Tag Archives: Climate Change Feedback Loops

The Exact Timing of Near-Term Human Extinction Is Academic

29 Thursday May 2014

Posted by in Climate Change, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

≈ 56 Comments

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This post is in response to Systemic Disorder commenter Palloy who thinks that peak oil will save mankind and that global warming “will not be as bad as +1.5°C.” I want to answer the question of what degree of warming we are already committed to if industrial civilization were to disappear off the face of the Earth right now.

Palloy is overlooking the part that aerosols from industrial activity play in temporarily cooling the planet. James Hansen called this the Faustian Bargain:

…Human activity modifies the impact of the greenhouse effect by the release of airborne particulate pollutants known as aerosols. These include black-carbon soot, organic carbon, sulphates, nitrates, as well as dust from smoke, manufacturing, wind storms, and other sources. Aerosols have a net cooling effect because they reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches the ground and they increase cloud cover. This is popularly known as “global dimming”, because the overall aerosol impact is to mask some of the warming effect of greenhouse gases.

Hansen’s new study estimates this aerosol “dimming” at 1.2 degrees (plus or minus 0.2°), much higher than previously figured. Aerosols are washed out of the atmosphere by rain on average every 10 days, so their cooling effect is only maintained because of continuing human pollution, the principal source of which is the burning of fossil fuels, which also cause a rise in carbon dioxide levels and global warming that lasts for many centuries…

The average global temperature rise thus far is about 0.85°C since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Once industrial activity ceases and its accompanying aerosols fall out of the atmosphere, the average global temperature will jump to about 2°C, but it won’t simply stop there because Palloy forgets that there is a lag time involved with CO2 emissions. The effects we are feeling now were from our emissions 40 years ago:

…The estimate of 40 years for climate lag, the time between the cause (increased greenhouse gas emissions) and the effect (increased temperatures), has profound negative consequences for humanity. However, if governments can find the will to act, there are positive consequences as well.

With 40 years between cause and effect, it means that average temperatures of the last decade are a result of what we were thoughtlessly putting into the air in the 1960’s. It also means that the true impact of our emissions over the last decade will not be felt until the 2040’s. This thought should send a chill down your spine!…

This “committed warming” of past CO2 emissions whose effect will be manifested in the coming decades is about 0.6 degrees Celsius. Adding up the current warming of 0.85°C from the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the loss of aerosols with global dimming at 1.2°C, and the “committed” temperature rise from the 40-year lag time of CO2 emissions equal to 0.6°C, we get a total of 2.65°C. If all industrial activity stopped right now, we would already be committed to 2.65°C, a global average temperature rise of three times what we are currently experiencing. With all the drought, flooding, hurricanes, landslides, fires, and other manifestations of climate change that we are undergoing now, I shudder to think what the world will be like in 2050 and yet humans continue to burn coal and other fossil fuels at breakneck speed. According to the Climate Accountability Institute, half of all emissions have been produced in the past 25 years.

Now we get to the even more insidious aspects of anthropogenic climate change that very few comprehend. Dozens of self-reinforcing feedback loops have already been triggered, but we’ll discuss only one, the albedo effect, in the loss of our planet’s air conditioners, the Arctic and Antarctic:

(1)   An increase in temperature decreases the area covered by sea ice as it melts leaving a larger area of exposed ocean.
(2)   This decreases the reflection of sunlight as ice is far more reflective than the newly exposed ocean.
(3)   Reduced reflection increases the area’s absorption of heat from the sun.
(4)   This increases the temperature of the area, amplifying the original increase in temperature mentioned in (1).

A recent study calculated that the loss of Arctic ice reflectivity from 1979 to 2011 added an amplifying feedback to human warming equivalent to 25% of the heat captured by CO2 emissions during that same time.

We know that we don’t live in a linear world and that climate change is a non-linear phenomenon. Recent studies on abrupt climate change in Earth’s history reveal that temperatures have changed rapidly by 5°C in just 13 years. With the grand experiment mankind has irrevocably and haphazardly embarked on, the de-thawing of vast stores of permafrost and clathrates measured in the gigatons has commenced, creating the possibility for a sudden catastrophic release of such gases at any time. Methane, for about the first 10 to 20 years of its initial release before it breaks down into CO2, is many fold more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Humans are too busy calculating everything in terms of economic profit with regards to newly exposed resources and shorter shipping routes in the Arctic to take the time to fathom what damage they have done. Industrial civilization has permanently disrupted the stable period known as the Holocene within which mankind and civilization have been allowed to prosper.

Thus, we can see that the world is changing quickly into an environment that may well be outside the habitability for humans. The timing of human near-term extinction is likely academic.

