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[Closed] New Climate Study says worst case scenarios are unlikely. Why they are wrong.

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(@jeanne-mayell)
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One group of climate scientists are revising downward the likelihood of worst case scenarios of runaway climate change that could lead to 10 degree  C. increase in pre-industrial levels by 2100. They are saying the most likely increase will be 2.2 -3.4 degrees Celsius , with central figure of 2.8 degrees C (5.04 Fahrenheit). 

It may make people feel better, but it doesn't fit those studies that have been more accurate at predicting how the climate has changed so far. Those  more dire studies' predictions actually fit where the earth's climate is now.  NASA scientist James Hansen was considered extreme until his predictions started coming true. 

 Psychically, I see super storms, unlivable heat, unending fire, incalculable losses of coastal cities, and tertiary effects on insects, trees, diseases, crops, and the unpredictability of weather that will make the next two hundred years catastrophic.

I think we will survive as a species but billions will die. And life will change.  We will find ways to adapt and places to live or migrate to throughout the year.   But if this study's conclusion takes hold, I don't think people will understand how much we have to do to stop a global catastrophe. 

It will take a close reading of this study to understand why they are comfortable with these figures. Hoping Zoron will weigh in here with his climate group's expertise. 


   
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(@zoron)
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Zoron has spent the last few days struggling with flu, while doing his climate science. I have looked at these claims of a limit, and have as well. Our collective opinion is that basically, this is bad science, and best described as Horse doopy. You cannot make the sort of estimates made in the recent papers, from the data, and get the results they predict. Our network are looking at my own prediction, which is 2.37C above the basic temperature just before industrialisation happened. Yoes, that was not a typhis year o, The northern Hemisphere is now this year 0.83C above the average from 1945 to 1965. We have to add to this the actual previous temperature, and an error of about at least a degree, in measuring the base temperature from which it all started to go wrong. We are already past the Paris limits. Thats the science. My intuition and scanning match those of Jeanne. We see very close visions. Not good. 


   
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(@runestoneone)
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Zoron, I am *curious* about the climate change scenarios mentioned here, and particularly in the possibility of carbon remediation. Gonna ask a question, first the windup:

As an eco-geek living in the Farm Belt of the US, I'm aware that a great deal of carbon sequestration could be done through bioremediation.  (Never mind the better idea of chucking our carbon addiction in the first place.) My particular focus is biochar, algae oil, and carbon removal with hempcrete (hemp hurds mixed with lime). 

"According to one prominent study (Woolf et al, 2010), sustainable biochar implementation could offset a maximum of 12% of anthropogenic GHG emissions on an annual basis." Yay! 

One source says hempcrete can sequester up to 110kg of carbon per cubic meter. If one argues for replacement of current roads with hempcrete equivalent to the total US interstate system (estimated to cover a land area of 20 miles square) which would be 32186.9 meters on a side, 32186.9 x 32186.9 x 1 meter deep would give you what--1035996531.61 square meters removing 110kg, for a total of  113,959,618,477.1 kg of carbon removed...which might be around the CO2 we dump in the atmosphere a year.  Maybe. I'll admit I'm a writer, not a scientist. And we'd need 100x that to offset the Industrial Revolution.  But hempcrete's good for so much more than roads...

Then there's a possibility of carbon sequestration via algae capture through Calvin-cycle activity, ultimately in the form of algal biomass. Between 1.6 and 2 grams of CO2 is captured for every gram of algal biomass produced....

OK, my point is that there are remediation options which in toto seem to offer the *possibility* of CO2 remediation (and thus altering climate change) to the uninitiated. When formal calculations on climate change are run, and doomsday scenarios postulated--what remediation efforts are factored in to those calculations?  At what scale?  

I'm also curious how much human idiocy plays into those conclusions--like political willingness to do what needs to be done, probably a do or die 'Manhattan Project.'  Another way of phrasing the question: is this a 'hard science' problem where we're up against the laws of physics, or is this a 'soft science' problem where we're up against the laws of human mulishness?

