Systemic Collapse: The Basics

[Falcon]

I never claimed we would avoid irreversible climate change,

Well, here we are running up against the limitations of this format. I am required to manage at least three separate threads (you, FS and LBJ) with all of you taking anything I say to any of you as something I'm saying to each of you.

my criticism of you about this topic is down to your attempts to use the issues of climate change to bring a new immediacy to our energy woes that does not actually exist.

I can't imagine how discovering we have 80% less energy than we thought we had doesn't bring immediacy. I can't imagine how you can argue that "ignoring it and carrying on as if we didn't have to leave it in the ground" is the same as saying immediacy doesn't exist.

Not that I am a huge fan of the term irreversible in this case, since given long enough the planet could recover eventually, just not within a timescale that means much to my own lifespan.

Sophistry. Sorry, I've run out of patience with it.

Personally Im not too strongly wedded to any of the really specific numbers that climate change science thinks it has latched onto, since our models for the climate system will not be quite as sophisticated as the reality.

The Arctic sea bed is now observably gassing off methane. Methane is 70 times more reactive than CO2. We don't have a cork big enough for that sort of thing. It has now started. Exactly how much reality do you need before you become convinced?

 

[elbows]

When faced with highly harmful events of uncertain likelihood, we should act as if those events were certain until such time as it can be shown by the scientific method that they are not.

To anticipate an argument you might make based on your consideration of analogies such as freedom/security: we can distinguish between reversible harmful events (e.g. drug trials) and irreversible harmful events (e.g. climate instability) and assert that irreversible, highly harmful events demand the most conservative approach.

Discuss.

Well, I probably wouldn't go quite that far. The events deserve a conservative approach, but I wouldn't go as far as to treat the events as certainties until proven otherwise. Or rather I might, but humans never have before and I don't see them starting now. If we were that risk-averse then many of the fruitful advances that happen to have gotten us to this very risky point would never have happened in the first place. Growth would not necessarily of become a god to our system in the first place if we considered risks and rewards differently, or if we were more easily contented.

I would probably focus more on how harmful events are rather than whether they are irreversible. Nuclear power is another easy example of what you describe: regardless of how low the level of risk is that something will go wrong, what matters in this case is that the stakes are very high if something goes wrong. Nuclear power issues also revealed another important factor in how this risk stuff influences the opinions of the masses. The likes of Monbiot stumbled into blindly pro-nuclear territory in large part because he was driven mad by peoples fearful attention to large, intense and dramatic risk, as opposed to the sort of risk that builds up slowly over time and doesn't delivery holywood-esque apocalyptic visuals to us on a given day. He saw people wanting to get rid of nuclear power stations and he saw coal stations in their place, which understandably set of his fears of climate change and the sort of daily pollution you get from coal-fired stations. Sadly he attempted to overcompensate for this by saying some very silly things about Fukushima, his crude attempt to get people to balance risks more fairly involved some counterweights made of pure bullshit.

But yeah, the stakes are high enough that these issues really should override many of the day-to-day comfortable yet worn out beliefs. Shocks are what can get us there, the daily grind will only serve to keep us away from tackling the core issues, any excuse, so you need shocks to reconnect people to the underlying reality. And Im kinda sad to say that on the planet/environmental front, people have become conditioned to the generally horrific landscape, and would require a shock of dramatic proportions to renew their fervour for change. And it would be a bit late by then. So I have to say that energy and economic shocks are more promising, plenty of complacency still to be shaken from people on these fronts, since the shocks on these fronts that most of us have experienced in recent decades are small compared to the potential ones to come.

 

[free spirit]

I absolutely agree. In other words, we will not avoid irreversible climate change. Yet you lambast me for not using sufficiently imprecise language. You are currently attempting to have your cake and eat it.

even if we stopped all fossil fuel use dead now we'd not avoid irreversible climate change, because we've already experience x amount of it, and have another x amount locked in that we've yet to experience due to the planets thermal inertia.

