[onlooker]

A very eloquent post Ibon, if I may say. I think all of us on this site came here out of concern for the state of our world and the trajectory of our species. So we are united by this. Our differences of opinion are trivial in comparison to the plain realities which Ibon alluded to. Our species is deep into overshoot. And it is futile now to attempt to prolong that condition because we cannot and in fact do more harm by trying than not. So, I wish not to see many people die but I do recognize that WE are the problem in our numbers and ways of living. So, yes the futility and helplessness is undeniable. Our life individually and collectively is a gift. Our species has abused this gift and will pay the consequences and that is all part of the cycles of Nature and this Universe.

[dohboi]

A seemingly compelling counterargument, often reused in the media, is that none of the glacial-interglacial transitions of the past 400 kyr shows a sudden, large methane-spike, suggesting that abrupt, large-scale methane outbursts are unlikely. One might appeal to such abrupt events being below the temporal resolution of the rock record in explanation, but absent such spikes the safest answer is to say that large-scale interglacial outbursts did not occur during that time.

This time, however, is different. Anthropogenic warming has interrupted the Glacial-Interglacial cycle of the Quaternary (Ganopolski et al., 2016; Haqq-Misra, 2014) and there will be no coming Ice-Age n-1000 years from now to reseal all of this volatile Carbon, as happened at the end of each previous interglacial. This now-broken cyclicity is one reason why catastrophic reservoir-collapse has never occurred in the past and we should not take any comfort from that lack of precedent as never before has an Interglacial period been combined with annual, planetary-scale thermal forcing.

While high CO₂ levels have been present in Earth's atmosphere before (e.g., during the Cambrian and Archaean) without initiating either the moist or runaway greenhouse state, never has the rate of warming been annual in scale as today. The question is not whether anthropogenic emissions could initiate these greenhouse states, but whether Arctic clathrate release could. The IPCC 3rd Assessment Report (2001) concluded that rapid increase in atmospheric methane from the release of buried clathrate reservoirs would be "exceptionally unlikely", at < 1% chance, a figure revised up to 10% by the following report in 2008.

Yet the Mars observations show that abrupt, cascading devolatilisation occurs readily in nature, and there is nothing about these observations to suggest that this process is not portable or scalable to Earth. That ESAS lacks Mars' mound-density makes the scaling no less valid, the methane-supersaturation of 80% of ESAS bottom waters (Shakhova et al., 2010) showing that frost mounds are not the sole venting pathway, gas migration pathways growing in capacity annually in the areas of greatest emissions (Shakhova et al., 2017).

Destabilisation of the shallow-marine clathrates of ESAS continues to be excluded from every global climate model

http://arctic-news.blogspot.it/

[Cid_Yama]

I think I've come up with a temporary fix that could at least buy us time. Could we not create our own manmade freshwater pulse? I'm sure we could engineer a placement for nukes in the Greenland ice cap for maximum effect.

link

This is something we actually have the means to do. We have the knowledge.

link

This is the first time in a decade I've felt we have a way out.

What do you all think? This is the first time you've seen a hopeful Cid Yama. It may not be over.
(And it's a good way to dispose of all the world's nukes, as this would be a monumental undertaking. Geoengineering on a massive scale requiring perhaps all of them, reengineered for this purpose.)

[Outcast_Searcher]

I think I've come up with a temporary fix that could at least buy us time. Could we not create our own manmade freshwater pulse? I'm sure we could engineer a placement for nukes in the Greenland ice cap for maximum effect.

link

This is something we actually have the means to do. We have the knowledge.

link

This is the first time in a decade I've felt we have a way out.

What do you all think? This is the first time you've seen a hopeful Cid Yama. It may not be over.
(And it's a good way to dispose of all the world's nukes, as this would be a monumental undertaking. Geoengineering on a massive scale requiring perhaps all of them, reengineered for this purpose.)

Interesting, but risky. (Lots to go wrong). Lots of trust and cooperation needed -- which isn't in great supply on many matters.

