THE Earth in 2100 Thread (merged)

[Ludi]

Didn't make many waves, unfortunately,

I think these kinds of programs don't make waves because of the prevailing attitude of "They will fix it." Folks who watch the show assume "They" are watching it also and will fix the problem.

[Novus]

"They" have watched and "They" have for the most part given up on trying to solve the oil crisis. The solution "they" have come up with is the controlled demolition of the middle class. Poor people consume less energy and that is the way it is going to be.

[Ludi]

"They" have watched and "They" have for the most part given up on trying to solve the oil crisis.

"We've tried nothin' and we're all out of ideas."

[mos6507]

"They" have watched and "They" have for the most part given up on trying to solve the oil crisis. The solution "they" have come up with is the controlled demolition of the middle class. Poor people consume less energy and that is the way it is going to be.

Come on, man. You've been listening to too much Alex Jones. "They" don't know diddly squat about peak oil. What little they do know, they think they can technofix our way out of (based on what Steve Chu has said). The only guy in washington who knows is Roscoe Bartlett and every time he speaks about it, the chamber empties out like it's a prog rock drum solo or something.

[hillsidedigger]

Did any of you responders click on the link?

[Mesuge]

mos> Pls. define "they" - CIA clearly tracks and acts (in twisted sense) in peakoil related area at least since mid 70s, that's documented. Neocons, the previous administration, which tightened the screws knew and acted on the picture at least since mid 1990s, again documented, well known fact. So, don't fool around this issue.

I'm not interested what frontend clowns like Barry the Change, Nancy Demokratstein or that Alaskan psycho-belle think about peak-oil, but I'm interested about the opinions on the matter among the banker families who own nice controlling chunks of Fed, and often times don't pop up on any of these stupid top100 list of wealthiest humans anyway.. The so-called "descrete-elite" above-superclass, which is a terminus technicus of modern sociology-economy-political science. The people you likely never meet in your entire life, roughly less than 500 families who either directly own or excert control over 95% plus of this planet.

[Peepers]

Did any of you responders click on the link?

I did. My antivirus blocked access and the attempted download of a threat.

I encourage the moderators to remove this link!

[Narz]

"We've tried nothin' and we're all out of ideas."[/quote]
That's from the Simpsons (the episode where Flanders goes crazy)! Can I has cookies?

[Heineken]

Read it and weep. And as we know, the IEA usually tries to tone things down.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... tional_pop

[PrestonSturges]

On the PeakOil front page last week, Breitbart was declaring victory because an NSF study said we'd probably only have 3 degree rise, but it also said the last great ice age was the result of only a 2 degree chill. The lowball estimate of 3 degree increase will still put much of NYC and Florida underwater, and the wingnuts are calling this some sort of victory.

The best case 3 degree scenario looks like the US will have massive refugee problems, the worst case scenario is near extinction.

[Heineken]

Nothing will be bigger than this. Nothing. With the possibility of nuclear war. It's going to be the shape of the century.

No wonder there are so many who can't allow themselves to believe it. (Similar phenomenon to PO.)

[ritter]

Well, if the IEA is saying it, the ship has sailed. I'm surprised their handlers allowed the admission.

[clif]

Three Degrees?????

According to Mark Lynas, in the book Six Degrees,

Three degree raise in temps will result in a return to temps last seen three million years ago during the Pliocene Era.

The end of the Amazon as a rain forest, which would then result in a Savannah type grassland ecological environment instead.

The ENSO phase in the Pacific could become the permanent stage of climate there, which means droughts in Indonesia, Australia, and floods in Peru's Atacama Desert. A failure of the Indian subcontinent Monsoon season, would undercut the agriculture there, and of course the rain and mudslides California suffers during El Nino would also become more permanent.

and of course he says this;

According to the newly updated model, a three-degree rise in global temperatures-something that would happen as early as 2050-effectively reverses the carbon cycle. Instead of absorbing CO2, vegetation and soils start releasing it in massive quantities, as soil bacteria work faster to break down organic matter in the hotter environment, and plant growth goes in reverse. So much carbon pours into the atmosphere that it pumps up atmospheric concentrations by 250 parts per million(ppm) by 2100, giving a further 1.5^C boost to global warming.

