Fresh from this morning's MIT Tech Review - we're all gonna die. Want the details? Why would you?
If you're still with me, here's the deal. Looks like the planet is in for a lot more sunny skies. The flip side (do you even remember vinyl records?) is that global warming may leave us with less cloud cover.
The kids from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are reporting a new study published in Nature Geoscience claims that global warming could cause enough loss of cloud cover over our oceans to trigger up to 8 degrees Celsius of warming.
Curiously, the normally fastidious crew at MIT overlooked mentioning that the research came out of rival CalTech which happens to manage NASA's legendary Jet Propulsion Lab.
Supercomputer simulations suggest that greenhouse gases are causing the disappearance of clouds over our oceans, and that could drastically speed up global warming over the next century, a paper in Nature Geoscience suggests. Specifically, the tipping point is predicted to come once atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations reach about 1,200 parts per million. The figure is currently about 410 ppm but could reach 1,200 ppm within the next century.
This scenario would be similar to an event that occurred about 56 million years ago during the Eocene period, according to the authors. During the so-called Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a sudden release of carbon into the atmosphere was followed by a sudden temperature increase of more than 5 °C. It had catastrophic effects. It caused mass extinction in the seas and was hot enough for crocodiles to swim in the Arctic.Now, in fairness, if mankind makes it through the next thirty or forty years there's a decent chance we'll work out some means of artificial cloud cover if for no other reason than so we don't all die. That's called "geo-engineering" which is scary in its own right. But 8 degrees Celsius, that really doesn't leave you with a lot of options, right? Right?
4 comments:
The news just gets worse and worse, Mound, yet the response, both among politicians and the general public, is a puzzling and studied indifference. I don't get it.
Lorne just think of the cartoon of that frog lounging in the pot atop the stove. Then, take away the humour.
Um, pardon me, but I am currently in USA and I sure don’t see indifference. What seems most visible here is a purposeful rejection of climate science from many sides. Just look at the different ways Herr Trump is opposing it. From dropping out of Paris Accords, dropping mileage requirements for cars, tariffs on solar/ wind projects to promoting coal all he can, to denigrating, to “I don’t believe it” on Climate Science Report, etc, etc. Look at the response to the Climate New Deal of AOC. Even Democrats are on board with this mind set, with Feinstein latest nonsense. No it’s not indifference, it is outright rejection. It will take years, decades, I believe, to reverse this. Don’t forget too that all this crap from USofA gives plenty of cover for the likes of Ford, yellow vests, truck convoys, etc. The billionaire oil moguls are fighting back hard. Look at how they handled “Occupy”. I personally think it was Naomi Klein et al’s declaration of stranded assets that need to be left in the ground that scared the beejeezus out of them. Oil is their big ticket to untold wealth as it has always been and no bloody environmentalists are gonna change that and that’s that. Until they can be clearly identified as the pariahs they are, it will only get worse. 1789, anyone? Mac
The problem we have, Mac, Canada included, is that we're running out of time. We know what must be done by 2030 if we're to (have a chance to) avert runaway global warming. That sounds like a lot of time. It's not. For the magnitude of the challenge, finding a global consensus to do what must be done and, even then, only for a "chance" is beyond the will of our political caste, in your country, mine and pretty much the rest of the pack.
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