Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

landrieu deserves eternal damnation as well

i think i posted this a few years back but i saw it again today and remembered how much i liked it:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CNb8m9vUkAAAu1A.png:large

i don't like it :c

hehe, also there's the fact that it's not based off of any data, but i think it illustrates reality pretty accurately

sickening:

http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/welcome-to-beautiful-parkersburg/

god damn. thank you for sharing that. just sat and read the whole thing, watched all the videos. fucking devastating.

also incredible journalism. not directly global warming related but probably a must-read, and a reminder just how flagrant and bone-chillingly corporate cover-ups are, still are, like all this happened very recently, is still happening now. not some long-dead villains burying some toxic waste drums in the 50s and 60s. fucking horrifying.

2015's El Niño will rival the strongest on record.

Every El Niño brings Sep-Jan drought and forest and peat fires to Indonesia. These have been exacerbated by draining of lands for palm plantations, over peat deposits up to 20 m thick.

During the last big El Niño in 1997, Indonesian peat fires were responsible for 13–40% of global carbon emissions, and were responsible for the largest annual increase in atmospheric CO2 on record. They're the main reason Indonesia is third to China and America in total carbon emissions.

When one considers peatlands

account for 550 Gt carbon worldwide. The majority of the carbon stored in peatlands is in the saturated peat soil that has been sequestered over millennia. In the sub (polar) zone, peatlands contain on average 3.5 times more carbon per hectare than the above-ground ecosystems on mineral soil; in the boreal zone they contain 7 times more and in the humid tropics over 10 times more carbon.

tropical peatlands, and their climatically driven burning, look a lot like the most plausible positive carbon feedback during past interglacials. Delving into this, they're more scary short term than permafrost outgassing and seabed methane hydrates.

And for those awaiting the rotten egg scent of past oceanic anoxia / euxinia extinction events:

Purple Waves Puzzle Oregon Coast Scientists, Officials

She photographed these examples of the stuff in Neskowin on August 15.

I was in Neskowin, Oregon on August 18-21 and saw nothing like this. Not sure if I should be sad or happy about that.

Given no one was falling over dead from hydrogen sulfide, you missed an opportunity to witness a purple sulfur bacteria bloom, of the sort which played a major role during the late-Devonian, end-Permian, and end-Triassic mass extinctions, as well as the Cenomanian–Turonian, Aptian and Toarcian ocean anoxic events.

Usually, purple sulfur bacteria blooms are only visible in the Black Sea and off Namibia, so its pretty cool (horrific!) that it only took one year's warm blob to see photic zone euxinia off American shores.

No one else may care, but that end-Triassic link should go here.

I read your link on purple sulfur bacteria and agree that having it show up in the water along the Oregon coastline is pretty horrific. The pace of climate change seems to me to be accelerating rapidly, looking at both the pace at which new weather records are being set in the past year and the margins by which those new records are eclipsing the old ones.

frankly, i avoid the numbers as much as possible. because every story i read about these things, every set of facts i come across, corrodes my sanity (which was never that great to begin with) more and more. and i don't think it's just me. given the choice between madness, ignorance, and denial, i guess i'll go for ignorance.

i think that's the decision that most people make, whether they say it or not

i think about it a lot but i don't really know what i'm supposed to do with it.

One step beyond!

After one goes through all the Kübler-Ross stages, there's still wry humor and the knowledge of how privileged we are to know just why our civilization is closing up shop. Most didn't get this before their droughts, plagues, eruptions, and sacks of cities. Document it, preserve what's valuable, wake up each day.

Oh, and root for bird flu or a similar pandemic that might give us a chance in hell.

learn how to make & repair things, have basic tools, learn about edible plants

buy camping gear, you might need it someday

that is very good advice

rapacity seems built into the human brain. sometimes i really do think that people would rather die than scale things back.

this should really be the cover of someone's next scare book...

http://i.imgur.com/8HJzT81.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Dr4Vhip.jpg

Rapacity -- we probably evolved to glut ourselves in times of plenty, so yeah!

But as awful as we are, we'd be able to adapt to losing our creature comforts; I'm guessing our survival drive would/will win out over our desire for smartphones and SUVs.

xxp

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/world/united-states-russia-arctic-exploration.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

well, at least i still have the ability to enjoy a FUN FACT from time to time:

"When President Obama travels to Alaska on Monday, becoming the first president to venture above the Arctic Circle while in office..."

more will go when it becomes a warm & sunny resort destination

see, this is what turns you into ted kaczynski, when you realize that this sort of environmental catastrophe was inevitable from the beginning of the industrial revolution 200 years ago. but goddam, i do not want to return to a state of nature. hobbes was right. if the only alternative on the table is to re-establish malthusian economics, then hurtling headlong into the unknown, into mass extinctions and mega-genocide, under the foolhardy hope that we'll figure out some way to fix it before it's too late actually becomes the preferable option. fuck subsistence.

