Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change

[donsutherland1]

6 minutes ago, LongBeachSurfFreak said:

It’s not a gimmick. Once fusion becomes a reality. And with AI advancing at warp speed a solution to making fusion viable could occur significantly sooner then previously thought.

limitless clean energy makes carbon capture and sequestration real. And it just might save the planet. 
 

 

The promise of fusion is real. It will supplant much of conventional power, when realized. 

I'm referring solely to carbon capture. The actual CO2 captured is tiny. Moving to clean energy, including nuclear fusion, will make a much larger contribution than carbon capture will.

Investment should be focused on promising technologies such as nuclear fusion, not carbon capture. Climate projections should be based on realistic assumptions not fictional ones that assume carbon capture.

[LongBeachSurfFreak]

1 hour ago, donsutherland1 said:

The promise of fusion is real. It will supplant much of conventional power, when realized. 

I'm referring solely to carbon capture. The actual CO2 captured is tiny. Moving to clean energy, including nuclear fusion, will make a much larger contribution than carbon capture will.

Investment should be focused on promising technologies such as nuclear fusion, not carbon capture. Climate projections should be based on realistic assumptions not fictional ones that assume carbon capture.

I agree that fusion solves further increasing GHG levels. But that still leaves us at a level that corresponds to significantly more warming then has yet to be realized. My premise is that energy being essentially limitless allows for technology that was once too power hungry to be environmentally and economically feasible. Carbon capture may very well be feasible when removing the energy equation paradox. Desalination is another prime example. 

[chubbs]

This is a good news /bad news chart. The world is moving quickly to clean energy technology, but the US is lagging and policy support in the US is being removed. We will be left with an outmoded energy system.

 

[Typhoon Tip]

I think it possible if not likely that the positive feed-backs a real and ubiquitous fusion future brings for humanity, are not being fully visualized. 

Example,  the CO2 sequestering is obviously physically possible.  But the problem isn't in the mathematics, it's in the engineering: 'How to do so by not requiring equal or more energy?'   Point for discussion ... it takes a lot of energy to crack apart the CO2 molecule.  If you're needing so much energy, particularly when the energy is coming from carbon combustion sources to do so ... you are not effectively lowering anything.  We know all this ... 

The solution up at the Orca facility in Iceland was to tap the region's effectively limitless geothermal energy source.  How that is a gimmick - or why... - is actually not really an engineering 'know-how' related matter.   I'll have to read exactly why they are on the wrong side of the results.  Gimmick doesn't add up for me, though, because there's no way that the secretive or dishonest mechanism for perpetuating some other cause ( in this case preserving combustion of carbon) would ever conceivable work or remain clandestine form people frankly noticing that - that seems too childish to believe.  ...Although as afterthought, shit ...we put one of Satan's colon polyps in the white house so anything's possible...

Back on fusion, it's an easy case to make that a fusion would be more than equal to that challenge.  The range estimates vary some based upon source ( MIT ...vs "AI" ...vs - ) but as many as 5 to 8 orders of magnitude more power is accessible over any present conventional means.  That's between 10, and some estimates as high 100 million times more.   The expression, "an embarrassment of riches" leaps to mind.  So... with essentially 0 on the negative side of the net equation, this problem of CO2 above the background correction capacity of the planetary systems becomes no problem at all. The remaining challenges, beyond the sociological assholeness of our species, are rendered to a trivial endeavor.

But, this kind of "Kardashev 1" level control at a planetary scale would really mean fixing, or having the ability to fix the problem, fast - precisely what is needed. Any limitations beyond that would be sociological - different discussion.   It wouldn't have to take centuries to correct the anthropomorphic CO2, back to state prior to the Industrial Revolution. ... Even if CO2 were suddenly halted, (not remotely realistic), a natural extinction rate of CO2 is too slow to stop the other usage of the term extinction; and toppling indirectly linked ecological systems exposes thresholds in multitudes - true dystopia is realized. The general biology science ambit argues that it's already beginning...etc.  It's a snow ball just starting to roll down hill.

