benjhm

@benjhm@sopuli.xyz
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benjhm ,

This makes sense for mid-latitudes, but the timing of peak power will depend on how much energy the current youth in India and children in central Africa will aspire to use as they get older. That's hard to 'predict' - it's their choice of development pathway, but hope they don't follow China's route with so much cement, steel, roads, there are other options.

benjhm ,

Is this intentionally english speaking, or does this just reflect the population of lemmy ?
I'd prefer a multilingual europe instance, ou chacun parle sa langue, para aumentar la diversidad.

benjhm ,

That's interesting. I wonder whether those 6519 surveyed are representative of whole population, or of people who anyway online a lot.
It’s seems there was an inflection around 2012 - what happened then ?
The curve ends during covid lockdowns, wonder whether deflected since ?

benjhm ,

But how, practically, do you choose any sample "at random" nowadays ?
Especially if trying to avoid a bias towards (or away from) online people ?

benjhm ,

Indeed I see too much fatalistic doomerism here on Lemmy and it's boring - waste of potential energy.
We can try to explain better - if people want to understand - that climate system is complex, actions don't give immediately tangible results, there are many sub-systems with inertia, and indeed various types of waves too, but most of this is predictable and the pathways we have to follow are well known.
By the way about the jet-stream waves mentioned in the article, they have two sides - where I am it's been cool recently.
More importantly, seems likely that Chinese emissions are peaking, not because they are so virtuous but because their enormous over-construction bubble involving so much steel and concrete, which was driving global emissions growth, has burst. When I was in climate negotiations years ago, we could never get the chinese to agree to talk about peaking before 2025, yet it happened. Meanwhile renewable energy expands fast around the world.
However we also reduced a lot of sulphate aerosols (both on land and from ships at sea), so we removed that temporary cooling, then on top of that we had El Niño, and have a peak in the solar cycle. The temperature spike then pushes more CO2 into the atmosphere from forests, soils and ocean, so we get bad news about atmospheric CO2, but such feedbacks happened before and are in the models, it’s not unexpected or out of control yet.

COP29 in Azerbaijan: Human rights advocates are worried that Baku is locking up activists and journalists ahead of the UN climate summit this fall ( www.dw.com )

Environmental organizations were incredulous when they learned that COP29, the next United Nations World Climate Change Conference, would be held in Baku, Azerbaijan this November....

benjhm ,

It's a pity that Bulgaria and Armenia (rival candidates within same UN-region to host COP29) conceded this at COP28, I don't know why.
Last I heard, Azerbaijan even closed its land borders - no way in except by plane - anybody know if this is still true?
Anyway, the agenda for some COPs matters more than for others - this year they just have to clap something through to keep the process going, so real progress can be made next year in Belem.

benjhm ,

Indeed fascinating - for somebody who knows more about CO2/pH and gas exchange around marine microalgae - indeed it does vary a lot, maybe counter-intuitively, on a tiny scale ...

benjhm ,

Nice graphic. Although probably you'd see more info with just a lineplot, separating north / south + land /ocean. What strikes me is how regular the gap is over the last year, and how it bulges most in July-December, which suggests the ocean (larger and less variable) dominates the numbers, with El Niño overlaid on steady warming trend. To get it back down quickly, we need more effort on short lived gases - mainly methane (tackling aviation-indeed cirrus might also help compensate for reduced ship-sulphate cooling ) .

benjhm ,

Depends whose lifetime. Mine, maybe not, but for my children - yes. Also depends what indicator - global CO2 emissions maybe falling this year, but temperature will lag decades, sea-level even more (btw I do model these scenarios, so know well how they diverge ).

benjhm , (edited )

Even if we had low-emissions, low-noise, low-accident cars, there'd still be the concrete jungle surface needed to drive them - and loads of emissions to make the steel and cement of highways.
Although cars carrying four or more people directly to a medium-distance destination can be relatively efficient per pers-km, people buy oversized cars imagining some dream holiday, then use them for daily life on one-person trips that (electric-) bicycles and/or trains could do - car-sharing could help avoid that and solve the EV-range issue (although personally, my dream holidays would be in places with no cars at all).

benjhm ,

That's great progress, thanks for all the work!
Glad to see enhanced federation with rest of fediverse - a small detail : the link for 'Automatically includes a hashtag with new posts' should point to pull (not ) - should help discoverability from mastodon, especially if community tags become customisable.

