No Ice Age for 100,000 Years.

Back in the 1600s through the beginning of World War One, we were in a slightly icehouse climate called The Little Ice Age. And by rights, we really should be going into another one right now. Just as the news media told us we would be back in the 1970s. But with 405 ppm CO2 (485 ppm CO2e) in the atmosphere we should consider ourselves lucky if it comes about. Because at 280 ppm in the 1880s towards the end of the LIA, which would still be the approximate CO2 content if we hadn't burnt all those fossil fuels, especially coal and petroleum, we would instead be heading headlong into yet another major ice age -- when all of Canada, the USA northern tier, and much of Northern Europe including Russia and Siberia -- would become glaciated: covered with ice up to three miles thick.

We narrowly missed a new ice age, and now we won’t see one for a long time.
by Scott K. Johnson - arstechnica.com
13 January, 2016

Before fossil fuels rendered this moot, conditions were nearly right.

Recorded human history has played out within one type of climate—an interglacial period. During the glacial periods of the last million years (commonly referred to as “ice ages”), great ice sheets grew to cover Canada and some points south, as well as Northern Europe and much of Russia.

In the 1970s, we learned there was a consistent 100,000-year heartbeat to this back-and-forth cycle governed by subtle patterns in Earth’s orbit. The thing is, it’s about time for the next heartbeat. We’re at the part of the cycle where the interglacial period should be wrapping up and the slow but inexorable descent into another ice age would begin.

But that hasn’t happened, and it’s not going to any time soon. Our current breakneck emissions of greenhouse gases will see to that. Still, the scientific question is worth asking: what, exactly, does it take to start off an ice age?

We are currently at a low point in summer sunlight reaching the northern high latitude region, which is how the orbital cycles turn into glacial cycles. Because there are several orbital cycles involved, the peaks and valleys in that sunlight are complex—it’s not as simple as a sine wave oscillating between a constant high and a constant low. But there were two interglacial periods in the last million years (one 400,000 years ago and one 800,000 years ago) with a similar combination of orbital cycles. Both crossed the threshold into an ice age when they hit this low point in sunlight.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/we-narrowly-missed-a-new-ice-age-and-now-we-wont-see-one-for-a-long-time/

Now we're going to have a super-long interglacial period for at least 50,000 years, perhaps 100,000 years. And it might include a second Permian Exstinktion [sic!].

Top Scientists Don't Hold Back on Weird Weather and Anthropogenic Global Warming.

From Robertscribbler.

Top scientists from all over the world are now speaking out about climate change: that yes, the present weird weather including the El Diablo (El Nino on streroids) is linked with the increasing carbon content in our atmosphere, brought to you by our Happy Motoring!^(TM) lifestyle.

UK Floods. Source: Her Majesty's Government of the UK (Hat tip to dtlange)

 Amidst Disasters Around the World, Top Scientists Declare Links Between Extreme Weather and Climate Change

By Robertscribbler
31 December 2015

Andy Lee Robinson said it all-too-well — “El Nino + Climate Change = El Diablo.”

And as the Washington Post so cogently notes — the world is now experiencing a rash of Freakish Weather from the North Pole to South America. It’s what appears to be happening as these two major record weather makers fire off simultaneously. A grim tally that includes the highest river levels ever seen in Missouri, the worst floods England has seen since the Middle Ages, the first time the North Pole has seen significantly above freezing temperatures during Winter in modern record keeping, city and region-crippling droughts spanning Central and South America, and seemingly everywhere, but especially in the North Atlantic where Greenland melt outflow has backed up the Gulf Stream, storms that seem to laugh in the face of our weather history.

Dr. Jeff Masters, at Weather Underground, yesterday made this grim observation:

“This isn’t the climate I grew up with. We didn’t see this kind of weather in the 20th century. It’s just a continuation of the crazy weather we’ve seen over the course of the 21st century so far.”

Attributing Single Extreme Weather Events to Climate Change

But Dr. Masters will be the first to tell you that it’s tough to scientifically prove that any one storm or weather system was altered by climate change. In essence, it’s like trying to prove that this home-run or that shut-out was caused by a baseball player taking steroids. We know that the steroids result in a changed performance by the athlete, just as we know that climate change alters the overall performance of weather. But it’s devilishly difficult for scientists to pin down the exact climate change mechanisms going into this or that monster storm or mega-drought. It doesn’t mean that climate change or steroids aren’t at work, because they are. It’s just hard to pin down exactly when.

It’s this gray area that climate change deniers and fossil fuel backers have exploited to generate doubt that climate change is happening at all. They’ve hyper-focused on this storm or that drought, rather than the larger extreme weather and temperature trend — which is clearly changing and worsening. It’s almost as if a group of baseball fans got together to defend the use of steroids in the sport and placed the burden of proof on whether or not an individual home run was caused by the stuff. A false analysis that puts both scientists and those concerned about the environment into the ridiculous position of having to prove the existence of climate change in one storm or a single drought. The ludicrous assumption being that, otherwise, climate change doesn’t exist at all.

But merchant of doubters didn’t count on one thing — the advancement of science.

http://robertscribbler.com/2015/12/31/amidst-disasters-around-the-world-top-scientists-declare-links-between-extreme-weather-and-climate-change/

And it's not just Dr. Jeff Masters (two tips o' th' hat to todaysguestis). Several other scientists weighed in on the link between global warming and our weird weather, according to the UK Independent:

“There is no doubt in my mind that climate change is partly responsible for the flooding across the north of England. These floods are in part due to greenhouse gas emissions.” 

Climate scientist Professor Piers Forster, University of Leeds

“Simple physics tells us that warmer air can hold more water vapour. The global warming that we have experienced so far has increased the atmosphere’s moisture storage capacity by about seven per cent. This is undisputed science and it clearly increases the potential for extreme rainfall and flooding.”

Paul Williams, meterologist at Reading University (UK)

It is undeniably true that warmer air can hold more moisture, just as warmer oceans increase the moisture content of the atmosphere by about six per cent for every 1C warming. In simple terms, the more moisture there is in the atmosphere, the more additional energy it contains. “So from basic physical understanding of weather systems it is entirely plausible that climate change has exacerbated what has been a period of very wet and stormy weather arising from natural variability.”

Dame Julia Sligo, the chief scientist at the Met Office

"We found that global warming increased the likelihood of the heavy precipitation associated with a storm like Desmond. An event like this is now roughly 40 per cent more likely due to climate change than it was in the past, with an uncertainty range of five to 80 per cent.”

Friederike Otto of Oxford University

(Dr. Otto is a co-author of a study already submitted to a peer-reviewed journal suggesting that climate change has increased the chances of Desmond-like storms by about 40 per cent and prepared by a team of scientists from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and the University of Oxford.)

"The armchair meteorologists who continue to insist this is all just weather are starting to sound a little bit like Aunty Mabel expressing surprise at her remarkable luck in boardgames. The weather has changed, and we have changed it: get used to it. Those with more open minds are asking, ‘Is this the new normal?’ Unfortunately, the answer is ‘No’ – ‘normal weather’, unchanged over generations apart from random fluctuations, is a thing of the past."

Professor Myles Allen of Oxford University

And Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State University, co-author of Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change and creator of the "infamous" hockey-stick curve weighs in on this, too, in an interview with MSNBC on the 2 January concerning El Niño, climate change and the recent extreme weather events (tip o' th' hat to dtlange).

And NASA says El Niño’s worst is yet to come!

