[dohboi]

Thanks, vox. You really are a gem!

[GHung]

From Vox's links; "“The answer is, most of our indicators are headed in the wrong direction,” Watts said. “Broadly, the world has not responded to climate change, and that lack of response has put lives at risk . . . The impacts we’re experiencing today are already pretty bad. The things we’re talking about in the future are potentially catastrophic.”

That applies to just about everything in a world of human overshoot.

[Plantagenet]

The Paris Accords allow countries to keep on using FF and emitting CO2. OF COURSE THAT WILL RESULT IN MORE GLIBAL WARMING

Where were all these people who now say the Paris Accords won’t stop global warming back in 2015 when the Accords were being signed? It might have been helpful if they’d raised these concerns back then

Cheers!

[asg70]

The Paris Accords allow countries to keep on using FF and emitting CO2. OF COURSE THAT WILL RESULT IN MORE GLIBAL WARMING

Why do you care about GLIBAL(sic) WARMING if you fly to Greece and Nepal on a whim? Please stop pretending to give a damn. You spend all your time pointing your damn finger at anyone and everyone other than yourself. It's tragedy of the commons, man. You may be only a small part of this, but collectively we ARE the root cause, not policy failures. You're a textbook case of externalizing.

[Plantagenet]

The Paris Accords allow countries to keep on using FF and emitting CO2. OF COURSE THAT WILL RESULT IN MORE GLOBAL WARMING

Why do you care about GLOBAL WARMING if you fly to Greece and Nepal.....

I care about global because it is dangerous for the entire planet. Alaska, Greece, Nepal and the rest of Europe, Asia, Antarctica, South and North America and Africa—-its all going to be affected and biomes will change and coastal areas will be drowned everywhere around the planet

I know this is hard for you to grasp since you’ve never been far from home and the world to you is just funny pictures on your TV, but this planet is beautiful and it’s all we’ve got.

Get it now?

Cheers!

[rockdoc123]

I care about global because it is dangerous for the entire planet. Alaska, Greece, Nepal and the rest of Europe, Asia, Antarctica, South and North America and Africa—-its all going to be affected and biomes will change and coastal areas will be drowned everywhere around the planet

I know this is hard for you to grasp since you’ve never been far from home and the world to you is just funny pictures on your TV, but this planet is beautiful and it’s all we’ve got.

it seems you are ignoring a common concern that is brought up. First of all, there is no such thing as global temperatures (its an amalgamation) nor is there such a thing as global temperature increase other than how you put together all of the stations around the world. If you bothered to look at the sea level measurement stations you would note that there is a huge range of values of relative sea level rise going on. Looks bad in places like Lousiana where subsidence has been a problem and looks not a problem in places where an isostatic response has been positive and the satellite measures are not just limited in range but also suspect. My point is it is all regional and to a large extent local. Now I know I've traveled way more extensively than you unless you have been pretty much everywhere (my job over the years made me do that, so name the places where there isn't any oil and gas and that would be where I wasn't unless on a holiday) and many of those places will experience a completely different scenario from what you infer as "climate change bad".

So I'm sorry to say it is "dangerous for the entire planet" is just over the top. Whatever happens with climate and for whatever reason, it is guaranteed that some areas will be affected negatively (with respect to peoples memory) and some areas will be affected positively. The timeline for any of that is probably more important to anyone on this site in any event. If you are trying to project out 50 years (my guess is the average lifespan of most folks here) it is obvious that some areas will be happy (hey, more moisture and it's warmer) and other areas will not be (shoot it's dryer and a bit hotter). If instead, you are trying to portray the ultimate doom of what might happen in a thousand years then go for it...baked planet etc. Unfortunately, that is projection way beyond where anyone has a clue about the variables let alone their interaction.

[Plantagenet]

I know I've traveled way more extensively than you

Certainly you’ve been to more oilfields then I have, I’ll grant you that. Your long career in the oil biz took you many places where oil was the game.

