change – The Atlantic

|

Why the 2060s Are So Important to Climate Change – The Atlantic

Last week, two major papers on sea-level rise were published. Both try to answer the greatest outstanding questions about sea-level rise: How much will the oceans rise, and how fast? Their conclusions are either reassuring or frightening, depending on your optimism about how quickly the world will get a handle on its carbon pollution.

The first paper, written by 84 scientists, shares the results from a portfolio of the newest climate models and is clearly meant to shape the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth assessment report. If countries follow the path they have currently committed to under the Paris Agreement, the world’s average temperature will rise about 3 degrees Celsius by 2100. That will induce about 25 centimeters, or about 10 inches, of sea-level rise, according to the median model run, the new paper finds. But if countries manage to hold warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as they now aspire to do, then the median sea-level rise falls to about half that amount.

I was reading about the growing wildlife risk out west this summer with the drought they’ve been having out west

|

I was reading about the growing wildlife risk out west this summer with the drought they’ve been having out west. It seems like many parts of the west are getting drier while the east is getting wetter. I wonder if this means we will have more of those gray-brown hazy summer days this summer, where a lot of sun is blocked by high-level smoke in the atmosphere and there is a ton of glare everywhere, like we had for a while last summer.

It’s been six decades since the last extreme drought in New York. Our climate getting noticeably wetter. In 2018, I was in camping in Finger Lakes National Forest. Little over two weeks after I left, there was 7 inches of rain in a half hour where I was camping, and 9 inches the next town up in Lodi where cars were floating down Main Street. Such occurrences are more likely now when there is so much water in atmosphere due to climate change.

NPR

|

EPA Says It Will Phase Out Harmful Greenhouse Gas : NPR

The Environmental Protection Agency is cracking down on a powerful class of greenhouse gases that are used in refrigerators, air conditioners and building insulation. On Monday, the agency announced a new regulation that would dramatically decrease production and use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, over the next 15 years.

Refrigerants are one of my favorite topics! While this article really oversimplifies the issues -- getting rid of HFC in new units is good for climate change. HFC-23 has a global warming potential of 14,800 times that of carbon dioxide. HFC-134a used in cars is 1,430 GWP.
 
That said, units built with one refrigerant generally can't be switched to another without modifications. Often it's just better to refill refrigerants after leaks are patched. The EPA mandates all refrigerants are recovered when cars, refrigerators and air conditioners are scrapped, so there should be a supply for a long time for HFCs, just like you can still buy CFCs and HCFCs to refill old units. The Empire Plaza, for example still uses CFC refrigerant (CFC-22) in it's chillers, even though they haven't manufactured any new stock in nearly 25 years now.
 
Most of the low GWP refrigerants pose engineering and safety challenges -- propane is very flammable and explosive, water and carbon dioxide require extremely high pressures that require super-strong components, and other refrigerants are patented and expensive like hydrofluoroolefin (HFC-1234yf). Also, hydrofluoroolefin produces flourine gas when burned, which can be very toxic in car and house fires. But scientists are finding solutions to these kind of problems, and most people aren't particularly concerned what is chilling their beer and office as long as it's sufficiently cold and is energy efficent.