More background

Mid Atlantic Renewable Energy  Initiative



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Just to note a few points:

1. Empirically observed effects of anthropogenic warming, eg. melting
and sea level rise, are consistently more rapid and more extreme than
predicted by models.

2. Positive feedback's that either reduce the ability of the Earth system
to absorb excess CO2 (saturation or weakening of carbon sinks), or cause the Earth system to emit more CO2 and methane (eg. thawing permafrost), are being observed much sooner than expected.

3. There are growing indications that the Earth’s biosphere is already
suffering from the effects of warming, eg. oceanic phytoplankton, a very
high rate of species extinction, and severe damage to entire bio-regional
ecosystems (eg. the Amazon) that may ported their collapse.

4. Anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are increasing, and accelerating, and current proposals for reducing them present no plausible scenario in
which emissions will actually peak and decline in anywhere near the time frame that is required to avoid what are generally considered
“dangerous” levels of CO2 (although points 1-3 above suggest that the
current levels are more dangerous than has been generally believed).

Without massive counter-measures, it is very hard to imagine a realistic happy ending to this story...

See as well:

Latest News from Antarctica 

Our energy problems:  sitting on top of peak

Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?

Implications of peak oil for CO2 and climate 

(by Kharecha and Hansen.)

BBC News November 2007:    Energy needs 'to grow inexorably'

 International Alert 2007 :        A climate of conflict

 

 

  1. Roger Willaim Chamberlin ( RealClimat) Says:
    1 November 2007 at 9:14 PM

    Changes in ocean circulation are not only going to kill a lot of sea life, but there is positive feedback again on greenhouse gas and warming acceleration … and the ‘closing of the door’ on for ever on the solution of using sea ecosystems to sink the carbon back where it came from, living biomass in thriving oceans [as distinct from our largely dead and dying ones]

    … but as if that currently almost half-complete death of the base of sea life [corals and phytoplankton] , there is something people do not seem even be aware of let alone to have modeled, the methane hydrate distribution on continental shelves is controlled by ocean temperature LOCALLY … just changing the ocean circulation at almost any coastline can trigger massive methane release without any increase in average earth temperature!

    … the amount of methane is potentially so massive that it could even swamp the breakdown of methane in the atmosphere with sudden massive acceleration in warming due to methane persisting far longer

    … in any case we shall never be able to recover from this input because it triggers warming and then the rest of the methane will be released as well and its likely all over … thermal run-away

    life is demonstrably not coping with the current rate of change, measurements suggest it is four times the maximum rate at which many species are changing their location and habits in failing attempts to adapt… we have not the time to sit around just talking any longer, we need things back under control in all-out emergency action , it is simply irrational to find out what we overlooked after it commits us all to slow death …

    The pictures painted to decision makers are of a sort of trade-off between cost and inconvenience of change as against temperature rise and some damage to nature [some say 50% by 2050, some say sooner] … no-one seems to be pointing out that one cannot damage nature 50% and it stop there, by that stage we have committed ourselves to almost complete death of the planetary life system and ourselves with it…

    The ‘fiddling whilst Rome burns’ analogy comes to mind… we know the atmosphere is disturbed, we know we are disturbing the sea circulation…. it really is time that all these things were reducing, not accelerating in positive feedback already ,out of control ,as the figures indicate they are …

    it is not time for another five years research before acting , it is time to mobilize everyone on the planet to change our way of life [one of the biggest ‘inertia's’ in the system is humanity’s reluctance to change and learning time of new ways] …

    It is seriously time to stop playing brinkmanship with existence of life on earth …and that is the thing we are gambling with against what is currently, but briefly a fairly small expense in best prudent insurance now [compared to massively increasing cost as time goes on, until no amount of money can save the ecosystems and us at a time which may easily be not far ahead , some say it is here already … there is absolutely no justification for risking all life on this planet for even massive expense, but we may well have a tiny window for doing it cheaply whilst the seas are somewhat alive … their death is not linear in time either …

    We simply cannot have time for the mistake some dozen groups are playing with of just creating algal blooms which must then die , depriving the ocean of oxygen and with no great sequestration of CO2 to deep deposits or even guarantee that more co2 will not be released long term…

    It is a crude sledgehammer approach where a hundredth of the amount of iron used could be chelated and fed in slow-release to the oceans to let the ecosystems expand, saving the seas and sinking truly massive amounts of CO2 into living biomass as the seas exponentially grow back to life UNDER OUR CONTROL and monitoring…

    We even get vastly more food out of the process to offset the cost , enough to feed all people at last and at low cost , and off-setting the crippling loss of fertility of the land from modern farming methods…

    If we all plant trees on our land , we can do much the same on the land too…

    A serious look at the motor car shows that we would actually live vastly healthier lives without it and its pollution even without the massive contribution stopping using petrol and diesel cars would be to bringing things under control… this really is a win-win situation , a no-brainier … helping the earth and improving our quality of life at the same time…

    Why are people not doing this? Do they not know yet? It seems even politicians mostly do not know that we are accelerating down the slippery slopes already , nor appreciate the extent of the damage , so how can the people ?

    I just do not understand either how when we know that we don’t know all that could go wrong ,that we don’t play prudent and safe, extra-cautious until we do know , when we are playing for stakes of almost all life on earth, our own existence…

    We are not then even considering the worst case scenarios and then maximizing the chance of avoiding them, but why not? Since we all die in those cases, surely they are to ones to consider and ensure we maximize chances of avoiding them …

    What we have at present i think is that even the best policy on the table is of somewhat less than 50% chance of keeping below 2C … but 2C is the point where some believe thermal run-away sets in… that makes no sense then at all as a policy, we want a close to zero chance of getting to that 2C point, not for it being more likely than not!

    Again, methane release in the sea is being reported off South America, let us hope that it is only very local volcanism or sea-bed shift , because if it is not we likely are too late to stop the ‘clathrate gun’ being triggered by ocean current changes kicking it off by merely LOCAL temperature rise over massive methane hydrate deposits … caused by just any ocean current shift with no average temperature rise of the earth needed to make it kick in…

    I just do not get the confidence that men imagine that we can control this whenever we like , we really do not know that!

    and the cost of doing so when we finally do so is exponentiating as we speak , what point is there at all in not doing all that can be done now, immediately ???

    Equally we cannot just sit around and let the seas die, if we let 50% of species die off on the planet currently predicted , then it doesn’t stop there! … take any key organ out of our body and the whole dies, lose any key species and the ecosystem dies , almost all of it , and then we ourselves cannot survive that… the ecosystem that feed us will be committed to death long before v50% of species are extinct … putting it as percentage is misleading, this is NOT a linear process at all,not even close …

    How can mankind not be working flat out to absolute first priority to minimize the chance of that, by every single method we know …I just don’t understand our complacency at all … we pride ourselves on intelligence , but this matter makes people dumb as rabbits caught in the headlights , standing inactive in the path of an approaching truck…

    There is so much we can get going on immediately to get things moving back toward control, out of positive feedback and it just isn’t even beginning to happen… instead we are not even aiming to give ourselves half a chance to avoid pushing nature to the edge where there is no return…

    It is less than imprudent, it is irrational in extreme … Changes in ocean circulation are not only going to kill a lot of sea life, but there is positive feedback again on greenhouse gas and warming acceleration … and the ‘closing of the door’ on for ever on the solution of using sea ecosystems to sink the carbon back where it came from, living biomass in thriving oceans [as distinct from our largely dead and dying ones]

    … but as if that currently almost half-complete death of the base of sea life [corals and phytoplankton] , there is something people do not seem even be aware of let alone to have modeled, the methane hydrate distribution on continental shelves is controlled by ocean temperature LOCALLY … just changing the ocean circulation at almost any coastline can trigger massive methane release without any increase in average earth temperature!