NASA scientists are saying the warm weather cycle is expected to unload its biggest punch in early 2016.

According to its latest satellite imagery, the strong El Niño that’s been brewing in the Pacific Ocean has shown “no signs of waning” and is on pace to match or even surpass the 1997–98 El Niño event—the biggest ever recorded.

“In 2014, the current El Niño teased us—wavering off and on,” Josh Willis, project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. “But in early 2015, atmospheric conditions changed, and El Niño steadily expanded in the central and eastern Pacific.”

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-el-ni-o-worst-yet-come-203204128.html;_ylt=AwrTccn1hIlWezMA0nEnnIlQ;_ylu=X3oDMTEyYXAwN25lBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQjExMTVfMQRzZWMDc2M-

So in the words of the immortal Margo Channing (Bette Davis): "Fasten your seatbelts! It's going to be a bumpy ride."

El Diablo's Weird Weather To Bring Floods to Lower Mississippi Valley.

AGW + El Niño → El Diablo (first coined by Andy Lee Robinson, here).

It should be common knowledge now what an El Niño is.

And as everyone ought to know but most deny -- AGW is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, sending excess Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere at a rate of 3 ppm per year.  We don't need to use fossil fuels, of course. Wind, solar, hydro can Carbon-free substitutes for electricity-generation fossil fuels, usually coal and natural gas. It'll be a long and difficult transition requiring heroic efforts to get off of our dependency on fossil fuels, but it's doable so long as there is the political will to do it. Plus, they need subsidies, of course. But then again, fossil fuels are also being subsidized, at a rate of $5 Trillion a year.

And a tip o' the hat to Robertscribbler - I stole the following paragraph from him! ;^)

To be very clear, though, we have replacements for fossil fuels now already. And there are vast political and economic forces that are still arrayed against them despite the obvious proof of the old fuel’s terribly destructive nature occurring in these freak weather and climate events now, globally, on a nearly daily basis. So it’s not just a new energy source that is needed, we have some of those already. And it’s not just an obvious crisis that’s affecting people everywhere. It’s the fall of an old, powerful, and now very destructive order that is necessary. An order that is pervasive and influential as any that has ever existed.

And as long as this old order continues not lead, not follow refuse to get out of the way, and propagandize and bamboozle the public, we will continue to burn fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow, until economic reality -- that is, the bottom line -- intervenes and makes it too expensive to profitably extract or mine fossil fuels and sell it at a price the end consumer can afford.

And so long as we burn fossil fuels, we will continue to increase the Carbon Dioxide content in the Atmosphere, and continue to contribute to and aggravate Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). And with AGW comes weird weather, which will get weirder and weirder, and worse and worse, until the climate restabil-izes.

And speaking of weird weather: the floods in the Mississippi, as well in other rivers such as the Ohio and the Arkansas, are going to endure a spell.

Long-duration Mississippi River Flood event underway

Terry Pinder, Daily Kos
30 December 2015

Heavy rains from Christmas week have drained into the Mississippi, forcing it to rise substantially.  This is a significant Mississippi River flood from about St. Louis southward.

This flood will last well into January.

This is just the Mississippi. The Ohio and the Arkansas, both of which empty into the Mississippi, are also both in flood, cresting not until early next week.

Jeff Masters writes:

On January 20, the flood crest is expected to arrive in New Orleans, bringing the Mississippi River to its 17-foot flood stage in the city, just 3 feet below the tops of the levees. In past years, though, when the river has been forecast to rise to 17 feet in the city, the Army Corps of Engineers has opened up the Bonnet Carre Spillway in St. Charles Parish, which diverts water into Lake Pontchartrain and keeps the river from reaching flood stage in New Orleans. The Corps may also be forced to open the Morganza Floodway in Pointe Coupee Parish, which would divert water down the Atchafalaya River.... The Corps also has the option of increasing the flow of Mississippi River water into the Atchafalaya at the Old River Control Structure in Concordia Parish

The Army Corp actually does know what level of flood will destroy Old River Control, wash Morgan City (which sits at the mouth of the Atchafalaya) into the Gulf and leave Baton Rouge and New Orleans on a fetid, salty swamp arm. You can read about it here.  Luckily this flood, this time, does not appear to be the one.

I have concerns that this will not be the end of it. The atmosphere is giving signs that it will shift in the next couple weeks—the Great Pacific Warm Blob that killed so much sea life and influenced much of the weather for the last couple years across North America is finally dead and El Niño is locked in.  It is going to get wet in southern California and the Southwest---and points east.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/12/30/1464743/-Long-duration-Mississippi-River-Flood-event-underway

Typical El Niño effects. Source: srh.noaa.gov.

Points East, meaning: the Great Plains, Texas and Dixieland. Well during an El Nino event, the US Gulf Coast and Southeast are supposed to be cool and wet. Until last night, it's been mostly warm and wet. Now for a short while at least, it's going to be cold and wet like a dog's nose. :^(

It's Happening!

Climate change is paying no attention to Peak Oil -- other than respond positively (read: negatively, for us humans and all other creatures) -- as the present production peak, which may be followed by yet another, higher peak when Iran's oil production comes on line to the market, will spew more CO2 than ever into the atmosphere, assuming the demand that has been destroyed is resurrected. Otherwise the glut of oil will just pile up in storage. But eventually it will be burnt; it's a question of when. The added carbon dioxide, along with the beginning of the failure of so many carbon sinks, has will help the atmospheric carbon dioxide increase to accelerate, as it just did this past year: 4 ppm year-over-year.

Non-tropical Cyclone Frank. Current Pressure 928 mb.
This storm is the size of Europe and is as strong as a major hurricane.
Source: dtlange at Robertscribbler.

Anyway, one of the responses is this wicked non-tropical cyclone the size of Europe in the North Atlantic that has bombed out to 928 mb -- Major Hurricane strength, bringing rain and above-freezing temperatures (34 degrees F = 1 C last night) to the North Pole. Robertscribbler, now the bard of climate change reporters, has this to say:

Warm Storm Brings Rain Over Arctic Sea Ice in Winter

By Robertscribbler, 29 December 2015

The Starks were wrong. Winter isn’t coming. It’s dying.

As The Atlantic so aptly notes, the hottest year in the global climate record is ending with a Storm that will Unfreeze the North Pole. A warm storm that is now predicted to bring never-before-seen above freezing temperatures in the range of 32 to 36 degrees Fahrenheit for the highest Latitude in the Northern Hemisphere by afternoon tomorrow. A storm expected to dump six inches of rain and bring 80 mile per hour winds to a Northern England already suffering the worst flooding events in all of its long history. A storm that will rage ashore in Iceland packing 90-100 mile per hour winds and hurl both heavy rains and snows across that volcanic isle.

The impacts of this storm, which the UK Met Office is now calling Frank, could well be tremendous. Cumbria in Northern England may be set to experience yet another ‘worst flood on record’ — one of three occurring just this month. And the 920 mb range central low of this sprawling system is forecast to rip through the heart of Iceland itself. But the more visible risk of damages to England and Iceland may well pale in comparison to the quiet, yet drastic impacts taking place in the far north. 

As the first front of warm air proceeded over the ice pack to the north of Svalbard, the rains fell through 35-40 degree (F) air temperatures. It splattered upon Arctic Ocean ice that rarely even sees rain during summer-time. Its soft pitter-patter a whisper that may well be the sound to mark the end of a geological age.