I'm probably asking way too much of you here--but if there's something you'd be willing to aim me at to understand the factors entering into climate forecasting, that would be great!  Thanks for all you do!  -R1-


   
(@zoron)
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Zoron says:

 Runestone one, 

This is good work.  But in Trumpistan, it ain't going to be allowed. I agree  your figures. 

Meanwhile, I am working on a larger post re climate. The calculations of my own group, are very clear. We are now about nearly  two and a half degrees above the point where the climate started to get lots of carbon dumped into it from industrialisation. We now call this the "Departure base point", not the "Pre-industrial benchmark", which has a wobbly credibility now. The actual  truth is that we are now above the two degrees of the Paris Climate Treaty. Thats our present temperature. The temperature is going up now, (Global average) at about a tenth of a degree per year. This is because of the huge increases in Arctic temperature, where heat is rising at about one degree per year, but accellerating as well. In many parts of the Arctic, winter temperatures are now about 30 C higher than before. There are now Summer heatwaves. The Greenland glacier is breaking up and sliding into the sea. In about 25 years, the average rise from where we are now, will be another two and a half degrees. You have to add to this the roughly two and a half degrees we are already over the "Departure base point". That's about, say, five degrees. Enough to collapse the planetary food supply. Unlike most people working on climate, I can use my Psychic abilities to foresee what is going to happen. So I fully endorse Jeanne's glimpses of the future and what is to come. It freaks me out, but now we have to think of survival, as the changes are accelerating and for practical purposes, cannot be reversed. What we can do here is to foresee, spread the things we discover, and ensure that they inform the public debate. I am sorry to be so bleak, but Jeanne is right. We have to speak out at what we see. Apparently about four million people agree with us, as that is now the hit rate for the site. We are doing a public service.  


   
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(@runestoneone)
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Yeah, Z, Trumpistan is NOT the 'Great White Hope' of climate change remediation.  IMHO, that's gonna be the Chinese. 

If anybody can turn an economy on a dime to pull off mass climate remediation, it'll have to be an authoritarian system. The Russians are too corrupt, even if they have vast land masses in the right places to sink carbon (or at least preserve their methane sinks). Canada might be able to do a lot--their arable land is going to be feeding the world, good for biochar. Europe's doing well with slowing inputs, but don't have enough land for bioremediation. 

The US has an anal-cranial inversion. No help there. (You have *no idea* how frustrated this makes me. <!HEADDESK!>)

Our only hope is some guy in a garage with an old TI calculator, designing a home Co2 capture unit for the mass market.

-R1-


   
Jeanne Mayell, Tee, Marley and 7 people reacted
 Tee
(@tee)
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Thank Zoron and R1 for sharing your ecological knowledge with us! Idiocy all abound. Think about all those crazy climate change deniers, our dependency on oil (also all that plastic!!!) and a mad governments... anyway...

May I suggest a global future climate-scan by region/ country/ continent - the good, bad and ugly. This way people could start wrapping their heads around what could possible happen to them locally. Also the scan would not only focus on the struggles but also the potential of a region to come up with new, positive visions and innovations for their respective futures.

I think our international viewers would appreciate this... and I need to know where to settle my kids, lol...

 


   
(@kim-k)
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Here's a article on Canada's weather. "Insurers say Canadian weather is getting hotter, wetter, and weirder"

http://www.thetelegram.com/news/regional/insurers-say-canadian-weather-getting-hotter-wetter-and-weirder-179191/


   
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(@runestoneone)
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Tee, that's a brilliant idea. A scan probably needs to be more granular than by continent or even country. In the US, we probably need to break it down by bio-region to really see what's coming.