Apneaman left this message here just a short time ago:

Journalist Dahr Jamail & Professor Peter Wadhams say the resulting release of methane will lead to massive climate disruption, and that we have reached a point of no return.

Update (12-3-2014):

CO2 Takes Just 10 Years to Reach Planet’s Peak Heat (Not 40 Years)

In a study that could have important ramifications on estimating the impacts, costs and benefits of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, new research shows that CO2 brings peak heat within a decade of being emitted, with the effects then lingering 100 years or more into the future…

…The research, published Wednesday in Environmental Research Letters, provides policymakers and economists with a new perspective on how fast human carbon emissions heat the planet. Back-of-the-envelope estimates for how long it takes for a given puff of CO2 to crank up the heat have generally been from 40-50 years. But the new study shows that the timeframe for CO2 emissions to reach their maximum warming potential is likely closer to 10 years….
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/co2-emissions-peak-heat-18394

There Will Be No Miracles Here

09 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil, Pollution

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Even with all the environmental reports I read about the numerous species man is pushing off the face off the Earth, the biospheric havoc he is wreaking, and the violence he inflicts upon his fellow man, I still find the idea of human extinction surreal when I flip on the TV and see commercials for Viagra, breast augmentation, and ‘Hoveround’ power wheelchairs. I mean, we’ve managed to walk on the moon and send out exploratory space crafts and robots to other planets, yet we cannot even manage ourselves adequately enough here at home to keep from irrevocably fouling things up?!? How can that be? That we can achieve such feats of genius, but end up shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot with greenhouse gases just seems like one enormous and macabre cosmic joke to me. Doesn’t it strike you as tragically humorous? Oh, but the word is that we humans would be crazy if we didn’t reach deep down into our bag of technological tricks, if only for one last desperate time, to try to fix this doozy of a problem we’ve gotten ourselves into. Why not? We’ve already FUBARED the planet as it is, what with the chain of climate feedback loops irretrievably out of the genie’s bottle, making any mitigation and adaptation plans a day late and a dollar short. Faith in technological progress is certainly a myth that will not go down easily. We’ll keep trying to right this plane even as it does barrel rolls into the side of a mountain. What a horrible accounting error humans made by ignoring depletion and pollution in their calculations. Governments pretended that peak oil and global warming were simply figments of our imagination. If only their jobs didn’t depend on maintaining such an epic falsehood. Who knew 9 billion humans would become the next deposit of fossil fuels.

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We had other things on our mind though, didn’t we. Money and the ability to generate it became the raison d’être for humans. Saving the environment simply was not profitable, unless you could convert it into some sort of tourist attraction. Wealthy people could hop on a CO2-belching airline and traipse around in those “protected areas” with their safari hat on and an assortment of modern electronic paraphernalia to record the momentous occasion, not too dissimilar to those annual climate change conferences the industrial world would put on. Humans always were great at maintaining appearances, even if it did cost them an entire civilization that spanned the planet. They were so good at detaching themselves from their surroundings that they could literally monitor a species into extinction while calling the whole process conservation. How’s that for self-delusion! As long as someone was getting paid, no one really cared about the end results. Biostitutes indeed!

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So one could say that the human path to extinction was paved in greenbacks, if not gold. Nobody dared whisper that all the wealth humans had built up and accumulated over the last several hundred years since the industrial revolution was simply a grand illusion, a phantasmagoria of the fossil fuel age. It is said that there are two things certain in this world, but actually there are three: death, taxes, and ecological balance. Man may exploit, pollute, exterminate, and plunder all he wants, but in the end Mother Nature will always claw back what was taken without forethought or reflection. The first mistake made by man was to proclaim dominion over nature. From that point onward many other bonehead maneuvers were orchestrated by humans, but perhaps the biggest one was when they gave personhood to an economic entity devoid of feelings, morals, or conscience. How could anyone seriously think corporations were people??? Homo sapiens must suffer from an inferiority complex to have labeled its kind “wise”.

2230-dystopiaSo this is my second eulogy to man, my first being ‘The Short Story of Carbon Man and Industrial Civilization‘. There are no Hollywood happy endings or cliff-hanger climaxes. Mother Earth will slowly take back what was stolen while billions of tiny humans scurry around to higher ground and find ways to temporarily hold off the gathering forces, but no mercy will be given to those who brushed off decades of warnings and prescient predictions. There will be no miracles here for a species that believes itself separate from and above the natural world.

