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Earth Science

Earth Continues To Warm

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
February 6, 2019
Earth Continues To Warm

2018 Was The Fourth Warmest Year In A Continued Warming Trend
“Earth’s global surface temperatures in 2018 were the fourth warmest since 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Global temperatures in 2018 were 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.83 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. Globally, 2018’s temperatures rank behind those of 2016, 2017 and 2015. The past five years are, collectively, the warmest years in the modern record. “2018 is yet again an extremely warm year on top of a long-term global warming trend,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

26 responses to “Earth Continues To Warm”

  1. Donald Barker says:
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    Odds are that this pattern will continue for the rest of the lives of everyone currently alive. Add another 2 billion humans on Earth between now and 2045, and given human nature as it is on the broad scale, and nothing will occur that will actually stop or reverse the ongoing change that will eventually damage and change human life as we have known it. And don’t expect our intelligence or technology to save the day. We are too busy trying to build walls (of every kind), and expanding human greed and ego to address real human induced problems.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      There is some evidence, according to a recent piece in Scientific American, that the future holds a smaller population than current. The thinking is that as people become wealthier they have fewer kids. Japan is an example, and the US, particularly if it continues with an insane immigration policy, will follow suit.

      We never had kids, never wanted them, like lots of people my age.

      opps: It was Wired, not SA:
      https://www.wired.com/story

      • fcrary says:
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        Actually, I saw that story in another place, and it might have been Scientific American. It’s all from a UN study which came out last year. The Wired interview you linked is about someone who disagrees with their baseline estimate for population growth. But the UN study did have high and low estimates as well as a baseline. The low estimate did have population starting to decline in the late 2000s, for the reasons you and the person interviewed suggest. The baseline had population more-or-less leveling off by 2100, and the high estimate had continued growth, although at a significantly reduced rate.

        But these sorts of studies are very uncertain since social and economic factors are hard to predict. Some governments are encouraging people to have children, since they are facing a rising number of retired people who have to be paid pensions and medical benefits, and a falling number of younger people who are working and paying taxes to cover those costs. (And that isn’t any commentary on the people who have retired. It’s just how some of the pension and social security systems are set up; they were set up assuming a fixed ratio of beneficiaries to workers paying to support the system, and that’s not what current demographics predict.)

    • Gerald Cecil says:
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      I doubt that energy use of whatever the USA will have become by 2045 will be what will be modifying global climate. By then a much larger population elsewhere will hopefully be living a “modern lifestyle”, necessarily driving per capita energy consumption way down as economies electrify with diverse power inputs (natural gas here, nuclear elsewhere). 2 to 3-fold reductions in our use are entirely feasible with mobility constrained, allowing others to modernize. And of course the children of all the billionaires burning up miles in Gulfstreams now will be living in relative squalor on Mars where their emissions can only improve that climate.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Sadly, nuclear remains verboten amongst those on my side of the aisle. Let’s hope there’s some industry push-back.

        • Jeff2Space says:
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          Considering nuclear doesn’t contribute CO2 to the atmosphere, we need to at least keep the plants we have going until the rest of the fossil fuel powered plants are replaced. I’d like to see more research into actual modern nuclear reactor designs. The ones we have running today are terribly old designs. Certainly we can do better.

          • fcrary says:
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            In terms of normal, operating performance, I’m not sure how much better a new reactor design would be. But in terms of sensors, control systems, and robotic work in hot areas, we could probably do much better. Also, I’m inclined to say that multiple, small reactors are inherently more fault tolerant than a single large one. (That’s about residual heat from daughter product decays, even when the reactor it turned “off”.) Perhaps a new design might consider that. And, overall, those are things that address one of the key issues holding back nuclear power: Safety. But part of the problem is explaining a technical issue to people who aren’t necessarily interested in technical details.