During Year of Extremes, Carbon Dioxide Levels Surge Faster than Ever ( today.ucsd.edu )

“Not only is CO2 now at the highest level in millions of years, it is also rising faster than ever. Each year achieves a higher maximum due to fossil-fuel burning, which releases pollution in the form of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” said Ralph Keeling, director of the Scripps CO2 program that manages the...

benjhm , (edited )

Global directly-anthropogenic CO2 emissions - things we measure and attribute to countries - have been flat in the period 2019-23 (except for covid dip), and maybe falling this year (due to changes in China). However there are also climate -> carbon feedbacks. The most obvious are forest fires which tend to peak during El Niño years (it's a repeating pattern - I even remember 1998 seeming bad). Heating also enhances respiration by bugs in soils, and reduces the solubility of CO2 in seawater - the ocean is the largest and most long-term CO2 sink. El Niño also changes ocean circulation temporarily, but I forget which way this impacts CO2 (it's not trivial - you have to think about the history and future of large patches of water).
So, if known emissions are flat, but there is a record increase in the atmosphere, that means those feedbacks are worse.
It takes a while to disentangle the factors, but this is not a surprise to me.

benjhm ,

Well, maybe not just wait ... Some factors will fall back - e.g. El Niño is a cycle, so are sunspots, ocean patches go round in (big-slow) loops, forests can run out of tinder (for a while). But to be sure to tip the balance of those climate-carbon feedbacks we need to get the temperature down - this could be done quicker by focusing especially on emissions of shorter-lived gases - mainly methane. Cutting out aviation-induced cirrus might also help to cancel some of the warming we got from cutting shipping sulphate - the opposite effect is because low clouds cause net cooling, high clouds cause net warming (depending on angle of sun etc. ...).
The good news is that models already include most of these factors, the bad news is that models say we have to cut emissions much faster than we do.

benjhm ,

It's not just good for pigs and chickens, doesn't Ireland already feed seaweed to cows to reduce methane emissions ?
Also along the west coast of Scotland seaweed was used as fertiliser, this was even a big export during the Napoleonic wars.

benjhm ,

Of course all emissions should be counted. It's not just the explosions and burning oil, I'd guess that manufacturing all the steel and chemicals also uses loads of energy. Some stockpiles used now may be associated with emissions long ago, e.g. in the last decades of the soviet union emissions rose very high, even while the economy was low.

benjhm ,

So that suggests, over 4 tons CO2 per tank-refill. Many of those things don't get to roll very far (except by train, ship), but there's still over 120 tons embodied CO2 just from producing the (mainly) steel. Also the energy in the shells.
I guess military planes, ships, missiles contribute more than tanks. Should also consider albedo effects such as smoke drifting over arctic snow.
But maybe this is all dwarfed by the implied emissions of reconstruction later, also missed opportunities for cooperation on global mitigation efforts.

benjhm ,

"...at a rate of roughly 0.05 percent per day ... would take a very long time" ... but by my quick calculation 0.9995^3650 is 84% per decade, which is not long. Almost instantaneous on a geological timescale - and think how much the world changed when fungi learned how to digest lignin in wood - ending the era of coal-forming swamps.

benjhm ,

The key new info is not the decadal trend, it's 'not yet risen beyond pre-pandemic levels' - in other words global emissions are ± flat.
More recent info (also from carbonbrief) suggests that China's emissions may now be falling (and therefore likely global too -as China was such a large fraction of recent growth). On the other hand feedbacks from high temperatures in 2023 - forest fires, ocean circulation etc., made the atmospheric CO2 rise break another record, but several temporary factors (e.g. reduced shipping sulphate, El Nino, solar cycle, etc.) contributed to that spike.

benjhm ,

I'm using Alexandrite, find it good

benjhm ,

Hmm, publishing that will really help those Crimean beach hotels get customers for this summer...

benjhm ,

It's worth trying, the principle works.
Indeed I even felt it from paragliding, how large dark patches form rising convection cells, later fluffy clouds.
Unstable air is also needed, which is rare within the descending side of big Hadley cells - why these areas are deserts.
Otoh the big deserts were greener in the past, so it might be possible again.

benjhm ,

This issue is interesting in a generic sense - I have no particular interest in US roads, but the balance issue is difficult as editors are not evenly distributed - for example there are many articles about train stations in europe, but the level of detail is far from balanced wrt their relative importance ). Which leads to my question - did anybody consider a fediverse (decentralised) model of wikipedia whereby the community of interconnections gradually evolves, so inclusion / exclusion is less binary ?

benjhm ,

Tragic, but change now seems inevitable, although they didn't cause it ( should be compensated by the big soybean/cattle-ranchers who driver deforestation, inter alia ). Maybe similar situation to Sundarbans in Bengal ( although they don't have açaí ) .

