[Homesteader]

For all our cleverness I agree with James Lovelock; we are to stupid to save ourselves. IMO a number of tipping points have been passed including but not limitied to population, GHG's, CC and all that goes with it.

[Narz]

We are way past tipping points, Bob. Yes, BAU will not change. We are about to enter a period of worldwide famine, mass migrations, desertification and water shortage, and population die-off. Then things this will get really bad as we hit peak heat stresses over most of the planet, where it becomes impossible to shed metabolic heat.

Peak heat?

[americandream]

No, I think he meant "peak heat stresses", or peak stress of the warmth variety.

We are way past tipping points, Bob. Yes, BAU will not change. We are about to enter a period of worldwide famine, mass migrations, desertification and water shortage, and population die-off. Then things this will get really bad as we hit peak heat stresses over most of the planet, where it becomes impossible to shed metabolic heat.

Peak heat?

[americandream]

bobcounsins, I guess we could apply the same logic to the credit market in not regulating it notwithstanding the recent sub-prime blowout and the subsequent quantitative easing (taxpaid bailout).

In other words, why worry about the next tipping point on the spectrum of financial mayhem to debt armageddon for we have no way of knowing where it is with any precision and never will and therefore, despite the recent turmoil, why regulate?

A tipping point is a point of inflexion. Most of what you describing are not tipping points, but linear increases in various parameters. We have no way of telling where the tipping point is for most of these parameters. We can tell for sure that oil is/has reached a tipping point, but we don't know whether net energy will undergo a similar inflexion. Even then, we can't tell if a peak of net energy will cause catastrophic social disruptions.

Qualitative assessments are just crystal ball gazing. Take pollution. I agree it's bad, and getting worse. But tell me a number for the level of pollution now, and the number where the tipping point is. You can't, no one can. So while we see the same trend, it is a pure guesswork whether a) there exists a tipping point b) whether we are about to approach it.

You know, I used to be like you, when I got my news and opinion from po.com. There is a whole raft of bad stuff going on and it all seems to point to imminent disaster. Then a guy called JD came along and started asking awkward questions. Of course he got banned, so I headed over to his blog to rip him to shreds. There I was presented with a well-reasoned alternative view, and I realized after the rhetoric is removed there was a different way to see the same parameters.

The thing is, speaking as a former doomer, I would tend to agree with you that wherever we look, humans are screwing things up. I can also accept that this indicates that we *may* be headed for a tipping point. But it is far from certain that this is the *only* way to look at it. We may be able to avoid the tipping point, we may not even be anywhere near a tipping point.

The concerned citizen fears that if we don't make dire predictions, then humans won't be persuaded to change their ways. Well, I have some news. Humans won't change by persuasion, only if they are forced to. BAU will continue whether we like it or not. This may mean humans run off a cliff, or maybe not, we can't tell except with hindsight. No amount of jumping up and down saying "watch out for the cliff!!" will make a blind bit of difference.

You're talking semantics. A tipping point doesn't have to be an exact second in time. To deny the science is to deny that we have reached certain milestones for which there is no return from and there is plenty of evidence of that. For instance, it’s believed that 350 ppm (450 a certainty) was the tipping point for CO2 emissions, extinction means that particular species will never be seen again, there exists plenty of places where more people live then the surrounding environment can sustain without a steady external support system, which means they have overshot their carrying capacity, we have either passed or are in the tipping point of Peak Oil,… and so on.

Avoidance is a mute point since we have entered into many of these tipping points already. Some will take years to play out while others will crash like a bad day in the stock markets.

The fact that not much of anything will be done about the above problems until well beyond the tipping point is a whole other discussion.

[bobcousins]

We are way past tipping points, Bob. Yes, BAU will not change. We are about to enter a period of worldwide famine, mass migrations, desertification and water shortage, and population die-off. Then things this will get really bad as we hit peak heat stresses over most of the planet, where it becomes impossible to shed metabolic heat.

I can tell you exactly how this willl play out as the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is about to release more than enough methane to kill us all off.

Enjoy your delusion of a future of no limits and everything will work out. It won't be long before reality rears it's ugly head, and those without hope start blaming and attacking each other.

To quote Semiletov, “We can do nothing about it, of course.”

That's all speculation.

I never said there are no limits, that is a straw man. It is possible that we reach an equilibrium state.