    … the amount of methane is potentially so massive that it could even swamp the breakdown of methane in the atmosphere with sudden massive acceleration in warming due to methane persisting far longer

    … in any case we shall never be able to recover from this input because it triggers warming and then the rest of the methane will be released as well and its likely all over … thermal run-away

    life is demonstrably not coping with the current rate of change, measurements suggest it is four times the maximum rate at which many species are changing their location and habits in failing attempts to adapt… we have not the time to sit around just talking any longer, we need things back under control in all-out emergency action , it is simply irrational to find out what we overlooked after it commits us all to slow death …

    The pictures painted to decision makers are of a sort of trade-off between cost and inconvenience of change as against temperature rise and some damage to nature [some say 50% by 2050, some say sooner] … no-one seems to be pointing out that one cannot damage nature 50% and it stop there, by that stage we have committed ourselves to almost complete death of the planetary life system and ourselves with it…

    The ‘fiddling whilst Rome burns’ analogy comes to mind… we know the atmosphere is disturbed, we know we are disturbing the sea circulation…. it really is time that all these things were reducing, not accelerating in positive feedback already ,out of control ,as the figures indicate they are …

    it is not time for another five years research before acting , it is time to mobilize everyone on the planet to change our way of life [one of the biggest ‘inertia's’ in the system is humanity’s reluctance to change and learning time of new ways] …

    It is seriously time to stop playing brinkmanship with existence of life on earth …and that is the thing we are gambling with against what is currently, but briefly a fairly small expense in best prudent insurance now [compared to massively increasing cost as time goes on, until no amount of money can save the ecosystems and us at a time which may easily be not far ahead , some say it is here already … there is absolutely no justification for risking all life on this planet for even massive expense, but we may well have a tiny window for doing it cheaply whilst the seas are somewhat alive … their death is not linear in time either …

    We simply cannot have time for the mistake some dozen groups are playing with of just creating algal blooms which must then die , depriving the ocean of oxygen and with no great sequestration of CO2 to deep deposits or even guarantee that more co2 will not be released long term…

    It is a crude sledgehammer approach where a hundredth of the amount of iron used could be chelated and fed in slow-release to the oceans to let the ecosystems expand, saving the seas and sinking truly massive amounts of CO2 into living biomass as the seas exponentially grow back to life UNDER OUR CONTROL and monitoring…

    We even get vastly more food out of the process to offset the cost , enough to feed all people at last and at low cost , and off-setting the crippling loss of fertility of the land from modern farming methods…

    If we all plant trees on our land , we can do much the same on the land too…

    A serious look at the motor car shows that we would actually live vastly healthier lives without it and its pollution even without the massive contribution stopping using petrol and diesel cars would be to bringing things under control… this really is a win-win situation , a no-brainer … helping the earth and improving our quality of life at the same time…

    Why are people not doing this? Do they not know yet? It seems even politicians mostly do not know that we are accelerating down the slippery slopes already , nor appreciate the extent of the damage , so how can the people ?

    I just do not understand either how when we know that we don’t know all that could go wrong ,that we don’t play prudent and safe, extra-cautious until we do know , when we are playing for stakes of almost all life on earth, our own existence…

    We are not then even considering the worst case scenarios and then maximizing the chance of avoiding them, but why not? Since we all die in those cases, surely they are to ones to consider and ensure we maximize chances of avoiding them …

    What we have at present i think is that even the best policy on the table is of somewhat less than 50% chance of keeping below 2C … but 2C is the point where some believe thermal run-away sets in… that makes no sense then at all as a policy, we want a close to zero chance of getting to that 2C point, not for it being more likely than not!

    Again, methane release in the sea is being reported off South America, let us hope that it is only very local vulcanism or sea-bed shift , because if it is not we likely are too late to stop the ‘clathrate gun’ being triggered by ocean current changes kicking it off by merely LOCAL temperature rise over massive methane hydrate deposits … caused by just any ocean current shift with no average temperature rise of the earth needed to make it kick in…

    I just do not get the confidence that men imagine that we can control this whenever we like , we really do not know that!

    and the cost of doing so when we finally do so is exponentiating as we speak , what point is there at all in not doing all that can be done now, immediately ???