What does the beginning of the end of Winter sound like? It’s the soft splash of rain over Arctic Ocean sea ice during what should be its coldest season.

http://robertscribbler.com/2015/12/29/warm-storm-brings-rain-over-arctic-sea-ice-in-winter/

What will Russia do when they can no longer depend on General Winter to kick hordes of invading armies out, like they've had for so long, at least since Napoleon's time.

Of course, Eurasia is not the only place affected by all this weird weather caused by El Nino and a meandering Jet Stream. The Christmas Weekend Storm of the Four Seasons over the US midsection is sending an immense amount of floodwater down Midwestern watercourses into the Mississppi River, flooding lots of floodplains as it goes.

When the water reaches New Orleans about the time of the Martin Luther King holiday. On its way there, it will pass the Old River Control Structure, which keeps the Mississippi from escaping down the Atchafalaya and which almost failed in the 1973 spring flood, and put it to the second worst flood level ever. And although they do not yet anticipate it, the Army Corps of Engineers might open up the Bonnet Carre Spillway and the Morganza Spillway to relieve pressure on this structure and the floodwalls and embankment levees in front of New Orleans.

And this is just two of the many, many meterological phenomena (weather events) which attest to climate change, like the changing intensity of rainfall over England, whose North is badly flooded now: that global warming is happening just as the climate scientists in the past predicted it would. 

Why COP 21 Is a Fraud... Last Part.

Well I've exposited why COP 21 is a fraud, and let John Michael Greer have his say, mainly because it's targets for emissions curbs are non-binding, because there is no commitment to not continue using fossil fuels, and because countries are going ahead with fossil fuel reserve exploitation and other fossil fuel energy projects anyway. Another reason comes from an old study: that the present (2005 = +/-376 ppmV) overburden of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere will break the 2.0 degrees C (3.6 F) limit anyway.

 

Atmospheric CO2 is rising around 1.9 ppm per year, up from a pre-industrial level of 280 ppm by volume.
Source: Wikimedia Commons via Tom Murphy, Do the Math.

 

On avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system: Formidable challenges ahead.

V. Ramanathan and Y. Feng
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego

Edited by William C. Clark
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved July 24, 2008

Abstract:

The observed increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) since the preindustrial era has most likely committed the world to a warming of 2.4°C (1.4°C to 4.3°C) above the preindustrial surface temperatures. The committed warming is inferred from the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates of the greenhouse forcing and climate sensitivity. The estimated warming of 2.4°C is the equilibrium warming above preindustrial temperatures that the world will observe even if GHG concentrations are held fixed at their 2005 concentration levels but without any other anthropogenic forcing such as the cooling effect of aerosols. The range of 1.4°C to 4.3°C in the committed warming overlaps and surpasses the currently perceived threshold range of 1°C to 3°C for dangerous anthropogenic interference with many of the climate-tipping elements such as the summer arctic sea ice, Himalayan–Tibetan glaciers, and the Greenland Ice Sheet. IPCC models suggest that ≈25% (0.6°C) of the committed warming has been realized as of now. About 90% or more of the rest of the committed warming of 1.6°C will unfold during the 21st century, determined by the rate of the unmasking of the aerosol cooling effect by air pollution abatement laws and by the rate of release of the GHGs-forcing stored in the oceans. The accompanying sea-level rise can continue for more than several centuries. Lastly, even the most aggressive CO₂ mitigation steps as envisioned now can only limit further additions to the committed warming, but not reduce the already committed GHGs warming of 2.4°C.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/16/0803838105.abstract

I repeat the finding of the above study, that with the 2005 Atmospheric content of about 376 ppmV CO2, there is already 2.4 C (4.3 F) degrees of global warming baked in the cake. We've gone through about half that now.

And even what global warming we've passed through so far appears to be just too much to avoid global weirding and dangerous climate change, what with the Christmas weekend storms (with tornadoes) that left so much rain on the Mid-South and Great Plains that the Mississippi will be experiencing historic levels of flooding over the next few weeks. The place to watch may not St. Louis, or New Orleans, but the Old River Control Structure that keeps the Mississippi from escaping down the Atchafalaya River. That structure almost failed in the famous 1973 floods. Dr. Jeff Masters of Weather Underground reports that the NWS River Forecast Center predicts that "the Mississippi River would crest at Red River Landing, where the Old River Control Structure is located, on January 19. The predicted crest of 62.5' is just 0.9' below the all-time record crest of 63.39' set on May 18, 2011."

The global weirding we've experienced so far has wrecked the climates of the Arctic, as Robertscribbler reports:

Record Hot Arctic: NOAA’s 2015 Report Card Shows Signs of Failing Climates

by Robertscribbler,  21 December 2015

In NOAA’s most recent annual Arctic Report Card, the records just keep falling as the litany of global warming related events appearing throughout the far north continued to crop up with ever-more dizzying frequency...

NOAA’s Arctic report is a stark expose of the state of the Arctic climate. What we view now is a system undergoing a rapid and dynamic transition from its previously stable state to something that is entirely new and alien to human civilization.

The 12 month period of October 2014 to September 2015 was the hottest one year time-frame since record keeping began for the Arctic back in 1900. As a result of these record warm temperatures, Arctic sea ice during the Winter hit its lowest maximum extent ever seen. Summer sea ice extent was likewise greatly reduced hitting its 4th lowest extent ever recorded. Old, thick sea ice which represented 20 percent of the ice pack in 1985, has precipitously declined to a mere 3 percent of the ice pack today. Snow cover also took a hit, declining to its second lowest extent on record during 2015 and striking a range of 50 percent below the typical average for the month.

Overall warming of the Arctic is at a much more rapid pace than the rest of the world. This accelerated pace of warming is due, in large part, to loss of snow and sea ice reflectivity during the Spring and Summer months. As a result, more heat is absorbed into dark land and ocean surfaces — a heat that is retained throughout the Arctic over longer and longer periods. And, though NOAA doesn’t report it in the above video, overall higher concentrations of greenhouse gasses like methane and CO2 in or near the Arctic region also contribute to a higher rate of warming (see NOAA’s ESRL figures). In a world that is now rapidly proceeding beyond the 400 ppm CO2 and 485 ppm CO2e threshold, this is exactly the kind of Northern Hemisphere polar amplification we would expect to see.

http://robertscribbler.com/2015/12/21/record-hot-arctic-noaas-2015-report-card-shows-signs-of-failing-climates/
 

And this record hot Arctic, acting in concert with El Nino and The Blob (record warm water and high pressure air out in the Pacific), is spawning a wicked frontal system possessing multiple lows, hurricane-force winds and an area the size of small continents (examples.: Europe, Australia). This system is just one of the first h'ors d'oeuvres in the just-commencing multiple course meal of dangerous climate change that Jim Hansen called The Storms of My Grandchildren. I do not expect these storms to cease until the overheating of the planet finally reaches an equilibrium a thousand years from now.

 

Warm Arctic Storm To Hurl Hurricane Force Winds at UK and Iceland, Push Temps to 36-72+ Degrees (F) Above Normal at North Pole

by Robertscribbler, 27 December 2015

We’ve probably never seen weather like what’s being predicted for a vast region stretching from the North Atlantic to the North Pole and on into the broader Arctic this coming week. But it’s all in the forecast — an Icelandic low that’s stronger than most hurricanes featuring a wind field stretching over hundreds and hundreds of miles. One that taps warm tropical air and hurls it all the way to the North Pole and beyond during Winter time. And it all just reeks of a human-forced warming of the Earth’s climate…

 

Sunday afternoon, a powerful, hurricane force low pressure system was in the process of rounding the southern tip of Greenland. This burly 960 mb beast roared out of an increasingly unstable Baffin Bay on Christmas. As it rounded Greenland and entered the North Atlantic, it pulled behind it a thousand-mile-wide gale force wind field even as it lashed the tip of Greenland with Hurricane force gusts. To its east, the storm now links with three other lows. Lows that are, even now, drawing south-to-north winds up from a region just west of Gibraltar, on past the UK, up beyond Iceland, over Svalbard, and into the Arctic Ocean itself.

