The 'Ticking Time Bomb' That Could Cause Such Rapid Global Warming We'd Be Unable to Prevent Extinct

[polly7]

AlterNet / By Thom Hartmann

November 26, 2013

If, 250 million years ago, you were standing thousands of miles away from what is now Siberia in the first years of the Permian Mass Extension, probably the most you would notice is an odd change in the weather and a reddish hue in the northern sky. What you wouldn’t know, and probably your children wouldn’t even realize –although their grandchildren probably would – is that a tipping point had already been passed, and an extinction – an unstoppable one – was already underway.

Back in 2002, the BBC documented how, just in the previous decade, geologists had by-and-large come to the conclusion that a sudden release of methane led to the death of over 95% of everything on Earth during the Permian Mass Extinction. That methane is back, probably in even larger quantities, as life has been so active since the last mass extinction.

We laid out the scenario and its possible doomsday implications in a short video titled “ Last Hours” a few months ago. Since the world has been recently sensitized about methane, we’re now discovering more and more of it leaking from oil wells, fracking operations, melting permafrost, and even stirred up by Arctic storms.

Just this week, the EPA reported they may have been underestimating by half the amount of methane being produced by human activity. Meanwhile, the National Science Foundation just released a report that methane releases from the Arctic have also been underestimated. The caption accompanying their graphic says it all too clearly: “Methane is leaking from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf into the atmosphere at an alarming rate.”

Full article: http://admin.alternet.org/environment/ticking-time-bomb-could-cause-such-rapid-global-warming-wed-be-unable-prevent-extinction?akid=11192.44541.M144g1&rd=1&src=newsletter929520&t=5

This is an older article regarding methane under the Antarctic ice sheets also:

"The scientists behind the study calculate that as much as 4 billion tons of methane gas could exist beneath the ice, and that if the alarming rate of polar melting continues and the vast reserve escapes into the atmosphere, the feedback loop of climate change already underway would accelerate dramatically."

"If the scientists are correct, these southern deposits would roughly match recent estimates of the amount of methane lurking beneath the northern Arctic ice sheets."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101640394

[tavalon]

1. Well maybe it's better that it come sooner than later.

I don't want my disabled child to face that after my death.

[polly7]

2. :(

That's the worst part of it, isn't it ... imagining those we love who will have to deal with it.

[CRH]

3. Another extinction thread, that's three in one week, ...

As the bad news keeps bubbling up, it is good news so many live in ignorant bliss or outright, denial. If the frozen carbon sinks are indeed failing, and the process is irreversible in human time frames, nothing more needs to be said. Those in ignorance or denial will escape despair, which is better than watching the reaffirmed slow motion train wreck every day. Now, where did I put the Xanax.

[tavalon]

4. You have a point there.

[CRH]

6. Yeah, there are times when, ...

finding the peace within the present is the best alternative. Good luck.

[kestrel91316]

7. There's an argument to be made along the lines of

not telling a young child with terminal cancer that they are going to die. So many people just wouldn't comprehend, or would suffer too much distress.

[dotymed]

60. It kind of makes me wonder

if TPTB were informed of the impending, irreversible future crisis.

That would explain their short sighted greed at all costs mindsets.

Rationally, they would have pooled resources too attempt to save our future. Sadly, rationality is their very weak suit..

[Delphinus]

79. That is pretty much

what I asked in another thread I replied to on climate change. You really do have to wonder!

[Bigmack]

81. Considering the corkscrew-shaped thinking...

... of TPTB and the 1%, I think they would all try to figure how to make millions on the collapse of societies and extinction. They'd all want to be the richest before the end.

[chknltl]

5. KnR. it ain't often Thom Hartmanns hair catches fire

I have been listening to him for a decade or longer now. If Thom is alarmed we best be paying attention imo.

[MsPithy]

8. Hope I live long enough to see those responsible being designated, PLANET KILLERS.

Not that any of us have clean hands, I drive a V8, and among other things, I'm willing to accept my share of the blame. But, people like Inhofe and the barons of the petroleum industry have had such a humongous and monstrous effect, they can accurately be called PLANET KILLERS.

and, I think PLANET KILLERS should always be all caps.

