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davieG

Technology, Science and the Environment.

By davieG, in General Chat

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26 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Never read the comments/replies.

 

Even got the standard tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist banging on about HAARP/chemtrails.

Tbh mate I genuinely think we are going to fail to meet the challenge. We've both seen the data, we're arguably over the edge already. Refusal of governments - shamefully including our own - to really take the actions their populations would support is failing mankind. I fear for our children.

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leicsmac

leicsmac

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18 minutes ago, toddybad said:

Tbh mate I genuinely think we are going to fail to meet the challenge. We've both seen the data, we're arguably over the edge already. Refusal of governments - shamefully including our own - to really take the actions their populations would support is failing mankind. I fear for our children.

I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet. :thumbup:

 

TBH I think the way humans and other factors are making the Earth change is only going to become apparent to a lot of people when the real economic and social consequences begin - raised prices that affect them, numerous health changes as a result of increasing heat putting even more strain on the NHS and the like. Even at that point, however, they may still be a chance to adapt the way we live and do things in a way that staves off total disaster, even if things are quite nasty for a bit.

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Buce

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3 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet. :thumbup:

 

TBH I think the way humans and other factors are making the Earth change is only going to become apparent to a lot of people when the real economic and social consequences begin - raised prices that affect them, numerous health changes as a result of increasing heat putting even more strain on the NHS and the like. Even at that point, however, they may still be a chance to adapt the way we live and do things in a way that staves off total disaster, even if things are quite nasty for a bit.

 

Unless we stop ceding power those who have most to gain from maintaining the status quo, we - and the planet we live on - are doomed.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/26/endangered-species-act-gray-wolf-oil-gas-industry

 

 

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4 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Unless we stop ceding power those who have most to gain from maintaining the status quo, we - and the planet we live on - are doomed.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/26/endangered-species-act-gray-wolf-oil-gas-industry

 

 

The only comfort about that is that those who have the most to gain from maintaining the status quo would be equally doomed, and merely the last out of the door. It would be nice be around long enough to see their faces in that one moment when they realise they are responsible for something that no amount of money or pious little belief will save them from and there is no deliverance from a deity (if they believe in one) afterwards either.

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5 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

The only comfort about that is that those who have the most to gain from maintaining the status quo would be equally doomed, and merely the last out of the door. It would be nice be around long enough to see their faces in that one moment when they realise they are responsible for something that no amount of money or pious little belief will save them from and there is no deliverance from a deity (if they believe in one) afterwards either.

 

" When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money."

 

Alanis Obomsawin

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16 minutes ago, The Bear said:

Einstein was just awesome. 

 

To come up with such a mind-blowingly different concept at that time in physics was just a true genius of imagination. 

Also played a (though certainly not the most) significant part in explaining the quantum world that often gets overlooked.

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Extreme global weather is 'the face of climate change' says leading scientist

Exclusive: Prof Michael Mann declares the impacts of global warming are now ‘playing out in real-time’

• Heatwave made more than twice as likely by climate change, scientists find

 

The extreme heatwaves and wildfires wreaking havoc around the globe are “the face of climate change”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has declared, with the impacts of global warming now “playing out in real time”.

Climate change has long been predicted to increase extreme weather incidents, and scientists are now confident these predictions are coming true. Scientists say the global warming has contributed to on the scorching temperatures that have baked the UK and northern Europe for weeks.

The hot spell was made more than twice as likely by climate change, a new analysis found, demonstrating an “unambiguous” link.

Extreme weather has struck across Europe, from the Arctic Circle to Greece, and across the world, from North America to Japan. “This is the face of climate change,” said Prof Michael Mann, at Penn State University, and one the world’s most eminent climate scientists. “We literally would not have seen these extremes in the absence of climate change.”

“The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle,” he told the Guardian. “We are seeing them play out in real time and what is happening this summer is a perfect example of that.”

“We are seeing our predictions come true,” he said. “As a scientist that is reassuring, but as a citizen of planet Earth, it is very distressing to see that as it means we have not taken the necessary action.”

 

The rapid scientific assessment of the northern European heatwave was done by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and also colleagues in the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium. “We can see the fingerprints of climate change on local extremes,” he said.

