Runaway Global Warming - Has Arrived pt 7

[nth]

What do you think?

Well, as I said, agriculture is bad for the environment.
If you don't care about the environment, then yes, this is virgin soil with enough fertilizer, it will be very productive land for the summer growing season.

Don't they get very little sunlight during winter months and too much sunlight during summer months?

[Ludi]

A vast expanse of western Siberia is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.

Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

Link

[EnergySpin]

"We knew at some point we'd get these feedbacks happening that exacerbate global warming, but this could lead to a massive injection of greenhouse gases.

"If we don't take action very soon, we could unleash runaway global warming that will be beyond our control and it will lead to social, economic and environmental devastation worldwide,"

[Ludi]

Thank you, ES. {I fixed your link with ES's correction MQ}
Think anyone over here will take this issue seriously now?

[EnergySpin]

Thank you, ES.

Think anyone over here will take this issue seriously now?

No ... because the "spin doctors" will raise arguments such as:
oh it is a mathematical model
oh changes will happen slowly
oh it will tank the economy
oh you mean I have to stop driving my Hammer to the beauty salon 50 miles from here to have my hair done?
"Global warming is not happening - temperatures are not caused by CO2 but by the weather fairy. In any case it is a communist/liberal/European/anti-American conspiracy to tank the economy"

[crude_intentions]

Thank you, ES.

Think anyone over here will take this issue seriously now?

Your Average American would'nt pay attention to Global Warming if his children were spontaneously combusting in front of him.

[Wildwell]

The Wild hunt will be appearing this Halloween, the bugles can be heard by some now…

[EnviroEngr]

I need someone like Backstop or Devil to verify this. I've been told by some geologists and archaeologists that we're still coming out of the last Ice Age yet - that what we're going through now isn't a shift to a new equilibrium but a finishing off of the last cycle.

True?

[sklump]

Thank you, ES.

Think anyone over here will take this issue seriously now?

Your Average American would'nt pay attention to Global Warming if his children were spontaneously combusting in front of him.

Or else, it'll be "HOORAY! CAUCASIAN JAYSUS IS COMING!"

[EnergySpin]

I need someone like Backstop or Devil to verify this. I've been told by some geologists and archaeologists that we're still coming out of the last Ice Age yet - that what we're going through now isn't a shift to a new equilibrium but a finishing off of the last cycle.

True?

To verify what?
That the permafrost or the ice caps are melting?
NASA pictures are not enough for you?

[EnviroEngr]

I need someone like Backstop or Devil to verify this. I've been told by some geologists and archaeologists that we're still coming out of the last Ice Age yet - that what we're going through now isn't a shift to a new equilibrium but a finishing off of the last cycle.

True?

To verify what?
That the permafrost or the ice caps are melting?
NASA pictures are not enough for you?

Oops. If PMS finds out I used ambiguous semantics, I'm toast.
Let me redo that:

I need someone like Backstop or Devil to verify this ---> I've been told by some geologists and archaeologists that we're still coming out of the last Ice Age yet - that what we're going through now isn't a shift to a new equilibrium but a finishing off of the last cycle.

True?

[shakespear1]

When I was in Western Siberiarecently the locals were telling me that the winters now are warmer, lot warmer than ususal. Those lows of -50 are very rare and short.

Another large region of the world is toast

[The_Virginian]

Melting glaciers in Switzerland are revealing ancient forrests.

Wine used to be made in newfoundland (VINland).

The planet has warmed, cooled, and pole shifted many many times w/o industrial society.

However,

DEVIL believes that we as humans contribute more than our share of co2 to the atmosphere, which they figure is speeding up the natural proccess, and hastening the doom of many a coastal town.

