Protecting the Earth's biosphere and environment is a global imperative. This thread is to explore science based solutions and policy initiatives to protect, preserve, enhance Biodiversity.
Humanity has been loading the earth's environment with greenhouse gases, forever chemicals, mining water and other
resources at breakneck speed. The drastic extra fluxes of carbon and nitrogen to the global carbon and nitrogen cycle in the geologically instanteneous last 100 years is having significant impact.
Huge tracts of natural forests has been converted to agriculture and human habitation. Only 4% of earth's mammals are wild and the rest are all domesticated livestock for human use. https://www.ecowatch.com/biomass-humans ... 13930.html
All these issues need deep solutions over the next 50 years. This thread will identify problems, solutions, best practices and policy initiatives that can be scalably implemented by people, industry and Government
An interesting take on Carbon removal fundamentals
Essentially the CO2 fluxes we are commonly taught in school is in the fast carbon cycle. The slow carbon cycle is sequestration of CO2 by weathering reactions, ocean acidification, fecal pellet transfer to anoxic zones in deep oceans.
If reactors are retired, polluting energy sources that fill the gap could cause more than 5,000 premature deaths, researchers estimate. The findings appear in the journal Nature Energy. MIT News reports:
They lay out a scenario in which every nuclear power plant in the country has shut down, and consider how other sources such as coal, natural gas, and renewable energy would fill the resulting energy needs throughout an entire year. Their analysis reveals that indeed, air pollution would increase, as coal, gas, and oil sources ramp up to compensate for nuclear power's absence. This in itself may not be surprising, but the team has put numbers to the prediction, estimating that the increase in air pollution would have serious health effects, resulting in an additional 5,200 pollution-related deaths over a single year.
If, however, more renewable energy sources become available to supply the energy grid, as they are expected to by the year 2030, air pollution would be curtailed, though not entirely. The team found that even under this heartier renewable scenario, there is still a slight increase in air pollution in some parts of the country, resulting in a total of 260 pollution-related deaths over one year. When they looked at the populations directly affected by the increased pollution, they found that Black or African American communities -- a disproportionate number of whom live near fossil-fuel plants -- experienced the greatest exposure.
This is still a big killer, may be out of fashion these days losing media space to global warming, but shows no signs of relenting as India tries to catch-up on infra.
Rising Ocean temperatures are pushing fragile Coral ecosystems to complete collapse. As of 2023 50% of the massive Great Barrier Reef and most other reefs across the globe have bleached and may be permanently dead shortly. The coming generations will probably see corals only in aquariums.
Such high Ocean temperatures are very alarming and mankind will see the first mass extinction of an important ecosystem due to Human Induced climate change in the next decade.
Drastic action to manage carbon footprints is needed.
Tanadv ji, I have clicked on the link in the Smithsonian article and spent a good 30 mins reading the study being quoted. I wasn't disappointed. Suggest you check out the chapter "Experimental Procedures". Very dubious study, if not dishonest. If this is the level of rigour expected, anyone can make a study to get any desired conclusion. But try getting funding for a study that aims to check if the opposite is true, and you will know why so many fear mongering articles are appearing all the time. BTW, I didn't see any data on "(rising) ocean temperatures" in the study, nor any specific info on the supposed "bleaching", no correlation established between these terms, I see no evidence for the "GBR is 50% dead" in the actual study.
While its a no brainer that pollution and overfishing will lead to loss of biodiversity, the easy add on is "climate change" to freeride on the other two factors with no evidence of causal relationship based on reliable data, and this kind of deceit has been going for many years now, and I wont be surprised of you come back with "climate change itself is a no brainer" ! Like Greta the school dropout shouting the science is settled, how dare anyone question any of this? eh?
The Smithsonian article that wraps the study into an edible morsel for the hoi polloi says:
“Coral reefs have been in decline worldwide—I think that's pretty commonly accepted,” says Tyler Eddy, a research scientist at Memorial University of Newfoundland who co-authored the study. “We didn't necessarily know the magnitude of how much, when we looked on a global scale, that reefs had declined.”
Looks like "scientific method" is the one most in danger of extinction here.
This is not the first or only such study but EVERY such study I've come across in the past 5 years or so is qualitatively in the same shit bucket, with a doomsday prediction article wrapped around it. Thats why I think this CO2, climate change activism is a crock of shit and takes away focus and funds from much needed efforts to control pollution of air, soil, waters and preserve biodiversity.
