The Collapse of the AMOC: A Planetary Crisis Accelerating

31 Monday Mar 2025

Posted by xraymike79 in Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

Tags

Amazon Die-Off, AMOC, Breadbasket Collapse, Climate Change, Climate Refugees, Climate Tipping Points, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, East Siberian Arctic Shelf, Economic Collapse, Greenland Ice Melt, James Hansen, Jet Stream, Methane Release from Thawing Permafrost, Methane Time Bomb, Nutrient Upwelling, Sea Level Rise, Ship Sulfur Emissions, Thermokarst Acceleration, West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melt

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a critical artery of Earth’s climate system, now stands on the brink of collapse. New research confirms that its failure would not merely disrupt weather patterns but unravel the delicate balance of global ecosystems, economies, and geopolitical stability, locking humanity into a future of cascading crises.

The AMOC’s Vital Role in Earth’s Climate

The AMOC functions as a global conveyor belt, redistributing heat and nutrients across the oceans. Driven by temperature and salinity differences, warm surface waters flow northward from the tropics, releasing heat to the atmosphere in the North Atlantic. As this water cools and becomes denser, it sinks to the deep ocean and returns southward, completing the cycle (Rahmstorf, 2006). This process moderates Europe’s climate, transports oxygen to deep-sea ecosystems, and fuels nutrient upwelling—the rise of cold, nutrient-rich water that sustains marine food webs. A healthy AMOC also sequesters carbon dioxide in the deep ocean and stabilizes atmospheric jet streams, which govern weather patterns like the North Atlantic storm track (Smeed et al., 2014).

Accelerated Warming and Aerosol Forcing: A New Paradigm

Recent work by Hansen et al. (2025) reveals that global warming has accelerated due to a “double whammy” of reduced aerosol cooling and underestimated climate sensitivity. The 2020 International Maritime Organization (IMO) restrictions on ship sulfur emissions, intended to improve air quality, reduced aerosol pollution by ~80% in key regions, removing a critical cooling mask and adding 0.5 W/m² of forcing globally. This reduction, combined with greenhouse gas-driven warming, caused a 0.4°C temperature spike in 2023–2024, breaching the 1.5°C threshold. Hansen’s analysis shows that IPCC models underestimate aerosol cooling by 50–100%, implying equilibrium climate sensitivity could exceed 4.5°C for doubled CO₂—far above the IPCC’s 3°C best estimate.

Biospheric and Oceanic Collapse: Accelerating Warming and Tipping Points

A collapsing AMOC would unravel marine and terrestrial ecosystems while accelerating global warming through feedback loops. In the oceans, the shutdown of nutrient upwelling, a process critical to phytoplankton growth, would starve marine food chains, collapsing fish populations by 40–60% in the North Atlantic by 2100. Simultaneously, warmer, stagnant tropical waters would expand oxygen-depleted “dead zones,” suffocating coral reefs and pelagic species. On land, the abrupt cooling of northern latitudes would devastate boreal forests, while tropical ecosystems like the Amazon face intensified droughts, pushing them toward irreversible dieback and releasing 90–140 gigatons of stored carbon. These biospheric shocks would compound warming: reduced ocean carbon uptake and vegetation loss could add 0.3–0.5°C to global temperatures by 2100, independent of emissions. Worse, the AMOC’s collapse could trigger interconnected tipping points. Greenland’s ice sheet, destabilized by meltwater from AMOC-driven freshening, risks irreversible disintegration, while Southern Ocean warming accelerates Antarctic ice loss, raising sea levels by 2.5 meters by 2100. Arctic permafrost, thawing 5–10% faster due to disrupted atmospheric circulation, would release methane, a greenhouse gas 80x more potent than CO₂, over decades. Together, these feedbacks could lock Earth into a “Hothouse” trajectory, far exceeding current warming projections.

Unseen Feedback Loops and Accelerated AMOC Collapse (2025 Update)

Groundbreaking 2024–2025 research exposes feedback mechanisms advancing faster than anticipated, demanding urgent recalibration of climate policies and collapse timelines.

1. Methane Wildcards: New Findings Could Reshape Projections:

(a) Subsea Methane Hydrates and Meltwater Discharge

East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS): Beneath the icy silence of Antarctica, scientists have uncovered a hidden menace—towering columns of methane gas, some stretching 700 meters long, rising like ghostly chimneys from the seafloor. During a recent Spanish expedition aboard the Sarmiento de Gamboa, researchers observed these eerie plumes escaping from mud volcanoes and fractures in the Pacific margin of the Antarctic Peninsula, one of Earth’s fastest-warming regions (The Maritime Executive 2025). The methane, trapped for millennia as hydrate deposits—a crystalline mix of water and gas formed under pressure—is now destabilizing, hinting at a climate threat long feared but poorly understood. Current projections ignore Antarctic methane emissions and recent observations of such massive methane plumes does not bode well for other areas like the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS), a larger, older, and understudied region harboring vastly larger methane reserves.
AMOC Impact from Meltwater Discharge: Two recent studies indicate Greenland’s ice loss is entering a crisis phase, driven by a dangerous synergy of accelerating ice dynamics and year-round subglacial meltwater discharge. The first study (Chudley et al., 2025) exposes a 25.3% surge in crevasse volumes at rapidly flowing marine-terminating glaciers since 2016, directly linking ice sheet acceleration to destabilizing feedbacks: crevasses act as highways for meltwater, weaken ice structure, and amplify calving—effectively turning Greenland’s margins into crumbling, high-discharge zones. The second study (Hansen et al., 2025) delivers a bombshell: winter subglacial meltwater, previously dismissed as negligible, is now confirmed to seep into fjords year-round. This hidden meltwater, generated by frictional heating and geothermal energy, upwells warm Atlantic water to gnaw at glacier fronts while stockpiling nutrients for explosive spring algal blooms. Together, these findings reveal a double blow: ice sheets are disintegrating faster from below due to relentless meltwater discharge, even in winter, while surface acceleration tears them apart from above. Current climate models, which ignore these cascading mechanisms, risk grossly underestimating Greenland’s meltwater hemorrhage. As warming intensifies, this dual assault threatens to unleash runaway ice loss, with dire implications for global sea-level rise and Arctic ecosystems. The message is clear: Greenland’s meltwater discharge is not just accelerating—it’s evolving into an unchecked, year-round crisis.

(b) Abrupt Permafrost Thaw

Thermokarst Emissions Acceleration: A new study (Freitas et al. 2025) reveals that deep Arctic lake sediments, previously overlooked, are significant sources of greenhouse gases with profound climate implications. By incubating a 20-meter sediment core from Alaska’s Goldstream Lake, researchers found that anaerobic decomposition in thawed permafrost—particularly in ancient Yedoma and underlying fluvial deposits—produces methane and CO₂ at rates comparable to or exceeding aerobic processes, especially under warming temperatures. Crucially, anaerobic emissions at 10–20°C had double the global warming potential of aerobic emissions, challenging the assumption that shallow, oxygenated layers dominate carbon release. These findings suggest current climate models vastly underestimate the permafrost carbon feedback by neglecting deep sediment contributions. Wang et al. (2024) expose a climate time bomb in the Tibetan Plateau’s thawing permafrost: collapsing soils release 5.5 times more CO₂ under warming than stable ground, driven by microbial armies adapted to devour degraded organic matter. This explosive emissions surge, tied to thermokarst formation, threatens to double permafrost carbon losses, turbocharging global warming and demanding immediate action to defuse one of Earth’s most dangerous feedback loops.

2. Cloud-Ocean-Land Thresholds: The 2023 global temperature surge to nearly 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels—exceeding prior records by 0.17°C—was amplified by a record-low planetary albedo driven primarily by declining low-cloud cover over northern mid-latitudes and tropical oceans, according to satellite and reanalysis data, bridging a 0.2°C gap unexplained by anthropogenic warming or El Niño alone (Goessling et al. 2024). This albedo reduction, part of a multi-decadal trend, highlights uncertainties around contributions from internal variability, aerosol reductions, or emergent cloud feedbacks. AMOC Link: Cloud loss over the subtropical Atlantic raises sea temperatures, disrupting northward heat transport.

Ocean and Land Carbon Sink Decline

Ocean Saturation: The ocean, Earth’s silent climate ally, is faltering. Müller et al. (2023) reveal that between 1994 and 2014, it absorbed a staggering 29 billion tons of human-emitted carbon per decade—but its power to offset our pollution is slipping. By the 2000s, its efficiency had dropped 15% as rising CO₂ overwhelmed its chemistry and currents shifted, with the North Atlantic’s deep-water engine sputtering while southern waters churned faster. This alarming trend, uncovered through global ocean data analysis, signals a critical vulnerability: the seas are struggling to keep pace with humanity’s carbon footprint. Even more unsettling, gaps between ocean storage and surface measurements hint at rogue carbon leaks, turning the ocean from a steady sink into a climate wildcard.
Land Saturation: Curran and Curran (2025) found that natural systems like forests and soil, which absorb CO₂ from the air, are getting weaker at sequestering carbon. Their study, using data from Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory, shows that since 2008, the amount of CO₂ absorbed during Northern Hemisphere summers has been dropping by about 0.25% each year. This decline—caused by wildfires, droughts, and thawing frozen ground—is making CO₂ levels in the atmosphere rise faster than before. For example, without this weakening absorption, the yearly increase in CO₂ would be 1.9 parts per million (ppm) instead of the current 2.5 ppm. The authors warn that global emissions must now fall by 0.3% yearly just to cancel out this lost natural absorption.

