Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

global warmin', happened so fast

For meteorology geeks interested in a more in depth guide to why the warming Arctic is leading to greater temperature extremes in temperate latitude:

Sceptical Science: A Rough Guide to the Jet Stream: what it is, how it works and how it is responding to enhanced Arctic warming

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DW1C_UAVwAAt6QY.jpg

the weather is a second-by-second contradiction here in the bay area. the sun is actively warm on your skin, but the air is arctic. if you get into a car that's been sitting out, it's baking, but you need a heavy coat if you're walking more than 5 minutes from that car to your destination.

can anyone recommend some more entertaining films about ecoterrorism?

Maybe dramas The East, Night Moves, and Finnish TV series Tellus. Documentaries Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist, Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson, Wiebo's War, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, and quite a few on Ted Kaczynski.

BTW, I've never seen any of these, besides a couple of the Unabomber dramatizations long ago.

the east is v lol imo

if a tree falls is outstanding

nightmoves is p good too

ya second if a tree falls, extraordinarily good

also not that i endorse or like derrick jensen really but END:CIV fits the bill of what you're asking for

haha yeah Jensen just keeps digging that transphobic hole deeper and deeper eh? I'm so baffled by that.

If A Tree Falls thirded

So snowstorms in Rome and 60 degrees in Cleveland. In February.

death throes of the jet stream

By the way, here is the daily updated mean of temperatures above 80 N. Temperatures have fallen to "only" ~11° C (20° F) over the mean, vs the 21° C (38° F) over the mean seen last week. It has been interesting watching the alarm percolate out from early nodes (like me 6 days ago) to twitter/reality based news finally.

Average daily temperatures in the Arctic this year have been up to 20C higher than average

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/27/arctic-warming-scientists-alarmed-by-crazy-temperature-rises

xpost

I've long believed that global warming will be faster and worse than standard projections, because the insane right-wing attacks on climate scientists would intimidate them and cause them to lowball all their estimates of what will happen https://t.co/qVXhjEDe78

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) February 27, 2018

there are some political factors that contribute to conservative projections (e.g., the summary IPCC document must have unanimous consent, and the Bush-era US delegation refused to sign on unless certain sections were watered down). but generally i don't think that intimidation from the right-wing plays a significant role.

the projections tend to be conservative primarily because that's the nature of the scientific method, especially in a field that largely relies on models with components that are not fully understood. there are some significant "known unknowns" which are suspected to strongly contribute to warming, particularly feedback loops like the albedo effect, methane from thawing permafrost, methane from the oceanfloor, etc. climate scientists have had some difficulty incorporating the effects of these feedback loops into the climate models because all of the complex ways they interact with each other aren't fully understood yet. the way the earth is consistently warming at the very high edge of the projections (and beyond them in some cases) seems to confirm the hunches of many of the people working on the feedback loops, but it takes time to work these things through the good ol' scientific method.

good post

Um ok scared now

thx Karl, we rely on u

also, COMPLETELY counter to the right wing's caricatures of climate scientists as alarmists who want to scare people (in order to...profit?), when pieces on worse case scenarios and the dire end of the projection spectrum contain anything resembling an overstatement, the scientific community are very proactive about issuing corrections and caveats. see a prominent article that appeared last year and the backlash:

New York Magazine: The Uninhabitable Earth
Ars Technica: Climate scientists push back against catastrophic scenarios

i don't know shit climate change now, if i ever did. it's been years since i followed it on a daily basis. i'm one of those people who got too depressed and can't really deal with it any more. the "response" to climate change, at least in the US, is a perfect storm of dire scientific predictions vs capitalism, corruption, lies, willful ignorance, and other human weaknesses in all their terrible varieties. it's depressing as hell and it's difficult to function even when you try not to think about it too much.

i sometimes find myself encouraged by the most dire predictions because i feel like 'we' deserve it

which is revolting because i will not be among the people who suffer from it

i am a bad and solipsistic person

The climate issue, to the degree it isn't simply about the salvation of civilization, is essentially about equity between generations (and secondarily as distributed across nations to the extent they have developed at different rates). It's about us primarily to the degree to which we're nearly the last people in a position to act on it in an effective way in recognition of our obligations to future citizens (or in anticipation of how we'll be remembered by them). I don't think they would substantially distinguish between reasons not to think about it.

I hate it. I live an ascetic life compared to most Americans, but I know my lifestyle isn't sustainable. Almost no one's is. I read the primary literature, and hence know that food security for *everyone* is at risk. Hundreds of millions will starve due to climate change before much of Miami Beach floods. Some 19 years ago I decided I would never procreate, because any life I created in the developed world would be several lost in the developing world.

Even if the world kept to Paris Accord commitments, that's a trajectory to 3.5° C mean warming, before feedbacks from permafrost/peat/etc. Negative emissions energy like biofuel with CCS are pipe dreams at the moment, and that's what most of the planners are relying upon.

It feels like the back car of a roller coaster, ascending the chain lift, and the front car is suspended over the drop but the chain hasn't released. It's the stomach churning feeling of knowing what's about to happen, but the screaming hasn't started yet. But its all going to be in slow motion. Even those born today won't see the worst. A couple centuries of ever increasing temperatures, worse storms, shifting precipitation, and intermittent global famines. Then several millennia of encroaching seas, even once the climate has reached its new equilibria.

This will change humanity, even if something like our civilization perseveres. A few billion surviving, many in former tundra. Leaving the world better than one finds it will become a paramount moral virtue. In the future, people will be executed for doing things that I do daily, like running coal-powered air-conditioning or starting internal combustion engines. It's all so disheartening.

At least we’ll die sooner

Some 19 years ago I decided I would never procreate, because any life I created in the developed world would be several lost in the developing world.

