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Four Degrees of Devastation
UXBRIDGE, Canada - The prospect of a four-degree Celsius rise in global average temperatures in 50 years is alarming - but not alarmist, climate scientists now believe.
Eighteen months ago, no one dared imagine humanity pushing the climate beyond an additional two degrees C of heating, but rising carbon emissions and inability to agree on cuts has meant science must now consider the previously unthinkable. (Image: freewebs.com) Eighteen months ago, no one dared imagine humanity pushing the climate beyond an additional two degrees C of heating, but rising carbon emissions and inability to agree on cuts has meant science must now consider the previously unthinkable.
"Two degrees C is already gone as a target," said Chris West of the University of Oxford's UK Climate Impacts Programme.
"Four degrees C is definitely possible...This is the biggest challenge in our history," West told participants at the "4 Degrees and Beyond, International Climate Science Conference" at the University of Oxford last week.
A four-degree C overall increase means a world where temperatures will be two degrees warmer in some places, 12 degrees and more in others, making them uninhabitable.
It is a world with a one- to two-metre sea level rise by 2100, leaving hundreds of millions homeless. This will head to 12 metres in the coming centuries as the Greenland and Western Antarctic ice sheets melt, according to papers presented at the conference in Oxford.
Four degrees of warming would be hotter than any time in the last 30 million years, and it could happen as soon as 2060 to 2070.
"Political reality must be grounded in physical reality or it's completely useless," John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told the conference.
Schellnhuber recently briefed U.S. officials from the Barack Obama administration, but he says they chided him that his findings were "not grounded in political reality" and that "the [U.S.] Senate will never agree to this".
He had told them that the U.S. must reduce its emissions from its current 20 tonnes of carbon per person average to zero tonnes per person by 2020 to have an even chance of stabilising the climate around two degrees C.
China's emissions must peak by 2020 and then go to zero by 2035 based on the current science, he added.
"Policymakers who agreed to a two-degree C goal at the G20 summit easily fool themselves about what emission cuts are needed," Schellnhuber said.
Even with a two-degree rise, most of the world's coral reefs will be lost, large portions of the ocean will become dead zones, mountain glaciers will largely vanish and many other ecosystems will be at risk, Schellnhuber warned. And there is the risk of reaching a tipping point where the warming rapidly accelerates.
The planet has already warmed 0.74 C over the past century and the warming is now increasing at a rate of 0.16 C per decade, according the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 report.
With 2008 emissions at the very top end of the IPCC's worst case estimates, it is time to look at what that may mean for the planet, said Richard Betts of the Climate Impacts research team at the Met Office Hadley Centre in London.
Continuing on the current high emissions path means average global temperatures would increase by 4.0 to 5.6 degrees by 2090. Brazil, much of Canada, parts of the U.S., Siberia and Central Europe would be eight degrees warmer than in the past 50 years, computer models show. Rainfall in the north will increase but wet tropics will become 20 percent drier.
The models are based on human emissions alone, and do not include heat-amplifying feedbacks from melting ice or changes in carbon sinks. When those are factored in, it moves the timetable forward so that "reaching four degrees by 2060 is a plausible, worst-case scenario" with the median being 2070. By 2100, 5.5 degrees is possible, he said.
Few places would experience the global average temperature, Betts cautioned, noting that the computer models show the Arctic warming 15 degrees while many other regions of the world would experience 10 degrees of additional warming.
These scenarios do not include potential tipping points like the release of the 1.5 trillion tonnes of carbon in northern permafrost or the melting of undersea methane hydrates.
What would the world look like when it is four degrees warmer? It will likely mean one to two billion people will not have access to adequate fresh water because of the major shift in rainfall patterns, said Nigel Arnell, director of the Walker Institute for Climate Systems Research at the University of Reading in Britain.
Up to 15 percent of existing or potential cropland - and 40 percent in Africa - will become too dry and too hot for food production. While there might be some gains in northern areas like Canada and Russia, generally the soils there are not suitable for crops, he said.
