407.42
Over 400 is the new normal – and that’s not normal. USA Today:
Six months after 195 nations vowed tougher action to curb global warming, the problem has only grown worse, with higher accumulations of greenhouse gas emissions, record worldwide temperatures and widespread coral bleaching from hotter ocean waters.
On top of that, a new United Nations report documents increased pollution levels for the world’s cities.
The primary greenhouse gas that leaders at a global summit in Paris last December agreed to reduce — carbon dioxide (CO2) released from burning of fossil fuels — is now fixed above the historic milestone of 400 parts per million that was reached for the first time last year.
Less than 300 feet from the edge of the cliff.
In the planet’s Northern Hemisphere, where most of the world’s population lives and burns fossil fuels, a benchmark reading from the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii reached a monthly average of 407.42 parts per million in April. In the slightly cleaner Southern Hemisphere, readings from an Australian measuring station surpassed 400 parts per million last week, according to Australian scientists.
The rate of 400 parts per million is significant because the planet hasn’t seen that much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for millions of years.
“This is the new normal. This isn’t going away,” said Pieter Tans, chief greenhouse gas scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He said the warming of the planet will be steady and inevitable. “It’s like we just set the thermostat at a higher level.”
But we evolved at the lower level, so this isn’t going to work out well.
The coral reefs are going, rapidly.
The trend is not improving.
And it amazes me how many people can just shrug this off. We’ve changed so much so fast, and we think we can just keep on changing it forever because technology will magically make it all right. In fact, one thing I hear is that we’re just going to move to the moon, or Mars, or wherever the popular site is right now. Never mind that it probably won’t work…why do we think we have the right to fuck up another planet (or moon)?
Not to mention the logistics of moving everyone and all everyone’s luggage to the moon, let alone Mars. I mean come on, people…
Like anyone who’s not ‘important’ would get off the planet anyway (except maybe exceptional breeding stock – I’m sure The Donald would have a view on that)
If humanity has proved anything at the level of populations, it’s that they’ll only react to crises.
Not actally having a full scale nuclear war is the only disaster I can think of where groups of people have acted preventively. And that’s probably because blowing stuff up is the type of danger the lizard brain can understand.
So, based on past behavior, there will be no effective response until the existential threat is *perceived*. And I don’t mean by us eggheads who’ve been running around with our hair on fire for years. Decades.
Once the magnitude of the threat is perceived, people are going to plunk down for the first, cheapest and stupidest “solution” to hand. It’ll be some form of geoengineering or, possibly, some kind of satellite sunshading. That will be guaranteed to make an awful situation worse because people never do the right thing in an environmental crisis. It’s not something lizard brains can grasp.
My cheery and uplifting message is that we better hope the climate disasters accumulate so fast and furious that people don’t have the money to try any stupid “fixes.” Then we may get off with mere centuries or a couple of millenia of Dark Ages.
I hope I’m just being too Russian about the future.
That’s been my experience, too. When I teach about the effects of global warming, I give my students an article to read about the Maldive Islands. Invariably their response is, “Wow, this really is affecting someone, just because it’s not affecting us here.” Except it is. We are feeling the effects, but we don’t notice because the heat is going up just slowly enough to boil the frog without him jumping out of the pan.
If for the last few decades most countries had been doing like France & replacing fossil with nuclear for electricity generation & electrifying & expanding the rail system, this problem would be a lot smaller.
The West Coast’s ag industry has been suffering from climate change for quite a few years at this point… and yet some Republican dick goes and brings a snowball in to show Congress…
*cough*methane*cough*
“the heat is going up just slowly enough to boil the frog without him jumping out of the pan”
*shudder*
Creepy, made all the more creepy because it’s apt.
When people tell me it’ll all be cool because we’ll move into space or whatever, I try to help them understand that our arc of ‘progress’ so far has been driven by the availability of cheap energy…and we’ve pretty much used up that resource. There are other available energy sources–lots and lots of solar, fission, fusion, who knows…but they depend on having cheap energy to create an infrastructure for them. This was Rob Hopkins’ insight–that we’re faced with two apocalyptic disasters, destruction of our habitat and loss of cheap energy, that interact–and one keeps us from making any improvement in the other.
Another thing people I explain this to find it difficult to assimilate is that if we did establish space colonies the people most suited to thrive in them aren’t the alpha males who want to go but rather the poorest of us–these are people who are used to using very little and working hard for it, can cooperate, can accept living in close quarters with others, and who would appreciate how fragile and precarious a totally controlled and managed environment would be. A space colony made up of the people who want to be space colonists would self-destruct in weeks.
