Climate scientists issue dire warning

[kpete]

Climate scientists issue dire warning

David Adam, environment correspondent
Tuesday February 28, 2006
The Guardian


The Earth's temperature could rise under the impact of global warming to levels far higher than previously predicted, according to the United Nations' team of climate experts.

A draft of the next influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report will tell politicians that scientists are now unable to place a reliable upper limit on how quickly the atmosphere will warm as carbon dioxide levels increase. The report draws together research over the past five years and will be presented to national governments in April and made public next year. It raises the possibility of the Earth's temperature rising well above the ceiling quoted in earlier accounts.

Such an outcome would have severe consequences, such as the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and disruption of the Gulf Stream ocean current.

The shift in position comes as Tony Blair is expected to pledge today to work towards a date for stabilising international greenhouse gas emissions when he meets Stop Climate Chaos, the climate change equivalent of Make Poverty History. The group is campaigning for a target date of 2015 for stabilisation, saying a later date would endanger the planet.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1719606,00.html

[DS1]

1. and still, nobody with any power to do something about it will care

because we gotta have jobs, even if we do end up having to wear oxygen kits to go outside

[Deja Q]

34. Oh, they're doing something about it...

It's just not what anyone else thinks should be done.

[staticstopper]

35. Maybe this could help...

New Temporary Political Party

Here is the platform:
To bring to a stop all social wedge issues that currently distract the American people. No pro or con legislation written nor debated by our national Senators and Reps. (if they would bother, it would be nice to quickly make it illegal to spy without notice) and insist that they work to accomplish the following two goals.

The Two Goals
We must, on a national level, fix 2 huge problems, 1) protecting our lands and atmosphere as much as possible and implement a non-military system to rescue victims of further hurricanes, large violent attacks and contagions, 2) stop the deaths of our soldiers, contract workers, and the deaths of so-called “collateral damage victims” by badly planned foreign policy.

Social wedge issues are now used, (wittingly or unwittingly), by certain powerful people in both major parties to keep their jobs in politics alive or from a learned misguided cart before the horse thing...while America withers. I do not judge their deeper motives.

If they keep doing all this busy work, using America's concerns to hack away at each other's branches, our sword of liberty will continue to dull.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/2/23/211412/596

[hedgehog]

2. I've heard predictions that the Gulf Stream would shut down, but

what happens to Europe if the North Pole warms up? It seems that I'm coming across information in the last few weeks suggesting that events are moving faster than predicted in the past.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. Worst case scenario, there will be a few breeding pairs of humans living

in the tropics of antarctica.

[klook]

13. Just make sure gay marriage is still illegal then. (eom)

[mopinko]

33. prepare for another round of evolution, folks.

cockroaches, be ready to take over.

[LVdem]

6. The North Pole warming up means the ice sheet will shrink...

(which it is already doing) and a shipping lane will open up part of the year across the top of Canada. If the Greenland ice sheets were to completely melt the water level of the world's oceans would rise twenty-one feet. As for the Gulf Stream shutting down: England and western Europe get really, really cold which would be more in line with their latitudes. A Gulf Stream shutdown would also effect the US east coast, namely New England.

edit for spelling

[CabalPowered]

16. I think that's going to happen a lot sooner than anyone

is anticipating.

Check out the heat bloom from yesterday.

?click

More than 20 degrees Celsius above normal!!

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. Good God, that's huge!

Before I looked, I thought "they must have misread the map somehow", but that's what it looks like.

[CabalPowered]

23. I watch the anomaly maps like housewives watch Soaps

That's the biggest bloom I've seen in awhile. Although last year at this time, Antartica had a persistent bloom over 20 degrees that lasted for months.

Great set of maps here..

http://geography.uoregon.edu/weather/#ClimateAnomalyMaps&Diagrams

[Bandit]

25. Not sure how accurate that is

It has where I live at ten degrees lower than normal when in fact we are having higher than normal temperatures. :shrug:

[CabalPowered]

27. It's a difference in baselines

These maps use historical data from satellites gathered between 85' and 96' whereas the normal temperatures referred to by your local weatherman are an accumulation decades of data collected on the ground. Here's the mean temps for yesterday according to the 85/96 dataset..

?click

edit: fixed link

[Odin2005]

41. No Arctic sea ice = massive climate shifts in the tropics.

If there is only one pole with ice the equatorial band of low pressure where the trade winds meet, the Intertropical Convergence Zone, will shift away from the remaining iced-over pole. The ITCZ already averages about 5 degrees north of the equator because the continental ice sheets of Antarctica have a much stonger influence than the arctic sea ice. When the arctic sea ice disappears, the ITCZ wil shift to about 15 degrees north, making the equatorial rainforest belt and the savanna belts to shift north as well, cauing the hot deserts of the northern hemisphere (such as the Sahara) to shrink and to cause the hot deserts of the southern hemisphere (such as the Kalahari) to expand.

[Coexist]

15. that lovely climate on the west coast of Great Britain

would become similar to that of the other land masses on the same latitude. Or that is the theory, at least.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream
<snip>
Its extension toward Europe, called the North Atlantic Drift, makes Western Europe (and especially Northern European winters) considerably warmer than they otherwise would be. For example, in January, the temperature difference between coastal Norway and northern parts of continental Canada is approximately 30 °C on average, even though they are the same latitude.

The Gulf Stream is a western-intensified current, largely driven by the wind stress<1>; its extension, the North Atlantic Drift, is largely thermohaline circulation driven. Speculation that global warming might affect the thermohaline circulation, perhaps leading to relative cooling in Western Europe, often erroneously refers to the Gulf Stream, whereas it is the North Atlantic Drift which might be diminished by shutdown of the thermohaline circulation.

[kineneb]

3. so are we beyond the edge?

this will so screw agriculture...I am curious what the predictions are for continental US...

personal interest in all of this, since I am trying to get a garden growning...will it get colder, hotter, wetter, drier?

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. Our equations were wrong. We were counting forests and the oceans

as carbon sinks, but as it turns out they are saturated and now leaching carbon back into the atmosphere. And no one took into account the thawing of the Siberian permafrost releasing methane in massive quantities.

Truth be told climatology is a very difficult discipline and there are so many variables to take into acct and so many unkowns that change everything, it's very hard to come up with a definite answer of "The earth's temperature will rise X degrees, the oceans will rise X number of feet." Yes, we cacn guess that much but it's the WHEN that is eluding us.

I am thinking about buying some oceanfront property in Vermont. I think I might like to live on Stowe Island.

[Skidmore]

7. So will I get beach front property here in

eastern Iowa, or will I be living on a canyon when the New Madrid fault does its thing? I'd like to be prepared.

[GreenPartyVoter]

8. Hey, don't laugh but every so often I check out the future earth changes

maps of various psychics. I can't help but wonder if they will come true. http://www.greatdreams.com/maps.htm

[Skidmore]

12. Not laughing a bit...I try to divine the future too sometimes at

this site: http://www.starlightnews.com/

Check out the link for *'s second term.

From this map, http://www.baproducts.com/chetmap.htm I can have beachfront property AND live on a canyon.

[GreenPartyVoter]

14. Meanwhile, I will be underwater. Pretty much the coast of Maine is

not looking good on anybody's earth changes map. :(

[Skidmore]

32. Move inland and we'll farm.

People will need food always.

[RazzleDazzle]

44. Massive drought, famine, dessertification in some areas

It ain't pretty.

Rain where there shouldn't be; no rain where there should be. And so forth.

[kineneb]

45. some places already having drought problems

I caught a CNN weather report at the hospital (was there for Hubby's outpatient surgery) which reported that a portion of Texas is at half of the usual rainfall- 18" vs. normal 36".
NorCal seems to be getting more "monsoon"-type rain storms, at least this year. The rain is beginning later and lasting into June, where the rain used to end in May and then nary a drop until October. And central Oregan is getting less rain. Strange things are afoot.

[Strelnikov_]

9. Probably Too Late To Prevent Extinction

But we could at least, for those coming after us, try.

Hotter, Faster, Worser
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0222-27.htm

. . .

First, there hasn’t been any real uncertainty in the scientific community for more than a decade. An unholy alliance of key fossil fuel corporations and conservative politicians have waged a sophisticated and well-funded misinformation campaign to create doubt and controversy in the face of nearly universal scientific consensus. In this, they were aided and abetted by a press which loved controversy more than truth, and by the Bush administration, which has systematically tried to distort the science and silence and intimidate government scientists who sought to speak out on global warming.

But the second reason is that the scientific community failed to adequately anticipate and model several positive feedback loops that profoundly amplify the rate and extent of human-induced climate change. And in the case of global warming, positive feedback loops can have some very negative consequences. The plain fact is, we are fast approaching – and perhaps well past – several tipping points which would make global warming irreversible.

. . .

The last time it got warm enough to set off this feedback loop was 55 million years ago in a period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM, when increased volcanic activity released enough GHGs to trigger a series of self-reinforcing methane burps. The resulting warming caused massive die-offs and it took more than a 100,000 years for the earth to recover. It’s looks like we’re on the verge of triggering a far worse event. At a recent meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Sciences in St. Louis, James Zachos, foremost expert on the PETM reported that greenhouse gasses are accumulating in the atmosphere at thirty times the speed with which they did during the PETM.

. . .

Our children may forgive us the debts we’re passing on to them, they may forgive us if terrorism persists, they may forgive us for waging war instead of pursuing peace, they may even forgive us for squandering the opportunity to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle. But they will spit on our bones and curse our names if we pass on a world that is barely habitable when it was in our power to prevent it. And they will be right to do so.


Methane Burps: Ticking Time Bomb

http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html

. . .

Now here's the scary part. A temperature increase of merely a few degrees would cause these gases to volatilize and "burp" into the atmosphere, which would further raise temperatures, which would release yet more methane, heating the Earth and seas further, and so on. There's 400 gigatons of methane locked in the frozen arctic tundra - enough to start this chain reaction - and the kind of warming the Arctic Council predicts is sufficient to melt the clathrates and release these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

. . .

The most recent of these catastrophes occurred about 55 million years ago in what geologists call the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when methane burps caused rapid warming and massive die-offs, disrupting the climate for more than 100,000 years. The granddaddy of these catastrophes occurred 251 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, when a series of methane burps came close to wiping out all life on Earth.

More than 94 percent of the marine species present in the fossil record disappeared suddenly as oxygen levels plummeted and life teetered on the verge of extinction. Over the ensuing 500,000 years, a few species struggled to gain a foothold in the hostile environment. It took 20 million to 30 million years for even rudimentary coral reefs to re-establish themselves and for forests to regrow. In some areas, it took more than 100 million years for ecosystems to reach their former healthy diversity.

. . .

The cause of all this havoc? In both cases, a temperature increase of about 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit, about the upper range for the average global increase today's models predict can be expected from burning fossil fuels by 2100. But these models could be the tail wagging the dog since they don't add in the effect of burps from warming gas hydrates. Worse, as the Arctic Council found, the highest temperature increases from human greenhouse gas emissions will occur in the arctic regions - an area rich in these unstable clathrates.

[Strelnikov_]

10. Look At The Bright Side. OIL IN GREENLAND!!!

You can't make this stuff up.

http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2006/02/229-oil-in-greenland.html

There is no doubt that there is oil in Greenland. There are widespread oil seeps and shows in the west (Source) and extensive bitumen showings in the Franklinian Basin of northern Greenland Source. In the Northeast Greenland Shelf Rift Systems Assessment Unit (AU 52000101), the assessing USGS geologist (M.E. Henry) noted the similarity to North Sea geology, and the presence of four exhumed oil fields (which are now bitumen). He gave 1.0 as the probability that a 20MMbarrel field exists.

[NoMercy]

11. The Planet is in danger -- Still no congressional committee meeting.

Our priorities are bizzare.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

18. Naughty videos and flag burning take precedence.

[CabalPowered]

17. Check out the heat bloom from yesterday

?click

That's more than 20 degrees Celsius above normal!!

[Lorien]

20. Yep-but even those on the left are more captivated by the ports deal

"terra, terra, terra" is all we hear, aside from concerns about Iraq and our economy. Climate change could and will make every other issue pale into insignificance.

[Skidmore]

22. The value o fthe ports deal is its utility as a means to get

the people out of positions of power who refuse to do something and perhaps bring on board more sympathetic minds and willing ears. If you think about it, it might be useful if you would join in drumming these frauds out of office.

[Lorien]

28. What a nasty and idiotic comment

You have absolutely no concept of how hard I've been working to oust the GOP. None. I've been fighting them for 30 fucking years; my parents were activists, and their parents before them. I've signed the petitions, marched, boycotted, sent letters and worked on election committees. What the fuck have you done?

The urgency of our environmental situation CAN NOT be overstated. If our party joined Gore in attempting to enlighten the public about this urgency, then 2006 and 2008 would be ours.

[Skidmore]

30. My apologies for offending you.

I do believe this issue has utility though and should be used to the greatest advantage possible. As long as * and this Republican party are firmly ensconced in power, then there is very little chance of the scenario changing. The longer it takes to remove them, the more damage is done.

[texastoast]

38. You are absolutely correct

What does the tee-shirt say?

Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we can't eat money. - Cree proverb

Why, oh why, must we go there?

[Armstead]

24. Frankly this is too depressing to contemplate

I'll admit that I avoid thinking about climate change, because it seems like one of those things that is too depressing and unchangable to worry about.

If the dire predictions prove true, we're screwed and there's not much we can do about it at this point.

Easier on the psyche to focus on the shorter term things that there is at least the possibility of doing something about.

It's a lousy attitude, I realize. But I don;t see any solutions.

