I’ve seen some people putting out charts showing the kind of effect that the massive reduction in sulphur content in shipping fuel is having, and this is the first El Niño we’ve had since that happened (around 2020). It is an improvement, but the sulphur dioxide pollution had the side-effect of basically masking some of the global warming that had already happened by blocking some of the solar irradiance, especially over the ocean.
This is apparently changing stuff like cloud formation and seems like it might be a big part of the puzzle. Of course, reducing this pollution is overall good, even if one of the side effects of it being in the atmosphere was somewhat positive…
Those sulphur emissions were not large by atmospheric standards (the entire shipping industry “only” emits about 800 Mt of CO2 a year, not all of which even comes from high-sulphur bunker fuel). However the SO2 quantity does have severe environmental impact (the first emissions trading scheme, back in the 90s, was to control SO2 emissions), in this case increasing the acidity of the oceans and coastal regions thanks to so-called acid rain.
The real tragedy is that the scrubbers remove the SO2 from the exhaust and…deposit it in the ocean.
Hoping for relief by the end of El Niño could be short lived. The latest La Niña years were among the hottest years of this century.
And regardless on which stage of both we are now, positive feedback loops change baselines, every push forward reinforces their action to a new level, like less floating ice means more (dark) water exposed to sunlight and higher heating speed, and less ice formed in the next colder season, or that with hotter climate more permafrost thawed, and more greenhouse got released by that natural process over really vast areas.
And it is not easy to fix something without affecting a lot more in a complex system, like is the global climate one (or the one that includes it, with human systems, ecosystems and so on). You push a simple change without considering the whole of it and it might or not change the single metric you want to change, but it probably will affect many others, that may take time to be noticed or us being aware of how important they are. And as we are coming from (and depend on) an stable system, any big enough push will move the system further away from that stability.
I’ve heard a lot of denialists push the Tonga volcano and resultant water vapor in the stratosphere as evidence that climate change is more complex than we understand.
I always whole heartedly agree that it’s very complex, but we do know introducing novel gases to various parts of the atmosphere is generally chaotic and something to be avoided when we can.
It stratifies people into weird binary groups, while ignoring the reality that people have nuanced opinions, and many of those are quite reasonable.
It's a subtle form of "you're with us or against us", and disparages people who don't see things exactly the same way you do.
It's also used to move goal posts. I.e. if a person believes that yes, it's likely that humans are having some effect on climate, but that we aren't sure exactly what it is and how harmful it will be over a period of time - are they a "denier"?
It has its roots in holocaust denialism, and tries to paint folks skeptical of a single climate viewpoint with that same brush.
It doesn't further the discussion and encourages tribalism.
Inflammatory words like that are a barrier to quality discussion.
> if a person believes that yes, it's likely that humans are having some effect on climate, but that we aren't sure exactly what it is and how harmful it will be over a period of time - are they a "denier"?
Yes 100% they are a denier. This was a position that was valid in the 80s. It's also exactly the bs talking point spread by those who profit from us not moving away from fossil fuels. Confuse and delay as much as possible and discredit those pesky scientists with their models that can't decide if it'll be terrible or catastrophic.
Climate is the premier example of a non-linear chaotic system, as evoked with the butterfly effect and unreliability of weather forecasts more than a week out. Making predictions of the far future state of chaotic systems is obviously going to have wide error bars. In just the past couple thousand years there has been significant climate change with little ice ages and warm periods. Notably, the colder climates have generally been far more destructive to civilization than the warm periods.
A sober approach would weigh the pros and cons of climate change and cost benefit analyses of the various mitigation strategies. Climate alarmists advocate degrowth in the extreme, or spending many trillions on intermittent energy sources and impractical energy storage systems. This would obviously reduce human well-being as energy consumption per capita is tightly correlated with standards of living. The costs of climate change are still unknown, and it could very well be the case that higher CO2 levels do not increase global temperatures to catastrophic levels, as evident with life thriving during the Carboniferous Era. Increasing CO2 levels would also be beneficial due to the CO2 fertilization effect, effectively greening the Earth, while also increasing agricultural yields as observed in greenhouses. And if temperatures rise too much then stratospheric aerosol injection is always an option. Calcium carbonate could be a good alternative to sulfur dioxide since it doesn't react with ozone, and cooling the Earth is estimated to cost only a few billion a year.
