8.8 Feet of Sea Level Rise by 2100

Source: Pinterest

A global sea level rise of 8.8 feet could easily mean 20 feet in New Orleans: one tropical storm, and "blub, blub!"

In the last days of Barack Obama's administration, US government scientists warned even more sea level rise is expected by century's end than previously estimated, due to rapid ice sheet melting at the poles. 

The report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) set the "extreme" scenario of global average sea level rise by 2100 to 8.2 feet (2.5 meters), up half a meter from the last estimate issued in 2012. 

"We raised the upper limit of our scenarios," lead author William Sweet told AFP. 

"It is possible. It has a very low probability. But we can't discount it entirely."

How low a possibility? 0.1 percent? 0.5 percent? One percent? Five percent? The one percent doctrine means we must plan for it and act as required to counteract the threat.

To find out more, click here.

Here's an idea on Boston protecting itself from sea level rise:

"The Sapphire Necklace"
Source: The Boston Globe.

For more on what Boston might set out to do to protect itself, click here.

2017 IS Strange - Part 7 // February

Here's the next vid from Last Messages that's filled with weird weather, Earth changes, animal die-offs and other tragedies that aren't supposed to be happening, but are thanks to global warming / climate change.

And the fron image is a drone photo of this huge fishkill somewhere -- it looks like California or Australia.

2017 Is Strange -- Parts 3, 4 and 5 // January-February

2017 is strange! And a heck of a lot happened in the past four weeks, all a result of Global Warming and her ugly twin, Global Weirding.

 2017 Is Strange Part 3 // January

2017 Is Strange Part 4 // January-February

2017 Is Strange Part 5 // February

And not just lots of weird weather, either: there are now lots of strange clouds, strange animal movements, invasions and die-offs including those of birds, bizaare sounds in the ambient environment, and new, strange sunsets -- all due to the two goddesses we called to life, Global Warming and Global Weirding by our greenhouse gas emissions from way too much burning of fossil fuels and the spraying of chemtrails by our flying of our commercial, military, government and private jet airplanes!

Well we screwed ourselves but good, now. 2017 is strange and 2018 promises to be stranger yet. 2019, stranger still. And so on and so on and so on. So ease back, and... relax that rear end of yours, and... enjoy! 😉

2016 Is the Third Hottest Year in a Row.

The Boston Globe posted a picture touting a 60-degree January day as evidence of Global Warming. But it isn't. There were January thaws with daytime temps in the 60s in the 1970s when I was growing up in greater Boston. But it's the ocean warming and polar warming that's pushing up the annual mean temperatures, year over year over year over year.

For third straight time, Earth sets hottest year record

Justin Gillis and John Schwartz of The New York Times,  January 18, 2017

Source: The Boston Globe.

Marking another milestone for a changing planet, scientists reported on Wednesday that the Earth reached its highest temperature on record in 2016 — trouncing a record set only a year earlier, which beat one set in 2014. It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have blown past the previous record three years in a row. 

.... 

The data show that politicians cannot wish the problem away. The Earth is heating up, a point long beyond serious scientific dispute, but one becoming more evident as the records keep falling. Temperatures are heading toward levels that many experts believe will pose a profound threat to both the natural world and to human civilization. 

In 2015 and 2016, the planetary warming was intensified by the weather pattern known as El Niño, in which the Pacific Ocean released a huge burst of energy and water vapor into the atmosphere. But the bigger factor in setting the records was the long-term trend of rising temperature, which scientists say is being driven by increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. 

“A single warm year is something of a curiosity,” said Deke Arndt, chief of global climate monitoring for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “It’s really the trend, and the fact that we’re punching at the ceiling every year now, that is the real indicator that we’re undergoing big changes.”

For more, click here.

The Bourgeoisiophene.

Karl Marx was right. Driven by the Bourgeoisie, Capitalism will continue until all the natural resources are exhausted, the workers are pauperised, and the natural realm, badly polluted. (Of course, based on his views concerning natural resources, Communism and Socialism weren't much better, or were even worse, depending on your perspective.)

From Truthdig: Paul Street, How to Stop Capitalism’s Deadly War With Nature (Link).

Source: Truthdig.com

Earth scientists now know that the history of our planet has been set for some time in our current geological age, the Anthropocene. According to leading experts Will Steffen, Paul Crutzen and John McNeill, in this era, “human activities have become so pervasive and profound that they rival the great forces of Nature and are pushing the earth into planetary terra incognita. The Earth is rapidly moving into a less biologically diverse, less forested, much warmer, and probably wetter and stormier era.” We are living in a “no-analogue state” in which “the Earth system has recently moved well outside the range of natural variability.” ... ...