[EnergySpin]

What I meant to say .. Is that the average temperature is going up.
And the fact that it is going up, is evident from satellite images of the ice polar caps.
IPCC consensus position is that this is due to human activity solely. Other's are maintaining that this is the finishing off a trend. In either case human made GHG are emitted with the potential to induce a run-away effect, which would magnify any natural trend to global warming. The argument that "oh human emissions are a small % of the global CO2 content" (which is not, we have increased CO2 by 35% compared to the pre-industrial age through industry AND agriculture) is irrelevant given the non-linear dynamics of climate control mechanisms (the "butterfly effect").
It does not really matter if the natural trend is the predominant one; exceeding thresholds in the mechanisms controlling the climate (and such thresholds DO exist) will be caused by both mechansims (since they are synergistic). Assigning causality relations in non-linear systems is a very tricky and possibly futile exercise. Since I do not like retyping self-evident stuff again ...
http://peakoil.com/post147141.html#147141
But I do want to hear Backstop and Devil on this myself

[Wildwell]

EUROPE’S vanishing glaciers and melting permafrost in Siberia prompted scientists to raise new fears over global warming yesterday.

The dual concerns came as a high-altitude Alpine ski run closed yesterday for the first time because of a lack of snow.

Tour operators at Val Senales in Alto Adige, near Italy’s border with Austria, said that the run had never before had to close since it opened 30 years ago. High-altitude ski runs have also been closed in the Tonale Pass and at Marmolada, in the Dolomites.

Walter Maggi, a geologist at Milan University, said that the closures had come after low rainfall in the spring and very high temperatures in June and July. “But there are deeper causes. The finger of suspicion points at global warming,” he said

The Times


Melting bog may lead to 'ecological landslide'
By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent
(Filed: 11/08/2005)

A melting permafrost peat bog stretching across an area the size of France and Germany could unleash billions of tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, Russian scientists have warned.


The huge frozen region, covering around 360,000 square miles of western Siberia, is rapidly turning into a watery landscape of shallow lakes. Experts fear it could release huge quantities of methane trapped in the frozen peat.

The latest alert follows research by Sergei Kirpotin, a botanist from Tomsk State University in Russia, and Judith Marquand from Oxford University.

Mr Kirpotin told New Scientist magazine that the entire western Siberian sub-Arctic region had begun to melt in the last three or four years. He predicted an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and undoubtedly connected to climatic warming".

Western Siberia has warmed faster than almost anywhere on the planet, with average temperatures increasing by about 3C in the last 40 years.

The Telegraph


Siberia's peatbogs have been churning out methane for 11,000 years but billions of tonnes of the gas has remained locked within the permafrost that covers it.

Because the permafrost is coated in snow and ice, it reflects sunlight before it can be warmed up.

But in recent decades, as the temperature of the globe has risen, the vast expanse of western Siberia has begun a slow thaw.

The melting of the permafrost is more than a mere indication of climate change. It is an example of a finely balanced environmental system that when upset by global warming can trigger a dramatic reaction that drives global temperatures up further.

Art 2 TG

A new report from the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) warns that temperatures in Europe's major cities are rising.

The report analysed summer temperatures in 16 European cities over the last 30 years and found that in most of them, average summer temperatures were at least one degree Celsius higher over the last five years than they were 30 years ago.

BBC

[_sluimers_]

Thank you, ES.

Think anyone over here will take this issue seriously now?

Your Average American would'nt pay attention to Global Warming if his children were spontaneously combusting in front of him.

Or else, it'll be "HOORAY! CAUCASIAN JAYSUS IS COMING!"

Hahahahaha
Caucasian Jesus LOL

[shakespear1]

Is there more than ONE?

[Wildwell]

We have heard a lot about climate change and the need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2. Although we are told that climate change will lead to an increase in floods, droughts and hurricanes, many people assume that the changes will be very slow and, for people living in cold climates, they could mean some nice warm weather.

But the threat of climate change is much worse than most people imagine. There is a real risk that rising temperatures could spiral out of control and reach levels that would wipe out the majority of species on the planet, including the human species:

*

CO2 in the atmosphere has risen sharply since industrialisation to a level that has probably not been exceeded for at least 20 million years. This is likely to mean substantial rises in global temperatures[1] (although changes in ocean currents may cause some local cooling[2]).
*

As temperatures rise, soils will cease to absorb CO2 as they do now and will start to release it. As forests die, they will stop absorbing CO2 and will release it as they burn or decay. These increases in CO2 will accelerate rising temperatures.[3][4]
*