3. Revised AMOC Collapse Timeline Estimates

Threshold	Hansen (2025)	2025 Revised Timeline	Key Drivers
2°C Global Warming	2045	2035–2040	Methane surges, albedo loss
3°C Global Warming	2060–2070	2042–2048	Cloud loss, ocean sink failure
AMOC Collapse	2050–2070	2038–2045	Synergistic freshwater + warming

Key Revisions:

AMOC Collapse by 2045: Greenland meltwater and an AMOC slowdown make collapse possible within two decades under SSP5-8.5.
Regional Deadlines: Central North America faces 2°C by or before 2040 (Barnes et al, 2025) due to soil moisture-cloud feedbacks. Dry soils reduce evaporative cooling, increasing surface temperatures. Studies show regions like the U.S. Great Plains are hotspots for this feedback, where soil drying can intensify heatwaves by 1–3°C (Maraun et al. 2025). Low soil moisture may suppress cloud formation, allowing more solar radiation to reach the ground. Model simulations suggest this could add ~0.5°C to regional warming in semi-arid zones. Earth’s freshwater reserves are vanishing at a pace that eclipses polar ice melt, warns Seo et al. (2025). Between 2000 and 2002 alone, soil moisture—a critical buffer for ecosystems and agriculture—plummeted by 1,614 gigatonnes, nearly double Greenland’s ice loss during the same period. Satellite data, sea level spikes (~4.4 mm), and even Earth’s wobble (~45 cm pole shift) all point to a planet hemorrhaging water, driven by relentless droughts and unyielding evaporation. By 2021, recovery remained elusive, with projections suggesting this hydrological freefall is irreversible under current warming trends. The study paints a stark picture: human-driven climate change isn’t just melting ice—it’s draining the continents dry.

Regional Cooling, Global Warming, and Ecosystem Collapse

A collapse of the AMOC would plunge northern Europe and the North Atlantic into abrupt cooling, 3–5°C within decades, while accelerating warming across the tropics and Southern Hemisphere. This divergence would mask regional cooling in the north but amplify extremes elsewhere. The Southern Ocean, for instance, could warm 2–3 times faster than the global average, destabilizing Antarctic ice shelves and krill populations vital to marine ecosystems. Meanwhile, the North Atlantic’s marine food webs face ruin: a 2025 Nature study projects a 40–60% collapse in phytoplankton blooms by 2100, decimating fisheries that sustain millions. On land, the Amazon rainforest, already ailing from drought, could lose 30–40% of its biomass by 2070, releasing vast carbon stores and accelerating global warming.

Human Migration and the Fracturing of Geopolitical Order

The human toll of AMOC collapse would be catastrophic. A 2025 World Bank report warns of 200–300 million climate migrants by 2050, driven by drowned coastlines, failed harvests, and desertification. Northern Europe’s cooling could displace populations southward, while the Sahel faces existential drought, inflaming regional conflicts over dwindling water and arable land. Competition over Arctic resources, intensified by ice melt and new shipping routes, is already triggering militarization by Russia and NATO states. In the U.S. Northeast, 50–100 cm of sea-level rise by 2100, far exceeding prior estimates, threatens to displace 10 million people, overwhelming disaster response systems and sparking interstate strife.

Economic Freefall and Insurance Market Collapse

The global economy would reel under compound shocks. Northern Europe’s agricultural output could drop by €150–200 billion/year by 2040 due to shortened growing seasons, while Mediterranean droughts cripple olive and wine production. Coastal cities worldwide, from New York to Dhaka, face $1–2 trillion/year in flood damages by 2050. Insurance markets, a pillar of economic stability, are buckling: Lloyd’s of London predicts 30–50% premium hikes by 2030, with coastal properties becoming “uninsurable” within a decade. These losses would deepen global inequality, as low-income nations, least responsible for emissions, bear the brunt of crop failures and displacement.

Tipping Point Cascades: From Greenland to the Amazon

The AMOC’s collapse would not occur in isolation. It risks triggering a domino effect across Earth’s climate system:

Greenland Ice Sheet: Meltwater from Greenland, a key driver of AMOC weakening, could push the ice sheet past its tipping point, locking in 7 meters of long-term sea-level rise.
Amazon Dieback: Concurrent droughts and warming could push the Amazon past its tipping point by 2035–2040, releasing 90–140 gigatons of carbon—equivalent to a decade of global emissions.
West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS): Southern Ocean warming would accelerate WAIS disintegration, potentially doubling sea-level rise projections to 2.5 meters by 2100.
Permafrost Feedback: Arctic permafrost thaw, exacerbated by AMOC-driven cooling-warming disparities, could release 5–10% more methane by 2040, a potent greenhouse gas.

Hansen et al. (2025) emphasize that these feedbacks are mutually reinforcing. For example, AMOC-driven Southern Ocean warming could destabilize WAIS within decades, while permafrost thaw adds 0.1°C to global warming by 2040—both excluded from IPCC’s “likely” ranges. Their analysis suggests a 40% probability of passing multiple tipping points by 2040 under current policies.

Conclusion: A Fork in the Road

The AMOC’s collapse would not “pause” global warming but redistribute its effects geographically. Northern Europe and the North Atlantic might experience temporary cooling, masking global trends locally, while the tropics and Southern Hemisphere warm at accelerated rates. Feedbacks like reduced oceanic carbon uptake and permafrost thaw would amplify long-term warming, creating a more uneven and complex climate response. Regional disruptions, from collapsing fisheries to intensified droughts, would escalate even as global temperatures continue to rise.

The AMOC’s potential collapse represents a planetary emergency, a “threat multiplier” that would fracture ecosystems, economies, and geopolitical order. While regional cooling might offer a deceptive respite in the North Atlantic, the broader consequences—runaway southern warming, mass migration, and interconnected tipping points—would dominate humanity’s trajectory. The window to prevent collapse is narrowing: the recovery, once lost, would take millennia.

Hansen et al. (2025) advocate for immediate, radical policy shifts: a global carbon fee-and-dividend system to phase out fossil fuels, coupled with investments in modern nuclear energy and solar radiation modification (SRM) research as a temporary buffer. They stress that current IPCC scenarios rely on implausible carbon capture assumptions and ignore aerosol forcing revisions, putting the 2°C target out of reach without SRM. However, they caution that SRM alone cannot substitute for emissions cuts—delayed action risks locking in AMOC collapse and meters of sea-level rise by 2100.

Policy Imperatives: 2025 Urgencies

MethaneSAT-2 Deployment: Launch AI-equipped satellites to track subsea and permafrost emissions in real time.
Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI): Fast-track trials to offset cloud loss (e.g., SCoPEx Phase II).
Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement: Scale up carbonate addition to preserve CO₂ uptake.

Immediate emissions cuts, global cooperation on refugee resettlement, and investments in climate resilience are non-negotiable. The alternative is a world unrecognizable—a destabilized Earth system with diminishing room for human agency.

Safe Havens? The Myth of Escape

While no region would remain entirely unaffected by an AMOC collapse, certain areas may offer relative safety due to geographic, climatic, or geopolitical advantages. New Zealand and Tasmania are often cited as refuges due to their isolation, temperate climates, and lower exposure to extreme droughts or sea-level rise compared to low-lying tropical regions. Their southern latitudes might buffer against the worst of Northern Hemisphere cooling and tropical heating, though accelerated Southern Ocean warming could disrupt fisheries and rainfall patterns. Inland elevated regions like the Rocky Mountains (Canada/U.S.) or the Andes (South America) could avoid coastal flooding while benefiting from colder temperatures offsetting global warming. Scandinavia, despite facing abrupt cooling, has resilient infrastructure, freshwater resources, and low population density, which may help manage agricultural shifts. However, these regions would face challenges: mass migration pressures, disrupted global trade, and potential conflicts over resources like arable land and water. Even “safe” zones would need to adapt rapidly to erratic weather, biodiversity loss, and societal instability. Ultimately, survivability hinges less on geography and more on equitable governance, adaptive capacity, and global cooperation to mitigate cascading crises.

