Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/10/01/antarctic-ice-melt-changing-earths-gravity/

Globally, habitat loss and hunting have reduced tigers from 100,000 a century ago to just 3,000.

That is not acceptable.

xp
I read that the other day and was thinking back in the Mesozoic era there wasn't any ice at either of the poles and what is the relevance of gravity fluctuations around the earth when we are going into an irreversible anthropocene extinction event? It is the least of our worries surely.

I guess I knew that tigers were endangered, but holy fuck. Are there even going to be tigers left in a few decades?

Also all those other species. :( Fuck.

The only reason there is a tiny amount of tigers and larger terrestrial animals left in Africa is that we evolved with them and they knew how dangerous we were, they didn't fare so well on the continents we immigrated to. It really is fucking shite that bio-diversity on this planet will be reduced to humanity and cattle :(

And rats and cockroaches.

I'd guess insects could be a good shout to be the beneficiaries/conquerors of a post-anthropocene wasteland.

I'm looking forward to a splendid diversity of toxic algaes.

what is the relevance of gravity fluctuations around the earth when we are going into an irreversible anthropocene extinction event

The GRACE mission data is produced for the entire planet, and confirms aquifer depletion and glacial melts everywhere. If it takes a $127 million mission to convince the handful of persuadables that Antarctica is in net mass loss (as GRACE has), then its money well spent.

Plus, when the intelligent rodentiforms unearth our titanium time capsules 40 million years from now, we might be able to warn them about the perils of fossil fuels.

Jellyfish and squid are having their best years in eons, now that we've knocked the keystone predators down a few notches.

I have always said its gonna be us vs. cephalopods

insects reached evolutionary stasis eons ago

I would love get a deep time view of what actually happens..

"now that we've knocked the keystone predators down a few notches"

How is this happening? They getting bigger or humans weakening the predators?

Tuna population is about 5-10% what it was a century ago, likewise for sharks and other top predators. Jeremy Jackson covers the downstream effects in this TED talk.

I'm looking forward to a splendid diversity of toxic algaes.

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--MtLQ5YBr--/18lor1mbq6t4ejpg.jpg

http://ih2.redbubble.net/image.9607093.7321/fig,white,mens,ffffff.jpg

It appears that Internet humor is the only thing strong enough to offset just how unpredictable the next 50 years is going to be like.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--AF5w9M3hvg/VDGmpNwWkoI/AAAAAAAAVHw/utB0l_JsJEk/s1600/Screenshot%2B2014-10-05%2Bat%2B1.13.52%2BPM.png

Oceans Getting Hotter Than Anybody Realized

...Research published Sunday concluded that the upper 2,300 feet of the Southern Hemisphere’s oceans may have warmed twice as quickly after 1970 than had previously been thought. Gathering reliable ocean data in the Southern Hemisphere has historically been a challenge, given its remoteness and its relative paucity of commercial shipping, which helps gather ocean data. Argo floats and satellites are now helping to plug Austral ocean data gaps, and improving the accuracy of Northern Hemisphere measurements and estimates.

“The Argo data is really critical,” said Paul Durack, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher who led the new study, which was published in Climate Nature Change. “The estimates that we had up until now have been pretty systematically underestimating the likely changes.”

Durack and Lawrence Livermore colleagues worked with a Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist to compare ocean observations with ocean models. They concluded that the upper levels of the planet’s oceans — those of the northern and southern hemispheres combined — had been warming during several decades prior to 2005 at rates that were 24 to 58 percent faster than had previously been realized.

...“Even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today, we'd still have an ocean that is warmer than the ocean of 1950, and that heat commits us to a warmer climate,” Gille said. “Extra heat means extra sea level rise, since warmer water is less dense, so a warmer ocean expands.”

