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Climate Change? Try, Climate Breakdown
What's clear from Copenhagen is that policymakers have fallen behind the scientists: global warming is already catastrophic
The more we know, the grimmer it gets.
Presentations by climate scientists at this week's conference in Copenhagen show that we might have underplayed the impacts of global warming in three important respects:
- Partly because the estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) took no account of meltwater from Greenland's glaciers, the rise in sea levels this century could be twice or three times as great as it forecast, with grave implications for coastal cities, farmland and freshwater reserves.
- Two degrees of warming in the Arctic (which is heating up much more quickly than the rest of the planet) could trigger a massive bacterial response in the soils there. As the permafrost melts, bacteria are able to start breaking down organic material that was previously locked up in ice, producing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and methane. This could catalyse one of the world's most powerful positive feedback loops: warming causing more warming.
- Four degrees of warming could almost eliminate the Amazon rainforests, with appalling implications for biodiversity and regional weather patterns, and with the result that a massive new pulse of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. Trees are basically sticks of wet carbon. As they rot or burn, the carbon oxidises. This is another way in which climate feedbacks appear to have been underestimated in the last IPCC report.
Apart from the sheer animal panic I felt on reading these reports, two things jumped out at me. The first is that governments are relying on IPCC assessments that are years out of date even before they are published, as a result of the IPCC's extremely careful and laborious review and consensus process. This lends its reports great scientific weight, but it also means that the politicians using them as a guide to the cuts in greenhouse gases required are always well behind the curve. There is surely a strong case for the IPCC to publish interim reports every year, consisting of a summary of the latest science and its implications for global policy.
The second is that we have to stop calling it climate change. Using "climate change" to describe events like this, with their devastating implications for global food security, water supplies and human settlements, is like describing a foreign invasion as an unexpected visit, or bombs as unwanted deliveries. It's a ridiculously neutral term for the biggest potential catastrophe humankind has ever encountered.
I think we should call it "climate breakdown". Does anyone out there have a better idea?
- Posted in
46 Comments so far
Show AllWe are a water planet.
What is happening to the oceans of the world in terms of measurable warming and acidification is enough to freak anyone out once understood.
The oceans are reaching a tipping point.
The artic is reaching a tipping point.
The boreal forests are reaching a tipping point.
The atmosphere is reaching a tipping point.
My temper is reaching a tipping point.
You are spot-on----it's all about water, and all the tricks it plays when changing states.
Consider the change in location of water mass playing a part in stirring the pot.
Apparently, we have a little time left---80% of Greenland's present ice sheet was laid down since the last climate reversal 110kya. (The Great Ice Age", J L Chapman and others, 2000ad.)
climate is not breaking down, and it is not even changing except that it is always changing, always different.
it is only the matter of climate suitable for human habitation that some humans are worried about(others don't give a hoot). otherwise it doesn't really matter that life as we know it might end. it doesn't seem that great a loss...
we've been fouling the nest for awhile now, getting kind of disgusting
coldponder, would you stop that, please? - You're still alive, still part of US, still able to change and help. You and your life DOES count, to all of us. - As we all count to the living Biosphere that we're growing in, grow on and grow from - and, indeed, grow towards.
Now's a good time for realizing how much we're alive!
Subjectively, life is a miracle freely given that keeps on happening.
Human life, however, is coming more and more to resemble an infection that is swamping out the rest of the Biosphere. If we destroy the whole thing, sure, life will reemerge and maybe someday intelligent creatures will develop technology and will be able to use it sensibly without destructiveness.
But I'm unlikely to be around to see it.
Your nightmares of total destruction astound me. You must think us little ol' humans are really something!
Don't worry. Even in the worst case scenario, most species and pockets of humans will survive quite well. Our civilization won't, but hopefully some of our technological knowledge will get carried along so they won't have to start from scratch.
This is nothing but a blip in geological time. A hot flash for Gaia, nothing more.
This old Indian isn't worried or concerned about these things. If Vegas were offering odds on you saving Planet Earth I'd bet against you. Listened through the years as the European visiters to our land talked about a thing they call, "Progress."
Now it looks like all this great grand swell "Progress" could progress into a Hollywood Disaster Movie where everyone upon the earth has a part.
