The Sixth Mass Extinction: Why Climate Scientists’ Hair is on Fire

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2013/12/extinction-climate-scientists.html

The Sixth Mass Extinction: Why Climate Scientists’ Hair is on Fire
By Juan Cole | Dec. 18, 2013
(By Dahr Jamail)

I grew up planning for my future, wondering which college I would attend, what to study, and later on, where to work, which articles to write, what my next book might be, how to pay a mortgage, and which mountaineering trip I might like to take next.

~snip~

“We as a species have never experienced 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of evolutionary biology, natural resources, and ecology at the University of Arizona and a climate change expert of 25 years, told me. “We’ve never been on a planet with no Arctic ice, and we will hit the average of 400 ppm… within the next couple of years. At that time, we’ll also see the loss of Arctic ice in the summers… This planet has not experienced an ice-free Arctic for at least the last three million years.”

For the uninitiated, in the simplest terms, here’s what an ice-free Arctic would mean when it comes to heating the planet: minus the reflective ice cover on Arctic waters, solar radiation would be absorbed, not reflected, by the Arctic Ocean. That would heat those waters, and hence the planet, further. This effect has the potential to change global weather patterns, vary the flow of winds, and even someday possibly alter the position of the jet stream. Polar jet streams are fast flowing rivers of wind positioned high in the Earth’s atmosphere that push cold and warm air masses around, playing a critical role in determining the weather of our planet.

McPherson, who maintains the blog Nature Bats Last, added, “We’ve never been here as a species and the implications are truly dire and profound for our species and the rest of the living planet.”

[chervilant]

1. We're on the front end of this catastrophe...

And, we're capable of contemplating the results of our unfettered hedonism. It's too late to stop this massive train wreck.

As I've said many times now: when Gaia rolls over to scrape us off her backside, we'll just have to go along for the ride.

[Prophet 451]

2. We're fucked

Between the lack of political will to make the big decisions necessary and the percentage of people/politicians who have been brainwashed and are now deniers, I think the chances of us actually taking the actions necessary to avert catastrophic climate change are pretty much nil. I take some effort to ensure that our household is carbon-neutral not because I think it will make a difference but because it allows me to feel smug when I insult deniers.

[greenman3610]

3. careful with this

MacPherson is considered a loon by the high level climate scientists I know. He promotes a brand of hopelessness that does not help anyone. It is not grounded in mainstream science.
The problems are indeed dire and profound, we should all be terribly concerned - but MacPherson is going around trumpeting imminent catastrophic human extinction.

We're not getting off that easy. We'll actually have to be here and deal with the problem.

[indie9197]

4. Well at least the antarctic ice cover is above average

And if the Yellostone caldera explodes we won't have to worry about arctic ice anymore.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

[madokie]

7. And its going too

Its not a matter of if its only a matter of when.

[NickB79]

13. The Antarctic ice extent is a poor future indicator

It's theorized that the increasing amounts of sea ice around Antarctica are due to fresh water rapidly flowing off melting, land-based ice masses into the seas. As fresh water is less dense and salty than seawater, it has a lower freezing point and will float on top of the seawater.

End result: more melting on the continent creates more of the thin, seasonal ice that we're seeing. Unfortunately, the increased ice disappears entirely in the summer months, and the increasing melt rates of land-based ice sheets makes it more likely that large calving events could occur. If one of the big, above sea-level ice shelves let go, it could jack global sea levels FEET in just a few years.

[tularetom]

5. Well, if it's too late to do anything about it, I'm gonna buy the biggest gas guzzler I can find

Seriously, this kind of talk does not help to promote a smaller carbon footprint. If we're all fucked anyway, there really is no point in attempting to conserve resources or search for and develop alternative sources of energy.

I don't believe that, but I guarantee you there are a lot of people who will.

[GliderGuider]

15. We're all fucked anyway...

So yes, there really is no point in attempting to conserve resources or search for and develop alternative sources of energy.

That's the basic meaning of fucked. McPherson is probably wrong about the timeline, but he's absolutely right about the outcome.

If you really want a gas-guzzler, if your soul and spirit long for one more piece of conspicuous consumption, by all means go for it - it may be your last chance. It won't change the outcome one iota.

[stuntcat]

17. The faster and rougher the collapse is, the less species we'll wipe out getting there

So this is why I sometimes feel so silly peeling the paper of my canned food so I can recycle it separately. I'm totally fooling myself thinking there's any use, thinking anything *I can do matters one bit.

I mean if we have this lonnnng drawn out pathetic slide down, then we'll spend the next two centuries wiping out everything.
But if we have a violent blow-out in the next few decades and then get to where we can't do anymore harm, then all the other species have a better chance, there might be some forest left, some part of the ocean we haven't trashed.