 

GFS forecasts predict a storm bombing out between 920 and 930 mb over Iceland by Wednesday. It’s a storm that could rival some of the strongest such systems ever recorded for the North Atlantic. But this storm’s influence is unique in its potential to shove an unprecedented amount of warm air into the Arctic. A warm storm for the Arctic Winter time.

 

Over the next few days these three lows are predicted to combine into a storm the likes of which the far North Atlantic rarely ever sees. This storm is expected to center over Iceland. But it will have far-reaching impacts ranging from the UK and on north to the pole itself. As the lows combine, GFS predicts them to bomb out into an unprecedentedly deep low featuring 920 to 930 mb (and possibly lower) minimum central pressures by this coming Wednesday. These pressures are comparable to the very extreme storm systems that raged through the North Atlantic during the Winter of 2013. Systems that featured minimum pressures in the range of 928 to 930 mb.

 

It’s worth noting that the lowest pressure ever recorded for the North Atlantic occurred in the much further southward forming Hurricane Wilma at 882 mb.

 

By early Wednesday, temperatures at the North Pole are expected to exceed 1 degree Celsius readings. Such temperatures are in the range of more than 40 degrees Celsius (72 degrees Fahrenheit) above average.

 

http://robertscribbler.com/2015/12/27/warm-arctic-storm-to-hurl-hurricane-force-winds-at-uk-and-iceland-push-temps-to-72-degrees-f-above-normal-at-north-pole/

And it's not just storms we have to worry about. It's also wicked bad droughts, like the one California recently experienced for the past four years -- and is still experiencing to some degree and in some areas.

A study was made for California’s millions of trees and it looks like the drought stress on them has been extremely bad: bad enough to cause about half of them to be so water stressed that they’ll die if the drought comes back.

California’s Future Is in the Hands of Its Dying Trees

Newsweek – By Zoë Schlanger 29 December 2015

The past four years of punishing drought have badly hurt California’s forests. Rain was scarce, the days were too hot, and this year’s wildfire season was the worst anyone has seen in years, burning up nearly 10 million acres across the West. For the first time, a team of researchers has measured the severity of the blow the drought dealt the trees, uncovering potential future destruction in the process. The resulting paper, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a rich visual testament to just how much California needs its trees and how close the state is to losing 58 million of them.

A team at the Carnegie Institution for Science, led by ecologist Greg Asner, used a laser-guided imaging tool, more properly referred to as high-fidelity imaging spectroscopy (HiFIS), mounted on a plane to sweep over California, taking snapshots that revealed how much water content the forest canopy had lost over time. In these images, the trees that appear red and orange are severely depleted of water. Light trees, in shades of tan, are trees under “drought stress” resulting from this past year’s dry season. The trees colored in blue are “doing OK,” Asner says.

In total, the team found that up to 58 million large trees, shown in red, have been heavily impacted by the drought. If the drought recurs, or if the El Niño keeps the heat turned up in the region, Asner says these trees will likely die. New tree growth would also be suppressed, leaving room for shrublands or grasslands to take over, destroying the current ecosystem of plants and animals entirely. That poses a host of new questions for wildlife management and conservation. “For example,” Asner says, “if we’re going to lose habitat, what does that mean for bear populations?”

http://news.yahoo.com/californias-future-hands-dying-trees-161512163.html

Of course, it's not just California. As Colorado Bob said to me today, Every tree everywhere is under attack. All over the world.

And this, at only half of the 2.4 degree Celsius temperature rise (+4.3 F) that we've already baked into the cake of Anthropogenic Global Warming. And Peak Oil won't reduce it, not one iota!

Dios mío! El cambio climático!

"My God! The Climate Change!," exclaimed a Shorecrest (Miami) resident in Spanish to Ms. Nicole Hernandez Hammer with the Union of Concerned Scientists one day this past October, about a month past the blood Supermoon in September. That day, like on other days with high-tide inundations before it, the water was coming out of the storm drains and into the street -- even out of the ground and onto the front lawns of people's houses,  I have a friend in Oakland Park who used to live in Shorecrest -- NE 84th Street to be exact. And now the Miami metropolitan area, in fact the whole of South Florida, will have to be abandoned in about two decades due to sea-level rise. In fact, there may be divestment in Shorecrest already -- there is a vacant lot at the corner of NE 79th Street and 10th Avenue, where a multifamily or commercial building once stood.

At the same time, Florida Governor Rick Scott denies there is any climate change happening and has even instructed the engineers, researchers and scientists under the state's employ or contract to not mention the term "climate change" or even sea level rise, but instead, if they must mention anything of the sort, couch them in more innocuous terms like "nusiance flooding" for tidal inundations from sea-level rise. You can't make this stuff up! When such flooding occurs, the irony, as Al Gore said at the time, "is just excruciatingly painful."

And you can't build embankments in Miami to keep out the sea... all the bedrock is porous limestone!

The Siege of Miami

Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker.  

The city of Miami Beach floods on such a predictable basis that if, out of curiosity or sheer perversity, a person wants to she can plan a visit to coincide with an inundation. Knowing the tides would be high around the time of the “super blood moon,” in late September, I arranged to meet up with Hal Wanless, the chairman of the University of Miami’s geological-sciences department. Wanless, who is seventy-three, has spent nearly half a century studying how South Florida came into being. From this, he’s concluded that much of the region may have less than half a century more to go. 

We had breakfast at a greasy spoon not far from Wanless’s office, then set off across the MacArthur Causeway. (Out-of-towners often assume that Miami Beach is part of Miami, but it’s situated on a separate island, a few miles off the coast.) It was a hot, breathless day, with a brilliant blue sky. Wanless turned onto a side street, and soon we were confronting a pond-sized puddle. Water gushed down the road and into an underground garage. We stopped in front of a four-story apartment building, which was surrounded by a groomed lawn. Water seemed to be bubbling out of the turf. Wanless took off his shoes and socks and pulled on a pair of polypropylene booties. As he stepped out of the car, a woman rushed over. She asked if he worked for the city. He said he did not, an answer that seemed to disappoint but not deter her. She gestured at a palm tree that was sticking out of the drowned grass.

“Look at our yard, at the landscaping,” she said. “That palm tree was super-expensive.” She went on, “It’s crazy—this is saltwater.” 

“Welcome to rising sea levels,” Wanless told her. 

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sea levels could rise by more than three feet by the end of this century. The United States Army Corps of Engineers projects that they could rise by as much as five feet; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts up to six and a half feet. According to Wanless, all these projections are probably low. In his office, Wanless keeps a jar of meltwater he collected from the Greenland ice sheet. He likes to point out that there is plenty more where that came from. 

“Many geologists, we’re looking at the possibility of a ten-to-thirty-foot range by the end of the century,” he told me. 

