Global Climate Change Science News

[macdoc]

Tell that to Cern.

[Brian Peacock]

Erm.

[JimC]

you can create electrons through beta decay or high-energy collisions

Sure, and also the decay of a gamma photon into a positron and an electron. But the vast majority of the current electrons in the universe were created in the big bang...

[macdoc]

I picked your nit .

[Brian Peacock]

Nah, just a non sequitur really - because, as Jim pointed out, it should be "make electrons move" rather than "make electrons" to generate electricity. The LHC doesn't generate electricity when briefly creating particles either.

Consider your picked nit nit picked.

[macdoc]

CERN creates electrons. It doesn't just move them.

Electrons can be created through beta decay of radioactive isotopes and in high-energy collisions, for instance, when cosmic rays enter the atmosphere. The antiparticle of the electron is called the positron; it is identical to the electron, except that it carries electrical charge of the opposite sign.

How much energy is needed to create an electron?
The rest mass energy of an electron is 511 keV. So this is how much energy is required to create an electron, at rest, and which is not in an electromagnetic field.24 Jan 2015

https://physics.stackexchange.com/quest ... ic%20field.
are we done yet?

[pErvinalia]

Creating electrons doesn't generate electricity. That's the point they are making.

[macdoc]

Moving electrons does.....and ?
I only disputed that electrons could not be created outside big bang conditions. Nit remains picked.

[Tero]

Climate change measuring stopped.
https://www.threads.net/@severeweatheru ... xNP31r4Y6g

[macdoc]

This
"However, this administration is simply ignorant if they think that Mauna Loa is the only place where this is happening."

[L'Emmerdeur]

Then simply stop any effort at all to keep an eye on it. Solved.

President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to end nearly all of the climate research conducted by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), one of the country’s premier climate science agencies, according to an internal budget document seen by Science. The document indicates the White House is ready to ask Congress to eliminate NOAA’s climate research centers and cut hundreds of federal and academic climate scientists who track and study human-driven global warming.

The administration is also preparing to ask for deep cuts to NASA’s science programs, according to media reports today.

The proposed NOAA cuts—which could be altered before the administration sends its 2026 budget request to Congress in the coming weeks—would cut funding for the agency’s research arm, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), to just over $171 million, a drop of $485 million. Any remaining research funding from previously authorized budgets would be moved to other programs. “At this funding level, OAR is eliminated as a line office,” the document states.

If approved by Congress, the plan would represent a huge blow to efforts to understand climate change, says Craig McLean, OAR’s longtime director who retired in 2022. “It wouldn’t just gut it. It would shut it down.” Scientifically, he adds, obliterating OAR would send the United States back to the 1950s—all because the Trump administration doesn’t like the answers to scientific questions NOAA has been studying for a half-century, according to McLean.

[source]

[Brian Peacock]

They could so easily be championing American science as the best in the world.

Charles David Keeling (April 20, 1928 – June 20, 2005) was an American scientist whose recording of carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory confirmed Svante Arrhenius's proposition (1896) of the possibility of anthropogenic contribution to the greenhouse effect and global warming, by documenting the steadily rising carbon dioxide levels. The Keeling Curve measures the progressive buildup of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_David_Keeling

[JimC]

But "drill, baby, drill", Brian!

[Brian Peacock]

But "Revenues are up on the quarter, and the stock price is 7% up on the half" Jim. A heating planet is what you get when you outsource your moral responsibility to a balance sheet.

[Brian Peacock]

Exploring pathways for world development within planetary boundaries*

Abstract
The pressures humanity has been placing on the environment have put Earth’s stability at risk. The planetary boundaries framework serves as a method to define a ‘safe operating space for humanity’1,2 and has so far been applied mostly to highlight the currently prevailing unsustainable environmental conditions. The ability to evaluate trends over time, however, can help us explore the consequences of alternative policy decisions and identify pathways for living within planetary boundaries3. Here we use the Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment4 to project control variables for eight out of nine planetary boundaries under alternative scenarios to 2050, both with and without strong environmental policy measures. The results show that, with current trends and policies, the situation is projected to worsen to 2050 for all planetary boundaries, except for ozone depletion. Targeted interventions, such as implementing the Paris climate agreement, a shift to a healthier diet, improved food, and water- and nutrient-use efficiency, can effectively reduce the degree of transgression of the planetary boundaries, steering humanity towards a more sustainable trajectory (that is, if they can be implemented based on social and institutional feasibility considerations). However, even in this scenario, several planetary boundaries, including climate change, biogeochemical flows and biodiversity, will remain transgressed in 2050, partly as result of inertia. This means that more-effective policy measures will be needed to ensure we are living well within the planetary boundaries....

* Nature, 25 May 2025, open access