Flooding will affect at least 500 million people because sea levels will rise more than one metre by 2100. The somewhat contentious issue of future sea level rise has been resolved with a new computer model that almost perfectly matches the historical changes in sea level since 1880, reported oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
The new model projects sea level rise by 1.2 to 1.9 metres from 1990 levels by 2100, said Rahmstorf.
"We're expecting a really big sea level rise in the longer run," he said.
Even at two or three degrees of warming, sea level will inevitably rise many metres higher in the centuries to come. The main questions are how fast levels will increase, and whether vulnerable countries like Holland can build seawalls fast enough to keep up with the rising water levels and the extraordinary costs involved, he said.
In a four-degree warmer world, adaptation means "put your feet up and die" for many people in the world, Oxford's Chris West said bluntly. "In accepting the many alarming impacts, we see that it (a four-degree C increase) is not acceptable."
The climate negotiators heading to Copenhagen in December must accept the fact that the world's carbon emissions must eventually stop - and stop completely. There is no sustainable per capita carbon emission level because it is the total amount of carbon emitted that counts, explains Myles Allen of the Climate Dynamics group at University of Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department.
Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for many centuries, which makes it the most important greenhouse gas to reduce and eliminate. The current focus on CO2 concentrations like 450 ppm or 350 ppm is the not the right approach since it is the total cumulative emissions that determine how warm the planet will get, Allen told the conference.
If climate negotiators only look at slowing rates of carbon emissions, then natural gas will be substituted for coal because it has half of the carbon - but the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere will continue to increase.
"We didn't save the ozone layer by rationing deodorants," said Allen.
- Posted in
47 Comments so far
Show AllIf one were to take into consideration the historical record of humanity abiding by it agreements then you are forced to recognize the absolute futility of any agreements; even ones as important as the current climate impact that humanity now recognizes as its own responsibility.
Whether humanity will be able to recognize that the changes are needed immediately depends on far too many factors to make an applicable prediction.
This leaves humanity with but one choice. Make the needed changes or perish at your own hands.
I personally do not have much faith in humanity as a whole.
There is however some hope for 'individuals' among the many members of humanity. They have my hope and what little faith I have is in the law of self preservation of the individual, by the individual.
It is widely accepted that the Industrial Revolution marked the beginning of the environmental impact of humanity now being regarded as the 'threat to humanity'. This occurred almost simultaneously with the science of 'evolution' and the other scientific disciplines that reveal the adverse impact of the 'IR'. If one takes into consideration that just in the USA there are millions of 'impactors' who believed that 'evolution' is fiction, and are placing their faith in a 'deity' that will return any day now and rescue them from the disaster they have created; there will be little hope for the needed changes to be applied in time enough to save the environment.
This may be the one thing that changes the prospects for humanity and the other life forms on the planet for the future. When the 'deity' fails to 'rescue' the 'impactors' ,they will have no other choice but to set aside those beliefs and replace them with 'reality based' intelligent applications which may save them in the long run.
IF enough of them survive the disasters and themselves. History reveals that 'Human Beings' are some very destructive and cruel 'creatures'; to other life forms and to themselves.
Human history will also reveal that they do not have the capacity to think very far into the future, without consulting their 'deitites' for advice. This being the case.
"Be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth"---has proved to be some very poor 'advise' from at least one of those 'deities'.
Great post.
"Be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth"---has proved to be some very poor 'advise' from at least one of those 'deities'.
Yes, and I am convinced that was either a poor biblical translation or a statement from the bible's authors thinking in terms of their own times, agendas, and desires.
We must keep the faith and continue to take action. What other choice do we have? We cannot sit on our hands and watch Mother Earth be ruined by Her children's violent actions and inaction.
Excellent post Native Son,
This is not the first time the Homo line has experienced an extinction event. Dozens of our closely related cousin species didn't make it. Homo Neanderthalis was one of the last. Cause: We murdered him with our superior brainpower. He was big and strong, but we had better communication and probably weapon making skills if the Clovis people are any indication of how fine skilled a tribe can become at crafting a huge instrument of war on a stick.