The terrible trends and data have led the venerable progressive political scientist and social-justice advocate Susan George to introduce what she calls “a new phenomenon in the history of humankind.” In a recent lecture to the International Centre for the Promotion of Human Rights in Buenos Aires, she names it “geocide,” meaning “the collective action of a single species among millions of other species which is changing planet Earth to the point that it can become unrecognisable and unfit for life.” Humanity, George says, “is committing geocide against all components of nature, whether microscopic organisms, plants, animals or against itself, homo sapiens, humankind.” George is unstinting in her denunciation of the human species: “Homo sapiens has only existed for roughly 200,000 years. The time we’ve spent on this planet compared to its total age is infinitesimally short, just the tiniest sliver of geological time. It amounts to a mere 0.00004 percent of Earth’s existence. And although any given species of plant or animal—vertebrate or invertebrate—tends to last on average about 10 million years, our species seems determined to cause its own extinction, along with the rest of creation, long before its allotted time.” ... ...

But is the culprit really Homo sapiens as a whole? The concept of the Anthropocene has rich scientific validity. It holds welcome political relevance in countering the carbon-industrial complex’s denial of humanity’s responsibility for contemporary climate change. Still, we must guard against lapsing into the historically unspecific and class-blind uses of the term “anthros,” and project the recent age of capital onto the broad 100,000-year swath of human activity on and in nature. As the brilliant and prolific environmental historian and political economist Jason Moore reminded Sasha Lilley during a KPFA radio interview in 2015: “It was not humanity as a whole that created … large-scale industry and the massive textile factories of Manchester in the 19th century or Detroit in the last century or Shenzhen today. It was capital.” It is only during a relatively small slice of human history—roughly the last 500 years, give or take a century or so—that humanity has been socially and institutionally wired from the top down to wreck livable ecology.

A compelling case has been made by Moore and other left environmentalists that it is more historically appropriate to understand humanity’s earth-altering assault on livable ecology as “the Capitalocene.” Capitalism has ruled the world since 1600 or thereabouts (by academic calculations), and only during this relatively brief period of history has human social organization developed the capacity and compulsion to transform earth systems. “Geocide” is a capitalist crime, not a transgression of humanity over its long and mostly noncapitalist history.

(Emphases in the above quote are mine)

For more, click here.

Scientists Warn World Will Miss Key Climate Target (UK Guardian).

Coral Reef in Fiji. Source: Alamy via UK Guardian.

Leading climate scientists have warned that the Earth is perilously close to breaking through a 1.5C upper limit for global warming, only eight months after the target was set. 

The decision to try to limit warming to 1.5C, measured in relation to pre-industrial temperatures, was the headline outcome of the Paris climate negotiations last December. The talks were hailed as a major success by scientists and campaigners, who claimed that, by setting the target, desertification, heatwaves, widespread flooding and other global warming impacts could be avoided. 

However, figures – based on Met Office data – prepared by meteorologist Ed Hawkins of Reading University show that average global temperatures were already more than 1C above pre-industrial levels for every month except one over the past year and peaked at +1.38C in February and March. Keeping within the 1.5C limit will be extremely difficult, say scientists, given these rises.

Atmospheric heating has been partly triggered by a major El Niño event in the Pacific, with 2016 expected to be the hottest year on record. Temperatures above 50C have afflicted Iraq; India is experiencing one of the most intense monsoons on record; and drought-stricken California has been ravaged by wildfires. 

Stanford University’s Professor Chris Field, co-chair of the IPCC working group on adaptation to climate change, told the Observer: “From the perspective of my research I would say the 1.5C goal now looks impossible or at the very least, a very, very difficult task. We should be under no illusions about the task we face.”

For more information, click here and here.

New Article out on Global Warming.

An atoll in the island nation of Kiribati, which is only a few feet above sea level
Photo credit: Kadir van Lohiuzen, Noor Images via National Geographic.

Reported by the National Geographic, here. (I know, it's owned by Murdoch now, but what can you do?)

An annual report that is sometimes called the planet's "physical" finds that 2015 was the warmest year since records began in the mid to late 19th century. The year also marked several other milestones, from a record carbon concentration to an unusual number of tropical storms. 

The 26th report, State of the Climate in 2015, released online today by theAmerican Meteorological Society  (AMS), was compiled by hundreds of scientists from 62 countries and was peer reviewed.

Speaking of tropical storms, yesterday here in New Orleans an afternoon pop-up thunderstorm cloud ended up behaving like a tropical storm, with lots of leaves and small debris blown this way and that.

Here are the five key points made by the report, according to NatGeo:

1. In 2015 Earth was about 1 deg C (1.8 F) warmer than it was in the 1880s. Warmer still in 2016, with January through June being 1.3 deg C warmer than the pre-industrial era in the late 19th Century. This is when El Niño has lost his strength.

2. Sea-surface temps are the hottest ever since records were kept, aided by The Blob in the Northeast Pacific, despite the freshening and cooling by the Greenland ice melt in the North Atlantic.

3. Carbon Dioxide atmospheric content has passed the 400 ppm milestone. This was last witnessed in the middle Pliocene Era, 2-3 million years ago, or perhaps even the middle Miocene, 10-15 million years ago.

4. Global Sea-Level Rise is the highest since records were kept. The global mean sea level rise is now about 70 mm (2-3/4") higher than the levels taken in 1993, which in turn was a little bit higher than the 1988 value which was higher than the 1929 value; the post-1929 rise actually varied from town to town, due to gravity, land subsidence, seismic pressures, crustal springback because of melting ice caps, etc., etc.

