Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

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

I can't really recommend the James Lovelock books, unless you are a fan of fatalism.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change?lite

Canada's carbon emissions projected to soar by 2030

Canada's carbon emissions will soar 38% by 2030 mainly due to expanding tar sands projects, according to the government's own projections.

In a new report to the United Nations, the Harper administration says it expects emissions of 815million tonnes of CO2 in 2030, up from 590Mt in 1990. Emissions from the fast-growing tar sands sector is projected to quadruple between 2005 and 2030, reaching 137Mt a year, more than Belgium and many other countries, the report shows.

you know what we should do in the US? expand our pipeline capacity from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico so that tar sand companies can produce and sell more! not only will this allow oil refined from tar sands to reach the rest of the world, but it will also create nearly a dozen permanent jobs!

we can call it keystone and then argue about it like pathetic pieces of shit while the world burns

i'm sorry, 35 permanent jobs, not 12. i misspoke and i apologize to the families of the 35 people who could get permanent jobs if (when) the pipeline is approved

sorry, one of those mornings

Interesting article on how sea-level rise is impacting the East coast:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/science/earth/grappling-with-sea-level-rise-sooner-not-later.html

i'm sorry, 35 permanent jobs, not 12. i misspoke and i apologize to the families of the 35 people who could get permanent jobs if (when) the pipeline is approved

Magnitude of three -- THREE! -- tsk tsk.

that FB-bait jpg weather map showing the entire country struck by cold while California is summarized by 'LOL' -- I don't think it was written by a Californian because everyone I know is more than a little nervous.

http://unofficialnetworks.com/nasa-shows-bad-california-drought-127886/
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/01/12/high-fire-and-wind-warnings-posted-for-southern-california/

wish I could find the Earth First "We're All Gonna Die" image with the hot water heater warning picture

Some forensic meteorology on the drought out here: http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_24904396/california-drought-whats-causing-it

NYT reports on (a more recent) leaked version of the next IPCC report: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/science/earth/un-says-lag-in-confronting-climate-woes-will-be-costly.html

i just take it as a given that i will have to commit suicide in a few decades when the earth's resources are spent and all of our crops die and civilization descends into chaos

at least my beloved older relatives won't have to experience that scenario

A few decades? That's optimistic

Just try not to water your lawn, wash your car, bathe, drink, cook or grow crops in 2014:

http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/images/low_resolution/620x350x1483v1_20140113_20130113-SNsnowpack.png.pagespeed.ic.ep72B8IFzI.jpg

Bloody hell, has there been an El Niño / La Niña reverse this year?

Kinda hard to see because of the cloud cover, but the difference in greenery is appalling.

That's snow!

What?

/californian

Some of that in 2013 is clouds, it doesn't snow in the San Juaquin Valley. I also think that picture exagerates the problem in that the earlier one was probably taken after a major system went through and dusted the ground with a lot of snow that later surely melted away. All the snow in the Nevada flatlands doesn't persist, I don't think.

(/climate change denier)

So far, precipitation since October in the Northern Sierras and Southern Sierras is on track with the 1923-24 and 1976-77, the two driest years on record. Reservoir storage is only 65% of average.

So the snow blanketing the Great Basin in the 2013 shot is a bit misleading, but the parched Central Valley doesn't lie.

In other news, Paolo Bacigalupi, my favorite science fiction author engaging climate change issues, has a new novel The Water Knife to be released February 14th (in the UK, at least). Its set in the same world of Colorado basin water woes as his short story "The Tamarisk Hunter" (full text).

I'm not really a denier, just thought the two pictures were a little misleading.

LA Times article on the drought

enviro biggies bail on "all of the above"

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/17/you_cant_have_it_both_ways_green_groups_break_with_obama_over_hypocritical_climate_policy/

they should've put the pressure on back in 2011, after the climate bill failed, and before the 2012 election. obama has always treated environmentalists as just another political constituency to pay lip service to (i know, big surprise), he doesn't actually give a shit about the environment (another big surprise). so they should have exerted more pressure on him back he might have actually paid attention. what does he care now what they say?

this way they still get to sell tote bags and t shirts to 'mainstream' Dems

Earth had another top-ten hottest year on record in 2013, which ranked as the 4th warmest year since records began in 1880, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center said today. NASA rated 2013 as the 7th warmest on record. The disagreement between the two data sets is minor, since the 2013 numbers were within 3% of each other. Including 2013, nine out of ten of the warmest years in the 134-year period of record have occurred during the 21st century (2001–2013). Only one year during the 20th century--1998--was warmer than 2013. Global land temperatures were the 4th warmest on record during 2013, and ocean temperatures were the 8th warmest. Global satellite-measured temperatures in the lower atmosphere were the 4th or 9th warmest in the 35-year record, according to UAH and RSS, respectively. Following the two wettest years on record (2010 and 2011), 2013 joined 2012 as having near-average precipitation on balance across the globe.

http://icons.wxug.com/hurricane/2014/2013temps.gif

http://icons.wxug.com/hurricane/2014/noaa-nasa-2013.jpg

http://icons.wxug.com/hurricane/2014/global-temps-1880-2013.png

it's ok, we can always shoot millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to save us at the last minute, right. exxon for mvp