Who will survive us if the temperature becomes 140 degrees F in the shade?
A: Homo Cockroach, a member of the Senate deep underground maybe? Or Homo Gecko, a wall street CEO? They've both made a hell of a mess, and your suspicions of their illogical devotion to a deity of war and punishment is the likely culprit. Religion is an evolutionary tribal mechanism that gets the mindless drones (Faux News viewers and the military) all marching in the same direction. But as the dinosaurs found out, such fearsome military hardware is actually a burden if the climate changes. We spent all our time dominating the other life forms when we should have been using our extra grey-matter for solar power and population control.
Oh well, as the paleontologists say: No species has every dominated the Earth for more than a few million years, and Homo Sapiens is not going to be the first!
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
What a fossil foolish oil/coal/nucular corporate charade! Where's my #*%@& 1995 Clinton/Gore ELECTRIC CAR and NOW, my solar film ELECTRIC roof panels to power it and my home?
Yea Uxbridge
you got it you got it
you got it now you go
See National Geographic's
Six Degrees Can Change The World
rob from Bancroft
Yea Uxbridge
you got it you got it
you got it now you go
See National Geographic's
Six Degrees Can Change The World
rob from Bancroft
"...the U.S. must reduce its emissions from its current 20 tonnes of carbon per person average to zero tonnes per person by 2020... China's emissions must peak by 2020 and then go to zero by 2035..."
Come on, seriously? To ZERO? Is that some sort of climatologist joke?
This is the USA, baby - no matter we do, we'll wind up actually using MORE carbon per person by 2020 because, you know, we're funny that way...
No, really - zero? Game over. Pass the sunscreen...
My daughter says she will not have children because of climate change. This makes me very sad, but I can see her reasoning.
my son said the same, but I think his girlfriend is giving him some things to think about...
love this, from the article:
These scenarios do not include potential tipping points like the release of the 1.5 trillion tonnes of carbon in northern permafrost or the melting of undersea methane hydrates.
Methane Hydrates are suspected as a major cause of the greatest mass extinction in Earths History the Permian-Triassic extinction event. This some very serious stuff going on here.
Some scary chit Tom,
Here's an excerpt on the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event from wiki:
Other hypotheses include mass oceanic poisoning releasing vast amounts of CO2[91] and a long-term reorganisation of the global carbon cycle.[88]
However, only one sufficiently powerful cause has been proposed for the global 10 ‰ reduction in the 13C/12C ratio: the release of methane from methane clathrates;[7] and carbon-cycle models confirm that it would have been sufficient to produce the observed reduction.[88][91] Methane clathrates, also known as methane hydrates, consist of methane molecules trapped in cages of water molecules. The methane is produced by methanogens (microscopic single-celled organisms) and has a 13C/12C ratio about 60 ‰ below normal (δ13C -60 ‰). At the right combination of pressure and temperature it gets trapped in clathrates fairly close to the surface of permafrost and in much larger quantities at continental margins (continental shelves and the deeper seabed close to them). Oceanic methane hydrates are usually found buried in sediments where the seawater is at least 300 meters (984 ft) deep. They can be found up to about 2,000 meters (6,562 ft) below the sea floor, but usually only about 1,100 meters (3,609 ft) below the sea floor.[92]
The area covered by lava from the Siberian Traps eruptions is about twice as large as was originally thought, and most of the additional area was shallow sea at the time. It is very likely that the seabed contained methane hydrate deposits and that the lava caused the deposits to dissociate, releasing vast quantities of methane.[93]
One would expect a vast release of methane to cause significant global warming, since methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas. A "methane burp" could have released 10,000 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent - twice as much as in all the fossil fuels on Earth.[35] There is strong evidence that global temperatures increased by about 6 °C (10.8 °F) near the equator and therefore by more at higher latitudes: a sharp decrease in oxygen isotope ratios (18O/16O);[94] the extinction of Glossopteris flora (Glossopteris and plants which grew in the same areas), which needed a cold climate, and its replacement by floras typical of lower paleolatitudes.[10][95]
However, the pattern of isotope shifts expected to result from a massive release of methane do not match the patterns seen throughout the early Triassic. Not only would a methane cause require the release of five times as much methane as postulated for the PETM,[11] but it would also have to be re-buried at an unrealistically high rate to account for the rapid increases in the 13C/12C ratio (episodes of high positive δ13C) throughout the early Triassic, before being released again several times.[11]
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
One thing that that is different between now and the P-T event is that solar output was a percent or so less back then - not an insignificant amount. The sun's output is gradually increasing - prt of the normal evolution of stars of it's type, and even without any other perturbations, the earth is due to become uninhabitably hot for multiicellular life forms as soon as 600 my from now anyway.