5. Many parts of the world experienced extreme weather. This weird weather is well documented on YouTube by LAST MESSAGES in his 2015 IS STRANGE and 2016 IS STRANGE series (and more dating back to 2011) and by others.

For more information, click here.

Suppose Consumption of Fossil Fuels Were to Peak in 2030

Even though, so far, they appear to be peaking due to the levelling off of demand, due to the ramp-up of renewables and because of affordability and financial reasons, like too high a debt load.

Source: Sam Caranas, Arctic News.

But if the did, a certain Grebulocities figured out a possible end point for atmospheric carbon content and posted it a a response to the post "Dark Ages America: Climate" at The Archdruid Report blog, in which the archdruid, John Michael Greer, suggested that fossil fuel emissions might peak in 2030 -- this was on July 30, 2014 mind you:

Now if only I could somehow find a time machine or a longevity potion and see if you're right... 

I just made a crude spreadsheet in Excel to see what type of CO2 concentration we might peak at under the assumption that the rate of change of the CO2 concentration peaks around 2030, falling to 0 by 2100. Under my model, the CO2 concentration rises by 0.55% this year (roughly equal to its average growth rate over the last decade) and the growth rate increases by 0.01% per year from now until 2029 (at 0.7%/year), then falls by 0.01%/year until it bottoms out at 0 by 2099. 

The peak concentration under these assumptions is "only" 562 ppm, obviously reached in 2099, conveniently about double the preindustrial level where temperatures were 0.8 C cooler than present. If the mean of most model estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity is correct, we see about 3 C/doubling. So under these really crude assumptions, we've got a world 2.2 C warmer than present. Of course the error bars are huge, and they're larger on the warmer side. But if this is roughly where we end up, we're in the mid-Pliocene warm period at about 3.3 Ma, or perhaps a little worse. This is inconvenient because sea levels were 25 m higher than present, with no West Antarctic ice sheet and little or no Greenland ice sheet, but the East Antarctic ice sheet still existed and contained most of its current mass.

Well the CO₂ did rise by about 2.25 ppm on average from 2014 through 2015.by about 0.57% which is roughly on target with his prediction of 0.55%. But from 2015 through 2016? Well we don't have the minimum yet, but the CO₂ rise according to the graph maxima was about 3.5 ppm or about 0.88% according to the 2015 average content. And that's not even accounting for the fact that CO₂ content for 2016 finally peaked out at around 408 ppm in April - May, shown below.

Annual CO₂ pulse on Keeler Curve through July 2016.
Source: Mauna Loa Observatory, NOAA.

It appears that the 3.5 ppm rise is now being maintained. Although we're just coming off an El Niño, it's possible, especially when compared to the graph at the top, that we are having increased positive feedbacks or less negative feedbacks or both from natural sources, because it appears we did not have a nearly as big a Carbon Dioxide increase the last time we had an El Niño as strong as the one we've just had, i.e., the one in 1997-1998.

So will the atmosphere's Carbon Dioxide content be as little as 560 ppm? Don't know. But given the present rate of fossil fuels burning through 2030 and a new normal of 3.5 ppm for annual Carbon Dioxide content increase, we could be looking at 450 ppm or so around 2030, which makes the terminal content that much larger. Robertscribbler reports that under Business as Usual (IPCC's RCP 8.5) it could be as high as 936 ppm with a average planetary temperature increase at that time of around 4 to 5 degrees Celsius (7 to 9 Fahrenheit). Will it actually get that bad? Don't know.

But I DO know that global warming is NOT a myth!

"Retrotopia 2065" Second Draft of the Map.

Here's the second draft of the map I posted yesterday.

Other commenters remarked on Mr. Greer's big batch of tips he addressed to me and in turn, Mr. Greer came out with some more tips:

Ed-M, the Atlantic Republic is the present-day states of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, with the eastern (not western) panhandle of West Virginia; Washington DC is technically Atlantic territory but it's basically a ruin inhabited by squatters. West Canada is BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon Territory; Nunavut, I should have said, is an independent nation, having united with Kalaallit Nunaat (aka Greenland) in 2042. There's also the Free City of Chicago, which is an independent (and gaudily corrupt) nation, and consists of Cook County. I think that's it!

So I made some changes, but I kept the 2 degrees' Centigrade seal level rise for the East and Gulf Coasts, because the author of the Dredd Blogg has indicated that these coasts will get the worst of the sea-level rises. For example, Miami-Dade and Fort Lauderdale have a solid foot of risen sea level compared with the global eight inches since 1870, today!. Therefore for a global six feet, expect between ten and twenty feet sea level rise for the two shorelines.

For proof, click on the Dredd Blog tag and you'll be directed to his Post Series page. Scroll down to EXTINCTION (Yes, it is real) and then to various series on SEA LEVEL CHANGE. You'll find many posts under these topics that show that sea-level rise from global warming is not uniform, but varies all over the planet -- another component of global weirding.  For example, one post in particular discusses past and future sea level rise around Miami (click here).