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/the-siege-of-miami

I went to the University of Miami back in the day. And about two decades from now -- it is laible to look like this: six feet of sea level rise flooding a considerable amount of land, with a lot of campus buildings having "wet feet." A lot of Miami-Dade County -- not to mention Broward -- will be a lot worse off, requiring complete evacuations and wholesale abandonments of all but the highest areas.

A lot of this "nusiance flooding" is being caused by the backing-up of the Gulf Stream due to meltwater pulses from Greenland. The Sea Level in Miami is rising at an inch a year due to this.  But Miami is not the only place that's getting flooded -- strong storms caused by the temperature gradient between the warm middle North Atlantic and the cold waters around Greenland are pummelling the UK.

Floods of a biblical proportion leave cities, towns and villages under water

Robin McKie The Guardian

It was the day the floodwaters inexorably advanced across the Pennines, leaving much of the north of England sodden and beleaguered. From Greater Manchester in the north-west to parts of North Yorkshire some 50 miles to the east, Boxing Day 2015 will be remembered as the day the rains came. 

In Todmorden, in West Yorkshire’s Calder Valley, Rebecca Marshall was last night facing the grim prospect of having to abandon her home as the floodwaters slowly rose around her house. The incessant rains had left the little town cut off after all the roads in and out were flooded. 

By late afternoon the waters were “inches” from the top of the local defence wall and Marshall was stuck inside her home without electricity. Then floodwaters started to rise through her floorboards. “At the moment in our house it’s ankle-deep,” she said. 

“There’s about three feet of water outside our door. With no electricity we will have to move out. However, I don’t think we can get out of the town. All the roads in and out of Todmorden have been closed. Fortunately we have had friends and family turn up from all over the place offering to help.”  

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/floods-of-a-biblical-proportion-leave-cities-towns-and-villages-under-water/ar-BBnWzK7

It got so bad in the city of York, that the authorities had to raise flood barriers.

York's Fight Against Flooding As Barrier Raised

Sky News

Thousands of homes are being evacuated in York, since the flood barrier protecting the town was lifted last night. 

The Environment Agency said it was forced to lift the Foss flood barrier after water entered the building, putting pumps in danger of failing due to electrical problems. 

If the barrier became stuck in the 'down' position, it would not have been able to discharge water into the River Ouse. 

So the agency made the decision to lift it, warning residents in the city centre to move valuables to upper floors and prepare to leave their homes.  

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/yorks-fight-against-flooding-as-barrier-raised/ar-BBnX0le

The flooding is so bad in Midland and Northern England, that bridges could collapse, taking the structures built thereon (it's a European habit before the twentieth century) with them. And there's a "hurricane" still to come.

And the Mississippi River will reach flood stage at New Orleans around Martin Luther King Day due to all the recent rains in the Great Plains and the Midwest and Mid-South. Let's hope the levees hold.

These events, and others like them, shows that adapting to climate change is not going to merely cost chump change. A lot or resources, including energy resources, will have to go into this. Has anyone figured that peak oil, and peak coal and gas, may restrict the availability of these resources?

Natural Gas Leak in Southern California Emitting TONS of Methane.

In the first month, 80,000 tons, which make 960,000 tons a year. And the company responsible for the leak is flummoxed as how its crews and contractors are going to fix it.

From Zero Hedge:

California's Worst Gas Leak in 40 Years (and Crews Can't Stop It)

While world leaders signed the ‘historic’ agreement signed in Paris to fix the world’s “greatest threat,” a natural gas storage site in southern California is belching 145,000 pounds per hour of Methane – a greenhouse gas 70 times more potent than carbon dioxide. What is worse, while official proclaim this a “top priority” a fix won’t arrive until spring as emergency crews recognize “the leak was far from routine, and the problem was deeper underground.”

 

As Wired reports, in just the first month, that’s added up to 80,000 tons, or about a quarter of the state’s ordinary methane emissions over the same period !!!

 

The Federal Aviation Administration recently banned low-flying planes from flying over the site, since engines plus combustible gas equals kaboom.

 

And crews can’t set a deliberate fire, also known as flaring, which they often do at other remote areas with excess gas. The leak is so big and the flare would be so hot that it could make the mess even harder to contain.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-20/californias-worst-gas-leak-40-years-and-crews-cant-stop-it

And from the Wall Street Journal:

Gas Leak Fuels Frustration

Southern California residents go to hotels and students relocate in ninth week of ordeal.

“It’s like we’ve been hit by a Mack truck,” said Paula Cracium, president of the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council. “Most people didn’t even realize the gas storage field was up there.” The nearest houses are more than a mile from the underground gas-storage field and at approximately 1,200 feet lower elevation.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/gas-leak-fuels-frustration-1450653059

Of course, 1 MT a year is nothing compared to a 50 GT outburst of Methane from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf clathrates, which according to Russian Arctic field research scientists Natalia Shakharov and Igor Semilitev back in 2012, "could go at any time."

What Earth Would Look Like if All the Ice in the World Melted.

Here are maps of the Earth that shows the shorelines that would exist if all the ice in the world became unfrozen.

Example: Antarctica with no ice. Source: mymodernnet.com.

This wouldn't be a problem if Simon Bar-Sinister caused all the water in the world to  DRY UP! But we'd have a different problem, now, would we?

Since Simon is a cartoon character, we have no fear of that other "problem." But we also should have no fear of the ice-free planetary conditions since the Business As Usual (A1F1 = RCP 8.5) global warming future will not be met due to lack of fossil fuels that can be profitably mined or extracted; still, we should expect to reach about 550 ppm CO2 by Century's end. That will give us minimum 3 to 4 degrees C (5.4 to 7.2 F). Now how much sea level rise will we get?

At 3 C warming, about 25 meters, which yield 80 feet.

And it looks like Nature had already opened her Pandora’s Box.

October 2015 temps of 1.28 C above 1880s levels…. That’s 64% of the allotted 2 C target. Worse when you compare it to the newly-agreed 1.5 C target from the COP21 conference.

[December 2014 through November 2015 temps of] 1.06 C Above 1880: Climate Year 2015 Shatters All Previous Records For Hottest Ever.

Robertscribbler 14 December 2015

We knew it was going to be a record breaker. We knew that atmospheric greenhouse gasses in the range of 400 parts per million CO2 and 485 parts per million CO2e, when combined with one of the top three strongest El Ninos in the Pacific, would result in new all-time global record high temperatures. But what we didn’t know was how substantial the jump would ultimately be.

 

Today, the numbers were made public by NASA. And I hate to say it, but it’s a real doozy. Overall, according to NASA, Climate Year 2015 — the 12 month period from December of 2014 through November of 2015 — was 0.84 C hotter than NASA’s 20th Century Baseline. That’s 0.11 C hotter than previous hottest year 2014 and a full 0.21 C hotter than climate change deniers’ favorite cherry — 1998. In other words past record hot years are being left in the dust as the world is heating up to ever more dangerously warm global temperatures.

(Image source: NASA GISS.)

In any case, the current NASA Graph above is going to need some serious adjusting as the new global average for climate year 2015 is simply off the top of the chart. A new jump that gives lie to the increasingly obvious fake claim made by climate change deniers over the past two years that global warming somehow ‘paused.’