But as far the near future, this time, that little bit of extra solar output make make the diffference in the homeostatic "Gaia" mechanisms being ever being able to recover. So the coming great anthropogenic extinction may greatly speed the demise of complex life on earth, forever.
If that's true,
We should mandate residential solar in the southern states to feed the national grid, shutdown all coal, oil and nuclear plants, and outlaw the internal combustion engine (as you said, the sun's only going to get brighter.) Six Hundred Million years is a long time to be custodians of this planet. I submit that the current custodians, who worship: "monopolistic big gov/biz Capitalism" are incompetent and should be replaced with local leaders as it was for eight years under the Articles of Confederation.
Local is better every time. We could sink the container ship fleet for fish habitats.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
from the article:
The climate negotiators heading to Copenhagen in December must accept the fact that the world's carbon emissions must eventually stop - and stop completely. There is no sustainable per capita carbon emission level because it is the total amount of carbon emitted that counts, explains Myles Allen of the Climate Dynamics group at University of Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department.
Stop completely? Exactly!
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012! Acoustic, agrarian life...locally growing food...sex, marijuana and music...let's get it on!
I find the above climate numbers to be dreadfully conservative.
We have a positive-feedback global methane release underway. We know that this has happened many times before in geologic history under slight provocations,and we're going for a whopper of a provocation.
Next, we know that after peak oil, most of the world satisfies its carbon fix by burning down the world's forests for charcoal, a terribly high carbon fix, and the developed world rips down mountains for coal and tar sands for tar, also terribly high carbon fixes. So we're accelerating full speed into the problem right now.
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the really big one, is partly on below-sea-level rock and is vulnerable to undersea erosion. Also, the immediate ocean rise danger is from 50 foot hurricane storm surges next August, not from glaciers melting eventually. Why wait until 2050?
"Drill, baby, drill!" -- The entire Republican National Convention.
as this whole bad situation unravels, I hope the chant 'Drill, baby, drill!' becomes a rallying cry for the left, to remind the right that its been wrong so long, about everything.
I do not doubt they are right about the rise in CO2 if we continue on the current trajectory, but I just do not see it playing out that way at all. The corporate elites will use the CO2 levels and the depletion of energy resources to argue for policies that will further consolidate their power and accelerate the polarization of income and wealth so that the richest one percent in the world control over 90 percent of the resources. With advances in software and robotics large numbers of worker bees will no longer be necessary. Even large security forces will become unnecessary (though certainly the maintenance of some level of security forces will be essential) as more heavily funded DARPA projects reach maturation and the few will better be able to control the many. So it seems unlikely that a few decades from now energy, at least fossil fuel energy, will be expended at the same rate as today.
I would bet that the most likely future for the masses is enslavement or intentional eradication by the elites over a relatively short time frame, not slow death over the course of several decades through temperature rises and the resultant displacement and starvation (though certainly the elites may take advantage of climate change-related starvation to do some of their work for them).
hey, kivals...I agree that your scenario is very likely...this is why I cling to what may be a fool's hope...
That the entire globe's citizenry, meaning the average folks in any given country, would agree to disengage completely from the current system at a specific time and date...I chose September 22, 2012 to give us time to get food growing in the meantime...contracts would be voided...accounts terminated...electricity turned off...property rights nulled...life would, once again, be agrarian, and acoustic...