It's not just imprecise language, it's a misleading statement, written by a Guardian headline writer and not worthy of being repeated by anyone who wants to be taken seriously on the subject.

This sort of thing actually matters because it reinforces the perception that there's some sort of known threshold with climate change where before that threashold we don't have irreversible climate change, and after it we do. This sort of perception then leads to people then thinking that there's no point doing anything about it once it's clear that we're going to go beyond that threshold anyway, when the reality is that it's a continuum of increased risk of worse outcomes, so everything we can practically do to minimise emissions will have an impact on the eventual outcome, no matter if we actually end up going over some notional lines in the sand or not.

 

[free spirit]

Well, here we are running up against the limitations of this format. I am required to manage at least three separate threads (you, FS and LBJ) with all of you taking anything I say to any of you as something I'm saying to each of you.

shouldn't be too hard on that point, as I think all 3 of us are arguing essentially the same point.

 

[Falcon]

I've repeatedly stated in this thread that I already view it as being virtually impossible for us to limit CO2 concentrations to 450ppm,

Which is unfortunate, because consensus is that 350ppm was the safe limit.

I don't see that it serves any purpose to draw pointless lines in the sand that we must never cross, but inevitably will because we missed the potential to take the action necessary to not cross those lines 10-15 years ago.

Pointless from what perspective? A lightbulb went off in my head when I read Greer. His observation that the Green Agenda is only pursued for as long as it usefully serves some other agenda, and is thereafter abandoned, seems to explain a lot.

I also don't see that it's sensible to conflate crossing the 450ppm threshold with anything other than a slightly raised possibility of a 6 degree temperature rises,

Oh wow. 350 is the minimum. We are currently at 395 (Source: NOAA). Positive feedback mechanisms are already kicking in. We are on track on current policies to exceed 450. This is a statement you would need to be true in order to justify ...

and assert that as a result an immediate 80% reduction in fossil fuel use, or leaving 80% fossil fuels in the ground is necessary because the results of not doing that would be far worse than the economic devastation such a policy would cause.

Far worse than ... species extinction? Where have you read that a 6 degree rise in average surface temperature would not result in unimaginable economic devastation?

Of course I wish we'd started this process in earnest far earlier, and been in a position now to realistically be targeting 450ppm, but no amount of wishful thinking is going to make that happen now. Let's deal with the reality of the situation and what's realistically achievable from the current starting position without sending most of the world back to the stone age (or an early grave) by willfully destroying the world economy, in a scenario that's virtually certain to never happen anyway.

Self sustaining Arctic methane off gassing has commenced. There are significantly greater quantities in the tundras in Northern Russia - we just haven't sent anyone up to have a look because they are so remote. It seems to be something of a consensus that we will never reach a political agreement any time soon. Help me understand, rather, why it is not now virtually certain?

 

[Falcon]

even if we stopped all fossil fuel use dead now we'd not avoid irreversible climate change, because we've already experience x amount of it, and have another x amount locked in that we've yet to experience due to the planets thermal inertia.

I refer you to the OP of this thread. I sense something of an epiphany may be at hand...

 

[elbows]

Well, here we are running up against the limitations of this format. I am required to manage at least three separate threads (you, FS and LBJ) with all of you taking anything I say to any of you as something I'm saying to each of you.

I can't imagine how discovering we have 80% less energy than we thought we had doesn't bring immediacy. I can't imagine how you can argue that "ignoring it and carrying on as if we didn't have to leave it in the ground" is the same as saying immediacy doesn't exist.

Sophistry. Sorry, I've run out of patience with it.

The Arctic sea bed is now observably gassing off methane. Methane is 70 times more reactive than CO2. We don't have a cork big enough for that sort of thing. It has now started. Exactly how much reality do you need before you become convinced?

Bah, round and round in circles we go once more.