[Voice for Peace]

9. won't be water, be fire next time

[Ganja Ninja]

10. How did the world survive the melting at the end of the last ice age?

There must have been tons of methane under that ice too so why wasn't there and extinction event then?

Just asking.

[Nay]

11. Most of the life forms didn't survive the Permian Extinction; 9 out of 10

insect orders went extinct. In the first paragraph of the OP, I believe it was supposed to say "Permian Mass Extinction" not "extension."

[WowSeriously]

12. The world carries on just fine. It's the life that suffers.

And 95% doesn't equal 100%, so some life continues. Read the article.

Just saying.

[alfredo]

16. Prokaryotes can live miles underground.

[WowSeriously]

25. Life is awesome! I hope we preserve the mammalian kind

Not to mention all the rest.

[alfredo]

36. Shrews and other burrowing animals might stand a chance. It depends on how bad it

becomes. As long as we an active core there will be life underground in one form or another. The surface of the earth may look like Arrakis, but that hot spinning ball of iron will provide.

[thesquanderer]

38. As George Carlin said, there's no reason to "save the planet."

It was here long before there were humans, and it will be here long after we're gone. As he said, "The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked."

[WowSeriously]

43. A brilliant philosopher was he.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

13. that's the Permian mass extinction mentioned at the beginning of the article.

Eat, drink and be merry while ye can, for tomorrow......


This is too sad. Inconceivable.

I am going to snuggle my little Shrimpy.

[WowSeriously]

26. If I didn't have children I'd just sit back and laugh maniacally.

I'm so disheartened.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

31. I don't have children.

I never was interested first of all, and secondly, I just knew long ago that human over population would be the greatest danger. I knew that not having kids was the best thing one could do to help the environment.


Oh well....

[WowSeriously]

32. I completely understand that position!

My wife and I are only responsible for replacement quantities, as it were.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

33. it's a real shame that so many people think it's a "god given"right and ultimate blessing and

have as many as you want. No one has a right to interfere."

Lotta people out there who shouldn't be caring for children in the first place.....

And this isn't like earlier centuries where fewer kids lived to adulthood, fewer women lived through childbirth and fewer people lived into old age.

We didn't take lessons from numerous examples of overpopulation in other species, we don't take any long view of the continuous exponential increases in our numbers......

I'll never forget a National Geographic article that referred to us as an Exterminator Species. So for lack of forsight, we'll just exterminate every other creature and then ourselves.

Yay people.

[hatrack]

27. It warmed up, but it didn't warm up that much

In addition, the clathrates are held in place by pressure from being buried beneath sediments, by temperature that keeps them frozen, or by both factors working together.

In the absence of warming far beyond that marking the end of the last glacial period, and in the absence of physical removal of marine sediments hundreds or thousands of feet thick, we haven't crossed the threshold that would liberate huge amounts of methane.

At least, we haven't crossed it yet.

[CRH]

29. Hi hatrack, your post suggests, ...

the increasing release of methane from permafrost and the oceans though increasing, does not yet indicate a tipping. Most scientists state tipping can only be confirmed in retrospect.

Is what you are communicating about the combination of temperature and pressure suppressing hugh amounts of methane, that it is unlikely we are seeing tipping at this point? Do you believe that stabilization of the permafrost and arctic ocean sink degradation, is still possible through known mitigations?

Thanks

[CRH]

34. Never mind found information that answered my own queries, and more ...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2584575/

Large but poorly known amounts of methane are trapped in the sediments beneath the sea floor, frozen into a form of water ice called methane hydrate (1–3). The hydrates could be vulnerable to melting with a deep ocean warming of a few degrees Celsius (3–6), which is obtainable given the available inventories of fossil fuel carbon for combustion. Methane is a greenhouse gas, and it oxidizes in about a decade to CO2, another greenhouse gas that accumulates in the Earth's carbon cycle and continues to impact climate for many millennia (7, 8). The hydrate carbon reservoir has probably accumulated over millions of years (9, 10), with the gradual cooling of the ocean over geologic time, but a release of carbon from the hydrate pool because of melting could take place on a time scale of millennia (11, 12). Human release of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion has the potential to make the oceans warmer than they have been in millions of years (13, 14), thus, potentially releasing more methane than the apparently small releases through the repeated glacial-interglacial cycles (15). The methane hydrate reservoir can be considered a slow but, for societal purposes, irreversible tipping point in the Earth's carbon cycle (16).

The melting temperature of hydrate increases with pressure, whereas temperature in the ocean water column decreases with pressure (depth), so in the presence of sufficient concentrations of dissolved methane, hydrate would become increasingly stable with depth in the ocean. However, methane concentrations in the open ocean are too low to support hydrate formation, restricting hydrates to the sediments below the sea floor. Within the sediment column, the temperature increases with depth (following the geotherm), so that at a depth of a few hundred meters below the sea floor the temperature exceeds the melting threshold. The term “hydrate stability zone” generally refers to the sediment column from the sea floor down to the melting depth, typically a few hundred meters below the sea floor. Climate warming primarily affects hydrate stability near the base of the stability zone, where temperatures approach the melting point. The sediment column provides a thermal buffer that slows the response of the hydrates to climate warming by many centuries.

more at the link.

[LouisvilleDem]

42. Thanks for the link

Lots of good info in there.

[hatrack]

61. Also, handy link here to GRL paper from 2006 on Beaufort Sea methane hydrates

Little technical but not insanely so.

EDIT

[
20
] The settling of the moats surrounding PLFs is also
consistent with the dissociation of a laterally extensive gas
hydrate deposit at depth. The zone of dissociating gas
hydrate would initially experience an increase in pressure.
With time, local stresses may exceed the overburden
strength, causing sediment failure and vertical migration
of gas and sediment within a conduit beneath the nascent
PLF. As gas and sediment move upward, venting and
heaving of the sea floor is expected. At the same time, the
relief of stress within and export of material from the area
surrounding the conduit would promote consolidation and
in turn subsidence of the sea floor to form a moat basin
(Figure 2).
[
21
] The occurrence of vesicular-textured freshwater ice
comprising up to 30% of the volume of the PLF sediments
is consistent with this model. The void shape and spacing is
similar to gas exsolution voids observed in deep-sea cores
[
Paull and Ussler
, 2001]. We suggest this ice texture, which
has not been described in the literature, is consistent with an
initial gasified sediment texture and subsequent infilling of
the gas voids by freshwater ice.
[
22
] Upon warming caused by transgression, dissociation
of intra-permafrost gas hydrate would first occur at the top
of the methane hydrate stability field at temperatures
substantially less than zero degrees Celsius. In the environ-
ment where the gas hydrate is dissociating, decomposing
gas hydrate, free gas, and freshwater ice co-exist. For liquid
water to occur immediately above the gas hydrate stability
zone, substantial quantities of salt or other physical-chemical
inhibitors are required. The occurrence of freshwater ice in
the PLFs argues against the existence of brines in these
sediments.
[
23
] Industry coring has confirmed that at Admirals
Finger PLF, high ground ice contents extend to at least
40 m below the surface. With 30% volumetric ice fraction,
the freezing of ground water within a gasified sediment
fabric can account for approximately 12 m of heave at the
sea floor. Because the relief of many PLFs is more than
12 m, additional material movement is needed to satisfy
mass balance and the age of the material.

EDIT

http://www.ig.utexas.edu/outreach/ice-bound/pepperoni/pdfdocs/pongo%20paul.pdf

[CRH]

65. Great thanks, I'll follow up. n/t

[Nihil]

59. Give it time ...

> In the absence of warming far beyond that marking the end of the last glacial period,
> and in the absence of physical removal of marine sediments hundreds or thousands
> of feet thick, we haven't crossed the threshold that would liberate huge amounts of methane.

Hmm ... how about the inevitable destabilisation of buried clathrates by
greedy assholes who are actively drilling into them? (Happening in several places
now around the globe on a "prospecting" basis to be followed by "exploitation"
wells as soon as they can manage it.)

The best possible outcome of that kind of operation is that the drilling rig
is destroyed by an explosion and the subsequent fire burns off the escaping
methane. Everything less drastic than that is very bad news indeed.

[Bradical79]

39. Extinction isnt the end of the world

The world is going to be around long after it's no longer capable of supporting human life.

