I think this is the beginnings of an economy based on perpetual growth and fossil fuel energy running headlong into geological energy constraints. Basically I see an undulatory downward path for the rest of my life. From here out, I think any rallies in our economic condition are going to be met with spiking commodity prices that knock us right back down.
Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 11:52 pm Post subject: Re: Runaway Global Warming - Has Arrived
In the meantime as Trolls flag their lips to rejoice at seeing their words in print and enjoy posting what they know is BS (amazing what some people get off on), reality moves on and farmers leave multi generation farms. BTW no "Magic Clouds" will arrive in the nick of time to save these river systems
You Trolls do know that some farmers blow their brains out at loosing multi generation farms? But hey enjoy the freedom to BS to your hearts content. I mean it doesn't effect you, does it?
Why not come to meet some farmers and explain to them why you are right and what they are seeing with their eyes in their fields and declining bank balances are wrong?
Talk over the Internet is easy MATE. What to see face to face that you are full of crap? Got the Guts and Balls to put in on the line? I suggest not. After all what are Trolls really? Just big rocks in the river.
----------------------------------
The Forever Drought bites deep and hard:
Grim water forecast for northern Victoria (Australia): link
A 42% reduction in Murray River and a 48% reduction in Goulburn River inflows is a "Will The Last Person Leaving Their Farms Please Switch Off The Lights" event.
And still the yearly CO2 emission levels keeps climbing. Hey maybe when Australia grows no more food, something just might happen?
Too bad it will be very little, very late and will have no real effect.
Greg
Joined: Apr 12, 2007 Posts: 1185 Location: Central NC
Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 1:33 am Post subject: Re: Runaway Global Warming - Has Arrived
Minitax, STFU
Mods, chain an anchor to him and throw him overboard. _________________ "The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…"
Sir Winston Churchill
Joined: Oct 10, 2008 Posts: 10 Location: Perth, Australia
Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 6:40 am Post subject: Re: Runaway Global Warming - Has Arrived
miniTAX wrote:
Here's the kind of "real time" ice thickness data in Cidiot 's link. No wonder why he refused to show them. No remorse, no shame. Chart (large)
Good luck mate. Keep consuming, keep denying. There is no place for you at my fire. Are your shares dropping? Ooooh poor you.
I've seen the satelite images. I'll err on the side of safety, unlike the Industrial Military Complex.
Perhaps a thread on the psychology section of the forums is the place to discuss flat worlders?
Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 10:02 am Post subject: Re: Runaway Global Warming - Has Arrived
I have to concur with the last few posts.
In response to my statement that "climate models have shown themselves to be incredibly unreliable"
mini wrote: "Like it or not, it's the reality of climate models. If you're fool enough to believe they are anything close to reliable, it's your problem but claiming they are reliable is mere lie!"
Either he can't understand a simple declarative sentence in simple English, or he is intentionally misrepresenting what those he pretends to be conversing with are saying.
In either case, he has shown himself to be someone not worth further interacting with.
Joined: May 27, 2007 Posts: 1723 Location: The Post Peak Oil Historian
Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 10:11 pm Post subject: Re: Runaway Global Warming - Has Arrived
The methane time bomb and the Wall St meltdown
Recent reports of enhanced methane (CH4) leaks off the eastern Siberian coast (about 100 times the background level of about 1780 parts per billion CH4) and off Svalbard, Norway have been overshadowed in the media by the collapse of the global credit bubble.
At the root of both is a common thread, deregulation, including open-ended permits to pollute the atmosphere and the oceans, little-regulated financial systems and economic globalisation, representing failure by governments to protect the life and welfare of their hapless populations.
The continuing use of the atmosphere as an open sewer for industrial pollution has already added some 305 GtC to the atmosphere together with land clearing and animal-emitted methane. This raised CO2 levels to 387 ppm CO2 to date, leading toward conditions which existed on Earth about 3 million years (Ma) ago (mid-Pliocene), when CO2 levels rose to about 400 ppm.
By crossing above a CO2 level of 400 ppm the atmosphere is moving into uncharted territory. At this stage enhanced methane leaks threaten climate events such as the massive methane release and fauna extinction 55 million years ago, marked by rise of CO2 to near-1000 ppm.