Ocean warming is exacerbating flooding caused by the melting of glaciers and other ice. Seas have risen 8 inches since the industrial revolution, and they continue to rise at a hastening pace, worsening floods and boosting storm surges near shorelines around the world. Another 2 to 7 feet of sea level rise is forecast this century, jeoparizing the homes and neighborhoods of the 5 million Americans who live less than 4 feet above high tide, as well as those of the hundreds of millions living along coastlines in other countries.

but surely the hippies were wrong, and punk rock will save us

Fracking Footprint Seen From Space

An unexpectedly high amount of the climate-changing gas methane, the main component of natural gas, is escaping from the Four Corners region in the US Southwest, according to a new study by the University of Michigan and NASA.

..."There's so much coalbed methane in the Four Corners area, it doesn't need to be that crazy of a leak rate to produce the emissions that we see. A lot of the infrastructure is likely contributing," said Eric Kort, assistant professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the U-M College of Engineering.

Kort, first author of a paper on the findings published in Geophysical Research Letters, says the controversial natural gas extraction technique of hydraulic fracturing is not the main culprit.

"We see this large signal and it's persistent since 2003," Kort said. "That's a pre- fracking timeframe in this region. While fracking has become a focal point in conversations about methane emissions, it certainly appears from this and other studies that in the U.S., fossil fuel extraction activities across the board likely emit higher than inventory estimates.
"
While the signal represents the highest concentration of methane seen from space, the researchers caution that Four Corners isn't necessarily the highest emitting region.

"One has to be somewhat careful in equating abundances with emissions," said study contributor Christian Frankenberg at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "The Four Corners methane source is in a relatively isolated area with little other methane emissions, hence causing a well distinguishable hot-spot in methane abundances. Local or more diffuse emissions in other areas, such as the eastern U.S., may be convoluted with other nearby sources."

(no idea why the headline mentions fracking, since the point of the article is that there are other huge releases of methane being detected that aren't the direct result of fracking.)

evil liberal media, naturally

NASA: Earth Just Experienced the Warmest Six-Month Stretch Ever Recorded

Over the weekend, NASA announced that last month was the warmest September since global records have been kept. What’s more, the last six months were collectively the warmest middle half of the year in NASA’s records—dating back to 1880.

The record-breaking burst of warmth was kicked off by an exceptionally warm April—the first month in at least 800,000 years that atmospheric carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million.

high in the mid-70s today along the mid-atlantic seaboard. october is the new september

http://www.thenation.com/authors/naomi-klein

in a better world, GOP politicians would be taken to task every day for theirhilarious insane contradicting position RE: climate change and their support for the military. the DoD just released an update to their Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap (CCAR). the position of the DoD on climate change is unambiguous; the first sentence is "Climate change will affect the Department of Defense's ability to defend the nation and poses immediate risks to U.S. national security." (italics mine)

i don't blame GOP fools for downplaying (aka not mentioning it at all, ever) the DoD's stance on climate change. but it's ridiculous that they're not called out on it more often, considering they support just about everything else the military does. why is it different with climate change? if they don't trust climate scientists and they don't trust "academics" and they don't trust SCIENCE, it seems like one of the next pillars of authority would be the military and religious organizations - both of which recognize climate change and support doing something to mitigate it.

http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/CCARprint.pdf

maybe now they can't trust the military? the kenyan jihad to weaken america by brainwashing us with climate "science" has infiltrated our armed forces! socialism! impeach!

That's...kinda true. (In re: not trusting the military, or rather, ascribing them to being 'pressured' by politicians who are not themselves. Which oddly enough doesn't seem to apply when they themselves are in charge but hey.)

maybe the core question is Who do republicans still trust?

Big Oil? But even ExxonMobil and Chevron and BP are acknowledging that carbon emissions might have something to do with this thing called climate change, so I guess maybe I should say the Kochtopus instead?

It's an interesting mindset that they have, where they can be so paranoid and apocalyptic about one looming middle- to long-range threat (e.g. debt) but dismiss out of hand another (climate), and by "interesting" I mean depressing, and by "debt" I mean "debt when a Democrat is occupying the White House."