[KamaAina]

14. Why can't we capture that methane and use it as fuel

instead of fracking for it?

[immoderate]

17. Fracking releases it, so we can capture it, then we use it as fuel.

The problem is when it's burned, it becomes H2O and CO2, both greenhouse gasses.


--imm

[KamaAina]

18. But at least this way, we'd be capturing something that would already be heading into the atmosphere

rather than releasing even more gas, not to mention poisoning everyone's drinking water.

[immoderate]

21. It's hard to capture gasses that are seeping out from continents and under oceans.

The methane will come from all over. It is hidden under frozen tundra, and as methane hydrate under the oceans.

The volume is enormous. And burning it will not help the situation, it will just convert it into other greenhouse gasses. Not good.

--imm

[pscot]

22. How do you capture something seeping from millions

of square miles of arctic tundra or ocean floor?

[KamaAina]

23. If I knew that, I'd have three brazillion dollars by now.

I could buy and sell Rmoney.

I'm merely posing the question.

[pscot]

28. I was thinking we could just cover all of it

with a very large plastic tarp. But I can see some problems with that. Maybe one of the engineers around here could do the math. The stuff used for that inflatable sports dome in Minneapolis might work.

[Tansy_Gold]

30. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but

H2O is water. Non?

[Scootaloo]

37. As a gas, though, it is an insulator = greenhouse gas

[Tansy_Gold]

48. Okay

That makes sense.

[immoderate]

46. You are right, (oui) but H2O is a polarized molecule, and as water vapor is a GHG.

It behaves differently, because it condenses and forms clouds. As vapor, it is a strong greenhouse gas. As a cloud, it insulates the radiation from below, but reflect the radiation from above, except at night, of course.

--imm

[alfredo]

20. Stop eating meat. Build pedestrian friendly cities. Convert suburbs into more

sustainable neighborhoods. Build smaller homes.

We're still going to die, but we might have something constructive to do while we are waiting.

[jeff47]

50. We aren't fracking for methane. We're fracking for natural gas and oil.

Methane is an undesired by-product.

We can capture it. It's just nowhere near cost-effective because of the relatively low concentration. It doesn't take much to cause climate change, but it takes a lot more to make it easy to capture from the atmosphere.

[caraher]

64. No, methane IS the desired product

Just ask the industry:

In its purest form, such as the natural gas that is delivered to your home, it is almost pure methane.

[joshcryer]

72. It is releasing over a very widespread area.

You're looking at a megascale project, tenting the entire Siberian geography with some capturing devices, at minimum. The albedo changes from doing that alone (assuming the material was white or even reflective) would be sufficient to stop the release.

It's not impossible, just vastly expensive, in the tens of trillions of dollars.

[KamaAina]

75. And how much does fracking cost?

Not just up front, but with the "externalities" like people being able to set their well water on fire.

[Champion Jack]

78. How much does Fracking cost?

What's fresh drinking water worth? What is clean water for crops and animals worth?
How much value do you put on the air that you breath?
Does radiation poisoning bother you? How about arsenic in your bloodstream?

[Auggie]

15. I've accepted this as certainty

[BelgianMadCow]

24. Me too, ever since reading about mile-wide methane "holes" spotted in the artic seas, end of 2011

It was in an article from the Independent. When clathrates release, as they move up, they become first liquid then gas, and their volume increases as they rise (since the pressure drops). When these gas bubbles surface, you see a hole.
So the occurence of such holes wasn't anything unknown or new. But the size of the holes was.
I coupled it with the heat that went missing form the climate models, which was found to be going into the oceans.

Doesn't mean we have to throw our hands in the air and scream about the end times. It can just as well be beginning times. But I firmly believe we have entered the "non-linear", unpredictable phase of global warming.

On edit: I see that Thom Hartmann also mentions the methane holes - he calls them columns.

And here is the Independent link, from it:

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov of the International Arctic Research Centre at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who led the 8th joint US-Russia cruise of the East Siberian Arctic seas, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.

"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said.

[alfredo]

19. Ignorance was bliss

[Scootaloo]

35. And not a lystrosaurus in sight

Fortunately, the dominant life forms on the planet will probably be largely unaffected.

...By which I mean insects and bacteria. Set your time machines back to the Silurian, folks, it's about to get a little muggy.