My second degree is in Environmental Science and I did everything related to climate change that I could get my hands on. That far from makes me an expert but…
We are fucked. We are so far into the process that we can forget all about prevention. We need to start researching mitigation strategies asap. The last year’s rapid increase in mean monthly temperatures may be a blip – we won’t know until we’re a long way past it – but the smart money is on an accelerating rate of the rise in mean global temperature.
The coral reefs will go, and fairly soon. There’s really no way we can stop that at this point. Ocean acidification is already happening. A raised atmospheric CO2 concentration means more CO2 absorbed by the ocean which acidifies the water which affects coral reefs and the carbonate shells grown by foraminifera. Foraminifera are right at the bottom of the marine food web. Lose a significant number of them and the food web collapses. That wipes out a major source of food for an awful lot of the world’s human population.
The terrestrial food chains will be (already are being) thrown into chaos by losing species that cannot physically adapt to higher temperatures or that are substantially reduced when they try to adapt by expanding their ranges and come into conflict with the currently indigenous species. Then there’s the asynchrony between dependent species – for instance, as Spring and warm temperatures come earlier and earlier insects which require a particular source of food for their young may find their hatching times are out of phase with plant growth of the right sort. The same thing can happen with egg laying and mating triggers.
Then there’s the serious probability of hitting “tipping points” where the earth flips from one stable climatic configuration to another. Very, very quickly. Such things could be triggered by methane outgaussing from permafrost – methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 and there is, to use a technical phrase, a metric fuckton of the stuff locked up in the Arctic. In fact, there’s some evidence from Siberia that this is already happening.
Maybe there are technical solutions we can find. We are, after all, in many ways, a very, very clever bunch of chimps. But that’s not something I’d want to blithely rely on. The best I can say is that it’s unlikely my generation will see the worst of it. Unfortunately I have two kids who are likely to see something a lot worse.
Sorry kids. We really fucked this one up.
@ Steamshovelmama That’s the impression I’ve been getting from several sources…and the ‘if we only act now we may get out of this thing’ rhetoric sounds sadder and sadder the longer we don’t (really) act.
We may collectively be clever chimps, but cleverness can’t save the world without infrastructure, and the more energy we use to develop the technical solutions we’d need to save the world, the more environmental damage we’ll cause. So we’ve put our fist into the coconut and can’t let it go to get our hand out.
The other side of the coin…juste à titre d’info…
William M Gray was a very respected climatologist who made great strides in the study of hurricanes, their frequency, predictability and intensity etc. There isn’t an across the board agreement on this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_M._Gray
http://www.denverpost.com/harsanyi/ci_3899807
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
As pertains to climate change, one thing is for sure. Over the past 2,000 years or so the climate of Europe has undergone very dramatic shifts that occurred in a very short time. These drastic changes most certainly had nothing to do with human activity or the burning of fossil fuels. That said, there is still no clear concensus on why or how this happened.
I’m a dissenter!
Steamshovelmama – my first degree is in Environmental Science, and I agree with you. I don’t tell my students that; but I don’t see how they can avoid the conclusion if they are paying attention. And still they vote for Republicans for fear that some black woman somewhere will take their job or some transgendered person will use the same bathroom as them if they vote Democrat. Oh, and abortion, of course. This area is highly Catholic, and not the kind of Catholics you read about on the news, the ones that don’t follow the Pope and are liberal. These are conservative Catholics who only depart from the Pope on the Death Penalty.
I’m not optimistic myself, but the problem with saying it’s too late is that it becomes another excuse for inaction (“Well, it’s too late now anyway, so why bother…”). If actions speak louder than words, humanity’s stated opinion for the last 25+ years has been that it’s too early to act. My fear is that we’re going to jump straight from “It’s too early” to “It’s too late” without ever passing through the “The time to act is now” phase. A good outcome may no longer be an option, but we can probably still make it a whole lot worse by continuing business as usual.
@Bjarte
Yes, we can’t stop trying out of despair – but I think that if we’re to get anywhere we need to stop talking about prevention and move on to problem solving and mitigation. Carbon sequestering on a massive scale, for instance.
Of course, we’re almost certainly past peak oil (and coal and gas) so it won’t be many decades before CO2 release on an industrial scale will stop, whatever we do. The question is whether we, as a species, will be able to survive the changes we have created in our environment.
Which is why I never tell my students we’ve gone too far. Unfortunately, they are unwilling to act because they think it’s too early. Nothing is actually happening yet, in their eyes. They can’t see the problems, even as we have constant issues with the agriculture that forms the economic basis of our state. They still think it’s too early to act – because why act BEFORE something happens!