The current heatwave has been caused by an extraordinary stalling of the jet stream wind, which usually funnels cool Atlantic weather over the continent. This has left hot, dry air in place for two months – far longer than than usual. The stalling of the northern hemisphere jet stream is being increasingly firmly linked to global warming, in particular to the rapid heating of the Arctic and resulting loss of sea ice.

Prof Mann said that asking if climate change “causes” specific events is the wrong question: “The relevant question is: ‘Is climate change impacting these events and making them more extreme?’, and we can say with great confidence that it is.”

Mann points out that the link between smoking tobacco and lung cancer is a statistical one, which does not prove every cancer was caused by smoking, but epidemiologists know that smoking greatly increases the risk. “That is enough to say that, for all practical purposes, there is a causal connection between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer and it is the same with climate change,” Mann said.

 

Other senior scientists agree the link is clear. Serious climate change is “unfolding before our eyes”, said Prof Rowan Sutton, at the University of Reading. “No one should be in the slightest surprised that we are seeing very serious heatwaves and associated impacts in many parts of the world.”

 

image.png.24ef6ca78b72ae0a55dcee2d9848a676.png

 

It is not too late to make the significant cuts needed in greenhouse gas emissions, said Mann, because the impacts progressively worsen as global warming increases.

“It is not going off a cliff, it is like walking out into a minefield,” he said. “So the argument it is too late to do something would be like saying: ‘I’m just going to keep walking’. That would be absurd – you reverse course and get off that minefield as quick as you can. It is really a question of how bad it is going to get.”

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2 hours ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/climate-geoengineering-kim-stanley-robinson_us_5b4e54bde4b0de86f487b0b9

 

Luddism isn't going to save your arses, guys. SciTech just might.

I think it's a very bad idea for the public to be led to believe that tech might bail us out. If some miracle can be done, great, but it should be talked about as virtually impossible. Mankind must urgently get away from fossil fuel and into green energy. It must do so asap. It is often those that don't care about the climate that try to put us off this path by talking about tech solutions publicly.

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13 minutes ago, toddybad said:

I think it's a very bad idea for the public to be led to believe that tech might bail us out. If some miracle can be done, great, but it should be talked about as virtually impossible. Mankind must urgently get away from fossil fuel and into green energy. It must do so asap. It is often those that don't care about the climate that try to put us off this path by talking about tech solutions publicly.

 

Sorry toddy, but I'm not with you on this one. Getting into green energy is using tech to bail humans out - as are various other solutions that make humans live longer and safer lives than they did years ago.

 

I can see what you mean about saying it will be a panacea as that makes people think they can abdicate their own responsibilities and do as they wish and that's hazardous and I'm definitely not suggesting that people shouldn't be pushing for a greener world and doing that for themselves, but not taking steps using tech to at least guard against what the Earth can throw at us is merely waiting for the first supervolcanic eruption, glacial period, heat/food/water crisis, asteroid strike or global pandemic to end civilisation. Even if we were to mitigate every single human-caused effect of a change in the Earth, that still leaves any and all of the above.

Using tech to mitigate changes in the Earth on at least a small scale isn't just desirable. It's essential to long-term human survival.

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22 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Sorry toddy, but I'm not with you on this one. Getting into green energy is using tech to bail humans out - as are various other solutions that make humans live longer and safer lives than they did years ago.

 

I can see what you mean about saying it will be a panacea as that makes people think they can abdicate their own responsibilities and do as they wish and that's hazardous and I'm definitely not suggesting that people shouldn't be pushing for a greener world and doing that for themselves, but not taking steps using tech to at least guard against what the Earth can throw at us is merely waiting for the first supervolcanic eruption, glacial period, heat/food/water crisis, asteroid strike or global pandemic to end civilisation. Even if we were to mitigate every single human-caused effect of a change in the Earth, that still leaves any and all of the above.

Using tech to mitigate changes in the Earth on at least a small scale isn't just desirable. It's essential to long-term human survival.

It's pie in the sky bs with unknown side effects.

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45043989

 

 

Plastic pollution: How one woman found a new source of warming gases hidden in waste
By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent
2 August 2018

It's your classic movie eureka moment.

Young researcher Sarah-Jeanne Royer set out to measure methane gas coming from biological activity in sea water.