"Retrotopia 2065"

Over at The Archdruid Report, John Michael Greer has been writing a series called "Retrotopia." The first chapter was posted about November of last year and the series has had about its twentieth chapter posted. So I thought I'd make a little map of North America at about that time.  Mr. Greer gave me the following pointers:

Ed-M, the map's pretty simple. The Republic of New England and the Maritimes consists of the New England states from Massachusetts north, and the Maritime provinces that are now part of Canada. Quebec is Quebec. East Canada is Ontario, Manitoba, and points north. The Lakeland Republic is Ohio, West Virginia except for the western panhandle, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The Confederate States of America is the old Confederacy of 1861 minus Texas, and plus the southeastern quarter or so of Missouri. The Missouri Republic is the rest of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, along with all of Wyoming and Montana east of the Continental Divide and the northeastern third or so of Colorado. The Republic of Texas is Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and part of southern Colorado. The Republic of Deseret is Utah, Idaho minus the panhandle, and the portions of Colorado and Wyoming west of the continental divide. Arizona and Nevada are abandoned territory, uninhabitable due to climate change. The Republic of California is California, and the Cascade Republic is Washington, Oregon, the Idaho panhandle, and the portion of Montana west of the continental divide. Oh, and there's the Kingdom of Hawai'i and the Republic of Alaska, if you want to include them. Sea level has gone up about six feet; New Orleans, Galveston, and the Florida Keys no longer exist, and the southern end of Florida has been heavily eroded by rising seas and massive hurricanes, so it's not the same shape as it is today. Got it? 

And so with that information, I created a map.

I got the Atlantic/Florida/Gulf Coasts drownings from this photo here. I went by that photo's 2 degree Celsius projected sea level rise which looks about right but I think is a gross underestimate for a 2 deg C tempreature rise. And at the current Carbon Dioxide Levels? It's going to be worse: higher temps and higher sea level rise.

I also tweaked SF Bay, the Puget Sound and Vancouver BC area, the Cook Inlet (Anchorage AK), the Yukon Delta and the MacKensie Delta to account for a 6-foot rise. Of course, the water that far up North might not rise being it's so close to Greenland and all.

Peak Oil Now or Else! Says the Earth.

From Flassbeck Economics on the ability of the IPCC, governments and scientists' worst case scenarios to keep up with what's actually happening:

The reality of Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (ACD) continues to outstrip our ability to model worst-case scenarios, as it is happening so much faster than ever anticipated.Sixty-three percent of all human-generated carbon emissions have been produced in the last 25 years and science shows that there is a 40-year time lag between global emissions and climate impacts. This means that we have not even started to experience the consequences of our growing emissions (see here). In the meantime, nothing substantial, nothing efficient is happening to curb CO2 emissions.

For example:

• Late 2007:The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announcesthat the planet will see a one degree Celsius temperature increase due to climate change by 2100.
• Late 2008: The Hadley Centre for Meteorological Research predicts a 2C increase by 2100.

We've already blown through the 1.0 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) increase from 1880s levels, we'll see a 2 degree Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) increase before too long. 2025?

The further predictions are dire and portrays scenarios which are extremely bad.

To avoid them we have to get off of fossil fuels as soon as possible and start sequestering carbon as soon as possible too. But that essentially requires a change in the corporate-driven capitalist system and a change of heart in humanity in general, in the American people in particular. Will the latter occur as it needs to? Morris Berman says it ain't gonna happen.

Impact of Sea Level Rise in Boston Worse than Previously Thought.

Again, it's all on the ice-melt in Antarctica and the release of water due to the reduced gravity of the shrunken Antarctic ice cap. The Law of Gravity works on objects on and orbitng Earth and every other planet, tides, solar systems, galaxies, and even water around ice caps and hoards of wealth!

From The Boston Globe:

The consequences of climate change on Boston are expected to be far more calamitous than previous studies have suggested, a new report commissioned by the city says. 

In the worst-case scenario, sea levels could rise more than 10 feet by the end of the century — nearly twice what was previously predicted — plunging about 30 percent of Boston under water. Temperatures in 2070 could exceed 90 degrees for 90 days a year, compared with an average of 11 days now.

The report, by scientists from the University of Massachusetts and other local universities, has raised concerns in City Hall just two weeks after Mayor Martin J. Walsh attended a climate summit in Beijing.

The updated projections for Boston take into account new research that suggests the accelerating melt of the ice sheets covering Antarctica will have a disproportionate impact on cities along the East Coast.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/06/22/climate-change-could-have-even-worse-impact-boston-than-previously-expected/S6hZ4nDPeUWNyTsx6ZckuL/story.html?event=event25

For more information:

Dredd.Blog: Greenland and Antarctica Invade the United States

Ecocosmology: The Gravity of Sea Level Change

Dredd Blog: Why Sea Level Rise May Be the Greatest Threat to Civilization

Update on the Antarctica Meltdown:

I got a heads-up from Robertscribbler. He's snagged some research on the meltdown now going on in the Antarctic:

Unfortunately, Totten is just one of many large glacial systems that are now destabilizing across Antarctica. And researchers are now beginning to identify significant potential sea level rise contributions from Antarctica alone (ranging from two feet to nearly two meters) before the end of this Century. In New Scientist, during March, Antarctic researcher Rob Deconto notes:

“Today we’re measuring global sea level rise in millimetres per year,” DeConto says. “We’re talking about the potential for centimetres per year just from [ice loss in] Antarctica.”