That used to be the feeling. But current sources suggest that synfuels and fracking have extended that out further. Of course, they have serious problems, too, but I’m afraid we may not be able to rely on peak oil to save us on this one. And the calculations for CO2 levels if we use all the oil and gas (and coal) in the reserves are really frightening. That’s why I tell my students that we didn’t move on from the Stone Age because we ran out of stones. We can’t afford to continue what we’re doing even if there is enough to last longer. And nuclear may be too late to save us, since it requires substantial amounts of water, and the droughts have caused some plants to have to temporarily shut down in recent years. Plus, a number of plants recently closed early because they couldn’t afford to stay open. Nuclear simply costs too much to be viable unless the government puts money into it very heavily.
Whether we can “technology” our way out of this remains to be seen. I’m guessing the answer is no with current technologies. But…that doesn’t preclude some major breakthrough. The real issue is that we need to change our lifestyles, and also to slow down population growth (preferably to a negative growth for a while), which might mean reworking our economy so it doesn’t require constant growth.
Yep, putting the entire stored carbon of a geological period (or a significant fraction of it) back into the atmosphere in less than 300 years is a scary prospect.
I’m not sure fracking puts more than a “bump” on the downward slope past peak fossil fuel, particularly since, as you say, it has environmental issues of its own. And with water an already reducing resource Nuclear isn’t much better.
I agree – all the issues come down to there being too damn many of us and, even worse, the entirely understandable ambitions of India and China for Western lifestyles. And while we’re guzzling oil and consuming mountains of crap we hardly have the right or ability to tell them they can’t do that.
Most euro nations are either at zero or in negative population growth but if our per capita consumption continues to increase that doesn’t matter. The US leads the world by quite a large margin in careless consumption but Europe isn’t exactly innocent. The Chinese cut their population growth using draconian measures but are increasing their power usage despite that – all those coalfired power stations. Then there’s the problems attendant on negative population growth – an aging workforce, the loss of the governmental tax base etc. No taxes, no money to deal with environmental issues.
The real key is that all these problems take more than the life of one government to solve so governments don’t worry too much because the consequences won’t be their problem. Changing our lifestyles – yes, absolutely, but you and I are both using electronic gadgets for this doom laden conversation… I live in a centrally heated house with two TVs, video, DVD player, two laptops, a netbook, two tablets, three mobile phones, a fridge, a freezer, a gas oven, a power shower, three electronic room fans, electric bedside clocks, mp3players, music system, games console, room lights, etc, etc, etc. We both see the problem but I haven’t altered my lifestyle (though my carbon footprint is actually pretty low as we don’t own a car or fly). You may be one of those rare people who has but, given your presence on this board, I doubt it. And if you and I aren’t willing to give up so many of our mod-cons others who don’t see the issue very clearly certainly won’t.
So, on a personal level, eat, drink and be merry for we truly are fucked.
While fracking may not give more than a “bump”, the tar sands and other synfuels will be more than a bump. And they are dirtier than the fuels they are replacing. Using these is even worse than using petroleum products, but cheap gas is the motto of nearly every politician, mostly because it’s the motto of most of the citizens of this good old USA.
And actually, there are countries that consume more per person than we do – they just happen to have small populations. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, for instance. Oil money allows profligate consumption.
It is true that we eventually have to figure out how to start taking carbon out of the atmosphere, but the first thing we need to do is stop putting in more. The last thing we can afford to do is wait for the world to run out of fossil fuels, since we have already found something like five times more than we can ever burn and still have some realistic chance of keeping global warming below 2 °C.
As someone who studied renewable energy and work in hydropower, I don’t think our options are limited to fossil fuel generated electricity or nothing, although I’ll be the first to admit that we’re not going to replace fossil fuels with something that works exactly the same way, only without the carbon emissions. Wind and solar power etc. are great stuff, but they are definitely more suited for small, local power systems than the giant, centralized ones that we’re used to. Technically there is nothing impossible about this. Whether or not it’s politically possible remains to be seen, but what we have seen so far offers little cause for celebration.
As others have pointed out, what we’re looking for is not so much a silver bullet as a “silver buckshot”. Wind power is not going to solve this problem, solar power is not going to solve the problem, hydro power is not going to solve the problem, more efficient technology is not going to solve the problem, reforestation is not going to solve the problem etc. The hope is that all of them combined will, if not “solve” the problem, then at least limit the damage enough to keep the planet somewhat habitable. And yes, life style changes will have to be part of the mix as well. The good news is that most research seems to indicate that consumerism never really made us any happier anyway. Personally I’m inclined to think the opposite is true.
There is a lot of talk about how doing anything about climate change is going to hurt the economy, to which I say “Compared to what?” My understanding at this point is that there’s no possible consequence of phasing out fossil fuel – for the economy or anything else – that’s worse than the consequence of failing to do so. There can be no thriving economy on an uninhabitable planet.
Agreed on the “silver buckshot”. People who complain that renewables can’t provide enough energy forget that we work on a grid system already.