South African city copes with climate change by chopping down trees ( wapo.st )

While preserving the world’s forests is widely considered essential to combating climate change, scientists in South Africa have determined that invasive tree species are sucking up so much groundwater that the area is better off eliminating the trees.

benjhm ,

Hope they thought through the whole story. Cape town has a micorclimate squeezed between sea and desert, so it may be a special case, but in general as climate changes, plants should be able to migrate too. Trees evapo-transpire, large areas of trees help to create clouds, and convection cells, and maybe rain. So such policy might help increase groundwater in the short term, but not in the longer term.

benjhm ,

Good idea, hope it catches on, When I began coding, we had to design efficient loops and be careful with memory, but recently brute force applied "in the cloud" seems to dominate, especially with AI. Perhaps this approach can help give a little credit to those who still try to develop efficient software.
[ p.s. you might get more comments if cross-post to a programming / software community ? ]

benjhm ,

At 1000 km/hr, it'd run out of track in less than four minutes, hope it can stop in time ...
Anyway not convinced there's much point in this. China should be building more suburban rail networks to fill the gaps, instead of pouring so much concrete into crazy-wide highways and toll-roads (look on satellite image, you'll see).

These wildfires never went out — they just moved underground | Canada’s record wildfire season keeps burning through the winter ( wapo.st )

“Climate warming and drying is leading to these very large fire years, which then facilitate this overwintering fire activity,” Jennifer Baltzer, a biology professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, told the Toronto Star.

benjhm ,

I've seen similar underground winter fires in Siberia, smoke from peat emerging through snowy forests - and that was 1997-98 (also an El Niño winter). Adding a lot of extra carbon, bad positive feedback ...

benjhm ,

Of all the placard photos to choose to highlight, Nature could have found better than "science = fact" which seems to me more a proclamation of faith than encouragement of experiment.
Regarding the somewhat strange differences between countries, I suspect there may be a linguistic issue - words like "science" and "trust" have different scope in different cultures and systems - hard to ask the same questions everywhere.

benjhm ,

Jon is quite right, in many places they are not trying to significantly increase modal share, the problem is lack of trains to use the capacity of the network, plus some gaps/bottlenecks in that network.
Also the business model of SNCF is particularly bad (should be called SNCP - just designed for small elite living in Paris), while DB suffers from years of underfunding infrastructure. Situation is improving in some other corners of europe, but too slowly to pull enough traffic from air and road.
Compare with the expansion of chinese railways over the last decade.
[ By the way, is that photo the Meuse (Dinant-Givet) ? I'd like to use that line if it would reopen ]

benjhm ,

I like this game, has potential to help people think, especially about land-use, but also has issues.
However we discussed this in some detail 11 days ago (e.g. 22 comments on solarpunk),
it could be good to continue in further depth, but would feel odd to re-paste the same comments.
It is a problem for Lemmy (and other social media sites), that a 'deep' long-term topic loses prominence too quickly, compared to 'breaking' news. So my question is rather general, how could we blend /gather comments across communities and across time?
Meanwhile, enjoy the game (I don't want to discourage new comments).

benjhm ,

It's good they exposed this network of websites - now what is going to be done to prevent them using it as intended (casual users on phones promoting soundbites to friends are not going to be checking the list in such articles...)?
Having said that, the anglosphere experienced this already in 2016 with Brexit and Trump, and such networks also promoted anti-french coups in Africa, so to 'uncover' this now seems rather behind the wave. A specific issue among francophone elite was their concept that to make french great again they had to focus on resisting "anglo-saxons", so were naïvely tempted by russian narratives about a "multi-polar world". Russia wants to divide europeans, we need to cooperate better.

Russian Dreams of De-Dollarization Stutter as Chinese Banks Threaten To Cut Off Putin’s Only Remaining Economic Lifeline ( www.thestockdork.com )

Last week, the Zhejiang Chouzhou Commercial Bank suspended all transactions for clients from Russia and Belarus, raising concerns about the potential impact on Russian exporters. The move may have been influenced by recent expansions of U.S. financial controls and the risk of secondary sanctions....

benjhm ,

There was talk, back in 1990s (iirc?) of europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok. I think it’s a pity we missed that opportunity.
I've crossed the Russian-Chinese border on a few occasions, years ago, back then it felt culturally that was a european border. Now, the way it's going, seems more likely Siberia will end up attached to China.
(by the way, wrt OP, China has many many banks...)

benjhm , (edited )

They are certainly not a 'de facto carbon price' because they are not related to the amount of carbon that any specific homeowner emits. Carbon price is meant to be an incentive to change behaviour or technology, to reduce emissions.
I suppose they might be considered a 'de-facto climate-change-denial price' for those who recently invested in such places by the sea (in the US case, there seems to be some correlation...), but that's still not fair for people who lived in vulnerable places for a long time, before some of these impacts became inevitable.

benjhm ,

Not all wetlands are methane-producing. I'd imagine that wetlands formed where ice has just retreated first have to sequester a substantial amount of carbon from the atmosphere, before they could release it back again.
Of course there are relatively small areas of greenland that have been green for a long time, so may have accumulated peat, but to imply the ex-ice-sheet will became a big methane source, just because this is an issue in other regions of the arctic (russia, canada) , seems to extrapolate too far.

benjhm ,

We have one, it works reliably for many years, even in winter when there is sun - problem is sunny days are too rare here from Nov to Jan. If you get one, get a big tank, and optimise setup for winter (low sun angle), more than enough hot water in summer.