[caseymoz]

40. Then how did life survive 56 million years ago?

When there were no ice caps at the poles sea levels were at their highest and crocodiles existed in what's now Britain? It was called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum:

http://www.wunderground.com/climate/PETM.asp

[jeff47]

51. Life can survive just fine. But there was a mass extinction on either side of that maximum.

Mass extinctions wipe out a lot of lifeforms, but not all lifeforms.

For example, humans will not go extinct from climate change. We're too adaptable. If the worst case comes to pass, billions of humans will die, but billions will survive.

OTOH, a whole lot of other creatures won't survive.

[caseymoz]

63. It was nowhere near the order of P-T extinction though.

And we know there were no icecaps during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Actually, I can see the human population falling to a tenth of its size over the next two millennium.

Already it's clear that we're in a major extinction event.

[Delphinus]

80. Hi caseymoz,

Can you elucidate how it's clear we're (already) in a major extinction event?

[caseymoz]

82. Sorry, haven't been here for a while.

This source elucidates it better than I can five minutes before going to bed:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/03/2/l_032_04.html

The background level of extinction known from the fossil record is about one species per million species per year, or between 10 and 100 species per year (counting all organisms such as insects, bacteria, and fungi, not just the large vertebrates we are most familiar with). In contrast, estimates based on the rate at which the area of tropical forests is being reduced, and their large numbers of specialized species, are that we may now be losing 27,000 species per year to extinction from those habitats alone.

The typical rate of extinction differs for different groups of organisms. Mammals, for instance, have an average species "lifespan" from origination to extinction of about 1 million years, although some species persist for as long as 10 million years. There are about 5,000 known mammalian species alive at present. Given the average species lifespan for mammals, the background extinction rate for this group would be approximately one species lost every 200 years. Of course, this is an average rate -- the actual pattern of mammalian extinctions is likely to be somewhat uneven. Some centuries might see more than one mammalian extinction, and conversely, sometimes several centuries might pass without the loss of any mammal species. Yet the past 400 years have seen 89 mammalian extinctions, almost 45 times the predicted rate, and another 169 mammal species are listed as critically endangered.

Therein lies the concern biologists have for many of today's species. While the number of actual documented extinctions may not seem that high, they know that many more species are "living dead" -- populations so critically small that they have little hope of survival. Other species are among the living dead because of their interrelationships -- for example, the loss of a pollinator can doom the plant it pollinates, and a prey species can take its predator with it into extinction. By some estimates, as much as 30 percent of the world's animals and plants could be on a path to extinction within 100 years. These losses are likely to be unevenly distributed, as some geographic areas and some groups of organisms are more vulnerable to extinction than others. Tropical rainforest species are at especially high risk, as are top carnivores, species with small geographic ranges, and marine reef species.

[progressoid]

54. The answer is at the link you provided.

Earth's ecosystems were able to adapt to the PETM because the warming was gradual; however, the warming we're causing today is about 10 times as fast, and Mother Nature might not be able to keep up with the changing climate this time around.

[caseymoz]

66. That's not what I would call a precise statement.

First of all, lower down in the article, it says the PETM released 5 billion tons per year. I get the idea that there's a range of error in what they're saying. In geological terms, a century and ten thousand years are still very short increments, too short for many macro-fauna to adjust.

Two billion metric tons over what time period? The geo-climatic events in the Permian-Triassic extinction, which almost destroyed all life of earth, were supposed to have taken place over three stages about 20,000 years. Well, 2-5 billion tons per year over that time period would be 40 trillion to a quadrillion metric tons of greenhouse gases. We haven't reached that yet.

Let me clarify my POV, though: I'm not saying Global Warming isn't going to be a catastrophe. The mortality and hardship is going to be massive, and worse every year we don't stop it. I wouldn't doubt if the humankind's numbers fall to one-tenth over the next millennium, and living in a world that harsh will be bad enough.

Reports of the end of the world, though, or of human extinction, are premature.