Centimeters per year sea level rise is about ten times faster than current rates and implies 100 year increases — once it gets going — in the range of 2 to 3 meters. Such increased melt does not include Greenland’s own potential sea level rise contribution. Nor does it include sea level rise from other glacial melt and ocean thermal expansion. As such, it appears that multi-meter sea level rise is becoming a more and more distinct possibility this Century. Furthermore, the paleoclimate context is now pointing toward catastrophic levels of overall melt and sea level rise if global greenhouse gasses aren’t somehow stabilized and then swiftly reduced.

And don't forget Sea-Level Changes -- with a lot of rises away from Greenland and especially Antarctica -- from the redistribution of waters released from the Ice caps' gravity.

A meter here, a meter there and pretty soon you’re in for some wicked serious sea-level rise!

Totten Glacier Is Destabilised.

Why should you care?

Because it's in East Antarctica -- and the "warm" deeper waters from the Southern Ocean are melting into the glacier and its whole catchment area. Let me show you:

Here is a map of Antarctica with the Totten Glacier highlighted in pale blue:

Source: The Wasibngton Post, via Dennis Dimick on Twitter,
via dtlange at Robertscribbler.

Now let me show you how deep its catchment area is!

Source: ScienceDirect via Robertscribbler.

Note bedding under the catchment area is up to about a mile below sea level! So before the glacier were to visibly melt, it could become severely undermined by the warm waters already eating away at its base. Which means, if we're especially unlucky (or God is or The Gods are especially angry at us or playing tricks with us) this thing could get completely undermined before detatching from its above-sea-level neighbours. And if it does, when it does a huge chunk of ice the size of California and 1-1/2 miles high (at least) will go sailing off to the North or falling into its basin -- and nine-tenths of that height will be underwater!

From Robertscribber:

Towering Totten and the Coming MultiMeter Sea-Level Rise

A new scientific study has found that the Totten Glacier is fundamentally unstable and could significantly contribute to a possible multi-meter sea level rise this Century under mid-range and worst case warming scenarios.

408 Parts per million CO2. 490 parts per million CO2e. This is the amount of heat-trapping CO2 and total CO2 equivalent for all heat-trapping gasses now in the Earth’s atmosphere. Two measures representing numerous grave potential consequences.

We’re Locking in 120-190 Feet of Sea Level Rise Long Term

Looking at the first number — 408 parts per million CO2 — we find that the last time global levels of this potent heat-trapping gas were so high was during the Middle Miocene Climate Optimum of 15-17 million years ago. During this time, the Greenland Ice Sheet did not exist. East Antarctic glacial ice was similarly scarce. And the towering glaciers of West Antarctica were greatly reduced. Overall, global sea levels were 120 to 190 feet higher than they are today. Meanwhile, atmospheric temperatures were between 3 and 5 degrees Celsius hotter than those experienced during the late 19th Century

Large sections of Antarctica rest below sea level. A physical feature that renders substantial portions of Antarctica’s glaciers very vulnerable to rising ocean temperatures. Since the latent heat content of water is substantially higher than that of air, even comparatively small ocean temperature increases can cause significant melt in sea-facing glaciers and in below sea level glacial basins.

For more, click here.

Now if the Totten Glaicier were all to melt, it would contribute about 3.5 meters of additional sea level -- over 11 feet, according to The Washington Post. Now this huge chunk of ice isn't going to all melt and leave the rest of Antarctica frozen. Instead, as it melts, Greenland, West Antarctica and other areas in East Antarctica will also melt, as they are doing now. So we could get, say, 1 meter from Totten, 1 from Greenland, 1 from West Antarctica and 1 or 2 from other parts of East Antarctica by 2100. Guess what! That's 13 to 16 feet of sea level rise! South Florida will be inundated. Chesapeake Bay, enlarged to the point of Ridiculousness. The Central Valley in California, flooded (maybe). The Missisissippi Delta in Louisiana, destroyed. Courtesy of the Fossil Fuels Derivatives Beast.

Possibly, the only thing that can stop this is Yellowstone blowing up.

Tips o' th' hat to dtlange and Robertscribbler.

Climate Central predicts we will keep on feeding the Fossil Fuels Derivatives Beast more and more through 2040.

The Fossil Fuels Derivatives Beast. Source: Sandara.

The misleading headline reads:

Global 2040 Forecast Sees Only Slight Fall in Fossil Fuels

Article by Bobby Magill, Climatecentral.org, 11 May 2016

I doubt he wrote the headline, though.

Now, snippets from the rest of the story.