I am a mere academic research scientist, and seldom visited oil fields or facilities other than basing out of the Drift River facility here in Alaska when Redoubt Volcano was erupting. Oh and some time at the Valdez TAPS marine oil terminal when I had a consulting contract to evaluate seismic hazards

Cheers!

[mmasters]

This planet has been through far worse than some extra CO2 in the atmosphere. Life goes on and it will be here long after us.

[jedrider]

This planet has been through far worse than some extra CO2 in the atmosphere. Life goes on and it will be here long after us.

1. It's not the planet 'we' worry about. It's us AND what we hold dear.
2. I think that on the whole, AGW is a catastrophe for practically everywhere on Earth because EVERYWHERE on Earth will become DIFFERENT in the end.
3. We all know that there is no averting GW, but just perhaps, we can make a bad situation much worst. There's a chance that we can have a longer period of being in the safe zone (for us) before GW becomes truly catastrophic.
4. If nothing can be done, which seems likely, then we ARE on the best course: We will make the rest of our time here as short as possible!

[Tanada]

1. It's not the planet 'we' worry about. It's us AND what we hold dear.
2. I think that on the whole, AGW is a catastrophe for practically everywhere on Earth because EVERYWHERE on Earth will become DIFFERENT in the end.
3. We all know that there is no averting GW, but just perhaps, we can make a bad situation much worst. There's a chance that we can have a longer period of being in the safe zone (for us) before GW becomes truly catastrophic.
4. If nothing can be done, which seems likely, then we ARE on the best course: We will make the rest of our time here as short as possible!

About #2, you admit that climate change is simply change to different conditions but you define change as being catastrophic. This is not anything like a realistic view of the post global warming world. Changes in the tropical zones will be minor and will mostly effect warm blooded animals larger than about 20 kg mass. IOW the very largest of the bird species and all the large mammal species may become excluded from the equatorial belt, but that means a bonanza for the plants and cold blooded animals like the reptiles, amphibians and fish that will no longer be in direct competition with the large birds and mammals. At the other extreme the polar zones will become temperate which is a vastly richer type of ecoregion than the polar zones. The plants and animals currently living in the polar zones may have a rough time of it, but birds like Penguins and mammals like Polar Bears are routinely located at zoo's and preserves in temperate ecoregions and thrive in those conditions so they have a good chance of survive and thrive after the climate flips.

About #3, again you are defining Change as Catastrophe. Change is part of life and massive change like this requires significant adaptation to survive and thrive, but that does not equate it to a catastrophe.

About #4, you seem to be under the impression that human extinction is on the table due to climate change. You could not be more wrong if you tried. 70,000 years ago when Mount Toba erupted in supervolcanic fashion Homo Sapiens were limited in range to Africa and the climate shock of the volcanic winter almost caused us to go extinct. Today humans inhabit all seven continents after a fashion and nearly every island at sea or in smaller bodies of water. Islands are particularly resilient when it comes to climate shock because the maritime influence keeps things from changing too far from 'normal' on a short time scale. Even the most extreme calculated climate rate of change is too slow to kill every human and a large number of humans will be in areas where the climate shift will not be extreme like Mediterranean Africa, Tibet, Chile, Vancouver Island where post shift will closely resemble today's climate averages. Once those rapid shifts in climate zones stabilize in the new greenhouse configuration the many millions of worst case scenario survivors can expand out into the new climate zones where humans can survive. Those in the equatorial zone might not survive depending on just how intense the wet bulb temperatures actually turn out to be and that might kill as many as 3 Billion humans, but global population is vastly higher and more diverse in ecoregions than that. Even in the worst case scenario the remnant human population will number in the millions and in the most likely case scenarios we will number in the 1-3 Billion range. If you are really hoping for human extinction you are going to be very disappointed.

[kanon]

About #3, again you are defining Change as Catastrophe. Change is part of life and massive change like this requires significant adaptation to survive and thrive, but that does not equate it to a catastrophe.