In Memory of Man

2,000,000 B.C. – 2060 A.D.
He who once dominated the Earth with his technology and ingenuity,
but whose overwhelming numbers and psychopathic leaders
pissed it all away in a sea of radiation,
toxic chemicals, and plastics

“The planet is fine. The people are fucked.”

― George Carlin

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The Grim Future Seen From Current Headlines

13 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by in Capitalism, Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

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America faces the future.

As the recent news stories below illustrate, extreme weather is on the rise and has been scientifically linked to human-induced climate change. I find it amazing than in the midst of the beginning stages of collapse of industrial civilization, many will attribute the disintegrating environment to natural phenomenon, biblical and other religious prophecy, or the lizard illuminati. I suppose the real reason behind America’s hi-tech surveillance panopticon is to keep the hungry and destitute masses from overrunning the walled compounds of the elite when climate change and peak net energy really kick into gear. These days the number of headlines pointing to environmental collapse are overwhelming; choosing one is like shooting fish in a barrel. The population of Atlantic Puffin bird, called the ‘marine canary in the coal mine‘, has reportedly been “losing body weight and dying of starvation, possibly because of shifting fish populations as ocean temperatures rise.” The Arctic, an essential temperature regulator for the planet, is melting fast and releasing a carbon time bomb:

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Over hundreds of millennia, Arctic permafrost soils have accumulated vast stores of organic carbon – an estimated 1,400 to 1,850 petagrams of it (a petagram is 2.2 trillion pounds, or 1 billion metric tons). That’s about half of all the estimated organic carbon stored in Earth’s soils. In comparison, about 350 petagrams of carbon have been emitted from all fossil-fuel combustion and human activities since 1850. Most of this carbon is located in thaw-vulnerable topsoils within 10 feet (3 meters) of the surface.

But, as scientists are learning, permafrost – and its stored carbon – may not be as permanent as its name implies. And that has them concerned.

“Permafrost soils are warming even faster than Arctic air temperatures – as much as 2.7 to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius) in just the past 30 years,” Miller said. “As heat from Earth’s surface penetrates into permafrost, it threatens to mobilize these organic carbon reservoirs and release them into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane, upsetting the Arctic’s carbon balance and greatly exacerbating global warming.”

Current climate models do not adequately account for the impact of climate change on permafrost and how its degradation may affect regional and global climate…

…“The Arctic is warming dramatically – two to three times faster than mid-latitude regions – yet we lack sustained observations and accurate climate models to know with confidence how the balance of carbon among living things will respond to climate change and related phenomena in the 21st century,” said Miller. “Changes in climate may trigger transformations that are simply not reversible within our lifetimes, potentially causing rapid changes in the Earth system that will require adaptations by people and ecosystems.”…

Adaptation will likely not be possible by humans, and as far as our sprawling steal and concrete cities are concerned – they’re toast.

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…“Some of the methane and carbon dioxide concentrations we’ve measured have been large, and we’re seeing very different patterns from what models suggest,” Miller said. “We saw large, regional-scale episodic bursts of higher-than-normal carbon dioxide and methane in interior Alaska and across the North Slope during the spring thaw, and they lasted until after the fall refreeze. To cite another example, in July 2012 we saw methane levels over swamps in the Innoko Wilderness that were 650 parts per billion higher than normal background levels. That’s similar to what you might find in a large city.”…

The next headline sums up the climate policy of all governments – a joke. Business-as-usual will continue until it ain’t so usual anymore. Insurance costs will skyrocket and the wrath of nature will roll back all the transient wealth humans have built up atop the backs of our fossil fuel slaves. Externalized costs will be paid back in the wreckage of a civilization which thought of itself as superior to and separate from the natural world.

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Reading the inklings of future trouble that the next three headlines portend, you’ll see global famine on the horizon:

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We’re seeing more severe storms,” Vilsack said. “We’re facing more invasive species. More intense forest fire threatens communities each year. NOAA reported that 2012 was the second most intense year in our history for extreme weather events — droughts, flooding, hurricanes, severe storms, and devastating wildfire. NOAA also advised that last year was the warmest on record for the continental United States.”

He made it clear we can’t dismiss these changes as an aberration.

“The latest science tells us that the threat of a changing climate is new and different from anything we’ve ever tackled,” Vilsack said.