Of course, banks and law enforcement would attempt to thwart any changes, especially around the financing of housing, but their authority would be stripped on that day...this is the most likely source of violent contention, in my mind...
The idea is simple: each individual working with their neighbors to promote the availability of potable water and local foods...while horrors like you describe are certainly possible, even in this scenario, the hope would be that even those folks who would work for the companies building and organizations deploying the weapons of surveillance and attack would quit doing so, and join the movement...
May be a pipe dream, but in light of the truly terrible trends those in power are following, the only dream I can find that might lead out of this mess...the people of the world unanimously retaking the reins of societal direction, and maintaining simple and sustainable living methods via psychological conditioning and local coercion...religions and mores must be directed toward harmonious interaction with the living world, and attempts to violate must be dealt with locally...
May we all, together, help us all, together...and quickly, before they perfect their technological tools of tyranny...
Yah, these computer models are set up to use one, or perhaps two, factors in the processing. The reality is that the planet is a huge web of interconnected forces, operating together. Take the CO2, the methane, the polar warming causing more warming, the rise of the seas resulting in a lense of fresh water to strangle the plankton [one basis of the planetary food chain, and provider of a huge percentage of atmospheric oxygen], and other, heretofore unanalyzed pieces of the puzzle, and we are looking at twenty years, not centuries. And there is not a snowball's chance in hell that any governmental body will take the necessary steps. Though I do find kival's suggestion, above, to be both believable and horrible.
MichaelC
Three ADDITIONAL people per second. They all want the necessitites and luxuries of life.
NO ONE wants to stop for THEIR family. No indeed. You still need to get the kids to college and the mall.
You still need bottled water for the children because you CARE.
Three Three Three Three Three Three Three....
Pagan religions promised a hot hell. So did Christian preachers. Existential philosophers talked about a cold hell, without a God to save or damn us.
Four degrees Celsius is the temperature at which water is most dense. Space=energy=matter, each time losing, losing. Losing what? Each time we are definitely losing.
Our whole lives are a history of loss, irreparable loss. Nobody has the will to save us. No technology has the ability to save us.
If nobody has the brains or wisdom or courage to answer me...I had to attend to other stuff... of course there is no answer. thank you for listening to me.
Of course there is a "Plan B" that can reverse the trends in time.
http://vortexengine.ca
By ventilating the planet (convoluting the troposphere) to rid it of excess heat and producing inexpensive electricity (not necessarily from the same devices) at the same time there is no limit to what can be accomplished in just a couple of decades--even removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.
If hurricanes can remove excess heat from seawater at a rate which is two orders of magnitude greater than humans currently produce it, a million AVEs approximately the size of an NBA basket ball arena (<$50 million each) could continuously remove a similar amount from above our land areas.
Think that number is impossible? It's only one per 6,500 persons on earth. With just one person in 10 dedicated to this task, it CAN BE DONE.
Now, we only have to get word to the polititians. DEMAND THAT "PLAN B" BE DEVELOPED AND IMPLEMENTED ASAP.
""Our whole lives are a history of loss, irreparable loss. Nobody has the will to save us. No technology has the ability to save us.""
You know this reminds me of one the worse 'rights or abilities' taken from or denied people and that is to protect and defend themselves and it basically was done by a few scheming criminal types through the government and religion to convince or deny people the ability to defend and protect themselves and what is their's.
This really shows when you consider the intentional perpetration of what is happening now and the seemingly reluctance for people to actually do any thing no matter the harm or death caused by those hell bent on stealing everything they get their hands on in some senseless game of 'I just made more money than you' with every intention of getting it all, no matter the cost to other people.
This almost has to be bound up in the hatred that is ongoing all over the world with the 'have's and have's not' compounded by such a high degree of overcrowding that the harm done now is most likely done and will only get worse.
And I would be willing to bet that this great nation of 'less-freedom than most people realize' that tries to play the charade of a loving, caring, rightous and moral country that there is a 'launch immediately' status at all times now especially with the prevailing paranoia that exists here.
