And THAT'S the tipping point boys and girls...nothing can stop the melting of the poles now.

All of the climatologists worst case scenarios will start to come into play. Desertification will spread rapidly, fresh water will become more precious than oil, coastal areas and the entire Indonesian archepelago will be under extreme threat, and hurricanes, typhoons and tropical storms will become more frequent, stronger and more destructive. Extreme weather of all kinds will become the norm.

Agricultural land will be hard hit, as modern factory farming techniquies will lead to 'Dirty Thirties' type dust-storms that will ravage the globe.

Populations will shift and conflict will be assured as people who are displaced by rising waters in some places, and loss of fresh water in others, migrate to find refuge.

Party's over. Time to clean up.

Tim Flannery, Richard Heinberg, Howard Kunsler all tried to warn us. We didn't listen.

When it's time to pay the piper, the Devil calls the tune.

Will a CO2 saturated ocean become an EMITTER of the greenhouse gas above a certain temperature?

Agreed Galen but notice how environmentally ominous stories get very little attention via posts...Mention Clinton raking in the military donors and bang 92 posts.

"THAT'S the tipping point boys and girls…nothing can stop the melting of the poles now" and that's the end of the 'Homo Sapien biological experiment' over 250,000 years....Clinton's storm in a tea cup and that's the end of 'constitutional republic experiment' over 200 years...

This is genuinely frightening, how the collective 'Nero' fiddles, while the planet burns...

Sam: Yup. As well as being more acidic, which leads to coral bleaching, which erodes the calcium CARBONATE they are made of. Which releases more CO2 into the atmosphere. And so goes the positive feedback cycle.

At the same time, as the poles melt, they will dillute the oceans just enough to stop the energy transfer of the North Atlantic current, which will shut down. The loss of the North Atlantic current will lead to catasrophic climate change in northern Europe, plunging it into a cold period worse than the 'Little Ice Age' of the 1600's.

As the poles melt, sea levels will rise drasticly, and much faster than the nay-sayers will admit to. ALL of the worlds port cities will be flooded, and the great majority of the Indonesian and Polynesian islands will disappear beneath the sea. This will displace MILLIONS of people.

We talk of the end as if it were near but it is not. The Apocalypse already happened... we made every effort not to notice... ending the way of nature as it used to be. We 'put up a parking lot' and are shocked to find we have to live in it.

This isn't the 'end' ...but we realize that it is the beginning of something terrible. The southern oceans reached their carbon sink capacity already and the saturation point for Antarctic was back in 2005. Ask whether we saw this coming...the study was over a ten year span... didn't they get any idea of this after five years or seven? Yeah well.

There is another trigger or saturation point that has been reached, at least for many. We actually felt calm about doing this to people (actually our own kids and grandkids) some fifty years from now. What we NOW begin to realize is that we haven't wanted to know and so allowed ourselves to continue doing things the way we have been because in effect ...it wasn't going to be us. They'll deal with it in fifty or a hundred years from now. Seems our blind spot kept us blind.

The Apocalypse already happened and we find it happened ...to us. We still don't really want to face it. Not those alive fifty years from now but US. Right now. For those amongst the most blind... it will almost seem unfair. How could it have gotten so bad? So quickly? So ...personally?

The Apocalypse already happened and we weren't really watching because we really didn't want to know. It wouldn't happen to us but in the future. Alas when you don't really want to know something...then usually you don't... until you can't escape facing it... by then 'inescapable' translates as ...too late.

So welcome to YOUR near future...the one we blithely were willing to leave to those fifty years from now. Now think about your declining freedoms and rights, warrantless surveillance, media consolidation, globalization, 'starve the beast' agendas and all the rest and ask yourselves what will we ALSO see in our near future? Greed will insist on being greedy even till the 'end' and during the 'end' and afterwards as well. We already feel the caress of an iron fist and hear the steps of an iron heel as corporate greed grows entrenched in it's unassailable dominance seeing only profits and not necessity (what is best for all). When we need most to change... they insist on not having to, since they are making big profits as things stand and change might eat into those profits.

The Apocalypse is US and ...dang but we thought it would be them (fifty years from now). That's really inconvenient huh?

As they say... you get what you pay for... who expected that we would be the ones (who do it) that would actually have to PAY for what we got? Welcome to the future you expected to leave to your children.

Seems early huh? Yeah. The Apocalypse already happened... we missed it when it occured... but it's effects won't be missing us. We threw it all away and stuck our heads in the sand like a proverbial ostritch but we find it was a boomerang and it speeds back on us... we never saw that it coming back on us.

Ouch!

The future will not be televised. The future will be survived.

Bad new and good. The bad is immediately obvious. The good is that the formation of carbonic acid and thus the acidification of the oceans will stop increase. Acidification means less krill and other life that relies on calcium shells of one sort or another to survive.