Had human beings upon the earth lived like the Tribes used to live they wouldn't pretty much destroy themselves by their own hands through either their pollution or modern days weapons. Perfect Logic in an Illogical World.
But we got cheap electronics so that's something..cha cha cha..
Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.
Reverred medicine man Black Elk (may his spirit soar like an eagle) chanted in his rituals to the direction North as "Where the great white giant lives", and told us:
"The only things that work well are things that work the way Nature works."---Neihart, "Black Elk Speaks" 1932
Wish I had a decent peace pipe and a solar battery charger to share, heh, ShadowD?
Sioux Rose
SNYDLY: You hit the recipe for sustenance: working WITH nature, not enslaving her beings... when I see entire forests taken down to plant ONE kind of tree in straight erect rows, it reminds me of the miliary ordering soldiers into "formation." This type of approach is now being done with genetics, the building blocks of life, the DNA chains that have been sculpted over eons to do what nature through trial and error recognized them most fit to do. Oceans left as dead zones, mountain tops blasted off and away, species vanishing, the proof of nature dying in so many places and still some show the hubris to say that's the way of things. Sure. The twisted anti-life/anti-nature WAY of things!
The "new" facts streaming daily out of this week's Copenhagen meeting have been well known for years to people who have been paying attention to the science. The real problem is what Mr Monbiot alludes to when he cites "the result of the IPCC's extremely careful and laborious review and consensus process." Consensus requires conservative conclusions, and all the IPCC reports have understated the climate change problem in order to reach it.
If Mr Monbiot (or anyone else reading) wants a real scare, he should read "With speed and violence : why scientists fear tipping points in climate change" (2008) by Fred Pearce. Feedback loops are kicking in, and in case after case, events that the IPCC has projected would happen gradually over the next century are becoming evident in the course of just years. We are well and truly screwed.
The current economic meltdown is the most constructive thing to happen to the environment in the past 60 years. Stands to reason that it would be the result of the failure of global governing elites, as opposed to any concerted planning or action on their collective part.
Ok, George, let's not call it climate breakdown. How about "Monbiot's Grand Deception"?
Folks, read Naomi Klein's book (The Shock Doctrine) to learn how self-serving political agendas are insidiously implemented by trumpeted crisis and fear.
There's plenty of info available for one to research both sides of this questionable, hyped climate catastrophe. Please, do your homework before caving in to the fear mongers.
I think Ms. Klein would be quite shocked to see her book, which was purely about capitalist economics, being used to attack a consensus among physical scientists. This consensus is practically unaminous, and as a result, it is greatly understating the risks and threats.
the IPCC is like an engineer who designs a dam for the worst rain storm that the climatologist can state with resonable certainty (say 70%) will occur over the dam life. Such a dam would have a 69.9% chance of being subjected to a larger storm, failing, and killing many people downstream. Would such odds be acceptable to the public? Fortunately, dam's aren't really designed this way.
But in addressing climate, we are doing it this way. Is gambling with much smaller odds, say 10%, of humanity being wiped out by the worse-case climate scenarios acceptable? HINT: Because people consider even the death of a handful of people downstram unacceptable, dams must be designed to safely pass a maximmum theoretical flood that will have practically no chance of being exceeded over the dams hundred year or more lifetime.
On a seperate note, it is a very curious sociological question why so much Critchtonesque, conspiracy theory-laden denialism is arising from what appears to be the US left.
---USAn---
How could so many scientists be misled? The same way practically all of our professional lawmakers in Congress were used to initiate Bush's wars. The military-industrial-congressional-EDUCATIONAL complex tends to deliver what their masters desire.
What should rouse one's suspicions about climate crisis are the complex financial shenanigans being proposed as solutions.
Firstly, you stated the ansswer to your first question. The odds of it happening" were posited for this discusson at 10%, bit it could be 1% - the point is, it is probably much higher than any kind of acceptable odds that people would accept for dams or airplanes. Would you get on an airplane with a 1% chance of crashing? Would you fly on such an airplane even if the fare were free?
