I saw an article about this last week. It identified the cause as a new rule last year switching the fuel for cargo ships and tankers that reduced the allowed sulfur content by about 80%. This is very good to slow ocean acidification, save algae and coral. But the sulfur in the air reflects or scatters sunlight away from the earth and the surface of the sea. Go figure.
It is a quite long article. Almost at the bottom it gets around to this:
Which says: "Here’s where things get esoteric. As of January 1, 2020, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) put a limit on the sulfur content in shipping fuels, reducing the global upper limit on sulfur content from 3.50% to 0.50%. This policy is referred to as IMO 2020. Here is a link to an article describing this change. This reduced limit was mandatory and led to over a 75% drop in the emission of sulfur oxides. While great for the environment in many respects (e.g. less acid rain and ocean acidification), there was also a not-so-unexpected consequence."
A little more explanation and discussion of some other possibly contributing factors follow what I quote above.
BTW, bostonwalker, you owe me, but I'll try to return the favoe at my earliest convenience. It took me at least a half hour of digging through my history to find TFA. If I had a link, I would have included it. And, BTW, it would have been OK to list me as a source on your doctoral dissertation. Although I am getting old and have a hard time remembering, I am widely known to be very reliable, particularly when I'm right.
This site tends to default to a “remain placid” attitude and flag/downvote energetic replies, but if this isn’t worth abject panic and appropriate action then I’m not sure what is.
The issue with this site is its total belief in tech as a solution. You will have plenty of people here saying "there's no need to change your lifestyle, some tech billionaire will solve it".
I also think the wealth of most people here means they think they will be insulated from the problems caused by climate change.
And what energetic appropriate response would you do for a phenomen that is as rare and poorly understood as this?
Please notice that the link between this sudden 4sigma increase in surface temperatures and a small long-term continuous increase in atmospheric infrared absorbing gasses is at best extremely strained.
On what planet is a 50% increase small? The CO2 we've added to the atmosphere is trapping an almost unfathomable amount of energy in the climate system that wouldn't be there otherwise.
Theres more CO2 in the atmosphere that here has been in millions of years. Global average temps are higher than they've been in more than 100,000 years. The oceans are 25% more acidic. This is an out of control science experiment with the thermal and chemical properties of our at atmosphere and oceans.
CO2 is the primary greenhouse gas in terms of climate. You're on that water vapor crackpipe, but water vapor has a residence time of only 72 hours. It doesn't drive warming and cooling. It only works as a feedback for other things like CO2 that do. You should really just let this outdated climate denial bullshit go. It's embarrassing.
It would help if you defined your terms and context here.
Water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and other trace gases in Earth's atmosphere absorb the longer wavelengths of outgoing infrared radiation from Earth's surface.
Methane absorbs more infrared (per fixed amount) than C02, sure, but overall there's less methane (currently) and so the current volume of C02 in toto absorbs more infrared than the current methane volume.
Also relavent to the discussions is the relative rates of change .. the C02 concentration in the atmosphere has been less than 1900 levels for millions of years and has only recently in the past century climbed upwards in concentration by significant amounts .. leading to increases in water vapor and mthane levels.
CO2 is the reason the planet is hotter than it's been in 100,000 years and climbing rapidly. It's the reason the oceans are 25% more acidic. It's the reason sea level rise is accelerating. It's the reason there's 7% more water vapor in the atmosphere. It's the reason there's 2% less oxygen in the oceans.
panic fatigue? it has been at least ten years, more for many here.. that "urgent" is an appropriate word. The "control and stall" groups just get more money and more time, not less it seems here in the USA.
Non-anthropomorphic climate change can take centuries or millenia to happen. So that people are concerned about things changing on the scale of decades seems understandable.
All of the "serious" people who are "panicking" while refusing to actually amend their life or act in a reasonable fashion is a large part of why people have disengaged.
I know. Clearly CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas and the planet isn't hotter than it's been in 100,000 years because Al Gore and Leonardo Decaprio are hypocrites. I know thats how I decide my priorities is by gauging the hypocrisy levels of celebrity activists.
Yes - it was a popular AGW denialst go-to in the early 2000s until the increasing temps continued completely independently from the 11-year solar cycle. It's been pretty thoroughly debunked now, e.g;
I guess my thinking is more along the lines of the right sun spots and solar events in the right places - i.e. with enough energy directed in the right plane to affect earth systems. Maybe it could be fruitful to explore radio blackouts caused by solar storms - to see if correlation with temperatures could exist. That could falsify or verify such a correlation and further analysis as well. Just a thought
Solar irradiance has been declining for 35 years. Which is one way we know it isn't the sun.
Also the troposphere is warming rapidly while the stratosphere is cooling. Which is only something you expect from greenhouse gas related warming.
Also night time temps are increasing faster than daytime temps. Another fingerprint of greenhouse gas induced warming.
Also the earth is hotter than it's been in 100,000 years and scientists predicted that greenhouse gasses would cause exactly this much warming with this level of greenhouse gasses 50 years ago well before it was obvious what was going to happen.
This global 5km Sea Surface Temperature (SST) Anomaly product, displays the difference between today's SST and the long-term average. The scale goes from -5 to +5 °C. Positive numbers mean the temperature is warmer than average; negative means cooler than average.
What does it mean / what will happen as a result? The twitter thread says more precipitation -- anything more specific than that? Big storms? No storms?
It's going to translate to an increased rate of extreme weather events. Droughts in particular are of a concern as they're already resulting in massive crop losses. Here are a couple of recent examples in North America
Market-based solutions for the climate crisis have failed and are too slow to address the issue, all current oil reserves should be immediately valued at zero dollars. Many governments have been completely captured and are not working towards humanity’s long term survival.
