Global financial system implosion begins

[Crispy]

The 2038 bug will be a much bigger deal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

 

[Falcon]

There have been decades of research now, from all countries, using multiple methods. They all agree, and have had their models confirmed with the real data, that the warming is real and that we're causing it. The sea level is rising, the climate is changing, and unless we make *drastic* changes (rather than the more gradual ones we could have made if we started 30 years ago like we should), then those changes will continue on their present trends. The world is not going to end, but it is going to cause us plenty of problems.

I agree with Crispy. However, I would also point out that there is a political aspect to climate research which has the effect of dampening, not amplifying, its signal. It realises that a message which is too "scary" might be as counterproductive politically as a message which is too watered down.

Sadly, our dawning understanding of positive feedback mechanisms - for example, the aggressive feedback between minuscule temperature increase and colossal methane release (25 times more reactive than CO2) - shows that the effects of climate change are considerably more aggressive, and can take place considerably more quickly, than those models which exclude positive feedback predict (which is to say, those models upon which current consensus is based). And there are dozens of these positive feedback loops, none of which we begin to understand much less can model, all of which entail rapid escalation potential.

The climate is a non-linear system. All of our data tells us it is highly sensitive to precisely the changes in state we are inducing, and capable through positive feedback of undergoing rapid, large phase change in consequence. Our response to conventional hydrocarbon depletion will be to accelerate that state change through the mining and combustion of higher emission fuels.

So consensus is probably optimistic. "Skepticism" seems an unwise stance.

 

[ymu]

colossal methane release (25 times more reactive than CO2)

OK, this is something I'd like explained.

As I understand it, methane is considered less important than CO2 despite being a more powerful greenhouse gas because of the much shorter half-life.

But methane decomposes into water and CO2, so I'm not sure why the shorter half-life makes any difference.

Anyone?

 

[Crispy]

Methane is not considered less important, it's about 20x worse than CO2, tonne for tonne.

 

[Falcon]

OK, this is something I'd like explained.

Carbon dioxide equivalent (Wikipedia)

For example, the [Global Warming Potential] for methane over 100 years is 25 and for nitrous oxide 298. This means that emissions of 1 million metric tonnes of methane and nitrous oxide respectively is equivalent to emissions of 25 and 298 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide.

It matters because colossal quantities of methane are currently sequestered in Arctic tundra and seabed gas ice. Heating the land and sea releases methane, which heats the land and sea, which … - what in systems theory is called a positive feedback loop i.e. self amplifying loop.

And that methane multiplies the speed of the effect by an additional factor of 25.

In broad terms, it means there is a temperature (which we don't know) above which climate change is irreversible and able to traverse to the highest end of current atmospheric temperature prediction. i.e. species extinction. The IEA reports recent scientific consensus placing us around 5 years from the equivalent atmospheric concentration of CO2 for irreversible climate change.

These gassing off events are now being observed. See Vast methane 'plumes' seen in Arctic ocean as sea ice retreats

 

[Frank Merton]

It wasn't an invented issue. There were loads of legacy systems around that had to be dealt with.

Young companies/institutions had less to worry about, of course. Our place was running off software built in the 1970s and a fair bit of it needed replacing.

Even in the '70s everyone could predict it. What you say is fair enough; it wasn't just invented. None of these things are -- maybe they are kinda like King Arthur. He probably wasn't just invented, but he sure got exaggerated.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Came across this earlier today and thought it at least tangentially relevant to the present discussion.

According to a report released in early December by the Checks & Balances Project, a self-avowed “pro-clean energy watchdog group,” the press routinely quote think tanks that bash clean energy policies and technologies without mentioning that the groups receive significant funding from fossil fuel interests.

From 2007-2011, 10 of those organizations, including the Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, received a combined total of almost $16.3 million from ExxonMobil and three foundations supported by oil and gas companies, according to the Checks & Balances Project. In the same time period, the organizations were mentioned 1,010 times in articles about energy issues in 58 daily newspapers, as well as the Associated Press and Politico, but the media described their financial ties between to the fossil fuels industry only 6 percent of the time.

Most of the time (53 percent), news outlets used only an organization’s name—no more, no less. Occasionally, they would describe the organization’s ideology, with terms like “conservative” (17 percent) or “libertarian” (6 percent) and rarely by its location (3 percent) or function (e.g. “think tank” or “nonpartisan” group) (3 percent).

http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/fronting_for_fossil_fuels.php

 

[Frank Merton]

Methane is not considered less important, it's about 20x worse than CO2, tonne for tonne.