Fusion would create a favorable synergy space for innovation in general - that's an intuitive no-brainer.  However the truly transformative extent of that is likely hard to visualize in terms of discrete applications.  If, and most like when, quantum computing is brought on-line,  power and intellect assist in both solution gathering and engineering applications ... staggering.  Huge, huge steps in the department of, "innovation got humanity into this crisis; innovation is required to save us"    

[Typhoon Tip]

It's CNN, so taken with caution ... but interesting nonetheless

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/20/climate/ice-sheets-sea-level-rise

forward, the journal Communications Earth & Environment. Phys.org has a version too

https://phys.org/news/2025-05-15c-paris-climate-agreement-high.html

 

 

[LongBeachSurfFreak]

1 hour ago, Typhoon Tip said:

It's CNN, so taken with caution ... but interesting nonetheless

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/20/climate/ice-sheets-sea-level-rise

forward, the journal Communications Earth & Environment. Phys.org has a version too

https://phys.org/news/2025-05-15c-paris-climate-agreement-high.html

 

 

Good read. The lag effect between warming and melting is elephant in the room. So even if we stay at 1.5c it would take centuries to play out. It’s the feed back cycles that haven’t occurred yet that should raise the most concern. 

[GaWx]

From WxBell: Consider this chart of seismic activity:

 

In looking at that chart, Dr Viterito was asked this question:

: "How can you claim such a significant impact from so few events?"

 

"This graph is the Mid-Ocean Spreading Zone Seismic Activity (MOSZSA) from 1977 through 2024. In order to capture the total number accurately, we can only monitor the medium and large sized seismic events. For the catalogue that I use, these are events of magnitude 5.3 or higher. 

 

To answer your question, here is how this works: last year (2024) we saw a total of 93 mid-ocean seismic events magnitude 5.3 or higher. In fact, virtually all of them were 5.3-6.2. What every seismologist does know, however, is that the scale is logarithmic. So, for magnitudes 4.3 to 5.2, there were 10 times 93, or 930 seismic events. From 3.3 to 4.2, there were 9,300 events. From 2.3 to 3.2 there were 93,000 events. And from 1.3 to 2.2, there were 930,000 events! Add it all up and there were over 1,000,000 seismic events along the mid-ocean ridge system for 2024. Furthermore, it is estimated that roughly 98% of those events produce high temperature magmas. That means that, on average, high temperature magma was injected into the mid-ocean ridge system nearly 3,000 times every day! 

 

At its low point in 1977, there were only 22 mid ocean events of 5.3 or more, or roughly 200,000 total events. That's nearly 5 orders of magnitude less than the 2024 event total! This dynamic, highly energetic system is CLEARLY having an impact on the thermohaline circulation."

 

 

Any comments?

[chubbs]

8 hours ago, GaWx said:

From WxBell: Consider this chart of seismic activity:

 

In looking at that chart, Dr Viterito was asked this question:

: "How can you claim such a significant impact from so few events?"

 

"This graph is the Mid-Ocean Spreading Zone Seismic Activity (MOSZSA) from 1977 through 2024. In order to capture the total number accurately, we can only monitor the medium and large sized seismic events. For the catalogue that I use, these are events of magnitude 5.3 or higher. 

 

To answer your question, here is how this works: last year (2024) we saw a total of 93 mid-ocean seismic events magnitude 5.3 or higher. In fact, virtually all of them were 5.3-6.2. What every seismologist does know, however, is that the scale is logarithmic. So, for magnitudes 4.3 to 5.2, there were 10 times 93, or 930 seismic events. From 3.3 to 4.2, there were 9,300 events. From 2.3 to 3.2 there were 93,000 events. And from 1.3 to 2.2, there were 930,000 events! Add it all up and there were over 1,000,000 seismic events along the mid-ocean ridge system for 2024. Furthermore, it is estimated that roughly 98% of those events produce high temperature magmas. That means that, on average, high temperature magma was injected into the mid-ocean ridge system nearly 3,000 times every day! 