Since we can't even get a solid majority of people to believe it's real, or vote to do something substantive about it (like a decent sized CO2 tax, which could replace some income taxes), I find it hard to see the needed entities getting together and doing this until things get a LOT worse.

But certainly interesting, creative, out of the box thinking.

[Cid_Yama]

Yes, that is the weak point, but literally, the heat is on. Hungry, hot and miserable can be great incentive inducers.

We already know the effect of a freshwater pulse in the same place, from the Younger Dryas.

AMOC slows to a crawl or shuts down altogether. Almost immediately Northern Hemisphere temperatures drop 10 C, and stays that way for over a century. Arctic Ice would reform. Permafrost would refreeze. It could perhaps put us back on track for the next glacial.

ESAS subsea permafrost degradation still remains a problem. But this could give us time. Hopefully.

But it does solve a big chunk of the problem. AND the climate refugees turn around and go home, with a lot of people who don't like the cold going with them.

Emissions stop being the end of us, but rather, a moderating influence. (That is if CO2 toxicity doesn't kill us off.)

Summer highs in North Texas would be around 30 C (86 F). Michigan weather. Texas could become a golfers paradise.

Summer highs in Michigan around 20 C (68 F). Nice place to visit in summer, but winters will be brutal. Like northern Saskatchewan.

Northern Europe, Get out your sealskins and mukluks. Remember what happened to the Viking Greenlanders that didn't adapt to the ways of the Eskimo.

Lots of winners and losers, but better than going extinct, don't you think?

[Tanada]

Your pulse is impossibly far from the correct location. The MacKenzie freshwater pulse dumped a thick layer of fresh cold water on top of the Arctic ocean at the border of the Yukon territory. From that location the water was delayed in the Arctic long enough that it was frozen into a new very thick ice cap of fresh water rather than frozen salt water that is more vulnerable to melting.

All melting Greenland does is dump water into the vast North Atlantic where it will disperse rather than freezing into a refreshed Arctic Ice cap. Sure you might stall the Gulf Stream current for a while, but as I have pointed out ad nauseum the Gulf Stream does not transport nearly as much warmth to Europe as the long discredited theories of the 1970's once proclaimed. Western Europe is warmed by the maritime climate effect with a 1-2C increase in surface temperatures on land from the Gulf Stream. If you follow the latitude lines of Scotland around the earth to the Pacific coast of North America and look at the climate records you can easily verify that land temps in the same latitudes is within 1 C or 2 C at worst of the weather in Scotland. You can do the mirror effect and see the same is true on the pacific coast of South America at the same latitudes as far south as the continent reaches to Tierra del Fuego at 54 degrees south which roughly matches up with Newcastle England. Because of the Antarctic circumpolar current the temperature difference in Chile is greater than it is in British Columbia compared to Western Europe. The yearly average temperatures in Punta Arena the southernmost large city compares with Bremen, Germany in terms of latitude and parallels it with a -12 F or -7 C temperature effect. However the ports in both locations are ice free year around despite their distance from the equator something which is decidedly not true on the Asian Pacific coast at the same latitudes. IOW prevailing westerlies from across a large body of open water greatly warms the land on western coastlines but cold continental air flowing out to sea on eastern coastlines has the opposite effect freezing the sea far closer to the equator. You see the same effect on the east coast of North America as you do on the Asian coast. Newfoundland freezes hard while Great Britain, further north, stays relatively ice free.

[Cid_Yama]

Sorry I didn't make myself more clear, and the article I linked to didn't go into how. The Scripps article just triggered the idea. Freshwater in the Arctic is expelled to the North Atlantic down the coasts of Greenland to the critical place where the AMOC sinks, stalling the circulation.

I don't know where you got the rest of that stuff about freezing Ice and whatnot.