[anarch]

19. Good. It'll add to the overall impression that we're LIVING IN HELL!!!

[ladjf]

26. The 3 to 3.5 million year existence of the Gulf Stream has played

a profound role in the human Evolution. If the Stream were to stop, cataclysmic climate changes would occur.

[spanone]

29. David, our president says you're full of shit. Would he lie????/

Nevermind.

[dysfunctional press]

31. The west antarctic ice sheet will probably go before Greenland-

this is how quick what we know can change-

from cnn in 1998:

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/science/9812/01/icesheet.yoto/

The west Antarctic ice sheet is not melting rapidly, is reasonably stable and has been so for more than a century, according to an international team of scientists. The ice sheet is the largest grounded repository of ice on the planet and some scientists caught up in the debate over global warming have argued that the melting of this ice sheet would lead to a dramatic rise in sea levels.

The international team of scientists, who reported their findings in the journal Science, analyzed five years of satellite radar measurements covering a large part of the Antarctic ice sheet in an effort to determine if there is any direct evidence of the ice sheet melting. While the scientists generally agree that global warming is occurring, their study suggests that it is not having an effect on the Antarctic ice sheet.

"Based on our short, five-year period of observation of the interior of Antarctica, we do not seem to detect that the ice is melting more than one centimeter per year," said explained C.K. Shum, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and geodetic science at Ohio State University.
"That would mean that the interior Antarctic ice sheet does not seem to be contributing to sea level rise more than 1 millimeter per year."

and this is from last year:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6962

Antarctic ice sheet is an 'awakened giant'

The massive west Antarctic ice sheet, previously assumed to be stable, is starting to collapse, scientists warned on Tuesday.

Antarctica contains more than 90% of the world's ice, and the loss of any significant part of it would cause a substantial sea level rise. Scientists used to view Antarctica as a "slumbering giant", said Chris Rapley, from the British Antarctic Survey, but now he sees it as an "awakened giant".

Rapley presented measurements of the ice sheet at a major climate conference in Exeter, UK. Glaciers on the Antarctic peninsula, which protrudes from the continent to the north, were already known to be retreating. But the data Rapley presented show that glaciers within the much larger west Antarctic Ice sheet are also starting to disappear.

If the ice on the peninsula melts entirely it will raise global sea levels by 0.3 metres, and the west Antarctic ice sheet contains enough water to contribute metres more. The last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in 2001, said that collapse of this ice sheet was unlikely during the 21st century. That may now need to be reassessed, Rapley warned...

http://www.asoc.org/general/iceshelve.htm

Dr. Oppenheimer does not conclude that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will collapse, only that it could. He believes that we might still be able to avert catastrophe if we reduce greenhouse gases now. "With countries beginning to formulate global-warming policies," he wrote, "the potential hazard from WAIS is too large and irreversible to be relegated to a list of imponderables for consideration at a later date." Dr. Oppenheimer's data suggests that collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would likely raise sea levels by 20 feet (four to six meters). It could take more than 10,000 years for the ice sheet to reform.

so- if when the west antarctic shelf goes(and don't forget how fast/suddenly the larsen shelf went 4 years ago)- the sea levels rise 20 feet...and if when greenland goes- that's another 21 feet- plus, and that's just those two- it doesn't even take into consideration all the other glaciers around the world, and doesn't take into consideration further ocean rise caused by the water expanding as it warms- how many coastal cities could survive a permanent 50 foot risein sea levels?

[Odin2005]

36. The WAIS is in trouble too? Oh, fuck!

:scared:

[texastoast]

37. It's too late

Fuckers should have listened 30 years ago when it was a pretty good scientific "theory." All of us.

[Karenina]

39. Fasten your seatbelts, kids

It's going to be a VERY BUMPY RIDE.

[muriel_volestrangler]

40. I'm confused - is the WAIS the ice shelf or the ice cap on land?

The picture you give circles the Ross Ice Shelf. But I was under the impression the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is everything on land between there and the Ronne Ice Shelf - the upper section on that diagram. Can anyone give a definitive answer?

[Odin2005]

42. the WAIS is the smaller ice sheet...

the Antarctic ice sheet is split into to parts by a central mountain range into the Large EAIS and the small WAIS (the Ross Ice Shelf is a part of the WAIS). The EAIS is very stable, we don't have to worry about it. The WAIS is unstable because the weight of the ice sheet has pushed the land below sea level, meaning the whole ice sheet can slide into the ocean if seawater gets between the ice and bedrock, raising the sea level very rapidly

[AJH032]

43. This makes me so sad, and nostalgic

Remember back in the 90's when President Clinton was very concerned about global warming and entered into the Kyoto treaty? I wish we still had a president who cares about the environment. Our planet, our home is at stake here.