This past winter has set a worrying record in the Arctic, as scientists examining the effects of climate crisis continue to express dismay at the region's warmest winter since researchers began documenting the climate there.
This information was in the news a couple of weeks ago. However, it is so important it is worth going over it again. The amount of changes in the Arctic as well as the Antarctic over the last couple of decades have been amazing. The climate models have predicted that global warming is amplified in the polar regions. And the changes occurring in these regions and further amplify global warming. That is why even a small increase in global temperature from greenhouse gas emissions can be so dangerous on relatively short timescale. Small initial increases in temperature can be greatly amplified. James Hansen has contended we have now reached the point where this amplification may take off in a big way. That is why he has argued that we need to stay under 1C (after only slightly going beyond it). We are at about 1C now and scientists are beginning to say that it may no longer be possible to stay under 1.5C. And It seems pretty well agreed that staying under 2C is an unbelievable challenge.
Fuku radiation, global warming/climate change and the 6th extinction equals Eliminating Life Event (ELE for short). Live your life with excellence, honesty and love. There really isn’t any other way, is there?
I have seen some people saying the last time the poles got warmer was during the last Ice Age???
Living in Calif we are told all the time about water shortage and to conserve, yet there is all kinds of new development going on. If the water shortage is for real shouldn’t we be stopping all this new construction???
In this tax season people who have many kids are rewarded with big fat checks from the government. I understand having two kids,but four or more maybe these people should be taxed for the costs that happen because of over population. Yes Wall Street wants everyone to have ten kids to keep consumption alive and well. There needs to be a real conversation on cutting back on population growth.
Support the Commons!
I completely agree with you, Holygeezer. At 50 years of age, I’m afraid (if I’m not murdered and cannibalized by a group of thugs) that I’m going to live long enough to see the proverbial shit hit the fan. Remember the old grade school experiment about putting a thermometer in a pitcher of water? As long as the ice is present, the water stays fairly and
persistently cold at around 2C/35F. But once the ice is melted, the temperature of the water begins to warm VERY quickly (ultimately to the surrounding temperature). This is what people don’t understand about the importance of Arctic Sea Ice. Once that ice is gone, the surrounding open water will quickly warm, making it harder for ice to reform in the future. And once the Arctic starts to warm on steroids with no ice at all… then the combined global land/sea temperatures will quickly spike and (I fear) will warm to the point (and soon) that we will be unable to grow sustainable plant-based foods. We are fucked. I stopped flying airplanes in 2003 because I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror anymore knowing even then what was happening and what was/is coming down the pipe of planetary horror.
Good work Lrx talking in metric, unlike the author of this article who mixes the two systems of measurements - but that’s just a detail I suppose.
I began blogging on climate change in 2004/2005, on the BBC World News - it is now thirteen years later.
After thirteen years and dozens and dozens, perhaps hundreds of peer-reviewed science articles later, my take is this:
Direct air capture of CO2 will be necessary.
Half the Earth needs setting aside as a nature preserve.
We need to regain, as a world population, our tribal sense of one for all and all for one, and abandon the zero-sum economy.
That being said, I’ve just ordered a copy of Richard Alley’s “The Two Mile Time Machine”, and I am re-reading various articles both peer reviewed and popular, that he has written since GISP2 on the Greenland Ice Sheet.
Then I am going to move to Mark Bowen’s book on mountain glaciologist and dust expert Lonnie Thompson, “Thin Ice”.
In other words - bone up before moving on.
A truly worthwhile spending of time and energy, in my view.
Interestingly, the IceCube Neutrino Telescope at the South Pole, and previous work such as AMANDA, have provided new insights into glaciology (bubble free ice below ~ 1500 m at the South Pole; this ice clearer than diamond…; Cherenkov light, peaking in the ultra violet, having a serendipitous transmission profile for high energy neutrino detections, and much more (“The Telescope in the Ice” (2017), by the same author of “Thin Ice”, Mark Bowen, himself a Phd. physicist from MIT.)
When I see people with young children, I wonder if they even took into account the world their children might be inheriting when making the decision to have kids? Then I remember that very few conceptions are actually planned so the whole point is moot. At 64, I’ll probably miss most of the climate disaster that I helped create or at least did little to stop.
I have little doubt everything is going according to plan, by the global elite.
We are in their plan in the sense that we will not be here. Eliminating 90% of the human population would cure the problems we face planetwide.
Through either nuclear winter or global heating, much of mankind would be wiped out.
I believe the global elite are purposefully moving to make one or the other happen.
Nothing else could explain their total and non- sensical rejection of any and all evidence of climate catastrophe bearing down on us.
Nothing else could explain their un-ending push for nuclear war so persistently.
While they remain safely tucked away in their elaborate bunkers to wait out the worst of it, the rest of humanity will perish.
These people are trying to kill us.
Once we widely understand this, we can counter their evil plans.
IMHO
Dig that coal! Drill that oil! Cut them woods all down! Mine that Uranium! And pave over all the rest that’s left!! Shrink them preserves, who needs 'em? This is the dystopia that is today’s America, brought to you by Mr. Trump and his Psycho Circus
And to add to the truth you guys speak, to me what remains consistently the saddest part (almost, next to seeing my beloved Florida being killed off) is the prideful insistence by so many around me, both where I work and where I live, that all of this is somehow a lie. That global warming is a hoax.The rest of us fight on gallantly, in a lonely battle to try and save this place.
This may be true, or not, if so no one has told them that this change will continue for hundreds of years and settle down over thousands of years, leaving maybe microbes in it’s wake.
According to the Trumpenstein monster in the White House, there is no such thing as global warming.
"On November 6, 2012, Donald Trump tweeted: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
On October 19, 2015, he then tweeted: “It’s really cold outside, they are calling it a major freeze, weeks ahead of normal. Man, we could use a big fat dose of global warming!”"
Every Insane Thing Donald Trump Has Said About Global Warming
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/12/trump-climate-timeline/
Trump says scientists are in on the hoax. On January 6, Trump went on Fox News to discuss a severe cold snap that set records across the country. “This winter is brutal,” said Trump, adding that climate change is a “hoax” perpetrated by “scientists [who] are having a lot of fun.” Trump kept up this line of argument throughout the long and miserable winter.
We’re half a million square miles short of Arctic ice extent today, or twice the size of France.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
March is a particularly bad month to be short of ice extent. All spring that blue water is going to be absorbing solar heat, and all summer too. Then the Arctic Ocean will have even less ice next year.
Worldwide grain harvests are suffering. The world’s deserts are expanding. World seafood production is also suffering. These trends will become terrible in perhaps 70 years.
Mass extinction is like Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s steals the “you” of you away slowly, and then afterwards you’re going to grieve dearly. Mass extinction will be permanent for everybody’s great-grandchildren. Don’t go there! Eaarth is losing maybe 200 species per day right now.
The solution:
As the Arctic slowly melts, climate change feeds on itself. Preventing the Arctic from melting down is now just as important as our displacing most or all major uses of natural gas, oil and coal. We’re now fighting an extremely slow planetary megafire that slowly builds on itself and that eventually can be horribly destructive.
Corporations have already performed the world’s cheap and quickly profitable energy research. Too often nobody on earth is funding the critical research and product development that will only come to fruition in perhaps ten or twenty years. Therein lies a primary solution. Humanity must somehow come up with major and well-spent funding in transit R&D, in solar heat R&D, in stored solar-based electric generation and in Arctic-centered climate change inhibition. Just as a previous generation developed solar power and wind turbines, we have some specific and well-defined technological races sitting in front of us, waiting for our hands, for our thoughts and perhaps for our simple courage.
We need ideas, simple experiments, more ideas, peer review, more ideas, product development and ramping up of key products. Did I mention ideas yet? Our entire world economy seems to be built to crush or stifle new engineering ideas. As a matter of planetary life or planetary half-death we as a civilization must nurture critical path ideas, we must learn to pay inventors their rent money and food money for these critical ideas and we must learn to teach invention as a college course or major to a new generation of inventors. As long as the next billion-dollar idea costs a thousand dollars (my best estimate for the effort I put in versus what I get out, your persional invention ratio may differ), we should think about getting our bright ideas wholesale and throwing out the bad ones.
Moral injury
Moral injuries can lead to a person becoming unable to cope with life. I’ve seen at least one scientist suffer from despair over climate change, and then she eventually became an activist.
We need activists. We also need all sorts of organizers and workers for the important climate R&D push. We need philanthropic organizations without their heads on backwards, and the same goes for universities and state governments.
Excellent conversation. WHen do we move from talk to ACTION.
How about we start with making trumpty dumpty and his Repugants in Congress go extinct in 8 months from now. Actually quite simple - VOTE. Get every member of your family, friends, enemies, communities, to VOTE for anyone - I mean anyone - with a “D” in front of their name and flush every “R” down the toilet. THEN - hold every “D” accountable - it’s time to get 90%+ voter turnout and 80% "D"s.
VOTEVOTEVOTEVOTEVOTEVOTEVOTEVOTEVOTEVOTEVOTE
If, as you say, global elites choose to bury themselves under ground in order to wait out some nuclear devastation that wipes out 90% of life on Earth, I believe, and you can check this out with a scientist, that they will remain buried for the rest of their lives.
Nuclear radiation can take millions of years to dissipate.
This just in - thought you would be particularly interested:
“The problems faced by the progressive coastal bastions have been sobering on two fronts: not only is the western flank of the US experiencing the escalating consequences of climate change, but widespread Democratic dominance at state level has failed to enact ambitious policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Climate change tightens grip on US west coast despite progressive aspirations
Greenpeace so far - tried and true. I once wrote them and suggested they run for office - no reply though ?
I don’t like to vote in that manner but whether one is concerned about climate change or fascism or both I think the best thing to do is vote for any Democrat in the general election. In primaries of course then one can vote for the Democrat of preference. I know there are many people on the left who will not go along with that but I think there is both a climate crisis and a real threat of fascism so that is what I advocate.
This is an excellent piece by climate scientist Kate Marvel:
She writes:
“There is now no weather we haven’t touched, no wilderness immune from our encroaching pressure. The world we once knew is never coming back.
I have no hope that these changes can be reversed. We are inevitably sending our children to live on an unfamiliar planet. But the opposite of hope is not despair. It is grief. Even while resolving to limit the damage, we can mourn.”
And yet . . . . she has a young son.
So does Naomi Klein. Paul Beckwith too (I could go on)
I cannot imagine knowing what we know now and consciously bringing a child into this world. Biology overriding rationality?