Less krill, less biodiversity in the oceans. This means the single greatest extinction event in the entire existance of this planet. All caused by an upstart primate with more brains that he knows what to do with.

Wow. Don't that just make ya proudr'nshit...

The governments, media and corporations focus on economic growth and encourage endless consumption. After 911 we were all told to shop by our "leader". When sales are down or the market begins to tank action is taken. When the world's ecosystem is being destroyed there is a little talk and even less action. Keep that carbon based economy pumping money into the hands of the rich and powerful, as CO2 is being pumped into the ecosystem.

Our hope is in grassroots change.

Sadly, those beautiful photographs of the coral reefs will be all that we have to show our grandchildren that such things actually existed and you could snorkel among it.

If the oceans become saturated with emissions, the scary thing is not that there will be more greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. The scary thing is that it will turn the water acidic and kill all the fish. The scary thing about the conveyor belt shutting down is not that Europe will get cold. It is that the oceans will turn anoxic - in a word, stagnant.

How do you think Homo Sapiens will do on a planet with a stagnant, acidic ocean?

Phytoplankton on the surface will absob the CO2 - over a course of eons. They will sink to the bottom of the lifeless ocean and not die or decay, taking the CO2 out of the system. Eventually, the layer of their corpses will turn into - get this - oil. And the cycle will resume. Maybe it will be sentient clams next time, instead of apes. But we will be utterly boned.

No life will survive. The Earth will be the true twin of Venus. Do you think that maybe we ought to try to do something?

Paul M, interesting point about how ironic, oil gets the world in the mess it's in and oil will be the return except without us.

greenskier wrote:

.....Our hope is in grassroots change.....

Yes, exactly.

Come on, people. Every one of us needs to pitch in and make the necessary changes in our own lives along with withdrawing our support from corporations and industries that aren't acknowledging reality.

This isn't about "Illuminati Control" or World Domination through taxation and regulation or any other such absolute BULLSH-T.

It's about facing the very basic scientific evidence of our having gone too far and having the grace to change our bad habits.

It's up to US.

Honestly, it is.

Just START somewhere.

TODAY.

Paul M wrote:

.....It is that the oceans will turn anoxic - in a word, stagnant.....

That IS true.

The fact is that there are ALREADY several established "dead zones" (large swaths of ocean that no longer support marine life) right around the United States, including much of the Gulf of Mexico and a large area off the Pacific Northwest coast.

This isn't a video, folks.

Seriously.

Somewhere I read that increased corn production for ethanol is already directly enlarging the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.

What a crock is ethanol.

I missed the Wide Angle on the Indian Farmers. What a crock is that GM cotton no-saving-seeds-policy.

Is Bill Mollison still alive, and does anyone know a Permaculture link he endorses(ed)?

Countdown, little more than five years left. Get your programs and your seats, it is going to be a show.

Anyway, we'll have to return to crafts and do it yourself "Yankee know-how" (what was that?). Jobs with the CCC planting bamboo and perhaps lots of yard sales with tools for sure cheaper than the ones at Home Depot. Hope there'll be some pennies left.

A few billion people with hoes and machetes could make a LOT of Terra Preta and return that carbon to the ground. It would have the nasty side effect of increasing crop yields and reducing the amount of nitrous oxide and methane released from cropland into the atmosphere but there's nothing to be done for it.

Of course we could all just watch TV instead while our planet slowly chokes. That's what they're doing in Atlanta that is in the midst of a huge drought.

Get your deck chairs cause the Titanics done sailed with you on it.

Go! Lemmings! Go!

Galen, speaking as someone in the profession of repairing environments, the good news is that repair is much quicker and easier than destruction. The trick is steering society away from the status quo into a sustainable path.

"A few billion people with hoes and machetes could make a LOT of Terra Preta and return that carbon to the ground."

My lord, someone wants to talk appropriate technology? Isn't doom and gloom more fun? I haven't seen any other points like yours, Pangolin. Could you elaborate a little on the above? You're talkin a different crop than soy beans I take it? I may be gone until I can catch my breath next Saturday. Thanks for any further break-down ahead'a time.

Sam wrote:

"Will a CO2 saturated ocean become an EMITTER of the greenhouse gas above a certain temperature?"

Yes. CO2 becomes less soluble at higher temperatures. This is where the positive feedbacks start kicking in.

Even scarier, calcite (CaCO3) becomes less soluble at higher temperatures. Thus, we can expect to see a lot more of this occurring in the oceans:

2HCO3{-}+ Ca{+2} = CaCO3 (calcite) + H2O + CO2 (gas)

The amount of dissolved HCO3 in the oceans is vast, about 50 times the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.