Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

chris hayes' metaphor in the nation a few years ago that a serious response to climate change would entail a destruction of capital comparable to the one represented by the abolition of slavery continues to be a helpful way for me to think about this stuff and who will be willing to do what re: it, inexact as the analogy may obviously be in key ways

has anyone read this? it's a bit long but really flush with detail, if repetitive:

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/21060-green-capitalism-the-god-that-failed

i think this is what pushed me to give up on capitalism entirely

A serious response is not going to happen without global trade accord with teeth: products that don't price-in greenhouse externalities will be tariffed to approximate these. Which I don't think will happen till we've baked in 3° C. 3° C probably entails 6-8° C from positive feedbacks. Humanity will survive (in pockets), but technological civilization is more doubtful. And good luck advancing past the Renaissance without a fossil fuel bootstrap. This isn't an inconvenient truth, this isn't widespread suffering, this is the end of hopes for humanity to expand and understand the universe. Its our Great Filter, as I suspect its been on other worlds.

Also, I need to get into analog synths and name my project "Great Filter", which to my surprise hasn't been taken yet.

a destruction of capital comparable to the one represented by the abolition of slavery

was the idea supposed to be in part (a) that this was a sea change in who it was that effectively POSSESSED capital, and (b) it was also covered over/obscured by concurrent industrialization?

if the article i linked to is anything to go by, the ecologically responsible price for ghg should necessarily contract the size of the economy thus making any progress towards ghg reduction fruitless in a political system which privileges economic growth (which is not limited to capitalism, though it is inherent in capitalism)

xp

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/all-references-to-climate-change-have-been-deleted-from-the-white-house-website

see you in hell, y'all!!!

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/07/science/earth/antarctic-crack.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

oh cool, a hellmouth

Oklahoma hits 100° in the dead of winter

This is awesome; also, terrifying.

http://en.newsner.com/man-points-camera-at-ice-then-captures-the-unimaginable-on-film/about/nature

@EricHolthaus
Temperatures up to 40 degF (22 degC) above normal today across the East.
The warmest February day for 100+ years (since records begin).

https://twitter.com/EricHolthaus/status/835197141366657024

Currently 74 in Cleveland. Hottest Feb. 24 on record for both Cleveland and Akron.

@NWSChicago
Chicago's about to do something its never done in 146 years of record keeping: go the entire months of Jan & Feb with no snow on the ground.

february tornado warning in iowa

For the first time ever, no measurable snow in Chicago this January and February.

Officially. 50s today, but might snow tomorrow!

Snow in March?? We could use some of that global warming I'm always hearing about, am I right??

An Argentine research base located on the northern tip of Antarctica hit a balmy 63.5° Fahrenheit today, hotter than New York City's 61° Fahrenheit (as of 1:26 p.m.)

http://in.reuters.com/article/antarctica-temperatures-idINKBN1684IC

isolated incident!

fuuuck

that and more:

Scientists know thawing permafrost unlocks carbon. But according to Tank, most of the carbon in the Canadian melting is being released quickly as coarse particles that aren't converted to CO2 immediately. But separate research by Swedish scientists suggests that the soil particles are quickly converted to heat-trapping CO2 when they are swept into the sea. A series of studies on the National Institute of Health's Arctic Health website documents how the widespread thaw of permafrost is already having direct impacts on people. Warmer water and increased sediment loads are harming lake trout, an important source of food for native communities. Changes to the land surface are also disrupting caribou breeding and migration, and in some places, the disappearing permafrost has destroyed traditional food storage cellars, researchers have found. At lower latitudes, permafrost is the glue that holds the world's highest mountains together by keeping rocks and soil frozen in place. Scientists are documenting how those bonds are dissolving, said Stefan Reisenhofer, a climate scientist with the Austrian Bureau of Meteorology and Geodynamics.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27022017/global-warming-permafrost-study-melt-canada-siberia

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a53555/antarctica-63-degrees-permafrost-melt/

bill mckibben on bill maher is less depressing than he might be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V69l7zbFeAk

the oceans are warming 13% faster than previously thought. sweet!

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/3/e1601545

The world has lost roughly half its coral reefs in the last 30 years. Scientists are now scrambling to ensure that at least a fraction of these unique ecosystems survives beyond the next three decades. The health of the planet depends on it: Coral reefs support a quarter of all marine species, as well as half a billion people around the world.

"This isn't something that's going to happen 100 years from now. We're losing them right now," said marine biologist Julia Baum of Canada's University of Victoria. "We're losing them really quickly, much more quickly than I think any of us ever could have imagined."

