[dohboi]

"Interesting graph" Here they are so all can see easily what we are talking about:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/Past-a ... e-CO2.html

Figure 1: Compilation of available CO2 data for the last 450 million years. For data sources see text. Proxy records are colour coded and labelled in the relevant panel. Greenhouse gas emission scenarios (RCP – Representative Concentration Pathways) used in IPCC AR5 are shown in the right hand panel. Note the variable log scale for time. For the geological data a smoothed line has been fit to the data with an uncertainty accounting for uncertainty in age and CO2. The black line describes the most probable long-term CO2 with 68% confidence limits in red, and 95% confidence in pink.

Figure 2: Climate forcing by changing CO2 and solar output for the last 450 million years. CO2 data and projections are as outlined in Figure 1. Changing solar output calculated as described in Gough et al. (1981; Solar Physics, 74, 21-34) with CO2 forcing from Byrne and Goldblatt (2014; doi: 10.1002/2013GL058456). The red band is the 95% confidence interval around the smoothed line through the published CO2 data.

We're on that highest track, RPC 8.5 (or worse). We are scheduled to soon, in the next few decades, go beyond any level of forcing that has ever been seen in the recorded history of the planet. And at a faster rate than we have ever moved anywhere close to that direction.

And some aver as a certainty that extinction is definitely not possible. No one can know may or may not happen in these contexts--we are wading deep into totally uncharted waters.

[AgentR11]

I really like that second chart; its hard to describe to people how atypical the current rate of change is. But it is a rate of change chart, the next few decades will NOT produce a larger forcing than in Earth's history (the rate of change in forcing may be higher than ever though) , but by the time CO2 hits 2000 ppm, it'll be in the ball park. The problem for life in general though, is that going from 250'ish to 2000 ish in a few centuries will be near impossible for any niche holder to adapt to, they are all likely toast. Less picky species may also find themselves turned into niche holders in the process (eg us.)

As to extinction, all that begins... ends. No species can avoid extinction. Its only a question of when and how. I don't think climate change can kill off the hominid line. I do think climate change can end industrial civilization. Maybe an unanticipated issue tangential to it might do the trick, maybe a virus evolves in a way we've never seen and can't be stopped; so can never say 'never'.

[Tanada]

Personally I think our civilization will end its current mass growth before we hit 1,000 ppmv, the confluence of climate, peak oil and peak other resources is going to mess up our system in ways we can not imagine, let alone anticipate and adapt too.

[dohboi]

" The problem for life in general though, is that going from 250'ish to 2000 ish in a few centuries will be near impossible for any niche holder to adapt to, they are all likely toast."

Nicely put.

"I don't think climate change can kill off the hominid line."

Sheer arrogance imho.

"our civilization will end its current mass growth before we hit 1,000 ppmv"

Economic growth is the current means for increased CO2 emissions. But EG is not necessary for ICO2E.

The world is almost certainly going to devolve into a kind of lowgrade universal war as resources get ever scarcer and effects of CC get ever more severe.

Conventional war takes a sh!t-load of ff to operate.

Those in POWER will have POWER to extract POWER from the earth in the form of ff. To the very end.

I do agree that it is essentially impossible to know how to 'adapt' to the coming (or even the current) insanity.

[AgentR11]

"I don't think climate change can kill off the hominid line."
Sheer arrogance imho.

No. Just a guess. Arrogance would imply some enthusiastic certainty. Its just my hunch that our high speed, software type adaptability, is sufficient to adapt to conditions as they present; whether that's a cave on the Arctic circle or magic powered techno-bubble-cities...

Arrogance would have stated, "there's no way in ****** climate change can kill of the hominid line."

[dohboi]

OK, got it. Keep in mind that all other "Homo" species have, in fact, gone extinct, though.

[AgentR11]

OK, got it. Keep in mind that all other "Homo" species have, in fact, gone extinct, though.

