Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

The thing that irritates me to no end about this is that EVEN IF climate change is a total hoax and the 1% of scientists who think it's not man-made were actually right, taking drastic action against it is STILL gonna make the world a better place 30-40 years down the road. We're gonna run out of dead dinosaurs some day.

god will put more in the ground to fool the heathens into believing in darwin, and he'll put more oil there, too

So anyone read McKibben's terrifying NEW new math?
At this point I'm just desperately hoping he's a huckster? If I made a chart of my climate-related despondency over the last five years it would look a lot like the famed hockey stick graph.

Keep at it, you've gotten through denial, anger, and bargaining, and acceptance is around the corner.

I don't think he's a huckster but sadly it's becoming increasingly clear that the 1.5 degree goal is just not really realistic given today's current political reality.

xp: Mind, I've been following this since Stephen Schneider's "The Changing Climate" appeared in the Sep 1989 Scientific American. Think I got through denial, anger, and bargaining in the 90s, and depression before the Copenhagen conference. Now, I'm just hoping for more Svaldbard seed vault / Rosetta Project / Georgia Guidestones type work to help our distant, distant descendants pick up the pieces.

https://twitter.com/NWSFlagstaff/status/780014052160311297

good thing we're about to pull out of the Paris treaty

US folks: it takes a couple of mindless minutes to support a climate question (or all of them) for the next US presidential debate.

wow those are some depressing questions when you sort by "most votes"

yes but expected

we are committing suicide, all so that rich fucks don't have to worry themselves about the prospect of considering sacrificing their luxuries by redesigning society to be less productive (less work, less commuting) and more sustainable. we are very professional and practical, in other words. shrewd, you might say. smart. go humanity

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-s-co2-passes-the-400-ppm-threshold-maybe-permanently/

Some non-terrifying math: http://futurism.com/solar-power-cost-has-dropped-25-in-only-5-months/

It'll be interesting to see how much is overcapacity. Buying solar has been a bargain, investing in it has been a nightmare.

Clarrification: I haven't, but I've watched for a decade. Photovoltaic panel manufacturing is the definition of a bad investment: little branding, no margins, constant R&D just to stay on the treadmill.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/world/africa/kigali-deal-hfc-air-conditioners.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a23417/convert-co2-into-ethanol/

The paper and supporting information.

It's doesn't seem like a negative emissions technology, but rather a means to capture some otherwise wasted excess renewable energy using emissions from a source for relatively pure CO2, like a natural gas generation plant.

While its not as sexy, the story lead me to discover an eminently plausible way of coping with renewable intermittancy: hydrolyse water to hydrogen, methanate with CO2, and store the resulting methane in the existing natural gas distribution network, like the 30 power-to-gas demonstration plants active or being built in Germany.

We're all familiar with Arctic sea ice extent, but records are also kept of global sea ice extent.

https://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/global_sea_ice_extent_zoomed_2016_day_304_1981-2010.png

*gulp*

i mean, tell me that's not actually as terrifying as it looks

Historically, Arctic sea ice extent has trended lower, while Antarctic trended higher (IIRC, because of lower salinity Antarctic surface waters due to glacial melts). This is the first year where both Arctic and Antarctic ice are the lowest seen. For more, see Current State of the Sea Ice Cover (NASA).

Zooming out on Antarctic sea ice, its less marked, but still unprecedented:

http://neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov/uploads/images_db/CSIC_figure6.png

So, global sea ice extent was already close to the lowest recorded in the last 40 years back in mid-Sept, and, subsequently, the 1.5-2.5 sq km growth that pretty much always happens during October... just hasn't happened. Because Jul/Aug were the warmest months on record. Not good.

If I lived on one of the low lying island nations I'd be hoping there would be some serious contingency planning going on. I mean the Maldives alone has a population of nearly 400000, if things started happening quickly there could be a far worse catastrophe than the '04 tsunami.

The Maldives are using foreign grants to build up islands 2 m above sea level, for instance the island of Hulhumalé, which was originally intended for population overflow from the capital Male. Longer term, they've been in discussion with Sri Lanka as a future refugee destination. The Maldives are in a much better situation than Pacific atolls, given their high tourism income of nearly $US 1 billion/yr.

Paradise almost lost: Maldives seek to buy a new homeland

Kiribati's attempts to follow the Maldives: https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2014/december/1417352400/john-van-tiggelen/cold-comfort

...subsequently, the 1.5-2.5 sq km growth that pretty much always happens during October... just hasn't happened. Because Jul/Aug were the warmest months on record

Sorry "Mike Jones" (heh) but that doesn't seem accurate. Take a look here:

https://neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov/uploads/images_db/CSIC_figure1.png

While it's true that current Arctic sea ice extent is apparently the lowest ever for this time of year, there still has been a significant rebound in October from the summer low. I think what's actually making the difference, as Sanpaku seems to imply, is that the loss in the Antarctic sea ice extent is what's driving the global net low this year. It remains quite worrisome particularly because of the positive feedback due to the reduced albedo effect (meaning more heat is absorbed from sunlight by water than by ice). Still, when we hit a relative low in the Arctic in 2007 I was sure that by this time we'd have ice-free summers in the Arctic. I guess things could be worse.

[Source: https://neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov/csb/index.php?section=234]

And basically, if you're wondering about the difference between "extent" and "area", apparently extent is just based on actual sea ice coverage, while area factors in the sea ice concentration.

Right, gotcha. I was only going by that graph above, where there isn't the major upturn in *global* sea ice extent in the last 25 days that one would normally expect to see. Arctic sea ice, yes.

