Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

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

Without control of Congress, any dem president, whether Hillary or otherwise, will not be able to undertake the kind of broad actions required to make substantial progress on climate change.

that's not entirely true

(as he points out in the article) pres can do a lot by fiat via agency rules and regulations, as long as it's upheld by the courts

and already has

and of course individual states can do a lot (we're not waiting for the feds in CA, for ex.), it's compelling these other stupid states, like say Texas, that's the issue on the national level

I don't think Gwynne Dyer was far wrong writing about future borders in Climate Wars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGMrGlAHUq0

Guy in the middle is the Australian Prime Minister, guy on right is minister for immigration

All three are utter shitbags

"There's a mic right there" is an amazing answer to that joke