Rising temperatures may also cause methane to be released from the vast deposits of methane hydrates that exist at the bottom of the sea—and also from melting permafrost. Since methane is about 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2, release of methane would cause further increases in temperature leading to the release of more methane in a positive feedback loop or vicious circle.[5][6][7]
*

There have been several mass extinctions in the geological history of the world and some of them appear to have been caused by runaway global warming.[8][9]
*

These things may happen much sooner and much more quickly than many people imagine. On several occasions in the past, the world’s climate has changed dramatically and abruptly in the space of a few years.

http://www.mng.org.uk/green_house/threa ... m#_ednref8

[Licho]

You have to PM to Devil if you want his comment, afaik he only reads energy tech forum.

[backstop]

Ludi –

This news from Siberia is very grave indeed. It had been hoped that the permafrost there would hold up perhaps for many decades, allowing time for society to mend its ways and perhaps avoid a wholesale melting. No such luck.

To put the issue into perspective, our fossil-fuel-burning, deforestation and sundry other activities are emitting around 7.0 Bn Ts Carbon per year, of which about a third (say 2.3Bn Ts C) is recovered by the planet’s natural cleansing of the atmosphere. Thus we need to cut our global emissions by well over 60% (4.7Bn Ts C) just to stop adding to the excess atmospheric carbon, i.e. just to stop making the problem worse.

Those emissions have risen in lock-step with fossil fuel usage and so correlate closely to global economic growth, and overall have raised the concentration of atmospheric carbon by around 34% since 1780 (i.e. the pre-industrial level) from 280ppmv to about 380ppmv. The UK govt. has recently proposed a global cap of 400ppmv as the maximum to avoid ‘harmful climate change’, which target is pretty sure to be accepted by the EU and certain other powers as the proper basis for UNFCCC negotiations.

However, the numerous feedback loops, of which albido-loss (loss of reflective snow & ice cover) and melting permafrost are just two examples, are a pocketful of Global Warming’s jokers dropping onto the negotiating table.

Globally, permafrost hold many times the carbon tonnage of the total known coal reserves – the Siberian bogs alone hold around 70 Bn Ts of Methane (CH4). There is a further crucial twist which is that Methane is around 20 times as potent as a greenhouse gas as Carbon Dioxide (CO2), so in terms of CO2-equivalent the threat is of 1,400Bn Ts CO2 being emitted. If it took as long as 200 yrs to come out (and in places it’s already bubbling out so hard that the lakes are unable to freeze in winter) that’s an average of 7Bn Ts CO2 equivalent per year.

At the point where all the feedback loops’ combined output swamped the planet’s cleansing ability (~2.3Bn Ts C /yr), the loops would become effectively self-fuelling and entirely beyond any human remedy. Given the momentum of the massive elemental forces in play, we may already be committed to that condition – each day wasted in the status quo’s prevarication makes it more likely.

Thus in answer to your question “Think anyone over here will take this issue seriously now ?” I’d say yes, they will, for several reasons.

First, this is freighter-loads of ammo for US scientists to put into the media debate, and, with intensifying weather-events hitting all over the country, I think Americans are already starting to wake up to the scale of this cluster-fuck of a cock-up and of the lies they’ve been sold by the fossil fuel industry and its politicians.

Second, there were calls at Gleneagles (from outside the fences as well as within them) for a “Partnership of the Willing” among concerned nations N & S, to negotiate a treaty founded on the policy framework of “Contraction & Convergence,” to which dilatory nations could accede when they feel ready. This is not the thread to go into the details of this possibility, but the impact of the Siberian news will be to accelerate the launch of that Partnership of the Willing, on grounds that there is no longer any point in waiting for laggards.

Third, both the shift of public opinion within the US and the launch (and even preparatory discussions) of such a partnership will be potent levers on the US body politic. In addition, for all it is scared of being sued by many nations for climate damages, and so has tried to delay until China & India’s output has risen to the point of making such a case hopeless, that fear will increasingly be outweighed by the threat of climate destabilization itself.

I think Washington will at last be looking for serious change, so long as it requires no loss of face.

My two pennorth. Sorry about the length.

Regards,

Backstop