Coming Soon, the Great Warming Spurt.

You may have never heard of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) or, as its sometimes called, the Pacific multi-decadal oscillation.  Before long that will change.

There have been references to it here and there but it wasn't until this article was posted at Climate Central on the 27th of last month that I finally spent a bit of time exploring it.

You've probably heard of ENSO, the El Nino Southern Oscillation that brings us El Nino or La Nina conditions every seven years or so.  PDO is something like ENSO on steroids and for the past 15-years it's been sucking heat out of the atmosphere and burying it in the waters of the Pacific Ocean.  That, apparently, is soon to change.

Humanity is about to experience a historically unprecedented spike in temperatures.

That’s the ominous conclusion of a vast and growing body of research that links sweeping Pacific Ocean cycles with rates of warming at the planet’s surface — warming rates that could affect how communities and nations respond to threats posed by climate change.

Papers in two leading journals this week reaffirmed that the warming effects of a substantial chunk of our greenhouse gas pollution have been avoided on land for the last 15 to 20 years because of a phase in a decades-long cycle of ocean winds and currents. With Pacific trade winds expected to slacken in the years ahead, the studies warn that seas will begin absorbing less of global warming’s energy, and that some of the heat they’ve been holding onto will rise to the surface.

You see, for the past two decades we've sort of been running a tab on the extra heat generated by our growing greenhouse gas emissions.  That heat didn't go away, PDO merely stored it in the ocean.  Because that heat got sucked underwater we didn't notice how much we were actually warming the planet. But just as an ocean can absorb heat from the atmosphere so too can a warmed ocean release heat back into the atmosphere.  

Amid the questions left unanswered by the research, however, are whether communities are prepared for looming assaults of increasingly intense heat waves after the warming slowdown reverses, and how the expected spikes in surface temperatures could affect policy debates dealing with climate action and clean energy.

"A future speedup in warming is likely to affect public opinion about climate change if it results in changes at the local level that people recognize," Utah State University assistant professor Peter Howe, who has researched public perceptions of climate change, said. "I would also caution, though, that perceptions and experiences of local climate conditions appear to be related to some extent by pre-existing beliefs about global warming."

Along with rising tides caused by rising temperatures, intense heat and heat waves are the clearest signs so far that human activity is altering the climate. A suite of modeling studies have independently concluded that heat waves that ravaged Australia in 2013 would have been almost impossible without the warming effects of our greenhouse gas pollution. Scientists have also directly linked record-breaking heat in Europe with global warming.

Meanwhile, California’s record-breaking heat last year, which some research links more closely with ocean cycles than with global warming, substantially worsened the drought-inducing effects of low rainfall and snowfall rates. That’s a problem that will continue to worsen fire risks throughout the American West, and much of the rest of the world, as temperatures start to really spike. That could threaten the survival of entire ecosystems,including the spectacular high-altitude forests of the American Southwest.

This concern dovetails with recent research finding that our oceans' capacity to absorb atmospheric heat has peaked and is waning.  The oceanic heat sink that we've so relied upon may be less reliable than we had hoped.

So, brace yourselves.  The heating spike may be up to 5-years off which provides some opportunity to do things such as heat-proofing the house or going for that heat pump option.

Whether You Excavate It or Pump It or Frack It Out of the Ground, It's All Fossil Fuel

We get all sorts of stuff out of the ground and it's all lethal, every BTU of it.   Some of it, for example natural gas, is less lethal.  Some of it, heavy crude and coal, is especially lethal.   But, still, burn enough of any of it and you consign civilization as we have known it for 3,000 years to extinction.

We're discovering new reserves of Civilization Eradicator all the time.   China, heavily dependent on imported oil and coal, is about to get into fracking Big Time.   The United States and Canada are already heavily into fracking.   You could even say we're "Mother Frackers."   And coal?  Oh yeah, baby.   We dig coal, we really do, and then we either burn it ourselves or ship it as fast as we can to Asia so they can make the crap that lines the shelves at Wal-Mart.