This is true but as I understand it methane doesn't last very long and CO2 lasts nigh onto forever. Also, people have no reason to dump it in the atmosphere -- it's valuable stuff, so only cows and their like do it.

I think you may be talking about frozen hydrides in the tundra. By the way, feedback loops tend to be self-correcting as they work both ways.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> By the way, feedback loops tend to be self-correcting as they work both ways.

That's an interesting but slightly unclear statement, want to elaborate on it?

 

[Falcon]

Also, people have no reason to dump it in the atmosphere -- it's valuable stuff, so only cows and their like do it.

It's not people or cows doing the dumping.

By the way, feedback loops tend to be self-correcting as they work both ways.

Factually incorrect statement. There are two categorically different types - negative i.e. self correcting and positive i.e. self amplifying - not one type which works both ways. We are discussing the positive type. (reference)

 

[littlebabyjesus]

By the way, feedback loops tend to be self-correcting as they work both ways.

Varies by system. Non-linear systems can display all kinds of behaviours, with a single equilibrium, multiple equilibriums or no equilibriums at all. You would be right to point out the high uncertainty levels regarding the various feedback loops of the climate system, but you're not right to imply that they are likely to be 'self-correcting'. For a starter, there is no 'correct' position in the climate. There is a climate that is 'correct' for us and our survival, but there is no reason to assume a bias towards this climate within the system itself.

 

[ymu]

Methane is not considered less important, it's about 20x worse than CO2, tonne for tonne.

Thanks. Think I'm misremembering this.

Whilst searching for it, I found the reference on global cooling I quoted without links above:

A survey of the scientific literature has found that between 1965 and 1979, 44 scientific papers predicted warming, 20 were neutral and just 7 predicted cooling. So while predictions of cooling got more media attention, the majority of scientists were predicting warming even then.

http://www.newscientist.com/article...ey-predicted-global-cooling-in-the-1970s.html

 

[Crispy]

This is true but as I understand it methane doesn't last very long and CO2 lasts nigh onto forever.

The "20x worse" description already has this decomposition factored in, for a 100 year period. Over a 20 year period, it's more than 70x as strong.

Also, people have no reason to dump it in the atmosphere -- it's valuable stuff, so only cows and their like do it.

That's right. Human emissions (this includes agriculture) of CH4 are limited to about 3-400 million tonnes per year, which is a bit less than the emission rate from the permafrost under normal conditions. There are trillions of tonnes of CH4 trapped in the arctic tundra and sea bed, the rapid release of which would send us crashing back into an interglacial climate.

I think you may be talking about frozen hydrides in the tundra.

Clathrates are a less immediate (though no less important) threat, as the ocean takes a long time to heat up. The land permafrost is much more susceptible to immediate localised melting, especially now the sea ice is thinning and causing above-trend warming in the Arctic.

By the way, feedback loops tend to be self-correcting as they work both ways.

I don't understand what you mean here. The warming = more methane = more warming positive loop only works one way. There are other positive loops which act in the other direction (warming = more clouds = more heat reflected into space) but they are nowhere near as strong.

 

[ymu]

This is true but as I understand it methane doesn't last very long and CO2 lasts nigh onto forever.

Methane decomposes into CO2 and water, so its half-life should make bugger all difference to anything.

According to my misremembered link, it's not the half-life that makes it a less important emissions target. It's that the quantities of it are relatively small.

 

[Falcon]

The "20x worse" description already has this decomposition factored in, for a 100 year period. Over a 20 year period, it's more than 70x as strong.

Interestingly, shale gas operations - one of the "clean technologies" advanced by fossil fuel interest groups that is supposed to rescue us from energy depletion - evolve large quantities of fugitive atmospheric methane emission. So the emissions footprint of shale gas operations is estimated to lie between 30% and 100% higher than conventional gas operations and 20% higher on the 100 year and 100% higher on the 20 year horizon than coal operations. (Howarth, "Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations", 2011)

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Frank Merton has managed to unite a bunch of posters who've previously been arguing furiously on this thread.

 

[elbows]

I have sometimes mentioned 1970's doom scares when arguing with Falcon.