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A historic multi-billion dollar flood disaster has killed at least eighteen people in Central Europe after record flooding unprecedented since the Middle Ages hit major rivers in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Slovakia over the past two weeks. The Danube River in Passau, Germany hit the highest level since 1501, and the Saale River in Halle, Germany was the highest in its 400-year period of record. Numerous cities recorded their highest flood waters in more than a century, although in some locations the great flood of 2002 was higher. The Danube is expected to crest in Hungary’s capital city of Budapest on June 10 at the highest flood level on record, 35 cm higher than the record set in 2006. The flooding was caused by torrential rains that fell on already wet soils. In a 2-day period from May 30 – June 1, portions of Austria received the amount of rain that normally falls in two-and-half months: 150 to 200 mm (5.9 to 7.9″), with isolated regions experiencing 250 mm (9.8″). This two-day rain event had a greater than 1-in-100 year recurrence interval, according to the Austrian Meteorological Agency, ZAMG…

…The primary cause of the torrential rains over Central Europe during late May and early June was large loop in the jet stream that developed over Europe and got stuck in place…

…If it seems like getting two 1-in-100 to 1-in-500 year floods in eleven years is a bit suspicious–well, it is. Those recurrence intervals are based on weather statistics from Earth’s former climate. We are now in a new climate regime with more heat and moisture in the atmosphere, combined with altered jet stream patterns, which makes major flooding disasters more likely in certain parts of the world, like Central Europe. As I discussed in a March 2013 post, “Are atmospheric flow patterns favorable for summer extreme weather increasing?”, research published this year by scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in German found that extreme summertime jet stream patterns had become twice as common during 2001 – 2012 compared to the previous 22 years. One of these extreme patterns occurred in August 2002, during Central Europe’s last 1-in-100 to 1-in-500 year flood. When the jet stream goes into one of these extreme configurations, it freezes in its tracks for weeks, resulting in an extended period of extreme heat or flooding, depending upon where the high-amplitude part of the jet stream lies. The scientists found that because human-caused global warming is causing the Arctic to heat up more than twice as rapidly as the rest of the planet, a unique resonance pattern capable of causing this behavior was resulting.According to German climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf, “Planetary wave [jet stream] amplitudes have been very high in the last few weeks; we think this plays a role in the current German flooding event.

The biggest lie ever told is that we will be able to adapt to or mitigate a planet-wide shift in weather patterns, temperatures, and sea level rise on such a short time-scale as to be instantaneous in geologic records. Our fall – a tragicomedy of hubris, self-delusion, greed – will be more precipitous than our rise.

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Burning Down the House

02 Saturday Feb 2013

Posted by in Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

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Despite industrial capitalist carbon man’s inexhaustible faith in human progress with its techno-fix gadgetry, the Age of Stupid is alive and well today. Mega-cities in deserts can only sustain themselves so long as cheap fuels abound and, more importantly, life-giving water is available. These hard facts of life become even more unavoidable when 70% of your state’s population resides in the thirsty city of Las Vegas. But as history has shown in the parched American Southwest, water runs uphill to human population and money. Las Vegas, the epicenter of Nevada’s major revenue-generating industries (tourism, gaming, and conventions), is the powerhouse of the state. So when Sin City demands something, all bow down to it. In the case of water, that would mean the rest of the state with its rural farmers, native wildlife and plants, and delicate desert ecosystems.

The meteoric growth of Las Vegas and the incredible shrinking Lake Mead:
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We spoke previously of the nearly $1 billion Las Vegas project of constructing a third straw to reach down to the bottom of Lake Mead whose water line has been dropping precipitously and endangering the other two existing water intake pipes. Vegas has also been busy buying up the water rights of farmers and land owners in the rest of the state and paying them 10 to over 20 times the assessed value of their land. Some have tried to fight back at this “water grab”, but most have taken the money.

As discussed before, the feedback loop of a diminished albedo effect from less snowfall will result in more heat from the sun being retained by the earth and the desiccation of soil. Tree die-offs and increased levels of wind-born dust particles will also be part of that global warming feedback loop.

Looking at a graph by the National (Interagency) Fire Center, an upward trend in the average acres burned per fire is clearly visible:
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Getting back to the water consumption of Las Vegas, their current water grab amounts to water mining, an illegal practice according to Nevada laws, and will likely lead to an environmental disaster:

…Rob Mrowka, a Nevada-based ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the proposed project could cause “an epic environmental disaster” by draining groundwater levels and drying up springs and wetlands, pushing 25 species of Great Basin springsnails near extinction…

…Lynn Davis, NPCA’s Nevada field office manager[:] “The threats of this water mining project are far reaching: It could be built at anguishing public expense, could dry up the area and plunder Great Basin National Park, threaten the region’s rural life and create health issues that would multiply economic and social losses.”…

…”The federal government’s own scientists are confirming this Las Vegas water project would be an epic environmental disaster,” said [Rob] Mrowka, the Center for Biological Diversity ecologist. “It’s really no exaggeration to say that the natural, cultural and social heritage of central Nevada is at grave risk from this project.”…

John Bredehoeft says it’s impossible for Las Vegas to pump the water out of these remote areas of Nevada without collapsing the ecosystem:

…As he explains it, there is no water to spare for Las Vegas without disrupting the equilibrium between water flowing in from snowmelt and water taken out every year by ranchers, plants and animals…

…Mining ground water is illegal in Nevada.

