Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

Use it up, find another.

Mars is a close as it gets to Earthlike in our solar system, and it appears there's practically no fossil resources (save widespread underground water) there. Everything else would have to be brought in, so to be viable, any colony would of necessity be the most sustainable human community anywhere. Think Biosphere 2, only with more severe consequences than everyone starving and gasping for oxygen for the last year of the experiment.

It's kinda fortunate for the universe that by the time we have technology to colonize other worlds, we'll likely lack the physical resources or collective will to do so in any appreciable way. After the heat waves, droughts, famines, diseases, wars and oil/phosphate shortages of the bottleneck century, our remaining descendants will have to hunker down around the poles for a few millenia while dying algae pull the excess CO2 at the surface down to the abyss. And it will be for all intents impossible to have a repeat of the industrial revolution for at least a few million years, as all the easily accessible fossil fuels will have been extracted.

didnt the diamond book collapse discuss pacific island populations where the canoes just *stopped coming* and presumably the last residents could only look out to see and hope someone came. they didn't. the end.

i'm also going with the "using up one planet after another" hypothesis until Keir Dullea goes through that Stargate.

@ Hunt3r

In Collapse, that was the case for Rapa Nui/Easter Island and the Greenland Vikings. Diamond's "islands are snow bubble Earths" thesis is most concisely conveyed in an essay he wrote for Discover magazine in 1995. Caveat!, The site that's from was an important contributor in 2001 to unremitting depression. On the bright side, I've now reached Kübler-Ross-ian acceptance.

the pope is going to publish an encyclical letter on climate change

In a sign of what can be expected in the encyclical, Cardinal Turkson, who authored an early draft of the document, suggested it was a sin for “humans to degrade the integrity of earth by causing changes in its climate”.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/672de57c-edd0-11e4-90d2-00144feab7de.html#axzz3YnkIbuVg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CEyYVomWEAAaoor.png

it could have been so much easier.

Black line represents current emissions?

Annual emissions history.

2° C is no longer a realistic possibility (save a near term pandemic), and our children will be forced inject sulfates into the stratosphere to slow (but not change the ultimate magnitude) of the impacts and runaway feedbacks. I'm living in a future scuba diving destination.

http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/could-we-reboot-civilisation-without-fossil-fuels/

inching ever-closer to thunderdome wheeeeeeee

Royal Dutch Shell has been accused of pursuing a strategy that would lead to potentially catastrophic climate change after an internal document acknowledged a global temperature rise of 4C, twice the level considered safe for the planet.

Shell accused of strategy risking catastrophic climate change

The campaign for U.S. Senate candidate Mike Beitiks begins with a message of comfort to his prospective constituents: “ISIS. Obamacare. Russia. The NSA. Wealth disparity. Immigration reform. Gun control. What do all of these hot issues for the 2016 election have in common? None of them matter because we’re all going to die.” Beitiks’ platform is singular: Halt government action until climate change is addressed. While the San Franciscan native is certain this message won’t get him elected, he’s hopeful that his extremely narrow campaign will at least offer consolation to those who fear human extinction, if only by letting them know they’re not alone.

http://www.theawl.com/2015/05/the-were-all-going-to-die-candidate

A plausible timeline of the distant future (BBC).

Idk, I find all of that kind of comforting.

Was surprised to see how close we are, relatively speaking, to the end of life on Earth

Even if we did everything right, our descendants would have ~800 million years, and C3 photosynthesis (most plants) only~ 500 million years, before the planet becomes uninhabitable due to sun's evolution. We're smack dab in the middle of a billion years between the oxygen crisis and snowball Earths, and the ultimate runaway greenhouse. On the other hand, if our descendants are still around then it should be straightforward to create some artificial ring systems (just deposit a few comets inside the Roche limit) or sun shades at Lagrange 1 to extend habitability.

Oh, is that all.

Sanpaku's link seems to be here

need to poll everyone's favorite timeline event. leaning toward 'local group finishes merging,' which would have to mean a local supergroup.

Either Laptop Dissolving at 100k or The Big Rip at 20 billion.

All matter is torn apart by the expansion of the universe. All distances become infinite - not good.

Pick your biblical plague:

‘Blob’ of warm Pacific water may intensify drought; threatens ecosystem
Red crabs swarm Southern California, linked to ‘warm blob’ in Pacific
Purple blob creatures invade California beaches
Toxic algae bloom might be largest ever

December 2014 record warm
Global oceans also record warm for 2014
2014 Earth's warmest year on record
Janaury 2015 second warmest on record
February 2015 second warmest February on record
March 2015 and first quarter of year warmest on record
April 2015 fourth warmest on record
May 2015 was warmest May on record
March–May and year-to-date also record warm

I thought I'd be inured to this by now, but I've a strong urge to assume the fetal position.

On the other hand, if our descendants are still around then it should be straightforward to create some artificial ring systems

Assumes humans will acquire ever-increasing amounts of cheap, readily-available power without inadvertently using that power to destroy every ecosystem on earth through ineptitude, greed and mismanagement. Long odds.

That won't happen. With just 2.3% annual growth in energy use, Earth reach boiling temperature on Earth in [400 short years](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/). Far more likely that we eek along with the 500 or so million it will be possible to support after the Big Melt and with extensive phosphorus recycling, and with luck someone a few millenia down the line will invent the autonomous self-replicators we'd need to exploit solar energy on Mercury or volatiles in the trojans. Without some sort of autonomous self-replicators, exploiting any off-world resources is a fool's errand.

