Why is the climate changing. (Page 178)

ghostgeek: Kitty, when exactly was the last time the average world temp hovered around 140 F?

Today, Earth’s average temperature hovers around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. During the early Eocene, it was closer to 70 degrees and the world was a different place. The poles were free of ice; the tropical oceans simmered at spa-like temperatures of 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Palm trees and crocodiles hung out in the Arctic. Several million years before that, at the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), things were even warmer.

More extreme hothouse periods lurk in the deeper recesses of geologic time. During the Cretaceous Hot Greenhouse 92 million years ago, global surface temperatures rose to around 85 degrees Fahrenheit and remained hot for millions of years, allowing temperate rainforests to flourish near the South Pole. Some 250 million years ago, the boundary between the Permian and the Triassic period is marked by an extreme global heating event where Earth's average temperature flirted with 90 degrees Fahrenheit for millions of years, according to a preliminary reconstruction from the Smithsonian Institution.

[ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/earth-130-degrees-this-week-much-hotter-one-day ]

ghostgeek: Only one thing is certain about the climate; it is always changing whether somebody has the temerity to boil a kettle or not.

kittybobo34: Zef, and Ghost, that comment on Temperatures was based on the range that existed the last time this planet had a run away green house situation.

zeffur: Got a citation for that temp? I've never seen it cited before from any credible source.

kittybobo34: Not off the top of my head,, just memory

kittybobo34: As I recall from the article, you could swim in the arctic ocean comfortably as the water was in the mid 70's

ghostgeek: So who is going to give up what so someone else can stay cool?

ghostgeek: Have you noticed people driving less or using their phone less often? I haven't.

ghostgeek: Is space tourism a stillborn venture? Doesn't seem like it.

ghostgeek: Has war been banished? Not according to the news.

ghostgeek: What's the odds that the must-eat snack for tomorrow will be a packet of locusts? Vanishingly small I would say.

kittybobo34: On the other hand if food prices keep going up, bugs may yet be in your diet. It is the most efficient food source.

zeffur: Lol. I think I'd rather go hungry.

ghostgeek: A Tokyo-based edible-insect company has begun joint research with a university expert aimed at expanding bug dining choices by optimizing techniques to mass produce edible locusts. Not only tasty, locusts are an even more environmentally friendly source of protein than the market’s current mainstay, crickets.

Takeo LLC has begun joint research into the farming of migratory locusts for food, together with Ryohei Sugahara of the environmental entomology laboratory in the faculty of Agricultural and Life Science at Hirosaki University, Aomori Prefecture.

Locusts have a similarly high protein content to crickets. But whereas crickets are omnivorous and when farmed are fed a high-nutrition mix of grains and fishmeal, locusts eat the low-nutrient leaves of various grasses. That means, Takeo says, that as well as producing much less greenhouse gas compared with cows and pigs, locusts are also a more resource-efficient food than crickets.

Although commercial mass production of locusts is being attempted in various places around the world, there have so far been few stories of success beyond the laboratory level, the company says.

[ https://zenbird.media/joint-research-begins-on-locust-farming-as-alternative-food/ ]

ghostgeek: I guess in twenty years time everybody will be crunching on locusts as they drive their electric cars.

kittybobo34: Locusts, and meal worms mmmm Actually insects are our natural food, judging by our teeth and small mouth. Odd how our culture has made this a taboo., But even our snacks imitate bugs, we love crunchy with soft interior snacks.

ghostgeek: Seems somebody wants to build an eco-city in the Saudi desert:

Glow-in-the dark beaches. Billions of trees planted in a country dominated by the desert. Levitating trains. A fake moon. A car-free, carbon-free city built in a straight line over 100 miles long in the desert. These are some of the plans for Neom - a futuristic eco-city that is part of Saudi Arabia's pivot to go green. But is it all too good to be true?

Neom claims to be a "blueprint for tomorrow in which humanity progresses without compromise to the health of the planet". It's a $500bn (£366bn) project, part of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 plan to wean the country off oil - the industry that made it rich.

Covering a total area of over 26,500 sq-km (10,230 sq-miles) - larger than Kuwait or Israel - Neom will, developers claim, exist entirely outside the confines of the current Saudi judicial system, governed by an autonomous legal system that will be drafted up by investors.

Ali Shihabi, a former banker now on Neom's advisory board, says the mega-territory will include a 170km (105m) long city, called The Line, which will run in a straight line through the desert.

If that sounds unlikely, Shihabi explains that The Line will be built in stages, block by block. "People say this is some crazy project that's going to cost gazillions, but it's going to be built module by module, in a manner that meets demand," he says.

Much like Barcelona's traffic-free "superblocks", he explains that each square will be self-sufficient and contain amenities such as shops and schools so that anything people need will be a five-minute walk or cycle away.

When complete, travel along The Line will be via hyper-speed trains, with the longest journey "never more than 20 minutes", the developers claim.

What's more, Neom will be home to Oxagon, a city floating on water spanning 7km (4.3 miles) - making it the largest floating structure in the world. Neom's chief executive, Nadhmi al-Nasr, has said the port city will "welcome its first manufacturing tenants at the beginning of 2022".

[ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-59601335 ]

ghostgeek: I suppose it will be cheaper than colonising Mars.

scriptplay: Why is climate changing?
Sun

ghostgeek: Changes due to the variability of the sun, changes due to the variability of earth's orbit, changes due to the solar system orbiting the Milky Way, changes due to the rearrangement of the continents, changes due to volcanism and then there's the changes due to somebody striking a match.

ghostgeek: Jim is the Energy Services Manager for Gateshead Council - and he's giving this former fossil fuel site a green makeover for an ambitious new heating scheme.

He points to a borehole that descends 150m beneath the muddy earth. Like many old coal mines, it's now flooded with water. But the water is naturally warm at 15C - and this heat is key.

Just a few metres away, a giant heat pump has been installed.

It's a clever bit of engineering. In the same way that warmth can pass from one person to another when they shake hands, the warmth from the mine water is transferred into the closed heat pump system.

Through a series of processes a higher temperature, 80C, is reached and it's this heat that's sent out through pipes to be used by buildings in the local area. The mine water is sent back underground so the process can begin again.

The small, individual heat pumps that people install in their homes work using the same principle. They take some warmth - whether it's from the air or the ground - and then increase the temperature, providing heat for that one household.

But the heat pump in Gateshead is so large that at full capacity it can provide heat for the equivalent of 5,000 homes."We're really pleased that we've taken the legacy of the coal mining and we're turning that negative asset into a positive future source of energy," says Jim.

[ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60772187 ]

kittybobo34: wow,, very cool idea. In Iceland they do something similar, after extracting the heat for power, they then pump it to the greenhouses and homes. Heat is so cheap, that most people control their house temp by opening the windows, in the winter.

ZeusMother: Thought id ad this article. We need to get our sh*t together. Even IF you have hesitations around wether you believe it's real or not..is it really worth taking that risk? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/20/heatwaves-at-both-of-earth-poles-alarm-climate-scientists

ghostgeek: It's the last day of March here and the flowers are bursting out of the ground. It's also been snowing on and off, something I didn't expect to experience this far into spring, so I wish the poles would keep their cold and leave me with the heatwave.

wJust_woW: