More climate doom & gloom
Mar. 4th, 2009 12:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenCouple of bits of particularly bad news that I have come across this week.
[1] M.I.T. joins climate realists, doubles its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1°C
Well worth reading the piece and the links thence.
In summary, if very serious action is not taken - big league stuff, not fooling around with pointless nonsense like off-setting and biofuels - then we're on line for a warming of up to seven centigrade by the end of the century. One of the problems with these reports, as one of the linked articles discusses, is that [a] people don't understand probability and [b] climate scientists cannot believe how very stupid people are, so the scientists phrase their reports in their normal cautious language: "temperatures may increase, maybe by this much but more likely by only this much, if emissions are not reduced..." Partly because they can't credit that nobody will do anything.
Personally, I'm a cynic; I don't believe anyone will do anything significant.
Reasons the figures are being adjusted are, for instance, that the oceans are not absorbing much CO2 any more - because they've been doing it as fast as they can for a couple of centuries already and now they are near saturated, so much so that large areas are now largely dead and devoid of multicellular life.
Also, whereas the report does address discoveries such as the failing rates of uptake by the biosphere, it does not consider major new threats, such as massive methane (and carbon dioxide) release from thawing permafrost (did you know that a quarter the Northern hemisphere is permafrost?) and melting seabed methane clathrates.
And these are all synergies - they reinforce one another. In other words, the MIT report is far too cautious in its predictions.
[2] Meanwhile, in Central Asia, Lake Balhkash is in imminent danger of drying up. Now that the Aral Sea is effectively gone - the biggest single man-made environmental disaster in the world, certainly in the 20th Century and possibly, arguably, of the industrial revolution so far, and I bet most people have never even heard of it - Balkhash is the largest body of water in Central Asia after the Caspian. However, unlike the seas, it's shallow: only 5m to 25m deep. But now, it's getting polluted and also starved of water - it's just not showing that much yet, because it's getting topped-up by all the melting glaciers.
OK, so, it's far away and won't impact Britain much, but that, in my book, is no reason to not care. These are the early-stage big obvious signs of the looming catastrophe.
[3] Japan's boffins: Global warming isn't man-made; Climate science is 'ancient astrology', claims report
Several leading Japanese scientists have spoken out against anthropogenic climate change. This is terrifying stuff - while Japan is a highly insular culture, it is also an influential one. And one with a terrible record in terms of environmental responsibility, from whaling to massive timber use. I cannot help but wonder who has bought these guys off.
This will give more fuel to the global-warming deniers, and so long as they are around and voting, they will doom us all, and our children and our childrens' children. After that, well, at this rate, all bets are off. Plastic-laminated picture books on how to chip stone tools, make bows and arrows and effective ways to hunt, prepare and eat rats and cockroaches might be the best gift for the great-grandkids, I reckon.
Not A Rhetorical Question: what would make people believe, short of actually seeing it themselves? Because by the time the figures are in, it will be too late to change anything significant.
My bet: we are on course for an ice-free world within a century or two. Synergistic effects will accelerate massively, the polar caps and glaciers all melt, sea levels rise by 70m (200') and the inundated coasts, melting permafrost and clathrates and CO2 saturation of the oceans kills off most marine species leaving huge dead zones. There will be rapid mass human die-offs on land, due to agricultural collapse and scarcity of fresh water. Rivers will dry up as the snows and glaciers feeding them disappear and the tree cover on high watersheds is cut down and burned, leading to flooding, soil loss and rapid desertification. There will be epic water wars. All this long before the fossil fuels run out.
It is almost funny. We are all in a bus, careening down a steep mountain road at ever-increasing speed, completely out of control, but lots of passengers think this is normal and are saying they're looking forward to getting to the bottom and the drivers are still arguing whether to brake or not.
I wonder when people will notice? I wonder if I will live to see it? I hope to make it to 2050 or so. By then, I reckon, we will have made only token efforts and it will be irreversible.
[1] M.I.T. joins climate realists, doubles its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1°C
Well worth reading the piece and the links thence.
In summary, if very serious action is not taken - big league stuff, not fooling around with pointless nonsense like off-setting and biofuels - then we're on line for a warming of up to seven centigrade by the end of the century. One of the problems with these reports, as one of the linked articles discusses, is that [a] people don't understand probability and [b] climate scientists cannot believe how very stupid people are, so the scientists phrase their reports in their normal cautious language: "temperatures may increase, maybe by this much but more likely by only this much, if emissions are not reduced..." Partly because they can't credit that nobody will do anything.
Personally, I'm a cynic; I don't believe anyone will do anything significant.
Reasons the figures are being adjusted are, for instance, that the oceans are not absorbing much CO2 any more - because they've been doing it as fast as they can for a couple of centuries already and now they are near saturated, so much so that large areas are now largely dead and devoid of multicellular life.
Also, whereas the report does address discoveries such as the failing rates of uptake by the biosphere, it does not consider major new threats, such as massive methane (and carbon dioxide) release from thawing permafrost (did you know that a quarter the Northern hemisphere is permafrost?) and melting seabed methane clathrates.
And these are all synergies - they reinforce one another. In other words, the MIT report is far too cautious in its predictions.
[2] Meanwhile, in Central Asia, Lake Balhkash is in imminent danger of drying up. Now that the Aral Sea is effectively gone - the biggest single man-made environmental disaster in the world, certainly in the 20th Century and possibly, arguably, of the industrial revolution so far, and I bet most people have never even heard of it - Balkhash is the largest body of water in Central Asia after the Caspian. However, unlike the seas, it's shallow: only 5m to 25m deep. But now, it's getting polluted and also starved of water - it's just not showing that much yet, because it's getting topped-up by all the melting glaciers.
OK, so, it's far away and won't impact Britain much, but that, in my book, is no reason to not care. These are the early-stage big obvious signs of the looming catastrophe.
[3] Japan's boffins: Global warming isn't man-made; Climate science is 'ancient astrology', claims report
Several leading Japanese scientists have spoken out against anthropogenic climate change. This is terrifying stuff - while Japan is a highly insular culture, it is also an influential one. And one with a terrible record in terms of environmental responsibility, from whaling to massive timber use. I cannot help but wonder who has bought these guys off.
This will give more fuel to the global-warming deniers, and so long as they are around and voting, they will doom us all, and our children and our childrens' children. After that, well, at this rate, all bets are off. Plastic-laminated picture books on how to chip stone tools, make bows and arrows and effective ways to hunt, prepare and eat rats and cockroaches might be the best gift for the great-grandkids, I reckon.
Not A Rhetorical Question: what would make people believe, short of actually seeing it themselves? Because by the time the figures are in, it will be too late to change anything significant.
My bet: we are on course for an ice-free world within a century or two. Synergistic effects will accelerate massively, the polar caps and glaciers all melt, sea levels rise by 70m (200') and the inundated coasts, melting permafrost and clathrates and CO2 saturation of the oceans kills off most marine species leaving huge dead zones. There will be rapid mass human die-offs on land, due to agricultural collapse and scarcity of fresh water. Rivers will dry up as the snows and glaciers feeding them disappear and the tree cover on high watersheds is cut down and burned, leading to flooding, soil loss and rapid desertification. There will be epic water wars. All this long before the fossil fuels run out.
It is almost funny. We are all in a bus, careening down a steep mountain road at ever-increasing speed, completely out of control, but lots of passengers think this is normal and are saying they're looking forward to getting to the bottom and the drivers are still arguing whether to brake or not.
I wonder when people will notice? I wonder if I will live to see it? I hope to make it to 2050 or so. By then, I reckon, we will have made only token efforts and it will be irreversible.
