Might be worth looking at this older article on vulcanism and climate by the usgs:
https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/news/volcano-watch-pinatubo-effect-can-geoengineering-mimic-volcanic-processes#:~:text=This%20aspect%20of%20Pinatubo’s%201991,Fahrenheit)%20over%20the%20ensuing%20year.
Thanks, that’s a good one. Authoritative articles from relatively objective sources on the subject are not so easy to come by, perhaps because it’s such easy fodder for the sensationalists and doomsayers. This one, from the Los Alamos National Lab, is good too:
https://www.lanl.gov/orgs/ees/geodynamics/Wohletz/Krakatau.htm
Being optimistic is great and I’m also optimistic. On the other hand I don’t see the working together part so far capturing the optimism of the masses. I think we agree to go at a global problem solo comes across as tilting at windmills to most.
I personally don’t feel our leaders have done a good job of convincing anyone there is a problem or those that feel there is a problem the impact of the problem. Instead at least from my perspective it looks like the leaders assume we understand the problem and if you are not of that mind then you are simply a denier and not worthy of explanation. The trouble in the USA there is easily perhaps 100M people or more that ether fall into denier status or just don’t care status. I remember Obama making a speech on global warming and climate change and I expected hearing bold plans where we would be looking for new alternative energies and expanding nuclear, wind and solar. Something like a 50 year plan for bridging oil to the next great thing and it seemed quite logical the first step in personal transportation would be plug in hybrid autos. Full electric near home and gas as a longer range fuel when needed. The big talking point that came out of that speech is he told us to all keep our tires properly inflated on the high end of the pressure range and it will save gas.
Sure I’m sure there is some working together going on, but if there is an impending mass extinction event of the human race just around the corner there is nowhere near enough working together going on, and nothing to bring people on board to the immensity of the problem.
For those yet not onboard there is something else in their thought process and that is there may well be a problem man made or not and the problem is likely not as doomsday as they are being told. They have a belief the problem is being escalated because it allows for in the immortal words of Rahm Emanuel “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.”
If you look more into Rahm’s quote pertaining to climate change and what it can imply he then directs it into every aspect of society they would in their minds like to right and in others minds control. People right or wrong feel the climate issue is less about climate and more about controlling them.
Plausus’ post, and the smoke alerts we’ve had recently that many of us have commented on, put me in mind of a book I’ve recently read - and which came out fairly recently. Folks here might find it interesting. Its written by the guy who wrote “The Golden Spruce”, a book that I know some here have read. Here’s a review:
Fire Weather by John Vaillant review – apocalypse in Alberta | Society books | The Guardian
There are some sobering facts that are reported in it. We’ve all heard of fires that grow big enough to form their own fairly large weather systems. The Peshtigo fire here in Wisconsin did, So did other large forest fires, as did the fire bombings of Dresden, Tokyo, Hamburg,
But there have recently been wildfires that have actually spawned fire tornadoes (generating winds over 150 mph that feed the fire while creating lightning and dispersing hot embers over great distances). This is something new under the 21st century sun. They are also powerful enough to deposit very large (and long lasting) clouds of ash and volatile gasses well into the stratosphere. One such firestorm cloud was initially mistaken by folks reading satellite data as a nuclear test. This is stuff that directly concerns many of us who live in or near forested areas.
Or worse, that we are incapable of understanding the problem and we should just trust them. First, no one likes politicians who talk down to them, and second, trust isn’t a give-away, it must be earned. Two strikes.
And I agree that leaders have not made convincing arguments that changing behaviors in ways that can reduce carbon emissions now will lead to a better place. Strike three.
SRM has been on the table for quite a while. Long before Gates had anything to do with it. It is considered by many as a last resort. Why is that? What is driving the perceived need for doing it? Should it be researched? These are the pertinent questions to ask.
The big downside to SO2 is acid rain. This is one of the reasons why the majority of climate scientist are against doing this sort of thing at the present. Especially not on any kind of global scale. There is no one presently trying to deploy SO2 in the atmosphere. Apparently, a company planned to release SO2 in Baja Mexico. There was a lot of controversy over the companies plan and it was shut down by the Mexican government.
