Uplifting and Helpful Quotes

Robert Heinlein, not Twain.

“The whole principle (censorship) is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.”

 

Ancient ocean methane not an immediate climate change threat

New research shows reservoirs of ocean methane in mid-latitude regions will not be released to the atmosphere under warming conditions.

As the researchers documented, ancient methane is being released from the seafloor. However, they found negligible amounts of this ancient methane in the surface waters. They concluded, based on earlier studies, that this methane gas first dissolves in the deeper waters and then oceanic microbes biodegrade the methane, turning it into carbon dioxide before it leaves the water.

 

"The best slave is the one who thinks he is a free person."

Johann von Goethe

 

Freedumb

When evil rich people exploit and oppress dumb poor people and then convince them it’s all for their freedom

Dilloniuos

 

How do you know you're free if not by the feeling of being free?


-Will

 

"Of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it.”
Christopher Hitchens

The last Robert Heinlein book, To Sail Beyond the Sunset

 

Even weak tropical cyclones have grown more intense worldwide – we tracked 30 years of them using currents

In analyzing those records, we found that the ocean currents induced by weak tropical cyclones became stronger globally during the 1991-2020 period. We calculated that the increase in ocean currents corresponds to a 15% to 21% increase in the intensity of weak tropical cyclones, and that intensification occurred in all ocean basins.

We also found evidence of increasing intensity in the changes in water temperatures measured by satellites. When a tropical cyclone travels through the ocean, it draws energy from the warm surface water and churns the water layers below, leaving a footprint of colder water in its wake. Stronger tropical cyclones bring more cold water from the subsurface to the surface ocean, leading to a stronger cooling in the ocean surface.

The 2022 Atlantic hurricane season officially ends on Nov. 30, after 14 named storms and eight hurricanes. It isn’t clear how rising global temperatures will effect the number of tropical cyclones that form, but our findings suggest that coastal communities need to be better prepared for increased intensity in those that do form and a concurrent rise in sea level in the future.

 

-Will

 

Yeah, I call Bull on this one.

 

"Naive you are if you believe life favors those who aren't naive."
Piet Heim

 

Climate change will clearly disrupt El Niño and La Niña this decade, 40 years earlier than we thought

We found the influence of climate change on El Niño and La Niña events, in the form of ocean surface temperature changes in the eastern Pacific, will be detectable by 2030. This is four decades earlier than previously thought.

So what does all this mean for Australia? Warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean, fuelled by climate change, will cause stronger El Niño events. When this happens, rain bands are drawn away from the western Pacific where Australia is located. That's likely to mean more droughts and dry conditions in Australia.

It's also likely to bring more rain to the eastern Pacific, which spans the Pacific coast of Central America from southern Mexico to northern Peru.

Strong El Niño events are often followed by strong and prolonged La Niñas. So that will mean cooling of the eastern Pacific Ocean, bringing the rain band back towards Australia—potentially leading to more heavy rain and flooding of the kind we've seen in recent months.

Our research suggests Australians, in particular, must prepare for more floods and droughts as climate change disrupts the natural weather patterns of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.

 

2022 saw record temperatures in Europe and across the world

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (*C3S) has published its 2022 Global Climate Highlights, which show 2022 to have been a year of extremes, with many temperature records broken and a continued rise in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Summer 2022 was the hottest on record for Europe and, overall, last year was the second warmest year on record for Europe, while globally it was the fifth warmest.

Both polar regions saw episodes of record temperatures during 2022. ..At the Vostok station, in the interior of East Antarctica, for example, the reported temperature reached -17.7°C, the warmest ever measured in its 65-year record. During September, temperatures over Greenland were 8°C higher than average with C3S data showing that almost all of the country experienced average temperatures higher than in any September since at least 1979, associated with prevailing winds from the south and southwest that were warmer than normal. The Antarctic saw unusually low sea ice conditions throughout the year, with six months seeing record or near-record low Antarctic Sea ice extents for the corresponding month.

Preliminary analysis of satellite data averaged over the whole atmospheric column shows that carbon dioxide concentrations rose by approximately 2.1 ppm, while methane rose by around 12 ppb. This resulted in an annual average for 2022 of approximately 417 ppm for carbon dioxide and 1894 ppb for methane. For both gases this is the highest concentrations from the satellite record, and by including other records, the highest levels for over 2 million years for carbon dioxide and over 800 000 years for methane.

 

Oceans surged to another record-high temperature in 2022

The amount of excess heat buried in the planet’s oceans, a strong marker of climate change, reached a record high in 2022, reflecting more stored heat energy than in any year since reliable measurements were available in the late 1950s, a group of scientists reported Wednesday.

That eclipses the ocean heat record set in 2021 — which eclipsed the record set in 2020, which eclipsed the one set in 2019. And it helps to explain a seemingly ever-escalating pattern of extreme weather events of late, many of which are drawing extra fuel from the energy they pull from the oceans.

 

“The energy that flows through a system acts to organize that system,"
Harold Joseph Morowitz
Back cover from:
"The updated last whole earth catalog"

"If that isn't nice I don't know what is"
Kurt Vonnegut