Tag Archives: Methane Release from Thawing Permafrost

Runaway Climate Change in the Arctic is Just The Beginning

21 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by in Climate Change, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

≈ 45 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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:

Snap 2013-05-21 at 11.35.20

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

Snap 2013-05-21 at 12.42.56

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.

Snap 2013-05-21 at 13.05.02

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.

piomas-trnd6

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.

arctic-death-spiral-1979-201303

You can see that September ice volume plunged from 7km3 in 2009 down to 3.3km3 in 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.

Snap 2013-05-21 at 15.01.37

– 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 in Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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…

co2_800k

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:

    1. Albedo feedback: Accelerated warming in the Arctic speeds up the decline of ice and snow cover, further accelerating albedo change.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. 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.
    10. 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):

Untitled 1s

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

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 
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.