There’s a lot to be said about the harm that climate change is doing and will do in the future, both to ecosystems and to humanity, but the current system would be horrible, dangerous, and inhumane even without the destabilization of our climate. Case in point: [Read more…]
I’ve previously mentioned my hobby of talking to/arguing with strangers on the internet, and a while back I decided to copy and paste one of the conversations onto my blog, since it seemed wortwhile. Since then I’ve periodically added to the series when something interesting and fun comes up. So, without further ado, here is the latest installment of Conversations with Strangers, taken from the comments thread of this Huffington Post article.
Stranger:
So if a change in ice mass at a pole can cause the earth to sway from its position, then isn’t it possible over time that population changes could do the same thing? It that is possible, then couldn’t China and other over populated areas produced the same “balance” issue? Now, if this is possible, that could mean that Chna is a leader in carbon emissions and “Population Sway”.
My last blog post covered a dramatic shift in the location of the North Pole, and a change in the direction in which Earth’s axis is migrating, and the wording of the original articles, and subsequent secondary and tertiary articles has been the source of some confusion.
The 75˚ shift refers to the change in direction of polar drift, NOT change in location of the pole. It’s a big change in direction, but nowhere near the kind of change we would see if Earth’s equator suddenly ran through the Arctic and Antarctic. We probably would have felt that.
No really though. It’s always been clear that the worldwide melting of glaciers and ice sheets was going to have some effect on Earth’s crust. Like some other impacts of climate change, it’s a pretty straightforward concept – the crust is a relatively thin layer of solid stuff on top of the molten goo that makes up most of the planet’s bulk, so massive chunks of ice press the layer down. Reduce the ice mass, and the crust rises up a bit.
From there it’s not much of a stretch to predict some change in seismic and volcanic activity as a result.
What had not occurred to me was that this redistribution of mass could actually result in changes in how the Earth moves through space. New research published in Science Advances (yay open access!) indicates that the loss of ice mass in Greenland and West Antarctica, coupled with a gain in ice mass in East Antarctica, has shifted the North Pole towards the UK in the last decade, a change from the direction it was moving for most of the 20th century.
This isn’t a big enough shift to cause problems, bit it is an indication of the scale of the changes that are occurring, thanks to human-caused climate change.
Drinking monk’s blood like any good atheist. I think this was from a monk similar to Friar Tuck in Russel Crowe’s Robin Hood.
Some people say transitioning to clean energy will simply cost too much – “leave it to future generations.” In Edinburgh, Scotland, Richard Alley explains that if we start soon the cost of the transformation could be similar to that which was paid for something none of us would want to do without – clean water and the modern sanitation system.
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have developed a new catalyst for splitting water. Here’s why this is big news:
One of the great strengths of renewable energy is their consistency and predictability. Yes, wind and solar have periods when they’re not generating power (with some exceptions like certain solar thermal designs), but the sun is available for a set amount of time every day, and wind blows in predictable patterns where turbines are placed. These predictable patterns make it easy to balance the grid, and to calculate how many units are needed to meet demand.
But here’s a little secret. All sources of power are intermittent. There is no power plant, coal, nuclear, or gas, that is available 100 percent of the time. The electrical grid is built with this in mind.
A well functioning coal plant, will not be available 44 days of the year.
For nuclear, it’s 36 days, as well as 39 days for refueling every 17 months or so.
Wind power has a failure rate of only 2 percent, and units rarely go down all at once.
A while back Scotland decided to aim for 100% renewable energy by the year 2020 – a goal that has been doubted despite being almost halfway there at the end of 2015. Now, they’ve taken another massive step forward – Scotland has shut down its last coal plant!
It’s easy, when entering the world of atheism, too get a biased view of religion. A lot of what’s talked about are the clearest examples of how bad religion can be. My own experiences with religion were largely positive. I was raised in a Quaker household in New England, and my religious community was, for a long time, my primary social community. It was a group of kind, welcoming people who were great at making everybody feel valued. I think a lot of effort went into creating that space for the kids growing up there, and I’m glad I had it.
And I should be clear – while I was pretty devout, in my way, and pretty clear that Quakerism was a Christian religion, albeit an unusual one, many of my friends, and many adults in the society were not Christian, and viewed Quakerism as more of a lifestyle thing. That really bugged me sometimes. All in all, the people were kind and respectful, and while I had to part ways with that community, I hold no resentment towards Quakers, and it’s been made clear to me many times that if I chose to rejoin the community, or even just to visit, I would be made welcome. The worst that I would suffer would be awkwardness from long absence and different understandings of the world.
Not everybody is so lucky, and not everybody has parents who are as open-minded, understanding, and willing to work for a good relationship with their kids as mine are. Case in point, fellow FTB denizen Joe Sands, over at Incongruous Circumspection:
Now, I will introduce you to one of my most popular series on my old blog, off in that dusty corner of the internet.
I grew up in an abusive environment, learning to cope quite well until I was 19 years old. At that point in my life, the heat got too hot and I was ready to be free. I left and went to live with my dad to get on my feet and expose myself to the real world in full color, rather than a world through sheltered and well defined, paranoiac lenses. My freedom came with many bumps in the road as I discovered that I was truly lazy when I wasn’t being yelled at to accomplish a task. I needed to mature…grow up. Life moved very fast and I needed to jump in and roll with it.
I’ll let you read the rest at his latest installment of Letters from my Mama, and just add that talking to other people from religious families sometimes makes me quite grateful for my own family, and my own experiences with religion.
Thanks to SteveoR for showing this to me!
The video shows a graph of the rise of atmospheric CO2 levels over the second half of the 20th century, into the 21st. Then it starts to “zoom out”, showing falling levels, back into the last ice age, rising before it, falling again for another ice age, and so on back to eight hundred thousand years BCE. As longer periods of time become visible on the graph, the timeline compresses, showing the last 50 years or so for the very short time that they represent. Well before the end of the video, it is clear that CO2 levels are far, far higher now than they have been at any point in the last 800,000 years, and beyond.