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.

Heads-Up! Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

26 Wednesday Jan 2022

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

≈ 322 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Adam McKay, Antarctic Ice Melt, Anthropogenic Mass Extinction, Arctic Ice Albedo, Arctic Ice Melt, Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Celebrity Worship, Chemical Pollution, Climate Change, Climate Change Feedback Loops, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Commercialization, Commodification of Nature, Cryosphere, Don't Look Up, Doomsday Preppers, Dr. Randall Mindy, Ecological Overshoot, Elon Musk, Fossil Fuel Industry, Global Forest Die-Off, Global Warming, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Interstellar Colonization, Janie Orlean, Jason Orlean, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Kate Dibiasky, Leonardo DiCaprio, Loss of Biodiversity, MAGA rallies, Mark Rylance, Meryl Streep, Persecution of Environmental Activists, Peter Isherwell, Planetary Boundaries, Prof Tim Garrett, Professor Harold R. Wanless, Sea Level Rise, Techno-Fix, Techno-Utopians, Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melt

“I’m telling you that we’re putting our kids onto a global school bus that will with 98% probability end in a deadly crash.” ~ Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director Emeritus of Potsdam Institute

I recently saw the movie ‘Don’t Look Up’ after avoiding it since its release and I must say, that movie mirrors the tragic state of our society to a T. When you see Dr. Randall Mindy (DiCaprio) finally losing his cool, raging against a shallow, celebrity-idolizing, commercialized society on some glib TV talk show, this was not a stretch for the actor (an ardent environmental activist) who simply had to replace the oncoming fictional comet with the asteroid of abrupt climate change currently bearing down on us. At first, no one will listen to the scientist’s warning, not even the President of the United States Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) who is more worried about her polling numbers and keeping her campaign contributors happy than being bothered by an existential threat to civilization. Once tech guru Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance) plants a bug in the President’s ear about how the comet could be exploited for its trillions of dollars worth of rare earth minerals, then all bets are off for deflecting the oncoming catastrophe. The creepy Techno-Utopist Isherwell reflects our own society’s blind worship of technology and consumerism as the answer to all its ills, when in reality they are only further alienating us from the natural world that underpins our survival. Throughout the movie, there are beautiful clips of nature that briefly flash across the screen, reminding me of what we are losing in our ongoing sixth mass extinction. Modern man and the havoc he is wreaking on the planet is happening in a microsecond when viewed in geologic time scales, but humans have trouble seeing it because we live an ephemeral existence, easily inured to an ever impoverished world.

Labeling the comet’s collision course with Earth as mere fear-mongering, politicians and TV talking heads manage to politicize the threat amongst the population, hence the title of the movie. Throngs of mindless people attending political rallies while wearing trucker caps with the slogan ‘Don’t Look Up’ reminded me of scenes from the MAGA crowd in thrall to their grift-scheming conman. Those who speak too much about the reality of the approaching comet are ziptied, blinded with a hood over their head, hauled off to an undisclosed location, and compelled to stay quiet by the authorities. In our real world, a fate much worse than that awaits those who oppose fossil fuel companies, miners, loggers, and others who are destroying the planet. Only when the comet and its long tail become clearly visible in the sky do people take the threat seriously, but by then it is too late. Back to reality, there’s no indication that such a tipping point in public consciousness has changed our trajectory towards ecological disintegration and collapse of civilization. Near the end of the movie as the planet-killing comet is colliding with Earth, Dr. Mindy’s family and a few of his colleagues are holding hands at their last supper and Dr. Mindy says, “We really did have everything, didn’t we?” The same can be said of what we are losing in today’s unfolding anthropogenic mass extinction. A thousand species a day, each a product of eons of evolution and designed for a specific purpose, being permanently erased from this planet along with any sort of stable and predictable climate means we are trashing Eden and descending into the hellscape depicted in Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. This most recent study confirms past warnings:

“Drastically increased rates of species extinctions and declining abundances of many animal and plant populations are well documented, yet some deny that these phenomena amount to mass extinction,” said Robert Cowie, lead author of the study, in a press release. “This denial is based on a highly biased assessment of the crisis which focuses on mammals and birds and ignores invertebrates, which of course constitute the great majority of biodiversity.”…“Dedicated conservation biologists and conservation agencies are doing what they can, focused mainly on threatened birds and mammals, among which some species may be saved from the extinction that would otherwise ensue,” the paper said. “But we are pessimistic about the fate of most of the Earth’s biodiversity, much of which is going to vanish without us ever knowing of its existence.”…The researchers write that it is crucial to fight against the crisis and manipulating it is an abrogation of moral responsibility.

Of course the ones in charge, blinded by their greedy dream to profit from an oncoming disaster, surreptitiously escape Earth on a rocket ship, cryogenically preserved until they reach a distant Earth-like planet in the Goldilocks Zone of another solar system. This colonization of some other habitable planet by Earth-bound humans is a fetish amongst techno-optimists and futurists, but it is a pipe-dream not only because it is impossible due to basic biological constraints and technological infeasibility but also for the simple reason that if we cannot keep our house in order here on the planet that gave birth to us, we don’t deserve another chance. And for God’s sake, can Elon Musk stop ranting that humans have to get off Earth because all life will be snuffed out after the sun theoretically expands into a giant red star five billion years from now? Just as in the movie, our tech demigods will lead us over the cliff while planning their own getaway to a private underground bunker or second homes far away in some distant country. It is frightening to think that we are only seeing the beginning of this unfolding global ecological apocalypse that will affect every living thing on Earth. Nearly all past mass extinctions have occurred due to a disruption of the carbon cycle, only now it is happening at a rate of speed multiple times faster than previous ones and with humans serving as the architect of their own demise. In the last 500 million years, across 6 mass extinctions and the countless rise and fall of global temperatures and sea levels, the only time the climate changed faster was 66 million years ago when Earth got hit by a 10km asteroid that killed off 75% of all species. Mass extinction events turn freshwater bodies into toxic soup, and we’re seeing the same thing happen today. But fret not, technology will save us and stock prices are up this week, not to mention that our social media rankings are going gangbusters.

It has been said that when civilizations begin to die, they go insane. Perhaps Stoicism and Buddhism are the most useful philosophies in an age where the future is bleak and no one seems to be facing reality. After half a century of dire warnings from noted scientists, numerous Climate ~~Action~~ Inaction Summits (rigged to fail), revelations of decades-old climate studies from Fossil Fuel Corporations themselves proving all along that they knew, and worsening extreme weather events as well as the planet’s quickly disappearing cryosphere (what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic), here is where we stand today:

The world’s insatiable appetite for electricity is setting up a climate disaster

A report published Friday by the International Energy Agency found that global demand for electricity surged 6% in 2021, fueled by a colder winter and the dramatic economic rebound from the pandemic. That drove both prices and carbon emissions to new records.

The growth in demand was particularly intense in China, where it jumped by about 10%…

…Electricity generated by renewables grew by 6% globally last year, while coal-fired generation leaped 9% due to high demand and skyrocketing natural gas prices, which made it look like a more attractive option.

Carbon dioxide emissions from power generation rose 7% as a result, reaching an all-time high after declining the previous two years…

…The IEA found that emissions from the power sector will “remain around the same level from 2021 to 2024,” even though they need to decline “sharply” for the world to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the worst effects of climate change.

As physicist Tim Garrett has pointed out, “Any new energy source adds impetus to the conversion of raw resources into the stuff of civilization, accelerating growth and future demands for all energy types. Renewables add to the consumption, they do not replace.” Also, gains in energy efficiency are simply supplanted by more growth.