The ocean apparently circulates in such a way that freshwater released farther northward near the Arctic can much more easily interrupt the sinking of surface waters in the Greenland and Labrador Sea that sets the pace of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.

link

link

The Younger Dryas event was not like any normal climate change as therefore was bound to have impacts on the world. It is said that temperature fluctuations not only occurred before and after but also during the phenomenon. In England, the glaciers started to form which was caused by extremely low temperatures while in Holland the temperatures were below -20°C when the winter season came. Of all regions affected by the YD, in Greenland, the effects were felt the most with the ice cores recording a temperature drop of 15°C. The trees were also affected in most of Europe and alpines and tundra were dominant after the trees retreated. This period affected even Syria where drought hit the ancient community of Abu Hurerya.

And yes, the cooling would be confined to north of 30 degrees N. During the Younger Dryas, the Southeastern US became warmer and wetter, as the ocean heat was no longer carried northward.

But, the Arctic is where we need the cooling, which was considerable during the YD.

Also important, from the YD we know the effect was temporary and eventually rebounded, with the AMOC resuming.

[Cid_Yama]

Arctic Warming Hotspot in the Northern Barents Sea Linked to Declining Sea Ice Import

Ignore the black box that pops up in the corner. This is a link to the full paper. This is hot off the presses, just published.

[Newfie]

Tanada,

Parts of Newfoundland freeze hard, the Great Northern Pennisula is considered sub Arctic. It much is not frozen. South coast ports are open 12 months as is St Johns.

Enough quibbling, I take your major point.

What would be interesting is the interaction between the effects of such a pulse and the changing Hadley cell circulation, of in fact that is changing as I suspect.

It all gets real complicated real fast.

CID,

I like your idea but see difficulties. Some noted above. One additional one would be that, if it were effective, humanity would most likely see it as opportunity to simply continue on with their wasteful ways, digging a deeper ultimate grave. Such measures should only be of last resort and once the population has been reduced to sustainable levels. I know, I’m heartless.

[vox_mundi]

Planet Now At Risk of Heading Toward 'Hothouse Earth' State

Keeping global warming to within 1.5-2 degrees C may be more difficult than previously assessed, according to researchers.

An international team of scientists has published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) showing that even if the carbon emission reductions called for in the Paris Agreement are met, there is a risk of Earth entering what the scientists call "Hothouse Earth" conditions.

Crossing that threshold "guarantees a climate 4-5 Celsius (7-9 Fahrenheit) higher than pre-industrial times, and sea levels that are 10 to 60 meters (30-200 feet) higher than today," cautioned scientists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

And that "could be only decades ahead," they said.

... The impacts would be "massive, sometimes abrupt and undoubtedly disruptive"

"Places on Earth will become uninhabitable if 'Hothouse Earth' becomes the reality," said co-author Johan Rockstrom, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre

Researchers suggest the tipping point could come once the Earth warms to 3.6 Fahrenheit (2 Celsius) over pre-industrial times.

The planet has already warmed 1 C over pre-industrial times, and is heating up at a rate of 0.17 C per decade.

"A 2 C warming could activate important tipping elements, raising the temperature further to activate other tipping elements in a domino-like cascade that could take the Earth System to even higher temperatures," said the report.

The authors of the study consider 10 natural feedback processes, some of which are "tipping elements" that lead to abrupt change if a critical threshold is crossed. These feedbacks could turn from being beneficial, by storing carbon, to a source of uncontrollable emission in a warmer world. These feedbacks are permafrost thaw, loss of methane hydrates from the ocean floor, weakening land and ocean carbon sinks, increasing bacterial respiration in the oceans, Amazon rainforest dieback, boreal forest dieback, reduction of northern hemisphere snow cover, loss of Arctic summer sea ice, and reduction of Antarctic sea ice and polar ice sheets.

All of these processes are interconnected, the authors note, and the collapse of one could trigger another.

"The risk of tipping cascades could be significant at a 2 C temperature rise, and could increase sharply beyond that point."

"This cascade of events may tip the entire Earth system into a new mode of operation," said co-author Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

The "carrying capacity" of a 4 C or 5 C degree world, he has said previously, could drop to a billion people

.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/07/31/1810141115

... Some are concerned that the authors' faith in humanity to grasp the serious nature of the problem is misplaced.