I should add SO2 and NOX are also being pumped into the air when dirty coal is used for energy production. We reduced acid rain in this country by reducing dependence on dirty coal for energy production.
The link does a brief outline of what the US plan will be. That is to further investigate the possible need to do it in the future if we fail to reduce carbon inputs. It would be a risk vs risk analysis. Sort of like the risk of treating cancer with chemicals that are bad for you to overcome what cancer is causing in you. In other words, is it a viable backup plan as a last resort if things go worse than we had hoped.
Our government is also worried about other actors such as countries or companies going ahead and deploying the technology unilaterally since there is no global agreement to prevent them doing so.
The reason it is even being considered is there is no sign the world will actually reduce our CO2 emissions.
That’s my takeaway from the reading the first link minus the opinion parts of it.
The second link required my email so I didn’t read it.
I put a whole lot more trust in scientist than I do in politicians and talking heads. So, my bias is to listen to what they are telling us. Now science is made up of human beings applying the scientific method seeking to further knowledge, so we can have a better understanding. Yes, they are human and often flawed. The scientific method is there to offset human bias. It requires validation and consensus to be accepted.
We have numerous scientific studies that have been linked to this thread. It is good to go to the source and see what actually is being said by the scientist. I can’t help but find science fascinating and enlightening. I am often impressed by the intelligence of those doing the work, and how they tackle what appears to be unknowable and succeed in finding answers. However, the science seems to put the general public to sleep. Most of us get our info which is often spun by those reporting on it in the media. This does cloud the real work that has been done.
I truly believe we will not take significant action soon enough. Not for myself but the children of the future. Our children. For me when pikeabike posted about the benefit of returning to a 55mph speed limit it turned on a light (LED of course 
). It is the perfect example of why we won’t take action in time. I get it people don’t want to drive the speed limits now. Yet that is a simple easy change to make and would save us money. What is there to make me think we will do the hard things. The hard part is the hurdle we face now. Perhaps this message is the important one. It is easier to grasp than the science, but without the actual science it is meaningless.
Basically, it is us as a collective, not just government, and the corporate world that are responsible for not making the changes that are needed. I’m too busy surviving, it’s just too demanding so let the dice fall where they may mentality.
BTW Buffalo Alice I really enjoyed the Krakatau link you posted. It demonstrates how easily it is to change the climate. Be it manmade of natural.
As to the speed limit thing and how government uses it.
With the tech we have today it is more than simple to control speeding. First every auto made knows where it is at and what speed it is going it would not be difficult at all to have a system that takes a look at where you are at and limits your speed to the speed limit. It could even adjust the speed limit based on weather even. What about old cars. You pass a law that if your car is old school you attach a box to it that will monitor your speed & location and mail you a fine for every time you go over the speed limit. It would be easy to enforce the ones that disconnect or mess with the box as you will have 1000s of traffic police that wont be needed sitting on interstates with speed guns.
If they want to go old school get the high priced officers off the speed traps and replace them with pace cars EV that drive down the center of the two lanes with a wide bumper that has flashing lights driven by a min wage driver. They putt along right at 55MPH.
The truth is the government wants you to speed and play the game and supply a rich revenue stream. Even my little town has 4 cops and 99% of what they do is pull people over right in front of my house where the speed steps up as we are just outside of town but the sign allowing it is a quarter mile down the road.
I was once heading south from PA to SC and there is a well known speed trap area where they enforce with helicopters and teams of police on the ground. I was passed by a line of 30 cars speeding and just as they got around me here come the red lights. I was the last one in the line and the line and all 30 some ahead of me. They started at the front so I sat there for an hour waiting to tell them I was passed by the speeders and got involved in their operation. The cop could care less handed me a ticket for about 300 bucks and told me if I didn’t like it I could come back in a week for court. I got to SC and paid the stupid fine.
It was 2 weeks later heading back home I got to the state line madder than a wet hen and I decided to do an experiment. I found an 18 wheeler that was going 1MPH over the speed limit and I got in the left lane just off his bumper and set my speed to match his. I remember looking in my mirror about half way thru the state and seeing a string of cars bumper to bumper for miles and miles of PO drivers. We rolled past several staging areas and I think if they could have got into traffic they would have hauled me in for going the speed limit. Once I left the state I pulled ahead of the 18 wheeler and the traffic quickly went to a ridicules fast pace and quite a few folks gave me the one finger salute or wagging fist. All I did was save them all 300 bucks.
