Anthropogenic Climate Change

Some people would rather drown, I guess.

Or think they're special enough that it won't apply to them because they're rich enough to move.

The cynic in me thinks they won't learn until Typhoon Haiyan's Atlantic sister sinks Southern Florida into the sea with many thousands of fatalities.

The really cynical me thinks they won't until the rest of the country decides that constantly bailing them out is too much of a hassle.

People want Aquaman as their neighbor.

@ Resileafs

You'd be surprised but that's actually a common reaction between people of all stratas of society. People would rather face a deadly situation than doing the safe thing if the latter implies a radical change to their usual lifestyle.

One idea I've heard of (no source at the moment) is the idea of desert-adapted bioreactor algae which could be farmed in the Sonora Desert. Unfortunately, at this phase it still seems to be rumors and ideas.

The changes in CO2 emissions so far have been rather unimpressive, basically steady growth until COVID-19 came.

" I've written a lengthy Wikipedia article about what happened the last time the Sahara wasn't a desert"

You wrote that? Impressive. What fascinates me is there there was this entire world, which lasted thousands of years, and which must have contained so many people and societies, yet which we know next to nothing about. What a playground for the imagination.

Here is a hurricane researcher discussing Miami's plans. You'll be shocked to hear that apparently the hurricane problem has been largely neglected.

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

You ever get the feeling Miami wanted to be a new Atlantis?

As in "a fantasy city drowned in its own sewage water?"

It's already the "fantasy" part, so I guess all that is left is for its sewers to clog up with its own recklessly flushed down trash and sink it...

I'll be more lenient and say that no Mayor will be able to come clean with the problems Miami will have to face without getting their head on a pike the day later.

That and people tend to ignore problems until they overwhelm you. Sad truth about every tragedy ever - they are never unexpected or unpredictable; people just don't care about warnings until the threat comes to pass.

Meanwhile, it looks like one of the key climatic oscillations may be an artifact. To wit, hitherto scientists described an Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) characterized by warm sea surface temperature anomalies in the tropical Atlantic, cold ones in the subtropical Atlantic and warm ones in the subpolar Atlantic. A more positive AMO has been linked to more active hurricane seasons.

It looks like it's actually two separate modes: A stronger African monsoon is responsible for the warm tropical Atlantic while a slowdown of the thermohaline circulation results in cold subpolar Atlantic and warm subtropical Atlantic. This also means that the great Sahel droughts are probably the reason for the inactive 20th century Atlantic hurricane seasons.

On the other side of North America, Winter Precipitation Changes in California Under Global Warming: Contributions of CO2, Uniform SST Warming, and SST Change Patterns . Unlike other parts of the world with a Mediterranean climate California is expected to become wetter and not drier with climate change, but this publication suggests it's the mean ocean warming that does it and not its El Niño-like tendency as was previously assumed.

Well if therea silver lining here is that at least Cali might have a chance of de-desertification.

Then again it assumes the state would be consistently wetter instead of only getting wet in the Winter. The latter scenario might actually make the existing greenery more kindling for wildfires.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Mar 6th 2021 at 8:40:32 AM

Edit - Oops, you're right.

Edited by AlleyOop on Mar 6th 2021 at 12:18:00 PM

Think you got the wrong thread there.

As a crop, cannabis has enormous carbon emissions: Ironically, growing it in a controlled environment has a huge environmental impact.

Well, so much for legalization being a good thing.

Shutting down coal power would have a much larger environmental impact. I saw that in New Scientist (didn't read the article; someone tweeted it) and it was making some rather invidious comparisons. Watch for the spin.

I don't think Ars of all places would have anti-climate change spin, but I agree that coal is a much bigger problem.

Although I should also note that an appeal to bigger problems is a fallacy in itself, often used to dismiss smaller problems as irrelevant.

I'm confused, what is "anti-Climate change spin"?

Whatever F Ighteer meant with it, I think.

Fair enough.

I interpreted it as "climate change is a fraud scam!!11!!" kind of angle.

No, there's a "both-sider" thing going on where people say, "Oh, look, weed emits GHG. Guess liberals don't really care about climate."