BTW, has anyone here tried to check how we arrive at some conclusions about ocean temperature over 150 years? Where does the data come from, starting from around 1850 or so? Please do if you can.
Regarding Hurricane Otis that slammed into Mexico:
If we are going to look at the context of rapid intensification, we need to start with the fact that to qualify as rapid, a hurricane must gain 35 m.p.h. of sustained wind speed in 24 hours.
Otis gained 115 m.p.h. and did it in 12 hours.
Hurricane Otis unleashed a “nightmare scenario” on Acapulco in southern Mexico Wednesday morning after the storm rapidly intensified into a Category 5 just before landfall and gave officials and residents little time to prepare.
Otis strengthened from a tropical storm to an extremely dangerous Category 5 hurricane in just 12 hours before it slammed ashore near Acapulco as the strongest storm on record to hit this area and the Pacific coast of Mexico.
The sudden burst of power gave people little time to prepare and get to safety as Otis bore down on Acapulco, a popular tourist destination that’s also a permanent home to roughly 800,000 people.
NRao wrote: ↑25 Jan 2023 10:06
It would help immensely to provide sources for your assertions.
This is a good thread. I'd request the moderators to prevent hijacking of this thread by questioning "why we need these solutions in the first place". Voluminous data exists and can be looked up instead of having to regurgitate it.
Cyrano wrote: ↑25 Jan 2024 21:17
Before y'all get worried suggest you guys watch this...
Might as well close this thread then, if all is fine and dandy with the earth's climate, environment, and sustainability.
Is it possible to have a thread in which we assume this to be a serious problem and just discuss what is happening on the solutions front, without hijacking it with "there is no problem and we are being fooled" ?
There are already other threads for arguments on climate change assessments, whether it's real or not, etc. Additionally, sustainability and circularity are not just about climate change issues.
If you can't distinguish between climate and the rest of the topics regarding the environment then suggest you do some reading and research instead of spreading absurd anguish.
Cyrano wrote: ↑26 Jan 2024 02:52
If you can't distinguish between climate and the rest of the topics regarding the environment then suggest you do some reading and research instead of spreading absurd anguish.
I just did distinguish between these topics.
Environment includes climate change and solutions to mitigate it. I'm not anguished, I said that posting "climate science is a lie" videos is hijacking this thread. That's like posting "Ram is imaginary" in a thread on "ram mandir construction/opening".
Must listen podcast - superbly made btw - of the ongoing defamation trial in Washington DC court where Michael Mann of the climate change hockey stick fame is suing 2 people critical of his work for defamation.
BTW Mann filed a similar case against another critic of his work and did not show up in court to defend his case and lost that suit, was ordered to pay legal fees which he never did and the defendant passed away.
Dubey Ji,
I've been following the climate change movement for about 5 years now. Started as a well meaning supporter like most people but curiosity got the better of me and I tried to genuinely understand this field. The more I dug into it the more unconvincing the "science" is, and the more self serving, metastasising , virulent and malafide scam it has revealed itself to be.
Try and watch the video above and the podcast of this trial. Climate activists are the worst thing that can happen to pro environment common people, and I do count myself amongst them.
The findings of this new research, led by Roxy Mathew Koll, scientist with Climate Research Lab, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, are published in a recent book, The Indian Ocean and its Role in the Global Climate System, released on April 26.
“In the present-day climate scenario, where we are experiencing 1.2-degree Celsius warming, marine heat waves have already emerged in the Indian Ocean and are rising; at present, they range up to 20 days a year,” said Koll, talking to Mongabay India about the implications of prolonged marine heatwaves in the Indian Ocean. “But, by 2050, we are expected to breach the two-degree Celsius mark, and these heatwaves are likely to increase to 220-250 days, which is two-thirds of a year. We are calling it a permanent heatwave state for the Indian Ocean,” he said.
“These prolonged marine heatwaves will not only intensify cyclones but also affect fish migration, coral reefs, phytoplanktons and marine biodiversity,” warned Koll, who is also the lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.
The projected heat waves in the Indian Ocean are of concern as nearly 250 million people live within 50 km of the Indian coastline (3.5% of the world’s population). The 8,118-km long coastline is also home to more than seven million people who depend on fishing for their livelihood.
