Climate Change and Extreme Weather

[ysabetwordsmith]

 A summary of predictions and link to the original report.  In a nutshell, we are fucked; climate change effects are already in progress.  We are extra specially deeply fucked sideways if people keep going on the current trajectory.  We are only slightly rudely fondled if maximum effort is made to undo the damage immediately.  Which is not really news, just a more refined description with better resolution and fresher examples, than what people have been saying for the last several decades.

Comments

[moonvoice]

Yeah, pretty much. It's really horrifying. I read a lot about animals in my line of artwork (and also just for interest) and the way the weather will impact the oceans is terrifying. Outside of causing coral bleaching (and industries connected to coral reefs - including fishing - produce about 360 billion dollars per year, which is currently more than the oil industry), it is possible that krill systems could collapse, which is a big and terrifying prospect.

Although, the research is also suggesting that some animals will likely do very, very well as a result of global warming in the oceans. So if we're happy to eat sea squirts forever... *sighs*

It's all going to be really fucked, regardless. D:

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> it is possible that krill systems could collapse <<

The bleaching is familiar, the krill threat is new to me. The one that really worries me is that the thermohaline cycle could break down if too much polar ice melts. Massively altered climate system, massive collapse of civilization -- and that one could turn fast, fast.

>> Although, the research is also suggesting that some animals will likely do very, very well as a result of global warming in the oceans. So if we're happy to eat sea squirts forever... *sighs* <<

The phrasing I've seen is "rats, roaches, and jellyfish." 0_o Not my ideal set for totems or ecology.

Re: Thoughts

[siliconshaman]

The thermohaline cycle is robust, but if we go down the business as usual path, we are well and truly screwed, blued and tattooed. Because a 10 degree rise is enough to trigger the runaway melt-down of the Greenland ice cap, and that will break it.

and of course, if that happens then the Antarctic meltdown is inevitable... and at that point we're into Hollywood disaster movie territory.

Based on my understanding, I'd say the odds of all that happening is about 30% within 100 years...

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>The thermohaline cycle is robust, but if we go down the business as usual path, we are well and truly screwed, blued and tattooed.<<

Exactly. It's difficult to break, but possible and within range of our species-wide influence now.

A key thing that worries me is, almost nobody pays attention to it. It's too obscure. It's a huge thing and crucially important, but most people don't even know it exists let alone what it does or how it could break or what we should do to prevent that.

And that's one that at least a handful of people DO know about. How many things are there in the environment that are crucial but we don't know could cause a fatal collapse? Because I don't want to bet the survival of humanity on whether we know everything.

Re: Thoughts

[siliconshaman]

oh, and don't knock rats, roaches and jellyfish... the opportunist species usually survive whatever gets thrown at them. After all, what do you think survived the dinosaur killing strike, and we evolved from?

That said...I'd prefer to survive.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> don't knock rats, roaches and jellyfish... the opportunist species usually survive whatever gets thrown at them. <<

I agree that they are valuable, precisely because they're tough and adaptable. But the strength of a biosphere lies in its redundancy -- the diversity and fault tolerance it has. So anything that drastically reduces diversity is bad.

[somuchforendings]

Optimism time: I'm much more nature-focused than I am humanity-focused. So, while *we* might be fucked and while some species might go extinct or bottleneck, the Earth is really just going to swallow whatever we do to it and spit out the decaying bones of our civilization for whatever comes after us. Many of the predictions we make about wildlife are a bit like playing darts in the dark while riding a horse (otherwise we'd be much better at habitat management and restoration efforts than we are), so there's that, too.

I have to admit, even though climate change IS an extremely important issue, I sort of get irritated with how much exposure it gets when there are other pressing environmental issues. It's gotten to the point where I see things thrown under climate change that don't actually have that much to do with climate change (a LOT of what you see about the ocean is actually only marginally true for climate change, but much more true for what's going to happen if we keep overfishing/dumping poisons/allowing a lot of boat traffic in many areas) just because that's the only way environmentalists can get their voices heard anymore.

Climate change is a problem, but it's one of many and our world will be just as rocked if we let the ocean ecosystems collapse due to our combined efforts to fuck it up in other ways. It will also be just as rocked if our population continues to explode out of control while we lose more and more farmland. Etc. /my soapbox

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I'm much more nature-focused than I am humanity-focused. <<

So am I. However ...