Instead, in a "happy accident" she found that the plastic bottles holding the samples were a bigger source of this powerful warming molecule than the bugs in the water.

Now she's published further details in a study into the potential warming impact of gases seeping from plastic waste.

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"It was a totally unexpected discovery," Dr Royer told BBC News.

"Some members of the lab were experimenting with high density polyethylene bottles looking at methane biological production, but the concentrations were much higher than expected."

"So we realised that the emissions were not just coming from the biology but from the bottle that we were using for the experiment."

After graduating from university in Barcelona, Dr Royer found herself in Hawaii, leading teams of volunteers who were helping to remove plastic from beaches at weekends, while working on the chemistry of the substance during the week.

Image copyrightOLIVIER POIRION
Now she's published her report after spending a year and a half testing different types of plastic in and out of seawater to see if they emit methane and ethylene, which both contribute to the greenhouse effect.

Dr Royer found that the most widely-used plastic, the stuff used to make shopping bags, is the one that produces the greatest amount of these warming gases.

At the end of the study, after 212 days in the sun, this plastic emitted 176 times more methane than at the start of the experiment.

Ironically, when plastics were exposed to air the amount of methane emitted was double the level from sea water.

What's causing these emissions?
In short it's the Sun. Solar radiation acts on the surface of plastic waste. As it breaks down, becomes cracked and pitted, these defects increase the surface area of plastic available to sunlight which accelerates gas production. Even in the dark, the gas continues to seep out.

"I'm in the field every week," said Dr Royer.

Image copyrightSARAH-JEANNE ROYER
Image caption
Plastic waste washed up in a Hawaiian bay
"When I touch a piece of plastic, if there's a little impact on that plastic it's degrading into hundred of pieces pretty much as we look at it."

Is this a big deal?
Up to now, the link between plastics and climate change was mainly focussed on the use of fossil fuels like oil and gas in the manufacture of plastic items.

It's also known that when plastics degrade in the environment, they release CO2. Experts have welcomed this report as it is the first time that anyone has tried to quantify other warming gases emerging from plastic waste.

"Low density polyethylene (LDPE) does emit ethylene, methane and propane, even at low temperatures that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions," Prof Ashwani Gupta from the University of Maryland, who was not involved in the study, told BBC News.

"It is nice to see some quantified emissions on greenhouse gases for the selected polyethylene. The results clearly show variation in gas emission levels among the different polyethylene sources."

Image copyrightSARAH-JEANN ROYER
While the amounts of methane and ethylene being produced right now from plastics are very small, Dr Royer is concerned about the future and the fact that as plastic breaks down, more surface area is exposed, increasing the amount of the gases that drifts into the atmosphere.

"If we look at all the plastic produced since 1950, it's pretty much all still on the planet, and it's just degrading into smaller and smaller pieces, so we know the industry is booming and in the next 30 years and more and more greenhouse gases will be produced - that's a big thing."

What have the plastics industry said?
Nothing much at this point. According to Dr Royer, when she approached companies in the field, they weren't keen on talking about it.

"I told them I was a scientist and I was trying to understand the chemistry of the plastic," she said.

"I was trying to order some plastics of different densities and I was asking questions about the process and they all said we don't want to have contact with you anymore.

"I think the plastic industry absolutely knows, and they don't want this to be shared with the world."

How have other scientists reacted?
"Research on plastic waste is revealing it to be a disturbing pandora's box," said Dr Montserrat Filella, a chemist at the University of Geneva.

"As research expands our knowledge, we are realising that plastics can be insidious in many other ways. For instance, as vectors of 'hidden pollutants', such as heavy metals present in them or, now, as a source of greenhouse gases. And, in all cases, throughout the entire lifetime of the plastic."

Image copyrightSARAH-JEANNE ROYER
Image caption
Plastic debris from the tsunami in Japan is still causing problems in Hawaii
Others agreed that further research was urgently needed.

"No one knows how much methane and ethylene are being released from these sources. We don't know if it is adding significant amounts of greenhouse gases to our atmosphere," said Dr Jennifer Lynch, a marine environment expert from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (Nist).

"It's another consequence of the use of plastics and it needs further examination."

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