Mine enough of it and the water table can drop for hundreds of miles around. Springs stop flowing, streams disappear, plants and animals dependent on them die.

The way Las Vegas intends on getting around this scenario is by killing off the desert’s signature shrub, the greasewood (a phreatophyte plant), whose long tap-root reaches into the water table below. The only problem is that this plant holds the topsoil together just like the Midwest’s prairie-grass whose removal for wheat production lead to the Great Dust Bowl of the 1930’s:

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…Target the phreatophytes whose water you intend to take, and don’t allow them to compete for water.

Pump hard. Kill them fast. Then let the system return to equilibrium so what water comes in from snowmelt equals what is taken out by Las Vegas pumps, and the water table doesn’t fall inexorably.

But this weeds-for-water logic becomes a problem when greasewood serves an important function above and beyond offering forage to deer and cattle.

Phreatophytes prevent dust storms.

Spring Valley sits at the foot of Mt. Wheeler. In 1986, then-Congressman Harry Reid led Wheeler’s transformation into Great Basin National Park, in no small part because of Spring Valley’s pristine air.

Without a high water table saturating the valley floor and the long roots of phreatophytes anchoring the soil, Spring Valley could become the kind of dust bowl created by Los Angeles after William Mulholland began pumping Owens Lake in 1913.

Once Los Angeles drained the lake in California’s high Sierra, it began taking Owens Valley ground water. By the 1980s, the wasteland created by Los Angeles had given dust a new common name.

The vile mix of fine sand, arsenic and assorted metals billowing out of Owens Valley became the single worst source of “particulate pollution” in the nation, registering at 23 times the level allowed by federal heath standards. It filled local emergency rooms with asthmatic children. It traveled hundreds of miles, clouding three national parks and repeatedly shutting down China Lake Naval Weapons Center.

According to estimates by experts, the water demands of Las Vegas will inevitably lead to the collapse of the water table in the surrounding area:

[The model of Timothy Durbin, the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s own expert witness] was finally ready to simulate pumping for the full 90,000 acre-feet of water being sought by Las Vegas. The result? The level of the water table underlying Spring Valley would drop on the order of 200 feet or more over 75 years.

This would, as Durbin and Katzer had envisioned, indeed kill off Spring Valley’s phreatophytes.

It would also end traditional ranching in the valley.

And with no water saturating the top soil and no roots to anchor it, the parched earth of Spring Valley could indeed become a new Owens Valley.

What happens in Vegas does Not stay in Vegas. Their water mining will have far-reaching effects beyond the following:

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Despite the fact that water mining is illegal in Nevada and that the water demands of a man-made illusion like Las Vegas will lead to environmental disaster, the growth of this mega-city, just like others around the world, marches on at the expense of the natural world. The world’s population is flocking to them, but modern cities are at war with the environment and are essentially Not sustainable:

…Dr. William Rees at the University of British Columbia, who developed the ‘ecological footprint’ analysis, points out that most cities require the environmental services from a land base 300 to 1000 times the city area. Rees points out that a city is a ‘biophysical entity’ that includes the complex of land, water, atmosphere, resources, and waste sinks required to support the human population.

Rich consumer cities of Europe and North America require the most ecological space, but all modern cities carry an ecological debt to nature. I live in Vancouver, Canada, which prides itself as being a fairly ‘green’ city with bike paths and urban gardens, but even so, Vancouver requires a global biophysical area about 390 times the city itself.

In the study Ecosystem Appropriation by Cities published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Carl Folke and colleagues estimate that the 29 largest Baltic cities – including Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki – appropriate for their resource consumption and waste an area of forest, agricultural, marine, and wetland ecosystems over 560 times the area of the cities themselves. New York requires a total eco-footprint almost 1000 times the city’s geographic area. Tokyo requires twice the entire domestic bio-capacity of Japan.

The Folke study shows that the 744 largest cities worldwide require more CO2 sequestration than the entire world’s forests could provide. “If the goal is sustainable human settlements,” write the authors, “the increasingly limited capacity of ecosystems to sustain urban areas has to be explicitly accounted for in city planning and development.”…

Restrictions to water, exacerbated by climate change, will be the primary factor in the collapse of the modern metropolis.

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