My argument with you about this point is that we don't have 80% less energy than we thought, I don't agree with you putting it that way.

We don't have to leave it in the ground. We can carry on regardless of the climate implications. Im sure a great many of peoples concerns about climate change are that we will not do enough to prevent it, that the factors which promote highest possible levels of consumption will win over the sensible approach and doom us to more environmental woe.

Stop trying to paint me as someone who doesn't believe we are in deep poop when it comes to climate and energy. I don't need any of your exaggerated claims to help me decide how much mess we are in. My beef with you has always been about timing, rates, etc.

I am not going to pretend that things which likely will collapse in future have already collapsed. Im not trying to pretend that we've even begun to tackle the problems properly, or absorb the lions share of the pain, or come up with a fraction of the answers.

And why do I get my knickers in a twist over the way timing is discussed? Because the bloody system hasn't died yet. Its had some big shocks and one giant wobble, and its health and prospects do not look good. Maybe its brain-dead, but the point is that right now we are still keeping it alive, and I don't think we can claim that any climate or oil production issues are certainty come along either right now or within a short span of time. So this fucking system lurches on, with few clues as to whether it will die in dramatic and deadly fashion, whether this will eventually lead to sanity or a spiral of death, or whether the system will somehow survive by reforming itself in a radical enough way to cope with very different circumstances.

So thats why I get pissed off with hyperbole about timing, because I've been watching a zombie system staggering around and assaulting issues I care about for years now, and I want to do something but this beast of a system is in the way. Or is it? Should I throw my weight behind attempts to mutate it into a system that may be sustained, or do I have to sit around musing about what can be built from scratch on the day it finally dies. I suppose I should probably get on with what can be done today, and then just start again if it all goes belly up.

Bloody farcical markets. If they told the real price of everything with a proper longterm view, if externalities were not hidden, thenI still wouldn't want them to hold dominion over most key aspects of life & politics, but Id be able to at least concede they had a useful function. If the day comes that radically altered markets that are based on reality, or non-market based planning gain massive traction, then I will see this as a sign that perhaps the system is going to be able to evolve its way towards coping with this century.

Oh were that day already here, then my own personal path would be easier to decide. Im a developer who can harness the advances made in our world of networked information, one area where it is not hard to demonstrate real progress in recent decades. Yet to me this technology and my real interest in it are hugely diminished because right now the system still has growth and consumption as its gods, and it is not a lack of knowledge that prevents us from unseating the entrenched barriers that lie in our path. But if down were to become the new up, my how I would love to set about exploring stuff that helps people reduce consumption and make sane and rational choices. I just can't bring myself to do it until the crisis is couched in different terms to the ones we saw laid on rather thick last decade. I can't take the greenwashing, the fake choice, the preachy angst or middle-class good-life handwringing. I need all the aspects of the crisis to shine more brightly and come together to produce a very different tone to that seen either in the 70s oil & environmental shocks & grief, or the 2000s serious yet still cheery 'future targets' aspirational climate change concert wankery.

 

[free spirit]

Which is unfortunate, because consensus is that 350ppm was the safe limit.

wtf are you wittering on about now?

 

[elbows]

Some questions about the system.

Confidence is rather important for the promotion and continuation of certain ideologies, policies, markets and systems.

Can the system as we know it survive without a return of confidence?

Is it possible to uncouple growth from confidence, will it actually be possible to radically alter this idea of confidence so that it does not involve unsustainable forms of growth?

Will it be possible to keep the system struggling on by inducing short bursts of confidence on sporadic occasions, so that even if the overall direction continues downwards, people can still repeatedly build up hopes around small upward bumps in the road? Opportunities to cling to things long past their sell-by date.

