Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

Some "geoengineering" makes a lot of sense. Just painting rooftops and pavement white will go a long way to making urban heat islands more livable later this century.

As for the iron seeding, its just recreating the sort of thing that happens all the time when Saharan dust blows over the Atlantic.

Lots more questionable geoengineering (like adding sulfur compounds to aviation fuel, to be used only above the tropopause) will be widespread. We won't have a choice in the matter by then.

Knew that wd be Sanpaku from the first sentence.

http://www.weather.com/news/climate/2047-coldest-years-may-be-warmer-hottest-past-20131009

I don't know what's worse, the sheer irreversibility of this global change or the fact that the best case scenario for addressing it is just slowing it down by thirty years if we pull out all the stops- it makes you feel so helpless/hopeless, like a car skidding on ice and no matter how crank the wheel, you're drifting towards the cliff

We still have to pull out all the stops - our babies are in the back of the car, and so are the penguins.

the helpless feeling brought upon by the reality of the ~30 year lag will make geoengineering more and more attractive as we start to sink into this. conveniently for those in power, the geoengineering approach is much more aligned with our plutocracy than the alternative (conservation, living within one's means)

I think the worst thing about it may be that we have to get through brain problems / systemic dead ends that have stalled taking reasonable action for decades and show negligible signs of abating.

I've been listening to Alan Weisman's Countdown on my dogwalks. Seems we'll get through this with the help of a big dieoff. Thank heavens its been sunny.

We'll need to hope that happens in the developed nations and regions where most of the carbon emissions are coming from, yes?

Whoever recommended The Earth After Us, thank you! Loving it.

Yeah. About a decade ago I came to the conclusion that human population would almost certainly experience a big die-off before 2100. Makes me queasy to think about it, but foresight and effective planning seem like they will never gain enough traction to do more than mitigate the die-off by a small margin and perhaps assist the eventual accomodation to the new reality. It has happened before. Seems inevitable to happen again.

Zalasiewicz's The Earth After Us? That was me.

In the long view, population contractions are normal. For 3 centuries, Western Europe was spared from famines by Grand Banks cod and West Indies sugar & rum; for the past half-century, the world has been spared from elemental limits to agricultural production by Haber & Bosch's nitrogen chemistry and Norman Bourlag's grain breeding. Barring future discoveries of similar magnitude, it looks like efficiency in phosphorous recycling will determine human biomass. Not far behind comes the shifting precipitation in grain belts as temperate zones move polewards.

Material balances can't be evaded. I kinda hate that I may live to see balance restored.

That's the one, Sanpaku. Cheers!

"average summer temperatures in the Canadian Arctic over the last century are the highest in the last 44,000 years, and perhaps the highest in 120,000 years"

http://www.livescience.com/40676-arctic-temperatures-record-high.html

whoah!

Letterman with Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. Dave did a pretty good job here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26Ggh3egFKk

by the numbers, doesn't mean much I guess

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/01/obama_signs_executive_order_to_prepare_the_u_s_for_climate_change/

Ocean Warming Faster Now Than in 10,000 Years

http://www.msnbc.com/sites/msnbc/files/article-teasers/11.1.13.jpg

C are included in B?

yep:

Two-thirds of Americans (67%) say there is solid evidence that the earth has been getting warmer over the last few decades, a figure that has changed little in the past few years. While partisan differences over climate change remain substantial, Republicans face greater internal divisions over this issue than do Democrats.

Just 25% of Tea Party Republicans say there is solid evidence of global warming, compared with 61% of non-Tea Party Republicans.

sorry, here's the full link:

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/gop-sharply-divided-over-climate-science

oh, i'm sorry, i meant to say NO. C and B are mutually exclusive

that's kind of crappy, graph-wise

Global Warming's Irritating New Graph

i dunno, seemed clear to me

"geoengineering approach is much more aligned with our plutocracy than the alternative (conservation, living within one's means)"

given that "living within one's means" is the mantra of the "shut the govt down" crowd, that might be the hole in which to crowbar the right over to the green.

Keep scrolling down here to see a comparison of Haiyan to Katrina

Super typhoon Haiyan: One of world’s most powerful storms in history from space

http://news.yahoo.com/philippine-typhoon-deaths-climb-thousands-092323892.html

TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) — As many as 10,000 people are believed dead in one Philippine city alone after one of the worst storms ever recorded unleashed ferocious winds and giant waves that washed away homes and schools. Corpses hung from tree branches and were scattered along sidewalks and among flattened buildings, while looters raided grocery stores and gas stations in search of food, fuel and water.