― It's because I'm human, isn't it?! (Sanpaku), Thursday, March 1, 2018 4:44 AM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Personally, I'm largely of the same attitude towards reproduction, among other climate-friendly stances that are easy expressions of lifestyle preference ungrounded in philosophy/morality, but putting aside the fact that my partners have not always shared the same attitude, I've also considered the possibility that the political impact of one's progeny may outweigh the environmental impact of their existence and lifestyle. Have you asked how many lives they might save?

Its a bit late for me now.

Some people are born pessimists. Normal folk don't spend their idle hours delving into the climate change or resource depletion or geological extinction event literature. It changes a person, and time steals opportunities. The grey comes, and there's just compassion for others left. I don't want to "infect" others with my disposition, and I try to banish my premonitions when I play with my nephew.

There's always been a role for Cassandras, the ones who worried when the ground rumbled, and told their peers to depart the volcano's slopes. But its never been a happy one.

i like that attitude, Moo

I've also considered the possibility that the political impact of one's progeny may outweigh the environmental impact of their existence and lifestyle. Have you asked how many lives they might save?

excuse snark but, lol, potentially a bit of pressure transmitting itself to the wee mite there, no? "This child, Moo Junior... she is the Chosen. She has nits, just as the Prophecy foretells."

I think you've just given more thought to parenting a hypothetical Moo, Jr. than I ever have

pray
for
moo-ju

i am a child-haver and i have already rehearsed my "you may want to join a resistance movement in solidarity with oppressed people bc the world is going to suck when you're older" speech, its v good, i figure 7th birthday is a goodtime

Reading my 5yo a book at the moment which she chose from the library and which features a villain who wants to melt the ice caps to sell fresh water to rich people. It keeps on mentioning global warming, reasonably enough, but I elide those bits because I am genuinely horrified at the idea of explaining what this all will mean for her. Worse than when she realised dinosaurs aren't around any more.

The public seems to not trust the scientific method. Perhaps in schools we need to teach less science facts and less how to DO science. - How to check your sources, how to think critically. How to be skeptical.

I can imagine the history books of the future "At that time many did not believe that the climate was changing and being influenced by human activity" - we will seem like such fools

if there are books or a civilization that sustains a written record and scholarship, anyway

The history books will report, "Science was respected, but wasn't a major source of funding for political campaigns and media manipulation. Scientific culture of the time required reticence in official statements, which were often couched in jargon-filled reports, and read by few. Any climate scientist that reported, "If we don't make decarbonization the global priority now, some of our grandchildren, even in developed nations, will starve during coming climate famines, and home-grown fascism will arise to expel the masses of climate refugees," she would have been seen as an alarmist by scientific peers. Political leaders were largely ignorant of scientific details, but chose to listen to cornocopian climate working groups which postulated imaginary negative emissions technologies, like biomass with carbon capture and storage."

plus many assume that geo-engineering will solve all the problems

Science was respected

is this actually true

feel like a lot of people don't give a shit about science rn

and definitely average joe seems to have zero interest in improving their scientific / mathematical literacy

well, any kind of literacy really

I have more faith in technology to solve this problem than in politicians - also public fear/responsibility and consumer choices

demoans of coal and ash - simmering in filth - gaggin on their own dollars will rot away in the history of huamnkind - looking back at roaches who will be history's slime

Geoengineering will work, and with remarkably few side effects. The problem is that once we've gone down that path, we're chained to the thermostat for the next few thousand years. A lapse in constantly injecting sulfate aerosols, from budget cutbacks, or societal collapse, means that all the climatic effects of anthropogenic climate change will be compressed into a few years.

Civilizational collapse is common in history. In the past, it was mostly localized, leaving reservoirs of knowledge. But, if we continue down the A1FI scenario path (fossil intensive growth), that's a 6+ °C mean warming. We could prevent most ground level effects with a couple U2 squadrons constantly depositing sulfate aerosols in the stratophere. But when (not if) that's interrupted, its 6+ °C in 2-3 years, probably in a world that isn't prepared for it. Civilizational collapse becomes global.

Also there's the law of unintended consequences, whereby injecting all that shit into the air will inevitably lead to complex unmodelable conditions causing who knows what other problems.

http://i.imgur.com/6ODkDyK.jpg

I bet the sea is thinking "fuck 'em"

Geoengineering will work, and with remarkably few side effects

this is an egregiously bold statement

by the very nature of the thing geoengineering is not something that can be tested in a real world setting, and has to be completely based on theoretical calculations

since i live in the southwest i'm quite concerned about water issues, but this morning we had a guest speaker in my classroom who works on desalination, reclamation and atmospheric capture and when he left i was feeling quite optimistic about it

technology is grebt fuiud

what good will all the water in the world be when only machines rule the land!

this is an egregiously bold statement

Compared to say a 5 °C warming and half the world starving, the side effects are relatively small. It's not an ideal band-aid for the problem, but by later this century when the globe has overspent its carbon budget and consequences keep piling up, leaders will be desperate for any means to staunch the bleeding.

We have natural experiments with stratospheric sulfate injections with every major volcanic eruption. The main worries in the literature about direct adverse effects are that those sulfates will fall as acid rain, but models indicate the levels will be too small to have much effect, and that it will increase ozone depletion during polar winters, though here a study indicates it will slow ozone recovery, rather than cause worldwide depletion.

The indirect effects, of ocean acidification from continued CO2 emissions, or the potential for catastrophic interruptions to long-term geoengineering, seem much larger.

im not against geoengineering when it comes down to it, but it would be preferable if we avoided the need for it than to have to rely on it being successful and without major implications in order to survive as a species