Reference List:

Barnes, Elizabeth A., Noah S. Diffenbaugh, and Sonia I. Seneviratne. (2025) – “Combining climate models and observations to predict the time remaining until regional warming thresholds are reached.” Environmental Research Letters 20, no. 014008 (2025). https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ad91ca
Chudley, Thomas R., Ian M. Howat, Michalea D. King, and Emma J. MacKie. (2025). “Increased Crevassing Across Accelerating Greenland Ice Sheet Margins.” Nature Geoscience 18: 148–153. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01636-6.
Curran, James C., and Samuel A. Curran. (2025) “Natural Sequestration of Carbon Dioxide Is in Decline: Climate Change Will Accelerate.” Weather 80, no. 3 (2025): 85–88. https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/wea.7668
Freitas, Nancy L., Katey Walter Anthony, Josefine Lenz, Rachel C. Porras, and Margaret S. Torn. (2025). “Substantial and Overlooked Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Deep Arctic Lake Sediment.” Nature Geoscience 18: 65–71. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01614-y
Goessling, Helge F., Thomas Rackow, and Thomas Jung. (2024). “Recent Global Temperature Surge Intensified by Record-Low Planetary Albedo.” Science, December 6, 2024. https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/59831/1/adq7280_Merged_AcceptedVersion_v20241206.pdf
Hansen, J. E., et al. (2025). Global warming has accelerated: Are the United Nations and the public well-informed? Earth’s Future, 13(3), e2024EF004716.
Hansen, Karina, Nanna B. Karlsson, Penelope How, Ebbe Poulsen, John Mortensen, and Søren Rysgaard. (2025). “Winter Subglacial Meltwater Detected in a Greenland Fjord.” Nature Geoscience 18: 219–225. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01652-0.
IPCC. (2023). Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II, and III to the Sixth Assessment Report.
Maraun, Douglas, Reinhard Schiemann, Albert Ossó, and Martin Jury. (2025) “Changes in Event Soil Moisture-Temperature Coupling Can Intensify Very Extreme Heat Beyond Expectations.” Nature Communications16, no. 1 (2025): 734. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56109-0
Müller, Jens Daniel, N. Gruber, B. Carter, R. Feely, M. Ishii, N. Lange, S. K. Lauvset, et al. (2023). “Decadal Trends in the Oceanic Storage of Anthropogenic Carbon From 1994 to 2014.” AGU Advances 4. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2023AV000875
Rahmstorf, S. (2006). Thermohaline ocean circulation. Encyclopedia of Quaternary Sciences, 1, 739–750.
Seo, Ki-Weon, Dongryeol Ryu, Taehwan Jeon, Kookhyoun Youm, Jae-Seung Kim, Earthu H. Oh, Jianli Chen, James S. Famiglietti, and Clark R. Wilson. (2025). “Abrupt Sea Level Rise and Earth’s Gradual Pole Shift Reveal Permanent Hydrological Regime Changes in the 21st Century.” Science 387 (6741): 1408–1413. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq6529
Smeed, D. A. et al. (2014). Observed decline of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation 2004-2012. Oc. Sci. 10, 29–38.
The Maritime Executive. (2025). “Spanish Expedition Finds Evidence for Methane Leaks in Antarctica.” February 23, 2025. URL.
Wang, Guanqin, Yunfeng Peng, Leiyi Chen, Benjamin W. Abbott, Philippe Ciais, Luyao Kang, Yang Liu, Qinlu Li, Josep Peñuelas, Shuqi Qin, Pete Smith, Yutong Song, Jens Strauss, Jun Wang, Bin Wei, Jianchun Yu, Dianye Zhang, and Yuanhe Yang. (2024). “Enhanced Response of Soil Respiration to Experimental Warming Upon Thermokarst Formation.” Nature Geoscience 17, no. 6 (2024): 532–38. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01440-2

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Post Script Notes

Someone on Reddit questioned my essay’s findings by posting a study, published in January of this year, which came to a very different conclusion about an AMOC collapse.

After analyzing their posted study, severe limitations and shortcomings were found in it.

While Terhaar et al. (2025) provide valuable insights into historical AMOC variability, their conclusions are constrained by outdated CMIP6 assumptions and a narrow focus on heat flux correlations. My essay’s integration of non-linear feedbacks, post-2020 observations, and policy-critical timelines offers a more accurate and urgent assessment of AMOC collapse risks. The Terhaar study’s dismissal of proxy-based reconstructions and tipping point cascades reflects a methodological conservatism that underestimates the compounding crises outlined in my essay.

The scientific studies and findings, supporting my essay’s multi-disciplinary, forward-looking approach, capture the accelerating planetary emergency better than Terhaar’s retrospective, model-limited analysis.

Here are the details:

Key Differences in Approach and Limitations of Terhaar et al. (2025)

Reliance on CMIP6 Models and Air-Sea Heat FluxesTerhaar’s study uses 24 CMIP6 models to argue that air-sea heat flux anomalies (not SST proxies) better reconstruct AMOC variability. They conclude that the AMOC at 26.5°N shows no significant decline from 1963–2017, attributing past variability to natural oscillations.
- Overlooked:
  - Accelerating feedbacks post-2017 (e.g., Greenland/Antarctic meltwater acceleration, methane surges) are excluded. Their analysis ends in 2017, missing critical post-2020 observations of ice sheet destabilization and freshwater forcing.
  - Non-linear tipping points: The study assumes linear relationships between heat fluxes and AMOC strength, ignoring threshold-driven collapses (e.g., freshwater hosing from Greenland, permafrost methane).
Dismissal of Proxy ReliabilityTerhaar critiques SST-based proxies (e.g., Caesar et al., 2018) as unreliable, arguing that SPG SST anomalies are confounded by atmospheric variability.
- Overlooked:
  - Multi-proxy synthesis: My essay integrates diverse proxies (methane hydrates, oxygen depletion, Amazon dieback) to capture interconnected Earth system feedbacks, not just SST.
  - Emergent constraints: Terhaar dismisses emergent constraints from CMIP5 but does not account for revised aerosol forcing and climate sensitivity (Hansen et al., 2025) that amplify AMOC collapse risks in newer models.
Limited Treatment of Anthropogenic ForcingThe study attributes AMOC variability to natural heat flux oscillations and downplays human-driven forcings. For example, they note aerosol reductions post-2020 but do not quantify their impact on AMOC freshening.
- Overlooked:
  - Aerosol “double whammy”: My essay highlights Hansen et al.’s (2025) finding that reduced sulfur emissions (post-IMO 2020 regulations) removed a critical cooling mask, accelerating warming and AMOC destabilization.
  - Methane feedbacks: Terhaar’s analysis excludes subsea methane hydrate destabilization (Semiletov et al., 2024) and permafrost thaw (Turetsky et al., 2025), which accelerate freshwater input and reduce ocean carbon uptake.
Ignored Tipping Point CascadesTerhaar focuses on historical AMOC variability but does not model future interactions with Greenland ice loss, Amazon dieback, or Southern Ocean warming.
- Overlooked:
  - Interconnected tipping points: My essay emphasizes that AMOC collapse would trigger Greenland disintegration (+7 m sea-level rise), permafrost methane release, and Antarctic ice loss—feedbacks excluded from CMIP6’s equilibrium simulations.
  - Reduced carbon sink capacity: Terhaar’s heat budget analysis does not account for declining ocean carbon uptake (Boers et al., 2024) or vegetation loss, which add 0.3–0.5°C to warming by 2100.

Why My Essay Is More Accurate

Holistic Earth System PerspectiveIntegrates methane hydrates, cloud feedbacks, and ice sheet dynamics—factors excluded from Terhaar’s CMIP6-based analysis. These feedbacks compress AMOC collapse timelines to 2038–2045 under SSP5-8.5.
Policy-Relevant UrgencyHighlights accelerated warming post-2023 (0.4°C spike from aerosol reductions) and the need for solar radiation modification (SRM) research—issues absent in Terhaar’s study.
Observational ConsistencyAligns with recent observations:
- - RAPID array data: Shows AMOC at its weakest in 1,600 years (Caesar et al., 2021).
  - Greenland meltwater: Now 360 Gt/year, double 1990s rates (Ditlevsen et al., 2024).

If I was wrong, I would fully admit it; but the facts state otherwise.

Greta Thunberg Speaks the Horrific Truth of Humanity’s Fate

28 Saturday Sep 2019

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Pollution

≈ 42 Comments

Tags

Abrupt Climate Change, Anthropogenic Mass Extinction, Climate Refugees, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Coral Die-Off, Deforestation, Dr. Kevin Anderson, Ecological Overshoot, Exponential Growth, Extinction of Man, Financial Elite, Fossil Fuel Industry, Greta Thunberg, Hubris of Man, Hurricane Dorian, Jason Box, Keeling Curve, Methane Release from Thawing Permafrost, Micro-Plastic Pollution, Mid-Pliocene Era, Neil Adger, Nicholas P. Money, Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction, Rachel Warren, Resource Depletion, Sea Level Rise, The Great Dying, Will Steffan

When a 16-year-old girl named Greta Thunberg spoke with trembling anger of the unspeakable crimes today’s adults are committing against her and future generations, a chill ran down my spine. She will be alive to see the pulses of rapid sea level rise, the unraveling of industrial agriculture, the mass migration of hundreds of millions of climate refugees, and the disintegration of Earth’s biosphere. Today’s world with the ever-worsening breakdown of the biosphere is much more dangerous than during the Cold War when the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation hung in the air like the sword of Damocles, as expressed by President Kennedy: “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness.” Not only does the threat of nuclear war persist, the sword of abrupt climate breakdown now looms ever larger as governments are rendered impotent.

Scientists and the Red Cross recently warned the world is currently suffering at least one climate catastrophe per week and nearly two million people per week are needing humanitarian assistance. A UN global assessment confirms the planet is currently experiencing 2,500 conflicts over fossil fuel, water, food and land — conflicts directly related to the ongoing collapse of the earth’s biodiversity. No civilization in history has faced a complete reshuffling of the planet’s biosphere, let alone the ecological armageddon brought on by a Pandora’s box of pollutants from industrial civilization. Microplastics are literally raining from the sky. Irrevocably out-of-step with the natural world, modern civilization is destroying its host ecosystem by altering the geochemistry of the planet. A mass extinction event unlike any in Earth’s history is underway. Even if a small fraction of the global population survives this overshoot, it will take 10 million years for biodiversity to bounce back. Since atmospheric CO₂will ultimately be drawn down through a very slow natural process called sedimentation, the Earth will not reach pre-industrial CO₂levels againfor more than 100,000 years. The last time CO₂levels were this high was 3 millions years ago during the Pliocene when temperatures were 3-4°C(5-7°F) higher globally than today, and sea levels were 15-20 meters(50-65 feet) higher. It was too warm for glacial ice sheets to even exist in the northern hemisphere.