 

At its low point in 1977, there were only 22 mid ocean events of 5.3 or more, or roughly 200,000 total events. That's nearly 5 orders of magnitude less than the 2024 event total! This dynamic, highly energetic system is CLEARLY having an impact on the thermohaline circulation."

 

 

Any comments?

Shows the guy is in serious climate denial. When it comes to climate, the sun swamps the earth. Always has and always will. The big problem we have now is more energy coming in from the sun than is radiated away. A large and growing imbalance at the top of the atmosphere, roughly 0.5% of the suns energy, year after year after year. Crazy when you consider that the energy leaving the earth is rising rapidly as the world warms.

If seismic was warming the earth, the earth would be warming from the inside out not the outside in.

[wotan]

8 hours ago, GaWx said:

To answer your question, here is how this works: last year (2024) we saw a total of 93 mid-ocean seismic events magnitude 5.3 or higher. In fact, virtually all of them were 5.3-6.2. What every seismologist does know, however, is that the scale is logarithmic. So, for magnitudes 4.3 to 5.2, there were 10 times 93, or 930 seismic events. From 3.3 to 4.2, there were 9,300 events. From 2.3 to 3.2 there were 93,000 events. And from 1.3 to 2.2, there were 930,000 events! Add it all up and there were over 1,000,000 seismic events along the mid-ocean ridge system for 2024. Furthermore, it is estimated that roughly 98% of those events produce high temperature magmas. That means that, on average, high temperature magma was injected into the mid-ocean ridge system nearly 3,000 times every day! 

Maybe I'm not awake enough for this, but, that's not how this works.

I don't see which magnitude scale is being used, so I'll just speak in general terms.

An increase of one in a magnitude scale means the amplitude of the wave increased by 10. An increase of one means 32 times as much energy is released.  Dr. Viterito is smoking crack. You can't look at the number of earthquakes of a given magnitude and interpolate how many smaller ones there were.

[jbenedet]

On 5/20/2025 at 5:54 AM, chubbs said:

This is a good news /bad news chart. The world is moving quickly to clean energy technology, but the US is lagging and policy support in the US is being removed. We will be left with an outmoded energy system.

 

China is a major net importer of fossil fuels. Should consider that. Look at consumption.

China developing EV because they don’t have the oil/nat gas reserves to support their economy. Geology/geography; not altruism. 

[chubbs]

27 minutes ago, jbenedet said:

China is a major net importer of fossil fuels. Should consider that. Look at consumption.

China developing EV because they don’t have the oil/nat gas reserves to support their economy. Geology/geography; not altruism. 

Agree its not altruism. They've also flipped the competitive script in cars. China wasn't going to catch up quickly to other countries in engine technology, but have gained a big advantage by switching to EV. The EV/batteries spurring growth in Vietnam, Thailand, Brazil and Indonesia all come from China. 

[GaWx]

WxBell/JB continue to strongly push that underwater seismic activity has been an important factor in determining global SST anomalies and thus global air temps. JB asks AI (Grok) to assess 

I gave the charts below to Grok, 2024 SST, 2025 SST, the graphic of the mid ocean spreading zone and the recent drop off. Then I asked it this:

 

Look at the difference in SST between this year and last year, and look at the rapid drop off in Mid Ocean spreading zone activity. What do you conclude based on this

Grok Conclusion:The cooling of SST from 2024 to 2025, alongside the rapid drop-off in Mid-Ocean Spreading Zone Seismic Activity, indicates that the reduced tectonic activity is likely a key factor in the observed temperature change. The decrease in magma upwelling along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge has reduced the heat input into the ocean, leading to cooler SSTs in 2025 compared to 2024. Other factors like ocean circulation or climate variability may also contribute, but the timing of the MOSZSA drop aligns closely with the SST cooling, supporting a direct geological influence.

 

But keep in mind that Grok has in previous JB posts insisted that the number of hydrothermal vents needs to be like a billion+ to have a large enough influence like Dr. Viterito has been suggesting. There are only like a few thousand at most that have been discovered. Let’s say 10K max:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent

 Even if we up the # of vents to a million, that would still be far too small.