We may assume that one means by which a system can evolve over time is if new ideas are the source of renewed confidence, and these ideas get incorporated into the system. A great challenge that the energy & environmental issues of today pose is that we have not found much compatibility between the sorts of ideas these threats give birth to, and the existing system. We might get the impression that other more dominant ideas stand in the way of all but the easiest x% of change we need to undertake, that compatibility is a challenge that requires ideas that few have come up with yet. So it is no wonder that many who understand the scope of the problems have little faith that the present system can evolve in a manner that does not resemble broad collapse.

 

[elbows]

Seeing as I've been moaning about how we discuss timing, I was thinking about how systems affect the timing and pace of both the problems and our response so much.

There are a broad array of different timing scenarios for collapse and crisis of one sort or another. We can't predict the timing of many specific things because of how interrelated so many factors are, e.g. the economy and oil demand, which can then go on to alter the ultimate oil production & total resource utilisation numbers. So even if you think you have some specific numbers that demonstrate a clear and narrow timescale for one aspect of the woe, the bigger picture may yet render such timings well off the mark.

One thing we've managed to do well with the current system is to use it as a buffer against all sorts of problems. It clearly has capacity to insulate us from some issues far beyond the point at which it would have been pertinent to receive restraint rather than encouragement from the system. Saving up our problems for a rainy day. We can blame the system both for dragging its heels, and also for at some point delivering the problems to our doorstep in a rather intense moments of shock that will be hard to handle.

Of course its a little silly of me to talk of the system as one thing, rather than the many layers of stuff that go together to form the directed lives of humans over some period of time

 

[free spirit]

Far worse than ... species extinction? Where have you read that a 6 degree rise in average surface temperature would not result in unimaginable economic devastation?

you're either missing my point entirely, or deliberately misrepresenting it.

I'm not disputing the seriousness of a 6 degree rise in temperatures. I'm disputing that the likelihood of this happening at 450ppm is high enough to justify taking action that if taken would certainly lead to the immediate destruction of the entire global economy, and probable deaths of minimum hundreds of millions as a direct result of that action, and would condemn humanity to drastically reduced average standards of living for many generations to come, if not forever.

Or as the IPCC put it...

 

[SpineyNorman]

No. I find it offensive that you assume that I do. I was merely demonstrating our predicament.

What I do "hate" is suffering and misery. The extent and magnitude of these we see in the world today is an obscenity - one that our species has consistently been unwilling to avoid - and I fear we ain't seen nothing yet.


People have been warning of this since before the first oil crisis with the publication of Silent Spring, The Population Bomb and Limits to Growth.

Our response? - double the number of people on the planet, dramatically increase consumption of oil and finite resources, trash more of the natural environment and drive around in SUVs.

Pretty smart species eh?

Why compare us to fucking bacteria then? And it's not the whole species is it? There are differentials of power - those with power impose their model of production on the rest of us, we resist as far as we can but the responsibility is not on the shoulders of the species as a whole.

Your misanthropy ensures that you won't realise this though.

 

[Dr Jon]

Why compare us to fucking bacteria then?

Similar patterns of colonisation of a finite environment.

 

[free spirit]

Similar patterns of colonisation of a finite environment.

in case you wondered why you get labelled as malthusian, this is why.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Similar patterns of colonisation of a finite environment.

So, what then? All of us posting here will be dead in 100 years' time. The whole planet will cease to exist in about 5 billion years' time when the Sun swells up into a red giant and engulfs it. At some point in the distant future - perhaps 10^100 years' time, the universe may well be an entirely featureless place in which even the concept of time will make no sense as change will have ceased to happen. And that may even itself be the condition for a Big Bang, creating another universe.

Choosing bacteria - the most successful form of life on Earth - is rather odd if you wish to make a comparison. Perhaps half of all the biomass on Earth is bacteria.

But what conclusions do you want to draw from any of this. We are mortal. Our species is itself mortal, as all species are, as life itself is. So, what? Better never to have been born? That's an arbitrary judgement. Either way, it is too late. We have been born. Either we can engage with being alive or not. Our choice. As you yourself pointed out, the cosmos does not care either way, although not for the reasons you give with your theistic conception of 'gaia' - simply because it can't care.