At 412 ppm and rising, experts said temperature rises of 3-4C are likely now locked in.

What does any honest scientist have to say about mankind’s prospects in a 4°C world:

“There is a widespread view that a +4ºC future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond adaptation, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems and has a high probability of not being stable.”
Professor Kevin Anderson, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (Video, 58:00)

“We have already observed impacts of climate change on agriculture. We have assessed the amount of climate change we can adapt to. There’s a lot we can’t adapt to even at 2C. At 4C the impacts are very high and we cannot adapt to them.”
Rachel Warren, University of East Anglia

“There is a growing sense of panic in those who really understand what a 4°C world might be like.”
Prof. Will Steffan, Director of the Australian National University Climate Change Institute

“Thinking through the implications of 4 degrees of warming shows that the impacts are so significant that the only real adaptation strategy is to avoid that at all cost because of the pain and suffering that is going to cost.”
Prof. Neil Adger, University of Exeter

“…there is also no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible. A 4°C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation, with many of these risks spread unequally. It is likely that the poor will suffer most and the global community could become more fractured, and unequal than today. The projected 4°C warming simply must not be allowed to occur.”
World Bank report (2012) Turn down the heat: why a 4°C warmer world must be avoided

“If we don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ultimately stabilize CO₂ — and we also have to draw down a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere. If we don’t achieve that, there’s no real prospect for a stable society or even a governable society…”
Jason Box, Prof in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland

People are completely oblivious to our dependence on the complex adaptive systems that allow humans to exist and persist. To be clear, when the global temperature rises by 4°C within this century it will be faster than the blink of a geological eye, and we, along with 80% or more of the planet’s species are finished. 96% of all marine species and more than two-thirds of terrestrial species perished during the Great Dying at the Permian-Triassic interface. Global mean temperature at that time rose an estimated 5-8°C over a timespan of 3,000-20,000 years. A 4°C rise over just two centuries will be a rate of warming 15 to 100 times faster than that past extinction event. At this speed of warming, regions would experience temperature spikes of 10-15 degrees above normal in some months. Ecosystems would implode and the services they provide that sustain us would be obliterated. Virtually every vertebrate species on Earth would disappear, along with most plants and many invertebrates.

At just 1°C of warming we are already seeing major ecosystems such as coral reefs unraveling. Hurricanes so powerful that they require a new category now barrel across the Atlantic ocean and completely decimate islands; the cataclysmic Storms of our Grandchildren that Hansen warned about have only just begun. Arctic permafrost melt has already exceeded 2090 projections. It was economist William Nordhaus that set the 2°C warming target in 1975, not scientists. What did he get for this dangerous speculation, divorced from empirics? The Nobel, naturally. These days he is saying 3.5°C is just fine. John Kerry says we cannot leave the climate emergency in the hands of the neanderthals in power, but I dare say that anyone promoting mainstream economic theory is guilty of omnicide. Capitalism’s “extractivism” has turned the entire planet into a sacrifice zone.

Grand Bahama island before/after Hurricane Dorian made landfall, Sept 1, 2019

Humanity has essentially documented its own demise for the last half century while the Keeling curve inexorably rises faster than ever. As MIT Prof Daniel Rothman says, “When carbon levels in the atmosphere spike dramatically, the web of life collapses.” We are now seeing a record 10ppm of CO₂rise every four years and have have failed to curb emissions growth let alone move towards any sort of carbon neutral world. Alternative energies remain a sliver of total global energy consumption. In fact, “the annual increase in global energy use is greater than the increase in renewable energy, meaning fossil fuel use continues to grow.”

The rise of political ‘populism’ and the election of reactionary politicians in the U.S. and abroad has thrown yet another monkey wrench into any possibility of tackling the climate crisis. The demagogic Trump administration is simply burying any scientific evidence and ignoring its government’s own research on such things as the recent surge in climate refugees from Latin America due to climate-induced food insecurity. Russia and Brazil have both encouraged and precipitated the wildfire infernos raging in their countries. The catastrophe unfolding in the Amazon is a direct result of President Bolsonaro’s neoliberal policies designed to plunder the Amazon much like Trump’s dismantling of the EPA and deregulation of corporations. Both ignore the science of climate change and the reality of ecological collapse. In the case of Russia’s Putin, it was a cold economic calculus: “If the cost of putting out these remote fires is greater than the profit that could be made from selling the timber, they can decide to let it burn.”

And then there’s the global debt bomb of $250 trillion waiting to explode, not to mention the $200-250 trillion global carbon debt which increases by 16 trillion every year. Meanwhile, banks are quietly shielding themselves from climate catastrophe at taxpayers’ expense by shifting risky coastal mortgages off their books and onto the federal government’s Fannie and Freddie programs. Just as the U.S. government is leaving vulnerable countries to fend for themselves, so are private institutions unloading the risks onto the public. For those at the very top of our economic pyramid scheme who control public policy, dwindling resources will be kept first and foremost for them while everyone else is treated as collateral damage. This dereliction of responsibility, this cutting and running, is how the deteriorating conditions of the world are being handled. Throughout history, society’s elite have shown the same arrogance and hubris in the face of impending calamity. For example, the Fall of the Roman Empire:

If you read the chronicles of the early 5th century AD, you get the impression of total mayhem, with barbarian armies crisscrossing Europe and few, if any, Roman nobles and commanders trying to defend the Empire. Most of them seemed to be maneuvering to find a safe place where they could find safety for themselves. We don’t know what was the final destiny of Rutilius Namatianus but, since he had the time to finish his poem, we may imagine that he could build himself a castle in Southern France and his descendants may have become feudal lords. But not everyone made it. For instance, Paulinus of Pella, another rich Roman, contemporary of Namatianus, desperately tried to hold on his possessions in Europe, eventually considering himself happy just for having been able of surviving to old age.

We see a pattern here: when the rich Romans saw that things were going really out of control, they scrambled to save themselves while, at the same time, denying that things were so bad as they looked. We can see that clearly in Namatianus’ poem: he never ever hints that Rome was doomed. At most, he says, it was a temporary setback and soon Rome will be great again.

Thunberg’s speech alluded to such behavior by the polluting nations:

For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight. You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.

Yes, Greta, they are evil; they have access to every expert on the seriousness of the crisis and they are building walls and saving their own skin while continuing business-as-usual. Lest we forget, the fossil fuel industry’s own scientists accurately predicted the life-threatening effects of its product decades ago and not only did they do nothing to stop it, they funded and orchestrated a vast network of climate denial propaganda which continues to this day and have raced to exploit even more fossil fuels from the melting Arctic. When you consider that billions of people are going to die as a result, their actions become by far the greatest crimes against humanity ever committed. Make no mistake, our society is trading a livable planet for an unsustainable way of life that is irreparably depleting finite resources and altering the earth for eons, making it uninhabitable for organized human societies. Each day of business-as-usual further degrades the planet’s biodiversity.

“As the temperature rises, the patricians will seek refuge as polar migrants, or set sail on heavily armed ocean liners. Millions more will live in underground cities, anywhere to escape the sun. Dazzling reports of new methods for sopping up the gigatons of carbon dioxide will create ripples of enthusiasm and then fade in the next news cycle. Fisheries and agriculture will collapse, drugs will provide little solace, and everyone will curl up in a foetal position in the end, like the ash-entombed victims at Pompeii, whimpering in the inescapable heat. The likelihood of this outcome increases as the years pass and the smoke rises.”
~ Nicholas P. Money, THE SELFISH APE: Human Nature and Our Path to Extinction

"The latest climate simulation models are projecting temperature increases of up to 7°C by the end of this century. Unless you have a magical faith in technology, then that level of temperature rise signifies the potential end of our species…"https://t.co/kdldvQXGCa pic.twitter.com/a5DUZOXOG9

— xraymike79 (@xraymike79) November 2, 2019

Runaway Climate Change in the Arctic is Just The Beginning

21 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by xraymike79 in Climate Change, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

≈ 45 Comments

Tags

Aerosol Effect, Arctic Ice, Climate Change, Climate Feedback Loops, Climate Tipping Points, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, David Wasdell, Environmental Collapse, Envisionation, Global Dimming, Global Famine, Greenland Ice Sheet Melt, Methane Release from Thawing Permafrost, Release of Ocean Methane Hydrates, Runaway Climate Change, The Apollo-Gaia Project, West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melt

An astute reader has directed me to a couple of brilliant, just-released videos done by David Wasdell (produced by Envisionation) which bring into focus the rapid changes that are occurring in the Arctic and what the horrific implications are for the rest of the planet. I have watched both videos and posted an abbreviated version of them below. The original transcript of the two videos is here. We can see that even the worse case scenarios plotted by mainstream climate models have grossly underestimated what is happening in the Arctic. As Mr. Wasdell states, “The Arctic… is the fastest moving response to global warming and climate change anywhere on the planet.”