Secondly, I am stunned that you would even consider such an absurd thing as a cost-benefit analysis where one of the alternatives is humamities extinction. Firstly, considering that only humans use this thing called money, and no humans would be around to spend or save the costs, or ever engage in economic activity again, isn't you proposal the very definition of absurdity? But if you tried it, at any probability, the cost of the extinction alternative, is for the above reason, infinity, so for it going to have an infinity in the B:C ratio and be meaningless.
And considering that zero-carbon energy technologies to address climate change would be innovative and result in considerable economic activity replacing old technologies that are going to be obsolete anyway, how is it going to damage the world economy - it's going to expand the world economy! By analogy, are economists decrying the "cost to the world economy" of all those HDTV's that are being sold because of the mandated switch to digital broadcasts?
Don't listen to the deniers, the science of the problem is well understood - in fact it suffers from overconservatism (from the scinetists's perspective) and dangerous under conservatism (from the engineers who must use their data perspective) Please re-read the dam analogy. But, even if the climate mitigation measures prove unnecessary, we are going to have to switch to carbon-free energy anyway for resource depletion and other environmental reasons.
Just curious, excuse the bluntness, but what do you do to earn that $80,000/yr? Because like so many upper middle class and rich Americans, your working grasp of physical or social science, logic, mathematics, or engineering isn't that good.
---USAn---
Sioux Rose
PDJ: Most excellent post!
I am going to hazard a "guess" as to why some on the left are into climate denial. We know that Newt and Grover did a good job of making citizens have cause TO distrust government, and I think there is an extention of this lack of trust now extending to government scientists.
There are some who are so stuck in their minds and out of touch with their bodies, and equally out of touch with nature, that they do not SEE so much evidence all around them of the many natural systems breaking down. Instead they harbor intellectualisms of their own.
There are some, too, although I would see this more on the "right" in the conservative community who expect Jesus or "the messiah" to fix things, or otherwise they have been seduced--not unlike the Islamic suicide bomber--into believing a HEAVEN elsewhere awaits them, and this world of suffering is about to end. End Times, in the form of "Left Behind" has sold something like 50 million copies!
I can think of other "cause" factors, like a dislike of authority figures in general, and rebelliousness to facts, figures and statistics because so many of these have been used against common sense and decency. When there is so much to distrust, recognizing what is worthy of our trust becomes more difficult. A climate of disinformation is thicker than fog these days with media owned by interests bent on war, including "class war." Some throw the baby away with the bathwater as a result.
Even if that were true, additonal CO2 in the atmosphere would effect the lenght of time thaat it would take for the atmosphere to shed back CO2 down to a life sustaining level.
Here, kitty, kitty...
tnmoderate, 12:pm;
The cat crapping gold nuggets might be the worst attempt at anology that I have ever heard.
Yeah and the Titanic COULD sink if it hit an iceberg.
Theres a point at which additional CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't absorb more of the earths radiation, because its absorbed all that it can. But, as you put more CO2 in the atmosphere, more and more of that absorption occurs closer and closer to the earths surface, where it influences ocean and ground effects (evaporation, melting, etc). So, it still has an effect. This effect is modelled in climatological models, which is why they show things getting worse the more CO2 is added.
As for your impatience with the use of the word 'could' in estimating climatological effects, its clear no level of certainty would satisfy you.
The global situation, even without global warming or whatever term best fits, calls now more than ever for an entirely new ethos and political reality. In many respects this is already developing -- local food movements, etc. However, the Hygiecratic political philosophy, in my opinion, addresses the universal and particular exigencies in a critical, comprehensive, non-coercive way. For example, a sure fire means of halting global warming would be to curb economic production by 80%. We could have a one day work-week if we only nationalized all rental properties and basic foodstuffs -- basic for the optimal development of health, that is.
Why keep insisting there is a consensus when there is no such thing. A consensus among 2000 that gathered to present their views and theories...yes. But a consensus or anything approaching it among the worlds scientists and climatoligists....no such thing that I find.
For are more vocal but are a smaller number, not a majority. So I;'ll have to wait tioll there is real consensus using real science. I fail to see why anyomne thinks these guys are better at predictions than economists? Models are simply inaccurate.
Oh, Thomas, Thomas! Turn off the AM radio.
Here's your concensus:
http://logicalscience.com/consensus/consensusD1.htm
For "tipping Points" read: "Bridge at the Edge of the World" by Gus Speth (Yale).