However, cutting fossil fuel usage is only one part of the problem. Sheer consumption of resources in general – like water – is another. Climate change is set to be devastating but solving that won’t help if we run out of affordable potable water.
Too damned many of us.
@ John #13
I hope you’re right. I really, truly do. However the evidence you’re placing in opposition to the judgement of c. 97% (yes, that survey has been done) of PhDs working in climate science areas (i.e. most of the ones not employed by the oil industry) is a newspaper article and two Wikipedia links. That’s… not very convincing.
We understand – and can model with reasonable and ever increasing accuracy – the climatic change in Europe, and other global areas, over the last few tens of thousands of years (or the last few hundreds or milliuons or whatever). We have a pretty good understanding of the processes involved and a daily increasing understanding of what is happening now. It isn’t the same.
One contrarian voice is not enough to discredit mountains and mountains of actual empirical evidence, plus modelling results based on that evidence. I suggest you start with this website which discusses the issues and has links to the original papers so you can judge for yourself:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
@Bjarte Foshaug #20: ‘There is a lot of talk about how doing anything about climate change is going to hurt the economy, to which I say “Compared to what?”’
There was an actual study back in 2006 (?) chaired by Lord Stern (?) that looked at this question. Ten years ago, the estimate was, I think, that it might cost around 1.5%-2% of global GDP to implement effective across-the-board action to prevent the worst of climate change. And not doing it would cost 20% of global GDP *at a minumum*.
I’m hazy on all the details except the low single digits of a global Energiewende, and the 20% cost of inaction.
But one of them is in the future, and one of them is now, so it’s obvious when you’d rather pay the bill, right? (There I am, being all morose again.)
Bjarte Foshaug – second quixote, and there is another book, called What is the Worst that Could Happen? The author attempts to look at the various scenarios and what the costs would be if we did nothing and were wrong, versus if we made the changes and were wrong. Overall, the best plan was to do something and hope we’re wrong.
Re: nuclear & the need for cooling water.
This is a problem in some regions, but most of the worlds population lives close enough to an ocean that sea water cooling is the best option. Just be pessimistic and design to allow for a few meters of sea level rise. Maybe nuclear power plants on barges would be best.
John #13 / Steamshovelmama 22: It is also worth pointing out that the IPCC assessment reports are just an attempt to summarize the peer reviewed literature. The IPCC itself does not do original research. The assessment reports say what they say, because that’s where the weight of the evidence, as published in peer reviewed journals, is pointing.
I never quite cease to be amazed by how easy people seem to think it is to refute a strong scientific consensus, or even to think of something the experts have not considered. Climate scientist are of course perfectly aware that the climate has changed in the past (Though never so rapidly on a global scale. At least not while human civilization has been around). As Steamshovelmama rightly points out, studying past climate change is one of the ways scientists can be confident that what we’re observing now is not of the same nature.
Another point that too often gets lost in these debates is that global warming is a scientific prediction. It’s what should happen based on everything we know about the way greenhouse gasses interact with light which is not controversial. The rest is just energy conservation. This was predicted more than a hundred years ago, and the empirical evidence has confirmed this prediction with increasing certainty at least since the 80s. As others have pointed out, the one thing that climate scientists would not be able to explain would be if the Earth wasn’t getting warmer. And this matters since denialists are too often allowed to get away with framing the scientific consensus as an argument from ignorance (“We don’t know what else could explain the changes we are observing, therefore it’s human carbon emissions”). There’s a significant difference between predicting an observation in advance and explaining it in retrospect.
Yep, I’m constantly amazed by the number of people who look at you smugly and say, “But the climate has changed before!” and think it’s some kind of trump card.
“Well, how amazing! In just a few minutes thought you’ve come up with an answer that has eluded guys with PhDs who have been pondering this shit for their entire careers. How on earth did they never consider this? Golly, you’re a genius.”
The IPCC reports are an excellent metaanalysis (the only kind that’s scientifically worth the paper it’s printed on) of the available body of evidence. I think their executive summaries are a little conservative though.
@22
Thank-you for the link. I,ll read further.
There are a good number of scientists who admit that the climate is warming, but they’re not fully convinced it’s all due to human activity.
The climate oscillations in Europe over the past 2,000 years are irrefutable. But the fact there’s no real concensus with regards to the causes of these changes certainly SUGGEST that PERHAPS more is at work than just man-made warming.
If that’s the case, then we really can’t do anything about it, can we?
Actually the best estimate is that humans are responsible for more than 100% of the observed warming.
How is this possible? Because humans have also emitted large quantities of aerosols that have a net cooling effect, which mean that even more warming is needed to raise the temperature to where it is now.
In western India the temperature reached 123F yesterday