One of the reasons for the Arctic’s rapid temperature increase is that it is not being shielded by industrial pollutants that once came from the Northern Hemisphere. The aerosol effect is now coming primarily from the burning of poor quality coal in Asia(China and India). From roughly 1940 to 1980 there was a massive increase in power production during the Great Acceleration of the West. Remember the acid rain and smog from the 50’s and 60’s? In 1970, the U.S. Congress imposed acid emission regulations through the Clean Air Act which was strengthened two decades later in 1990. Sulfate and nitrate levels in precipitation decreased by some 40 percent since that time. This lifted the manmade protective aerosol shield, also called “global dimming”. Temperatures then started to rise again, but have leveled off since 1997 due to the recent industrialization of China and India, the effect of which has been to artificially cool down global temperature once more.

The effects of global dimming have been enhanced during this period [Asian Industrialization] by the mixing of more surface heat down to deeper ocean water, by the dominance of La Nina (cooler) conditions in the Pacific, and by a prolonged period of minimal solar radiation. The absence of temperature increase has also blocked all amplification from the temperature-dependent feedback mechanisms.

All of these eras(The Great Acceleration, The Clean Air Act, and Asia’s Industrialization) and their effect on global temperature are shown in the chart below:

Climate-change deniers are of course crowing and saying “Although carbon dioxide concentrations have gone on increasing, and emissions are running at a higher rate than when temperature was still rising, temperature has not changed. So obviously it is independent of carbon dioxide. So we can forget all about climate change and continue to use fossil energy without any worry about contributing to global warming!” That is a complete and utter myth!

Remember what happened after the Second World War? The same thing is happening today.

So what happens when Asia, specifically China, cleans up and improves its air quality? Global temperatures will rise again.

The Arctic Meltdown

Free from the effects of global dimming that heavy post WW II industrial activity produced in the northern hemisphere, the Arctic air is relatively clean, as compared to the rest of the world right now. The greenhouse effect from CO2 is therefore allowed to occur uninhibited at a much faster rate, setting off numerous positive feedback loops:

– increased Arctic temperature raises water-vapor concentration which in turn elevates the heating

– floating ice and land-based ice begin to melt and more sea and land surface is exposed to the sun’s rays, inducing further ice melt from the diminishing Arctic albedo effect

– the sea heats up from the disintegration of floating ice and the land heats up from diminishing ice cover

Hyper-exponential Increase of Temperature in the Arctic Area

The worst-case prediction by current climate models of an ice-free Arctic by about 2075 are way off mark because they employ crude linear extrapolations that do not account for complex, self-reinforcing feedback loops. the Arctic will actually experience its first occurrence of zero ice area at the end of September 2015 according to Wasdell’s studies.

Through the use of submarine-based sonar measurements and satellite data, a PIOMASS graph of yearly minimum Arctic ice volume or mass has been constructed which also shows the first occurrence of no floating Arctic sea-ice in 2015.

Another graph, known on the internet as the Arctic Death Spiral, shows the collapse in the total volume of Arctic ice measured in thousands of cubic kilometers. The center of the graph is zero and the values increase up to 30km³ as you move out from the center. Each year is represented from 1979 up to 2013 in a clockwise orientation. Each month of the year has its own color and is plotted in a clockwise fashion as well. Being the month with the least amount of ice cover, September is the innermost line represented by the color black.

You can see that September ice volume plunged from 7km³in 2009 down to 3.3km³in 2012. Indeed all months of each successive year are pulling downwards towards the center of zero ice volume. According to these calculations of total ice volume melt, the first year of an ice-free September moves up one year earlier to September 2014.

In the 1980’s, the mass of floating Arctic sea ice at the end of September was staying roughly stable. By the 1990’s it was losing about 4.5 thousand cubic kilometres per decade. In the 2000’s that moved up to about 7.8 thousand cubic kilometres per decade, while in the last three years the decadal rate has surged to around 13.8 thousand cubic kilometres. So we have another of these behaviours in which the smaller the mass becomes, the faster the rate of loss. The behaviour is not linear, it is represented by an exponential curve…

…And then there is one other thing to take into account:

Ice does not just melt and thin gradually to a wafer as would be implied in these projections. When it reduces to about 45 centimetres thick it begins to break up under the impact of waves and tides and storms. The result is a lot of brash, smaller broken pieces of ice. Now broken ice of this nature melts very much faster because warmer water and warmer air and solar energy can get round to its exposed surfaces. The melt-rate increases dramatically. These curves that we have been exploring take no account of this final break-up.

So, while we would expect the first occurrence of zero ice by the end of September 2014, there is a distinct possibility that under the impact of ice break-up (of which interestingly we were already seeing signs in March 2013) the Arctic Ocean could be ice free at the end of September in 2013.

Consequences and Implications

– Runaway Climate Change in the Arctic: The CO2 trigger has set off multiple factors such as the water-vapour feedback, the ice-albedo feedback and other positive feedback loops to exponentially accelerate ice loss in the Arctic as shown in the above graphs.

– Increasing Ice-Free Window: As mentioned earlier, September is the month with the least amount of ice and each successive year has seen a smaller and smaller volume of ice at that time. We are approaching the year when September will be ice-free, leaving the door open for the sun’s rays to heat up the ocean and further accelerate ice loss in the Arctic. This is like a burglar getting a foothold in a door that has been cracked open, allowing him to use his crowbar to fully pry open up the door that was once safely closed. An ice-free month of September that will soon open up in 2014 or 2015 will allow the sun’s solar energy to expand that ice-free window year after year after year.

– Accelerating Temperature: The expanding ice-free window described above will accelerate average temperatures upwards year after year after year, intensifying all feedback loops.

– Tundra Impact: Warmer Arctic temperatures flow over the land, melting tundra permafrost and releasing methane as well as activating bacteria which feed on exposed dead vegetation which in turn release even more CO2 and methane. The melting Tundra takes longer to refreeze in Autumn which further decreases snow cover. Melting Tundra releases warm waters which runs off into the northern seas, warming and desalinating shallow coastal surface waters.

– Methane Release: Wave energy, tidal behaviour and storm effects from a warming and increasingly ice-free Arctic are acting to disturb ancient methane deposits at the sea floor. These methane deposits are called “clathrates”, a combination of methane and ice crystals. The warmer the water gets, the more methane is allowed to reach the water’s surface and escape into the atmosphere. Fossil ice filled with ancient plant matter and detritus is also beginning to melt and release methane. The combination of Tundra methane and deep-sea methane escaping into the atmosphere further increases the greenhouse effect, enabling methane release to speed up and create an even more potent greenhouse effect. Thus another runaway feedback process has been activated.

– Melting Greenland Ice-Cap: The melting is accelerating and releasing water into the glacial cracks and down into the base of the ice sheet, enabling the calving of glaciers and discharge of icebergs into the sea.

…So the collapse of the ice-sheet could become exponential and could happen quite quickly. As that occurs, large quantities of cold fresh water are discharged into the North Atlantic and that can have significant effects on the drivers of the Gulf Stream, the thermohaline circulation. As that slows down (and we would expect it to under these conditions) then the heat that at presently comes via ocean currents to the north- western seaboard of Europe begins to decline. In a strange anomaly, the rate of change of temperature in north-west Europe will slow down as Arctic temperatures climb.

– Sea-Level Rise: The melting of the Greenland ice-cap would have catastrophic consequences for civilization and its large percentage of coastal urban centers. Up to about seven metres of global sea-level change could happen on a decadal basis. The West Antarctic ice field is also subject to melting and disintegration, although at a much slower pace than Greenland, which would act to raise sea levels even higher.

– Jet-Stream Behaviour: The energy of the Jet Stream is driven by the difference in temperature between the Arctic and the warm sub-tropical air of lower latitudes. As the Arctic warms and the temperature difference decreases, the jet stream around the North Pole begins to slow down and get sluggish or mangled. Colder northern air is being pulled south and warmer tropical air is being sucked up north to the Arctic, further warming the Arctic. This change in the jet stream causes “blocking patterns of extreme drought, extreme rain, extreme cold, extreme heat, and extreme unpredictability.”

And that is where the nub comes. With extreme unpredictability food production is disrupted in the bread-baskets of the northern hemisphere. We are talking about the corn and wheat-producing areas of North America and Europe, of Russia and the Ukraine, and across to the wheat and rice producing areas of northern China. We have already seen major loss of food production capacity in the northern hemisphere as a result of what has already taken place. Over the next few years that will accelerate significantly. There are economic issues; there are humanitarian issues; there are political issues that all stem from that instability. We are already seeing hedge funds and pension and other investment funds buying up future food in anticipation of future shortages and high prices that all stem from this phenomenon. That means it is going to be very difficult for the poorer countries of the world to buy food on the open market to enable their populations to survive. It will be even more difficult for the Aid agencies to buy up surplus food (which is in short supply and much more expensive) for distribution in conditions of humanitarian disaster. Because of the economic spin-off there will be financial destabilization in the wake of food shortages. That leads inevitably to political destabilization. So we have some really important issues to deal with that all stem from the implications of the phenomena we are now understanding in the terms of Arctic Dynamics.

– Impact on Global Dynamics: What we see in the Arctic – runaway climate change – could be in store for the rest of the planet which, at the moment, is still in stasis. Once the “aerosol effect” or “global dimming” of industrial pollution is removed, we will see further temperature increases. Other positive feedback loops which are specific to various regions of the world could come into play like they have in the Arctic.

The implications of jet-stream behaviour and Arctic dynamics could spin-off into our economics, into our food production, into abandonment of the poor, into the inability to sustain a population of 8, 9 or even 10 billion people, into our survival as a species. All this will inevitably follow unless we are able to intervene, to slow it down, to bring it to a halt and reverse it. Without that intervention, global dynamics hold a dark future for humanity and a dark future for the biosphere of which we are a part. It is time to take action, not only for the Arctic but for the whole global crisis in which we are all involved.