Nietzsche, all your other poignant statements aside, what is your source that states pagans promise a "hot hell?" I am a feminist wiccan, a form of paganism that is a gentle earth-based religion as you may know. Pagans do not even "entertain" the concept of hell. Hell and Satan are Christian concepts; Satan could be considered to be a God (or anti-God) in the Christian religion.
Peace to you. I believe we will save ourselves.
I confess to being ill informed on the subject but I was thinking more along the lines of of the pagan Greeks and Romans, and without doing any research I seem to remember their notion of an afterlife as being unpleasant.
Some Greek play has an inhabitant of Hades saying he would rather be a beggar in the world of the living than the king of the afterlife. Other descriptions of Hades suggested it might be dark and uncomfortably warm, but not a painful burning sensation.
I belong to a church which honors the European pagan religions. It's too bad that a male sky god had to give respect for the earth the back of his hand with a promise of wealth and conquest.
God knows we could use some respect for mother earth right about now. As she goes, we go.
Some other post mentioned that the privileged classes would die rather than give up an ounce of that privilege.
The privileged classes, i.e. the super rich would cut the last Redwood tree for a dollar even if it meant the end of the human race---hell, they have proved this to my satisfaction.
The plan behind Waxman-Markey and many folks going to Copenhagen is we can negotiate to slow emissions in steps until 2050, stabilize at 450 ppm, and gradually work down to 350. Joe Romm at the Climate Progress blog is an exponent of this plan.
It may not be good enough, but at least we will have the technology and some of the infrastructure ready when it becomes do or die. (If it isn't too late already.)
Gee, and I thought Waxman and Markey were smart men. The earth cannot sustain itself at 450ppm. All life will cease to exist. We need to get down to 350 ppm NOW. Pls check out 350.org and Bill McKibben's work about this. October 24th is the International Day of Climate Action when activists across the globe will be awakening people to the need to get down immediately to 350ppm. Please join us and definitely check out the website. Thanks.
I don't think it's that they're not smart, it's that they're among the privileged, and therefore not really very concerned about us lesser beings except to whatever minimal extent our wellbeing impacts theirs. In their world -which is the only world that *really* matters, in their hearts- we're surplus to requirements.
It's not unlike our feelings about faceless, nameless people in Bangladesh or the Congo -- we care about them in a vague, abstract way, but not at the level that we care about people we actually know. We indifferently let them be sacrificed every day because their stories are at the level of fiction in our own lives.
Like most of the privileged, they can't imagine not being privileged, so the idea that 450ppm might lead to their personal deaths is just science fiction to them. Galbraith called it when he said (I paraphrase) "the privileged will risk everything rather than give up even a tiny part of their privilege".
Another great post Mairead,
Thanks for hanging out here. Climate deniers, imho, are pretty much a mindless cult. But another form of cult is the group who can't fathom population control or understand that famine or predation on one's species is a natural process of any successful population at some point in it's existence.
We've got to stop feeding the problem. Peasants account for about a third of the global footprint through slash and burn farming and cooking with charcoal now that they've been priced out of LP gas. My Island is on fire as I speak. No tree is safe from the charcoal makers who roast a monster tree for days and then package the chunks in plastic to sell to the 17 year-old (average age) population.
The smoke has destroyed the air quality for miles in all directions of this island. The only thing that can put it out is a typhoon. Despite the misery it causes, at least heavy rain means a few days of fresh air. Thanks to greed of Oil companies, I've now got my own little version of "Lord of the Flies" in real life.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
You nailed it.
Thanks for sharing your perspective.
It's nothing short of brilliant.
Those that never had to work a day in their lives yet live off of the "fat of the land" have a observable disorder of being selfishly blind and morally indifferent; as my dear friend reminds me constantly; "Nature bats last."
Meantime, we need rooftop gardens and cisterns, bicycle paths, trees on parking lots, low maintenance greenery, global planned parenthood, the death of internal combustion and to lobby our state reps to allow us to decentralize energy and connect to the power grid, selling any energy we produce with solar panels and windmills in our homes and businesses back to the utility, making the electric meter run backwards.