"Six Degrees"; page 139

The planet 4.5 degrees warmer, Lyans writes last time the earth was 4 degrees warmer, there was no ice at either pole.

ibid; page 192

This means at least a 20 meter rise in sea levels, and of course Cyd's worst case scenario, the massive methane release both on shore and off shore Siberia. What global temperature that would result in, and the further feedbacks that could come from it is anybody's guess.

So Breitbart is celebrating a situation that very could result in run away warming????????????

Interesting.

[dohboi]

This follows the general trajectory of scientific discussion on the issue. Two years ago an MIT study concluded that 3 degrees C was already in the pipeline. Last fall the Royal Society, the oldest scientific body in the world, devoted an issue of their publication to the possibility of a 4 degree C rise.

So now we have a prediction of six degrees from a very staid, conservative group.

Keep in mind that all projections (that I have heard of) leave out some 'slow feedbacks' such as seabed methane. So even this is likely to be on the low end.

Keep in mind, also, that:

1) Global heating (I think we can call it that at this point) is not going to magically stop at the end of the century--it is going to go much higher

2) By the time we reach 7 C vast swaths of the most populated places on the planet, such as much of the east coast of the US and China, become uninhabitable because the combination of heat and humidity becomes more than the human body can cope with--people cook in their own skins.

[ritter]

This all gets me very depressed at times. Oh what a mess we've made of our children's world. Interesting times, my ass. I'm ready for some boredom.

[PrestonSturges]

Breitbart was doing the usual weekly victory dance claiming AGW is discredited, and as always, the deniers cite a paper that says the opposite.

The paper said that they believed that warming would be limited to 2-5 degrees C, but this assumes a strictly linear relationship between temperature and CO2 with no positive feedback mechanisms. And even this optimistic analysis still says that warming will do catastrophic environmental and economic damage. So the study said, in effect, "Well, maybe not extinction, if we're lucky."

Here's the Breitbart endzone dance
http://biggovernment.com/publius/2011/1 ... an-feared/

Here's the PeakOil article
http://peakoil.com/enviroment/study-fun ... an-feared/

And this USAToday summary was much better than I expected
http://content.usatoday.com/communities ... -limits-/1

[AgentR11]

Really, yall shouldn't expect any other reaction. They've won the political and power debate, but the ones with brains and education inside those organizations know the difference between the coolaid for the masses and reality well enough. So, they have to keep the FUD flowing, for as long as the rabble will more or less buy it.

Maybe we just come to accept that all that research and work into sustaining life in space will be used in a very mundane way, right down here on earth. We become fully dependent upon technology and electricity for our lives. We are Borg.. You will be assimilated.. Resistance is futile. Tally ho?

[Heineken]

If the increase---conservative, mind you---is achieved linearly from here, that means we'll be up 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit in just 44 years---already massively world-changing. And the next few decades will take us there, with all sorts of nasty bumps along the way (we've already felt some). What gets me is that just a few years ago, all of this seemed pretty abstract. Yes, the climate was going to change, but it was all safely down the line. A century or more away. Now it's imminent. Almost immediate.

And despite all the talk and green commotion, what's been happening to the greenhouse gas levels? Rising merrily away.

[PrestonSturges]

When are we projected to double CO2 concentrations? We're up about 40% already. I'm skeptical that we'll actually be able to scrape up enough hydrocarbons for a 100% increase.

[Whitefang]

With the ice already in steep decline, methane venting, ocean life dying.............this process is not going to take a hundred years from now. 10 degrees celcius in a decade seems more appropiate as a guess for the global heating spike.
That would mean fast collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, an armada of ice floating in the North Atlantic.....Heinrich event cooling things down at first, maybe we'll get summer snowblizards in Europe. Incredible amounts of rain for sure.
This is indeed bound to pick up speed and give rise to exponential growth in temperature.

We'd better prepare to bug out as soon as people realize there is not going to be enough food for all of us humans and that it is going to get worse every week from now. No worries about the powers that be, they will die the same death as we.
Terrible and yet.............