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            After half a century of nuclear energy we have no waste reprocessing plant and no waste storage site. WIPP has excellent geology but is precluded from accepting commercial waste.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Part of the problem is that the nuclear plants we have are based on the technology developed for naval reactors where they needed to be compact and light. This led to water cooled U-235 based reactors. Other fuels, like Thorium, and designs would probably be safer and more economical.

            BTW Canada, China and Germany are all working on Thorium based reactors. Canada has a joint project with Chile to build a reactor there that will be paired with a desalination plant that will provide a significant part of their water needs. While climate changers here are anti-nuke other nations recognize that it will be part of the process of adapting to the impact climate change will have.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            And we need to be able to store the waste away from the plant sites where it will be easily available when transmutation technologies are available, and to invest in developing those technologies. But again that is that a scientific approach to the problem instead of the emotional approach environmentalists have towards any practical solutions.

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            Some vocal extremist environmentalists that don’t bother with facts will always be against nuclear energy. But since nuclear power produces far less air and water pollution than fossil fuels, most reasonable environmentalists can be persuaded when given the facts.

            Heck in the long run, nuclear (especially fusion, if it ever becomes practical) may prove to cause less environmental impact than some renewable energy resources. We’re long overdue for some innovation in the nuclear power industry.

        • Gerald Cecil says:
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          Unfortunately the established nuclear industry has effectively collapsed … Westinghouse, GE, Hitachi, EdF, etc. Only Chinese firms are flush with orders so can optimize standard construction with impressively speedy builds. So we look to NuScale and their ilk for small modular reactors that can be marketed as “long-term sealed batteries” that are immune to meltdown. Big draws like a meaningful penetration of BEVs will require ongoing buildup in nuclear power, especially if fast batteries recharged at work discourage overnight charging. Few businesses will be able to charge more than a couple of vehicles with solar. Day charging will have to be discouraged by high rates to keep power draws off-peak.

          Power utilities like NG generators that burn clean without residue, and fracking has liberated much hence cheap fuel (although lack of pipelines leads to flaring, see even Texas’ Permian basin at night.) The big question is how feasible/profitable is it to extend fracking to other countries with suitable shale deposits that don’t vest subterranean ownership w/ surface dwellers as the USA does. As the world electrifies from an oil-based to a NG-based economy, refinery constraints like those bedeviling Venezuela will disappear. Too bad that shift will take a generation. My students learn how Boomers have burned half of the world’s recoverable petroleum, but understand why oil will become irrelevant in their lifetimes.

          • fcrary says:
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            It’s off topic, but I’m not sure what you mean by countries “that don’t vest subterranean ownership w/ surface dwellers as the USA does.” The problem we have in Colorado is that (surface) property ownership is a separate matter from (subsurface) mineral rights, and mineral rights include natural gas/shale for fracking. The land owners can’t keep the neighbors from fracking and extracting gas from under their land because they usually do not own the subsurface rights.

          • Gerald Cecil says:
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            True, in the USA this decoupling has spread from water rights to oil/NG fracking. Subdivision developers in shale regions generally retain mineral rights, sticking the homeowner as you note. However, the situation elsewhere is universally that the central government controls access to most of the underworld, which seems to have inhibited NG exploration & exploitation so far,

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            That’s something that varies by state. In Florida, could go either way. And as to this acre I sit on, now my interest is piqued…

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          The utility lost hundreds of billions of dollars on nuclear power because of the irrational and anti-science based fear campaigns environmentalists ran against nuclear power. That is why there are so many skeptics against them because they using the many of the same tactics with climate change.

          Yes, Climate is changing, yes, humans are responsible, but allowing the use of technology without irrational fears, nuclear energy, climate adaption, geoengineering, etc. humans will adapt and thrive. For example, the water problems California and Nevada will have from climate change could easily be solved by nuclear power and desalination plants using off the shelf and near term technology, but the environmentalists go insane when you even suggest it. They rather be killing millions of birds annually with their imported wind turbines instead.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Oh, dear. Another overly-simplistic assessment.