There is little evidence in Garnaut's Final Report that this possibility was taken seriously into account. Nor do the consequences of metres-scale sea level rise for a civilization hinged along deltas, low river valleys and coastlines, appear to prevent governments and business from "business-as-usual" behavior. The $700 billion donated by the US Congress to save corrupt financial dealers could have been better spent on the planet.
link _________________ In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell
It riles them to believe that you perceive the webs they weave. - Moody Blues
Joined: Dec 27, 2005 Posts: 120 Location: Australia
Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 10:24 pm Post subject: Re: Runaway Global Warming - Has Arrived
miniTAX wrote:
GregWatson wrote:
Why not come down to visit the Murray Darling basin in Australia? See the Murray river drying up. Watch the moisture in the farm lands evaporating. Guess what? Both are caused by a LACK of increased clouds and increased temperatures.
So take your pet armchair theories and shove them where the sun doesn't shine. Cause in the real world they are not working and like you are just BS.
Here is the BOM's rainfall data for the Murray Darling basin : NO "unprecedented" drought whatsoever. NONE ! And you Greg, where the hell are the data that support your BS? Chart (large)
Dr Jones said the rainfall figures were similar to the severe drought that lasted from 1939 to 1945, and the Federation drought, which ran from 1895 to 1903.
"Those three droughts, in terms of rainfall, are comparable," he said. "But this drought is a lot hotter than those two previous droughts. And those two droughts finished, whereas this one is continuing."
He said temperatures were about 1C hotter than the previous droughts.
_________________ "I've seen the future, brother, it is murder."
GELLERMAN: It's Living on Earth. I'm Bruce Gellerman.
Russian and Swedish scientists have found places in the Arctic Sea where huge amounts of methane are venting up from the ocean basin. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and the unexpected discovery is causing concern among some scientists who fear it might speed up global warming. Professor Orjan Gustafsson at Stockholm University recently returned from an expedition which found the methane, and he joins me by phone from Stockholm. Welcome Professor!
GUSTAFSSON: Thank you.
GELLERMAN: Where's the methane coming from?
GUSTAFSSON: Methane in the water on the East Siberian Artic Shelf is coming from sub-sea permafrost. This sea bottom used to be on land in the last ice age, and then was basically peat, that was frozen, permafrosted. And then the deglaciation—when it got warmer, the climate, then the sea levels was rising and the frozen peat was flooded. And it holds a large amount of methane. The conventional thought has been that this has been capped by the permafrost and held in place, but high levels of methane is now found in the seawater.
GELLERMAN: What would be causing this?
GUSTAFSSON: There are three different mechanisms whereby this permafrost could be thawing. First one is geothermal heat flux. Basically, cracks in the Earth's crust where heat from Earth's interior is pushing up and thawing the permafrost. Another mechanism is basically when the sea level's rising and sea water's flooding over this land, then the sea water itself which might hold plus two degrees Celsius or so at sea bottom is providing heat to slowly thaw the permafrost. And final key mechanism is likely because of plumes of the very large Russian artic rivers that is pushing out warmer river water on the shelf—is also providing heat to thaw the permafrost.
GELLERMAN: How big is this area that this is happening?
GUSTAFSSON: The East Siberian Artic Shelf is the world's largest continental shelf, and it covers about 50 percent of the total Artic Ocean. We don't know exactly how much methane is actually being released. What we found during the expedition is that in five or six regions, each of the area of tens of thousands of square kilometers, methane concentrations in sea water was found to be about a hundred times higher than the background methane levels in sea water. We just came back ten days ago from the expedition, and we now need to look at the full data set to evaluate what the total methane in the water column is and how quickly that might be fluxing out to the atmosphere.
GELLERMAN: Can you see the bubbles coming up out of the water?
GUSTAFSSON: You cannot see them by naked eye. I tried actually. I stepped out on the deck to try to see if I could see them by naked eye—these bubbles. I could not. But you can see them with our geophysical instrumentation.
GELLERMAN: What do we make of your findings so far?
GUSTAFSSON: Well, I think we need to reconsider the notion that the permafrost is holding this huge methane reservoir in place, in the sea bottom. That's clearly not the case. There is methane being released now. And given the fact that methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, I think what we need to do is to intensify these studies. This was a large expedition, it occurred for 50 days, but it was just one ship, and it's a vast area. So the area needs to be charted out much more carefully with many more ships operating simultaneously to better ascertain how large this methane source could be.
GELLERMAN: Well it's winter up there now. Are you going back to sea?