State of emergency should be declared with full mobilization (ie total war economy) towards addressing the climate crisis, that’s the only way out while there’s still time.
To pay for it, the usual tools nation-states have employed at times of war: devaluing currency, high income taxes (90% bracket) and disappropriation of non-productive wealth, etc. Other similar crises have happened and solved in this way.
It is possible to do with democratic feedback so no one stays behind and we come out of it with a more just society.
The truth is that until you, dear reader, are willing to give up your usage of your car and probably your AC, you are part of the problem.
And nobody is ready to hear that. But it's the truth. All this talk about "well so and so is a bigger problem" is generally not only wrong, but it's just useless finger pointing.
I no longer have a car, and I don't have AC. And I live my life accordingly. And sometimes it sucks. You should too.
I used to feel this way (I bike commute and only turn on our AC maybe 3-4 times a year), but I've come to believe that this idea of personal responsibility is a major fossil fuel industry talking point.
The fact is, governments around the world provide massive subsidy to all sorts of industry's that tends to support GHG production. We're never going to get this under control until we demand our representatives change the policy and incentive structures for a large majority of industry out there. It's not just cooling and cars/trucks. It's agriculture, heating, almost all of transportation/shipping, a majority of power consumption, etc.
But the entrenched powers at be want you to think that this is a personal responsibility issue, because lots of people stand to lose lots of money once we realize that the only thing that can fix this issue is a massive restructuring of worldwide government policy and incentives.
Yes and no. You are correct that it needs government and regulatory action to get the problem under any sort of control. However, it needs a critical mass of individuals that take it upon themselves to live by example. Otherwise, the administrations will always default to “look, we would really like to change something, but the majority of our constituents just can’t handle the drastic change”.
We need to show that it is possible to live a better life AND we need the government to force everyone to the same standard who is dragging their feet.
The government forms policy around popular opinion. If people don’t believe their impact is important than their government won’t affect policy that makes a difference to peoples’ personal impact.
The fossil fuel industry is a response to the people DEMANDING its service.
> But the entrenched powers at be want you to think that this is a personal responsibility issue, because lots of people stand to lose lots of money
Nothing will get done if people think this way. Just take your personal responsibility and inform others to do the same.
The government forms policy around capital [0]. Only when popular opinion “aligns” with capital does it succeed. This is the same everywhere, just to varying degrees. Either way, civilization as we know it is wholly reliant on fossil fuels so the majority will never agree to the degree of sacrifices required to prevent disaster.
We’re ultimately doomed to “bandaid the broken arm” until ecosystems collapse and we have no choice; forcing everyone still alive to suffer significantly worse consequences as a result.
This sort of degrowth stuff doesn't work. In the tropics, day time temperatures will be above what humans can _survive_ in, and air conditioning is the only way to keep billions of people alive in places like India.
We already have the technical solutions to have enough energy for everybody to have an AC while emitting minimal carbon (and perhaps generating enough electricity to actively take out carbon) - solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear.
The actual fixes western countries need to do is to actually make it easier to _build_ new things instead of trying to become poorer. Interconnect transmission lines (so we can carry power long distances), permitting for nuclear and geothermal (for various reasons requiring a much higher burden of proof and safety regulations than fossil fuel extraction and burning that kills way more people), _BUILDING MORE FUCKING HOUSING_ so people don't need to drive farther and farther, and they can walk and bike to get groceries and meet friends. These are all things that require policy decisions from people who are trapped in a bad incentive structure of both NIMBY local voters, and an attention oriented media that rewards both polarization and extreme cover-your-ass behavior that makes building expensive. Trying to put (and take) personal responsibility and giving up random things that don't move the needle isn't the way to do it.
We can’t conserve our way out of this. We have to electrify everything we can, and completely decarbonize our electric grid. To do that, we need to make clean electricity cheaper than fossil electricity, and just as reliable. Spending our focus on trying to convince people to stop consuming energy is a bit counterproductive. Your carbon footprint is almost certainly massive even if you personally use zero electricity, because the supply chain that keeps you alive is extremely carbon intensive. If you run your numbers, I think you’ll find that cars and AC are relatively minor contributors. Heating is much larger for most than either of those, as an example.
It’s unlikely, since angriculture alone is >1/10, water heating, home heating, manufactured goods, logistics/shipping, steel, and concrete are all major sources. Pretty sure the average family’s direct energy consumption is less than half of their footprint. Passenger cars get a lot of attention, but they’re actually not a large fraction. Concrete alone is a larger source.
But yeah, the suburban development plan is obviously terrible.
its all our individual responsibility to combat climate change, no systemic change necessary at all. It seems to me the actual issue is depoliticization, you have no hope to ever affect the rules based international order in any way, so the only thing left to you as a neoliberal is to advocate for meaningless individual change.
This isn't going to be solved by individuals voluntarily putting the climate above their own comfort. It's going to take strong bold policy. It's good to make good decisions and it's not great that some people don't care, but if your strategy to save society and the biosphere is based on individual choices the. We've already lost.
This isn’t really the forum for applied marketing strategy. What I’m suggesting, and what others have suggested in the replies, is indeed what needs to happen. I guess you marketing guys can figure out how to sell it - good luck.
Did all of that for more than 30 years now (ok, there weren’t any groups back then). Didn‘t help much I think. Ok for me - i did what i wanted to do - but perhaps government should start to do something too?
For every guy like you there’s 10 guys driving an F150 who think that’s cool. So when you go to the polls, who do you think gets voted in? The guy who’s going to force people out of their trucks?
I don’t think so. Carbon emissions per capita in NYC are lower than poor counties in the US (though I recognize even those are wildly rich by global standards.)
Cities are really efficient, just not the way America builds them. But it could start building better cities tomorrow.