Denial coupled with rosy scenario is the establishment philosophy. How does the loss of huge habitable areas and half the population work out to "survive and thrive"? I cannot understand the argument that something less than total human extinction is OK. We simply do not know how bad it will become and therefore we cannot rule out the extinction scenario. Just because there will probably be areas of habitable temperatures does not negate the extinction argument. I personally do not think GW will lead directly to human extinction, but there is no doubt that the GW climate will not be favorable for humans. I do not like to think of how bad it could be, but it looks like future generations will know. In the mean time, protecting the status quo remains the priority.

[asg70]

Question: how exactly does the arctic function in a hothouse earth when there are so few hours of sunlight half of the year? It just seems to me you can't treat the arctic circle the same as lower latitudes as far as plant growth due to this. Temperate plants aren't adapted for such limited sunlight.

[dohboi]

asg, of course you're right. Some people are apparently emotionally incapable of seeing the truth of the sh!t storm we have unleashed on the world, so cling to happy scenarios that are ridiculous on their face and fly in the face of the best science on the subject.

Anyone wanting to read a thorough and thoroughly researched account of what can be expected in the first 6 degrees C above pre-industrial levels can start with Mark Lynas's Six Degrees.

There is little upside in dramatically and (in geological time) very rapid shift in many of the most basic conditions and processes that life on earth depends on.

[jedrider]

The most important reason that CHANGE is bad, is that the rate-of-change is enormous in ecosystem terms. Humans are a top predator and so we depend upon everything below us. How will that work out?

I am liking the warmer weather here in California because I'm getting old, but it is disastrous to human effort and to the trees that help maintain our current climatic zones, which are rich and varied, currently, but probably not for long. I'm under no illusion that any of this CHANGE will be good.

[Tanada]

Question: how exactly does the arctic function in a hothouse earth when there are so few hours of sunlight half of the year? It just seems to me you can't treat the arctic circle the same as lower latitudes as far as plant growth due to this. Temperate plants aren't adapted for such limited sunlight.

That is rather a very foolish question or pure bait, I can not tell which.

To put it bluntly, the Polar regions get exactly the same number of hours of sunlight per annum as any location you can name on the Equator. The trees in Michigan and Ohio come in two varieties, deciduous and needle leaf evergreen as two competing strategies to deal with months of cold dark weather. The warmer earth will cause much more vibrant growth in the existing Taiga, the needle leaf evergreen forest that covers well over half of Siberia, Canada and Alaska. Those trees are already fully adapted to living through several months of very limited daylight countered on the opposites season with several months with very limited hours of darkness.

Secondly we have abundant fossil evidence that broad leaf deciduous trees survived and throve in latitudes as high as 75 degrees north during the Miocene Epoch, when world CO2 levels were very much like they are today. We also have substantial evidence that broad leaf evergreen trees, specifically palm species of tree, lived as far as 60 degrees north during that same epoch.

Temperate plants are some of them annuals and some are perennials like the trees cited above. For the annual plants the winter time darkness is totally irrelevant because those plants only germinate when there is enough sunlight to warm the soil above a fixed threshold, a somewhat different threshold for differing species but a threshold none the less. We already grow temperate plants in far northern Canada and Alaska and Siberia today in those places where the weather is warm enough. This covers not only a wide assortment of vegetables, it includes all three northern grains being Rye, Barley and Oats, all of which are or have been grown as far north as Iceland which averages 65 degrees north. The reason the Norse invaded Iceland and enslaved the monks who were its first settlers was to grow Barley and Rye in independent farms away from the political situation they fled in Scandinavia. They went on to colonize Greenland during the MWP and grew those same grains at the same latitudes in three main settlements and a dozen minor ones along the coast of Greenland.