Business as usual models run 2.6-4.8° C in 2100. Now, paleoclimate data suggests a higher sensitivity to atmospheric carbon, leading to a higher projected range of 4.8°C to 7.4°C

Climate change may be escalating so fast it could be 'game over', scientists warn (The Independent)
The new paper has a more reserved title: Nonlinear climate sensitivity and its implications for future greenhouse warming

7°C, by the way, is roughly where large swathes of the American Midwest become uninhabitable in Summer due to continental climate+humidity: it becomes impossible to dissipate heat by sweating.

To any anyone stumbling across an archive of this in future decades: I'm so sorry.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election-night-2016/goodbye-to-the-climate

That a bit alarmist tbh. Yes things are bad but exactly how bad? That's the question. Frankly it seems like emotions are running high around here right now and maybe we all need to take a breather. Sanpaku I saw some of your remarks on the election thread, are you doing ok now? I'm probably going to have to stay away from the strictly political threads for now, they've gotten too emotional for me and I don't feel like it's good for my mental wellness at the moment. Nothing personal to anyone involved, just my POV.

"Alarmist" referring to the NYT commentary, not specifically to the article about sensitivity to carbon. Regarding that article, I'd just point out that there seems to be a significant amount of uncertainty in their models. Not wrong, just uncertainty.

which part of it was alarmist?

the only thing in it that doesn't seem like a foregone conclusion is the possible international unraveling of the Paris Agreement, and the writing on that isn't alarmist at all:

The incoming Trump administration simply can disregard America’s pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 26 to 28 percent below the 2005 level by 2025. That is bad enough. But the big worry is what other key countries, including the world’s largest emitter, China, as well as India and Brazil, will do if the United States reneges on its pledge. The result could be that the Paris agreement unravels, taking it from the 97 percent of global emissions currently covered by the pact to little more than the European Union’s 10 percent share.

Don't forget, Trump once actually called for urgent action on climate change:

http://grist.org/politics/donald-trump-climate-action-new-york-times/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=sailthru-post-notifications&utm_source=notification&utm_term=u%28Donald%20Trump%20once%20backed%20urgent%20climate%20action.%20Wait%2C%20what?%29

Granted I don't see him backing this position now, but surely he is absolutely full of shit on most of what he says, so, y'know....*pukes in corner*

xpost
but the adoption of "climate change is a hoax" as the official position from the President of the United States, the rescission of obama's environmental executive orders, dropping support of the clean power plan, gutting of EPA, pulling the plug on methane regulations (among others), fastlane approval of keystone and DAPL (which will at least make some ilxors happy), increasing subsidies for oil and gas? yeah, that's all going to happen.

Right, it was mostly the headline that seemed alarmist. I agree that the discussion of the most significant issues, mostly the Paris Agreement, but also Obama's Clean Power Plan, are not sensationalist. Even his conclusions seem fairly measured. What we're really talking about here is Obama's legacy. I'm not sure four years is really enough to completely change the prognosis for the climate. I should probably stop talking now because I have a feeling Sanpaku is going to come and make me feel stupid soon. As he well should.

It's no secret that the Republicans are the party of the energy industry. This is what we're going to get as long as Republicans hold power at the national level. It's really embarrassing from an international standpoint.

yeah, agree that the title isn't exactly aligned with the writing underneath. i think editors choose the titles and subheds for articles, not the authors, so they went for the more clickbaity one (worked for me!)

i won't speak for sanpaku, but i think the issue is that the current period we're living in, meaning things we're doing this year, things that effect the next 5-10 years, really are critical. a lot of people are warning that we're already PAST the point of no return - the point where more feedback loops start to kick in and it's no longer even possible to reduce ghg concentrations. if we're not already there, even more people are warning that we are very, very close. loose, faulty analogy here, but imagine that we're riding in a car in the desert, and the dust is kicking up everywhere so it's hard to see, and it's likely we're headed toward the edge of a canyon. some people are saying we're actually already flying through the air. others say the cliff is coming up in 25 ft and we'd better slam on the brakes ASAP. it's possible the cliff is more like 75 ft away, though. that would be nice. the driver (obama) starts to put the brake on. then a guy on PCP rips open the car door, takes over the drivers seat and says that cliffs don't exist as he presses on the pedal.

(^now THAT's alarmist. and not far from the reality)

Yes I've thought about the car going over a cliff metaphor too. The dust in the air is a good touch. 75 ft though, that's pretty close. I'd say it's probably a clown car, and yeah half the clowns are on acid.

I can't say I've seen a lot of people saying we're already past the point of no return in the sources I pay attention to. Ok, admittedly that's mostly the Guardian these days but they have pretty good coverage of climate issues.

How the hell do we not succumb to despair now?

because humans strangely have reserves of strength and optimism that prevail against all available evidence?

http://33.media.tumblr.com/831d67561a29402a83433a1683b072da/tumblr_n6enlgTEoD1smcbm7o1_500.gif

viborg, its depressing, its all depressing, but its been so for at least 27 years for me. I'll be alright. Frankly, I haven't believed our species will do enough, soon enough, for a very long time. All Trump's election does is slightly hasten the timetable for the worst effects to appear.

I feel my obligation as an aware human is to minimize my personal footprint, advocate for measures that might buy time (green energy, conservation), and measures that preserve some biodiversity and knowledge through the coming centurys' bottleneck, and document both the effects, and what the world once looked like, for future generations. Those future lives will be under poorer circumstances, but hopefully it won't be a dark age, but rather a far wiser one, for our experience.

Humans may learn for the better momentarily, but complacency is also a trait of ours and we'll be back to where we are now, in some way.