What I found is many or our roadways quickly become overloaded when the speed limit is followed. Seems logical more drivers going slower will be on the roads a longer time. plus the faster drivers soon bunch up with the slower drivers. Once cars get bunched up driving becomes more erratic and wasting fuel.
The beauty of a true hybrid is the engine can run at its most efficient speed and the batteries can take up the fluctuations.
LOL, anything to escape talking about the science, eh?
No, I do not agree. Not with the way you have framed it, not with the apparent assumptions underlying your statements, not with the way you are wording it. Let me see if I can give you a sense for how I look at it.
I know enough about the science to trust it. More importantly, to trust it to correct itself over time. Note that I am not saying all scientists are honest, nor that all science is, at this point an accurate portrayal of reality and will never need to be changed. Just that I trust a climate scientist a lot. And I trust a consensus among the majority of climate scientists a lot more.
I am living in a little “d”, democracy. And it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.… if I remember the quote correctly.
Anyway, my take on our form of government is that in as diverse a democracy as we have, no one will get exactly what they want, all the time. We need to compromise. For example, I wish we were doing more to reduce carbon emissions than we have so far, but hey, I am one voice, so I have to accept that we, as a society, are moving as fast as we can under the circumstances.
I think a reasonable analogy to climate warming and what to do about it, is putting a man on the moon in the 1960s. I am sure there were people saying it was too difficult, the science was uncertain, technology was incapable, leaders were hypocrites, etc. But as a country, we “decided” to do that, and went ahead figuring it out as we went. I was comfortable with that. No need in my mind to second guess rocket scientists and engineers. I am happy to go along with the solutions and experiments they devised. After all, I am no rocket scientist, smile.
Similarly, with climate warming and solutions, I am “optimistic”, or have some confidence, that when things get bad enough, we will work together, in some way, to do what we can to survive. Nope, I do not have the solution(s). But I know enough to feel comfortable that when we work together, we can do some impressive things. Note that I am not saying things won’t get bad, people won’t lose homes, island nations won’t get flooded, species won’t be lost, etc. It is disappointing to me that we will have such destruction and loss. But I am one person, and recognize that we, as a world, can only go as fast toward solutions as the we can get enough agreement. So I have to be philosophical about it.
Another really good book for your growing library, well worth a read:
It may surprise you as it covers many things we thought we knew about human nature, that may well be wrong, based on another look at the data.
And, I will leave you with a quote I like:
“None is so great that he needs no help, and none is so small that he cannot give it.”
–King Solomon
Actually it was @PcomStealsYourData that posted about that first, not @ppine
In several posts this was implied that this was a way of having a postive impact on CO2 production with little direct cost (new signs were mentioned) and even save money due to reduced fuel costs. While those statements are likely true, there are more costs that would need to be considered. I think increased enforcement would be required, so more police officers, prosecutors, judges, courts and etc. But the really large cost would be the lost time, that means lower productivity for businesses and the self-employed (Uber anyone) and less leisure time for individuals.
You could say that is small and unimportant and to the individual that is true, but in aggerate it could be significant.
The article about economic impacts I posted above, states that “optimal” warming, from a total cost point of view is 6.75 degrees Fahrenheit and a total cost of $110 Trillion. Doing nothing is the second-best choice with a temperature rise of 7.4 degrees Fahrenheit and a total cost of $140 Trillion. If I were making the decision, I would prefer to spend a bit more and err on the lower temperature side at 5.3 degrees Fahrenheit with the higher cost of $165 Trillion. But the lower temperature targets are a practical impossibility.
We (the collective) have to consider all aspects of a change including the cost consequences.
True, of course, for people who can actually drive the speed limit on their commute. I wonder what percentage of city commuters actually can…
Sorry pikeabike my mistake.
As electric cars come on, I have no idea how the speed limit would influence CO2 levels.