Even if the world could halt global warming now, scientists still expect that more than 90 percent of corals will die by 2050. Without drastic intervention, we risk losing them all.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/scientists-race-prevent-wipeout-worlds-coral-reefs-46084018

Seventeen congressional Republicans signed a resolution on Wednesday vowing to seek "economically viable" ways to stave off global warming, challenging the stated views of President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a hoax.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-congress-idUSKBN16M235

"economically viable" ways to stave off global warming

kill the poor, recycle them into soylent green

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C7cf02MXkAIExPd.jpg

hey, we found the smart part of Florida

what is up with South Dakota there

Rosebud and Pine Ridge Indian Reservations.

To be fair, for most people alive today in North America and Europe, the main adverse effect of climate change they'll notice is rising food prices. Indirect effects will be depressing international news, migrant crises, and the rise of fascist nativism. Lethal heatwaves and abandonment of coasts will happen after I'm dead.

It's so difficult to explain that a massive effort to decarbonize the economy would take decades, and even when accomplished the world would continue to warm for decades due to thermal sinks and feedbacks, and that every year we delay will reduce the human carrying capacity and increase the total ice-cap melt over millenia. Decisions we make will effect the next hundred generations, and not enough of us realize this.

the next hundred generations

you're very optimistic

barring total thermonuclear annihilation, there'll be a hundred generations of humans in the future. chances are there'll be less of them, living lives of grinding deprivation compared to us, but i feel like the human race won't get off so lightly as to go entirely extinct within the next 2000 years or less.

a bright side to all of this is that if global human life expectancy goes down, we might be able to eke out a few more generations over the same span of time

such a pessimist, bg

nah, it's wishful thinking - i've always wanted to live in waterworld

a bright side to all of this is that if global human life expectancy goes down, we might be able to eke out a few more generations over the same span of time

generations don't work this way

yeah, you're right. well another bright side is that this will all make a hell of a story some day

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51GJCBgMhhL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

haha this guy, great work: http://www.hcn.org/articles/why-california-is-recruiting-dispirited-epa-and-energy-department-employees

you're very optimistic

Mostly splitting the difference:
~70 years: exhaustion of fossil fuels besides coal
150 years: atmospheric effects (temperature/precipitation changes) maximized, assuming limited runaway feedback
1k years: half of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps are gone
2k years: CO2 equilibrates with the oceans, leaving about 35% of anthropogenic emissions to perturb climate
3k years: ocean depths still warming
5k years: ice caps nearly all gone, sea level rise at maximum
10k years: remaining CO2 emissions drawn down by limestone weathering, but next ice age averted
120k years: the next glaciation, back on the Milankovitch cycle

Ie, human carrying capacity falls over the next two centuries, coastal settlements are abandoned over the next 50 centuries, and after that, whomever remains has to preserve or recover civilization without the benefit of easily mined fuels/metals/fertilizers. Houseboats, scuba salvaging, and waste composting will be big industries.

gosh, if only I could live to see it

whomever remains has to preserve or recover civilization without the benefit of easily mined fuels/metals/fertilizers.

i re-read a canticle for leibowitz recently and the central idea, that civilisation could rebuild itself completely a couple of times over after nuclear devastation, seemed overly optimistic for that very reason.

if (or, probably more realistically, when) climate change really starts to bite and quality of life for the vast majority of humans takes a nosedive, we as a species are likely doomed to never again reach the levels of technology and comfort we have now. so uh enjoy it while it lasts i guess?

it's neat that we did make it to the moon before we tanked completely. that's something I guess.

it still blows my mind that we did that with 60s technology

As far as I can tell, I adopted the agricultural fields south of Zartonk, Armenia in NASA's Adopt a Planet lottery. While I appreciate that this just a few hundred km from the birth of the Neolithic revolution (which started our troubles), I'm not sure I'm linguistically or temperamentally qualified to be responsible for this 1/64,000 part of the Earth.

i got a chunk of the pacific ocean just south of hawaii

I got a piece of eastern Montana near Scobey, near Canada. When i rode my bike across USA, i passed about 120 miles from there. If it's the same terrain as where i was, it's flat, open, and windy.

around 55 miles north of Nogliki, on Sakhalin island off the Sea of Okhotsk

I got a piece of western Quebec.

I adopted a vastly remote South Pacific parcel of empty sea, about a thousand miles south of Tonga & another thousand miles north east of NZ.

The premise does kinda remind me of surfing to random spots at the Degree Confluence Project.