"Given the evidence of human history, this would seem a naive hope," said Prof Chris Rapley, from University College London.

"At a time of the widespread rise of right-wing populism, with its associated rejection of the messages of those perceived as 'cosmopolitan elites' and specific denial of climate change as an issue, the likelihood that the combination of factors necessary to allow humanity to navigate the planet to an acceptable 'intermediate state' must surely be close to zero."

[Plantagenet]

Excellent post, Vox.

1. I would note that the Earth is already approaching 1.5°C warming, and it won't be long until we hit the 2°C limit that this study says will spin us into a new climate regime, i.e. Hothouse Earth.

2. Both the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere and the amount of global warming we are seeing seem to be accelerating. The summer of 2018 has been extraordinary, with heat waves and fires occurring simultaneously across huge areas of the northern hemisphere.

3. Expecting the Paris Accords to restrain global CO2 emissions is crazy, since the Paris Accords does't even call for reducing CO2 emissions---the agreement calls for INCREASING CO2 emissions. And it doesn't say anything about methane at all. We need a new agreement that actually REQUIRES CO2 emission cuts.

Buckle your seat belts everybody. We're living in interesting times.


Cheers!

[asg70]

Yep, Plant. I'm sure after reading this you'll buckle YOUR seatbelt and take another CO2 belching joyride around the globe.

[Plantagenet]

Allow me to express the gratitude of all humankind to you asg/ennui/mos, for never traveling, driving, riding in a taxi or bus, never shopping, not cooking, wearing only clothes you make yourself from cobwebs and dust kittens, not heating your house, eschewing the emittance of cow farts, or doing anything at all that would release CO2.

Your example of self abnegation will guide us. Your self-sacrifice is its own reward.


Go and emit CO2 no more.

Cheers!

[Plantagenet]

Michael Mann, the Penn State University climatologist, was on PBS Newshour this evening. The moderator asked him about Gov. Jerry Brown's recent statement that heat, drought and fires were California's "new normal."

Mann said Jerry Brown is misleading people. There is no new normal....what we're seeing now is just one step in an inevitable progression to hotter and hotter climate unless the world stops using fossil fuels.

And I don't see any progress towards using less fossil fuels on a global basis. CO2 in the atmosphere is currently going up at the fastest rate ever. Fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions in the US continues down, but the emissions cuts in the US are being overwhelmed by increasing CO2 emissions from the rest of the planet.

record surge in global CO2 emissions

Cheers!

[Pops]

Luckily we got out of that worthless Paris agreement, plant, we're much better off, even better, freezing the unprofitable CAFE standards will help cool the planet, now if only gov.moonbeam would quit diverting rivers to the ocean the fires would go out...

.

[Tanada]

Partisan Posturing Prevents Progress.

[Pops]

Actually it promotes regression
https://www.businessinsider.com/gallup- ... lem-2018-3

[Cog]

Luckily we got out of that worthless Paris agreement, plant, we're much better off, even better, freezing the unprofitable CAFE standards will help cool the planet, now if only gov.moonbeam would quit diverting rivers to the ocean the fires would go out...

.

Involuntarily you are correct about the Paris agreement being worthless. As has been discussed, while you were away for a year and a half doing things only best left to the imagination. But I'm imagining you saw that Trump was erasing your messiah's legacy and knew it was your duty was to bless us back with your presence to correct the record.

[rangerone314]

I have a lack of faith that humans will constrain their breeding.

[Plantagenet]

now if only gov.moonbeam would quit diverting rivers to the ocean the fires would go out...

I thought you liked gov. moonbeam.

And the fires in California aren't going out ever again---at least not until the trees all burn off.

California is changing from a Mediteranean temperate climate to a desert climate because of global warming. The current forest biomes can't survive there under the new hotter drier climate regime so they are burning off.
California's future is a climate like the one found today in Baja California just a few hundred miles to the south---i.e. a hot dry desert that is inhospitable to trees.

Cheers!