GUSTAFSSON: No, not personally. Fifty days at sea in August and September is sufficient in the Artic. And now it's freezing over very rapidly. However, our Russian colleagues, they are having some plans to return this winter as they were there also last winter having an expedition on the ice—going with large tractors on the ice and then pulling a caravan on the locked-up sea and then drilling holes in the ice and doing winter time sampling.
GELLERMAN: Well Professor Gustafsson, thank you very much. I appreciate your time.
GUSTAFSSON: All right, thank you very much.
GELLERMAN: Professor Orjan Gustafsson from Stockholm University. He's co-chief scientist of the International Siberian Shelf Study expedition. He spoke to us from his home in Stockholm, Sweden.
_________________ "It is no measure of health to be deemed sane in an insane society" J. Krishnamurti
Joined: May 27, 2007 Posts: 1723 Location: The Post Peak Oil Historian
Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 10:33 am Post subject: Re: Runaway Global Warming - Has Arrived
After Runaway Global Warming
Resilient police and military forces, and health care services, controlled by resilient democratic government structures, will be key to surviving such a crisis with some semblance of civilization intact.
Again, decentralization and scale are important, because opportunities for safe food and housing provision will be patchy and ecologically scattered. If sea level began to rise by a foot or two or three per year, for instance, moving people and housing and farming to higher and more northerly ground while maintaining social order, would be driven by consideration of where that higher ground and northern land suitable for housing and agriculture was, who was in charge of it, and what islands and peninsulae might result after Greenland and Antarctica are done melting or partially melting.
Canada will be a very popular country. And state legislatures and state governors, congressmen and women, Presidents and their staffs, government agency heads, all, unfortunately, will need to be protected. Plans for succession should be in place. Communications must be sufficiently resilient to survive repeated extreme weather events and rising sea levels.
(Whether our government officials will actually deserve such protection after letting such events occur is a purely moral question. As an expedient, for once, I would say, we shouldn't "throw the bums out." We will need every scrap of government we can get, and we may not have time for politics in any case. The UK national government headed by Winston Churchill suspended elections for the duration of WW2.)
In general, in any ecological crisis driven by warming, north is obviously better than south and higher better than lower. The US and the UK are both lucky to have large areas of relatively unpopulated higher land in their respective norths. The Highlands of Scotland, Maine, Montana's great plains, these may be the refuges we will seek.
Fast action on the part of a government, such as moving, say, agricultural equipment and fertilizer and seed from one area to another so that crops can be grown according to some emergency plan, may prove crucial. Planning out contingencies for such events might be helpful. A general preemptive policy of adding to food stock storage and supporting resilient agriculture and resilient housing before a crisis hits could literally save civilization.
What would be resilient agriculture? We don't really know, since we don't know which ecological regions areas might still be productive in the event of a runaway climate warming, but we obviously must begin to imagine it.
In Britain during WW2, resilience was sought and found using small scale decentralized production, adding gardens and livestock to small patches of useful land. Labor was usefully added to agriculture without taking troops from fighting, using programs like the Women's Land Army. All these and other related policies enabled land that had been pasture since enclosure to be plowed up once more for arable crops. The scale and intensity of agriculture was increased everywhere.
In any future climate emergency, agricultural mobility might be key; in WW2 Britain, the ecosystem at least was stable. In the future, we may find we can have ecologically productive homesteads and farms on northern and high altitude land currently under-utilized, such as that which surrounds us here in Maine. A government program to purchase by eminent domain and distribute such land to qualified farmers and homesteaders might also be key, as might the training of such people.
Shared equipment for clearing and planting, shared seed stock and breeding stock resources, imaginative use of animals and crops such as using sheep and goats to help clear land for future arable production, or using cover crops to sponsor nitrogen production without fossil fuels, all these might prove helpful. Finally, a few thousand tonnes of concentrated fertilizer and a few tonnes of seed stored in decentralized government buildings in each ecoregion would save, literally, millions.
link _________________ In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell
It riles them to believe that you perceive the webs they weave. - Moody Blues
Joined: Nov 15, 2007 Posts: 339 Location: US East Coast
Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 3:50 pm Post subject: Re: Runaway Global Warming - Has Arrived
I thought this might be of some relevance to this thread, in case you missed it in the news upfront.
Two small areas located roughly 200 miles off the coast of Charleston, S.C., contain enough methane to meet the country's gas needs for more than a century. And this is only one of at least two dozen similar reservoirs discovered in U.S. coastal waters since the early 1970s.
Disaster waiting to happen?