Despite the urgency to cut greenhouse gas emissions as climate change bears down on the globe, fossil fuel use is not likely to change much in the coming decades. Though renewable energy will grow quickly though 2040, gasoline and diesel will still move most of the world’s vehicles, and coal will still be the largest single source of carbon emissions.

Those are the conclusions of a forecast released by the federal government on Wednesday for how the world will use energy and what its carbon dioxide emissions will be over the next 25 years.

Feeding the Fossil Fuels Derivatives Beast.
Gasoline and diesel will likely remain the globe's biggest transportation fuels in the coming decades.
Credit: Michael Kappel/flickr via Climate Central.

The US Energy Information Administration predicts that as a whole, we will be feeding the Fossil Fuels Derivatives Beast more and more emissions (those are the derivatives, dear reader) through 2040:

Credit: US EIA via Climate Central.

Global carbon emissions from energy consumption are expected to grow at an average rate of 1 percent per year between 2012 and 2040, growing a total 34 percent in that time as fossil fuels provide the world with more than three quarters of its energy.

“With existing policies and regulations, worldwide energy-related carbon dioxide emissions will go from about 32 billion metric tons in 2012 to something like 43 billion metric tons out to the year 2040,” EIA administrator Adam Sieminski said.

And will consumption of fossil fuels decrease as a whole though 2040? Noooooooo...!

Look here:

Credit: US EIA via Climate Central.

Unless there are unexpected changes in global climate policy over the next 25 years, coal will still be the world’s king of carbon emissions in 2040.

Coal is expected to account for 38 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2040, down from 43 percent in 2012. Annual growth of coal use by that time is expected to be about 0.6 percent. In 1990, coal was responsible for 39 percent of global carbon emissions. Natural gas, by comparison, will account for 26 percent of global carbon emissions in 2040, up from 20 percent in 2012.

Although renewables will enlarge from about 12 to about 25 percent, fossil fuels will still hold the lion's share at 75 percent. And the actual amount of fossil fuels that will be consumed in 2014 will be larger than the actual amount consumed in 2012!

More here.

We will probably break through 500 ppm of CO₂ in the Atmosphere vs 400 ppm today, and definitely through 500 ppm of CO₂e. We're at 485 ppm CO₂e already and we're already making the Fossil Fuels Derivatives Beast more and more active! See my sister blog, 2016 is strange!.

Imagine how bad the Fossil Fuels Derivatives Beast will behave when we're at 500ppm.

Tip o' th' hat to Elaine Meinel Supkis.

Global Atmospheric carbon dioxide content soon to be permanently North of 400 ppm.

At least for the duration of the human species, I think.



From The Guardian UK:

World's carbon dioxide concentration teetering on the point of no return

Mikey Slezak, Guardian UK, 11 May 2016

Future in which global concentration of CO2 is permanently above 400 parts per million looms.

The world is hurtling towards an era when global concentrations of carbon dioxide never again dip below the 400 parts per million (ppm) milestone, as two important measuring stations sit on the point of no return.

The news comes as one important atmospheric measuring station at Cape Grim in Australia is poised on the verge of 400ppm for the first time. Sitting in a region with stable CO2 concentrations, once that happens, it will never get a reading below 400ppm.

Source: Australian Government / CSIRO

Meanwhile another station in the northern hemisphere may have gone above the 400ppm line for the last time, never to dip below it again.

“We’re going into very new territory,” James Butler, director of the global monitoring division at the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Guardian.

When enough CO₂ is pumped into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, the seasonal cycles that drive the concentrations up and down throughout the year will eventually stop dipping the concentration below the 400ppm mark.

Source: United States Government, NOAA.

The IPCC maintains that 400 ppm CO₂ in our atmosphere will give us 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) of Global Warming. Well we're already close to 1.5 degrees C temperature rise and even breached it for one month, and that the CO₂e of all the greenhouse gasses is somewhere north of 485 ppm which means the rise could be more like 3 degrees C, not to mention the fact that the IPCC has been notoriously conservative in its predictions for example the Arctic Ice extent minima in 2007, 2011 and 2012 were not expected until mid-century.

And we've already seen dangerous climate changes, like the die-off in the Great Barrier Reef, the near-extermination of starfish on the North American Pacific Coast (thank goodness there's being a recovery there), the submersion of five Pacific Islands, and the deadly typhoons and cyclones such as Yolanda in the Central and South Pacific since 2013.

What's the solution? Get off of fossil fuels before the current Peak Oil finally peaks and goes back down. And plant lots and lots and lots of trees.

Yellowstone could put the schnitz on Global Warming.

Instead, it would create a new ice age which would lead to the deaths of BILLIONS of people. And wreck two-thirds of the United States, utterly. Which means the country would not be able to function, period.

In other words: Yellowstone blowing up means the end of America.

From the Inquisitor.com article, Mega-earthquakes in Major Population Centers Highly Imminent, Experts Renew Warning:

Fears have also been expressed about an imminent eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, which experts say experienced a major eruption 640,000 years ago, followed by minor eruptions and lava flows 150,000 and 70,000 years ago, respectively.