Engaging with you on your level does not involve talking about climate change or anything to do with the problems of being alive. Engaging with you on your level in the end comes down to the simple fact that you have decided to take a particular attitude. Now maybe you can make some art out of this - music or a novel or whatever. But you cannot make an argument about climate change out of it. It isn't that kind of argument.

 

[frogwoman]

Similar patterns of colonisation of a finite environment.

the same could go for ANY species though.

 

[frogwoman]

ah well, maybe the workers' bomb will sort all this out.

 

[love detective]

Dr Jon - live your life a little for fuck's sake (In any of the infinite number of possible ways) instead of this creepy vulgar misanthropic existence you ooze out on these boards

 

[Falcon]

wtf are you wittering on about now?

Are you incapable of civil debate?

350 ppm is the target level advocated in a 2008 paper by climate scientist James E. Hansen (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) and others including Rajendra Pachauri, the U.N.'s "top climate scientist" and leader of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jonathan Foley (Director of the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment), Peter H. Gleick (President of the Pacific Institute), and Adele C. Morris (Policy Director of the Brookings Institution's Climate and Energy Economics Project).

350 ppm is the target you would set if you are interested in physics. It explicitly recognises the existence of positive feedback mechanisms and seeks to avoid triggering them. (350 Science, "The Science of 350, the Most Important Number on the Planet", Bill McKibben 2009)

if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that.
-- James E. Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2008

450 ppm is the target you would set if you are interested in politics. The flaw with the the political target is that the earth doesn't give a fuck about your politics.

You claim to have studied this to some degree - is this genuinely novel information?

I'm disputing that the likelihood of this happening at 450ppm is high enough to justify taking action

I believe your data is from the IPCC 4th assessment, in which case it is 6 years old in a rapidly advancing discipline, with rapidly falling uncertainty. Even that old data showed there was a 30-80% chance of exceeding 2 degrees at 450ppm, in a system with multiple, thermally triggered, positive feedback thermal mechanisms. Would you get on a plane with that spread of probabilities of crashing?

Those probabilities are estimated from radiative forcing, which doesn't work in non-linear systems. Which is unfortunate, given that the earth's climate is a non-linear system. From the IPCC's own report:

It is emphasized that this table does not contain more information than the best knowledge of S and that the numbers are not the result of any climate model simulation. Rather it is assumed that the above relationship between temperature increase and CO2 holds true for the entire range of equivalent CO2 concentrations. There are limitations to the concept of radiative forcing and climate sensitivity (Senior and Mitchell, 2000; Joshi et al., 2003; Shine et al., 2003; Hansen et al., 2005b). Only a few AOGCMs have been run to equilibrium under elevated CO2 concentrations, and some results show that nonlinearities in the feedbacks (e.g., clouds, sea ice and snow cover) may cause a time dependence of the effective climate sensitivity and substantial deviations from the linear relation assumed above (Manabe and Stouffer, 1994; Senior and Mitchell, 2000; Voss and Mikolajewicz, 2001; Gregory et al., 2004b), with effective climate sensitivity tending to grow with time in some of the AR4 AOGCMs. Some studies suggest that climate sensitivities larger than the likely estimate given below (which would suggest greater warming) cannot be ruled out (see Box 10.2 on climate sensitivity).

In other words - "we haven't modelled positive feedback" - precisely the mechanism that will propel us irreversibly to 6 degrees or more if triggered. Meanwhile:

"Recent observations confirm that, given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realized."

-- Copenhagen Climate Science Congress, March 2009

We've exceeded the 350 ppm necessary to avoid triggering positive feedback mechanisms. The Arctic is melting. So self sustaining methane off gassing has now commenced. This is not a matter of theoretical speculation - you can fly over it and watch it, over thousands of square kilometres. So even if we switched every fossil fuel carbon emitter off today, that process will now continue and accelerate as each increment in temperature (both from the inertia of our historical emissions and, increasingly, the contribution from 70 times more reactive off gassing) mobilises the next incremental tranche of methane, increasing the temperature.