Whoever signs their checks?

So Lockheed Martin is claiming a breakthrough in fusion that could be ready for widespread use in a decade
Might we have a shot at surviving after all?

fusion would be awesome. unfortunately it's been 'a decade away' for the past several decades. also highly unfortunate is that since there is a lengthy 'lag' between GHG emissions and their effect on temperature and sea levels that is decades long. in other words, even if the world miraculously went zero-carbon tomorrow we would still experience increasingly shitty effects of climate change for the next hundred years.

hey guys i dug deep into the synthesis report of IPCC's report, and found something that will absolutely shock you. these "scientists" (taking money from the envirofascist money machine, in many cases), buried information on the costs of mitigating climate change. see pg. SPM-17 in the report if you want to see for yourself, but let me warn you: bring along a roll of paper towels because you will feel unclean and nasty after you fully understand the economic implications of taking strong enough action on climate change to keep overall warming under 2 degrees celsius through the 21st century. Here we go. deep breath. it would require:

an annualized reduction of consumption growth by 0.04 to 0.14 (median: 0.06) percentage points over the century relative to annualized consumption growth in the baseline that is between 1.6 percent and 3 percent per year (high confidence).

you can't fool me with fancy numbers, envirofascists! i translated the figures into a handy chart, using a starting point of $85 trillion for today's Global World Product, 2.3% for annualized growth under the baseline scenario (halfway between their high confidence range marks) and 2.24% for annualized growth under the aggressive action mitigation strategy (the baseline rate of 2.3% minus the median 0.06 reduction of consumption growth).

take a look at the end of the world:

http://i.imgur.com/QhkozU6.jpg

let me summarize the the summary report of a giant group of climate scientists summarizing the reports of other people who have summarized reports: if we take the kind of action we need to take, right now, to keep 21st century warming at levels that are not catastrophic, it's going to make the overall Global World Product move from that upper line to the lower line.

WE CAN'T LET THIS STAND

What ~AGENDA 21~ doesn't want you to see!!!!111!

that $30 trillion gap at 2100...just think of all the megaspaceyachts that won't be built, all the extra caviar that will not be ordered, the 6th floor second penthouse that won't even be considered by rich people sitting in their primary penthouse..it's just fucking sad

Not to mention the price of caviar would likely shoot up catastrophically by that point!

That $30 trillion gap is irrelevant after the financial structure readjusts to a world that is uninsurable and unaffordable.

good LORD some depressing stuff is coming out on insideEPA (paywalled, sorry). some background, as quickly as possible: the proposed EPA rule on regulating greenhouse gases from existing power plants (as opposed to the rule on future power plants, which has already been implemented) depends heavily on active participation from states. the rule was developed with flexibility in mind. each state is given an annual rate-based target of greenhouse gas emissions - expressed as pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour. each state is then required to come up with their own plan (the State Implementation Plan or SIP) to meet the target, whether that's through using more renewable energy, energy efficiency measures, more natural gas (BARF....BAAAAAAARRFF. ahem, sorry) or improving generation efficiency at coal plants. if states don't develop a plan on time, EPA has to issue a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) - basically, doing the state's work for them - which is bad news because states (presumably) should be best suited to come up with plans that meet their own unique conditions and needs.

it shouldn't be a surprise that an influential GOP memo is circulating that advises GOP-dominated states to completely ignore the requirement for states to come up with their own plan, en masse, and just force EPA to create plans for each state. the memo's reasoning is that 1) states that develop their own SIPs are essentially supporting the administration and the GHG rule and degrades GOP politicians' ability to argue against it, 2) if dozens of states refuse to come up with SIPs, EPA won't have the resources to create plans for all of them in time, and 3) EPA will have less power and flexibility in designing plans for states than states would have if they created their own plans.