My plan B is for
$1.50/gallon oilgae grown in desert "greenhouses" (actually covered trenches are cheapest), with a lot extra made and pumped underground,
Self-heating buildings in the frost belt, including greenhouses for winter vegetables,
Highly cost-efficient and time-efficient above-grade electric transit
$.02/kwh peakload-matching solar electricity
If anyone sees any DOE officials, wake them up please.
The models are based on human emissions alone, and do not include heat-amplifying feedbacks from melting ice or changes in carbon sinks. When those are factored in, it moves the timetable forward so that "reaching four degrees by 2060 is a plausible, worst-case scenario"
Of course the article ALSO neglects to mention the possibility of 'cooling' events, such as an eruption of a major caldera due to tectonic activity. If, say Yellowstone or Krakatau were to erupt again, the ash laden sky would be block out the sun and the onset of a minor (or major) ice age could occur.
For anybody who has analyzed the graph of greenhouse gases and pollen throughout history based upon ice samples, the future seems pretty obvious. The SLOPE of today's graph is unprecidented. The Earth will survive, but life on Earth will change drasticly, and probably quite soon (geologically speaking). NO, we should STILL try to improve. Just because history has shown that a certain event has always occured at or about certain intervals, does not mean that it is a foregone conclusion that it will always be so. But... c'mon, who in their reasonable mind believes that ANY country will reduce to ZERO output?...
"But... c'mon, who in their reasonable mind believes that ANY country will reduce to ZERO output?..."
I'm not holding my breath on that one.... ;)
With all the feedback loops, mostly in favor of warming, even a dramatic and immediate reduction to 0 human emissions won't work. Sequestration of CO2 and CH4 (or even the combustion of CH4 would be better as the by-product CO2, contributes less to warming) is required (as the alternative, the emission of ash and soot into the upper atmosphere to block sunlight could also reduce harvests and potentially cause acid rain and other unwanted effects).
Algae and fast growing annuals are a safe biological method for doing this, assuming we can harvest and store it all, safe from the inevitable fermentation and decomposition, which both release CO2. However, there's not many natural places like that on this planet (and any artificial attempt to create something durable enough to last centuries may not work) and a coordinated task to do that still likely involves energy in transport. When you add in the costs of land cultivation (or in the case of algae, the nutrient solutions), it may only break even in terms of CO2 sequestration. Plus, considering how most of this is still in the R&D stage (read--further standardization/monocultures/genetic engineering is needed to match our expected levels of speed), we might just be setting ourselves up for a future trap. (Of course, this is still better than the ideas of making additional power plants just to provide the energy for sequestration or doing nothing.)
Ignorance is bliss. Yesterday, there was a lot of discussion on here about Paul Krugman's column about the state of (un) education in the US. Most of the comments above seem to be made by persons who understand a modicum of science. But there is that vast group, possibly majority, out there who make up the uneducated and have been taught for the last eight years to regard such knowledge as "Chicken Little" stories. The profit motive in American business does not think in the long term. All they care about is the next quarter. They will continue to pooh pooh any science that does not promise to make them more money this year. And the rest of the world will just have to blissfully cook itself to death.
So will individuals step up and make some changes? How about those changes that can be put into effect today? Still using that clothes dryer instead of a line? Cold rinse? Cold wash? Bicycle to do your actual errands? Turn the heat down closer to the European standard (put on a sweater, fer Crissakes!). AC a bit higher? Call your local politicians urging better lightweight mass transit? Compost? How about those tree leaves? Recycle? Local food? Less or no meat? Less useless junk? Let the news-model idiots in the media know that they need to step up to their responsibilities to educate and foster meaningful discussion? That's a fraction of the types of decisions folks could make today. Ending wars would be very helpful for our planet. Or we can just act like its acceptable to continue to muddle along past the graveyard; pretend that the answer is simply that the economy needs to grow again, in the same old destructive ways. Individual actions don't matter, right? Nope, don't count at all.
