[onlooker]

Oh and Tanada rates have change are important to for organisms to adapt. According to this book volcanic out-gassing implicated in past warming periods took millennia to have substantial climate changing effects, while we are apparently taking decades to de-stabilize the climate.

[dohboi]

You're both right. 6 degrees is already way past what global civilization can handle, and if we get there fast, probably beyond what most complex life can handle.

And we can't know for sure that things will proceed as they have in the past. Again, this is coming on extraordinarily fast, and the sun is a good bit hotter than the last times we approached these limits. And of course lots of other things have happened in the intervening years.

[onlooker]

Sorry Mods if you wish to transfer this post to a more pertinent one like runaway global warming your call.

[regardingpo]

What Do We Tell The (Grand) Kids?

I tell them "You're welcome. You're welcome that I was smart enough to never even bring you into this world in the first place."

[dohboi]

ol, I think it's relevant here.

We are trying to figure out how deep and how dire things look long term, and how to and whether to communicate those projections to the younguns.

We have to get fairly clear on what the science is on these questions in order to determine how much of it to relay.

This does bring up the question of how much we should emphasize the most cutting edge info, especially when that is particularly gloomy.

[onlooker]

your right Dohboi and that in turn highlights the point of ceasing as much as possible as soon as possible actions which are harming the biosphere and the chances for humans and other living organisms to live on this Earth so that perhaps their will be a future for life and in particular human life. I know others will mock this suggestion saying that any attempt to abruptly power down will doom most of humanity, I am not sure about this nor do i think anyone is to the extent of knowing how many people will die in the short term. What is clear is that continuing BAU will almost certainly doom much of life here on Earth in the medium to long term.

[Tanada]

Tanada, again I defer to others as my expertise is limited but according to a book I perused by Mark Lynas "six degrees our future on a hotter planet". Will not the point you made of negative feedbacks kicking in at 10C above pre-industrial averages be a moot point, considering that according to this book 6C above this pre-industrial base temperature would put us in a mode incompatible with conditions to sustain higher life forms particularly the ones living now adapted to living in these relatively cooler conditions such as humans. Besides the higher ranges of temperature near the 25C boundary , were they not mostly during the early stages of Earth's formation when molten lava and volcanic forces were shaping the Earth?

Don't get ahead of yourself Onlooker, we are talking about global averages here, not every spot on the globe. The Tropics will probably warm about 3 C in the Hothouse world while the Arctic and Antarctic will warm 25 C or more. The thing is as an example Lagos, Nigeria just 3 degrees latitude from the equator on the Atlantic Ocean averages 27 C on a yearly basis and has a record high of 34 C. Warm it three degrees and the average will be 30 C and the record maybe 37 C. To maintain that average the number of record hot days will have to be no more frequent than they are today. Now lets look at Barrow, Alaska the furthest north city in the USA at 71 degrees north on the Arctic Ocean. Yearly average temperature -12 C, record high temperature 7 C. Add 25 C and you get a yearly average of 13 C and a record high temperature of 35 C. Spokane, Washington today has an annual average of 8.5 C while San Fransisco, California averages 14 C.

No promises how things will turn out, but the whole premise of the Hothouse Climate is the difference between the Tropics and Poles is almost eliminated by the poles warming much more than anywhere else. Snowball Earth is the opposite effect, the Tropics cool to nearly Arctic levels of cold. To have a global hothouse the Poles will have to warms incredibly from where they are, but that doesn't put them outside the human toleration levels, and the Tropics warm only a little which may or may not put them outside the human toleration levels. When the PETM took place 55 million years ago we hit that second peak excursion above the 25 C global average and warm blooded animals over 25 kilograms in body weight could not live in the tropics, but those same larger animals thrived in the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

Like everything in the Universe it is a trade off, on a square mile area basis there are much more lands in the high latitudes than there are around the equator, so in those terms the Hothouse Earth provides more land gained than lost for life forms like us. Getting from here to there is going to cause massive changes in weather patterns which will cause crop failures in many if not most places. That will kill many more of the 8 Billion humans on the planet than the wet bulb temperature problem in my estimation, but lets be realistic we are all just guessing because we do not have a spare Earth to make changes to and study the results. No computer will ever be smart enough to simulate the real worlds, the best they can do are rough approximations of averages. That is the Chaos theory at work, the transition period could be remarkably smooth and peaceful or very randomly chaotic, and I wouldn't bet on a lot of peace.

[onlooker]

thanks Tanada for that in depth explanation. I do not know if their is a way to prepare for these changes other than to have all relevant information well studied as well as possible plans but that would entail cooperation or it might just be an entity like the Pentagon studying as we speak the response to these changes in climate.

[Tanada]

thanks Tanada for that in depth explanation. I do not know if their is a way to prepare for these changes other than to have all relevant information well studied as well as possible plans but that would entail cooperation or it might just be an entity like the Pentagon studying as we speak the response to these changes in climate.

You place your bet and take your chances, unless you decide to just ignore the situation or die early you will get a chance to find out if your bet was a winner or a loser.

[onlooker]

Based on all this info, I say tell the younger ones head up North, learn subsistence farming, self-sufficient living and make contacts with like-minded aware people as it is many times easier as part of a community then alone. Oh and do notice if you have an ample fresh water source nearby.

[GregT]

Based on all this info, I say tell the younger ones head up North, learn subsistence farming, self-sufficient living and make contacts with like-minded aware people as it is many times easier as part of a community then alone. Oh and do notice if you have an ample fresh water source nearby.

Exactly what my wife and I are doing onlooker, and quite frankly, water is the big concern. The glaciers are retreating at an alarming rate, and precipitation has dropped off considerably. We'll probably be alright for a few decades or so, but if current trends continue, not looking promising at all for the children.

