Climate Change

Discourses of Delay, p1

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Climate 201: Discourses of Delay, p1

5/31/21

Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/123840822
Episode: http://pdcn.co/e/traffic.libsyn.com/physicalattraction/Climate_201_Discourses_of_Delay_part_1.mp3?dest-id=535856

As the climate change debate has advanced, the arguments surrounding it have become more subtle. Outright denial of the climate problem is rare – so rhetoric has shifted to delaying urgent action. In this review of a paper by Steinberger, Lamb et al, I run down the new “discourses of climate delay”

I am a strong believer in a very high carbon tax and repealing most taxes on income and investing

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I am a strong believer in a very high carbon tax and repealing most taxes on income and investing

Very high energy prices would make America a much more efficient country, by raising prices on all materials. The low cost of materials and energy is the greatest crisis facing America and our world today. If everything was a lot more expensive, people would buy a lot less stuff and would find ways to repair existing products. It would be so good for American communities.

Greenhouse gases are shrinking the stratosphere

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Greenhouse gases are shrinking the stratosphere

The models showed that as the troposphere has been expanding, it has been pushing upward on the stratosphere. They also found that as carbon dioxide made its way into the stratosphere, it has had a cooling effect, resulting in a contracting force. The researchers found the net result was a thinning stratosphere. Their calculations showed that the stratosphere has thinned by approximately 400 meters since the 1980s, which translates to approximately 1% of its thickness. Running the models forward showed that the stratosphere will continue thinning as long as greenhouse gasses are emitted into the atmosphere. They suggest it could thin by as much as a kilometer in just 60 years. They note that their model also showed that changes to the ozone layer had little impact on thinning of the stratosphere.

The researchers note that it is still not clear what impact a shrinking stratosphere may have on the planet, but note that it could affect the trajectories of satellites and how radio waves propagate, which could eventually have an impact on the Global Positioning System.

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

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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

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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

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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.