Bitumen.   Makes no sense.   The last Albertan who understood the perils and pitfalls of the Athabasca Tar Sands was recently buried with full state honours.   Shhh, keep this on the QT, but there's a reason Alberta is still running in the red despite this supposed underground gooey windfall.

And now we're licking our lips in anticipation of getting at massive reserves of oil beneath the Arctic sea bed just as soon as our massive fossil fuel consumption clears away the rest of the Arctic sea ice.   Christ boys but we're gonna be rollin' in it then.

Oh sure, climate change is the greatest threat ever to face mankind.  There, okay we said it.   Now, let's move on.   Those fossil fuels aren't going to bring themselves out of the ground.   That's hard work, so hard that we can only do it with generous government subsidies and enormous fossil fuel industry tax and royalty deferrals.  But let's not get bogged down in details.  It's fossil fuel, isn't it?   And that makes us rich, doesn't it?   And that may hurt our grandkids, even make their lives living hell, but you can't look to the future and take care of business in the present.

And we may be on course for 4 degrees C of warming by 2100, perhaps even 6 degrees, but 4, 6 those are little numbers, single digits, nothing.   And besides, do you think you'll be around in 2100?  Don't be silly.

The 21st will be the Century of Fossil Fuels if we stay on our current course.   With the reserves we already have on the books and all the new fossil fuels we're uncovering we have four, maybe five times as much as we need to truly bake this planet.   At least some of us will get rich doing it.  Let's get cracking, er, fracking.

Waiting For a Beating

Climate change experts are becoming reluctant to speak their minds. Oh they're still plenty willing to talk about the endless river of data and research that steadily and consistently reinforces their scientific consensus. They're reluctant to give their views on mankind's political and social willingness to confront the challenges of climate change and our dwindling chances of meeting even dangerous limits on global warming in the 21st century.

The widely accepted consensus is that we have to limit warming to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century or face catastrophic climate change impacts. Four out of five climate change experts surveyed by The Guardian don't think we have much hope of staying within the 2 degree limit.

Today's Guardian poll of attendees at a climate conference last month in Copenhagen exposes the gulf between political rhetoric and scientific thinking. Of more than 250 experts surveyed, more than half said the 2C target could still be achieved but only 18 thought that it would be. By the end of the century, most thought average temperatures would rise by some 4C.

...Several scientists said the G20 summit in London, where climate change was barely considered, had convinced them the action required would not be taken. Simon Lewis, a climate researcher at the University of Leeds, said: "The summit shows that political leaders do not regard climate change as an urgent issue. They were tasked to re-configure the global economy and they chose to re-affirm the old model, and not move to a low-carbon economy as scientists have urged. The summit was more of an end-of-the-world order than a new world order."

Bob Doppelt, director of the climate leadership initiative at the University of Oregon, said: "One of the problems is that the issue is still being framed as a scientific and environmental issue. This is a major mistake. Climate change is just a symptom of dysfunctional social and economic practices and policies. It is a social and economic issue. The emphasis needs to shift away from the biophysical sciences now to the social sciences if we have any hope of solving this problem."

Others said it could take a series of extreme weather events similar to Hurricane Katrina and the 2003 European heatwave to force political action. One said a "9/11-type event" that could be traced to increased greenhouse gas emissions might break the political deadlock.

Put another way, mankind is waiting for a climate change beating of monumental proportions to spark the global consensus necessary to address the social and economic dimensions of global warming. Until and unless we reach that threshhold while we still have the strength and good fortune to even forge an international consensus, we seem bound to descend into an 'every nation for itself' regime that will then evolve into adversarial blocs. Once that happens, achieving any meaningful, comprehensive and effective consensus probably becomes a lost and unrecoverable opportunity. But don't take my word for it. This very endgame is reflected in the global warming studies conducted by both the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defence.

Unfortunately, we're much more practised and comfortable with resorting to military solutions than social and economic restructuring.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/14/scientists-global-warming-conference-poll