Pic Of The Moment: North-Eastern U.S. Hunkers Down For Historic Winter Storm

[wial]

33. Have you ever considered the data in the fossil record,

especially from the last big clathrate meltdown 55 million years ago? The evidence for positive feedback is very strong. They can detect the presence of methane based on carbon isotope ratios. What we see is a series of three spikes interrupted by brief stable periods. This can be explained by a burst of shallow ocean and permafrost methane, then massive global warming heating the ocean, reaching methane at greater depths, and then again. There were hundreds of years between the pulses to be sure, but even the first one was catastrophic.

In the similar event 250 million years ago there's evidence the oxygen supply disappeared as the plants and oceans died.

As for the jet streams, let me try to spell it out for you. The atmospheric banding between the equator and the poles (similar to the more obvious banding on Jupiter) is governed by the temperature differential between the poles and the equator. As the pole warms up, much more than the global average, we are seeing increasing "blocking highs" in which the usual west-to-east Rossby waves stop moving (that's why Hurricane Sandy took that hard left turn for instance) and even break through to the stratosphere, and the "Arctic dipole", in which blobs of warm air move north and split the cold air capping the pole, pushing it anomalously south, and causing wider jet stream meanders and the droughts we're experiencing. The real danger though is that the three bands could soon collapse into one, playing utter havoc with the world's agriculture. I'm not saying it will necessarily happen this year, but a complete melt of the arctic icecap in summer is within the margin of error *this year*, and with the higher heat absorbing capacity of liquid water over ice, even faster warming. More likely it will happen in 2015, but who's counting.

I've just stopped caring what the actual deniers think or say. If we worry about them we'll be as conservative as the IPCC, and that's no service to the world. They've been proven wrong. The big conferences don't work either. Time to move on.

The real problem is getting those who accept climate change is happening, but somehow think we still don't need to worry for a few decades and driving a Prius in the meantime is enough (I drive one, don't get me wrong, and yes I know the environmental impact of manufacture far outweighs any slight saving from its efficiencies) to realize the emergency is upon us *now*. If you still think it's enough to work on carbon emission reduction alone, by all means do it but do it with a lot more vigor. If you think carbon sequestration will save us despite its impossibly long time scales, go for it, we do need to get that done eventually.

But the battle front, I'm afraid, is in figuring out how to stabilize the planet very quickly and as safely and affordably as possible, while also not starting a war. If we don't do it, China will, and if China does it, it will probably cause drought in India, and then there will be hell to pay. So we can't just act like making compost heaps (which actually release carbon) or other minor lifestyle changes are going to make a whit of difference. Fine a hundred years from now. Now though, we have to survive the harm already done, which will be with us for a very long time as it is, and it will certainly get worse before it gets better.

The only thing more pressing that preparing to cool the planet by force is figuring out how to feed all those starving people. Remember too, the Arab Spring was driven by food prices much more than by facebook and twitter.

Plenty of books on the subject, if you care to read. I can recommend David Victor's "Global Warming Gridlock" which has a good section on geoengineering and its various ramifications, as well as strategies for adaptation, if it happens slowly enough.

I do understand your attack was on those who say we've already lost and obviously I'm not one of them, so I apologize for getting prickly on that front -- but I'll say it again, this should be at the top of every human's agenda, let alone our government's. It's the tsunami and it's not on the horizon, it's coming up the shore. It dwarfs all other concerns.