I also never said we shouldn't do anything about it. I agree, the prudent course would be to avoid stressing the environment. But there is no way that the general population are going to agree voluntary reductions in growth. Look at AGW, where we have pretty solid scientific evidence, yet cannot reach any sort of international agreement, nor it seems we are close to doing so.

If you tried to make the case for overshoot, and that people should start reducing population, there is zero chance of selling that.

Fortunately, the complacency of the masses is balanced by the hyperbole of doom.

[Cid_Yama]

That's all speculation.

No, those are well modeled conclusions based on current scientific research.

[dohboi]

Perhaps cid was thinking of this little gem?

cooking the grandkids

Basically this points out that as humidity rises with GW, more and more of the earth will experience heatwaves that are literally unbearable--"wet bulb" temperatures (a function of temperature and humidity) above about 35 degrees C (95F) are lethal, and, even without the clathrate gun going off, much of the earth could be regularly experiencing this lethal combination of high temps and high humidity.

Fortunately they are places where few people live--places like eastern China, the Indian subcontinent, and the eastern half of the US.

Right now, no place on earth regularly reaches these wbTs. In the map they show, nearly everywhere on earth will have hotter wbTs than any place on earth shows now.

[Cid_Yama]

That's the 'optimistic' senario as it doesn't include methane releasing in the Arctic in their model.

[Graeme]

The contribution of methane from the Arctic to the atmosphere is about 20%. Most methane comes from land sources. Your pessimistic scenarios about what will happen in the Arctic have been criticised here by me, yet you still promote scenarios which differ from scientists involved in such studies.

Lovelock's assessment of our future has been described as "unhelpful". He is unlikely to lead effects to cool the planet but his ideas may be useful.

[Cid_Yama]

yet you still promote scenarios which differ from scientists involved in such studies.

No, You are in Denial and the researchers who have actually conducted the research on the East Siberian Arctic Shelf since the mid 1990's you are dismissing as they are saying things you do not want to hear. The researchers who are actually conducting the research are the source of what I am saying.

Those that are in Denial look for sources that will tell them what they want to hear. That is not objective pursuit of the truth.

Reality does not require your belief. The end will come just the same.

[mos6507]

Cid, it's your prerogative to call "game over" on complex life on earth, but just remember that if everyone felt that way, nobody would bother lifting a finger to help. They would go the way of Denethor, lost in madness and suicide.



So on the odd chance that the situation can be mitigated, some hope (call it "denial" if you like) is a healthy thing.

[Cid_Yama]

mos, show me. Show me how this can be mitigated. Surely you have read what has been published by both Semiletov and Shakhova, based on data collected by 12 different nations.

Hope in the face of the facts is like wishful thinking.

Someone tell me how you stop a massive reserve of free methane, held back from releasing to the atmosphere only by a layer of subsea permafrost that has been degrading since being submerged 8,000 years ago, and is now porous and includes areas where there is no permafrost due to the existence of taliks beneath lakes and river bottoms that existed before it was submerged. All it takes is that reservoir to migrate to a place where it can release.

Since it is so shallow it does not interact with the water column but releases directly to the atmosphere.

I have challenged graeme to show me where they are wrong. All he does is try to find someone saying it will take a long time but not why. Usually not realizing(or rather not wanting to know) they are talking about terrestrial permafrost not the ESAS.

Come on Graeme, You're the one challenging the research. I'll make it easy for you.

You can find research that shows:

There is no free methane reservoir beneath the subsea permafrost.

That the subsea permafrost is impermiable to the release of methane.

That the methane cannot migrate beneath the subsea permafrost.

That the methane on the ESAS cannot transverse the water column to the atmosphere.

Take your pick.

If you can't challenge the actual research you are just blowing hot air.

Saying you found someone saying it's not true doesn't cut it. How is it not true?

[Graeme]

Cid, I'm not disputing the 4 points you made. It's just that you fail to recognise that there is no catastrohpic release of methane from the ESAS. The scientists involved say that there is leakage, which you do recognise has been going on for thousands of years. The scientists also say that they are not sure whether current warming of the atmosphere and oceans is involved.

We are just past a climate tipping point as this thread points out. There is still time to pull back from this but time is running out. We have to act soon.

[Cid_Yama]

Here we go again. Several people on this site have attempted to explain this to you before, but it keeps getting distorted in your own head.