This idea of a whole ocean becoming anoxic is quite scary, imagine the stench from a gigantic globe spanning pond.

I am become Elizabeth, New Jersey, destroyer of worlds...

i feel like the human race is reliving the plot of "flowers for algernon"

When President Bush XIV travels to address aid workers in former Washington State, he will be the first president to travel south of the Arctic Circle in decades.

https://33.media.tumblr.com/65b3f598635c97b75b76e30e4603adae/tumblr_ntuxa08v2C1qdmmiqo1_500.gif

ABOARD COAST GUARD CUTTER ALEX HALEY, in the Chukchi Sea —

best dateline

Climate trauma survival tips from Dr. Lise Van Susteren

http://i.imgur.com/Dr4Vhip.jpg

― 1995 ball boy (Karl Malone), Saturday, August 29, 2015 1:11 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Las Vegas, 2009, aerial photo by Alex MacLean.

Even Citibank is saying that taking action on emissions will be less expensive over the long run than doing nothing.
https://www.citivelocity.com/citigps/ReportSeries.action?recordId=41&src=Home

We believe that that solution does exist. The incremental costs of following a low carbon path are in context limited and seem affordable, the 'return' on that investment is acceptable and moreover the likely avoided liabilities are enormous. Given that all things being equal cleaner air has to be preferable to pollution, a very strong "Why would you not?" argument begins to develop.

That sort of thing is my only hope, that we somehow end up dumping billions into researching and producing some sort of technology to pull CO2 out of the air, cuz not doing so would cost us way more

It would have to pull it out faster than we're putting it in, which seems unlikely.

Geoengineering carbon sequestration is feasible, but it will be effective on century timescales, not the decadal timescales of our carbon blowout party.

http://dieoff.org/Olduvai.gif

My best case scenario is that after 2° C, permanent loss of New Orleans and Shanghai, hungry middle classes, southern borders lethally guarded against climate refugees, and the denialists have died off, politicians will start taking the issue seriously: Ie coal reserves nationalized and guarded by the military, drone strikes against exploration drillers, crippling trade sanctions against nations that don't enforce high carbon taxes. In that world, while there are still denialists of every religious stripe, their political power is limited by the willingness of a multipolar world to economically enforce a carbon extraction wind-down. I'm disappointed that the UNFCC hasn't floated economic sanctions against bad national actors yet.

2° C is only a milepost enroute to 4° C by 2100, itself only little positive feedback from existential threats at 6-8° C. Its inevitable at that stage that albedo engineering will commence. Locally by mandated white roofing/pavement, globally with stratospheric aerosols. Even Bangladesh could unilaterally afford injecting enough sulfur into the stratosphere. Geoengineering, despite the acid rain and other side effects, will be accepted as the price of continued civilization, and some elements, like biochar to convert cellulose to topsoil, are unambiguously positive.

Are there some geoengineering approaches that would speed carbon sequestration over the course of centuries, so that the albedo engineering can be tapered off as well? Yes. Oceans can be fertilized to spur diatom blooms. Powdered olivine and other silicate minerals can be deposited over both sea and land (including fiercely guarded rainforest refuges) to sequester still more, accelerating the weathering that over geologic time, has resolved past greenhouse episodes. These are projects on the scale of the modern energy industry: wartime efforts. Existential threats, universally understood by elites, are potent motivators.

But for now, I live simply, disseminate knowledge, vote for sanity, and hope for unambiguous early climate disasters that might motivate the elites to get serious.

The Cross of the Moment

Fermi's Paradox, climate change, capitalism, and collapse are among the subjects discussed in this feature length documentary on the environmental crisis. Interviewees include Bill McKibben, Gary Snyder, Derrick Jensen, Peter D. Ward, Jill Stein, Bill Patzert, Guy McPherson and other top academics, scientists and public intellectuals.

read 'jill stein' as 'ben stein' for a sec there and was deeply confused

sickening:

http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/welcome-to-beautiful-parkersburg/

― scott seward, Thursday, August 27, 2015 10:27 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

how is this not treason?

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/gop-congress-climate-pact-paris-213382?ifatfirst

This was hopeful while still realistic. So sad that the American GOP is the only thing left standing in the way of doing something about climate change.

watching the syrian refugee crisis unfold recently is leading me to low-level terror about how bad things are going to get when the world starts seeing climate refugees on the move en-masse from their flooded / drought-afflicted homes

I'm interested to see how very wealthy refugees will be treated and how they'll deal.

the USA has always welcomed very wealthy immigrants with open arms, but you must be filthy rich to merit the VIP treatment

thx for the link schwantz I hadn't seen that yet

So sad that the American GOP is the only thing left standing in the way of doing something about climate change.
― schwantz, Wednesday, September 9, 2015 12:10 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just the scum of the earth... good thing they seem in free-fall. that article by proxy almost makes a hilary presidency sound like a dream, as skeptical of her as i am.s