 

But aside from reality once again making the fossil fuel cheerleaders of the world (aka climate change deniers) look increasingly imbecilic, 2015’s new temperature increase is a visible sign of increasing climate danger. This year’s 0.84 C temperature departure above NASA’s 20th Century baseline is 1.06 C hotter than 1880s values. It’s a number just 0.44 C (or two more strong El Ninos) away from crossing the very dangerous 1.5 C threshold that nations of the world recently pledged to attempt to avoid at the Paris Climate Summit. It’s also a number more than halfway toward hitting the catastrophic 2 C warming threshold. Perhaps more ominously, Monthly temperature departures in October of 2015 hit a range of 1.06 C above the 20th Century baseline and 1.28 C above 1880s averages — shorter term ranges that are already coming close to testing the 1.5 C threshold.

http://robertscribbler.com/2015/12/14/1-06-c-above-1880-climate-year-2015-shatters-all-previous-records-for-hottest-ever-recorded/?replytocom=60338#respond

And just how much of a percentage of 1.5 C of the COP21's agreed-to global warming target is 1.28 C above 1880s levels is? About 85%. Forget waiting for peak oil, peak natural gas and peak coal to occur if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change and even more bizarre global weirding -- business as usual warped by fossil fuel extraction peaks and declines will still yield an atmospheric CO2 content of about 550 ppm (CO2e would be worse), yielding an ECS temperature rise of 3 C and an ESS rise of 6 C over the space of a thousand years. In geological time, that means Near Term Human Extinction.

Phytoplankton to Die Off if Seas Warm by 6 Degrees Celsius Due to Global Warming.

Report: The World Will Run out of Breathable Air Unless Carbon Is Cut

“As representatives from 195 nations gather in Paris to hammer out a global agreement to slash greenhouse gas emissions, a new study finds that the failure to do so could leave the world gasping for breath.

“Marine plants such as phytoplankton are estimated to produce more than half the Earth’s atmospheric oxygen, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. For the study, Sergei Petrovskii, an applied mathematics professor at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, calculated how unrestrained global warming could affect phytoplankton and thus the ocean’s ability to generate breathable air.”.

He found out that once the world’s oceans warmed by 6C (10F) the phytoplankton have a mass die-off, depriving us and other creatures of Oxygen with essentially zero warning.

http://news.yahoo.com/report-world-run-breathable-air-unless-carbon-cut-210604512.html

[Pseudo-]Conservative Hubris to Cause a Triple Greek Tragedy.

Around the world, but especially in the White Anglosphere nations and Russia, pseudo-conservative politicians are enacting or trying to enact laws, policies and subsidies that would favor fossil fuel vested interests over renewable energy.  Do they not realize that the fossil fuels will eventually run out, or do they think the Earth is this creamy nougat with unlimited stores of fossil fuel?  If they do realize, do they think that fossil fuel companies will make out like bandits once fossil fuel extraction peaks and declines as they charge whatever the traffic will bear for an increasingly scarce resource?  And do they really think, peak oil or NO peak oil, we can just keep emitting the combustion waste and extraction by-wastes into the atmosphere and environment without setting off a runaway hothouse climate and creating polluted wastelands in the process?  I mean , how foolish can they be?

One country, the United Kingdom, now has a "Conservative" government that thinks the British can switch over from coal to natural gas by fracking the countryside.  A year back or so, there was an unsuccessful fracking play there; the drillers came up with NOTHING.  This may be typical for Britain. So where are they going to get the natural gas from, Russia?

So without further ado, I'll hand this over to Robertscribbler.

Toxic Interests: In Lead-up to Paris Summit, Conservative Politicians Around the World are Fighting to Kill Renewable Energy

http://robertscribbler.com/2015/11/24/toxic-interests-in-lead-up-to-paris-summit-conservative-politicians-around-the-world-are-fighting-to-kill-renewable-energy/

We have seen the enemy and he is us.

‘He,’ in this case, is those among us now fighting an all-out war against government programs aimed at reducing the damage caused by human-forced climate change. And in this present time of ramping climate catastrophe, there is no excuse at all for this morally reprehensible activity. Yet, excuse or no, the foul actions of these shameless ignoramuses continue. For all around the world conservatives (called [neo] liberals in Australia) with ties to fossil fuel based industry continue to scuttle programs that would result in the more rapid adoption of renewable energy systems even as they undermine related initiatives to increase energy efficiency.

At a time when the world faces down a growing climate crisis — one that will have dramatically worsening impacts as the decades progress — these failed and corruption-born policies represent the most abhorrent of political activities. And as the world convenes to consider how best to lessen the danger posed by an unfolding global tragedy, there are many in power who are now actively working to increase that danger.

More than anything else, this corrupt group is fighting to enforce ramping dangers, an ever-broadening harm, and untold future tragedy.

Continues here.

These neo-liberal politicians are leading us into a triple tragedy of economic collapse due to peak oil, fossil fuel exhaustion and demand destruction because of the businesses and consumers taking on too much debt to continue buying the stuff at the same rate as before; of civilizational collapse due to climate change, especially from the global weirding to come such as the storms of our grandchildren; and environmental collapse due to both climate change and fouling the environment with combustion waste and extraction by-wastes.  These pols are not conservative in the LEAST because in the end they will not conserve ANYTHING.  Not even our "non-negotiable" way of life.

The Greeks had a word for this go-ahead-and-ignore-any-warnings attitude: it's called hubris.

Exxon-Mobil, Koch Brothers and Others Wrecked Public Trust in Climate Science.

The think tanks have been around at least since the mid-90s and what they do is "throw dust into the air" while making the "dust" appear just as good as peer-reviewed scientific papers on climate change. Purpose? To give Climate Deniers their talking points in order to grow doubt among the masses, who wouldn't know whom to trust.

 

Of course, they could have said that the amount of fossil fuel is finite and then say that climate change will not be as bad as the IPCC says it will get under business as usual with no limit to fossil fuels. But then, the investor class will realize that the fossil fuel extraction companies might not earn as much profit as they believed they will. And the public might panic and hunker down and conserve, further eating into these companies' profits. And we can't have that, now, can we? After all, this is America!

Another fine hat tip to dtlange at Robertscribbler.

Research Confirms ExxonMobil, Koch-funded Climate Denial Echo Chamber Polluted Mainstream Media

http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/11/23/research-confirms-exxonmobil-koch-funded-climate-denial-echo-chamber-polluted-mainstream-media

A new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) shows that the climate denial echo chamber organizations funded by ExxonMobil and Koch family foundations produced misinformation that effectively polluted mainstream media coverage of climate science and polarized the climate policy debate.

The analysis of 20 years’ worth of data by Yale University researcher Dr. Justin Farrell shows beyond a doubt that ExxonMobil and the Kochs are the key actors who funded the creation of climate disinformation think tanks and ensured the prolific spread of their doubt products throughout our mainstream media and public discourse.

“The contrarian efforts have been so effective for the fact that they have made it difficult for ordinary Americans to even know who to trust,”

In the 70s We Were Headed for a Full-Blown Ice Age.

Or at least that's what the news media kept on sayin'. Gnome sayin'?

But in the 80s the media turned on a dime and proclaimed the Earth was globally warming, apparently because they found out scientific consensus was in favor of it. Or was it for no reason? And now we have in the climatic record the biggest jump in climate warming since the Mediaeval Warming Period occurred in the mid-to-late 80s..

Hat tip to Abel Adamski at Robertscribbler.

Climate study finds evidence of global shift in the 1980s

http://phys.org/news/2015-11-climate-evidence-global-shift-1980s.html#jCp

Planet Earth experienced a global climate shift in the late 1980s on an unprecedented scale, fuelled by anthropogenic warming and a volcanic eruption, according to new research published this week.