I have not claimed the catastrophic release has already occurred. I have quoted Shakhova and Semiletov stating that it could occur at any time due to the fact that the free methane reservoir need only find a migration pathway through the now pourous permafrost on the ESAS.

Unlike other terrestrial and marine sources, which gradually release methane as it forms, the shelf is emitting methane that has accumulated in seabed deposits for hundreds of thousands of years and until now was restricted by permafrost, says Shakhova.

"As methane has been permanently originating in the seabed since it was formed, these deposits are huge and emissions of this ready-to-go methane to the water column only depend on occurence of migration pathways," she said. "These emissions could be non-gradual, sudden, more or less massive, they could even be abrupt."

link

...we consider release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage as highly possible for abrupt release at any time. That may cause ~12-times increase of modern atmospheric methane burden with consequent catastrophic greenhouse warming.

link

Your contention that the release of methane at these levels has been going on for thousands of years is wrong.

The preliminary findings of the International Siberian Shelf Study 2008, being prepared for publication by the American Geophysical Union, are being overseen by Igor Semiletov of the Far-Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1994, he has led about 10 expeditions in the Laptev Sea but during the 1990s he did not detect any elevated levels of methane. However, since 2003 he reported a rising number of methane "hotspots", which have now been confirmed using more sensitive instruments on board the Jacob Smirnitskyi.

link

“The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world’s oceans,” said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center.

“Our concern is that the subsea permafrost has been showing signs of destabilization already,” she said. “If it further destabilizes, the methane emissions may not be teragrams, it would be significantly larger.”

Shakhova notes that Earth’s geological record indicates that atmospheric methane concentrations have varied between about .3 to .4 parts per million during cold periods to .6 to .7 parts per million during warm periods. Current average methane concentrations in the Arctic average about 1.85 parts per million, the highest in 400,000 years, she said. Concentrations above the East Siberian Arctic Shelf are even higher.

link

Methane venting has increased dramatically in the last year.

A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas, according to the findings of an international research team led by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov. The research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.

And also again,

You cannot stop the degradation because the conditions under which the permafrost formed was terrestrial and once it was submerged it immediately began to degrade from the warmer oceanic environment, geothermal heat fluxes from below and the salinity.(think what happens when you put salt on a frozen doorstep.)

This is the result of long term natural processes. The contribution of AGW to the degredation of the permafrost is quite small.

You can't fix it. Anthropogenic global warming didn't cause this. The submergence of the shelf at the end of the last stadial did.

[Graeme]

Well, at least we agree catastrophic release is not happening now.

Lets move on the the prospect of such a release. There is not enough data to conclude that a catastrophic eruption of methane below permafrost on ESAS is imminent. In fact, as you point out, good quality data has only been collected since 2003.

Since 1994, he has led about 10 expeditions in the Laptev Sea but during the 1990s he did not detect any elevated levels of methane. However, since 2003 he reported a rising number of methane "hotspots", which have now been confirmed using more sensitive instruments on board the Jacob Smirnitskyi.

You don't know what the methane levels were prior to 2003 because they haven't been measured accurately. As far as I can tell prior to 1994, they haven't been measured at all. So the conclusions made are highly speculative and based on insufficient data. Also you really don't know what the range of the so-called background level was over the thousands of years the permafrost has been submerged by the sea.

Hydrates are not the only source of methane. A quick survey of literature reveals that rivers and lakes are also sources of methane on the Russian Arctic shelf.

As I pointed out in the other threads, other scientists are more cautious.

Martin Heimann, who wrote an accompanying analysis in Science and is a researcher at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, sent this cautionary note:

Indeed, at this point, it is impossible to tell whether these Arctic emissions are directly caused by recent Arctic warming or whether they have been persistent over at least much of the Holocene. This can only be answered from longer time series; complemented, maybe by borehole measurements in this shelf permafrost. Therefore, these new emission estimates do not allow yet a quantification of the permafrost methane-climate feedback.

Personally, I do believe that this feedback exists, but it doubt very much that it is “catastrophic” with large emissions over relatively short time scales (20-50 years) as implied by the “tipping point” metaphor. Even under strong warming the melting of permafrost takes time and the release of greenhouse gases will be quite gradual and will manifest itself as increased leakages.

nytimes

“The East Siberian coastal seas are an extension of the Siberian tundra, which was flooded when glaciers melted and sea levels rose at the end of the Ice Age. The thawing of the permafrost in the soil may largely be a result of natural causes, such as geothermal heat from below (through cracks in the earth's crust) and from the seawater above, during the 5000-8000 years since the permafrost was flooded,” says Örjan Gustafsson, professor of biogeochemistry at the Stockholm University, leader for the Swedish ISSS delegation onboard and one of the authors of the article.

