Later will be too late

[pscot]

Finally, comes the news, reported in this paper on May 13, that scientists have concluded that a large section of the mighty West Antarctica ice sheet has begun falling apart and its continued melting now appears to be unstoppable. “Today we present observational evidence that a large sector of the West Antarctic ice sheet has gone into irreversible retreat,” Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine, said in the article. ‘‘It has passed the point of no return.”

As I’ve noted before, when we were growing up “later” meant that you could paint the same landscape, see the same animals, climb the same trees, fish the same rivers, visit the same Antarctica, enjoy the same weather or rescue the same endangered species that you did when you were a kid — but just later, whenever you got around to it. Not anymore. Later is now when you won’t be able to do any of them ever again. So whatever you’re planning to save, please save it now. Because later is when they’ll be gone. Later will be too late

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/21/opinion/friedman-four-words-going-bye-bye.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

[bemildred]

1. It is too late. nt

[pscot]

2. Probably

[yeoman6987]

3. It probably is too late.

The problem is how can we explain Global Warming to the critics? The problem is that they know that the North East used to be a frozen tundra but melted away over time. They believe the same thing is happening to the Arctic. How do we effectively tell them that this is different then the other melting? I really want to know how we can change the discussion because regardless of how much we may despise the critics, we have to have a large percentage of them on our side or the status quo will continue and nobody wins.

[bemildred]

4. Reversing the effect will take just as long as bringing it about.

And probably longer, since the long-term trend is for the planet to get hotter, not cooler, and there is very little CO2 to be removed from the atmosphere to cool it as it is. So it is too late, it's a trap-door effect, much easier to bring about than to reverse. It's going to be the way it is for along time now, doesn't matter what we do, and there is little sign we are politically capable of doing much about it anyway.

[jeff47]

6. The long-term trend is cyclical.

The planet spends a few million years warmer, and a few million years colder.

We appear to be making our way towards a warmer period over the next million years or so. Even without human interference. But that would probably be followed by another ice age a few million years later.

and there is very little CO2 to be removed from the atmosphere to cool it as it is.

Uhhh....no.

There's plenty of CO2 to remove. It's not clear that it will be naturally removed quickly. (Note that "quickly" there is on a geologic timescale).

It's quite possible for us to artificially remove that CO2. It's just really, really expensive so it's not gonna happen until climate change is causing more expensive problems.

[bemildred]

7. Well, right now it's going up. Indeed.

But the fraction is .000350-400, which will be hard to remove because of the volumes you must process.

Biological methods offer promise, it's true, because they can scale up geometrically or exponentially, given enough "food", but the volume will still be an issue, you aren't going to clean all that air all at once no matter what you do.

And the effects of the current rising CO2 levels (and temperature) on biological systems are just unknown, the current case is unique. You can look to geological history for some clues, but it's not the same planet or the same sun it was millions of years ago, the sun is getting hotter too.

I agree that it's feasible to remove CO2, the problem is cost, or perhaps I should say "cost", it's messy in lots of ways.

But anyway, this is what I'm talking about when I say there is little CO2 left to remove:

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/images/CO2History.html

[jeff47]

9. The problem with that chart

is the timescale is waaaaay to large to be meaningful.

500M years ago, plants were just arriving on the scene. So there was lots of CO2 because the major carbon fixing organisms were just evolving - cyanobacteria and green fungus can't fix anywhere near as much CO2 as plants.

We didn't get something resembling our modern carbon-fixing world until about 250M years ago.

As for biological vs. artificial sequestration, the biological has a lot more problems. First, you have to create an environment for the plant to grow. And once you've grown the plant, how do you keep the CO2 in the plant? Normally, something eats it and gives off the CO2.

Artificial would probably involve pulling in air and then using pressure and cooling to get liquid CO2. It would be easy to separate off the CO2 this way, but the problem is finding a place to stuff the CO2. You're stuck with sequestration or breaking the CO2 into C and O2.

[bemildred]

10. You will note that the concentration has gone down a lot.

While the temperature of the planet has been relatively stable, suitable for life as we know it.

And the sun has gotten hotter.

CO2 is an essential element in the plantary thermal equilibrium mechanism which keeps the temperature stable as the sun warms up, that's why it went down. When its all gone, we don't know how the planet will be kept cool.

We screw with it at our peril.

And yet plants need it, CO2, so we can't just remove it all to keep cool, either.

And then there is the sequestered methane issue.

In the shorter term, climate is chaotic, and we are screwing with it, so predictions based of the theory that the past will be more or less like the future cannot be relied on. Change is not always smooth. Such rapid changes as we are causing are not normal, life does not have a chance to adapt, the planet does not have a chance to adapt.

[jeff47]

11. Actually, the concentration has gone up a lot.

Since we're talking about human-caused climate change, we're talking about going from 300PPM before industrialization to 400PPM today. If we built a machine that took the concentration back down to 300PPM, we have an extremely good idea of what the climate would look like.

Also, your chart isn't concentration. Your chart is percentage of atmosphere. Big difference in what it means.

[bemildred]

12. Right. nt

[bnolkyz]

13. The "critics" know it's real

But acknowledging that would reduce the size of their bank accounts.

[bemildred]

16. Lot's of people don't care about the future.

They say they do, but push comes to shove, they want what they want now, and the future, well, they won't be there then, will they?

[AverageJoe90]

14. Only if we believe it to be. nt

[bemildred]

15. No, it's too late, this will not be undone. nt

[AverageJoe90]

17. It's not too late to still mitigate climate change....the truth re: the WA shelf notwithstanding.

That was my actual point. EOM

[bemildred]

18. Oh there are things we can do, things we should have been doing for a long time now.

In fact I'd say we better get busy, adjust our attitude, get started. Probably the first thing would be to start treating unregulated growth as the disease it is, and start treating economic justice and social stability as the blessings they are.

[Jefferson23]

5. We sure did it, we're screwed. n/t

[Leme]

8. interesting side note to science people perhaps

when all the planes in USA were grounded after 9/11, it seems the USA cooled some...really.

[bemildred]

19. Control methane now, greenhouse gas expert warns

As the shale gas boom continues, the atmosphere receives more methane, adding to Earth’s greenhouse gas problem. Robert Howarth, greenhouse gas expert and ecology and environmental biology professor, fears that we may not be many years away from an environmental tipping point – and disaster.

“We have to control methane immediately, and natural gas is the largest methane pollution source in the United States,” said Howarth, who explains in an upcoming journal article that Earth may reach the point of no return if average global temperatures rise by 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius in future decades. “If we hit a climate-system tipping point because of methane, our carbon dioxide problem is immaterial. We have to get a handle on methane, or increasingly risk global catastrophe.”

Howarth’s study, “A Bridge to Nowhere: Methane Emissions and the Greenhouse Gas Footprint of Natural Gas,” will be published May 20 in the journal Energy Science and Engineering.

Natural gas – that once seemingly promising link between the era of oil and coal to the serenity of sustainable solar, wind and water power – is a major source of atmospheric methane, due to widespread leaks as well as purposeful venting of gas. Howarth points to “radiative forcing,” a measure of trapped heat in Earth’s atmosphere from man-made greenhouse gases. The current role of methane looms large, he says, contributing over 40 percent of current radiative forcing from all greenhouse gases, based on the latest science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

http://www.astrobio.net/topic/solar-system/earth/climate/control-methane-now-greenhouse-gas-expert-warns/