Keep in mind that even if we were to magically reduce our CO2 emissions overnight, the opposite of what is happening, we will never again see the climate we grew up in. It is never returning. Realize that the current level of CO2 equivalent GHGs already exceeds 500 ppm. The increased pace of extreme weather events we are now getting from climate change is shocking even those scientists who predicted it. The Arctic is greening with the treeline advancing northward 40 to 50 meters every year from what was once an annual increase of only a few centimeters. Adding yet another pernicious feedback loop to the climate crisis, beavers are moving into the warming Arctic in greater numbers and radically transforming the landscape with their dams, further accelerating the thaw of permafrost that releases methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. A worrying new study shows Earth’s ability to reflect solar radiation is weakening — as the ocean is heating it is failing to generate clouds that reflect back sunlight. Astoundingly, half of that weakening has happened in the last four years:

“The albedo drop was such a surprise to us when we analyzed the last 3 years of data – many scientists hoped that a warmer Earth may lead to more clouds and higher albedo which would then help to moderate warming and balance the climate system But this shows the opposite is true”

If this trend of Earth dimming due to climate change continues, climate models will have to (once more) be significantly revised to include this additional net warming. We are headed for a Miocene climate during which the Antarctic ice volume was half of what it is today and the Arctic Ocean was ice-free in winter. Sea levels were 130 feet or higher and temperatures were about 5 to 8ºC warmer. Our ancestors were apes at that time. The European shoreline was 120 miles inland from today’s coast and dense swamp-forests resembling modern Louisiana clogged coasts and estuaries in Denmark and Germany. Nothing living in its region today is adapted to what will come. Remember those trees in the Pacific Northwest that sizzled in the heatwave of last year’s summer? A new study paints a dire picture for their future, as well as ours:

“By some estimates, it’s probably the largest scorch event in history,” Oregon State University researcher Christopher Still told OPB’s “Think Out Loud” on Monday. “I mean this is a new thing for us to be seeing on Earth, so it’s sort of a dubious milestone.”…

…“If this just keeps going, if these are happening every five or 10 years, it’s gonna be really grim I think for most of the forests of the Pacific Northwest.”

As the saying goes, “Lessons in life will be repeated until they are learned.” And so humans have yet to understand their place in the world, punch drunk on more than a century-long bacchanalia of fossil fuel burning. In the end, nature will put us in our place, and not in a good way. It is interesting to note that right around the peak of industrial civilization’s collapse, humans will have evidently lost their biological ability reproduce due to chemical pollution. We have saturated the Earth with so many and so much chemicals that we have breached another planetary boundary:

The cocktail of chemical pollution that pervades the planet now threatens the stability of global ecosystems upon which humanity depends, scientists have said.

Plastics are of particularly high concern, they said, along with 350,000 synthetic chemicals including pesticides, industrial compounds and antibiotics. Plastic pollution is now found from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans, and some toxic chemicals, such as PCBs, are long-lasting and widespread.

The study concludes that chemical pollution has crossed a “planetary boundary”, the point at which human-made changes to the Earth push it outside the stable environment of the last 10,000 years.

“There has been a fiftyfold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950 and this is projected to triple again by 2050,” said Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, a PhD candidate and research assistant at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) who was part of the study team. “The pace that societies are producing and releasing new chemicals into the environment is not consistent with staying within a safe operating space for humanity.”

Pfft!!! Just another fancy-schmancy warning by some pedantic scientists for the world to ignore. No need to worry, we can live in hermetically sealed bubbles that filter out all that nasty stuff, can’t we? All of our socializing and entertainment take place indoors on digital screens anyway, doesn’t it? But wait, there’s more. The Doomsday Glacier is coming for us. The Thwaites Glacier is the size of Florida and it is cracking apart on the surface and melting from below, loosening its anchor on the undersea mountain that holds it in place. If this glacier goes, it could unleash much more ice from the West Antarctic ice sheet that is held in place behind it, causing an immediate and catastrophic effect (10 feet) of sea level rise. One scientist says it could go within a few years. This development falls in line with what another expert, Professor Harold R. Wanless, had said years ago about sea level rise and climate change—that sea level rise does not happen in a gradual and linear fashion but rather as sudden, large pulses. I blogged about him six years ago, and what he said back then in the context of what is happening now gives me chills:

…Subsequent ice melt was not a gradual acceleration and then deceleration process. Rather it was a series of very rapid pulses of sea level rise followed by pauses. These rapid pulses of rise, from three to thirty feet, were fast enough to leave drowned reefs, sandy barrier islands, tidal inlet deltas, and other coastal deposits abandoned across the continental shelf. That is what happens when climate change warms enough to destabilize some ice sheet sector. It rapidly disintegrates, resulting in a rapid rise.

