Catastrophic Climate Change & Runaway Global Warming - David Wasdell

[Junkdrawer]

Want to know what runaway GW looks like? It's outside your door.

[Junkdrawer]

1. It makes me SICK to say this: We need to investigate Geo-Engineering.....

I think secret experiments have been going on. It's time to see the data so the scientific community AS A WHOLE can investigate the best way to go about this.

[Ernest Partridge]

11. We're in this mess because of geo-engineering.

I share the informed concerns about geo-engineering.

However, let us not forget that we are in this planetary emergency as a result of "geo-engineering," albeit unintended geo-engineering.

Climate change today is "anthropogenic" -- the result of industrialization and the release into the atmosphere of vast quantities of geologically sequestered carbon.

Humans caused this problem by upsetting the natural systems of climate equilibrium. I can see no solution that does not involve a massive investment in compensating human intervention in the global climate in a global effort to restore that equilibrium.

Tragically, it appears that the mega-corporations, and their wholly-owned subsidiaries the governments, will not allow this.

Bottom line: We're screwed.

Talk about "saving the planet" is misguided. The planet will survive. However, it is doubtful that our species will long continue to be a part of it.

[chervilant]

2. This is critical information

about our critical proximity to our extinction event. Sadly, this presentation (from 2008!) is unlikely to appeal to the Hoi Polloi--the presenter was 21 minutes into his presentation before he discussed the essential global feedback loop which richly illustrates how close we are to species immolation, and 35 minutes in before he explained our critical threshold.

I predict that our species will continue to pontificate about this 'problem,' even as we watch incendiary news reports of heat-related deaths and bizarre climate events.

(Note how many of our superlatives reference destruction by fire...)

Here's what deeply saddens me about the likely experiences of our children and our children's children:

"Most of the systems known to affect Climate Change are now in net positive feedback. Each feedback mechanism accelerates its own specific process."

"Warming is accelerating GREATLY, especially 'recently.'"

"CRITICAL THRESHOLD is the point beyond which the power of positive feedback overwhelms the capacity for human intervention; and the point towards which the cost of climate stabilisation escalates asymptotically towards infinity."

That last quote would be better stated:

"Warming is accelerating exponentially, and soon there won't be enough money in the world to stop it!"

(I suppose that's one bright spot: some scientists still believe we can do something to salvage this...)

Since I had difficulty helping most of my students understand exponentials (and asymptotes), I doubt that the majority of the Hoi Polloi can grasp what this means. Thus, I've resigned myself to as much activism as I can effect in the time we have remaining, even as I watch these historic events unfold.

[Junkdrawer]

3. I feel your pain......

I'm a former CMU math major. For those who are not, take a live microphone and stand in front of an auditorium speaker. That's feedback.

[Moostache]

4. TEOTWAWKI....and I feel fine...

We are already doomed.

There is no hope of getting actions other than what people naively believe will be adapting to warmer temperatures. The right wing's devotion to corporate profits have killed us all and ended the possibility of a future. They refuse to see it, but as I sit in the oven that is St. Louis this summer (temps over 100 degrees for WEEKS now), I can already see and feel it. The soil in my yard is cracking. The grass and plants in the area are in shock and wilted or gone dormant already. The corn crop is failing at an alarming rate and this is BEFORE the worst effects start to kick in over the next few years.

Fuck it....I'm not going to bother losing weight, it will come off naturally when we are all starving in a few years anyway.

Really - what's the point in caring any longer? My kids have no future to look forward to - either economically or ecologically. My parents will soon be dead and I have no interest in trying to scrap out a living among the remnants of civilization. I have no interest in living without technology or returning to a caveman-like existence just to keep on recycling oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Positive feedback loops, once started, cannot be stopped by definition - they only occur AFTER a tipping point is crossed. The Earth will return to balance in a few hundred thousand years, after the feedback loops run out of fuel; and the beetles, ants and worms will inherit the earth. Anything with a mass greater than a pound is going to die off and after the planet goes on recycling the atoms we have released, evolution will take it from there. Technology may NEVER again evolve on this planet - the confluence of opposable thumbs, large brain cavities and the ability to think may never again shake out of the evolutionary dice roll.

It's ironic to me that I grew up as a child of the 1980's, worrying about the end of civilization by atomic bombs and nuclear annihilation. Instead, I get to die in the great Easy Bake Oven created to give profits to sheiks and oil corporation scumbags. I think I would have preferred the bomb...

[Junkdrawer]

5. The Hail Mary pass is called Geoengineering....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoengineering

Unless I miss my guess, you'll be hearing MUCH more about it in the coming weeks.

I think the "Contrails Conspiracy Theory" stuff was/are experiments to test various ideas IN SECRET. Science and secrecy do NOT go well together.

[chervilant]

9. Great description:

It's ironic to me that I grew up as a child of the 1980's, worrying about the end of civilization by atomic bombs and nuclear annihilation. Instead, I get to die in the great Easy Bake Oven created to give profits to sheiks and oil corporation scumbags.

The corporate megalomaniacs who've usurped our media, our politics and our global economy look pathetic, scurrying around--trying to 'insure' their survival in the face of our extinction event. Their filthy lucre will be cold comfort (pun intended) in the final years of global famine and water shortages.

[padruig]

6. Geo-Engineering is fascinating but ...

Geo-Engineering is fascinating like nuclear weapons, fascinating technology, dramatic technology, less than desirable results.

Geo-engineering is a band-aid at best, it does not solve 150 years of CO2 production into our atmosphere. We need to collectively refit our society to work with a smaller environmental footprint. We do this by energy efficiency improvements, both in production, transport and use.

We need to increase our recycling techniques and channels which do not carry the huge carbon burden that resource extraction and exploitation has.

Humanity isn't going to collapse, the fear is that we do not know with certainty what form humanity will have in the future but we can be certain that it will be smaller than the 7+ billion souls we have now.

[Junkdrawer]

7. Well put. But if we hit the knee on the exponential curve, band-aids (tourniquets!) WILL BE NEEDED...

If methane from the ocean and/or tundra start releasing in large quantities.

[chervilant]

10. Actually,

you cannot say that with any certainty. I find it fascinating that we can SEE with our own eyes the immediate consequences of our species' hubris, and some still allege that 'humanity isn't going to collapse.'

Humanity doesn't have to collapse to experience the consequences of decades of hedonism and shitting all over our precious environment. Our ecosystem tends toward a balance over which we have no control. Since we've over-populated, we've become THE stressor to the system. WE will have to deal with ALL of the likely consequences of our greed and short-sightedness as our ecosystem regains balance.

HOWEVER, before that balance is achieved, we will see increasing swaths of desertification, widespread famine and water shortages, and large numbers of people dying of starvation. Will tiny pockets of humanity survive this? It's difficult to imagine. I'm with the DUer upthread who asserted that any mammals over a pound will be doomed to extinction, but I would add that such an outcome will take a few years, if not decades. I believe this because we've passed our critical threshold. Now, we'll just have to go along for the ride.

[Junkdrawer]

8. Kick for Dr. Wasdell

[GliderGuider]

12. Oh. fuck.

I guess now we know what kind of stuff is going to be turning up in AR5 to "scare the wits out of everyone".

[Mojorabbit]

13. marking to watch tomorrow. nt

[longship]

14. Reply so I can get to main thread.

Coming from another DU thread.