We're all gonna die (The climate change thread)

[Rare White Ape]

Here's where New Zealand's weather is coming from.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/airattac...&__tn__=-UCH-R

[Rare White Ape]

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Prime Minister of Australia.

https://fbwat.ch/1kTflIois2lKi25T

[Rare White Ape]

Bureau of Meteorology: 2019 was hottest and driest year ever

https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/scie...-ever-endured/

An elderly woman has died of smoke inhalation after disembarking a plane in Canberra

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/stat...ring-canberra/

Also in the ACT, Australia Post has suspended all van and postie deliveries due to bushfire smoke hazard

https://auspost.com.au/about-us/news...ortant-updates

[Rare White Ape]

Now glaciers in NZ are being covered in ash and dust, and reducing their albedo, which is likely to accelerate melting of the glacial ice:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...st?CMP=soc_567

The article says the top layers may turn pink when algae begins to grow. What it doesn’t mention is that in the coming years it will be snowed over again, and the thin layer will be evidence of climate change that will be visible for thousands of years.

[Dicknose]

2019 might have been the hottest year in Australia, but we gave that a good kick yesterday with many hottest records broken - including parts of Sydney being the hottest place on the planet for the day.
Penrith, most west part of Sydney, was 48.5C (119F). My suburb hit a new record with 47C.
And this heat wave was across most of the state, with all the fires this was expected to be one of the worst fire days. They did compulsory evacuations of many areas.
Id been staying at my sisters holiday place in our Snowy Mountains (and yes still can see snow), but came back to Sydney on New Years Day. Lots of smoke, visibility was 100m, sometimes much less. They had the road blocked in the direction we had come from. Their place wasnt in the compulsory evacuation, but I think everyone left, I know a distillery/cafe nearby left - this was the first time they had shut in over 15 years.

We have plenty of bush fires in Australia. But we havent had such large ones and burn so long. Normally its a bad day and then its over. Or maybe a fire is out of control for a few days. These are so large and its so dry they have been burning for well over a month and no sign of them stopping until we get decent rain.

[Crazed_Insanity]

I wonder how much carbon are these wild fires adding to the atmosphere.

If humanity managed to achieve net zero carbon foot print, will wild fires like these still tip over the balance? Or perhaps these wild fires are relatively tiny compared to man-made pollution...

For CA, our worst wild fire was equivalent of doubling the carbon foot print of our annual power generation..., but that's only 15% of CA's total carbon emission. I guess most of our carbon came from autos...

https://qz.com/1483729/california-fi...-of-power-use/


Yep, another quick google revealed autos contribute to 41% of CA's total carbon foot print.
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/ghg-inventory-data

Even if we have Trump as president forever and never doing a damn thing for climate change... Elon Musk alone could be eliminated nearly 50% of CA's carbon emissions! But of course that's assuming Teslas becoming totally affordable as Hondas and Toyotas...

Anyway, these info are only for CA, your Aussie wild fires may very well vary...

[Rare White Ape]

It is already quite a large percentage of Australia’s annual carbon emissions, and will possibly even double it if it keeps going.

But there are two things to consider:

1. Natural disasters like volcanoes and bushfires do add to atmospheric carbon, but they shouldn’t be considered part of the carbon footprint of a country. In normal conditions (for example if humans didn’t exist) they would happen anyway, and nature would be able to absorb the odd volcano or bushfire that happens once a year. It’s the additional output from humans that tips the balance and causes extra carbon to accumulate in the air.

2. We are entering into a carbon feedback loop, where climate change causes more extreme weather events, which in turn cause more carbon to enter the atmosphere, which in turn causes more extreme weather events, and so-on.

What we are looking at is the difference between nature being able to reverse our climate mishaps within a few hundred years, or within 10,000 years. If we keep going as we are it could take that long to allow nature to return itself back to what it was before the industrial revolution.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Well, some CA wild fires were crazy-man-made!!!

Can you imagine? Some dude purposely flying into CA during windy conditions to set fires?!?!?
https://www.latimes.com/california/s...ires?_amp=true

Hope your fire wasn’t set by some mad arsonist...

Anyway, in dynamics, one way to stabilize such feedback is to increase damping of the overall system rather than just reducing input. I think it’s more and more unrealistic to expect we can reach the reduction level that climate scientists are hoping for... hopefully we could find alternative ways to dampen this feedback at least... sigh...

[Dicknose]

Its normally considered almost carbon neutral, in that over the period of a few years most of the carbon will regrown.
But these fires are hotter, more intense and are burning more and actually killing off trees. This could mean 20+ years for it to recover and become carbon neutral.

Some of the fires were started by people, had quite a few minor fires in Sydney. Some are just stupidity, like people setting off fireworks, while others are deliberately started.
The ones near where I was actually from lightning - we had some rain but lots of lightning and not enough rain to stop the fires from starting and getting out of control.

[drew]

Now glaciers in NZ are being covered in ash and dust, and reducing their albedo, which is likely to accelerate melting of the glacial ice:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...st?CMP=soc_567

The article says the top layers may turn pink when algae begins to grow. What it doesn’t mention is that in the coming years it will be snowed over again, and the thin layer will be evidence of climate change that will be visible for thousands of years.

That is of course, assuming they'll be there in another 20 years...