How net zero works in reality

[SteamyTea]

Just a snippet from this weeks comic.

May be of interest to those that think all models are wrong. Some models are useful though.

This Week

Climate change made the past 7 years the warmest on record

 

The UN’s World Meteorological Organization found that 2021 was the seventh hottest year to date, at 1.11°C above pre-industrial levels

IN PALMDALE, CALIFORNIA, TEMPERATURES REACHED 41.1°C IN JULY 2021

ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images

The past seven years were the warmest on record as climate change continued apace, despite the cooling effect of the La Niña weather pattern in 2021, the United Nations has found.

The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) analysed the six main global temperature data sets, which revealed that last year was the seventh hottest to date, at 1.11°C above pre-industrial levels.

“The continued onslaught of record years, including the seven warmest having occurred since 2015, is precisely what we expect to see due to human-caused planetary warming,” says Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University.

Governments at the COP26 climate summit in November reaffirmed their commitment to trying to hold temperature rises to 1.5°C and well below 2°C at worst. But emissions reductions pledges currently have the world on course for 2.4°C or more. 2021 is the seventh year in a row where temperatures have been more than 1°C above pre-industrial levels.

While only the seventh warmest year on average globally, 2021 saw climate scientists shocked by several temperature records broken by much larger margins than usual in some places, such as the near-50°C record set in Lytton, Canada. Previous research showed this event would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.

Read more: 2021 in review: Weather records aren’t just broken, they’re smashed

“Climate change impacts and weather-related hazards had life-changing and devastating impacts on communities on every single continent,” said Petteri Taalas at the WMO in a statement.

Although not a record for surface air temperatures, 2021 was another record-breaking year for heat content in the upper levels of the oceans, which are absorbing much of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans and the heat that this gas traps.

The cooling effect of the La Niña weather pattern is expected to give way later this year to its opposite, El Niño, which was responsible for 2016 being the hottest year on record. The UK Met Office, which holds one of the six data sets examined by the WMO, forecasts that 2022 will be 1.09°C above pre-industrial levels.

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Adam Vaughan

[markc]

Any reasonably intelligent person should accept that the climate is changing, but is that a bad thing?

it may be devastating to humans but could be exactly what this planet needs.

life started and everything has evolved through change, I’m sure if you asked the dinosaurs they would have thought a major impact would be the end of the world …. Which it was but for them, it allowed the earth to reset and lead the way to where we are now.

Yes we need to stop the unnecessary waste, dumping plastics etc. Into oceans and consuming everything we can find, but is change a bad thing?

losing 50% of the population would certainly help the planet. 

[SteamyTea]

16 minutes ago, markc said:

Losing 50% of the population would certainly help the planet

But would seriously hurt the 50% left.

I think we really need to distinguish what people mean when they say 'save the planet'. What most probably mean is 'save my lifestyle'.

 

Edited January 28, 2022 by SteamyTea

[markc]

7 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

But would seriously hurt the 50% left.

I think we really need to distinguish what people mean when they say 'save the planet'. What most probably mean is 'save my lifestyle'.

 

Absolutely. There is a price to pay for everything, sadly most people want without giving.

[SteamyTea]

17 minutes ago, markc said:

Absolutely. There is a price to pay for everything, sadly most people want without giving.

And due to mistrust, many people will not accept a gift.

[SimonD]

45 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

What most probably mean is 'save my lifestyle'.

 

Isn't that the implicit message behind almost all proposed climate change propositions, including net-zero? It's almost all, "we need to find means of generating energy to carry on living the way we are." Very few want to accept that none of it is sustainable, not even net-zero.

[JohnMo]

Carbon neutral should work, CO2 produced to generate, equals measures to remove the same amount of CO2 from the atmosphere.

 

In reality that means, you take statistical data, you manipulate the inputs and outputs to meet your own political wants and needs, exclude things like airports and air travel, and anything else you get political pressure from or is really difficult - then you get carbon neutral.

 

Doesn't really matter what you think or voice your options about, that is the reality of government.  Isn't it 7 global companies are responsible for about 80% of all CO2 emissions anyway?

[SteamyTea]

21 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Isn't it 7 global companies are responsible for about 80% of all CO2 emissions anyway?

That will depend on how, and what, you measure.

Exploring for, drilling, extracting, refining, transporting and storing oil will have a relatively small carbon footprint. 

But burn it in a car and it becomes horrendously high.

So is it the oil company or the car company that is (ir)responsible?

Or the end user.

I have just driven 34 miles to read my weekly comic and have a coffee. Could have done both from home.