For really scientific, slick paper, analysis: "The Great Ice Age" by J L Chapman and others.
Also, "Under a Green Sky", for erudite paleo-archeology and -climatology.
For the clearest charts, see Jms Hansen's lecture at Va Tech from his website.
For really good guesses at how it may play out, read my early posts here on CD.
( Different, but just as severe...). And, yes, we must stop what warming we can, and totally discard fossil fuels, bio-fuels, dismantle nukes planet-wide, stop cutting trees and raising cattle.
Cha cha cha.
iT's a crock of you know what, global warming. I can't stand to hear it anymore.
First, let's disabuse ourselves of concepts such as "saving the planet" or "life-sustaining levels."
The planet will survive us just fine. About 65 million years ago, Something Very Large hit our planet and wiped out 95% or more of all life. Oceans were displaced. The entire planet burned. The sun was blotted out for centuries. But walking around today, you wouldn't know it.
Do you think our species and our carbon emissions can compete with that?
So, it's not about saving the planet, but our civilization, because that is what will really crash. Food riots, a breakdown of the international system, massive displacement, with secondary effects of starvation, disease, you name it.
Now, about our carbon emissions...
People, that's our job. Bees pollinate, worms turn the soil, beavers build dams that create ponds that sustain water and insect life. Humans return stored carbon to the atmosphere, making it available for other forms of life.
Think about it.
What really distinguishes the human species? Fire. The Promethean Revolution makes the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions look like walks in the park. Our earliest myths celebrate the Fire Theft and state how afterwards, the rest of the animals separated themselves from us.
Fire made us what we are today. Cooking, which became chemistry, culture (all those stories around the fire at night), blacksmithing. You name it, it all goes back to fire.
But incidental to all that, fire returns stored carbon back into the atmosphere, where it becomes newly available for photosynthesis, the firstmost link in the food chain that enables all biological life.
Believe me, releasing carbon into the atmosphere is our job! It's what we bring to the ecological table, our contribution to Gaia. Sure, it would happen without us. Pollination would happen without bees, too, but not without a devastating adjustment.
But we've overdone it.
And you know what happens to a species that does too good of a job, when its numbers overstep certain boundaries. Nature has built-in checks and balances, such as, oh, warming the planet enough to disrupt the continued expansion of that species's numbers, if not reduce them significantly.
That's all this is, nature's way of saying, that's enough carbon for now, thanks. Sure, we can try to cut emissions back to 1990 levels. But who are we kidding? That might forestall things only for a week at best.
Do what the Irish monks did during the Dark Ages. Store up our culture, store up knowledge of our technologies and sciences, our literature and arts. Anything to keep the surviving generations from having to go back to square one.
If digging up and burning carbon was humans ecologically beneficial role, why did live thrive even better before humans and their fires? It is believed that the peak of biological diversity was in the Cretaceous era. Over the long term, solar output will gradually increase, heating the earth until complex multicelluar life becomes impossible about 700 my from now. So, we lay already be past the prime of Gaias 1.5 billion year lifetime.
While there is certainly truth in you remarks, I find such arguments to be rather misanthropic. I'm pretty discouraged too, but still feel that the continutiy of human civilization and human prosperity to be something worth fighting like hell for.
---USAn---
Oh, we'll be back, don't worry. A lot was lost in The Dark Ages, but thanks to some monks in Ireland, a lot survived and fueled the Enlightenment.
About life thriving before humans, sure, but life thrived before bees and beavers, too. We're not the only ones who do what we do (look at forest fires and volcanoes and good old slow-as-hell decomposition), just the best!
I don't understand why some people get so upset and think climate change is a crock. I wonder if these people have trouble believing in evolution. Maybe they don't believe in science or don't want our way of living to change. The majority of the leading climate scientists in the world agree the the climate is changing and the man is contributing. Who are all the climate experts that the nay sayers are listening to and what studies that they have done to disprove that the climate is changing ?
They're listening to pseudo-'scientists' bought and paid for by Exxon, etc.
They're afraid it's going to cost them money to switch over to clean. What they don't realize is that EXXON is afraid it's going to cost THEM money to switch over to a market they don't already dominate. So Exxon propagandizes, hires pseudo scientists, get's their anti-warming talking points don't pat on every station across the country.... and brainwashes the common citizen deniers to deny that they're denying anything.