Just a couple years ago, a study of ancient ice in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet showed that multiple meters of sea level rise occurred from less than 2ºC of warming at the beginning of the last interglacial period. As we are once again witnessing today, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is highly sensitive to collapse from slight temperature increases.

Circling back to the movie I was discussing earlier, there is a scene in which junior astronomer and Ph.D. student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) is with a group of disaffected youth who are discussing conspiracy theories regarding the global elite, and Dibiasky says in an exasperated voice, “You guys, the truth is way more depressing. They’re not even smart enough to be as evil as you’re giving them credit for.” Perhaps the truth is even more depressing than that. In the grand scheme of things, free will appears to be nothing more than a figment of our imagination. Like microbes proliferating in a Petri dish and dying off after overshooting their confines, humans are essentially replicating the same process albeit on a planetary scale. Evidently, we are biologically programmed to eventually crash and burn. Just as with all other species, humans have the imperative to expand their numbers, exploiting all resources until stopped by environmental constraints, and those limits to growth are fast approaching as we speak.

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.)

Tipping Points for Runaway Climate Change: West Antarctic Ice Sheet

28 Friday Dec 2012

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

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

A Perfect Circle, Arctic Ice Melt, Capitalism, Climate Change, Climate Chaos, Climate Feedback Loops, Climate Tipping Points, CO2 Emissions, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Faulty Climate Models, Global Famine, Greenland Ice Sheet Melt, Inverted Totalitarianism, James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Mass Die Off, Methane Time Bomb, Resource Wars, Runaway Climate Change, Sea Level Rise, West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melt, Zombification of the Planet

Amongst all the drama of the fiscal cliff, the story that should have gotten front page space this week is that the Antarctic is melting much faster than previously thought. In my post ‘Burning the Candle at Both Ends‘, the recent finding that the Antarctic was indeed losing ice came as a revelation to many and dispelled the popular belief amongst the global warming ‘denialist’ crowd that the South Pole ice sheet was increasing. The situation has now gotten more dire:

What are the ramification of this? We’ve released another ticking methane time bomb and opened up one more pandora’s box of known and unknown feedback loops:

…Half the West Antarctic ice sheet and a quarter of the East Antarctic sheet lie on pre-glacial sedimentary basins containing around 21,000bn tonnes of carbon, said the scientists, writing in the journal Nature.

British co-author Prof Jemma Wadham, from the University of Bristol, said: “This is an immense amount of organic carbon, more than 10 times the size of carbon stocks in northern permafrost regions.

“Our laboratory experiments tell us that these sub-ice environments are also biologically active, meaning that this organic carbon is probably being metabolised into carbon dioxide and methane gas by microbes.”

The amount of frozen and free methane gas beneath the ice sheets could amount to 4bn tonnes, the researchers estimate…

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 August 2012 13.00 EDT

And what will happen to coastal communities? If one were to perform a linear projection of sea level rise from recent records, then you would get the following results:

…Currently, sea level is rising at the rate of 3 mm each year. Given 1″ = 25 mm, this means by the end of the century a rise of 87 (yrs) x 3 mm / yr. = 261 mm or (261 mm/ 25 mm/in) = 10.44 inches – enough to wash away roughly one third of S. Florida and most of the sea level areas of the Atlantic coast…