[onlooker]

Yep Greg at some point in the future it appears not many solutions or answers exist for anyone!

[dohboi]

Soooo, we should all move to Lagos???

Knowing exactly how specific locations will fare is extremely difficult. And raw temperature differences don't tell you much about what the wbt will be, which is most crucial. If some tropic location goes up only a few degrees, but they are already near the 'drop dead' point of 35 degrees C wbt, then the 'slight' increase suddenly doesn't seem so very minor, since the raw temp increase plus the inevitable (in most tropical places) increase in humidity will make these places unlivable.

The main thing is that in Tanada's probably accurately predicted 'equable' climate with a one cell system in each hemisphere rather than a three cell system, patterns of precipitation (and pretty much everything else) will shift dramatically. Doubtless, there will be some places somewhere on the planet where some kind of productive agriculture is still possible.

But it will be pretty near impossible to know ahead of time where these will be, and it will even more certainly be impossible to support anything like the 7.3 or so billion souls that now inhabit the planet on those parcels of ag.

In short, most places where most people today live and grow food will likely become unlivable and ungrowable.

At the upper ends of heating and wbts, heavily populated places like East China, North India, Eastern US, and others will become literally unlivable--being outside of air conditioning (as if THAT will be widely available, lol/cry out loud) will kill you in just a few hours. Many other places will be too damn dry to do much growing of anything (most of the US West--already on its way--and many other already somewhat areas of continental interiors.

And of course many many places will fatally swing back and forth between extremes of killer droughts that wipe out most of the plant life (as we are getting a tiny taste of in the West) and extreme deluges that wash away anything that might be left of the dessicated foliage, along with most of the soil that might grow anything in it.

As Lynas so aptly describes, the world gets pretty un-fkn-livable anything north of about 5 degrees C above mid 19th century values. Don't let the luke warmers fool ya.

[Keith_McClary]

Knowing exactly how specific locations will fare is extremely difficult.

This panel shows the change in surface air temperature between a historical period from 1980-1999 to future projections from 2080-2099.
http://phys.org/news/2015-09-crocodiles-wyoming.html

[Hawkcreek]

Hi Hawkcreek

>>...I am one of those who ran away to the woods.<<

You can always run back especially if someone on the internet tells you it's safe to do so...

I am aware that everything on the internet is true, but I found that I kind of like the woods. It takes me an hour of driving to get to a Starbucks or a movie, which just means I go a lot less frequently.

[Cid_Yama]

Last Chance
Shooting Star

When the stranger came to town
All the people watched with wonder
In their tattered clothes
Gathered 'round and raised their eyes up from the dust

And the stranger said to them
I have been upon the mountain
I have witnessed forces, like cannons
That could ram you to the ground

Stand up on your feet
Your life is short as hell
You could be dead tomorrow
Today may be your

Last chance to believe in yourself
Your last chance to yell
Your last chance to be good to yourself
Your last chance to drink from life's well

In the crowd a voice was heard
Should we get them before they get you
Should we strike the first blow
He said no, no, no, you don't understand

The enemy is in your heart
Self-respect robbed by self-pity
Look across the country
All the people with their dreams dead in their hearts

Stand up on your feet
Your life is short as hell
You could be dead tomorrow
Today may be your

Last chance to believe in yourself
Your last chance to yell
Your last chance to be good to yourself
Your last chance to drink from life's well

So drink from the well
Oh yeah

Ooo ah oooo

It could be your
Last chance to believe in yourself
Your last chance to yell
Your last chance to be good to yourself
Your last chance to drink from life's well

To drink from the well
Oh yeah
Yeah

Oooo ah oooo, oooo ah oooo ah oooo

Drink from the well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5BqpvcWuyo

[onlooker]

Nice Poem Cid. Every day is our last chance.

[steam_cannon]

Kids evaluate life based on what they see. If there are iphones, they see that as natural. If there are no iphones, they see that as natural. If people pay for things with silver coins, they see that as natural. If people pay with paper or some kind of card, that too they see as natural.

Children see the world for whatever it is right now. The fine points of why the war memorial is there and why we feel sadness about it is something they will learn in history class sometime later. Battles were fought, wars for the environment were won or lost. Lands became deserts or flooded. And they will judge how to live their lives and as a generation they will make their own mistakes.

And should we apologize for whatever end or beginning is coming? I don't think so. The tragedy of the commons is a tragedy to be lamented, but difficult for any person to apologize for. Plato lamented the environmental destruction of Attica, but I don't think that was an apology. And as the philosopher George Carlin put it, the average person is pretty dumb and half of them are stupider then that. Myself, I'm not writing apologies for the actions of dumbasses! I have no control over their actions. Darwin will bite them in the end or he won't. The world will move on or it won't. The dumbasses aren't apologizing. I feel I have done my best and I'm not apologizing for other people. I also feel sorry for what humans have done, but I don't think I can or would even be qualified to apologize for the sadly amazing actions people have taken with this world.

That's what I think.

[dohboi]

"I'm not writing apologies for the actions of dumbasses!"

I'm not sure it is exactly accurate to say that our current horrific predicaments are the result of the actions of dumbasses, exactly.

Our society was carefully and intentionally planned and carried out mostly by very smart, very highly educated people.

It's of course anyone's choice whether they feel like apologizing...a lot of males seem to have a lot of trouble doing this under pretty much any circumstance, for some reason.

How much does it really hurt you, though.

And it would seem to be a way to powerfully get across that there is a heck of a lot for somebody to apologize for. And certainly none of us can say we played absolutely no part in frying the planet.

[jedrider]

I tell them that Guy McPherson is an optimist and it is time to go camping.

At least, the latter part, I am truthful.