This is NOT disturbing at all! Fuck the Trumpsters and the 3rd party voters so hard. Well, humanity had a good run I guess.
The simulation revealed a tipping point: a level of warming at which stratocumulus clouds break up altogether. The disappearance occurs when the concentration of CO2 in the simulated atmosphere reaches 1,200 parts per million — a level that fossil fuel burning could push us past in about a century, under “business-as-usual” emissions scenarios. In the simulation, when the tipping point is breached, Earth’s temperature soars 8 degrees Celsius, in addition to the 4 degrees of warming or more caused by the CO2 directly.
Then there are the feedback loops that we haven’t nailed down yet that could grease the slide down to the “no clouds” precipice.
Edit: Though one feedback loop may work us!
Kerry Emanuel, the MIT climate scientist, noted that possible economic collapse caused by nearer-term effects of climate change might also curtail carbon emissions before the stratocumulus tipping point is reached.
The apocalypse may be averted by the collapse of civilisation!
Clouds are inherently socialist - do you want to end up like Venezuela?
Not one question on climate change during the 2016 presidential debates.
Not one scientist or politician in three years on any major network or cable political show discussing climate change.
Corporate media ignored it completely, even after the spate of studies that came out illustrating the dire consequences of doing nothing.
It took a freshman congressional representative to put climate change on the map.
But here’s an interview with Sheldon Whitehouse.
I think he gets it without needing sarcastic barbs.
The Green New Deal at this point is only a resolution that hasn’t even approached legislative language. Hearings have not yet been held. In the Senate alone, there are carbon-price bills on the Democrats side, “Keep It in the Ground” bills on the Democratic side – a variety of smaller bills for different economic sectors that address climate change and the general prospect of a Green New Deal.
Our job as legislators is to walk through those various pieces of legislation, and pull something together that keep the 1.5-degree [increase] climate threshold that is most likely to actually get passed, and that maximizes all the collateral benefits for society in passing it as a significant climate bill.
Even Franklin Roosevelt didn’t get his New Deal passed in one bill. It was more a statement of purpose. What we have to do, the same way Franklin Roosevelt had to do it, is work together with Congress to pass section-by-section laws that will solve the climate problem before it gets out of hand. After doing that, rebalance what the traditional balance of power has been in American politics and in the American economy. Arrest and reverse the slide in both of those areas of power and money to those that already have the most of it.
the Chinese hoaxing game is stronk
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-29/miami-s-other-water-problem
Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First
[…] six feet of sea-level rise would put a quarter of Miami’s homes underwater, rendering $200 billion of real estate worthless. But global warming poses a more immediate danger: The permeability that makes the aquifer so easily accessible also makes it vulnerable. “It’s very easy to contaminate our aquifer,” says Rachel Silverstein, executive director of Miami Waterkeeper, a local environmental protection group. And the consequences could be sweeping. “Drinking water supply is always an existential question.”
But wait! I’m almost done reading the Uninhabitable Earth, recommended by Gordon Cameron above, and there is the cruelest catch-22 of all time which comes into play in your scenario. A ton of our carbon emissions also create particulate pollution in the atmosphere which has an albedo effect, reflecting some heat back into space. If we were to completely curb emissions over night we would see a sudden spike in temperatures brought on by unpoluted skies!
It seems to me hopeless that we will get it together to reverse global warming by cutting emissions, etc. So is there anything science can do to save us? The one idea I’ve heard is seeding the ocean with iron might work:
“Give me a half tanker of iron, and I will give you an ice age,” the oceanographer John Martin growled at a lecture at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1988.
How about nuclear war? Back in the day Carl Sagan was worrying about how nuclear winter would freeze the earth.
Maybe we can fire off just enough ICBMs to offset global warming.
I think there’s also been talk of massive cloudseeding (ships shooting sulfur-dioxide into the atmosphere) to increase the earths aldebo, and giant space mirrors.
The problem with any of the geoengineering solutions is they will have huge and largely unpredictable effects on the environment, so there is not going to be a lot of consensus to do them until climate change is starting to show some dire effects, and in that case we might be throwing more resources into resilience.
Yeah, the sulfur dioxide solution is apparently is relatively easy but will have dire known consequences and who knows what unforeseen consequences. I suspect someone will do it once it becomes apparent that we’re fucked.
Yeah, and the problem is who will do anything until we are fucked? Not corporate America. We are going to continue to dick around with this stuff for who knows how long? We know here in the U.S. Trump will fight against climate change because he’s a contrarian dick.
Yeah dude, no one was talking about climate change until Cortez!
I mean at the congressional level, where it was a tentpole item of their platform?
No. Not really like this. Even Al Gore’s action was more descriptive than proscriptive.
I will say that The Uninhabitable Earth has helped me resolve an issue I’ve been wrestling with over the past several months which is that, once I became convinced that near term societal collapse is inevitable, I decided that I was no longer going to share my opinions on this subject with anyone I know personally. The dilemma was this – If the person listening to my views on the subject believed me, I would be responsible for convincing them of something so incredibly horrible that it would alter their entire world view and could produce levels of depression and anxiety that would have real world effects on their lives in the present. Even when I tempered my views on the subject, I could see that the discussion caused immediate and obvious depression in the people I was talking too.
The Uninhabitable Earth, however, has convinced me to broach the subject, at least hypothetically, with my brothers so that the seed is planted to consider plans for adapting as things continue to unfold. The short term negative effects are offset by the benefits of being, at very least, mentally prepared for what’s to come.
Probably China.
Interview with the author.
Another casualty in the rise of right wing populism.
Europe’s Populist Right Threatens to Erode Climate Consensus
I’m not quite to the point where I think near-term collapse is inevitable, but I have certainly been feeling the last few years like I’ve been living in a twilight zone episode. For instance, recently I met with a financial adviser about the trajectory I am on for retirement savings. Good news - I am in pretty reasonable shape financially! They could even tell me how much savings I will have when I am 95 if I put a certain amount away each year. By convention, this is the grownup, reasonable thing to do and to worry about.
But it feels completely absurd to project out these constant rates of return more than 50 years into the future as if we aren’t staring the abyss in the face right now. Somehow making sure I have enough to buy a hamburger in 50 years is real and important but wrecking the basic physical processes we depend on to survive in that time frame is all theoretical and crazy-talk.
I’ve been feeling exactly the same thing. Wondering if I should be hoarding stone knives and bearskins instead of money. Or maybe quatloos.