Scientists say that a major step change, or ‘regime shift’, in the Earth’s biophysical systems, from the upper atmosphere to the depths of the ocean and from the Arctic to Antarctica, was centred around 1987, and was sparked by the El Chichón volcanic eruption in Mexico five years earlier.

Their study, published in Global Change Biology, documents a range of associated events caused by the shift, from a 60% increase in winter river flow into the Baltic Sea to a 400% increase in the average duration of wildfires in the Western United States. It also suggests that climate change is not a gradual process, but one subject to sudden increases, with the 1980s shift representing the largest in an estimated 1,000 years.

“We demonstrate, based on 72 long time series, that a major change took place in the world centred on 1987 that involved a step change and move to a new regime in a wide range of Earth systems,” said Professor Reid.

“Our work contradicts the perceived view that major volcanic eruptions just lead to a cooling of the world. In the case of the regime shift it looks as if global warming has reached a tipping point where the cooling that follows such eruptions rebounds with a rapid rise in temperature in a very short time. The speed of this change has had a pronounced effect on many biological, physical and chemical systems throughout the world, but is especially evident in the Northern temperate zone and Arctic.”

1500 Percent Methane Gas Flare Increase in Two Years off of New Zealand.

Hat tip to howardtra and Egor at Robertscribbler.

The year before, there were only fifty.

Hundreds of methane gas flares found off coast of Gisborne.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11441247

A team of scientists have found around 766 individual methane gas flares within an area of seabed off the coast of Gisborne, in what has been described as a "major advance" for science and a first for New Zealand. The finding comes as the 11-member expedition ends tomorrow morning with the NIWA deepwater research vessel Tangaroa arriving back in Wellington.

The team, led by marine geologist Dr Joshu Mountjoy, had been investigating the area after German and Kiwi researchers last year revealed 99 seabed gas flares there using state-of-the-art 3D and 2D seismic and echosounder technology. Following this discovery, Dr Mountjoy and his team sought to find out whether methane was getting through the water column to the ocean's surface and into the atmosphere, and determine what contribution it was making to global greenhouse gas.  The first objective of the voyage was to remap gas flares in the area in fine detail, using a range of acoustic techniques.  Surprisingly, the team discovered that every area of carbonate rock and every fault seen on the seafloor was expelling gas, and in total, they calculated there were near to 766 individual gas flares within the area.

Air Pollution to get a lot worse, thanks to further fossil fuel combustion.

Hat tip to dtlange at Robertscribbler.

"Just as FF carbon GHG emissions continue unabated so do particulate aerosols." -- dtlange.  The increase in aerosols will contribute to global dimming, causing the impact of increasing CO2 atmospheric content to be less than it would be otherwise if there were no such aerosol increase. Which means the temperature increase will be delayed. And the more the temperature increase is delayed, making the spike that much bigger when the FF emissions finally do cease. Faustian bargain!

CLIMATE CHANGE: Study says air pollution will get worse.

http://www.pe.com/articles/pollution-787092-allen-change.html

Study by UCR professor says changing weather patterns will worsen fine-particle air pollution.

Climate change could make the world’s air even dirtier than it is now, according to an analysis by UC Riverside climatologist Robert Allen recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change.  Allen used NASA’s super computers to model how global warming changes the atmosphere’s ability to cleanse itself from fine particle pollution — the airborne soot, chemical compounds, dust, and other microscopic specks associated with an array of health problems. The study found that by 2100, such pollution, also called aerosols, would linger longer and build up in the skies above much of the United States, Europe and Asia.  “All of the models show more of a burden of aerosol pollution,” said Allen, an assistant professor in UCR’s Department of Earth Sciences. “All of the models showed a consistent increase.”

Northern and Uplands Permafrost Ready to Dramatically Increase Atmospheric Carbon.

Well it appears that peak oil really is no object -- climate change, a.k.a. global warming, and global weirding, is going to jump the gun what with the wildfires in the taiga and tundra and the immense store of Carbon locked in the permafrosts of the northern and upland regions (ex.: Alaska, Siberia, the Arctic, Tibet) is just about ready to offgas so much carbon into the atmosphere, the CO2 content in the atmosphere could actually triple (400 ppm to 1200 ppm). If that happens, we'll see a hothouse environment in nothing flat!

Hat tips to Colorado Bob, humortra and redskylite over at Robertscribbler.

Fires Rapidly Consume More Forests and Peat in the Arctic

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fires-rapidly-consume-more-forests-and-peat-in-the-arctic/

Third of a four-part series. For the first two parts, click here and here.

Scientists who study fire in the boreal are debating how global warming will affect the fire regimes here. Their work will have global implications. Boreal forests sprawl across circumpolar Canada, Russia, Alaska and Scandinavia, and comprise about 30 percent of global forests. They contain extensive, carbon-rich peatlands that have formed over the past 10,000 years.

The upper 20 feet of these water-logged, oxygen-poor soils contains carbon in the form of partially decayed vegetation. The boreal forests store an estimated 703 gigatons of carbon, almost all of it in the soils, according to a 2009 report.

As it warms, peatlands dry out, leaving them vulnerable to fire. And if fire becomes a larger part of the landscape, these vast stores of carbon could be released to the atmosphere, which could trigger more warming and thus create a feedback loop.

If the warming trend continues, the area burned annually could double by the end of the century, according to Natural Resources Canada, the federal ministry responsible for the management and study of the country’s natural resources, including its forests. Fires, more frequent droughts and insect outbreaks could make Canada’s boreal forests a source of carbon, the federal agency warns.

Permafrost in Tibetan Plateau can be wiped out by temperature rise

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/permafrost-tibetan-plateau-can-be-wiped-out-by-temperature-rise-1529647

Much of the permafrost on the Tibetan plateau will possibly disappear by the end of the century under the present trend of global warming exceeding 2C. Almost 40% of it could be lost in the coming years, a Chinese report has warned, noting that the region has been seeing an average temperature rise of about 0.3C every decade.

The thawing has major implications for the local environment in terms of lake outbursts and landslides, besides contributing to global warming. More than half the plateau is covered in permafrost, with large reserves of carbon dioxide trapped within the frozen soil, the report from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said.

Permafrost: hiding a climate time bomb?

http://phys.org/news/2015-11-permafrost-climate.html

There is twice as much carbon in permafrost than in the atmosphere," said Florent Domine, a researcher with France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

"So if we transformed all the carbon in the permafrost into CO2, we would triple the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, and that would mean the end of the world as we know it."

It contains an estimated 1.7 trillion tonnes of carbon in the form of frozen organic matter, which escapes as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane as it warms and decomposes.

Study: Alaskan Boreal Forest Fires Release More Carbon than the Trees can Absorb

http://alaska-native-news.com/study-alaskan-boreal-forest-fires-release-more-carbon-than-the-ttrees-can-absorb-20315

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new analysis of fire activity in Alaska’s Yukon Flats finds that so many forest fires are occurring there that the area has become a net exporter of carbon to the atmosphere. This is worrisome, the researchers say, because arctic and subarctic boreal forests like those of the Yukon Flats contain roughly one-third of the Earth’s terrestrial carbon stores.

 The research is reported in the journal Nature Climate Change.

I wouldn't wait for peak oil to correct this problem. The problem is, given the immensity of the scale of the required decarbonization of our living arrangements (especially in transportation in Australia and the USA), how do we accomplish this before it becomes completely unmanageable?