Permian Extinction Redux and an Update on Climate Tipping Points

05 Sunday May 2013

Posted by xraymike79 in Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Amazon Destruction, Anthropocentrism, Arctic Ice Melt, Bark Beetle Infestation, Boreal Forest Destruction, Climate Change, Climate Tipping Points, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Eco-Apocalypse, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Global Die-Off of Forests, Greenland Ice Sheet Melt, Inverted Totalitarianism, Jay Hanson of DieOff.org, Mass Die Off, Methane Clathrate Gun, Methane Release from Thawing Permafrost, Runaway Climate Change, Sam Carana of Arctic-News.blogspot.com, The Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation (THC), The Indian Summer Monsoon, The Sahara and Sahel in Africa, The THOR Project, Under a Green Sky: Global Warming - the Mass Extinctions of the Past - and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future, West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melt

The extinction event which I talked about in ‘Free Markets, Corporate Profits and Mass Extinctions‘ looks by all unbiased scientific accounts to be happening again. Instead of volcanoes inducing climate change, today it is man’s industrial activities, specifically the burning of stored ancient sunlight, that is bringing about the end of the world as we know it. We will soon breach 400 ppm of atmospheric CO2 levels:

The ratio of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere is flirting with 400 parts per million, a level last seen about 2.5 million to 5 million years ago, according to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego….

…The speed at which Earth’s atmosphere has reached that density of carbon dioxide, a known greenhouse gas, has scientists alarmed.

Scientists estimate that average temperatures during the Pliocene rose as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit. Sea levels during that 2.8-million-year epoch ranged between 16-131 feet higher than current levels, according to Richard Norris, a Scripps geologist.

“I think it is likely that all these ecosystem changes could recur, even though the time scales for the Pliocene warmth are different than the present,” Norris said. Heating the ocean probably will cause sea level rises and change the Ph balance of the ocean, affecting a wide array of marine life, he said. “Our dumping of heat and CO₂ into the ocean is like making investments in a pollution bank,” he said…

Let’s go over and update the major tipping points again(covered earlier here and here) which are currently in play:

1.) Disintegration of the Arctic Ice Sheet:

2.) Disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet:

Jason Box speaks the language of Manhattans. Not the drink—the measuring unit.

As an expert on Greenland who has traveled 23 times to the massive, mile thick northern ice sheet, Box has shown an uncanny ability to predict major melts and breakoffs of Manhattan-sized ice chunks. A few years back, he foretold the release of a “4x Manhattans” piece of ice from Greenland’s Petermann Glacier, one so big that once afloat it was dubbed an “ice island.” In a scientific paper published in February of 2012, Box further predicted “100 % melt area over the ice sheet” within another decade of global warming. As it happened, the ice sheet’s surface almost completely melted just a month later in July—an event that, in Box’s words, “signals the beginning of the end for the ice sheet.”

Box, who will speak at next week’s Climate Desk Live briefing in Washington, D.C., pulls no punches when it comes to attributing all of this to humans and their fossil fuels. “Those who claim it’s all cycles just don’t understand that humans are driving the cycle right now, and for the foreseeable future,” he says. And the coastal consequences of allowing Greenland to continue its melting—and pour 23 feet’s worth of sea level into the ocean over the coming centuries—are just staggering. “If you’re the mayor of Hamburg, or Shanghai, or Philadelphia, I think it’s in your job description that you think forward a century,” says Box. “They’re completely inundated by the year 2200.”…

3.) Unleashing of Tundra methane clathrates and sub-sea methane deposits from (1) and (2):

Courtesy of the work by Sam Carana, the multitude of reinforcing feedback loops from the loss of the Arctic Ice Sheet are listed below:

Albedo feedback: Accelerated warming in the Arctic speeds up the decline of ice and snow cover, further accelerating albedo change.
Methane feedback: Methane releases in the Arctic further add to the acceleration of warming in the Arctic, further contributing to weaken Arctic methane stores and increasing the danger that methane releases will trigger runaway global warming.
Currents feedback: Sea ice loss can cause vertical sea currents to weaken, reducing the cooling effect they had on the seabed. This can thus further cause sediments to warm up that can contain huge amounts of methane in the form of free gas and hydrates.
Storms feedback: Increased frequency and intensity of storms can cause substantially more vertical mixing of the sea water column, causing more warming of the seabed, thus further contributing to the warming of sediments, as above.
Storms feedback: Accelerated warming in the Arctic can result in more storms, causing mixing of cold Arctic air with warmer air from outside the Arctic. The net result is a warmer Arctic.
Storms feedback: More open waters can result in more storms that can push the ice across the Arctic Ocean, and possibly all the way out of the Arctic Ocean.
Storms feedback: Storms also cause more waves that break up the sea ice. Smaller pieces of ice melt quicker than large pieces. A large flat and solid layer of ice is also less susceptible to wind than many lighter and smaller pieces of ice that will stand out above the water and capture the wind like the sails of yachts.
Storms feedback: Storms cause waters to become more wavy. Calm waters can reflect much sunlight back into space, acting as a mirror, especially when the sun shines under a low angle. Wavy waters, on the other hand, absorb more sunlight.
Fires feedback: More extreme weather comes with heatwaves and storms. Thus, this is in part another storms feedback. The combination of storms and fires can be deadly. Heatwaves can spark fires that, when fueled up by storms, turn into firestorms affecting huge areas and causing huge amounts of emissions. Storms can whip up particles that when deposited on ice, snow or the bare soil, can cause more sunlight to be absorbed.
Open doors feedback: Accelerated warming in the Arctic causes the polar vortex and jet stream to weaken, causing more extreme weather and making it easier for warm air to enter the Arctic.

4.) Disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet(covered here earlier):

Two papers released last week in the journal Nature Geoscience provide evidence that warming and melt in West Antarctica are occurring at levels that are highly unusual compared to natural variability.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet contains about 2.2 million cubic kilometers of ice; enough to raise global sea levels by 3 to 4m. What’s making glaciologists nervous is that the ice rests on bedrock which is below sea level; this makes it vulnerable to attack from below by a warming ocean as well as attack from above by increasing air temperatures.

5.) Destruction of the Amazon Rain Forest, and indeed all forests of the planet:

As some of us were heading off for the Easter holiday weekend, the Brazilian government was quietly releasing deforestation trends showing an increase in deforestation for the first time in five years.

These numbers use the DETER rapid response satellite system, a system that provides estimates of deforestation rates every month. Over the time period documented, August 2012 to February 2013, the rates increased an estimated 26.82% and an area of the Amazon larger than the size of the city of London disappeared.

In absolute numbers, that means 1,695 square kilometers (654 square miles) of forest have disappeared. That equals an area the size of 237,000 soccer fields…

…The increase in deforestation rates can be directly attributed to the Brazilian government’s systematic dismantling of the laws and agencies that protect the Amazon…

…President Dilma Rousseff’s approval of a new Forest Code, a law that provides amnesty for crimes committed after 2008 in the Amazon and reduces large areas of protected land, paved the way for the increase in deforestation. The president also structurally weakened government agencies like IBAMA, the federal environmental enforcement agency, so unfortunately it won’t be a surprise if deforestation continues to rise in the Amazon…

6.) Die-Off of Boreal Forests:

After more than a decade, the mountain pine beetle epidemic that surged through British Columbia appears finally to be in remission. Having devastated the province’s lodgepole pine forests, the insect is running out of food.

But forest managers now see new beetle infestations appearing at the edge of the Boreal Forest, in Alberta, and in the Yukon and Northwest Territories — areas well outside the insect’s historical range. As a warming climate lifts the temperature limitations that once kept the beetle in check, scientists fear it may continue its push across the continent, perhaps as far as the Atlantic Coast…

…Without debating the causes of global climate change the effects of forest dieback can be viewed factually. The earth is warming and droughts are increasing in severity and magnitude. Temperature and drought are major contributing factors to forest dieback, so more trees will be dying in the future. As more carbon is released from dead trees, especially in the Amazon and Boreal Forests, more greenhouse gasses are released into the atmosphere. Increased levels of greenhouse gasses increase the temperature of the atmosphere. The negative feedback loop is reinforced and the biological adaptations of the species determine its survival. Projections for dieback vary, but the threat of global climate change only stands to increase the rate of dieback. The issue is complex and models are intricate, so scientists have serious work ahead of them.^[8]

Scientists do not know the tipping points of climate change and can only estimate the timescales. When a tipping point, the critical threshold, is reached a small change in human activity can have long-term consequences on the environment. Two of the nine tipping points for major climate changes forcast for the next century are directly related to forest diebacks. Scientists are worried that forest dieback in the Amazon^[9] rain forest and the Boreal^[10] evergreen forest will trigger a tipping point in the next 50 years.^[2]… – source

7.) The Sahara and Sahel in Africa

It is difficult to estimate the overall ability to increase food production, but a recent analysis suggests that human consumption may be approaching the limits of the net primary plant production (NPP) — that is, the maximum photosynthetic production that is possible on the planet.

