Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

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.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/magazine/when-rising-seas-transform-risk-into-certainty.html

Freakish bouts of warm weather have accompanied this long period of historic warmth, unlike anything previously experienced.

In February of this year, Chicago witnessed multiple 70-degree days for the first time and a record snowless streak. Denver hit 80 degrees as early as it ever has (in a calendar year). Meanwhile, spring arrived as much as three weeks early in the South....

Guy Walton, a meteorologist who previously worked at The Weather Channel, actively tracks the number of high temperature records set, compared with record lows. For 28 months in a row, record high temperatures have outnumbered record lows. No previous streak has been this long (the next longest streak, of 19 months, occurred March 2011 to September 2012, Walton found).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/04/18/the-nation-is-immersed-in-its-warmest-period-in-recorded-history/

it was 85 degrees on easter in new jersey. no kidding there's a joke to be made there but it's harder and harder to overlook how reflexively doing so might be part of the problem

all fun and games til the crops fail.

which, thanks to our ruthlessly mining groundwater that accumulated over 100,000 years, we might put off for a couple of decades. maybe.

this is all fake news hysteria, the magic of the market will save us all, and won't those silly liberals be embarrassed then :)

Isn't there some way we can reverse-psychology our POTUS into not being a climate skeptic?

we already tried having al gore talk to him for 10 minutes, it didn't work

tbf nobody knew global climate change could be so complicated.

Let's show him a picture of a Maldivean child being evacuated because of rising ocean levels!

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/04/march-sets-new-global-warming-record

At Least Climate Change Will Bring More Icebergs to Kitesurf Over Like a Badass

NYT story yesterday suggested Ivanka and Jared are pressuring Daddy to stay in the Paris pact. Decision expected in late May.

Just imagine the pressure, having to persuade your cranky, right-wing-media addled dad/FiL to accept science, knowing that if you fail you will be vilified along with him for generations.

Presumably this is more of that bullshit wish-fulfillment stuff about the female Trumps being secret liberals, as though they weren't just more odd-looking super-rich parasites

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/03/science/earth/arctic-shipping.html

best headline...

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170504-there-are-diseases-hidden-in-ice-and-they-are-waking-up?ocid=fbert

omg don't forget the Blob

also makes the best album title, book title, poem title, song title.

was wondering when we'd hear again about the polar ice's virus crisis. apparently the last thing i saw raising that specter was all the way back in 2014. good thing the experts are working to solve everything without us having to do anything.

Humans didn't occupy the Arctic before the last 50,000 or so years, so I'd expect none of the permafrost pathogens are adapted to threaten apes. So, I see this being just an additional headwind for tundra-adapted wild animals (reindeer, caribou, musk ox, lemmings, bears, foxes etc.).

Most (61%) infectious diseases are zoonotic, but they were only transferred from domesticated/cohabiting animals after pretty extensive coexposure.

Just attaching to cell surfaces requires some molecular key/lock precision, and that has generally required selection on parasite variation over long coexposure. Domestication and housepests. Obv, you don't want to watch Andromeda Strain with me in the room.

Based on a novel written by a climate denier, btw.

there's six billion of us and counting while annual temperature records mount and the US government is *officially* like fuck you 'what, me worry'

7.5 billion, tbf

there are now more people living in cities than were alive when i was born

they like the hustle and bustle

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/19/arctic-stronghold-of-worlds-seeds-flooded-after-permafrost-melts?CMP=share_btn_tw

Kinda love how the Svalbard vault's interior uses the same shelving as my local hardware store.

lefty conspiracy from the Eisenhower days, no doubt

64 years ago today: "How Industry May Change Climate" by Waldemar Kaempffert, May 24, 1953 @nytclimate pic.twitter.com/PYFjsE28JR

— Brad Johnson (@climatebrad) May 24, 2017

makes sense

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/report-trump-is-planning-to-pull-out-of-paris-climate-deal.html

well, nice knowing you all

the tweet embedded in that piece is legit terrifying

How hot does Earth get if the U.S. abandons the Paris #climate agreement? @borenbears found out. https://t.co/gPZGvVRcFC? pic.twitter.com/BCSORD8r7D

— Jonathan Fahey (@JonathanFahey) May 27, 2017