Quite likely through a combination of interbreeding and/or being outcompeted by another hominid. Basically a refinement process. And now, given our sensitivities about race and ancestry, I think its a fair bet that as long as the current variety of hominid can say the latin "homo sapiens" and know what it means, we'll label whatever we happen to be at the current time, "homo sapiens". Given that we've likely been able to interbreed with other recent varieties, its probably not an unreasonable take on things anyway. If anything, it might be more correct to label most of the recent hominid species as "homo sapiens variety00x"; as opposed to presenting them as truly separate.

Kinda like various breeds of housecat... lol. Kinda unfortunate if one comes to an end through poor breeding practices, but all in all, there's still a bunch of "felis catus".

/meow

[Timo]

I'll have you all know that among humanity, I am unique, a breed unto myself! There are no others, and i am the last of my kind.

/tweet

[KaiserJeep]

I'll have you all know that among humanity, I am unique, a breed unto myself! There are no others, and i am the last of my kind.

/tweet

Is your name Timo or Chingachgook?

[Timo]

Timbochgook!

Monsanto has the patent on my DNA. I'm in the beta test stage right now. So far, i've proven to be heat tolerant, drought and herbicide resistent, resilient at cheating death on just a few occasions, but none the wiser from learning from those experiences. I think they're planning on making a few revisions in the new model.

[ffkling]

"not the Guy McPherson megadoom scenario but the real scenario we project based on paleoclimate records and real science evidence."

While you may not like what Dr. McPherson has to say, his conclusions are backed-up by sound science. He has the guts to speak the truth.

[dorlomin]

While you may not like what Dr. McPherson has to say, his conclusions are backed-up by sound science.

They are not. He is an embarrassment. There is a dedicated thread for that silliness.

[dohboi]

The Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, a transient global warming event, is characterized by extensive evidence of a more active hydrological cycle.

This includes a widespread pulse of kaolinite accumulation on continental margins, viewed as the by-product of either enhanced chemical weathering consistent with much more humid conditions and/or increased erosion of previously deposited laterites. … the latter might be indicative of extreme seasonal precipitation patterns.

To assess these hypotheses, we present a new high-resolution clay mineral assemblage and oxygen isotope record …. This finding points to accelerated exhumation and erosion of kaolinitic soils, most likely Cretaceous laterites.

doi: 10.1130/G32785.1 v. 40 no. 7 p. 591-594

http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/40/7/591.short
"Clay assemblage and oxygen isotopic constraints on the weathering response to the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, east coast of North America"

A hard rain gonna fall!

(Thanks to hank at RC for this link.)

[Tanada]

I am glad to see sound science coming out on this. Many climate models predict a much wetter future where monsoon style rains fall on much of North America for 90-180 days of the year as it transitions from cool temperate to wet and dry subtropical. This study should be able to outline where the wet season will be a major new climate zone and where it was not during the Miocene and give us hints for the future of the Anthropocene.

[Tanada]

One of the things about the Miocene/Anthropocene climate we are currently on course for that escapes most people. During the Miocene the climate of the Northern Hemisphere was much more 'equitable' than it is today. This means that back then and as we go into the future the climate as far north as 65 Degrees latitude was sub-tropical like today's Georgia in the USA. Palm trees grew on the southern coast of Alaska and Greenland.

For someone like myself who grew up with the wide temperature swings of the Midwest where we get up to 100 F on the hottest days of summer and down to -20 F on the coldest winter nights having the summer and winter both support palm trees would be the most profound change I can imagine.

The first time I visited Washington D.C. and saw Azelia bushes genetically Identical to those I grew up with in Michigan expanded into fully grown Trees towering up to 30 feet high it really hit me in the gut how things would change with an altered climate. All the ones I had seen before that were broad leaf evergreens that never got much over 4 feet tall and that took serious frost damage if we got a really harsh winter like the one just past in 2013-2014. People in this climate region plant them as ornamental bushes, not as trees.