This map is *very* complex--but each of these 'Level III' bioregions will be uniquely stressed by climate change, and suffer differing collapses or enhancements. In order to get a truly accurate forecast, one would have to read at this granular level.  Prob. suggest individuals or 'working groups' picking a given bioregion, and sharing tarot spreads in a dedicated forum.  85 regions (in the US alone) is likely too many for us to get through as a group in the evening.

ftp://newftp.epa.gov/EPADataCommons/ORD/Ecoregions/us/Eco_Level_III_US.pdf

We *could*, however, get through a more general read using the nine bioregions on this map:

That's not a tight enough focus to, for instance, pick a safe town to move to-- but should give a broad picture of major trends. 

Jeanne, could you please weigh in with your thoughts on doing this? Is it a good use of our bandwidth to try it?

-R1-


   
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(@jeanne-mayell)
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Quick response -- (someone should ask a question about it in the Q&A tonight):

R1, remediation is not factored into climate predictions except that they have often 2-3 scenarios, best case, medium case, and worst case scenarios based on estimates of future parts per million atmospheric carbon.  We have already missed the best case scenarios.   James Hansen is worth listening to, assuming he has some updates to his work. I feel he is both an excellent scientist and a seer.  But I sense you are up on all of this already. 

The reason I have put so much energy into reading Trump and the GOP is that they have driven climate change and we need them defeated to turn things around. Of course I care deeply about immigrants and the social safety net, and wars, which Trump et al. also drive.  But Climate Change will trump (sorry pun not intended) all else, and I have felt that we will hit an impossible surge in climate change  more quickly than scientists and media have said. 

We could do a Read the Future night that is solely focused on Climate Change. I'd love to do that. We could ask people to focus on different regions. I've seen the Great Lakes as a good area. I haven't seen it but people talk about Hawaii, due to deep water all around the islands that moderate extremes in climate.  My concern with Hawaii is that climate change is likely to exacerbate volcanos and earthquakes due to the weight of expanded oceans on fault lines.

Also the Arctic Circle.

Also, get this, living below ground - building homes and offices below rather than above ground.  Below ground living moderates temperatures.  I had a dream of below-ground living in about 25 years time.  Also acres of greenhouses that control temp and moisture. 

I have not so far had visions of the future in which people had found ways to beat the carbon problem.  One enthusiastic businessman took it upon himself a few years ago to  dump  hundreds of tons of... what was it...iron or superphosphate or something that he thought would create huge algae blooms.  He hoped that more plant life would capture carbon. 

 

 


   
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(@starpath)
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I found this article tonight and quickly read it.  It is pretty dismal sounding.  It is about the permafrost thawing and the release of carbon that was frozen in the ground thousands of years ago with ancient bacteria that will produce methane and carbon dioxide.  It is a big "wild card of climate change".  I had not thought about green grass and plants from 25,000 years ago thawing and then potentially decaying or even regenerating in some fashion. The article is titled,"Is There a Ticking Time Bomb Under The Arctic?" Curiouser and curiouser...

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/01/24/575220206/is-there-a-ticking-time-bomb-under-the-arctic


   
(@michele-b)
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Each and every time I return to my childhood home on Douglas Island, Alaska, I am struck by the immense sense of change. Crossing over to Juneau and our beloved Mendenhall Glacier I can literally see the new exposed rock as the glacier has receded. That change in the 70s to 90s was so insignificant in comparison to what can be seen, or better yet not seen. No longer the massive extended view of glacial ice that was once visible to now a visitor center that appears miles closer to the viewer not right up to that early glacier.

Researchers are finding that my home and Alaska's largest state just might be serving as our canary in the coal mine for indications of climate change. From family teaching the all grades, one school at Point Hope to visiting their extended family in Barrow,  Alaska's native people's are no longer finding their primary and deeply rooted historically and spiritually, sources of food. The polar bears are dying, literally drowning as they cannot find land (frozen ice) for respite, breeding or rest or their own food in warming oceans killing off their fish.

The changes in permafrost is huge and studies over many decades are showing that Alaska just might be the best place for scientifically measurable data as climate change increases...in many, many ways.

https://www.sciencealert.com/over-30-years-satellite-data-reveal-climate-change-transforming-alaska-warming-permafrost-fires


   
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