            The major resistance to de-sal involves dumping of the waste products – dumping into the ocean, which though fast is hardly infinite.

            Again. A complex problem. And do I have to actually say that nobody would “rather be killing millions of birds”?

    • Daniel Woodard says:
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      If we can raise the standard of living and reduce CO2 emissions the population will likely stabilize.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        My Indian friends look at me like I asked them to jump out of a window when I brought up the subject of children. Not having a family is so far out of the POV that they just can’t even get a handle on it. When explaining our choices they just shake their heads.

        But the main reason is this: the extended family provides the safety net that’s not provided by the government. The burden is recognized for sure.

        When they bought a new apartment they made sure they included rooms for their parents. Both sides.

        • Daniel Woodard says:
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          People are pragmatic When the Indian government provides Social Security and the kids start asking their parents for cars, population growth will plummet.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            If you are watching the current India elections: the idea of providing a social safety net is promulgated by about every party these days; some support cash payments. Among the intellectual class it is widely understood that the solution to the population problem is at least in large part the construction of a government-led social safety net. Finally.

  2. cb450sc says:
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    As the saying goes: the energy source of the future, and always will be! I’ve literally been hearing about fusion generators my entire life – ITER alone has at least 30 years of history.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      I noticed a blurb at phys.org recently about new research about magnetic fields that might be useful. Or not.

      Fusion offers the sort of energy density that is needed to conquer space with real spaceships. And about the only energy on the horizon that seems possible

  3. Michael Spencer says:
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    I think of ITER and AI in the same breath, in the sense that as common wisdom has driven them both into the land of “always 20 years away”, in actual fact, both are making real and significant progress.

    The transformation that will come with the availability of fusion energy cannot be overstated. This is not at all analogous, say, to the imagined-future of nuclear fission from the POV of the 1950s. In those nascent days all sorts of things were imagined- using explosions to dig a new Panama or Suez Canal being examples.

    I suppose that there are pie-in-the-sky hopes and dreams for fusion as well, many of which will be limited by either scientific or technical considerations, neither obvious here in 2019.

    But this much is certain: the energy density available from fusion will transform us in huge, if unpredictable, ways.

    I have commented over and over again that becoming a spacefaring species requires energy densities that are many orders of magnitude beyond what is currently available. It’s a self-evident assertion, to be sure.

    It is not too early to begin imagining what such an energy source would mean to exploration in space, starting with the real possibility of long-term space missions by actual scientists in ships capable of breaking free of gravity’s tyranny. No more sling shots around the solar system, no longer white knuckles like Neil’s as he fights to bring a laughingly-rickety “lander” down with rapidly diminishing fuel reserves.

    Landers will not be needed until we build spaceships as big as the new Ford-class carriers. What a future.

    Scientist #1, looking out a viewport: “Wow, did you see that? Let’s go take a look!”

  4. Gerald Cecil says:
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    Tokamak size is exactly the main problem w/ ITER, it cannot be extrapolated plausibly from its ~100 MW net output to a GW commercial unit once envisioned. Since that design was settled years ago, more agile entities have proposed much higher field-strength superconducting magnets, and other confinement strategies. And baseload power generation is generally moving to multiple smaller units that can be deployed faster and introduced incrementally. (China is still building large nuclear powerplants because electricity demand there is very strong, here not so much until the # of BEVs exponentiates in a few years.) All hold more promise for rapid progress on fusion than ITER. A big issue to be explored by ITER is the “first wall problem”, the pressure vessel is hammered by neutrons from the DT reaction. Much hotter fusions reactions can be aneutronic but can’t be reached by ITER. I think we’ll see practical approaches emerging over the next 10 yrs. with a demo powerplant built by China shortly thereafter.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      ITER is conceptualized as a research facility, don’t forget; much has already been learned, even (perhaps) at the cost of abandoning the project.