Walking through the woods in Florida a few years ago I was astonished at how few plants I recognized, the ecosystem was completely different than that I was used to and the distance was a little under 1,000 miles (1,600 km) north to south. In the Anthropocene those plants will be moving to here, where I now live, along with all sorts of creepy crawlies I never had to deal with before.

[dissident]

This soft climate will take thousands of years to arrive. We need the oceans and the atmosphere to equilibrate to the new radiative forcing regime and it takes many centuries due to the slow dynamical timescales in the oceans. Before planning for the good things to come from climate change we have to live through all the chaos that is going to be a problem during the very long transition period. This weather chaos will screw over humanity in an epic fashion.

[Subjectivist]

I have watched at least two lectures by Dr. Richard Alley on abrupt climate change that seem to imply changes can happen much faster than people expect. Sure melting Greenland could take several centuries, but while that big ice sheet is still slowly melting there will be palm trees growing in Chicago and Detroit. The northern hemisphere is a big place, just because one island has a two kilometer high ice sheet does not mean everywhere else will still be cold in the winter.

[dissident]

I have watched at least two lectures by Dr. Richard Alley on abrupt climate change that seem to imply changes can happen much faster than people expect. Sure melting Greenland could take several centuries, but while that big ice sheet is still slowly melting there will be palm trees growing in Chicago and Detroit. The northern hemisphere is a big place, just because one island has a two kilometer high ice sheet does not mean everywhere else will still be cold in the winter.

You missed the point. We have had about 8000 years of stable weather patterns (not to be confused with clockwork repetition of weather). Now we are undergoing an adjustment period and these patterns will reconfigure. This is not a linear process. Abrupt climate change does not imply abrupt transition from one stable regime to another. A point that I have not seen being clarified. The composition of the atmosphere and hence the radiative processes are changing. This is a non-negligible perturbation and the ocean-atmosphere system has multiple states. The perturbation facilitates the system bouncing quasi-randomly between different states. In other words, we are accessing more disruptive variability in the system.

It's funny how deniers use "variability" as some sort of excuse to fob off the very real forcing that humanity is imposing on the ocean-atmosphere system. The variability is not an out, it is a hammer that will make the anthropocene, ironically, a very hostile period for humanity.

[Subjectivist]

I have watched at least two lectures by Dr. Richard Alley on abrupt climate change that seem to imply changes can happen much faster than people expect. Sure melting Greenland could take several centuries, but while that big ice sheet is still slowly melting there will be palm trees growing in Chicago and Detroit. The northern hemisphere is a big place, just because one island has a two kilometer high ice sheet does not mean everywhere else will still be cold in the winter.

You missed the point. We have had about 8000 years of stable weather patterns (not to be confused with clockwork repetition of weather). Now we are undergoing an adjustment period and these patterns will reconfigure. This is not a linear process. Abrupt climate change does not imply abrupt transition from one stable regime to another. A point that I have not seen being clarified. The composition of the atmosphere and hence the radiative processes are changing. This is a non-negligible perturbation and the ocean-atmosphere system has multiple states. The perturbation facilitates the system bouncing quasi-randomly between different states. In other words, we are accessing more disruptive variability in the system.

It's funny how deniers use "variability" as some sort of excuse to fob off the very real forcing that humanity is imposing on the ocean-atmosphere system. The variability is not an out, it is a hammer that will make the anthropocene, ironically, a very hostile period for humanity.

How long does it take for an abrut climate change to settle down into a new pattern? Isn't this one of those chaos theory things where the stable regimes are strange attractors and once you swing too far away froneone you get pulled into another? Bifurcated hysteresis, or something like that? My mathematics training ended with Calculus and that was about 25 years ago so I muddle through these things.

[Newfie]

What I hear, on a practical and personal level, is that we really can't do any planning, that things can shift significantly year to year.

The implications of that are reduced harvests, and the need to store food stuffs in good years to survive bad years. The antithesis of JIT.

This will mean a shock to current global financial models.