Experts warn that major eruptions of Yellowstone comparable to the last super-eruption 640,000 years ago could be up to 2,000 times as powerful as the Mount St. Helens’ 1980 eruption. A major eruption of Yellowstone could devastate large swathes of the U.S. northwest and render about two-thirds of the country uninhabitable.

For more, click here.

And from another Inquisitor Article, Yellowstone Supervolcano Eruption May Happen Soon; Explosion More Catastrophic than Effects of Climate Change.

A Yellowstone supervolcano eruption capable of wiping out the western half of the U.S. may be closer than previously thought. Scientists say the Earth is now in a “volcano season,” and a large volcanic eruption poses a significantly greater global threat than even the effects of climate change.

According to scientists from the European Science Foundation (ESF), the Earth is experiencing a 300-year period of increased volcanic activity, or a volcano season. Some scientists have speculated this increased activity may be due to rising sea levels, possibly related to global warming.

In the report, entitled “Extreme Geohazards: Reducing the Disaster Risk and Increasing Resilience,” experts predict a supervolcano eruption with the ability to kill millions has a five to 10 percent chance of happening within the next 70 to 80 years. Such an event would make it difficult for a global society to adapt and remain sustainable.

Researchers are particularly worried about active volcanoes in Yellowstone National Park in the United States, Mount Vesuvius in Italy, and Popocatépetl in Mexico. As reported by International Business Times, the environmental impact would go well beyond any damaging effects of climate change over a 1,000 year period, should any of these three erupt.

For more, click here.

And here's why the Yellowstone Explosion could be huge:

Cross-posted at 2016 is strange!.

Arctic Ice Suffers Severe Melt-back as Satellite Monitor Begins to Fail.

This is a reblogging of and commenting on two recent articles posted by Robert Scribbler. Please note that this is not the only pole that's suffering ice melt. Antarctica is now melting, too.

First, Robert Scribbler predicts that the Arctic Ice will just about completely disappear by the end of this summer, and he backs it up with EVIDENCE, such as the now-ongoing break-up and meltback of ice in the Beaufort Sea:

Arctic Sea Ice is Falling off a Cliff and it May Not Survive The Summer

By Robert Scribbler 2 May 2016

Near zero sea ice by the end of melt season. The dreaded Blue Ocean Event. Something that appears more and more likely to happen during 2016 with each passing day.

These are the kinds of climate-wrecking phase changes in the Arctic people have been worrying about since sea ice extent, area, and volume achieved gut-wrenching plunges during 2007 and 2012. Plunges that were far faster than sea ice melt rates predicted by model runs and by the then scientific consensus on how the Arctic Ocean ice would respond to human-forced warming this Century. For back during the first decade of the 21st Century the mainstream scientific view was that Arctic sea ice would be about in the range that it is today by around 2070 or 2080. And that we wouldn’t be contemplating the possibility of zero or near zero sea ice until the end of this Century.

Melting more than Two Weeks Faster than the Early 2000s

Since April 27th, according to a record of sea ice extent provided by JAXA, daily rates of sea ice loss have been in the range of 75,000 square kilometers for every 24 hour period. That’s 300,000 square kilometers of sea ice, or an area the size of New Mexico, lost in just four days. Only during 2015 have we ever seen such similarly rapid rates of loss for this time of year.



Image source: JAXA via Robertscribbler.

We’ve never seen early season sea ice losses like this before. Severe sea ice losses of this variety can help to generate strong ridges and extreme heatwaves [and wildfires] like the ones we now see affecting [Canada,] India and Southeast Asia.

According to the rates of decline shown for this year, last year, 2007 and 2012, we are in for a record low area of Sea Ice Extent up in the Arctic. And one of the areas is the Beaufort Sea, described by Robert Scribbler, wherein there is a huge area of exposure of water close to the sea coast and the Canadian Archipelago, and an immense area of sea ice that is in shards:



Image source: LANCE-MODIS via Robertscribbler.

This Beaufort sea has never looked so bad off so early in the year. High amplitude waves in the Jet Stream continue to deliver record warmth, warm, wet winds, and record sea ice melt to this region of the Arctic. For reference, bottom of frame in this image is around 600 miles. The wispy threads you see in the image is cloud cover, the sections of solid white are snow and ice. And the blue you see is the open waters of the Arctic Ocean. Open water gap size in the widest sections is now more than 150 miles.

There, ice continues to rapidly recede away from the Arctic Ocean shores of the Mackenzie Delta and the Canadian Archipelago — where a large gap has opened up in the sea ice.

All this melting ice on sea and land will eventually convert to rising seas, and will inundate areas like Southern Louisiana, South Florida, the Chesapeake Bay including such major cities like New Orleans, Miami and Washington, D. C.

We can head it off if we do a crash program to get away from fossil fuels cold-turkey and start extracting carbon out of the atmosphere. But I have my doubts that this is politically possible at all.