 

[JohnMo]

Sory got my numbers wrong it is 100 global companies are responsible for about 71% of all CO2 emissions anyway?

 

Oil and coal equate for most of it.

 

4 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

That will depend on how, and what, you measure.

Exploring for, drilling, extracting, refining

 

There is always a flare, on each offshore production facility and each refinery which will be circa 0.5 to 2 mmsfd (million standard cubic feet a day) in normal running conditions, in upset process conditions could as much as 40 to 50 mmscfd or even much more.  Offshore production will also have power generation of 30 to 40 MW by gas turbine driven generators, 1MW on a drilling rig which will be diesel powered. So not that small.

[SteamyTea]

7 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

There is always a flare..........So not that small.

I grew up by oil refineries, you have made me feel quite homesick.

[Faz]

I know I am in the wrong place to make a statement like this but, has anyone ever considered that all the man made climate change stuff just maybe all bollocks?

 

I am old enough to remember the 1970s 'Ice Age' scare.  Thought that was bollocks as well tbh.

[SteamyTea]

2 minutes ago, Faz said:

has anyone ever considered that all the man made climate change stuff just maybe all bollocks?

Have to be a very big and clever fraud. Larger in scale than the moon landings.

3 minutes ago, Faz said:

am old enough to remember the 1970s 'Ice Age' scare

What you remember was misreporting by the media.

The reason you remember it was because that scenario was different from all the ones that said warming was happening.

And to put it into perspective, it was one scenario, out if many, that got copied into 3 reports.

 

There are still people that think the virgin birth was real.  Some stories stick because they are so different, not because they are true.

[joe90]

On 28/01/2022 at 10:21, markc said:

Yes we need to stop the unnecessary waste, dumping plastics etc. Into oceans and consuming everything we can find.

Most definitely 

 

On 28/01/2022 at 10:21, markc said:

but is change a bad thing?

No in fact it’s a nessesity.

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, joe90 said:

On 28/01/2022 at 10:21, markc said:

Yes we need to stop the unnecessary waste, dumping plastics etc. Into oceans and consuming everything we can find.

Most definitely

Did I post this up. Not read it yet.

 

Columnist

Pollution is the forgotten global crisis and we need to tackle it now

Leon Werdinger/Alamy Stock Photo

IN THE lead-up to Christmas, my household began to feel like a badly managed waste-processing facility. We planned to spend time with vulnerable relatives, so were keeping a close eye on our covid-19 status. Each lateral flow test generated seven items of non-recyclable waste, which piled up in the bathroom until I bit the plastic bullet and binned the lot. They are now, presumably, in landfill.

 

The pandemic may have temporarily cut global consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, but from a pollution perspective, it has spawned an almighty mess. It became clear early on that large quantities of discarded masks and other medical detritus were finding their way into the wild.

 

Recent research has revealed the shocking scale of the covid-19 waste heap. It estimates that by August 2021, the pandemic had generated 8.4 million tonnes of plastic waste, which has been dumped into the environment rather than disposed of properly. Such mismanaged waste is the main source of ocean plastic. Before the pandemic, we collectively fly-tipped about 32 million tonnes of it a year. The extra 8.4 million tonnes “intensifies pressure on an already out-of-control global plastic waste problem”, write the researchers (PNAS, doi.org/gnct34).

 

This is no exaggeration. Last year, the United Nations declared that waste and pollution is a planetary crisis on a par with climate change and biodiversity loss, and that we must tackle all three together. However, until recently, this crisis was a distant third in the global pecking order. That, in part, was down to a lack of data. Quantifying waste and pollution is hard. But if there was any doubt about the scale of the problem, new research dispels it. It contends that waste and pollution have crossed a Rubicon called a “planetary boundary”, and are now a threat to the habitability of Earth. We are literally choking on our own detritus.

 

The concept of a planetary boundary dates back to 2009, when a group of researchers led by Johan Rockström at Stockholm University in Sweden tried to define what they called a “safe operating space for humanity”. They picked nine global parameters that have stayed remarkably stable for the past 10,000 years, including climate, biodiversity, land degradation and pollution. These collectively create a life-support system for us, but are being pushed out of whack by our dominance of the planet. For each of them, they attempted to set a boundary that we breach at our peril.

 

In 2015, the team declared that four of the nine boundaries – biosphere integrity, climate change, land use, and the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles – had been breached. And two of them were still undefined, including “novel entities” – mostly chemicals released into the environment by human activities. In other words, waste and pollution.

