Re: SC88

As the world's economies continue their slide into economic armegedon, other parts of the many converging worldscale catastrophic issues continue their march towards an ever worsening state. One of grave importance that is being largely sidelined by the current economic travails of late is the quickening meltdown of earth's climate precipitated most significantly by humanities prolific burning of various carbon based fuels. The extent of this monumental growing crisis is staggering:

http://survivalacres.com/wordpress/?p=1644#more-1644

Beyond The Point Of No Return

It’s too late to stop climate change — so what do we do now?

As the pace of global warming kicks into overdrive, the hollow optimism of climate activists, along with the desperate responses of some of the world’s most prominent climate scientists, are preventing us from focusing on the survival requirements of the human enterprise.

The environmental establishment continues to peddle the notion that we can solve the climate problem.

We can’t.

We have failed to meet nature’s deadline. In the next few years, this world will experience progressively more ominous and destabilizing changes.............

............Within the last two years, a number of leading scientists — including Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), British ecologist James Lovelock, and NASA scientist James Hansen — have all declared that humanity is about to pass or already has passed a “tipping point” in terms of global warming. The IPCC, which reflects the findings of more than 2,000 scientists from over 100 countries, recently stated that it is “very unlikely” that we will avoid the coming era of “dangerous climate change.”

In fact, we may already be witnessing the early stages of runaway climate change in the melting of the Arctic, the increase in storm intensity, the accelerating extinctions of species, the ominous, large-scale releases of methane and the prolonged nature of recurring droughts.

Moreover, some scientists now fear that the warming is taking on its own momentum — driven by internal feedbacks that are independent of the human-generated carbon layer in the atmosphere.

Consider these examples:

* Despite growing public awareness of global warming, the world’s carbon emissions are rising three times faster than they did in the 1990s. As a result, many scientists tell us that the official, government-sanctioned forecasts of coming changes are understating the threats facing the world.

* The International Energy Agency recently found that the costs of avoiding dangerous climate change may be three times higher than those estimated by the IPCC in 2007.

* Scientists recently discovered a plume of methane rising from the perforated ocean seabed near Siberia into the atmosphere. Methane traps about 20 times more heat, molecule for molecule, than CO2. But because ocean-bed methane normally dissolves before it escapes into the air, the discovery has a number of scientists wondering whether it signals the beginnings of runaway climate change.

* A rise of 2 degree C. over pre-industrial temperatures is now virtually inevitable, according to the IPCC, as the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is approaching the destabilizing level of 450 parts per million. That rise will bring drought, hunger, disease and flooding to millions of people around the world. In fact, a number of scientists believe that forecast is far too rosy. John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said recently that only a return to pre-industrial levels of CO2 — about 280 parts per million — would be enough to guarantee a safe future for the planet.

* Scientists predict a steady rise in temperatures beginning in about two years — with at least half the years between 2009 and 2019 surpassing the average global temperature in 1998, to date, the hottest year on record.

* Given the unexpected speed with which Antarctica is melting, coupled with the increasing melt rates in the Arctic and Greenland, the rate of sea level rise has doubled — with scientists now raising their prediction of ocean rise by century’s end from about three feet to about six feet.

* Scientists recently concluded that the growing acidification of the world’s oceans may face a “tipping point” in the next 20 years. As the oceans continue to absorb CO2, the drop in their pH levels will begin to dissolve the shells of ocean organisms and destroy other forms of sea life. Researchers had initially estimated that tipping point might occur around 2060 — but new findings shortened that horizon to another two decades, according to Australian scientists.

* Scientists discovered that a recent, unexplained surge of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is due to more greenhouse gases escaping from trees, plants and soils — which have traditionally buffered the warming by absorbing the gases. In the lingo of climate scientists, carbon sinks are turning into carbon sources. Because the added warmth is making vegetation less able to absorb our carbon emissions, scientists expect the rate of warming to jump substantially in the coming years.

* The intensity of hurricanes around the world has doubled in the last decade. As Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research explained, “If you take the last 10 years, we’ve had twice the number of category-5 hurricanes than any other [10-year period] on record.”

* In Australia,a new, permanent state of drought in the country’s breadbasket has cut crop yields by over 30 percent. The 1-in-1000-year drought exemplifies a little-noted impact of climate change. As the atmosphere warms, it tightens the vortex of the winds that swirl around the poles. One result is that the water that traditionally evaporated from the Southern Ocean and rained down over New South Wales is now being pulled back into Antarctica — drying out the southeastern quadrant of Australia and contributing to the buildup of glaciers in the Antarctic — the only area on the planet where glaciers are increasing.

As one prominent climate scientist said recently, “We are seeing impacts today that we did not expect to see until 2085.”.........

...........You should know that even this assessment above (December 2008) is already dated in its totality and effects of runaway climate change. The Copenhagen conference and recent data sets indicate that the very worst case scenarios of the IPCC Report were woefully inadequate and will all be realized (and then some).

In point of fact — I’ve yet to reveal just how inadequately we are being informed. Here’s some data points that should scare the living hell out of you (sent in by Lonewolf):

1) A mean temperature rise of 4C to 6C within 50 - 90 years (and not slowing down after this time frame) is expected by many scientists from around the world.

2) An even higher mean temperature rise of 6C - 10C is expected by many others. Using the average then of 8C increase, we find:

This equates to 14.7F hotter (everywhere) on average. This is a 40% increase in temperature. A 90 degree day is now 126 degrees. A 100 degree day (now) is then 140 degrees. The hottest days now will soon become the coldest days of the future.

This means vast swaths inhabitable land around the the world will become absolutely desolate and unihabitable.

This also means nothing will grow except the most hardiest (and non-edible) of plants. This also means you can forget your water supplies — they won’t exist.

3) Even the optimistic predictions of temperature increase indicate that we will see a 25% - 33% rise in average temperature.

4) Under either of these scientific predictions, by the end of this century, most life on Earth will all be dead. This will kill most land-based life forms and probably all the marine life except the deepest animals (but even this is unknown).

5) Global temperature rises such as this will lead to increasing and escalating scarcity of critical and essential resources; food, water, land, habitable climate, agriculture regions, etc., and will inevitably lead to growing competition and unending war over these resources. A great many people in the coming years are going to die violent, horrible deaths.

6) This is not stoppable. This is not even debatable anymore.

7) This is not survivable for the vast majority of humankind. Those predictions by Lovelock of “30,000 humans” living above the Arctic Circle should be niggling your ears right about now...........

...........Grassroot efforts and community organizations and related efforts are all inadequate for the scale and scope of these changes.........

Notably, as the structure and integrity of the world's infinite growth economic paradigms ( enabled by our usage of the power of hydrocarbon energy sources ) continue to crumble and increasing negative growth becomes the " new reality " there will be less and less energy and resources available for any of the large scale attempts that might be made to mitigate to some degree the massive climate changes that we are experiencing now and those climate repercussions which will be increasingly severe in our future.