[Coral-List] climate change worse than we thought

Mon Feb 8 22:41:17 UTC 2021

What is distressing to me is that efforts to control and reduce the size of the human population is totally ignored as an essential part of any solution.  Trying to cut fossil fuel emissions and replace global energy needs with renewables in the face of increasing deforestation and other terrestrial impacts (and overfishing) that will be needed to support still increasing numbers of humans for Earth with food and water if nothing else is impossible! We can't do it now with almost 8 billion people,  how is that going to work for 10 billion people? No hope....

Dr. Alina M. Szmant,  CEO
CISME Instruments LLC

-------- Original message --------
From: Douglas Fenner <douglasfennertassi at gmail.com>
Date: 2/8/21 3:51 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: Alina Szmant <alina at cisme-instruments.com>
Cc: coral list <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Subject: Re: climate change worse than we thought

The surprise for me was that if and when coal use declines as we move to renewables, that reduces air pollution, a large part of which are aerosols such as SO2, which actually cool the earth.  So reducing coal if it isn't replaced by natural gas reduces both CO2 emissions and SO2, CO2 heats and SO2 cools (we've known that for a long time), and that means the aerosol reduction cancels out much or all of the CO2 reduction in terms of reducing the greenhouse gas effect.  And that's if we don't just switch from coal to natural gas, in which CO2 is reduced much less (and there are lots of methane leaks, which is a much more powerful greenhouse gas, but doesn't last as long in the atmosphere, but which has been argued to essentially negate any advantage of natural gas in terms or reducing global warming.  Could be avoided if the leaks were fixed, but they aren't being fixed.).  Sulfur dioxide is a strong pollutant otherwise, causes acid rain and is nasty to health, etc, and coal burning releases other pollutants, such as lots of mercury which is calculated to kill about 20,000 people a year in the US alone, and is the source of mercury in tuna (adults should not eat more than one can a week, children less).
     The situation is far worse than we have been thinking, and that includes for coral reefs.  This is not the first or only piece to argue that the IPCC has been too conservative in it's estimates.  I believe it is a fact that each new IPCC report basically has said the situation is worse than they thought in the previous report.  And we are currently at "business as usual" with no sustained reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.  We haven't begun to make a dent in what matters!!
     And that is going to devastate coral reef ecosystems (the dead geological structures will remain for much longer than human lifetimes).  Algae will not substitute for coral.
     No??.    Cheers, Doug

On Mon, Feb 8, 2021 at 7:23 AM Alina Szmant <alina at cisme-instruments.com<mailto:alina at cisme-instruments.com>> wrote:
How many people on Coral List read the article in the 3rd link Doug shared, and what is your hope for the future of coral reefs and Earth organisms in general (including human societies) after digesting the information presented?

https://www.climaterealitycheck.net/flipbook

Dr. Alina M. Szmant,  CEO
CISME Instruments LLC

-------- Original message --------
From: Douglas Fenner via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov<mailto:coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>>
Date: 2/7/21 4:48 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: coral list <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov<mailto:coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>>
Subject: [Coral-List] ocean slicks host larvae; climate change worse than we thought

Climate reality check 2020

It is much worse than we thought, a huge threat to coral reefs and humanity

https://www.climaterealitycheck.net/flipbook

Cheers, Doug

--
Douglas Fenner
Lynker Technologies, LLC, Contractor
NOAA Fisheries Service
Pacific Islands Regional Office
Honolulu
and:
Coral Reef Consulting
PO Box 997390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799-6298  USA

Social cost of carbon emissions much higher than previous estimates
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/trump-downplayed-costs-carbon-pollution-s-about-change

A German initiative seeks to curb global emissions of a climate
super-pollutant
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30122020/chemical-plant-nitrous-oxide-climate-warming-emissions/

The toxic effects of air pollution are so bad that moving from fossil fuels
to clean energy would pay for itself in health-care savings and
productivity gains
<https://nature.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2c6057c528fdc6f73fa196d9d&id=c9f70ba54f&e=190a62d266>
—
even if climate change didn’t exist.  In the US alone, decarbonization
would save 1.4 MILLION lives in the US alone.  And save $700 Billion a year.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/8/12/21361498/climate-change-air-pollution-us-india-china-deaths
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