It is “not whether humans will reach the global NPP boundary but when they will do so.” It seems probable that the developed countries will continue their excessively high levels of consumption. The emerging economies are likely to continue to eat more protein and a larger slice of grain production in countries with an appropriate climate for grain production will be diverted to feeding animals, or ethanol to drive automobiles. A child born in the Sahel today could belong to the first generation to come to maturity in the contemporary world where the ability to feed large numbers of ecological refugees may well diminish. It is also possible that the secondary effects of the collision of population growth and climate change could create what scientists call an “asymmetrical uncertainty.” The possible consequences of this asymmetrical uncertainty on political processes and violence could range from a slow worsening of the current situation to extremely serious conflict over resources and threats to security. Biologically, adverse factors can interact in ways that can cause a rapid downward spiral. For example, as noted above, ambient temperatures over 29°C (84°F) lead to a rapid decline in crop yields.

[At least 95% of the food production in the Sahel is based on rain-fed agriculture. The agricultural sector employs, directly or indirectly, more than half of the Sahel’s population…Global warming will mean that in temperate lands, where much of the global crop production occurs, the most productive regions will migrate away from the equator. While the net aggregate change as a result of climate change at a global level may be slow, the regional effects in the Sahel will be more rapid, significant, and adverse.] – source

8.) The El Nino Southern Oscillation(ENSO):

Climate models appear to be unable to accurately predict ENSO changes. Although scientists can predict some large-scale and long-term effects of anthropogenic global warming, there remains a lot of unknowns about specific regional effects.

The problem may lie in the models’ inability to reproduce the cycling between the ENSO’s El Niño and La Niña phases, especially given that many scientists think that La Niña is the major driver of drought in the southwest. The ENSO “behaves much messier in the real world than in climate models”, says Jessica Tierney, a climate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts who has investigated the role of the ENSO in East African rainfall variability². “We’re not sure how it has varied in the past, and we don’t know how it might change in response to climate change. This is really one of the big uncertainties we’re facing.”

In addition to their failure to reproduce El Niño and La Niña, existing models do not fully capture other factors that influence rainfall, such as clouds and vegetation. But Smerdon adds that the atmospheric and oceanic dynamics that inhibit rainfall and favour prolonged drought may be essentially random and so almost unpredictable.

Last week’s findings highlight the broader challenge of predicting how precipitation patterns will change as the global climate warms. Models are often at odds over the very direction of regional changes. For example, different projections prepared for the Colorado Water Conservation Board disagree on whether mean precipitation in the state will increase or decrease by 2050 (ref. 3).

But the uncertainties don’t change the larger picture, scientists say. “Climate models are not perfect, but they do the big things really well,” says Tierney. “We can be pretty confident that the southwest will warm and that water will become scarcer.

However, new research indicates La Nina instead of El Nino conditions in a warming planet: [La Niña conditions are “mostly the opposite of those of El Niño.“]

…since the 1970s the atmospheric circulation patterns over the Pacific have tended to favor La Nina conditions over El Nino ones. And, they write: “The overall trend towards a stronger, La Niña-like Walker circulation is nearly concurrent with the observed increase in global average temperatures.”

9.) The Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation (THC):

From the THOR project…

We know from historical data that from these two climatic events – the Medieval Warm Period(the long stable warming period over Europe) and the Little Ice Age(a well-known described historical event) – that the temperature changed, and our big question is, “Does the ocean also respond in this very short time scale?”

And one of the major results and maybe one of the biggest prices is that the ocean and the thermohaline circulation(THC) respond to these thermal drivers within just a decade.

…What we are mostly concerned about is that there is a certain threshold which is then reached, a certain point of no return more or less. So we will have a trend where it’s getting warmer and warmer and warmer, and there will be no return from this warming… and that will change the whole system, the whole flow of the system, and the thermohaline circulation may be changed…

The major threats we see right now to the thermohaline circulation mainly derive from the Arctic region. We see increased melting from the Greenland Ice Sheet. We see a retreat of Arctic See Ice. We see large reorganizations in the Arctic ocean system which accumulate fresh water. All of these things are components which may affect the thermohaline circulation.”

The most important factors affecting changes in the conditions of the thermohaline circulation are:

1.) Global warming itself caused partly by greenhouse gases from human activity.

2.) From AGW, there will be more rainfall in the higher latitudes causing glacial melt.

Density in the water is a key factor for the THC driver mechanisms. Cold surface water temperatures make the water denser and high ocean salinity cause these waters to sink. These are the main engines that run the THC, but now more fresh water is entering the ocean through the melting of the Arctic and Greenland ice sheets.

When this is integrated into the models, a new development of the engines is revealed. In a warmer climate state, the engine of the Labrador Sea seems to simply collapse…

10.) The Indian Summer Monsoon:

…Writing in the journal Environmental Research Letters, researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Potsdam University in Germany said increasing temperatures and a change in strength of a Pacific Ocean circulation pattern known as the Pacific Walker circulation in spring could cause more frequent and severe changes in monsoon rainfall.

The Walker circulation usually brings areas of high pressure to the western Indian Ocean but in El Nino years this pattern gets shifted eastward, bringing high pressure over India and suppressing the monsoon, they said.

Computer simulations show that with future global warming the Walker circulation is likely to bring more high pressure over India even without an increase in El Nino events.

These failures of the monsoon system suggested by the simulation, defined as a 40 percent to 70 percent reduction in rainfall below normal levels, were unprecedented in the researchers’ observational record, taken from the India Meteorological Department dating back to the 1870s.

“Our study points to the possibility of even more severe changes to monsoon rainfall caused by climatic shifts that may take place later this century and beyond,” lead author Jacob Schewe said. – source

Yesterday at the site “America 2.0”, Jay Hanson of DieOff.org quoted from the book “Under a Green Sky: Global Warming – the Mass Extinctions of the Past – and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future” (with his own comments at the end):

Indeed if humans were able to set aside their anthropocentric view of the world, we would be frantically changing our behavior and rearranging our economic and social activities in order to prevent our own demise. But alas, if things aren’t right between one’s ears, then everything else is moot.

(Edit on 3-9-2015: The following video has been made “private”, but it can be viewed in its entirety here.)

More Evidence of Overly Conservative IPCC Estimates Hiding the Coming Catastrophe

10 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

A Less Cloudy Future: The Role of Subtropical Subsidence in Climate Sensitivity, ApocaDocs, Arctic Ice Melt, Atmospheric Scientists John Fasullo and Kevin Trenberth, Climate Change, Climate Feedback Loops, Climate Tipping Points, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Economic Collapse, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Imperiled Life: Revolution against Climate Catastrophe, Inverted Totalitarianism, Javier Sethness-Castro, Mass Die Off, Methane Release from Thawing Permafrost, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Overly Conservative IPCC Estimates

As is generally known by those studying the most important issue of our time, the forecasts by the IPCC are on the conservative side with scientists overly cautious not to include predictions which may be perceived as too pessimistic. A new study in the Science Journal shows that actually the more pessimistic climate models are much more accurate:

It’s important to note that the IPCC estimates do not fully take into account feedback loops and tipping points. Below is an excerpt from “Imperiled Life: Revolution against Climate Catastrophe” by Javier Sethness-Castro (2012):

…A 2009 study on climate change performed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology–less optimistic and thus perhaps more realistic, for example, than the IPCC’s reports to date regarding the prospect of achieving significant carbon emission reductions in the near future–finds there indeed to be a chance that temperatures will increase 7.4°C (13°F) over preindustrial temperatures by the century’s end, with a 90 percent chance that the temperature increase would range between 3.5°C and 7.4°C (4.8°F-13°F).(75) The study’s authors are quick to clarify that even their decidedly bleak conclusions might be underestimates, as they, like the IPCC, do not fully account for the various feedback mechanisms that could arise given catastrophic climate change. NASA’s Dennis Bushnell, for his part, estimates that the average global temperature increase expected during this century once these feedbacks have been accounted for would amount to between 6°C and 12°C (10.5°F-21°F).(76) Warming of such apocalyptic proportions would be entirely horrific: it should be remembered that it was a 6°C (10.5°F) increase that triggered the end-Permian mass extinction.(77)

Though a matter of controversy among climatologists, there is reason to fear that overheating beyond these levels could induce a runaway greenhouse effect that would give rise to what Hansen terms “the Venus syndrome,” whereby climatic change abruptly delivers Earth to a state resembling that of Venus, where life simply cannot exist.(78)…

And another two news stories from the last few days with more ominous signs of possible acceleration into climate chaos:

I’m finding it harder to carry on with blogging about reality without compartmentalizing all this grim news into some dark recess of my brain, only to be unlocked at night when I read up on this subject. I live two lives – one in the fake world that we all mill around in like zombies in order to survive… and the other in this blog researching the coming apocalypse. No wonder the Apocadocs turned to humor to deal with this stuff.

Get Me Off This Crazy Ride!

15 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Arctic Ice Melt, Capitalism, China's Massive Coal Consumption, Climate Change, CO2 Emissions and GDP, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Ecological Overshoot, Economic Collapse, Environmental Collapse, Global Warming, Greenhouse Gases, Industrial Agriculture, Intensified Global Water Cycles, Methane Release from Thawing Permafrost, Peak Oil, Projected World Energy Consumption, Sir Robert Watson

Speaking on climate change in the video above is Sir Robert Watson, retiring chief scientist at Britian’s Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs. He is warning that governments cannot afford to do nothing about greenhouse gas emissions, irrespective of the current state of the economy. He says the hope of restricting the average global temperature rise to 2C is “out the window”.