eh, this stuff is kind of in the weeds, i guess. but it's an absolute disaster, writing's on the wall. the painful irony with all of this is unbelievable. obamacare, and now EPA GHG rules - based on ideas that were originally developed BY CONSERVATIVES, going out of the way to provide states with the ability to take control rather than the federal government, and then dealt punishing blows by conservatives that express their opposition to ideas by doing everything possible to undercut their success through nonparticipation.

and what's hilarious is that the end of the memo provides a few results from a survey that the consulting firm performed, and one of the things they highlight is that people greatly prefer states to decide how electricity generation is performed, rather than the federal government. IN THE SAME MEMO HE BEGS STATES TO FORFEIT THEIR ABILITY TO DECIDE HOW ELECTRICITY GENERATION IS PERFORMED IN EXCHANGE FOR TEMPORARY POLITICAL GAIN

Were you starting off the week happy and encouraged? Let me ruin it for you...

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/e2-wire/223398-senate-gop-steeling-for-battle-against-the-epa

Senate Republicans are gearing up for a war against the Obama administration’s environmental rules, identifying them as a top target when they take control in January.

The GOP sees the midterm elections as a mandate to roll back rules from the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies, with Republicans citing regulatory costs they say cripple the economy and skepticism about the cause of climate change.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) identified his top priority come January as “to try to do whatever I can to get the EPA reined in.”

McConnell made his defense of coal, a major piece of Kentucky’s economy, a highlight of his reelection bid, which he won easily over Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes.

He said he feels a “deep responsibility” to stop the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, as it proposed to do in January for newly built generators and in June for existing ones.

But those are far from the only rules the GOP wants to target.

Republican lawmakers are planning an all-out assault on Obama’s environmental agenda, including rules on mercury and other air toxics from power plants, limits on ground-level ozone that causes smog, mountaintop mining restrictions and the EPA’s attempt to redefine its jurisdiction over streams and ponds.

The Interior Department is also in the crosshairs, with rules due to come soon on hydraulic fracturing on public land and protecting streams from mining waste.

Republicans citing regulatory costs they say cripple the economy

if the EPA hadn't been all over Bear Stearns' case, inhibiting their free market creativity with environmental regulations, the CDO bubble would never have burst, AIG would be riding just as high today as in 2007, and half a dozen of the biggest US banks that went belly up would still be solvent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/world/asia/china-us-xi-obama-apec.html

China and the United States made common cause on Wednesday against the threat of climate change, staking out an ambitious joint plan to curb carbon emissions as a way to spur nations around the world to make their own cuts in greenhouse gases.

The landmark agreement, jointly announced here by President Obama and President Xi Jinping, includes new targets for carbon emissions reductions by the United States and a first-ever commitment by China to stop its emissions from growing by 2030.

Administration officials said the agreement, which was worked out quietly between the United States and China over nine months and included a letter from Mr. Obama to Mr. Xi proposing a joint approach, could galvanize efforts to negotiate a new global climate agreement by 2015.

i'm sure we'll still all die of hunger in 40 years, but this seems like good news.

inhofe is taking over for boxer? just shoot me.

ALEC has drafted model legislation to eliminate the EPA over a period of 5 years, replacing it with a committee of a rotating cast of 300 state environmental officials (6 per state). ALEC members will consider adopting it during their annual meeting in early December in DC.

haha

they propose replacing the 15,000 EPA employees with 300 people on a committee, which would result in a lowering of the EPA budget from ~8.2 billion to 2.0 billion. 2 billion for 300 committee member comes out to 6.66666666666666 million per committee member.

(i know, i know, they would propose paying the committee members a reasonable amount (not a devil amount) and then spend the rest on contractors)

Every future post to this thread should be preceded by this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2BNmn8TYdE

the proposal/memo is behind a paywall but goddamn it is hilarious and terrifying. The series of "WHEREAS" is just fucking incredible.

lol @ breathtaking "WHEREAS" series

have you seen it? it's just unbelievable.