    Equally we cannot just sit around and let the seas die, if we let 50% of species die off on the planet currently predicted , then it doesn’t stop there! … take any key organ out of our body and the whole dies, lose any key species and the ecosystem dies , almost all of it , and then we ourselves cannot survive that… the ecosystem that feed us will be committed to death long before v50% of species are extinct … putting it as percentage is misleading, this is NOT a linear process at all,not even close …

    How can mankind not be working flat out to absolute first priority to minimize the chance of that, by every single method we know …I just don’t understand our complacency at all … we pride ourselves on intelligence , but this matter makes people dumb as rabbits caught in the headlights , standing inactive in the path of an approaching truck…

    There is so much we can get going on immediately to get things moving back toward control, out of positive feedback and it just isn’t even beginning to happen… instead we are not even aiming to give ourselves half a chance to avoid pushing nature to the edge where there is no return…

    It is seriously less than imprudent, it is irrational in extreme to play brinkmanship with an unknown edge of certain heat-death of our world … and we do know that we are currently accelerating toward it …

     

    More serious climate discussions here : 

    http://www.realclimate.org/ 

 

Start here (from RealClimate) :

We've often been asked to provide a one stop link for resources that people can use to get up to speed on the issue of climate change, and so here is a first cut. Unlike our other postings, we'll amend this as we discover or are pointed to new resources. Different people have different needs and so we will group resources according to the level people start at.

For complete beginners:

NCAR: Weather and climate basics
Oxford University: The basics of climate prediction
Pew Center: Global Warming basics
Wikipedia: Global Warming
NASA: Global Warming update

Those with some knowledge:

The IPCC AR4 Frequently Asked Questions (pdf) is an excellent start. That covers:

  • What Factors Determine Earth's Climate?
  • What is the Relationship between Climate Change and Weather?
  • What is the Greenhouse Effect?
  • How do Human Activities Contribute to Climate Change and How do They Compare with Natural Influences?
  • How are Temperatures on Earth Changing?
  • How is Precipitation Changing?
  • Has there been a Change in Extreme Events like Heat Waves, Droughts, Floods and Hurricanes?
  • Is the Amount of Snow and Ice on the Earth Decreasing?
  • Is Sea Level Rising?
  • What Caused the Ice Ages and Other Important Climate Changes Before the Industrial Era?
  • Is the Current Climate Change Unusual Compared to Earlier Changes in Earth's History?
  • Are the Increases in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Other Greenhouse Gases During the Industrial Era Caused by Human Activities?
  • How Reliable Are the Models Used to Make Projections of Future Climate Change?
  • Can Individual Extreme Events be Explained by Greenhouse Warming?
  • Can the Warming of the 20th Century be Explained by Natural Variability?
  • Are Extreme Events, Like Heat Waves, Droughts or Floods, Expected to Change as the Earth's Climate Changes?
  • How Likely are Major or Abrupt Climate Changes, such as Loss of Ice Sheets or Changes in Global Ocean Circulation?
  • If Emissions of Greenhouse Gases are Reduced, How Quickly do Their Concentrations in the Atmosphere Decrease?
  • Do Projected Changes in Climate Vary from Region to Region?

We'll link to the individual pages once the report is available in html.

RealClimate: Start with our index

Informed, but in need of more detail:

Science: You can't do better than the IPCC reports themselves (AR4 2007, TAR 2001).

History: Spencer Weart's "Discovery of Global Warming" (AIP)

Art: Robert Rohde's "Global Warming Art'

Informed, but seeking serious discussion of common contrarian talking points:

All of the below links have indexed debunks of most of the common points of confusion:

Please feel free to suggest other suitable resources, particularly in different languages, and we'll try to keep this list up to date.