Even if
]A]ccording to a new modeling study published in Scientific Reports today, even if we made such drastic reductions permanent, it would still not be enough. The study shows that if we stopped all human-made greenhouse gas emissions immediately, the Earth’s temperatures would continue to rise because of self-sustaining melting ice and permafrost. These “feedback loops” — in which melting ice causes less sunlight to be reflected back into space, which in turn raises temperatures and causes more ice melt — have already been set into motion, the researchers argue.
I read something about it a couple of days ago – the melting tundra. It’s melting so fast and there’s so much of it that it’s going to dump more carbon than we can possibly compensate for even at zero emissions – aka it’s too late.
Humanity “is beyond the point-of-no-return when it comes to halt the melting of the permafrost using greenhouse gas cuts as the single tool,” Jørgen Randers, PhD, professor emeritus of climate strategy at BI Norwegian Business School and lead author of the study, tells Future Human.
For decades, climate scientists have tried to predict the so-called tipping point at which it would be too late to stop global warming — too late to limit the amount the temperature rises, the amount of sea level rise, and the number of lives claimed by both and other climate-induced ecological disasters — through reducing carbon emissions alone. Climate scientists point to either 2030 or 2050 as deadlines for the world to get to zero emissions before runaway climate change kicks in. But according to the new study, no matter how much we reduce emissions now, he says, warming will continue, and the self-sustained melting of Arctic ice and permafrost that has already begun could continue for 500 years.
It’s not 2050 or 2030 or even 2020; we passed it some time ago.
Will carbon sequestration save the day? Well…
To stop self-sustained melting — and the expected rise in temperature and sea level after emissions cease — Randers says the world must undertake a massive effort to capture carbon out of the atmosphere and store it back underground, a technology known as carbon sequestration. And we would have to start sucking at least 33 gigatons out of the air every year, starting this year. For comparison, all animal life on Earth collectively weighs an estimated two gigatons.
It’s kind of a big job.
It’s not just the carbon – it’s the methane. The permafrost has been releasing stored methane for some time. We’ve known for quite a while that it was too late, but we were always warned against saying that, because humans wouldn’t change their ways. I sort of said it anyway, because humans aren’t going to change their ways if they think there is no problem.
Realistically, at this point, we’re looking at a significant temperature increase by the end of the century, and that temperature increase has already begun. And people I know, even liberal people, seem to be in the “deal with that later” mode. I frequently hear “didn’t you know there’s a war on?” (There always is, dude) Or “We need to deal with poverty first. (Global warming will make poverty worse). Or “My little changes won’t make enough difference.” (Of course not, but literally everybody can say that; we would need collective action – starting about 50 years ago, or sooner.)
Makes all the (tentative) celebration of That Thing being defeated seem trivial, doesn’t it?
And the methane. The article I saw the other day (whatever it was) said that, but of course I forgot it.
And the “deal with it later” – jesus tell me about it. People around here still squat in their cars with the engines running for literally HOURS. They’re still putting light bulbs all over their roofs NOW, in early November. Etc. And this is in hipster techy knowledge-economy Seattle.
Yeah, here in central Nebraska it’s all monster trucks. When I moved here, there was a family across the street that must have made like 20 car trips a day, and judging by the length of most of them, probably within walking distance.
It was worse in Texas. Not only monster trucks and SUVs running and idling, but the AC/heating. My students would tell me they kept it at 80 in the winter and 65 in the summer! Switch that…if you can be comfortable at those temperatures in one season, you can be comfortable in the other.
Seriously. Drives me nuts.
The feedback is a specific type: positive feedback. In control theory, positive feedback is to be avoided at all costs (unless one wants to blow something up). An example from everyday life is when someone calls into a radio show with their radio volume turned up: the audio from the radio goes through the phone and is transmitted back out over the airwaves, which is then picked up and sent over phone, etc., resulting in a suddenly loud screeching and the radio host shouting at the caller to turn their radio volume down.
Nobody really knew how fast the positive feedback in the climate would get out of control. Back in the 1970’s there was a theory that it was going the other way–global cooling. But then more research was done with ancient tree ring studies and glacier cores, and the climate models were extended back past the 20th century. It’s starting to look now that the tipping point occurred much further back in time than anyone ever suspected.
James Garnett, the scientific literature never predicted global cooling. That was a media-driven thing. The scientific literature in the 1970s was already talking about global warming. Global cooling was not a thing in science, just in the minds of media. A couple of outliers (among scientists, not data) say “nope, global cooling is the thing”, and the media picks it up and trumpets it.
I’ve been saying for several years, at least, that we were past the tipping point. I suspect other scientists were saying that in private, even if not in public.
I do recall some science writers in one of the Science of Discworld books saying that it was possible that the Earth was heading into a new ice age (or at least was overdue for one) and that it’d be utter bullshit if it got cancelled out by our reckless venting of carbon into the atmosphere.
On the plus side the Earth has been here before; life will find a way. Too bad it’s not looking like homo sapiens is gonna have descendants.
iknklast, yeah, it was the popular media interpretation. I never claimed that the science pointed to “global cooling”.
Cue the calls for hasty, ill-thought, silver-bullet, testosterone fueled, industrial, geoengineering projects that promise to save us all but hide lots of unforeseen, unintended consequences that will be infinitely worse than the introduction of starlings to North America and rabbits to Australia.
Never mind that it was pretty much exactly this way of thinking that got us to where we are now, as the above paragraph can also be used as a pretty good description of the last five hundred years of human history.
As I wrote about a year ago we are already out of realistic hopes, and whatever unrealistic hopes remain are quickly fading. It has, of course, been true for quite a while that we need some degree of dumb luck in addition to far more aggressive emission cuts than any government, or any major opposition party, anywhere in the industrialized world is even considering. The longer we kept sticking to Business As Usual the more luck was needed, such that now we’re in “need a miracle” territory. I once expressed my fear that we were going to go straight from “it’s to early to act on the climate crisis” to “it’s too late” without ever passing through the “the time to act is now” phase. Well, I guess that’s the way we’re heading…
One of the “unrealistic” hopes I mentioned a year ago was taking governments to court. As I wrote at the time:
Of course my pessimism proved justified once again, and the state won the appeal as well. The case has since gone all the way to the Supreme Court, and today (well, technically yesterday in my time zone), was the last day of the hearings. I’m not sure when the verdict can be expected, but it usually takes a few weeks. Once again I support the lawsuit all the way, including putting my money where my mouth is, even if I’m no more optimistic than I was a year ago.
I still don’t think we have a right to give up though. Especially since defeatism is another excuse for inaction. In a sense it’s not even about saving the world any more, but rather about being able to say “at least I tried”.
Speaking of which…
https://uk.reuters.com/article/norway-oil-environment/update-2-norway-supreme-court-verdict-opens-arctic-to-more-oil-drilling-idUKL8N2J21QB?fbclid=IwAR3phiP_nwBobdt27yTmmuW_mW3Kkc0SjQa1Cm2giLoNDIJ4tXf_Zm9-bMU