Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

Climate models take this into account [0], contrary to what some people here seem to imply. It is also very likely that this is part of, but not the major factor of recent warming. [1]<p>I would like to point out that this is not something we&#x27;re just figuring out &quot;this week&quot; as Hank Green seems to want to frame it.<p>There&#x27;s no need to sensationalize. There is no conspiracy here. This is well known. It&#x27;s good to educate people, but it sucks that even good educators have to crawl in the click-bait mud to reach people.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;hausfath&#x2F;status&#x2F;1444679408573419520" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;hausfath&#x2F;status&#x2F;1444679408573419520</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.carbonbrief.org&#x2F;analysis-how-low-sulphur-shipping-rules-are-affecting-global-warming&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.carbonbrief.org&#x2F;analysis-how-low-sulphur-shippin...</a>

Related article from 2018 if anyone wants to read more :<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.technologyreview.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;01&#x2F;22&#x2F;67402&#x2F;were-about-to-kill-a-massive-accidental-experiment-in-halting-global-warming&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.technologyreview.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;01&#x2F;22&#x2F;67402&#x2F;were-about...</a>

I can’t remember who (maybe he’s quoted further in the thread than I quickly scrolled) but there’s a scientist who has been talking about this on Twitter for a long time (when I used to use it). Pretty scary these things can happen, but he was warning basically we are further along with global heating than we thought and this pollution was just masking some of the effect in the Northern Hemsiphere of CO2 we’d already released. We were always going to have to stop sulfur emissions, might have just been better perhaps to have a bit more gradual phase out to soften the shock…

This article suggests it probably isn&#x27;t the main cause: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.carbonbrief.org&#x2F;analysis-how-low-sulphur-shipping-rules-are-affecting-global-warming&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.carbonbrief.org&#x2F;analysis-how-low-sulphur-shippin...</a><p>There was also an underwater volcano that put a lot of water vapor in the upper atmosphere that could be a culprit. (On top of the ongoing trend of warming of course.) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.carbonbrief.org&#x2F;tonga-volcano-eruption-raises-imminent-risk-of-temporary-1-5c-breach&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.carbonbrief.org&#x2F;tonga-volcano-eruption-raises-im...</a>

I’ve unfortunately come to the conclusion that we are buggered.<p>Watching politics in the U.K. and the rest of the world I’m seeing politicians realise that they can tap into the populist idea that anything green is “the elites trying to control and tax you”.<p>All they care about us short term election prospects.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;hankgreen&#x2F;status&#x2F;1687535525169930241" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;hankgreen&#x2F;status&#x2F;1687535525169930241</a> (working link for those without account)<p>It&#x27;s an interesting observation but I would want to know if bunker emissions from ships matched coal emissions from high sulfur coal or diesel emissions prior to the around year 2007 transition from low sulfur diesel to ultra low sulfur diesel had as much of an impact. Remember there was a huge concern for acid rain in the 1980&#x27;s and 1990&#x27;s and cutting atmospheric SO2 pretty much eliminated it.<p>Not discounting that coal is terrible for lots of reasons but there&#x27;s a ton of variability on types of coal. One of the core reasons the coal industry pulled out of Appalachia is there were lower-sulfur deposits out in Wyoming... Some gov data: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eia.gov&#x2F;todayinenergy&#x2F;detail.php?id=37752" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eia.gov&#x2F;todayinenergy&#x2F;detail.php?id=37752</a><p>EDIT: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iea.org&#x2F;data-and-statistics&#x2F;charts&#x2F;emissions-of-sulfur-dioxyde-so2-by-sector-and-scenario-2015-and-2040" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iea.org&#x2F;data-and-statistics&#x2F;charts&#x2F;emissions-of-...</a> Transportation is a small % of emissions compared to energy generation. There&#x27;s been a regional shift though as North America moved to sulfur controls earlier for energy generation (1990) than Europe, and Asia has begun to climb as these regions went into decline.

This lacks scientific models or sources that quantify the magnitude of the reduction in ship tracks and the resulting impact on sea temperatures. They are not in the science.org article[1] he links either.<p>Usually posts with little evidence and the use of the phrase &quot;may be causing&quot; result in flagged posts, but not when it fits a certain narrative?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.science.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;article&#x2F;changing-clouds-unforeseen-test-geoengineering-fueling-record-ocean-warmth" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.science.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;article&#x2F;changing-clouds-unfo...</a>

Non crap link<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;farside.link&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;hankgreen&#x2F;status&#x2F;1687535525169930241" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;farside.link&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;hankgreen&#x2F;status&#x2F;16875355251...</a>

The fact that the loss of particulate matter in the atmosphere increases warming has been known for at least two decades.<p>This is not surprising to me. It started years ago when scrubbers began to be installed on coal power plants and continued with low sulphur diesel requirements that started 15 years ago.

A better wording for the title:<p><i>Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships has reduced masking of global warming</i><p>The word &#x27;cause&#x27; in current title seems wrong.