[hatrack]

62. It survived, but was severely diminished - overall marine extinctions +/- 30%, some groups 50%+

EDIT

ROGERS: Well the nearest analogy we could find to this in the past is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which was about 55 million years ago. During that period, there was a mass extinction - it's not one of the Big Five, so it’s not at the same scale of the end of the dinosaurs, for example - but it still led to the loss of up to 50 percent of marine species in some groups of organisms. The difference is that at that time it’s estimated, through natural causes, just over two gigatons of carbon was being pumped into the atmosphere per year for several thousand years. Now we are pumping 30 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere per year. So that’s why what’s happening now is so extraordinary - it's simply the rate at which this is occurring.

GELLERMAN: So are you expecting to see mass extinction - is the ocean going to collapse?

ROGERS: Well, we thought long and hard about this and we’re seeing very severe impacts from climate change already. Since the 1970s, we’ve seen mass coral bleaching events taking place. In 1998, a single bleaching event - and these occur as a result of elevated sea temperature - wiped out 16 percent of all the world’s tropical coral reefs. One event! Those events would increase in frequency as temperature increases. And I’ll just add, coral reefs are our most diverse marine ecosystems. They host – we’re not sure how many species - there are estimates everywhere from half a million to nine million species. And those ecosystems are in danger of collapse, probably within a generation and certainly by the end of the century if we continue to emit CO2 at the same rate that we’re doing now.

GELLERMAN: Okay, well Professor, cheer me up. The good news, please?

ROGERS: The hope is that marine species have been remarkably resistant to extinction. We know that overfishing has had massive effects on fish populations - you know, many of them have been reduced to 10 percent or less of their original size. But those species are still there. And in fact, the ocean still harbors much of its biodiversity that it’s harbored for millions of years. So if we act very quickly and we act decisively, we do have the opportunity to divert this disaster and really change this trajectory of degradation of these species and these ecosystems, upon which we really depend.

EDIT

http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=11-P13-00025&segmentID=2

[ErikJ]

41. Only solution might be purposeful nuclear winter

If we set off enough H-bombs in uninhabited areas that would throw up enough particulate into the atmosphere it would block the sunlight for a couple years maybe to give us extra time............. to build more H-Bombs. Then the radiation fallout might be a problem.

[mwooldri]

49. Or find out somehow to control volcanic eruptions....

... spew out just enough ash to block out the sunlight and cool things down...

but a volcanic explosion, man-made, at the scale needed.... will it happen? As soon as I see a squadron of porcine aviators take off from my back yard.

[jeff47]

52. Probably easier to build plants to remove CO2 and CH4 from the atmosphere.

Will take a lot of energy to pull them out of the atmosphere and sequester them. But on the plus side, it's something we can already do.

[CRH]

67. Do you have some links to this carbon sequestration technology? ...

Everything I've read so far produces more CO2 than is sequestered.

[jeff47]

70. I'm not talking about something that is up and running

We already know how to pull CO2 and CH4 from the atmosphere. It takes a lot of energy for cooling and pressurizing, so we don't currently bother - producing that energy from fossil fuels would release more CO2.

If we reach the point where we have to remove CO2 and CH4 from the atmosphere, it's just a matter of hooking up that technology to a non-CO2-producing energy source. Making it a simpler solution than what others were proposing in this thread.

Doesn't mean it would be easy or cheap, though.

[joshcryer]

73. Easier to just spray sulphates into the upper atmosphere.

Fucks up the ozone though.

[niyad]

44. will concentrate on that for which I am thankful tomorrow. can be depressed after that.

[AlbertCat]

45. B-b-b-but the Universe was made for us!

So what if we cannot survive in 99.999999% of it....or even on 2/3rds of our own little planet?

[blkmusclmachine]

47. The Rapture Ready Republicans Say: Bring It On, Sky Daddy

[ErikJ]

53. Jeebus is coming to save us.

[stopbush]

55. Republicans propose long-term solution to methane gas build up:

Air freshener.

[stopbush]

56. Unfortunately, people believe we can reason with the climate.

Humans assign human characteristics to the weather. We talk about an "angry storm," or "wrestling with the elements."

In the backs of our minds, we have this notion that the elements are something we can negotiate with.

The climate doesn't care. It's not a sentient entity.

[defacto7]

57. Doesn't anyone ever talk about us passing through

the galactic plane right now as we do once in 14,000 years? Or the fact that we are being approached by a number of asteroids and comets unprecedented in human history? Or the magnetic pole shift? Or that the Mayan calendar ends in a few weeks?