Catastrophic Climate Mutation - it's got everything an 'audience' wants: catastrophe and mutants.
Boy is it depressing reading these comments. Seems to be true--even on the left, the denialists are winning new converts in droves. Why? here are my two theories: one, a line from the Triple Crisis conference I went to a year ago: "You have to understand that most people will remain in denial as long as they can." People don't want to be bothered with change, especially drastic change. It's becoming increasingly clear that we've hit the 29th day, the final stage of a petri dish with an exponentially multiplying population of bacteria before it runs out of room and nutrients and the whole population suddenly dies. I've seen the estimate that humanity is now living at a level 23% beyond Earth's carrying capacity, and both population and "standard of living" are still rising. It was David Korten who said standard of living is "the rate at which the resources of the poor are appropriated by the rich and converted to garbage." There is no likely solution, without a level of rationality and cooperation humanity is showing no signs of.
Reason two--I suspect that Exxon Mobil and the Edison Institute are now sowing a much broader field more quietly than heretofore--instead of just paying the known denialists to give speeches and write books, they've got an army of bloggers pounding out rebuttals on any site where the search words "climate change" or "global warming" ring their bells--and it's having an effect.
We know that there are observed changes in the climate, as there have been over millenia. What we do not know is what all the causes of those chnges are and how much human activity is contributing to those changes. If human activity is a major cause, say 10 percent or more, then cutting carbon emmissions is a good strategy, but if it is a minor contribution, 1 or 2 percent, then it is mostly a waste of time (other than to cut pollution in cities) and a better strategy is to prepare for climate change that is being driven mainly by nature. And, because we will never be certain (climate is simply too complex to model and forecast with accuracy) preparing for and adapting to climate change should be our strategy regardless of whether we cut emissions of not. The first steps should be to re-organise the agricultural industry, re-assess urban infrastructure (especially in coastal areas) and put in place key international agreements and strategies. Sadly, most of the emphasis in the debate has been on our contribution to climate change and little is being done to prepare for the consequences of the change. For example, what international agreements need to be in place if over a decade or two a billion people are on the move because their locations are becoming uninhabitable?
this excellent article makes mr. monbiot's flirtations with nuke power all the sadder. the problem is immediate. yet no new nukes can come on line for at least 10-15 years and, of course, would only make things worse anyway.
the good news is that the conversion to renewables would make economic, ecological and employment sense even if the climate chaos were not a factor.
going to solartopia (www.solartopia.org) is the only answer for the economy and the ecology. no nukes!!
Some things we can do about global warming:
Use solar water heaters and put solar panels, small arrays of boat windchargers on rooftops and connect them to the grid to make the electric meter run backwards --will need Obama's help for this last one.
And plant, plant, plant, everywhere you can, organically, xeriscape, no mowing.
oh yeah sure.and change the light bulbs. see if you can find a copy of "As the World Burns- 50 simple things you can do to stay in denial" Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan
I suggest the term Entropy Gaia for what's happening to the world because it's more than climate change. To that must be added resource depletion, other types of pollution and superbugs... I used it in my novel Y3K, which looks back from the future to the coming breakdown of all planetary systems. Stan Kahn
Quantum Decoherence:
Good post. There is a lot going on with the sun right now that is being learned. I do hope we are not entering a period similiar to the Maunder Minn, but the cycles are beginning to point in that direction.
A scary thought.
Considering that Europe entered a renaissance and thrived during the Maunder Minimum - those "bitter cold" London or Amsterdam winters being comparable to say, Boston today, what exactly is scary about another maunder minimum?
All it would do is offset AGW a bit.
---USAn---
PJD:
The Maunder Minimum occured at the end of the "Renaissance Period". It was a time of crop failures because the weather was so cold.
Another Maunder Minimum would result in crop failures again. As far as AGW, there are lots of issues with the science of that. As we learn more about the sun, solar winds, etc we are learning that the sun is prob responable for the warming that has occured, with co2 being neglible in its effect. Even tho co2 is not as huge a driver as some would like to think, that in no way lessons the need to conserve our resources and develop other energy sources.