The most important words in the article were these:
"Schellnhuber recently briefed U.S. officials from the Barack Obama administration, but he says they chided him that his findings were "not grounded in political reality" and that "the [U.S.] Senate will never agree to this"."
That means that at best the United States will offer a token effort.
That means that the politicians of the United States are convinced that they can negotiate a compromise with the laws of physics.
That means that the United States is governed by fools.
That means that it is now too late for this planet of idiots.
That means civilization will be done in by the violence of anthropocentric global warming and by the violence of fools fighting to survive the unsurvivable.
The reality check has been performed and it has been ignored.
You and your children are dead meat. Unfortunately the only things around to benefit from the corpses will be those bacteria that survive the collapse.
"That means that it is now too late for this planet of idiots." Pretty much sums it up. It's a damn shame that so many other species of animals and variety of plant life have to suffer on account of idiocy and greed.
I agree because it really shows the thoughtlessness and carelessness in those trying to use up every natural resource to get rich and hopefully survive what the real climate change will bring.
It also focuses even closer that through the white invasion of North America from europe that man had long since turned from nature totally driven by the 'elite' then as now.
One of the best books that describes this is James Burke's 'Connections' which was serialize in Scientific American and on PBS or A&E or some such channel but it was his attempt to show the unexpected ways that our modern technological world came into existence but what he didn't mention much of was the damage to the environment created by these inconsiderate and greedy people trying to make a better life for everyone, so I ask you to 'look at us now'; he did spent a little time on the clearing of the forests in the UK and europe just to make glass, ships and melt iron.
Since this 'climate' thing is really a bunch of crap to keep people's attention directed at something other than the political and financial crises because thinking of ways to stop, change or alter the change in climate is like trying to stop, change or alter a woman's desire for sex once she gets into puberty and then the boys desires.
Climate is going to do what it does and all that is base on the future and for us simple humans, trying to predict the future is a crap shoot or a piece of rigged flim flam and as you say,
ricg October 10th, 2009 9:46 am,:
"""That means that the United States is governed by fools.
That means that it is now too late for this planet of idiots.
That means civilization will be done in by the violence of anthropocentric global warming and by the violence of fools fighting to survive the unsurvivable.
The reality check has been performed and it has been ignored."""
Think of this world as the proverbial SHIP OF FOOLS where the ship has shrunk to the minimum of being able to hold all the fools trying to keep from drowning.
"a one- to two-metre sea level rise by 2100, leaving hundreds of millions homeless. This will head to 12 metres in the coming centuries"
Actually, the next ice age is slated for arrival in one to three centuries as the current interglacial period ends so the dislocation of hundreds of millions will be temporary. But the unnecessary destruction of lives in that process is unjustifiable as is the complete destruction of 2/3 of all species. Many will evolve but we don't have a right to perpetrate that destruction for the spoils of petro-gluttonly.
For both environmental and social benefit, to minimize both the toxins and the warming, to reduce the intensity of the "great games" and resulting social/environmental ills, to protect the natural living legacy and to benefit future generations of people, we should impose strict controls on fossil consumption, and the capitalist machine, generally.
"Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for many centuries"
The end of the current interglacial in one to three centuries will fix the problem of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions but again, we don't have a right to perpetrate epic destruction in the meantime. The elites shoulder much responsibility as they are in control of public policy, but the people are responsible for taking back control.
>>> the next ice age is slated for arrival in one to three centuries
Wrong! Try 20,000 to 50,000 years.
Posted before but in case you never saw it:
Organic Can Save the World from Climate Chaos
"... carbon sequestration is the best way to buy time in a warming world. Cutting emissions will help, but not as immediately as sequestration...food production must be fundamentally restructured to simultaneously preempt and react to the devastating effects of climate change. ...organic agriculture presents an untapped solution, an underutilized carbon sink at the ready. ...if the world's 3.5 billion tillable acres could be transitioned to organic agriculture now, land could sequester almost 40 percent of our current carbon emissions. No other proposed carbon mitigation solution comes close to that potential impact, particularly using existing and readily available technology."
Rodale Institute, February 2009