>> So, while *we* might be fucked and while some species might go extinct or bottleneck, the Earth is really just going to swallow whatever we do to it and spit out the decaying bones of our civilization for whatever comes after us. <<

... "some species" already registers similar to an asteroid strike. I'm not happy that humanity's contribution to evolution is equivalent to hitting the Earth with a big rock. Yes, the biosphere will survive, but it really sucks to have evolved all these awesome life forms and then lose a majority of the complex and refined ones while the system gets smacked down to rats, roaches, and jellyfish.

>> much more true for what's going to happen if we keep overfishing/dumping poisons/allowing a lot of boat traffic in many areas <<

I agree that there are a great many environmental problems, some with shorter fuses.

Re: Well...

[somuchforendings]

Most of the people who predict that amount of species death due to climate change aren't wildlife scientists. They're climatologists. There's a reason why climate change generally isn't a focus in wildlife science/management/conservation programs*: it's a massive environmental concern, but not such a massive wildlife concern, at least compared to other issues, since many of the species around today have already survived massive climate change. I agree that losing much of our glorious megafauna would suck (though not as much as people think it would because it's generally not the pretty things that make the world go 'round), but what rankles me is that so many people think that most of issues these creatures are facing are caused by climate change. Generally not. Climate change will wipe us out (or at least put a massive hurt on our way of life) long before it wipes out white tailed deer or coyotes or rabbits or cheetahs. We like to think that anything that could take us out (namely, us) will also take out everything around us, but that's not really true.

It's all kind of a moot point, though, because unless we do have an attitude adjustment, these things might die off anyway because we think collapsing ecosystems in every way possible (erosion, clear cutting, over development, introducing species) is a Fun Thing to do. My issue with putting all of these things under "Climate Change" is that 1) the predictions when it comes to wildlife are ehhh (like I said, predicting how wildlife will respond to something is a bit like flying blind), so people don't really listen unless we're talking polar bears and 2) many of the animals that are sensitive enough to be that impacted by climate change are already up shit's creek without a paddle (corals, for one) and will probably be gone(r) long before climate change predictions say they should be because they're dying from 100000 other things, too, that nobody is really talking about.

(Also: rats are really, really complex and cool, evolutionarily speaking. We only hate them because of the plague. If something says "rats, roaches and jellyfish" be very skeptical, because the only similar thing about those three things is that they are generally considered "gross" and "common;" they all operate on different levels of complexity and in different "systems".)

*We don't really know each other well, so just to clarify that I'm not talking out of my ass here (heh): I'm about three weeks away from being done with a wildlife conservation degree and do have ~real world~ experience in wildlife management + talk/think about this stuff every day. I had to go out of my way to take a class focused on climate change because it's a footnote in the big book of wildlife issues today.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

That was ... pithy. But if anything, it understates the problem.

On the 16th, Neven's Arctic Sea Ice blog had a discussion of / link to (http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/11/arctic-methane-why-the-sea-ice-matters-.html) "a video from the Arctic News blog, which is run by the people from AMEG (Arctic Methane Emergency Group."

The video report -- filmed this spring, before summer's incredible string of Arctic warming and ice-melt records -- shows some of the world's leading experts on methane clathrates discussing recent findings and trends. They look terrified.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Metheow have enjoyed a strong reduction in sapient-induced climate change, thanks to their neurology, which triggers strongly on outlying signals -- such as camouflaged prey in a field of grass would have displayed. As soon as burning things was connected to bad weather and global effects, they started experimenting with it.

Not up to climate control yet, but dammit, their world is much better off in terms of CO2 production.

Humans, on the other hand, need to be slapped over the head with a baseball bat in order to notice things they don't want to see, especially things that would require disciplined changes in behavior.

Their respective behavioral hysteresis curves are like the difference between giving an atom a charge, and trying to align a permanent magnet. One jumps when the signal occurs, the other eventually grinds their way over and then doesn't want to move.

[sagaciouslu.livejournal.com]

Gwynne Dyer has spoken on this issue a number of times. Sadly, the link to a lecture he gave in Toronto a few years ago no longer exists.

Here's a link to his book, FYI:

http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Wars-Fight-Survival-Overheats/dp/1851688145/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353429800&sr=1-3&keywords=gwynne+dyer