The paradox is that while gas can be extracted from methane hydrates, doing so poses potentially catastrophic risks. Methane hydrates are frozen water molecules that trap methane gas molecules in a crystalline, lattice-like structure known as a hydrate. Unlike normal ice, hydrate ice literally burns — light a match and it goes up in flames. As temperatures rise or pressure rates fall, the hydrate disintegrates and the water releases the gas.
link _________________ When going through hell, keep going! Churchill
Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the the cheapest of pleasures, costs nothing, and conveys much. E Wiman
I know there’s no solution, so I just enjoy what’s here and I enjoy the journey G Carlin
Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 7:30 pm Post subject: Re: Runaway Global Warming - Has Arrived
We will evetually try to mine it, just as the Japanese will mine the methane off of their coasts. The methane will be destabilized and drive GW even faster.
As Lovelock said (before he more recently started promoting geo-engineering), putting humans in charge of the global ecological ballance is like putting a goat in charge of a garden.
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3879 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 7:36 pm Post subject: Re: Runaway Global Warming - Has Arrived
As Forrest Forrest Gump would explain it too you....
Gump wrote:
Stupid is as Stupid does!
_________________ Always appeal to a man's enlightened self interest, you can trust him to look out for himself honestly, It's when you appeal to his Honor or the Common Good that he stops paying attention.
Joined: Nov 15, 2007 Posts: 339 Location: US East Coast
Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 8:01 pm Post subject: Re: Runaway Global Warming - Has Arrived
Ya know, this is possibly the most disturbing news article here. You can argue with Cid about the likelihood of the Arctic methane releasing and he may or may not be right. But it does seem pretty certain that we will try to tap into the methane. Addicts will do anything for a fix. At BEST we will do it successfully and not destabilize the stuff but then we will just adjust to a methane habit and go crazy with that energy fix doing more GW damage.
Yeast licking the Petri dish, and pooing in their own backyard.
Sigh!!!!!!!!!! _________________ When going through hell, keep going! Churchill
Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the the cheapest of pleasures, costs nothing, and conveys much. E Wiman
I know there’s no solution, so I just enjoy what’s here and I enjoy the journey G Carlin
Joined: Jan 18, 2006 Posts: 369 Location: Bordeaux
Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 7:53 am Post subject: Re: Runaway Global Warming - Has Arrived
Mid october, nearly 2 months after Methane ARMAGEDDON was announced. And still no sign of any methane spike in the air. Niet, nada, zilch. Officially declared HAMIA (hot air missing in action) even with suckers still scrambling to find survival plans.
Graph (large)
Oh BTW, Cid, I have some acres in Antarctica at discount rate for you. Ideally situated on the peninsula and guaranted cool year long. Nice place for methane crooks' hide-out. Subprime ruined realters accepted. No problem to resell to prospective suckers buyers (plenty of them on peakoil.com/Environment topics)
Urgent before sold out. Pls contact me by email if interested.
Changed link per COC 3.1.2 "Graphic content: Do not post linked in graphics/photos more than 450 pixels wide. Instead, include an HTML link to the image." -FL _________________ "Of the dozen insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT" (Arata Kochi, WHO's malaria chief).
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3879 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 7:06 pm Post subject: Re: Runaway Global Warming - Has Arrived
Cid_Yama wrote:
Newfie, You were asking about time scale. I found this:
Methane mixes across the planet, but this is not immediate. The mixing time is about a year, as is evidenced by the interhemispheric gradient and sharp discontinuity in abundance across the intertropical convergence. Large emissions take time to dissipate. A major release of methane in the high Arctic would take 15-40 yr to spread to the South Pole (Thorpe et al .1996).
Maybe Argentina would be a good choice.
From Thin Ice by Dr. Mark Bowen p. 120
Quote:
In the twelve years from 1959 to 1971, the level at Muana Loa had risen from 315 to 330 ppm, about 3.4 percent, and the levels at the South Pole tracked those at the volcano but always lagged behind. From the delay Keeling estimated that it takes about six months for the disproportionate emissions north of the equator to mix completely into the air of the southern hemisphere.
Given that the source is Dr. Keeling, who discovered the Keeling Curve, I am more than satisfied that gas emissions take about six months to be homoginized through the atmosphere down to the South Pole. _________________ Always appeal to a man's enlightened self interest, you can trust him to look out for himself honestly, It's when you appeal to his Honor or the Common Good that he stops paying attention.
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