Emphasising and misrepresenting the uncertainty in climate science is commonly known as "climate change skepticism". Disputing the observable events that were forecast to occur with low probability above 450ppm that are already occurring at 390ppm is commonly known as "climate change denial". I'm intrigued as to why you are engaging in them.

 

[Dr Jon]

Dr Jon - live your life a little for fuck's sake (In any of the infinite number of possible ways) instead of this creepy vulgar misanthropic existence you ooze out on these boards

Your post reveals a delusional innumeracy which would explain why you find my contributions creepy, vulgar and misanthropic.

You are right that I waste far too much time on this though.

ETA
You can watch systemic collapse in real time here.

"Creepy, Vulgar & Misanthropic" - great t-shirt slogan!

 

[SpineyNorman]

Your post reveals a delusional innumeracy which would explain why you find my contributions creepy, vulgar and misanthropic.

You are right that I waste far too much time on this though.

ETA
You can watch systemic collapse in real time here.

"Creepy, Vulgar & Misanthropic" - great t-shirt slogan!

What are you on about? There are an infinite number of ways in which you could live your life rather than posting up daft hippyfascist stuff about us being a parasitical species.

The only reason why anyone with any sense gives a shit about the environment is that if we don't it will kill us. Human life is what matters, its preservation is what should drive how we approach this. If your "solution" involves a mass die off then it isn't a solution.

It's your creepy vulgar misanthropy, not "delusional innumeracy", that makes your posts come across as creepy, vulgar and misanthropic.

 

[Dr Jon]

Someone else with no fucking idea of what infinite means. Explains a lot...

 

[free spirit]

Are you incapable of civil debate?

350 ppm is the target level advocated in a 2008 paper by climate scientist James E. Hansen (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) and others including Rajendra Pachauri, the U.N.'s "top climate scientist" and leader of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jonathan Foley (Director of the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment), Peter H. Gleick (President of the Pacific Institute), and Adele C. Morris (Policy Director of the Brookings Institution's Climate and Energy Economics Project).

350 ppm is the target you would set if you are interested in physics. It explicitly recognises the existence of positive feedback mechanisms and seeks to avoid triggering them. (350 Science, "The Science of 350, the Most Important Number on the Planet", Bill McKibben 2009)

450 ppm is the target you would set if you are interested in politics. The flaw with the the political target is that the earth doesn't give a fuck about your politics.

erm yeah, 350ppm is pie in the sky wishful thinking. There is literally not an iota of a chance of us returning to 350ppm in my lifetime, or several further generations, hence the disdain with which I treated you bringing that up at this stage in this thread.

You claim to have studied this to some degree - is this genuinely novel information?

no, I was aware of it, I was also aware how utterly ridiculous it makes anyone look who argues that it's even vaguely possible to achieve it.

I understand James Hansen making the point from a scientific perspective, and he's basically saying exactly what I've been saying, in that we've already built in x amount of irreversible climate change even if we cut all emissions to zero immediately.

Anyone who thinks it is in any way realistic or useful to argue for a return to 350ppm may as well be campaigning for chocolate rain and marshmallow clouds, they're about as realistic a possibility.

I believe your data is from the IPCC 4th assessment, in which case it is 6 years old in a rapidly advancing discipline, with rapidly falling uncertainty. Even that old data showed there was a 30-80% chance of exceeding 2 degrees at 450ppm, in a system with multiple, thermally triggered, positive feedback thermal mechanisms. Would you get on a plane with that spread of probabilities of crashing?

I'm aware they're out of date, but wasn't posting it to show the precise probabilities, just to demonstrate in picture form to others reading this thread why 450ppm isn't some magical target figure beyond which we're all definitely so screwed that we must take action that would guarantee the overnight destruction of the world economy and plunge most of humanity back into the stone age.