Obviously energy independence and ecological preservation should still be pursued for their own sake. Yet we should be careful of succumbing to hysteria and malinvestment.
Are global climate trends a non-linear, chaotic system the way short term local weather is? If not this sounds intentionally misleading.
I don't like to feed the trolls usually but I found it entertaining to see you mix and match a "be reasonable" tone with bonkers suggestions and irresponsible "just buy your way out of it later" proposals. In particular I laughed out loud when you handwaved away catastrophic temperature changes because we could try to intentionally change the climate by injecting aerosols. I guess that unpredictable, chaotic system is totally predictable when it supports the (in)action you prefer?
> And if temperatures rise too much then stratospheric aerosol injection is always an option.
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This is apparently changing stuff like cloud formation and seems like it might be a big part of the puzzle. Of course, reducing this pollution is overall good, even if one of the side effects of it being in the atmosphere was somewhat positive…
EDIT: Although some analysis such as this - https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shippin... - suggests while there is a big effect, the effect shouldn’t be anywhere as large as what we’re seeing.
The real tragedy is that the scrubbers remove the SO2 from the exhaust and…deposit it in the ocean.
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And regardless on which stage of both we are now, positive feedback loops change baselines, every push forward reinforces their action to a new level, like less floating ice means more (dark) water exposed to sunlight and higher heating speed, and less ice formed in the next colder season, or that with hotter climate more permafrost thawed, and more greenhouse got released by that natural process over really vast areas.
And it is not easy to fix something without affecting a lot more in a complex system, like is the global climate one (or the one that includes it, with human systems, ecosystems and so on). You push a simple change without considering the whole of it and it might or not change the single metric you want to change, but it probably will affect many others, that may take time to be noticed or us being aware of how important they are. And as we are coming from (and depend on) an stable system, any big enough push will move the system further away from that stability.
I always whole heartedly agree that it’s very complex, but we do know introducing novel gases to various parts of the atmosphere is generally chaotic and something to be avoided when we can.
I don't think that's a very good word.
It stratifies people into weird binary groups, while ignoring the reality that people have nuanced opinions, and many of those are quite reasonable.
It's a subtle form of "you're with us or against us", and disparages people who don't see things exactly the same way you do.
It's also used to move goal posts. I.e. if a person believes that yes, it's likely that humans are having some effect on climate, but that we aren't sure exactly what it is and how harmful it will be over a period of time - are they a "denier"?
It has its roots in holocaust denialism, and tries to paint folks skeptical of a single climate viewpoint with that same brush.
It doesn't further the discussion and encourages tribalism.
Inflammatory words like that are a barrier to quality discussion.
Yes 100% they are a denier. This was a position that was valid in the 80s. It's also exactly the bs talking point spread by those who profit from us not moving away from fossil fuels. Confuse and delay as much as possible and discredit those pesky scientists with their models that can't decide if it'll be terrible or catastrophic.
A sober approach would weigh the pros and cons of climate change and cost benefit analyses of the various mitigation strategies. Climate alarmists advocate degrowth in the extreme, or spending many trillions on intermittent energy sources and impractical energy storage systems. This would obviously reduce human well-being as energy consumption per capita is tightly correlated with standards of living. The costs of climate change are still unknown, and it could very well be the case that higher CO2 levels do not increase global temperatures to catastrophic levels, as evident with life thriving during the Carboniferous Era. Increasing CO2 levels would also be beneficial due to the CO2 fertilization effect, effectively greening the Earth, while also increasing agricultural yields as observed in greenhouses. And if temperatures rise too much then stratospheric aerosol injection is always an option. Calcium carbonate could be a good alternative to sulfur dioxide since it doesn't react with ozone, and cooling the Earth is estimated to cost only a few billion a year.
Obviously energy independence and ecological preservation should still be pursued for their own sake. Yet we should be careful of succumbing to hysteria and malinvestment.
I don't like to feed the trolls usually but I found it entertaining to see you mix and match a "be reasonable" tone with bonkers suggestions and irresponsible "just buy your way out of it later" proposals. In particular I laughed out loud when you handwaved away catastrophic temperature changes because we could try to intentionally change the climate by injecting aerosols. I guess that unpredictable, chaotic system is totally predictable when it supports the (in)action you prefer?
> And if temperatures rise too much then stratospheric aerosol injection is always an option.
This reads like bad faith.
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