 

Dr. Spencer flat out doesn’t believe that undersea geothermal can possibly be a significant factor:

https://www.drroyspencer.com/2024/01/how-much-ocean-heating-is-due-to-deep-sea-hydrothermal-vents/

[wotan]

It's really hard to take (publicly accessible) LLM "science" seriously.

Sure, there might be some specialized LLMs that the general public can't access that might be trustworthy. But Grok? No.

[bluewave]

Not sure how anyone could come to that conclusion since this is a top down ocean warming process.

https://www2.whoi.edu/site/argo/impacts/warming-ocean/

[bdgwx]

Another observation that casts substantial doubt on the geothermal hypothesis is the cooling stratosphere.  If increased geothermal activity were the cause of the warming we would expect the stratosphere to warm; maybe not at the same rate as the troposphere, but warm nonetheless.

[Typhoon Tip]

19 hours ago, wotan said:

It's really hard to take (publicly accessible) LLM "science" seriously.

Sure, there might be some specialized LLMs that the general public can't access that might be trustworthy. But Grok? No.

I've noticed there's not enough projection of the future of AI, and too much critique over the status of what it means now...  ?

Not you per se - but this statement of yours reminds me of it - so just using it to launch a bit here...

The technology is primitive.   As spectacular as it may or may not come across to the laity, if not dismissed by computer science oriented types who flippantly describing it as Google on steroids ... this isn't where this tech is going.  Society needs awareness and practical imagination, most importantly ... preparedness. 

18 months, that's so far been the leap of capacitance intervals.  It may slow down ... but not likely.  It is in fact more likely to speed up, because it breaks through ability thresholds - positive feedback. In general, this technology also comes along with a huge, huge feedback toward its own improvement potential, and these leaps of ability observed, stunning for just the last 4 years, certainly supports that argument.  

I wrote a missive about this above ... likely tl;dr for some, but the gist of it is ... there's almost no value in sitting back and limiting it's existence in any way, when the future of it has almost boundless, prevalent potential ... I mean, despite all humanity achievements and conceits, to date?  Almost meaningless when we start triggering immortality,  dimensional travel - yes these sci fi visions are no longer just imagined do to the synergistic advantage of future improvements lending so favorably toward discoveries we cannot at this time really quantify very well.  We are coming out of the technological dark ages, really.   We're standing at threshold of door way with so much bright light the shimmering gallery behind us is rendered almost black.  So bright the glare drowns out anything specific on the other side - yet the light will draw us through, anyway.  The ramifications there, they are utterly unknown. 

Wait until QC comes on line and these systems are then fused to its "god-like" access.   Being whimsy with the language there but seriously,  I don't think there's enough "practical imagination"  in visualizing what that reality will be.  Most folks are being skeptical if not dismissive, and I think that's a waste of time when/if being aware, no ... "being prepared" for the synergy between man and machine in this case, creating an arena where new discoveries are unknown to most, and so (likely) unguarded, because they were not anticipated, while popping up in multitude ...

What is technological utopia, and does the darkness of human nature allow a non-competitive "state of provision"?   Where none gain at the 'expense' of even equity living for all. That's sort of the Gene Roddenberry future...  minus the enslaved robots - they will ( it is thought...) have no moral compunctions about their status, because they are merely very capable automatons doing the grunt word.  While the future AI, after the dawn of seamless simulacra, does the rest...   How will this effect an economy?  How will human kind incentivize itself?  There are no life-propelling systems in nature that do anything without fulfilling a reward circuitry drilled into primal satisfaction - we are enslaved to our evolutionary background.  Which may be in conflict with doing anything merely for the virtuosity of it.  And so, human nature will likely intervene. 

We are passing through an evolutionary stage.   One that humanity may even be unwittingly causing. 

[Typhoon Tip]

https://phys.org/news/2025-05-sea-limited-15c.html

[LongBeachSurfFreak]

3 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

https://phys.org/news/2025-05-sea-limited-15c.html

The lowering elevation through melting of ice sheets like west Antarctica and Greenland is powerful feedback. Could easily runaway and rapidly takeoff. It’s the type of feedback that is unstoppable regardless if we prevent further warming.