There is twice as much carbon in permafrost than in the atmosphere," said Florent Domine, a researcher with France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).
"So if we transformed all the carbon in the permafrost into CO2, we would triple the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, and that would mean the end of the world as we know it."
Permafrost is perennially frozen ground covering about a quarter of exposed land in the northern hemisphere.
It contains an estimated 1.7 trillion tonnes of carbon in the form of frozen organic matter, which escapes as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane as it warms and decomposes.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-11-permafrost-climate.html#jCp

Why Do Climate Scientists and Activists Ignore Peak Oil?

Why Do Climate Scientists and Activists Ignore Peak Oil? It's not something that should be ignored, but usually is, and sometimes even stridently dismissed. Yes, there have been dire predictions that the oil will run out before, going all the way back to the mid-1800s. But still, having come into a new peak on top of a long plateau, and the fact that oil companies are now looking at Arctic, deep-water and fracking to obtain oil, even extracting it from tar sands (now that's really the dregs!), common sense should tell us that Peak Oil is occurring now, and the extraction rates will decline at some point. Of course, once the decline sets in, there will be quite a large amount on the tail end of oil production, so we're not running out anytime soon, even if the downslope begins tomorrow. Yet usually what we hear from the Climate Change people is the worst case scenario [a] of climate change: RCP 8.5 (a.k.a. A1 F1) of a continuous rise in temperatures and CO2 levels caused by ever increasing burning of fossil fuels under business as usual, warming the planet by at about 3.7 deg C (6.7 deg F) this century. Fortunately, there's apparently not enough fossil fuels to accomplish that, unless the Earth's climate is even more sensitive to levels of Carbon in our atmosphere than is typically thought (3 deg C [5.4 F] for doubling of CO2 levels) due to the cautious conservatism of conclusions by Climate Science in general and also by the IPCC reports.

The Various RCP Global Warming Scenarios
Source: Knutti and Sedlacek (carbonbrief.org)

As the latest Japan Met Agency findings show, so far we are right on schedule! Also confirmed by NASA.

Global Temperature Rise since 1890, according to JMA. 

Global Temperature Rise since 1880, according to NASA.

Now what we are likely to get, even with peak oil happened upon accidently-on-purpose through business as usual, simply will not avoid a climate hot-house... unless we embark on a major effort of decarbonization. So without further adieu I will hand it over to Mr. Theo Kitchener of Shift Magazine, who wrote a timely article, "An Alternative Long Shot".

An Alternative Long Shot

Theo Kitchener, November 16, 2015

This article is an attempt to chart what might happen in terms of climate change, both in terms of science, and particularly the potential politics, if we see a serious financial collapse followed by further contraction due to peaking energy and resources. Despite this being quite a likely scenario, there is barely anything written on the topic.

 

Peak oilers, often end up thinking that we don’t need to worry about climate change because peak energy will take care of it for us. I think this view is strongly mistaken. While it is true that peak energy leads to less emissions than would otherwise be possible,[1] we still end up in the zone of highly likely runaway climate change, and there will still be much that needs doing on an activist front in order to minimise our risk. On the other hand, climate change activists are often blind to the possibility of financial collapse or even peak energy collapse. Accordingly, I think their strategies are based on business as usual continuing, which I don’t think is realistic.

 

Climate change activists tend to already know that their hopes to create a mass movement that will convince governments to act, and act enough, are likely to fail, but it’s a long shot worth fighting for if the current context is all you have to go on. What I’m offering below is simply an alternative long shot, one I think is more likely to succeed, considering it is based more on the short term interests of the population rather than long term interests, which are harder to get people active on.

 

Below is a brief analysis of what financial collapse means for the climate, followed by an analysis of potential political scenarios, and particular detail on what I see as the most likely strategies to create a safe climate. These include a decentralised movement to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations, emphasising a shift to permaculture and appropriate technology, the continuation of the anti-emissions movement, a mass movement mobilising to take what’s left of our industrial capacity out of the hands of elites, and put it into good use drawing down carbon, remediating the planet and providing for our needs. This scenario could definitely be seen as an unlikely long shot; however, considering the situation we find ourselves in, a long shot is much better than no shot.

More here: http://shift-magazine.net/2015/11/16/an-alternative-long-shot/.

Notes

[a] Granted, the linked author who brought this up (Charles C. Mann, "Peak Oil Fantasy", Orion Magazine, comment dated 11 October 2015,) actually brought up two cases where analysts had stated that Peak Oil will ensure that RCP 8.5 will not be reached; but, he goes on to say that "this type of argument, which stems directly from peak-oil beliefs, is anything but an obstacle to controlling climate change."

[1]   See for example http://judithcurry.com/2014/04/22/coal-and-the-ipcc/ and http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4807

Ocean Overheating Causing Beginning of Massive New Coral Bleaching.

This is from Mashable.com via Colorado Bob at Robertscribbler:

The third recorded global coral bleaching event may be underway.

"Coral reefs around the world — from Hawaii to the iconic Great Barrier Reef, eastward all the way to the Bahamas and beyond — are in jeopardy of being severely damaged or even dying because of a dangerous spike in ocean temperatures, scientists say.

"Conditions are so dire that, provided coral bleaching soon spreads from the Florida Keys to the Bahamas, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is expected to declare as soon as two weeks from now that the third global coral bleaching event is here. There’s already evidence of coral bleaching in three major ocean basins.

“ 'It’s like watching a slow-motion train wreck, and we’re waiting for the cars to pile up on this side of the track,' says Mark Eakin, the coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch, in an interview with Mashable."

http://mashable.com/2015/09/24/third-global-coral-bleaching-event/?utm_source=climatenexus&utm_medium=referral#oFAa_etJzuqD

NOAA to "declare [a bleaching event] as soon as two weeks from now" and "already evidence of coral bleaching in the three major ocean basins" means the current El Nino, as strong and monstrous as it is, cannot cool down the oceans soon enough to avoid this event. The article also states that "many coral reefs expected to perish by the middle of the century if recent trends continue." which means (1) we need Peak Oil on purpose, now, reducing energy use and switching to renewables, and (2) even if we reduce our emissions to zero, the 405 ppm CO₂ and the 480 ppm CO₂e means we will still have these global warming trends continuing for as long as forty years, or more, until the ice, oceans and atmosphere finally reached equilibrium.

There is a new study out that shows information can be extracted from samples of coral reefs to determine what the paleoclimatic record, i.e., the prehistoric climate, was like.

From Science Daily via Colorado Bob at Robertscribbler:

 Fossil corals have the unique advantage that they can be precisely dated by radiometric uranium-series dating, giving an age scale that can be directly compared to the ice core records.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150924151409.htm

And, now scientists have discovered another effect of global warming which is an amplifying of  semiannual to twice-annual variation in Pacific Ocean sea level, perhaps in both amplitude and frequency, causing South Seas' islands' coral reefs to become exposed to the air and die back as a result.

Also from Science Daily via Colorado Bob at Robertscribbler:

During El Niño, warm water and high sea levels shift eastward, leaving in their wake low sea levels in the western Pacific. Scientists have already shown that this east-west seesaw is often followed six months to a year later by a similar north-south sea level seesaw with water levels dropping by up to one foot (30 cm) in the Southern Hemisphere. Such sea level drops expose shallow marine ecosystems in South Pacific Islands, causing massive coral die-offs with a foul smelling tide called taimasa (pronounced [kai' ma'sa]) by Samoans.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150925142700.htm

Which means there will be more catastrophic diebacks of the coral reefs. Better start transplanting them now. Peak Oil will not stop this.