I highly recommend Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Water Knife." It's fiction, and a thriller, but it's an impressively imagined near-future where dwindling water supplies have turned the American southwest into a capitalist/cutthroat nightmare of water rights, militias, mass migration and black market economy. Really dark and horrific at times, but rooted in a frightening plausibility.

+1. Bacigalupi has been one of the better Cli-fi authors, though sometimes capturing a post-apocalyptic atmosphere outweighs characterization in his work. The Water Knife is set in a plausible noirish world of US Southwest states struggling for vital resources barely within constraints of Federal oversight. Only the fixation on physical copies of 130+ year old documents strained credulity.

His distant climate change in Thailand novel The Windup Girl and his two young adult novels Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities are also vignettes in a shared awful post-industrial universe, and all fairly good. Don't bother with Zombie Baseball Beatdown or The Doubt Factory which were outside his milieu, though the latter was well intentioned. He hasn't written his masterpiece, yet.

http://www.thenation.com/article/179461/new-abolitionism?page=0,0

300 forest fires in Alaska.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIO6XtPUMAAZpdY.jpg

p sure this is a screenshot from civilization

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hqupaQI59Qk/Tdc6GBK_NrI/AAAAAAAAAKg/tB4ygx7XifQ/s1600/Windows+XP+Mode+-+Windows+Virtual+PC_2011-05-20_22-54-56.png

A better shot:

MODIS satellite imagery of Alaska from 23 June 2015 showing infrared-sensed fire hotspots (red) dots from 260+ wildfires. Fire crews are currently working only about 15% (three dozen) of these fires.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/MODIS-Alaska-wildfires-6-23-2015.jpg

When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job (Esquire)

great article, thanks for posting

But climate change happens gradually and we've already gone up almost 1 degree centigrade and seen eight inches of ocean rise. Barring unthinkably radical change, we'll hit 2 degrees in thirty or forty years and that's been described as a catastrophe—melting ice, rising waters, drought, famine, and massive economic turmoil. And many scientists now think we're on track to 4 or 5 degrees—even Shell oil said that it anticipates a world 4 degrees hotter because it doesn't see "governments taking the steps now that are consistent with the 2 degrees C scenario." That would mean a world racked by economic and social and environmental collapse.

"Oh yeah," Schmidt says, almost casually. "The business-as-usual world that we project is really a totally different planet. There's going to be huge dislocations if that comes about."

But things can change much quicker than people think, he says. Look at attitudes on gay marriage.

And the glaciers?

"The glaciers are going to melt, they're all going to melt," he says. "But my reaction to Jason Box's comments is—what is the point of saying that? It doesn't help anybody."

As it happens, Schmidt was the first winner of the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union, and various recent studies in the growing field of climate communications find that frank talk about the grim realities turns people off—it's simply too much to take in. But strategy is one thing and truth is another. Aren't those glaciers water sources for hundreds of millions of people?

"Particularly in the Indian subcontinent, that's a real issue," he says. "There's going to be dislocation there, no question."

And the rising oceans? Bangladesh is almost underwater now. Do a hundred million people have to move?

"Well, yeah. Under business as usual. But I don't think we're fucked."

Resource wars, starvation, mass migrations . . .

"Bad things are going to happen. What can you do as a person? You write stories. I do science. You don't run around saying, 'We're fucked! We're fucked! We're fucked!' It doesn't—it doesn't incentivize anybody to do anything."

starting to think about moving north tbh. montana seems like a good option.

But things can change much quicker than people think, he says. Look at attitudes on gay marriage.

dude i...waht?

he's referring to public attitudes/political will re: climate change

hah, ok. the more immediate reference as pasted appears to be "there's going to be huge dislocations if that comes about," which made it scan to me as "no biggie, people can move across continents in the face of famine, look at...gay marriage!"

that probably wasn't a good portion to c+p (the whole thing is worth a read), i found it interesting to see gavin schmidt walk the line between reality and not wanting to alienate people with doom

i haven't finished reading it yet, but the encyclical from the pope is really worth the time:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/269022055/Laudato-Si-the-Pope-s-encyclical-on-the-environment-and-climate-change

i am seriously contemplating buying some land in the upper peninsula. who's with me?

Can you get iPhones shipped there?

i feel mostly ambivalent about climate change

the one thing it's convinced me to do is to never have children

denmark sounds nice

i find it difficult to understand how someone could not care about global warming, or care much more about, say, racial inequality as a social issue.

Can you get iPhones shipped there?

― Jeff, Wednesday, July 8, 2015 5:12 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think you have to smuggle them inside a pastie, but yes.

i find it difficult to understand how someone could not care about global warming, or care much more about, say, racial inequality as a social issue.

― e-bouquet (mattresslessness), Wednesday, July 8, 2015 7:09 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

um. really? is the latter that incomprehensible in 2015? like yeah in the grand scheme the planet being fucked is a bigger problem and spells greater doom for humankind in the medium to long run. no question. but "racial inequality" can mean getting directly screwed over in countless ways in the here and now. not least, facing the possibility of being murdered by police, or having that happen to people around you. of course people would care much more about that.

no, that makes sense.

i phrased my sentiment poorly. i meant to say that i think it should be more visible, cared about and included along that axis. environmental / life care is a piece of the intersectionality puzzle. it affects us all in the long term but is definitely having / has had immediate effects on native americans and others who are disadvantaged not only by class and race but location, removed from the global economy, subject to environmental degradation, etc.

i find it difficult to understand how someone could not care about global warming, or care much more about, say, racial inequality as a social issue.

― e-bouquet (mattresslessness), Wednesday, July 8, 2015 7:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

there's maybe more hope for changing one than the other

also ambivalent in the sense of the "guess this will be the thing we die from" sense, not the "who cares if the temp is rising" sense