I do realize there would be downstream costs to 55mph. Apparently, they were easily absorbed over the 22 years 55mph was the law of the land, and the tradeoff helped us reduce oil dependence. My point though is the reluctance of people to change in reducing CO2 if it is perceived as an inconvenience and especially if it would cost them.
I do agree that we can rapidly change our behavior to adapt, and we are smart. Yet it has taken 70 years to come up with a successful way to create a fusion reaction that produced more energy than we put in. We still have to engineer a way to do so at scale. Hopefully it won’t take another 70 years. It would be a game changer.
I happen to agree with much of the article link you posted on the economics although economics is an inexact science. however, I didn’t see any economic projection of climate impacts on fisheries or arable land. Or an economic metric on the cost of an eco-system collapse or mass extinction. Primally because they are hard to put a monetary number to and economics historically fail in accounting for these type of impact costs. Thats why we had to have the clean air and water acts passed.
Take the impact of damming rivers in the NW US. It had and has today still an impact on Salmon populations. We can count the dollars in commerce lost as the populations of salmon has decline. Dams prevented the annual spawn up into the small freshwater streams. The salmon spawn provided a 20% increase in nitrogen and phosphorous on streamside ecosystems and was spread through the forest by the animals that feed on the salmon. Those nutrient inputs were lost. the dollar amount was never considered. Although there has been remediation of some of the problems of dams preventing spawning. Then there is the salmon and pollock fisheries having caused declines in the spawning runs. The dollar amounts take into account the lost revenue, but not the environmental cost.
When I checked the information on the relationship of temp to CO2 levels, I found this " the relationship is approximately proportional, with each 10 ppm increase in CO2 concentration leading to a temperature increase of about 0.1 °C." Converting to Fahrenheit it would be 0.18 F to 10 ppm of CO2. Let us look at the temperatures used in the Smart Thinking paper. To start off let’s convert from temperature to CO2 ppm 7.4 F =411ppm, 6.75 f = 375 ppm, 5.3 F =294ppm. We will have to add these ppm CO2 amounts to the current atmospheric CO2 level of 441ppm. We get future CO2 levels of 852 ppm, 816 ppm, and 735 ppm. Now let’s look at these values on the graph below. All 3 values considered are well into the high risk of mass extinctions range.
The New York Post is hardly a source of journalistic integrity or rational coverage. It should stick to it’s lane as a scandal rag rather than trying to present science news.
The New York Post, founded by Alexander Hamilton, is the oldest continuously operating daily newspaper in the country first publishing in 1801. Hardly a rag for publishing stories which may challenge world views.
Oh yeah say laptop other great journalist news outlets couldn’t. I’d say most valuable paper in the country. Does well with scandals also.
integrity?
if we went to zero carbon emissions it would cut 10% of world carbon emissions as china adds yearly.
PaddleDog, I agree with you that China CO2 emissions are reprehensible. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t move as fast as we can to reduce our emissions because we are the second leading carbon producer in the world with per capita CO2 emissions nearly twice that of China. Isn’t that what a world leader should be doing. Leading by example.
I posted on this already but here it is in more detail What I found China was 32%, US was14%, and India 8% of total world CO2 emissions in 2022. The big 3 emitted 52% of the world total of CO2.
China’s is currently driving up global CO2 emissions. That makes it even more urgent that we continue reducing ours.
I am proud as an American that we are currently leading the world in reducing CO2. We should also continue on that path speeding it up as fast as we can to help offset the damage being caused by China.
We should also be letting the world know loud and clear we are doing so, and China is pushing the world toward a climate catastrophe every chance we get.
I should add that most of China’s CO2 is coming from building coal fired power plants which are on a decline in the US.
Castoff,
Great data and a very altruistic view / method of addressing. However the vast majority of our society (USA) has moved the needle to being individualistic in nature. As such, way to many people refuse to give up their conveniences while others will not.
The argument that we have to do it to offset others who will not just resonates in an echo chamber.
I ache for my grandchildren
So nothing has changed at the Post for 222 years?
At least one thing has: It wasn’t sold in the checkout line next to the National Enquirer and Weekly World News back then.
They will be worse off for our selfishness.