Those probabilities are estimated from radiative forcing, which doesn't work in non-linear systems. Which is unfortunate, given that the earth's climate is a non-linear system. From the IPCC's own report:


In other words - "we haven't modelled positive feedback" - precisely the mechanism that will propel us irreversibly to 6 degrees or more if triggered.

Actually the feedback mechanisms are modelled to some extent within the models. The greenhouse gas concentrations alone wouldn't cause the levels of warming predicted in the models.

I agree though that the feedback mechanisms are the major cause of the uncertainties within the models, and would also agree that the indications from the Arctic in particular are that at least some of those feedback mechnisms seem to be kicking in earlier than had been expected by the majority within the IPCC.

If you check my posting history, you'll see that I've been making these very points on threads about methane clathrates, methane emissions from permafrost melting, feedbacks from the arctice ice melt etc for years, so find your accusations of me being a climate sceptic more amusing than anything.

Perhaps when you've had a little longer to think seriously about the issue and the best way of tackling it, stopped flapping about the sky falling in and put down your 'the end is nigh' boards, you'll come to understand the position I've taken on this thread.

 

[Falcon]

erm yeah, 350ppm is pie in the sky wishful thinking. There is literally not an iota of a chance of us returning to 350ppm in my lifetime, or several further generations, hence the disdain with which I treated you bringing that up at this stage in this thread. no, I was aware of it, I was also aware how utterly ridiculous it makes anyone look who argues that it's even vaguely possible to achieve it.

You have completely lost the thread of your argument. I am not arguing that it is achievable. I'm arguing that it is unachievable, and therefore that climate instability is one of the unavoidable systemic drivers of Systemic Collapse. You have just agreed with me. Thank you.

But it's not as if we have a choice. The most useful thing about having a number is that it forces us to grow up, to realize that the negotiations that will happen later this fall in Copenhagen aren't really about what we want to do, or what the Chinese want to do, or what Exxon Mobil wants to do. They're about what physics and chemistry want to do: the physical world has set its bottom line at 350, and it's not likely to budge.

-- 350: The most important number in the world. Bill McKibben

 

[free spirit]

You have completely lost the thread of your argument. I am not arguing that it is unachievable, and therefore that climate instability is one of the unavoidable systemic drivers of Systemic Collapse. You have just agreed with me. Thank you.

have you got an extra double negative in there?

And no, I really haven't agreed with you at all, or lost the thread of my argument, you just don't seem capable of grasping what I'm saying.

Your global system collapse will only occur to the extent you portray it at if we take the step you recommend and willfully destroy the world economy in order to achieve some notional target figure for CO2 concentrations at the expense of all other factors.

I've stated that some level of warming is not only invitable before, at and after 450ppm, but is already guaranteed to some extent just from current GG concentrations. This is very different to your position regarding the chances of us hitting 6 degrees of warming if we go above 450ppm being so high as to justify the total destruction of the world economy to prevent us going beyond 450ppm.

 

[Falcon]

have you got an extra double negative in there?

It was corrected before you pressed "Post Reply".

you just don't seem capable of grasping what I'm saying. Your global system collapse will only occur to the extent you portray it at if we take the step you recommend and willfully destroy the world economy in order to achieve some notional target figure for CO2 concentrations at the expense of all other factors.

I've stated that some level of warming is not only invitable before, at and after 450ppm, but is already guaranteed to some extent just from current GG concentrations. This is very different to your position regarding the chances of us hitting 6 degrees of warming if we go above 450ppm being so high as to justify the total destruction of the world economy to prevent us going beyond 450ppm.

Yes I think I do. You are saying:

(1) that you know better than the head of NOAA, the UN's chief Scientist, and a cluster of the most influential climate scientists and

(2) the reason the scientific threshold for safe carbon concentration is wrong is because we can't achieve it.