[Typhoon Tip]

15 hours ago, LongBeachSurfFreak said:

The lowering elevation through melting of ice sheets like west Antarctica and Greenland is powerful feedback. Could easily runaway and rapidly takeoff. It’s the type of feedback that is unstoppable regardless if we prevent further warming.

 Yeah... I gotta say, ever since humanity bore witness to an entire planet jumping in temperature, air and sea alike ...en masse, inside of a 60-day span in the late winter/early spring of 2023, my faith in these climate projections have been rattled.  

That event was a warning shot.  If an entire planet can do that in a geologic time-relative instantaneous span, the next "triggered event" could very well be just as unanticipated.  That is the peril in the word, "unanticipated." To point out the obvious ... that means we were blind-sided.  We are lucky it was only temperature.  

Just for muse for a moment, there is a difference between observed climate change, whether linear versus accelerated over time, versus a singular event along the curve - think single bomb in a war.  There was once single bomb that went off and ended one: Hiroshima.   About 2 or 3 weeks ago I posted an op ed in here where some (admittedly) napkin calculations, utilizing AI assisted inputs, landed on a rather remarkable coincidence of numerology.   It turned out, if all the worlds nuclear armament were detonated at once, in a full on "multi-lateral exchange of good will"  (LOL), the amount of energy unleashed was very close to the same amount of energy that was required to elevate all the air and sea by 1 C, which is what essentially happened in 2023. 

Anyway, when I read that article ...the sagging ice idea and just the destabilization et al of Antarctica and Greenland ( in particular, the latter..), I was taken back to 2003, and a water cooler story I heard at a weather conference up at UML.  Around that time, an eerie event had taken place amid the interior expanse of the Greenland ice sheet.  Three different climate posts stationed out there ( I think it was U.S., Finland and Canada) all reported what registered as 3 and change seismic event, replete with sensations of shaking and rumbling. They immediate phoned one another to corroborate the observation ... but while doing so, they were having trouble with connections - I think it was because the GPS was off  ( coms tech was not yet as evolved as it is today). It turned out, all three sites had wondered off their previous locations by some amount of distant, during all that rumbling.  The ice, nearly a mile deep mind you, en masse, slid, carrying them all along with it, up to a KM's distance.  

There won't be a geological event where an enormous amount of land locked ice will suddenly depose into the sea.   Just like the whole planet won't up and jump a degree C.   Right?   Probably not... because gravity will help lock - so we can suppose - the basal ice to the land, crushing from the top as the sagging goes on... This "should" compensate for basal melt water flow rates lubricating the interface...  But liquid water also doesn't like to compress too...   Point being, "unanticipated" is a dangerous implication for mot inherently being prepare for not suspecting such big world things could ever happen.  

[GaWx]

JB just asked Grok 3 things:

1) “Can you estimate, given the ocean temperatures in 1985 vs today, what the global temperature rise would be if the oceans still looked like 1985?”

—————
Grok reply:

“If the oceans in 2025 had the same SST anomalies as in 1985, the global temperature rise would be around 0.4°C to 0.7°C above the 1991–2020 baseline, instead of the current 1.2°C. The ocean temperature increase since 1985 accounts for 0.5°C to 0.8°C—or about 42% to 67%—of the total temperature rise, purely through ocean heat and WV effects. This underscores the oceans’ dominant role in driving global temperatures.”

——————

2) JB: “What would have been the rise outside of the Arctic and Antarctic. which are heavily skewed in their winter season and adding to the distorted results?”

——————

Grok reply:

“If the oceans in the non-polar regions (60°N to 60°S) in 2025 had the same SST anomalies as in 1985, the temperature rise in those regions would be around 0.2°C to 0.5°C above the 1991–2020 baseline, instead of the current 0.8°C to 1.0°C”

——————

3) JB: “So, would you conclude the oceans are the biggest driving force of the warming, given these maps?”

—————

Grok reply:

“Yes, the oceans are likely the biggest driving force of recent warming, as the SST maps suggest.”