However my point has not been that people were worrying about nothing. My point was to urge caution when seeking to talk about near timescales with a high degree of certainty. Because some of these problems take a lot longer to reach their climax than some would have us believe. It is understandable that a sense of immediacy needs to be fostered in order to take action long before the tipping point is reached, but this has the side effect of providing something of a multi-decade void where skeptics can decide the whole thing is bogus just because the world hasnt crashed and burned before their very eyes. And meanwhile many of the attempts at mitigation that buy time have not been put to best use, that time has been used to carry on the old path for as long as possible. If I compare where we are now with the oil shocks of the 1970's, its a mixed bag. We have some new and genuinely useful tools in our bag now that were not there in the 70's, and we have managed to do the 'easiest' stuff kinda ok, but in other ways we have increased our reliance on unsustainable things and have actually raised the stakes.

 

[Nylock]

That's an interesting but slightly unclear statement, want to elaborate on it?

Good luck waiting on a proper response to that one. I'm still waiting for him to elaborate on what the *benefits* of global warming might be... (along with his other, earlier, assertion about *most* of the global warming scenarios being nonsense).



*-and no, Frank, saying shit like "Do some research rather than just reading propaganda. There are several perspectives to this." does in no way clarify your position.

 

[ayatollah]

Unfortunately the oil supplies obsessed neo-Malthusian, Falcon, has narrowed this supposed "Global Financial System Implosion Begins" thread down to the complete and utter red herring of reductionist oil-based monocausality again - when that narrow obsession has its own "Peak Oil" thread.

Anyway , back in the wider world of real economics and politics and class-based power and consequent resource distribution inequalities, this little snippet from Reuters today on the extraordinary collapse in the European new car market, shows how the short sighted economic/political strategy of "austerity" is actually driving the world ever deeper into the new Great Depression:


"Car sales in France and Spain in 2012 fell to their lowest levels for at least 15 years, with December registration data underscoring the challenges facing the broader European economy.
French car registrations fell 15% in December, leaving the full year down 14% to 1.9m vehicles – the lowest since 1997, French industry group CCFA said.
Spain's monthly sales shrank 23%, after a 20% fall in November. Its full-year total of 699,589 cars, down 13%, was the lowest since the industry association Anfac began keeping records in 1989. Italy was to report December data on Wednesday night, with German figures due on Thursday.
Ford led December's declines among mass-market brands, with sales down 40% in France and 31% in Spain. Opel, the European unit of General Motors, reported declines of 16% and 17% respectively.
Volkswagen, Europe's biggest carmaker, saw sales of its core brand slump 25% in France and 15% in Spain. PSA Peugeot Citroën fell broadly in line with both markets, while Fiat brand sales dropped 11% in France and 28% in Spain. Renault-brand registrations dropped 20% in Spain and 32% in France."

Yep, this new Great Depression is spiraling ever deeper because of short-sighted (ruling) class interests, capitalist class greed, and very bad economics. Let me restate the fundamental point once AGAIN........a possible (but highly debateable) current or indeed more likely future peaking of oil resources not only didn't cause the 2008 Financial Meltdown, but isn't causing the ever deepening world-wide recession since 2008 either.

Arguing about future oil supplies, and even energy alternatives, in isolation from the bigger political/economic system (that's currently "Capitalism" folks) picture, is about as useful , and as fundamentally dishonest in getting to grips with real causes, and solutions, as discussing the Great Irish Famine purely in terms of the annual fluctuations in the Irish potato harvest, or Irish peasant birthrates of the time.

 

[ferrelhadley]

As I understand it, methane is considered less important than CO2 despite being a more powerful greenhouse gas because of the much shorter half-life.

But methane decomposes into water and CO2, so I'm not sure why the shorter half-life makes any difference.

Anyone?

At current levels CH4 has less radiative forcing than CO2. And at current levels CH4 is broken down in the atmosphere. However the CH4 cycle is poorly understood and there are very significant possible sources for new CH4 emssions, melting of permafrost into anoxic water is a major source that may accelerate and very shallow ocean clatherates disocovered in the are another huge headache. The biggest mass extiction in history the Permian Triassic is linked to a clatherate breakdown in its final stage (over 90% of all species were driven to extinction, it is the only known mass extinction of insects) so there is a small amount of concern that things may get a little.... warm. Other clatherate releases have been observed and are closely associated with anoxic ocean events, where it became so hot the ocean stratified preventing oxygen from reaching the ocean floor and there are some minor mass extinctions observed (not one of the big 5).

Methane is somewhere between not really a problem and potentially making large parts of the earth physically uninhabitable for homo sapiens (too hot at night to cool: people die.) Bit of a lottery really.

 

[ferrelhadley]

The problem is we have had doomsday predictions from the environmental extremists since I was a kid (and I'm now almost seventy), and they have never proved out. One develops skepticism.