“The possibility cannot be excluded that the human contribution to warming of the Arctic, with an extended summer period with no ice and warmer water, as well as increased runoff of warmer river water, could be the straw that broke the camel's back, or rather that which pushes the temperature of the seabed permafrost above melting point," says Professor Gustafsson.

Professor Gustafsson stresses that the calculations show that there is no reason for excessive concern about the current situation where the atmospheric methane content is not significantly affected by the emissions that occur at this time. He emphasizes the importance of more extensive studies of methane emission from the Siberian coastal seas in order to better understand the risk of increased methane fluxes in the future.

eurasiareview

[bobcousins]

That's all speculation.

No, those are well modeled conclusions based on current scientific research.

Scientifically based speculation, sure, but still speculation.

I'm a big fan of science, but it has not reached the point of being able to perfectly predict the future, except in very controlled circumstances.

I accept that in the case of AGW there are many positive feedbacks which may represent tipping points but these have not been numerically quantified. The IPCC excludes a lot of positive feedbacks as they are too uncertain to predict.

If these feedbacks were included in the IPCC models, the worst case scenarios would be more likely. However, the IPCC worst case scenarios hopelessly overestimate the amount of FF remaining, so there is a very wide range if uncertainty.

I also repeat, regardless of whatever catastrophes you predict, you will be ignored by the wider public. They either don't care or won't believe it.

[bobcousins]

Here we go again. Several people on this site have attempted to explain this to you before, but it keeps getting distorted in your own head.

I have not claimed the catastrophic release has already occurred. I have quoted Shakhova and Semiletov stating that it could occur at any time due to the fact that the free methane reservoir need only find a migration pathway through the now pourous permafrost on the ESAS.

Yes, here we go again. ALL of your quotes contain the word "could" or "at any time". That includes the possibilities "may not" and "never".

No one is saying it WILL or will happen in X years. It's speculation.

[Shar_Lamagne]

Don't bother, Cid. Only a total moron or someone massively in Denial would not see the writing on the wall and neither would be worth the effort in my opinion.

Graeme has intentionally misinterpreted statements to twist them into what he wants to hear. He doesn't really want to know. He just wants everyone to shut up about it.

So here he is with the same two cherry picked statements, one mearly saying that the catastrophic release is not currently happening and the other again mistakingly misapplying a statement regarding feedbacks of methane from land based permafrost to the ESAS, intentionally ignoring the fact that the methane on the ESAS is already a free gas reservoir and does not need to melt but mearly find a path to release.

but during the 1990s he did not detect any elevated levels of methane

Unlike other terrestrial and marine sources, which gradually release methane as it forms, the shelf is emitting methane that has accumulated in seabed deposits for hundreds of thousands of years and until now was restricted by permafrost, says Shakhova.

Graeme take your Denial elsewhere. You are not addressing the research, you are not disproving anything that has been said. You have not shown how what is happening can possibly be stopped.

You are just looking for somebody you can point to saying what you want to hear and even twisting what they are saying so you can believe they are saying what you want to hear.

Graeme, you are free to not believe. This will happen irregardless whether you believe or not.

But you do not have the right to make baseless accusations against other posters, or declare people wrong, just because you don't like what they are saying.

Cid has more than proved his point with documentation and sound logical points.

You have not. All you have done is cherry-pick a couple quotes and declared these people say different, and that therefore everyone else is wrong.

That's a child's argument.

[Shar_Lamagne]

Yes, here we go again. ALL of your quotes contain the word "could" or "at any time". That includes the possibilities "may not" and "never".

Not when placed in context of the research.

You are making a facetious argument.

[dohboi]

On cid's point that AGW may have contributed a relatively small amount to the thawing of the ice capping the methane-- it may be small, but even a small forcing at exactly the wrong time can push delicately balanced systems out of balance, as one of the quoted sources put it, "the straw that broke the camel's back."

Human forcing, mostly from draining swamps and other agricultural activity, probably is at least partly responsible for extending the current warming beyond where it might have been otherwise in this Milankovich cycle.

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