Millions of teachers in China face losing their jobs with falling birth rate set to create a 1.9 million surplus by 2035 ( www.scmp.com )

With a rapidly increasing number of retirees and a plummeting number of newborns, China is undergoing a demographic transition that has far-reaching implications, including slower economic growth and a strained social security system.

benjhm ,

Indeed this is a big issue.
If you look at the population pyramid for China, there was a bulge corresponding to kids now in middle school, but the births within the last five years are much lower. So first primary schools are hit, but eventually it'll pass through to universities.
This is not just in China, the fertility rate in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan is even lower, suggesting maybe more related to urbanisation /housing, education and blending confucian with modern values, than government policies.
However the pyramids are less wavy in those countries, so it seems less 'news'.
Meanwhile, what can the education profession do ?
Maybe there's scope to reduce class sizes and increase diversity of topics?
Or reopen higher education for older people who missed out or change or refresh topic ?
Or maybe China will be exporting teachers to Africa where still a rapidly growing number of kids ?

benjhm ,

This is a misleading summary - global emissions may be about to peak (mainly due to changes in China), however planetary damage will lag way beyond that. As emissions peak, concentration increase will slow down (point of inflection), and even if concentration eventually peaks (before emissions approach net zero) surface temperature rise will lag a few decades behind that, while the deep ocean temperature and ice-melt and consequent sea-level rise could still continue for a century or more.
You need a model, not data, to get the inertia in the system (- here's mine you can experiment)

benjhm ,

Phil Williamson has always been a dedicated science communicator, but this article is from 2016 - do you have a specific reason to post it now, or just reflecting that the problem is still unresolved and it seems that history may repeat?

benjhm ,

Similar issue can apply to many types of degrees. And even without AI there is already a massive oversupply of graduates on many topics, especially in China. So the whole pyramid scheme of universities needs a big rethink.

benjhm ,

Well if China's "collateral" is infrastructure in Maldives, most of it will be lost to sea-level rise anyway. Maldives political division is/was not just pro-China vs pro-India, it's deny vs understand climate change.

benjhm ,

It’s not easy insulating old houses, getting into all the neuks and crannies. The people who know those best are the inhabitants, so there should be more incentives for DIY solutions. Also, such houses were built to be heated one room at a time, not for 'modern comfort' with thermostats and open doors, so expectations could adapt - really cold-blasts in western europe only last a couple of weeks. Alternatively 'heritage' expectations have to give, to cover exterior walls. Traveling further east in europe, you rarely see bare brick walls, they are always painted (with insulation below).

benjhm ,

Who decides the 'should be able to' - do sectors get 'grandfathering' rights? Maybe energy-inefficient sectors should decline to give more space for smarter solutions. Much aviation could be replaced by faster rail or shipping, which is much less energy intensive. Many (not all) industrial products also have substitutes. Much concrete and steel is used to make unnecessary roads which cover green spaces, and in the case of China, blocks that nobody even lives in. Many agri-chemicals are over-applied, leading to water pollution.

benjhm ,

What a surprise! - decades ago it was obvious these are toughest nuts to crack, which is why I avoided taking planes since 1990. Led me to discover many interesting places on the way, although became isolated from a society which treats jetting about as standard.
By the way, article a bit simple, agricultural sector also has challenges to reduce emissions.

benjhm ,

Maybe in some cases, the party changed since they joined, and it’s a bipolar electoral system that effectively kills splits.

benjhm ,

At least he (and those who assisted) tried, helps to show there was potential opposition, makes it more obvious to denounce the sham elections.

benjhm ,

Don't worry, understanding how life survives millenia in-ice may eventually help us, when we need spaceships to transfer to another planet...

benjhm ,

One reason people stick on Lemmy and other fediverse communities, is the choice of quality over quantity (in this case - wrt comments).
So quality over quantity could also apply to platforms like Codeberg. Github has so many abandoned student projects or forks going nowhere - maybe making the effort to look beyond the obvious is an indicator of serious (new) projects and contributors ?

It begins: Ethiopia set to become first country to ban internal combustion cars | automobiles cannot enter Ethiopia, unless they are electric [Edit: Strong indications this is unreliable] ( electrek.co )

Edit: It's looking like this wasn't reliably reported

benjhm ,

Many old cars that are no longer allowed in european cities end up exported to Africa. This leap-frogging move (esp if others copy) changes the outlook - depreciation of ic-cars accelerates, europeans might have to recycle more. Otoh, there are not yet so many 2nd-hand e-cars, so poorer people in rural areas of Ethiopia might be stuck - unless there is plenty of public transport even outside of cities? Wonder whether it applies to (mini-)buses?

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