Meanwhile, you are arguing there will be just enough global warming (in a non-linear, positive feedback system) to justify everyone supporting your policies, but not so much global warming as to make your policies irrelevant i.e. "Goldilocks" climate change - not too warm, and not too cold.

I feel I have the measure of your argument now, thanks.

 

[free spirit]

so anyway, shall we put some numbers on the methane emissions from the arctic and permafrost?

It's not really possible to be exactly sure where all the additional methane from 2007 onwards is coming from, but it's reasonable to assume that this increase would be a maximum upper level for the methane coming from the arctic region that you mention, particularly as the timings fit with the observations on the ground.

Anyway, the annual rate of increase since 2007 from this graph is 5.9 +/- 1.6 ppb/yr.

This analysis is from Tamino. I think one of the comments on that article sums this up best

To put this into the context of the SRES scenarios used in the IPCC TAR and AR4 reports, methane concentrations are projected to reach 1900 to 2600 ppb by 2050 (all but one are 2300 or more). Since concentrations were about 1850 ppb
back in 2000, to reach 2300 ppb by 2050 translates to an average increase of about 9 ppb/year.
Best source that I could find quickly: Wigly et al, Journal of Climate, 2002 (http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0442%282002%29015%3C2690%3ARFDTRG%3E2.0.CO%3B2)

So I agree that the methane emissions from the arctic permafrost and clathrates are a factor we'd hoped wouldn't really kick in this much this early, but let's keep things in perspective. The emissions are currently below the methane levels used in the SRES scenarios in the IPCC estimates in the graph I posted, so your predictions of a high probability of runaway doom seem a little premature to me.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Hmmm. How come we keep moving away from consensus here. To quote Vicky Pope from the Hadley Centre:

All too often uncertainty in science offers a convenient excuse for delaying important decisions. However, in the case of climate change there is overwhelming evidence that the climate is changing — in part due to human activities — and that changes will accelerate if emissions continue unabated.

That's a position that I think every single poster on this thread can subscribe to.

I have to say that I find McGibben's approach unhelpful, and also unscientific. His statement that 'the physical world has set its bottom line at 350, and it's not likely to budge' is a misrepresentation of the case in precisely the same way that Falcon has been misrepresenting it, carried away with his own rhetoric.

 

[Falcon]

I have to say that this climate-skepticism-by-stealth is perhaps the most unexpected and fascinating behaviour to have been exposed by this conversation. It's all the more insidious for its victims being unaware of it - I'm prepared to accept that Free Spirit is sincere when he claims to be concerned.

Nothing alters a simple fact: we are already far too late. The colossal carbon buffer afforded by our discovered and accessible hydrocarbon resources, coupled to the multi-decade time delay between our actions today and their measurable response on the environment, in a system possessed of a number of aggressive positive feedback systems, constitutes a vast monkey trap for our species. Our immediate desire, coupled to the deficiencies in our sensory information, overwhelms our higher order faculties, even up to the point of death.

In that context, anyone adopting the viewpoint that all will be well, we still have decades and, anyway, it's extremely unlikely that bad things at a civilisational scale are going to happen is deluded, and to the extent that he infects others with his complacency (however well concealed in the language of concern), is dangerous.

 

[Falcon]

The emissions are currently below the methane levels used in the SRES scenarios in the IPCC estimates in the graph I posted, so your predictions of a high probability of runaway doom seem a little premature to me.

Arctic methane emission is a (non-linear) function of pack ice area. The Arctic is melting at its fastest rate ever, and accelerating. On current trend it will have disappeared entirely within 30 years. And I'm quite certain you can't advance a hypothesis for why the tundra methane (orders of magnitude larger volumes) can't be mobilised by the same mechanism. You seem oblivious to the impact of time constant in the earth's climate system and your skepticism about methane level trends, based on data obtained before the Arctic melted and tundra warmed, seem appallingly complacent, to me.