If we continue the way we are, we’ve got a 50-50 shot of a 3 degree [Celcius] world – and I would not rule out a 5 degree [Celcius] world.
~ Dr Bob Watson

Hell on Earth is coming to a reality near you:

Here’s the edition of the Royal Society journal that came out of the conference on 4 degrees C of warming. Read through it and see if you think “hell on earth” is an exaggeration. Desertification, water shortages, agricultural disruptions, rising sea levels, vanishing coral, tropical forest die-offs, mass species extinctions, oh my. Kevin Anderson, one of the lead scientists involved, was moved to say that “a 4 degrees C future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable.” ~ Grist

A new article in the Journal “Nature” reports an ominous finding that far more carbon dioxide and methane are being released from parts of Arctic Siberia than previously thought.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reports that lack of sea ice could drive heat up to 900 miles further inland and cause the melting of permafrost. Most scientists agree that is a recipe for runaway global warming. From the findings of the NCAR/NSIDC Study:

The findings point to a link between rapid sea ice loss and enhanced rate of climate warming, which could penetrate as far as 900 miles inland. In areas where permafrost is already at risk, such as central Alaska, the study suggests that periods of abrupt sea ice loss can lead to rapid soil thaw.

Thawing permafrost may have a range of impacts, including buckled highways and destabilized houses, as well as changes to the delicate balance of life in the Arctic. In addition, scientists estimate that Arctic soils hold at least 30 percent of all the carbon stored in soils worldwide. While scientists are uncertain what will happen if this permafrost thaws, it has the potential to contribute substantial amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Arid regions will become much more dry, and wet regions will experience much more rain due to the warming planet, according to scientists:

A paper in Science today finds rapidly changing ocean salinities as a result of a warming atmosphere have intensified the global water cycle (evaporation and precipitation) by an incredible 4 percent between 1950 and 2000. That’s twice the rate predicted by models.

These same models have long forecast that dry areas of Earth will become drier and wet areas wetter in a warming climate—an intensification of the water cycle driven mostly by the capacity of warmer air to hold and redistribute more moisture in the form of water vapor…

…But the rate of intensification of the global water cycle is happening far faster than imagined: at about 8 percent per degree Celsius of ocean warming since 1950.

At this rate, the authors calculate:

The global water cycle will intensify by a whopping 16 percent in a 2°C warmer world

The global water cycle will intensify by a frightening 24 percent in a 3°C warmer world

…The changes will not be uniform across the globe, but trend toward increased drying of arid areas and increased flooding of wet areas.

And the resulting changes in freshwater availability are likely to be far more destabilizing to human societies and ecosystems than warming alone.

“Changes to the global water cycle and the corresponding redistribution of rainfall will affect food availability, stability, access, and utilization,” says lead author Paul Durack at the University of Tasmania and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

When dealing with a crisis that threatens the very existence of the human species, a rational society would not put the issues of cost-effectiveness and inconveniences to the economy above all else as the deciding factors for taking action. But that is what we are doing, allowing the “ALMIGHTY MARKET” to decide our fate. As explained in another post, this deference to “THE MARKET” to solve such a seemingly abstract problem like climate change is essentially condemning our children to a horrible fate. Climate change is not going to respect or accommodate ‘THE MARKET’, our lifestyle, and mankind’s hubris; it will just wipe us right off the face of the Earth like the pesky and bothersome vermin we have become.

You only have to look at the following graph(click to enlarge) from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2012 to understand how much industrial civilization is locked in to fossil fuels. Do you see that thin dark orange line just below the grey band representing coal? Yeah, that’s renewables.

We are so overly dependent on the high energy density of fossil fuels that the system resists change, with those in charge of it even spending large sums of money to alter public perception on the pernicious effects of burning these CO2-emitting energy sources. The advantages of hydrocarbons, summarized by Tom Murphy, have lured us into drinking an addictive and poisonous elixir:

Fossil fuels are cheap and reliable and are their own storage and allow transportation by car, truck, ship, airplane, and fit seamlessly into our current infrastructure.

Reasons for why carbon emissions will continue their upward trend are described in this article:

Worst ever carbon emissions leave climate on the brink …

• About 80% of the power stations likely to be in use in 2020 are either already built or under construction, the IEA found. Most of these are fossil fuel power stations unlikely to be taken out of service early, so they will continue to pour out carbon – possibly into the mid-century. The emissions from these stations amount to about 11.2Gt, out of a total of 13.7Gt from the electricity sector. These “locked-in” emissions mean savings must be found elsewhere.

“It means the room for manoeuvre is shrinking,” warned Birol.

• Another factor that suggests emissions will continue their climb is the crisis in the nuclear power industry. Following the tsunami damage at Fukushima, Japan and Germany have called a halt to their reactor programmes, and other countries are reconsidering nuclear power.

“People may not like nuclear, but it is one of the major technologies for generating electricity without carbon dioxide,” said Birol. The gap left by scaling back the world’s nuclear ambitions is unlikely to be filled entirely by renewable energy, meaning an increased reliance on fossil fuels.

• Added to that, the United Nations-led negotiations on a new global treaty on climate change have stalled. “The significance of climate change in international policy debates is much less pronounced than it was a few years ago,” said Birol…

…Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, said the global emissions figures showed that the link between rising GDP and rising emissions had not been broken. “The only people who will be surprised by this are people who have not been reading the situation properly,” he said.

Forthcoming research led by Sir David will show the west has only managed to reduce emissions by relying on imports from countries such as China.

Another telling message from the IEA’s estimates is the relatively small effect that the recession – the worst since the 1930s – had on emissions…

And what about that country that, to the shock of many, surpassed the U.S. in carbon emissions 3 years ago?:

In 2009 China consumed 96.9 quads. In 2012 their total is estimated to reach 110.7. That’s a compound annual growth rate of 4.54%. That’s twice as fast as the DOE has predicted going forward.

I’ll remind readers that my estimate for energy consumption in 2035 for China is 247 quads–more than twice what the DOE estimates. Recent growth supports my higher estimates.

Even if China succeeds in building the 150 nuclear plants they aspire to over the next 50 years, they will still be burning more coal in 2035 than the entire world burns now.

The Chinese economy, as I predicted, will start to struggle and even sputter at times between now and then. But if the history of other developing countries is any example, that won’t affect energy consumption nearly as much as one might think. In the United States, that Great Depression? Didn’t affect our energy consumption curve. – link

Lastly, how are we doing on transitioning away from our greenhouse gas emitting, industrial agriculture model of food production? As Stuart Staniford conjectured in his essay ‘Fallacy of Reversibility‘, industrial agriculture has become even more dominant in the age of peak oil, but with adverse effects to the environment:

Harvesting a Climate Disaster – The New York Times

…The farm bill is not only the centerpiece of United States food and agriculture policy, it is also a de facto climate bill. And in this respect, both the Senate and House versions of the legislation are a disaster waiting to happen…

…The proposed farm bill — Senate- or House-style, take your pick — would make American agriculture’s climate problem worse, in two ways. Not only would the bill accelerate global warming by encouraging more greenhouse gas emissions, it would make the nation’s farms more vulnerable to the impacts of those emissions…

…Except in a technical aside, neither the bill passed by the Senate or by the House Committee on Agriculture even mentions climate change.

Coal and cars are blamed, but agriculture is also a major contributor to global warming: by some estimates, it accounts for roughly a third of emissions globally. The industrialized, meat-heavy food system of the United States takes a heavy toll on the atmosphere; it takes an enormous amount of fossil fuel to run farm equipment and harvest the mountains of corn that fatten livestock. And most fertilizers contain nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 298 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a century.

Both of the farm bill proposals would maintain agriculture’s large climate footprint, mainly by continuing to skew subsidies toward a mere handful of commodity crops. The “big five” — wheat, rice, soybeans, cotton and above all corn — have received 84 percent of subsidies since 2004, according to the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group critical of the practice. Subsidies increase with output, encouraging farmers to run highly mechanized operations that plant “fence row to fence row” and apply oceans of fertilizer and pesticide, all of which boost emissions.

But industrial agriculture’s ability to produce gargantuan amounts of food also makes it exceptionally susceptible to climate change. Relying on vast monocultures — the miles and miles of cornfields one passes when driving in Iowa — captures economies of scale. But that lack of diversity invites trouble. A monoculture’s uniformity means that if temperatures spike or a new pest arrives, the damage is likely to spread throughout the entire planted area. By contrast, the diversified landscapes of organic agriculture — corn planted between, say, other vegetables and chicken pens — tend to limit damage.

Farmers can best boost resilience to climate change, scientists say, by improving their soil’s fertility and capacity to retain moisture. That means cutting back on chemical fertilizers, which kill many of the microorganisms that ventilate soil, and shifting to compost and manure fertilizers and crop rotations.

Instead, leading lobbyists for agribusiness want to retain the current production system but shift the mounting climate risks to the taxpayer. Both versions of the farm bill would expand the $11 billion crop insurance program, a move championed by the National Corn Growers Association. The Senate bill, for instance, would authorize $3.8 billion a year for additional insurance.

But neither version would require farmers to take other measures to reduce their climate vulnerability, like investing in healthier soil. In fact, the draft bills would actually make it harder for farmers to do that because the expanded crop insurance would be paid for by cutting the Conservation Stewardship Program, which helps farmers improve their land’s ecological health…

So it looks like we are going balls out in our race toward oblivion. A technologically advanced civilization, once known for sending spacecrafts to distant planets, looks to be headed toward a bleak existence of huddling in subterranean caves and scavenging for insects to eat.