Good for you.

Skim read the headlines and dont try to understand what was actually being said by real scientists and what was done to address these issues.

Who needs "facts" when we have a doddery old fart and their opinions.

 

[ferrelhadley]

"Peak Oil"
new car market,

I agree. What kind of idiot tries to associate +$100 oil with the new car market.

Bloody Neo and his Malthusians.

 

[Falcon]

Anyway , back in the wider world of real economics and politics and class-based power and consequent resource distribution inequalities

Thanks for that penetrating political insight into our 21st century problem, Ayatollah, drawn from an invigorating mix of 19th century political theory and Renault car sales figures.

Ayatollah's novel argument in a nutshell, in case it's not obvious:

1. Cars run on petrol
2. The discovery rate of petrol peaked in 1968 and has been declining at 15% per annum since (See figure below. Source: CERA)
3. The flow rate of conventional petrol sources peaked in 2006 (Source: IEA)
4. The average cost of unconventional petrol sources (which include converted food) is currently four times higher than conventional, and rising (Source: IEA)
5. Therefore the collapse in the European new car market is (i) extraordinary and (ii) caused by short-sighted (ruling) class interests, capitalist class greed, and very bad economics.

I'm sure we are all relieved that we have your honest analysis to guide us, and reassured that you've set aside reductionist monocausality.

But while I don't for a minute dispute the corrosive effects of capitalist class greed and the inequality inherent in the current basis for resource distribution, I didn't quite grasp the causal link between those and falling French car registrations - specifically that they offer a more likely candidate than rising motoring costs and falling disposable incomes arising from rising household energy costs. Could you be more explicit?

Also, and I'm sure it's just me, but I'm struggling to detect your thesis - is it that we should print more money and give it to people to buy cars so that they can restart the "real" economy by burning more poor people's food in their petrol tanks and releasing more emissions into the atmosphere? Again, with particular reference to how the debt would be serviced in a shrinking physical economy, and where the fuel would come from and emissions go in any stimulus of the European car market, could you be a little more explicit?

Oh - and by the way? The supply of potatoes is not finite under certain circumstances whereas the supply of oil is finite under all circumstances; it was possible to import potatoes from outside Ireland whereas it is not possible to import oil from outside the world; and the Irish had not configured their economy to work specifically and unsubstitutably in the presence of potatoes whereas we have configured ours to work specifically and unsubstitutably in the presence of oil.

Other than that, your Irish-Famine-As-A-Proxy-For-The-Global-Political-Economy-Predicament analogy is very helpful in allowing us to gauge the merit of your abstract world of "real" economics and politics and class-based power as an analytical device for understanding the physical, finite one the rest of us live in.

 

[Frank Merton]

Who needs "facts" when we have a doddery old fart and their opinions.

Who need to think about issues at all when all they have to do is insult those they disagree with.

 

[Frank Merton]

(Oh - and by the way? the supply of potatoes was not finite whereas the supply of oil is, it was possible to import potatoes from outside Ireland whereas is not possible to import oil from outside the world, and the Irish had not configured their economy to work specifically and unsubstitutably in the presence of potatoes whereas we have configured ours to work specifically and unsubstitutably in the presence of oil.

Deep thought.

 

[ferrelhadley]

Who need to think about issues at all when all they have to do is insult those they disagree with.

Irony.

 

[ferrelhadley]

Arguing about future oil supplies, and even energy alternatives, in isolation from the bigger political/economic system (that's currently "Capitalism" folks) picture,

Geology does not give a fuck about which economic fairy tale you tell yourselves.

 

[Frank Merton]

Geology does not give a fuck about which economic fairy tale you tell yourselves.

Still, he may have a point there; the economic system does influence economic choices. A market system will use up whatever is cheapest first, a statist system will use up whatever is cheapest first, but only after a few people are executed.

 

[Falcon]

Geology does not give a fuck about which economic fairy tale you tell yourselves.

Actually, while I agree with you, I also agree with Ayatollah to the extent that politics is a necessary explanatory factor. I just disagree with him that it is a sufficient one. Sadly, he isolates himself too much with his objectionable behaviour to discuss it with him.

 

[Frank Merton]

Irony.

I've been thinking about your remark; it was, I think, what is called "ageist," that is, exhibiting a bigotry based on age. I find English-speaking countries seem to be remarkably concerned about how their language can express forms of bigotry. What about this one?

(In Vietnam there is no end of bad karma from insulting an old person, but I understand that cultures differ. I'm also fat. Does that help?)