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Extinction Event?

Guy McPherson | 10.03.2011 15:03 | Climate Chaos | Ecology | Energy Crisis | Sheffield | World

The Arctic is defrosting as warm Atlantic waters rush through the Fram Strait instead of skirting the southern coast of Greenland. This is an important event, regardless of the deafening silence exhibited by the mainstream media.


How important? First consider the background, from the perspective of long-time climate scientist James Hansen and colleague Makiko Sato, who report the disaster awaiting us at just a couple of degrees warmer is truly catastrophic (although they downplay the likelihood we’re already committed to this outcome.)

Suffocating lifestyle

At the same time Arctic ice is melting, the planet is losing its lungs. Catastrophic drought in the Amazon has it emitting carbon dioxide more rapidly than the United States. Simultaneously, permafrost is thawing and methane stored in eastern Siberia is venting into the atmosphere at an alarming rate. Methane, by the way, is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Against this background, it’s easy to foresee a rapidly and profoundly warming Arctic as a trigger for accelerated responses such as the release of more methane hydrates and fewer reflective white surfaces, such as ice sheets and areas covered with snow. These extremely dangerous feedbacks, which forecasters did not expect until the planet becomes a couple of degrees warmer than the baseline, could trigger runaway greenhouse. In other words, any of these events — never mind all of them at once — could lead directly and quickly to the extinction of you, me and everyone in between.

Is that important enough for you? Or do you still want to debate it with the likes of these guys?

Hello, hello, hello is there anybody in there?

If you’re among the mainstream media, you’re proven you don’t care, and your answer to dealing with this is no, you wont.

If you’re any politician in the industrialized world you’re quaking in your boots over the prospect of being real about anything truly important. For you, the answer is no, you wont go there.

If you’re one of the kingpins of capitalism — or even a defender of capitalism — the answer is no. For you, only money talks.

I’ll go further: If you’re a defender of western civilization, with all its toys, disposability and conspicuous personal consumption, your answer is no, too.

If you’re among the few people working to mitigate the excesses of western civilization before it terminates our species, it seems we’ve lost this most important of battles.

The cumulative effect

Like economic collapse, extinction is a process that leads to an event. The last human on Earth will not die today, tomorrow, or even next week. But it clearly could happen within a generation. Indeed, the odds grow with every passing day while we continue to deny our role in our own demise.

What will it take for the people to act? For that matter, what will it take for the people to notice?

Nothing to see here. Move along. This time is different. We’re not like the Mayans. And the Anasazi. Or the Mesopotamians. Or the Easter Island denizens. It can’t happen here. And I’m just another purveyor of negativity to be ignored by a world full of happy optimists hedonists.

Love in the time of Cholera

I’m routinely accused of being an insane terrorist because I want to terminate the industrial economy, thereby giving humanity an opportunity to persist a few generations longer. At this point, with our knowledge of the adverse consequences of civilization for non-industrial cultures, non-human species, and even the persistence of our own species, how can any sane person want to keep the industrial age alive?

Who would do this to their children?

In the race between collapse of the industrial economy and climate chaos, it seems climate chaos won. Words are no match for the sadness I feel. I can only imagine the agony of parents as they comprehend the horrors we’ve created for them, and especially for their kids.

Or perhaps this childless atheist — as I am labeled by every writer who pens me into a story — cares about the future of humanity more than most parents. After all, nearly every parent with whom I speak — failing to notice the dependence of the industrial economy on the environment — is far more interested in growth of the former, for their child’s sake, than with protection of the latter (for their child’s sake).

We traded in future generations of human beings — all of them — for a few dollars more. We worshiped at the heavenly altar of economic growth, and triggered hell on Earth.

Chaos on this planet isn’t restricted to the climate, and it’s going global this year. We’re witnessing not merely a riot but a revolution, and it’s coming soon to a city near you.

Alas, it’s too little, too late. The American Dream long ago morphed into the American Nightmare. It’s too bad George Carlin couldn’t be here for additional commentary. Rationalist voices are hard to come by. Rationalist voices with a sense of humor are vanishingly rare.

The response remains the same, at least for me. As a society, we will continue to value financial profit over life. Therefore, as individuals we should prepare and maintain durable living arrangements in light of ongoing energy decline and ongoing climate change. And, of course, we must keep fighting to bring down the omnicidal beast that is the industrial economy. Now.

Guy McPherson
- Homepage: http://transitionvoice.com/2011/03/extinction-event/

Comments

Hide the following 7 comments

Animal Industries are the biggest cause of greenhouse gasses

10.03.2011 18:48

"If you’re among the few people working to mitigate the excesses of western civilization before it terminates our species, it seems we’ve lost this most important of battles." -- Personally I don't participate in the most severe of Western vices, but I'm among the "few people" who don't consume animal products!

I know that the animal industries are responsible for at least 24% of all man made emissions, and I know, like the author, that "Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide". However, I do wonder to myself whether the author and the re-poster have similar coherence or whether they produce scaremongering articles, whilst remaining at the very core of the problem.

I personally think we're too fucked to have a chance, and even if it's extinction doesn't come as quickly as the author predicts, it's coming soon. With this in mind I'll continue to keep my carbon output as low as possible whilst enjoying the hedonism, safe in the knowledge that I'm still doing more to save the planet than most self-proclaimed "environmentalists".

A self-proclaimed environmentalist
- Homepage: http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm


NASA: Melting Sea Ice fuelling sea-level rises

10.03.2011 19:30



Article in the Independent 10.3.11

 http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/melting-ice-sheets-fuelling-sealevel-rise-warns-nasa-2237616.html

Melting ice sheets fuelling sea-level rise, warns Nasa
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Thursday, 10 March 2011


Melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland could overtake mountain glaciers as the main contributors to rising sea levels, US scientists say.