Officials projected the death toll could climb even higher when emergency crews reach areas cut off by flooding and landslides. Even in the disaster-prone Philippines, which regularly contends with earthquakes, volcanoes and tropical cyclones, Typhoon Haiyan appears to be the deadliest natural disaster on record.

Haiyan hit the eastern seaboard of the Philippine archipelago on Friday and quickly barreled across its central islands before exiting into the South China Sea, packing winds of 235 kilometers per hour (147 miles per hour) that gusted to 275 kph (170 mph), and a storm surge that caused sea waters to rise 6 meters (20 feet).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/11/09/disaster-in-tacloban-philippines-chasers-document-ghastly-scene-from-typhoon/

looters raided grocery stores and gas stations in search of food, fuel and water

In this case "looters" means "desperate people who might otherwise die".

Seriously. It's fucking survival.

Such a crushing disaster. Fuck anyone who calls these survivors looters.
Some Fil-Am friends are urging those making donations to consider NAFCON: http://nafconusa.org/

i posted about this over on The ethanol thread (crickets), but i thought i'd repost it here:

The Secret, Dirty Cost of Obama's Green Power Push

the worst part about the AP report is the headline (they should just say "Corn Ethanol" - the subject of the story - rather than implicating all of "Green Power"). it's very much worth reading.

so ... i've been reading up on new developments in climate change modeling recently and unless i'm misreading it sounds like we're utterly fucked at this point no matter what we do. am i wrong?

there's always prayer

there are degrees of fucked, and "utterly" is likely our destination if we continue on the current path. there remains the possibility, though, that we'll spin the roulette wheel and end up on "kinda"

but yeah, the rapture is coming soon anyway because god said that he wouldn't flood the earth again

time to fast-track a shuttle to this joint

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20249753

Lol these 'super earths' they keep finding are so shit.

someone explain to morbs how far a light year is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship

seriously though i heard we were on track for 6 degree increase pretty much no matter what? and that all the plants would die and we would run out of oxygen by 2100 or something. that can't be right, can it?

Certainly it seems that once we get to around 3-4 degrees, runaway feedback loops are likely to kick in and get us to 6 no matter what we do to avoid it. And at 6 degrees of warming, a whole bunch of horrible things are going to happen, including near-dead oceans

Graphically, just take current global croplands, mentally subtract lands currently irrigated by overdrawn aquifers, and prorate production in remaining areas where precipitation is projected to decline, where temperatures will grow too high in some areas for germination or even photosynthesis, and don't even consider expansion to regions with acidic spodosol soils. The Indian subcontinent, the Mediterranean region, Mesoamerica, the Sahel, Australia, and America west of the Mississippi are all pretty fucked. The Pacific Northwest, Upper Midwest, and Lifeboat Britain might do okay if they can keep out the climate refugees.

Sanpaku ... If you ever author a book on this subject, I will buy it.

so mass die-off of humans?

If humans go, then you can bet a whole lot of OTHER species -- plant, animal, and miscellaneous -- are gone, too.

I.e. humans are the bonus.

"Just 90 companies caused two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions"
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/20/90-companies-man-made-global-warming-emissions-climate-change

i think this is one of the best climate change articles written for a general audience that i've read in a long time (probably since the mckibben article that prompted this thread:

http://www.thenation.com/article/177614/coming-instant-planetary-emergency

gotta love these tidbits, separated by several paragraphs in the original:

On December 3, a study by eighteen eminent scientists, including the former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, showed that the long-held, internationally agreed-upon target to limit rises in global average temperatures to two degrees Celsius was in error and far above the 1C threshold that would need to be maintained in order to avoid the effects of catastrophic climate change.

...A World Bank–commissioned report warned that we are indeed on track to a “4C world” marked by extreme heat waves and life-threatening sea-level rise.

The three living diplomats who have led UN climate change talks claim there is little chance the next climate treaty, if it is ever approved, will prevent the world from overheating. “There is nothing that can be agreed in 2015 that would be consistent with the two degrees,” says Yvo de Boer, who was executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2009, when attempts to reach a deal at a summit in Copenhagen crumbled. “The only way that a 2015 agreement can achieve a two-degree goal is to shut down the whole global economy.”