But this year’s shocking display of rapid ice melt in the Arctic and Greenland, in addition to new findings of the Antarctic warming at twice the rate as was previously thought, should be enough to tell you that future trends involving systemic changes in the environment will most certainly be exponential in nature, not linear. In other words, such effects as sea level rise will be orders of magnitude greater than what has been predicted:

…IPCC (2007) suggested a most likely sea level rise of a few tens of centimeters by 2100. Several subsequent papers suggest that sea level rise of ~1 meter is likely by 2100. However, those studies, one way or another, include linearity assumptions, so 1 meter can certainly not be taken as an upper limit on sea level rise…

…Hansen (2005) argues that, if business-as-usual increase of greenhouse gases continue throughout this century, the climate forcing will be so large that non-linear ice sheet disintegration should be expected and multi- meter sea level rise not only possible but likely. Hansen (2007) suggests that the position reflected in IPCC documents may be influenced by a “scientific reticence”…

…Perceived authority in the case of ice sheets stems from ice sheet models used to simulate paleoclimate sea level change. However, paleoclimate ice sheet changes were initiated by weak climate forcings changing slowly over thousands of years, not by a forcing as large or rapid as human-made forcing this century. Moreover, in a paper submitted for publication (Hansen et al., 2013) we present evidence that even paleoclimate data do not support the degree of lethargy and hysteresis that exists in such ice sheet models…

…The increasing Greenland mass loss in Fig. 1 can be fit just as well by exponentially increasing annual mass loss, a behavior that Hansen (2005, 2007) argues could occur because of multiple amplifying feedbacks as an ice sheet begins to disintegrate. A 10-year doubling time would lead to 1 meter sea level rise by 2067 and 5 meters by 2090. The dates are 2045 and 2057 for 5-year doubling time and 2055 and 2071 for a 7-year doubling time.

However, exponential ice loss, if it occurs, would encounter negative (diminishing) feedbacks. Our simulations (Hansen and Sato, 2012) suggest that a strong negative feedback kicks in when sea level rise reaches meter-scale, as the ice-melt has a large cooling and freshening effect on the regional ocean. Such a slowdown in the rate of sea level rise would be little consolation to humanity, however, as the high latitude cooling would increase latitudinal temperature gradients, thus driving powerful cyclonic storms (Hansen, 2009), and coastlines would be continually moving landward for centuries.

West Antarctic ice is probably more vulnerable to rapid disintegration than Greenland ice, because the West Antarctic ice sheet rests mainly on bedrock below sea level (Hughes, 1972). The principal mechanism for mass loss from West Antarctica is warming of the ocean, melting of West Antarctic ice shelves, and thus increased flux from the ice sheet to the ocean.

The several analysis methods compared by Shepherd et al. (2012) concur that the West Antarctic ice sheet mass imbalance has grown since 2005 from an annual mass loss of 0-100 Gt ice to a recent annual mass loss of 100-200 Gt ice (Fig. 4 of Shepherd et al.)…

There are roughly seven billion humans on Earth at this time, all of whom have a death sentence hanging over their head via anthropomorphic climate change. Perhaps this partly explains the recent popularity of zombies and the ‘walking dead’ in our culture. Forthright thoughts on this subject from a scientist commenting at the Arctic Sea Ice Blog:

The first signs have appeared of what will be a mass culling of the human population by way of famine in the decades to come:

…According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome, global wheat production is expected to fall 5.2% in 2012 and yields from many other crops grown to feed animals could be 10% down on last year.

“Populations are growing but production is not keeping up with consumption. Prices for wheat have already risen 25% in 2012, maize 13% and dairy prices rose 7% just last month. Food reserves, held to provide a buffer against rising prices, are at a critical low level. It means that food supplies are tight across the board and there is very little room for unexpected events,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist with the FAO…

My youngest son, who is eight years old, shocked me last week with a certain question. I don’t talk about the subject matter of this blog to him for obvious reasons. He asked me whether in the future the world would become a sort of technological paradise or a destroyed planet. I couldn’t answer his question. I didn’t even want to try.