Not a bad thread but misses a critical point.<p>If the Sulfur emissions policies were known for &gt;5 years and discussed for &gt;10 years why aren’t they part of mainstream climate models?<p>The best answer I could find was essentially that models use a proxy for aerosols and so including the new policy might cause “double counting” of this forcing. This ‘conservatism’ caused this effect to be left out of the models.<p>So the story is basically that current mainstream models underestimated warming due to them ignoring this effect. But if they are missing this forcing, what other “insignificant” forcings are missing? Are they positive or negative? Are there other observations that don’t match the models?<p>This has really shaken my faith in the climate science community. I’m starting to think ClimateGate wasn’t the nothingburger the media made it out to be.

For anyone interested in a near-future sci-fi look at how sulfur as a form of geoengineering might play out, check out out Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson[0]. The title[1] refers to what happens when you suddenly stop an effort like that...<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Termination_Shock_(novel)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Termination_Shock_(novel)</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Solar_geoengineering#Maintenance_and_termination_shock" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Solar_geoengineering#Maintenan...</a>

It does sound like a relatively small change yielded an outsized impact on the climate. This gives me hope for future climate solutions.

Sounds like some excuse from shipping companies to avoid cleaning up their act.

I&#x27;d wager a lot of money we&#x27;ve not seen that last of humanity screwing around with the climate in well-intentioned but bad-outcome ways.<p>Is there a name for this phenomenon of harmful actions because by an &quot;increase&quot; of understanding of the underlying system?<p>I imagine there are similar outcomes in many areas, politics, economics, code bases. Kind of like requiring helmets (protect personal health) for cycling leading to less cyclists (poorer health outcomes for a population)

Whoopsie daisy.<p>Cold acidic oceans, or warm sulphur free ones?

Reminds me of something similar in Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Termination_Shock_(novel)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Termination_Shock_(novel)</a>

&lt;offtopic&gt;Does this Twitter link open for you in Chrome? Lately I have had less than 50% success rate opening Twitter. I just see a blank page with an X in the middle.&lt;&#x2F;&gt;

The enthusiasm with geoengineering among the HN community is worrisome. Not sure which computing analogy would drive home the complete recklessness of this mentality but the Earth is not something you can reboot to the last working state once you harebrained patch implodes.<p>It is true that we have been slowly geoengineering for ages (initially unwittingly, recently with eyes wide open) and it is also true that our modeling abilities increase but this is quite far from making us experts in geoengineering.<p>For the short term future (decades) the only strategy that seems to make sense on the face of epistemic uncertainty is to refrain from aggravating the situation while studying ever more deeply the system we are now perturbing so much.<p>Our biggest mental deficiency when handling complexity is that we cant think holistically in practical ways. Isolating individual factors and applying linear thinking has worked wonders in isolated problems but it is not cutting it here.

So we were accidentally cooling by polluting? I don&#x27;t think that is good argument to start polluting again. Sulfur does have downsides, like acid rain.

What a misleading headline. “Exacerbating” ocean heating, perhaps, but THE primary cause is anthropogenic combustion of fossil fuels.

interesting thread, so the multitudinal effects of gas output came back with more nuance than anyone expected.<p>the oversimplified explanations of &quot;this gas bad&quot; are finally worth collapsing because nothing only ever does <i>just one thing</i>.<p>on the bright side, if this cloud seeding business helps keep everything cooled, i suppose that&#x27;s a good takeaway.

It’s off topic, but am I the only one who wanted to press the x button in the top left corner to close the window?

LOL. Right.

Either the world accepts that nuclear energy along with wind and solar is part of the solution to climate change, or we will be forced into geoengineering solutions. We may have already reached that point.

X&#x27;s threads make even less sense now unless you think everyone you want to reach is on X.<p>Also, just what a dumb name.

Roko has been talking about this for a while. Definitely super interesting.

Meanwhile, in Tonga: &quot;Tonga experiences unusual cold during El Nino alert&quot; [1]<p>&gt; Tonga&#x27;s Meteorology Department said on Friday that the Pacific island country is experiencing unusually cold weather, with cool days and cooler nights, and climate is leaning towards El Nino conditions.<p>&gt; According to the Matangi Tonga news website, a low of 9.3 degrees Celsius, recorded at the end of July in Tongatapu island where the capital Nuku&#x27;alofa is located, was the lowest on record for the island country of this year.<p>But because it goes against the hysteria of the &quot;world is boiling!&quot; this didn&#x27;t get posted in here, nor was it taken by the major Western news sources (I cannot find it on the BBC website, for example).<p>It&#x27;s the COVID hysteria all over again.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;english.news.cn&#x2F;20230804&#x2F;c739b0bc8f684fe9991e5c026109dfdd&#x2F;c.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;english.news.cn&#x2F;20230804&#x2F;c739b0bc8f684fe9991e5c02610...</a>

If you feel bad about this, perhaps go and find some Just stop oil protesters and take out your frustration on them. Perhaps drag them around by their hair, or kick them in the heads. It&#x27;s easy, they&#x27;re sitting on the floor, so it&#x27;s low hanging fruit.