But no, what would happen to chemical weapons stockpiles and nuclear melt-downs?

I'm supposed to be cheering up for the fucking holiday

[GliderGuider]

18. I'm not dreaming of a white Christmas

I'm dreaming of a fast collapse. Let Mother Nature sort out our fuckup.

[scheming daemons]

6. viewpoints like this are the opposite of helpful

If there's no hope... then we have no incentive to try to do anything.

Might as well pollute, waste, and party until the end.

The author is actually encouraging hedonistic and destructive behavior.

[The2ndWheel]

8. Which would differ from what?

[GliderGuider]

16. Encouraging hedonistic and destructive behavior is what we're doing now, FFS.

McPherson actually encourages resistance up to and including the destruction of civilization in order to reduce the damage we're doing, and because it's a moral imperative as he sees it.

So which will it be - consume ourselves to death, or smash civilization? Since the latter is impossible, the former defines our path. And since the former will inevitably cause the latter anyway, why worry?

[Yo_Mama]

9. This isn't science

I don't know what to call it, but it's not science.

Edited to add:
We know that during the Holocene climate optimum, there was much less Arctic ice than now. So his theory that we have never experienced these conditions is scientifically unsound.

The Hans Tausen Iskappe (northern Greenland ice sheet) is only about 4,000 years old.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Tausen_Iskappe

Give real climate scientists this - they have been researching hard, and the picture of the climate that has formed is not what the average person believes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum

The Holocene Climate Optimum warm event consisted of increases of up to 4 °C near the North Pole (in one study, winter warming of 3 to 9 °C and summer of 2 to 6 °C in northern central Siberia).[1]

[indie9197]

10. That is similar data to an article I read last week

There is no argument from me that CO2 levels are rising from man-made sources. How much of an effect it is having and will have in the future is the question. There is a lot going into the equation besides CO2 evidently.

http://www.sott.net/article/270166-Swedish-study-finds-that-earth-was-warmer-in-ancient-Roman-times-and-the-Middle-Ages-than-today

[Yo_Mama]

11. No scientist has ever said that climate was stable except for anthropogenic influences.

There are multiple anthropogenic influences on climate, and indeed they add more instability to an already unstable system.

But mankind did not originate as a species in a stable climate, nor has our species ever lived in a stable climate, and we will never get the chance to live in a stable climate. To try to claim that returning temps to their average of 4,000 years ago (which would not happen for centuries) would somehow trigger global environmental disaster is scientifically ridiculous.

We do not progress by believing in fables. The next glaciation will end our current civilization by massively crashing our population due to crop failure. A slight warming will not - it would probably increase arable land.

Not that I am implying that rising CO2 levels are good for us, but I do think we should remain in the realm of fact. It already appears that rising CO2 levels don't have nearly as strong a climate influence as seemed possible two decades ago.

This guy quoted in the OP is either a nut or he simply doesn't know what he's talking about, and I don't care which it is. Wrong is just wrong.

We're human beings. It's a good guess that our evolution into homo sap was produced by the rapid climactic changes of the ice ages, and that's the world that gave birth to us and in which we live. It started getting colder about 5 million years ago.

[cprise]

12. North pole temp is not global average temp

What is happening now has no analog in the Holocene. It could even surpass the PETM if current stores of methane turn out to be comparable or greater than in the centuries leading up to that event (the *rate* of warming is already much greater, which is a very ominous fact of itself).

I think McPherson is not as off-track as you portray him. The article also gives supporting references from credible sources.

I don't subscribe to doomism or 'too-late-ism'... one hopefully tries their best to avert a probable catastrophe as best they can, even if it turns out to have unforseen mitigations in retrospect. But what I don't understand is why we continue to argue in this fashion when mainstream climate scientists undermined their own life's work by playing a game of political credibility for decades. Beating people like McPherson up with "but mainstream climate scientists..." just seems inappropriate.

[stuntcat]

14. "in the midst of what scientists consider the sixth mass extinction in planetary history"

We are currently in the midst of what scientists consider the sixth mass extinction in planetary history, with between 150 and 200 species going extinct daily, a pace 1,000 times greater than the “natural” or “background” extinction rate. This event may already be comparable to, or even exceed, both the speed and intensity of the Permian mass extinction. The difference being that ours is human caused, isn’t going to take 80,000 years, has so far lasted just a few centuries, and is now gaining speed in a non-linear fashion.

I don't know one single person who cares one bit about this or how much worse it will get by the end of this century. Not one single person who thinks causing a MASS-EXTINCTION all over an ENTIRE FUCKING PLANET might reflect poorly on our self-worshipping his-very-image species.