And the US Congress and Senate are not helping. The GOP wants to cut everywhere except the War Department, and the Democrats are so ineffectual at stopping them, they are enablers. Which is why the Arctic Ice Satellite Monitor is starting to go on the fritz:

Republican Climate Change Denial is Blinding Our Ability to Observe the Arctic

By Robert Scribbler 26 April 2016

Denial.

It’s all-too-often what happens to the powerful when they are confronted with the consequences of their own bad actions. It can best be said that denial is blindness — the willful inability to open one’s eyes to the tough reality of the world. In literature, we can see denial in the tragic sin of hubris and in the metaphor of Oedipus the King gouging his own eyes out as a result of his failure to come to terms with the warnings of prophecy.

In the psychological sense, denial involves the inability to cope with reality such that a person will act in an irrational fashion to the point of generating fantasies that the object of said denial does not exist. Behaviorally, this results in an increasing degradation of a person’s ability to confront or cope with the object of denial — to the point of ardent, irrational, and possibly destructive outbursts when faced with it.

Arctic sea ice loss.

Ever since 1979 an array of satellite sensors has allowed our scientists to directly observe the sea ice in the Arctic. Since that time, and as a human-forced warming of the world ramped up, the area which that ice covers has dramatically shrunken. So much so that by this year, 2016, there’s a risk that not only will a new all-time record low be reached, but that by the end of this summer almost all the ice in the Arctic Ocean will be melted out entirely. A risk that a new climate change related event will start to take shape in the Arctic. The blue ocean events.

Data source: NSIDC. Image source: Pogoda i Klimat via Robert Scribbler.
Comment in red mine.

Arctic sea ice area as measured by observational satellites and most recently by  F17. The bottom line of the graph measures days of the year. The left side of the graph measures sea ice area. The corresponding intersections determine sea ice area on any given day of a year in the record. The up and downward swoop of each line on the graph shows the seasonal variation of sea ice area for that given year. The blue line on the graph represents 1980 sea ice area. The dark gray line represents the 1979 to 2000 average. The red line represents the 2012 record low year. 2016, in black, shows a squiggle as F17 begins to fail in early March of this year — a year that could significantly beat 2012 as the worst melt year on record. The sensor is failing because it is old and needs replacement. A replacement that is now sitting in a warehouse due to republican-led satellite research funding cuts.

Willful Blindness

Where does denial meet with Arctic sea ice loss? In the form of climate change denying republicans attempting again and again to cut and with-hold funding to NASA and NSIDC instruments that track what is an unprecedented and historic melt now ongoing. For ever since their coming to power in Congress in 2010, republicans have done everything they can to remove funding for the devices that provide a direct observation of the changes coming as a result of a human-forced warming of our world.

More here.

We Missed the Paris COP21 Climate Change Goal!

That is, the goal of 1.5 degrees Centigrade during the first three months of this year, according to Japan Met Office.

From the Robertscribbler...

Japan Meteorological Agency Shows First Three Months of 2016 Were About 1.5 C Above the IPCC Preindustrial Baseline

by Robert Scribbler, 14 April 2016 (link-format and image caption mine)

We should take a moment to appreciate how hot it’s actually been so far in 2016. To think about what it means to be in a world that’s already so damn hot. To think about how far behind the 8 ball we are on responses to human forced climate change. And to consider how urgent it is to swiftly stop burning coal, oil and gas. To stop adding more fuel to an already raging global fire.

Global policy makers, scientists, and many environmentalists have identified an annual average of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial marks as a level of heat we should try to avoid. [Link] The Paris Climate Summit made a verbal pledge to at least attempt to steer clear of such extreme high temperature ranges. But even the strongest emissions reduction commitments from the nations of the world now do not line up with that pledge. And it’s questionable that they ever could given the massive amount of greenhouse gas overburden that has already accumulated and is already rapidly heating the world’s airs, waters, ice, and carbon stores.

Current emission reduction pledges, though significant when taking into context the size and potential for growth of all of carbon-spewing industry, don’t even come close to the stated 1.5 C goal. Under our presently accepted understanding of climate sensitivity, and barring any response from the global carbon stores unforeseen by mainstream science, pledged reductions in fossil fuel use by the nations of the world under Paris would limit warming to around 3 C by the end of this Century. Rates of carbon emission reduction would necessarily have to significantly speed up beyond the pledged Paris NDC goals in order to hit below 3 C by 2100 — much less avoid 2 C.

As for 1.5 C above preindustrial averages — it already appears that this year, 2016, will see temperatures uncomfortably close to a level that mainstream scientists have identified as dangerous.

Source: Japan Met.

More here.

From before the Paris Summit -- Top Climate Expert: Crisis is Worse Than We Think & Scientists Are Self-Censoring to Downplay Risk

The following video below is from Democracy Now!, and is available on You Tube here.

British climate scientist Kevin Anderson, Deputy Director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester is interviewed by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!. In the interview Dr. [or Mr.] Anderson states that the Earth Changes in its climate constitute much more of a crisis, i.e. are much worse, than most people think. And he is not at all surprised that the USA negotiating team refused to agree to anything in the agreement that would be binding.