________________________
 

 JB is pushing the Dr. Viterito hypothesis based on very weak evidence at best that the oceans were warmed mainly by deep ocean seismic activity. But Grok already denied that possibility to JB due to far, far fewer under ocean thermal vents having been discovered vs how many would be needed to produce the amount of ocean warming that has occurred at the surface.

 The deep ocean seismic activity hypothesis of Dr. Viterito reminds me of JB ~15 years ago going with the idea that increased sunspots in the last half of the 20th century was likely the main cause of GW. I even went along with that as a possibility in an effort to be open-minded as I wanted to give it ~5-10 years to see if the very weak cycle 24 would finally lead to a reversal. There was an active SS thread here. By ~2018, I gave up on that possibility.

[calm_days]

here is a new example of what we were writing about a few weeks ago, that is, the ULL approaching brings quite a lot of warmer air with it to wherever it is located.  Here also are two examples of unique temperature dynamics from this year. 

February 3rd this year ^^

May 25 this year

[GaWx]

JFMA surface temp. anomalies vs 1991-2020: 2025 minus 2024 (C):

-E NA much colder as we know

-equatorial Pacific significantly colder due to Niña vs Nino as we know

-much of Atlantic dominated by significantly colder

-S and C Europe as well as SE Asia much colder

-Russia much warmer

-Australia and further south warmer

-Pacific N of 20N to Alaska and further N mainly warmer

[bdgwx]

In a contrarian forum recently a poster commented "that a temperature record which keeps on changing the past hardly can qualify as being correct."

I asked if he thought we should knowingly leave biases, mistakes, and errors in the record and whether we should knowingly omit (by not digitizing and uploading old station observations) in the record.

The response I got back was..."After thinking about it… yes."

Based on my conversations with @ChescoWx, @John Shewchukand others it seems that this reversed worldview of right vs wrong is shared among many contrarians and it is this warped worldview that drives much of the contrarianism in regard to climate science.

I'm not sure what the point of my post is here other than an expression of incredulity that this warped worldview exists at all.

@ChescoWx and @John Shewchuk if I have misrepresented your position here please correct me. It is never my intention to misrepresent someone. And if you are willing to engage maybe you cold help us understand the roots of this worldview.

[Typhoon Tip]

1 hour ago, bdgwx said:

In a contrarian forum recently a poster commented "that a temperature record which keeps on changing the past hardly can qualify as being correct."

I asked if he thought we should knowingly leave biases, mistakes, and errors in the record and whether we should knowingly omit (by not digitizing and uploading old station observations) in the record.

The response I got back was..."After thinking about it… yes."

Based on my conversations with @ChescoWx, @John Shewchukand others it seems that this reversed worldview of right vs wrong is shared among many contrarians and it is this warped worldview that drives much of the contrarianism in regard to climate science.

I'm not sure what the point of my post is here other than an expression of incredulity that this warped worldview exists at all.

@ChescoWx and @John Shewchuk if I have misrepresented your position here please correct me. It is never my intention to misrepresent someone. And if you are willing to engage maybe you cold help us understand the roots of this worldview.

It all just strikes me as wiring any means together that plausibly justifies denial - nothing else.  I mean every fucking version of why it's all open to being untrue has been heard ... and none of those are, in and of themself, true.

There are those that simply cannot comprehend a warming world - particularly because they lack advancing intellect and therefore are more reactionary based on the corporeal senses and not higher reasoning...    But those truly in that ilk of dimness are actually rarer... The ballast of denial is by those that are capable of the intellect, but are stymied by a myriad of motivated biases...

While everyone on the list that is denying, from the morons to polymaths, would gladly admit to it if it literally ( not figuratively) caused them pain.  I mean... ouchy ouchy ouchy pain.   Really plugged into an existential threat?   that cannot happen based upon lecture circuits by leading egg-heads ...which frankly for worse and a historical quirk are also facing the uphill oily road of an unfavorable zeitgeist.

This is all just labeling the mechanics that will place our species foot, and countless others ... into the grave