Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

Yet, long before humanity has burned all fossil fuel reserves on the planet, massive amounts of methane will be released. While the human body is potentially capable of handling a six-to-nine-degree Celsius rise in the planetary temperature, the crops and habitat we use for food production are not. As McPherson put it, “If we see a 3.5 to 4C baseline increase, I see no way to have habitat. We are at .85C above baseline and we’ve already triggered all these self-reinforcing feedback loops.”

He adds: “All the evidence points to a locked-in 3.5 to 5 degree C global temperature rise above the 1850 ‘norm’ by mid-century, possibly much sooner. This guarantees a positive feedback, already underway, leading to 4.5 to 6 or more degrees above ‘norm’ and that is a level lethal to life. This is partly due to the fact that humans have to eat and plants can’t adapt fast enough to make that possible for the 7-to-9 billion of us—so we’ll die.”

yellowstone supervolcano

this makes long-term thinking difficult

Lol that article

A-At least I have a topic to diffuse any family holiday political discussion now

As a misanthrope, this is excellent news!

I don't mind if people aren't around in 100 years. just wish it could be a comfortable transition.

Say hello to edible algae.

I'm curious about the William Nordhaus book "Climate Casino". Krugman wrote a nice review of it for NY Review of Books - don't have the link handy. It seems like an attempt to quantify the uncertainty of projections and do a rigorous cost-benefit analysis.

Become gay, don't procreate.

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, December 18, 2013 2:33 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I managed to do the latter without doing the former, but good advice on the whole.

Sounds like someone doesn't want to be fabulous.

“The only way that a 2015 agreement can achieve a two-degree goal is to shut down the whole global economy.”

see, it's a socialist Obammy conspiracy

so am i going to die soon y/n

taking into consideration that my life depends on medical technology powered by the global economy

i'd like if this happened after me and perhaps any kids i have are dead. sorry grandkids.

fucking terrifying tho, i've read enough of these articles, is anyone peddling a silver lining?

so i have until my fifties apparently, barring death in coming wars. do feel lucky i live in a place with a relatively small population.

Sure man I got something that'll make you feel good. Paypal me 500 quid at 乒✧@gm✧✧✧.c✧✧ and I'll ILXmail ya the article xp

...is anyone peddling a silver lining?

I've wondered if Northern Canada, Alaska, China, and Russia will open up as food belts. Just because it's warmer there doesn't mean everything else will be in place (water), but it's something to consider.

I figure probably sometime before 2030 I'll get one of those fake teeth with cyanide gas inside installed in my mouth. When the hordes come for me at least I'll be able to die quickly before they dismember me and eat me for my protein

it's pretty annoying we're all going to die really soon. i met a girl i like tonight but seems no point in asking her out now.

shame as i had been looking forward to not dying for a little while longer.

maybe i could bill it as a final throw of the dice, me and her for the next 20 years.

Good pick-up line material to be found, imo.

I've been thinking about finding someone who will eventually eat my corpse for nutrients. And we seem to have similar interests.

Baby all I can promise you is that I'll slit your throat first when they come for us

Wait, do you like Murakami? xpost

I have a vision in my head of the two of us, tucked away in Alaska, eating algae, as every living thing in the world dies. I know it's a silly romantic dream but maybe one day it can come true.

This were all plankton

Life were good that. Life were good.

The end of civilization and possibly humanity could happen within decades, we should catch an Arcade Fire gig before that.

RE: a silver lining - i quite liked this paper, by the genius earth scientist Larry Cathles: http://sp.lyellcollection.org/content/early/2013/10/18/SP393.6.full.pdf

he is optimistic and, i think, not excessively unrealistic, though he recommends large and immediate actions. in the paper he calculates that the resources required to support the entire projected population of earth at a european standard, 100 years from now, are present on earth. his main concern seems to be a projected shortage of soil.

in any case, i highly recommend reading it, as i think it provides a much-needed positive perspective.

I haven't even read 1000 Books To Read Before You Die yet. xpost

Kind of ironic that the same right-wing militant survivalists who have bunkers stockpiled with canned goods and who are most likely to survive the coming global warming apocalypse are also the least likely to believe that global warming exists

Their one mistake was to dig their bunkers below the level of the rising seas

Do you think they'll be persuaded when they're holed up in their bunkers? I'd like to think so.

The silver lining is that if scientists are unanimous that there's nothing we can do about this, then it allows you to fly overseas on intercontinental flights burning hundreds of thousands of gallons of jet fuel without feeling any remorse

Eat that bluefin tuna because tomorrow you might not be able to

xpost
nope. i honestly think that most of the hardcore deniers will either think "wow, those naturally occurring cycles that i've heard about really hit us hard! damn, we're unlucky!" and/or "god is angry with us. we have to please god"

“There’s not much money in the end of civilization, and even less to be made in human extinction.”

Waitasec, Jackson, you're not thinking hard enough! Some Silicon Valley whizkid will surely find a way to monetize the apocalypse!

Apocachat

i guess human extinction would hit the music industry fairly hard.

What I always find interesting about these articles is the implication that the massive climate shift we're currently experiencing is not the first time the Earth has gone through this

Like what happened 400 million years ago or w/e when the last one happened

Did God fart

Would probably curtail illegal downloads though xp

Maybe we should speed up the ILM artist ballot polls, just saying.

Like what happened 400 million years ago or w/e when the last one happened

Did God fart

this is a pretty good summary: http://www.wunderground.com/resources/climate/abruptclimate.asp

spoiler alert: god is always farting - that's how we breathe

Last night I fell asleep listening to the audiobook of Catastrophes by Donald Prothero. I was having some enhanced apocalyptic dreams listening to the chapters talking about previous greenhouse/icehouse eras. They were so evocative and interesting that I had to re-listen today.

From what I gathered 100 million years ago CO2 levels were 20 times higher than pre industrial revolution holocence epoch levels, with no ice-caps. But this greenhouse biosphere had been a slow creation throughout millions of years and we are currently releasing the same accumulative amounts in a millionth of the time.

Also that the fossil record from our current epoch would reveal a bigger extinction event than the P-T boundary does now from the big die off 250 million years ago. And that this extreme loss of bio-diversity due to human population growth has been happening long before we hit the industrialised era, at least 40 thousand years before.

RE: a silver lining - i quite liked this paper, by the genius earth scientist Larry Cathles: http://sp.lyellcollection.org/content/early/2013/10/18/SP393.6.full.pdf

just want to say that this is well worth reading

my only hope in all this is that I'm always astounded by how much humanity can accomplish in a short amount of time.

for sure! planet rendered uninhabitable within 300 years of the industrial revolution, we don't fucking hang around

Re: Cathles.

For the past decade attitudes to nuclear power has been a pretty good litmus test for whether environmentalists appreciate the magnitude of the problem, and the political impossibility of advocating lower living standards.

Thanks for introducing me to Cathles. My reading list has become still more daunting

Kindly excuse the grammar (has/have). Editing is fraught, particularly under influence of Christmas party sangria.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e2/Nuclear_Environmentalist.jpg/440px-Nuclear_Environmentalist.jpg

That Nation article has ruined my life

For the past decade attitudes to nuclear power has been a pretty good litmus test for whether environmentalists appreciate the magnitude of the problem

Or perhaps their ability to see that replacing one massive problem caused by unforseen consequences with another massive problem with already well known and unsolveable awful consequences is not necessarily a great idea