The amount of land area between 45-65 degrees latitude today which mostly consists of Taiga forest is very large. A farming motto I learned growing up 'Anywhere God plants a tree man can grow a crop' is simplistic but pretty accurate. The farmer needs to choose a crop that can mature in the short polar summer, but if the warmth and water are present the growing is a much easier challenge to overcome. This is why Fairbanks Alaska grows monster size vegetables every summer at a latitude just below the Arctic Circle. The summers are short in number of days, but they have very lengthy periods of sunlight on each day. Once the temperature is warm enough to eliminate frost concerns the 20 hours of daylight let annual plants mature in just a few weeks.

[jedrider]

Nice explanation Tanada. But aren't the hydrates concentrated at the poles? That doesn't seem like a good place for mankind to setup shop.

Scientists just found telltale evidence of an ancient methane explosion in the Arctic
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/04/21/scientists-just-found-telltale-evidence-of-an-ancient-methane-explosion-in-the-arctic-ocean/?utm_term=.567acbce1485

However, author suggests:

But as for a catastrophic, rapid release of methane from the ocean into the atmosphere, the odds — for now — are probably slim.

So, when should I start buying real estate that is towards the poles? In twenty years? Fifty years? I'll tell my kids, 'melting permafrost', that's where the future lies!

[yellowcanoe]

A farming motto I learned growing up 'Anywhere God plants a tree man can grow a crop' is simplistic but pretty accurate.

Maybe that is true where you live, but thousands of homesteaders here in Ontario discovered otherwise. While a large portion of Southern Ontario is good farmland there is also a sizeable area underlain by igneous rock of the Canadian Shield. This land was of course covered with large trees which led people to believe it would make good farmland. The reality was that the soil tended to be thin, rocky and nutrient poor. Most of this land that had been cleared has reverted to forest. There is still evidence of these early homesteaders -- in the Lanark highlands west of Ottawa you can see massive stone fences and/or piles of stones in the forest which were created by homesteaders trying to remove the stones from the thin, rocky soil. Climate change will add very little farmland to Ontario because almost all the land that is not currently being farmed is Canadian Shield country with very poor soil conditions.

[dohboi]

Good points, yc. Similarly in Georgia, the land according to the earliest accounts had a foot or two of rich black soil above the clay it is now famous for. Decades and centuries of poor farming practices left mostly the clay. Some trees can grow in it (GA is now a leading producer of timber), but mostly not a lot else in most places.

[dissident]

A farming motto I learned growing up 'Anywhere God plants a tree man can grow a crop' is simplistic but pretty accurate.

Maybe that is true where you live, but thousands of homesteaders here in Ontario discovered otherwise. While a large portion of Southern Ontario is good farmland there is also a sizeable area underlain by igneous rock of the Canadian Shield. This land was of course covered with large trees which led people to believe it would make good farmland. The reality was that the soil tended to be thin, rocky and nutrient poor. Most of this land that had been cleared has reverted to forest. There is still evidence of these early homesteaders -- in the Lanark highlands west of Ottawa you can see massive stone fences and/or piles of stones in the forest which were created by homesteaders trying to remove the stones from the thin, rocky soil. Climate change will add very little farmland to Ontario because almost all the land that is not currently being farmed is Canadian Shield country with very poor soil conditions.

Thank you for injecting a dose of reality into the "we will adapt" bubble of delusion. Muskoka and other swaths of Ontario don't have tillable soil. There is bedrock covered with a thin layer of loam or sand. White and red pine can grow in such conditions. Oak and maple can as well in regions with more loam than sand. But no human crops can. A lot of these poor soil lands were used for dairy farming but this activity died out.

Thinking the tundra will be a farm zone like the middle latitudes is extremely naive. Even as the tropics become uninhabitable to mammals there will be 9 month winters in the polar night zone. The IR downwelling flux from the warm atmosphere is going to be a terminal headache for farming. Top soil layers will rapidly dehydrate even though, ironically, there will be more moisture resident in the air and the annual mean rain amount may increase.

Humans will try to survive and perhaps even millions may survive. But living a Mad Max nightmare because people can't be bothered to change their habits today is grotesque.

[dohboi]

"living a Mad Max nightmare because people can't be bothered to change their habits today is grotesque."

Say it brother