A study lasting nearly 20 years has revealed that huge amounts of melted ice are pouring into the oceans.

This extra volume of water is probably surpassing that from mountain glaciers and ice caps, which have also been disappearing over the same period of time. Eric Rignot, of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and the University of California at Irvine, said: "That ice sheets will dominate future sea level rise is not surprising – they hold a lot more ice mass than mountain glaciers.

"What is surprising is this increased contribution by the ice sheets is already happening.

"If present trends continue, sea level is likely to be significantly higher than levels projected by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. Our study helps to reduce uncertainties in near-term projections of sea level rise."

Satellite observations over two decades have led to estimate that the ice sheets of Greenland and Antartica lost on average 475 billion tons of ice each year.

This would be enough to raise global sea levels by an average of 1.3mm (0.05ins) a year, Nasa said.

The study also found that the melting of the ice sheets was accelerating significantly, with each subsequent year seeing more ice being lost. Each year over the course of the study, the two ice sheets lost a combined average of 36.3 billion tons more than the year before.

The scientists estimated that if the current rate at which the ice sheets are melting continues for the next four decades, the cumulative loss of ice could raise global sea levels by 15cm (5.9in) by 2050.

When this is added to the predicted sea level contribution of 8cm (3.1in) from glacial ice caps and 9cm (3.5in) from the thermal expansion of warmer seawater, the total sea level rise could reach 32cm (12.6in).

"While this provides one indication of the potential contribution ice sheets could make to sea level in the coming century, the authors caution that considerable uncertainties remain in estimating future ice loss acceleration," according to a Nasa statement.

Isabella Velicogna, of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: "These are two totally independent techniques, so it is a major achievement that the results agree so well.

"It demonstrates the tremendous progress that is being made in estimating how much ice the ice sheets are gaining and losing and in analysing Grace's time-variable gravity data."

The study is to be published in the latest issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

pirate


They think it's all over...

11.03.2011 00:09

I think it's worth pointing out that for the last 50 years we have been in a period of solar warming, that the sun operates in a cyclical nature, is the single most important factor in the earth climate (regardless of the fact that the UN/IPCC is in total denial for the sake of the Nuclear Lobby) and that we are inevitably due a period of cooling as prescribed by our history books spanning as far as we know and solar data spanning back over the last 400 years!

No doubt the environmental argument is a real one, chemical production, deforestation, mining and blind stupid ignorance. It may be too late for us but not for our children and grandchildren. Science is spun the same as politics but the truth is always there to be seen.

Ra has awoken


New Clear Future

11.03.2011 09:13

The Nuclear Lobby are planning a wonderful future for your children.

In all, over 155 power reactors with a total net capacity of some 175,000 MWe are planned and over 320 more are proposed.

Ra has awoken


Nuclear emergency in japan

11.03.2011 14:57

state of emergency at nuclear power plant in Japan after cooling system fails after earthquake today

Ra has spoken


Walking the talk

11.03.2011 18:13

"I do wonder to myself whether the author and the re-poster have similar coherence or whether they produce scaremongering articles, whilst remaining at the very core of the problem."

Five minutes at my website or at the original source of this essay (Transition Voice) should convince you I'm no Bill McKibben. I'm not simply writing. I'm acting, too. I'll save you the trouble of going elsewhere by quoting from a forthcoming essay I prepared upon request from the editor in chief of the leading journal in my field:

"The threat of rapidly increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, coupled with ongoing human-driven extinction of Earth’s non-human species, strongly suggest it is no longer just the living planet we should be concerned about. Instead, we should be deeply concerned about the near-term future of Homo sapiens. A moral question arises: As an individual, what is each of us going to do about it?"

"My response as a 49-year-old, tenured, full professor was to resign my position and go back to the land, where my wife and I share, with another family, an off-the-grid (i.e., not connected to public utilities) dwelling and I try to inspire others to change their lives to become more supportive of life on Earth. The reasons for changing my lifestyle reflect my core beliefs. I no longer contribute to an empire built on an industrial economy based on consumerism, and thus resist imperialism (i.e., the dominant paradigm, which is characterized by oppression and hierarchy), or live in a city, which is not supported by my moral imperatives. As an academic, I could not devote enough time to my messages to people of the world’s industrialized nations about the consequences of addiction to fossil fuels. Because I am increasingly self-sufficient, I can extend my life for a few years beyond completion of the ongoing, human-induced economic and environmental collapses."

Please send me an email message if you'd like a copy of the document, which is scheduled for publication in the journal Conservation Biology in October 2011. Also let me know if I can provide clarification or additional information.

Guy McPherson
mail e-mail: grm@ag.arizona.edu
- Homepage: http://guymcpherson.com


vegan crap

11.03.2011 19:15

The figures you are quoting from the FAO 'Livestocks Long Shadow' report have been widely discredited. Vegans also fail to grasp that the FAO report is not attacking factory farming in the west but the subsistence livestock agriculture that supports many landless people across the world. The report argued for further intensifying agriculture to save on methane emmisions, its just misleading to claim that the methane you're saying comes from livestock would be saved if we all went vegan.

Here's a thought- any vegans who have actually read the FAO LLS report: shout out! I only say this because I always hear you guys talk about the report but you never seem to understand the malevelant political context of its conclusions.

Anyway there was a point I wanted to make about the OP, currently extinction rates are at 1000 times the background rate as estimated from the fossil record. This is the highest global rate of extinctions that earth has ever seen to our knowledge, faster than when the dinosaurs disappeared for instance. That is the extinction rate now. Climate change is not currently driving this extinction event its things like habitat destruction/fragmentation. That's not to say that in the near future climate change wont cause an increase in extinction rates really soon.

anon


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