 

The new paper attempts to fill this knowledge gap. It defines the boundary as the global capacity to run safety tests on these novel entities and monitor them in the environment. The authors say global production of chemicals has increased 50-fold since 1950, and there are 350,000 synthetic chemicals on the market today. Most haven’t been properly assessed for environmental toxicity (see page 44). The team estimates we have overshot the boundary by about 200 per cent, roughly as much as for biosphere integrity and worse than climate change (Environmental Science & Technology, doi.org/gn6rsw).

 

The timing of the research is both fortuitous and strategic. Next month, the fifth UN Environment Assembly – the world’s highest-level decision-making body on environmental issues – will meet in Nairobi, Kenya. On the table is a resolution to set up a global science body for chemicals, waste and pollution, modelled on the ones for climate and biodiversity. This is the culmination of a campaign that began last year and has been gathering support. It is no coincidence that many of the researchers on the planetary boundaries paper are involved.

 

Even without the covid-19 waste, it is clear that the campaign needs to succeed. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has done more than any other group to cajole world leaders into taking the climate crisis seriously. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, created in 2012, has elevated awareness of the biodiversity crisis to a new level. Waste and pollution deserve no less.

 

We aren’t going to step back inside the boundary any time soon. Global chemical production is forecast to triple again by 2050. But when our covid-19 waste has become an archaeological record of the first great pandemic of the 21st century, maybe we will have learned to stop fouling our own nest. If we are still around at all.

 

 

Graham’s week

What I’m reading

 

The self-styled poet laureate of punk John Cooper Clarke’s memoir I Wanna Be Yours.

 

What I’m watching

 

Archive 81 on Netflix. Isn’t everyone?

 

What I’m working on

 

My wardrobe. Honest.

 

This column appears monthly. Up next week: Annalee Newitz

 

Graham Lawton

[Faz]

2 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Have to be a very big and clever fraud. Larger in scale than the moon landings.

Not really - the research follows the funding. Try to get funding for a promising study proving it is all bollocks - good luck.  Funding for highly speculative research showing we are all doomed is in ample supply.

 

As with anything in life you have to follow the money....

 

As I recall, man made CO2 represents 3% of the CO2 emitted by the planet and eco systems generally. The UK purportedly is responsible for 1% of this so 0.03% of emissions. We are on track to bankrupt the nation on the pursuit of this folly and kill pensioners in their cold homes for this? Really?

 

Bet you are glad I am back now ?

[SteamyTea]

4 minutes ago, Faz said:

As I recall, man made CO2 represents 3% of the CO2 emitted by the planet and eco systems generally

Excess CO₂ emission, and that is the difference. 

It would also be nice to see the original source of that 3% figure.  I see it a lot, but never been able to track it down.

For a start there will be seasonal and yearly variations, for a number of reasons.

But, whether you like it or not, anthropogenic climate change is happening.

[Faz]

Maybe or maybe not. It is a question of faith in these times - like a virgin birth.....

 

Either way you have to question the cost and the consequences.

[IanR]

12 minutes ago, Faz said:

Not really - the research follows the funding. Try to get funding for a promising study proving it is all bollocks - good luck. 

 

There is plenty of funding available to disprove climate change. Those 100 companies mentioned here

 

On 28/01/2022 at 16:34, JohnMo said:

Sory got my numbers wrong it is 100 global companies are responsible for about 71% of all CO2 emissions anyway?

 

would love it to be proven untrue, as I'm sure few will survive the movement away from fossil fuels, not to mention nation states using their cyber warfare capabilities to discredit the scientists and organisations that made the case for humans causing climate change.

[SteamyTea]

Not just atmospheric CO₂ levels we need to worry about.

 

https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-ocean-acidity

Climate Change Indicators: Ocean Acidity

This indicator describes changes in the chemistry of the ocean that relate to the amount of carbon dioxide dissolved in the water.

• Figure 1. Ocean Carbon Dioxide Levels and Acidity, 1983–2018 
   

   

   

  This figure shows the relationship between changes in ocean carbon dioxide levels (measured in the left column as a partial pressure—a common way of measuring the amount of a gas) and acidity (measured as pH in the right column). The data come from two observation stations in the North Atlantic Ocean (Bermuda and Canary Islands), one in the Caribbean Sea (Cariaco), and one in the Pacific (Hawaii). The up-and-down pattern shows the influence of seasonal variations.

  Data sources: Bates, 2016;⁷ González-Dávila, 2012;⁸ University of South Florida, 2021;⁹ University of Hawaii, 2021¹⁰
  Web update: April 2021