Anyway, my daughter has a swim meet tomorrow and I'm going to be there. She's pretty good!

[Bohunk68]

58. You're a year late on the Mayan calender.

Yup, that one ended and a new one started the very next instant.

[defacto7]

69. Well I guess that shows how much I stay on top

of doomsday theories. There are serious issues to deal with on this planet but the die tomorrow kind are not worth worrying about. The catastrophes we can change are worth all the effort we can give them.

And my daughter did great today, even with the threat of world destruction hanging over us.

We live day to day. We change what we can day to day.

[Yo_Mama]

68. It was a lot warmer in the Arctic 7 thousand years ago and even 5 thousand years ago.

The Greenland ice sheets had melted to bedrock in places, and were much smaller than they are now four thousand years ago.

If we didn't tip into extinction then, I don't see how we can now.
http://phys.org/news/2013-11-greenland-shrunken-ice-sheet-weve.html

http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/pdfs/CO2_melting-glaciers.pdf

?w=500&h=366

If we talk about science, we should deal with science.

[CRH]

71. On the surface you raise an interesting question, ...

and I've spent some time searching Jason Briner's research. I am wondering if one of the linked articles has done a bit of cherry picking to meet preconceived conclusions. The other link appears to be from one of his publications but there is no indication which publication and if it has been reviewed. Most of what I've been able to find on Jason Briner indicates the research is sound, he has no loud critics, but his publications are not listed as having been peer reviewed.

The graph presented in the post is a mystery to me because I have been unable to locate its source in the links provided to determine specifically, the location, these air temperatures represent. Greenland, the Arctic circle, ?

Assuming the graph and linked information from what appears to be a Jason Briner publication are accurate, I still question if maybe apple and oranges aren't being compared to reach a conclusion, that Greenland or the Arctic, has been warmer in glacial minimums, without causing extinctions or major future warming.

The information in the Briner's publication might be true, and might give fresh insight into how much the seas will rise, but it in no way addresses the danger presented by air/ocean temperatures fast rising toward levels of the glacial minimums you have cited. Three to seven thousand years ago CO2 concentrations were not at 393 ppm and every major known part of the earth system was not in positive feedback. The time temperatures were rising and falling was not over decades but instead centuries, and any GHGs released were not added to an existing reservoir of atmospheric concentrations already in, temperature driven feedback. There was time for any release of Arctic methane to be absorbed into the atmosphere and then be sequestered in the land and ocean sinks without triggering earth system feedbacks. As well the fluctuation of temperature over time, allowed for any surface carbon sink failure to refreeze without providing a constant source of heat trapping GHGs.

I think the conditions that exist today, do not give us the luxury of time; and never before has a single specie, put GHG's into the atmosphere, as an addition to the natural carbon cycle. From this perspective, we are creating conditions that have never been recorded in ice floes, without a preceding major astroid or volcanic event.

[joshcryer]

74. The Vostok core (GISP2) is not representitive of global climate.

This is the first fact you must deal with.

It also ends 95 years before 1993. Or in 1898. Your graph, in fact, does not include any temperature data from the present.

We are well above the largest average proxy:



You can't take one proxy and extrapolate that upon the entire planet. I mean, I guess you can, but that would be misinformation.

[Phlem]

76. *sigh*

I'm glad everyone is waking up to this. If you subscribe to Scientific American, or had any curiosity about science, this is old news. There are several plans for CO2 sequestration, but it all needs financial investment and it all needs to happen yesterday.

The "out of Africa" hypothesis happened after a mass extinction event where some 100 to 1000 humans lived in caves by the sea while an Ice Age extended and narrowed around the the southern tip of Africa. They subsisted solely on the ocean.

While our current oceans are being extinguished by oil rigs, garbage, and nuclear waste, a reliable source of food is now impossible.

I'm afraid things are going to get tight to say the least.



-p

[polly7]

77. I think most people here were interested and mostly aware of it.

It's had many articles posted on it in the Environment & Energy Group .... I posted the article in the second link a year ago. You're so right .... definitely, the whole world needed to start acting on it yesterday.