Climate Change and Pollution Overload

This is yet another reference post like Resource Depletion and Peak Oil and Emerging Technologies on futurism, this time dealing with the consequences of climate change. Thoughts its impacts are not be as noticeable as technological change (which is now ubiquitous and accelerating) not will they be as immediate as resource depletion (oil production has already probably peaked), within a few decades it will become a dominant trend. An array of factors such as climate sensitivity to increased CO2 levels (probably high), global success at emissions reductions (unlikely) or the impacts of geoengineering (hard to predict) will determine whether or not the world will be rushing into a radically hotter state by the end of the 21st century. IMPORTANT: As you can see, it is not yet complete – I’ll be steadily filling in these terms during the weeks ahead.

Effects of Global Warming

CORE REFERENCES: From Wikipedia – Effects of global warming; Glossary of climate change; Index of climate change topics; Abrupt climate change. From S/O – Notes on “Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet” (M. Lynas); Notes on “The Last Generation” (F. Pearce).

Acidification of oceans: Through absorbing around 25% of annual human CO2 emissions, the oceans are steadily acidifying. The possible results are A) a collapse of the planktons (e.g. coccolithophorids, foraminifera, pteropods) that form the base of marine food chains – though phytoplankton may thrive, B) widespread dieoff of already declining corals and fish stocks and C) a reduction in the ability of the ocean to absorb further CO2 emissions. See The 800 lb. Gorilla in the Ocean.

Adaptation: As the world becomes warmer, individuals and peoples are going to adapt in different ways. Standard themes include new the bioengineering of drought-resistant crop varieties, better water management, weather control, and even Geoengineering. Infrastructure will creep north, as world civilization becomes centered around the Arctic circle (e.g. see polar cities). Others foresee that adaption will occur in more brutal and non-voluntary ways, such as forced migrations and Malthusian dieoff.  See Adaptation to global warming; the free book How the World will Change – with Global Warming by Trausti Valsson.

Anoxic events: The Shutdown of thermohaline circulation and ocean warming may lead to Ocean deoxygenation, the extinction of oxygen-dependent marine life and the buildup of lethal hydrogen sulphide in the ocean depths. Starting from partly enclosed basins like the Mediterranean or the Gulf of Mexico – or the already anoxic Black Sea – it too will be released into the atmosphere. Lethal in minute concentrations, the only warming will be the smell of rotten eggs before the human olfactory nerve becomes paralyzed. It will be a silent killer, making its way from the coasts to the continental interior. Furthermore, it will break down what remains of the ozone layer – exposing any remaining survivors to carcinogenic UV rays. See Review: Under a Green Sky.

Anthropogenic global warming: Is a fact. See Top 10 AGW Denial Myths.

Arctic melting: The Arctic is already in a death spiral and the latest projections indicate it could be ice free during summer as early as 2020. Once it goes, a triple feedback Ice-albedo effect kicks in – earlier snowmelts cause the Earth to absorb more heat, dark-hued shrubs and boreal forests encroach on the white tundra and disappearing Arctic sea ice is replaced by dark ocean water. The reformation of sea ice is hindered, since local temperatures soar over the dark ocean waters due to the reduced albedo. Global ocean and air currents are interrupted as the temperature differential between the Arctic and the tropics shrinks. There are both positive and negative economic consequences: 1) permafrost melting destabilizes infrastructure such as railways, structures and pipelines, 2) new shipping routes, hydrocarbon sources and agricultural lands are opened up that attract settlers, enterprises, and military forces. With several more degrees of warming, the Arctic becomes permanently ice free. Lakes drain and rivers bloat as the thawing ground and increased rainfall release far more fresh water into the Arctic Ocean. Eventually, the Arctic Circle may become a humid temperate zone, as it was during the PETM, when lush redwood forests grew along the shores of the High North and releasing water vapor that insulated them during the long polar darkness.

Arctic Oscillation: See here.

Carbon tax:

Clathrate collapse:

Crop yields effects: At 2-3C of warming, agriculture in the arid sub-tropics becomes increasingly untenable – in central America, south India, Indonesia and (rain-fed) southern and northern Africa. In the tropics, crop yields begin to slide, as the effects of increased CO2 fertilization are canceled out by higher heat stress (beyond a critical threshold yields begin to plummet). In North America, agriculture moves north to the Mid-West and east Canada, even as the West and South-West is afflicted by drought, heavy rainstorms and new pests. There will be a net global food deficit after a 2.5C rise, as even the mid-latitudes suffer due to extreme floods and droughts, while structural famine grips the subtropics and creates hundreds of millions of climate refugees.

[Click to enlarge].

At 4-5C of warming, agriculture will be crashing throughout the world’s mid-latitudinal breadbaskets, as the subtropics get too dry and the tropics too hot. The Great Plains, the western US, the Pacific coast of S. America, southern Africa, the western Indian subcontinent and Australia all see major declines. Droughts will prevail in SW North America, Central America, the Mediterranean, S. Africa and Australia – SE Asia during the winter, and the Amazon, Siberia and West Africa during the summer. Although(marginal) sub-polar lands will be opened up in Russia and Canada, and yields may rise due to new bio-engineered drought-resistant crops and the fertilization effects of increased CO2 levels, this will not close the gap – the situation will become ever more precaurious, for “with major global breadbaskets dusty and abandoned, rising demand will be chasing rapidly diminishing supply”. At more than 5C of warming, most of the tropics become too hot for crops and the subtropics dry up. The belts of habitality contract towards the poles, both on land and on sea. See Climate change and agriculture.

Desertification: East Antarctic melting: The Totten glacier drains an area with more ice than in the entire West Antarctic. Since the early 1990’s, catchment is losing enough ice to lower its height by more than 10m annually (despite raising ice levels in the flatter interior). Cook glacier is doing the same. Furthermore, like Pine Island and Thwaites, the grounding lines (farthest point downstream where ice makes contact with solid rock) of Totten and Cook is below sea level – by more than 300m in Totten’s case and “warmer waters appear to be loosing that contact”. Furthermore, “should the grounding line begin to retreat, we can expect the glacier to begin the familiar process of thinning and accelerating”. With around 5C of global warming, the entire East Antarctic will be doomed, raising sea levels by an eventual 70m.

El Niño:

Extreme weather:

Geoengineering: See The Final Gambit: Geoengineering

Glacier melting: Global dimming: See The Dilemmas of Global Dimming

Greenland melting:

Heat stress: See Simmered to the Edge of the World.

Hydroxyl collapse:

Hypercane: If a patch of ocean were to warm to 45-50C – either through very severe global warming, or an undersea super-volcano eruption or asteroid strike – a hypothetical class of tropical cyclone called a hypercane may form above it. Spanning continents (the eye itself being up to 300km across) and punching a hole through the stratosphere, these storms have 800kph+ winds that will flatten almost anything in their path. They may have had enough fuel to last for weeks and circumnavigate the globe several times over.

Ice-albedo feedback: When highly-reflective ice melts, it leaves behind darker-hued earth, flora or sea that absorb much more heat. Local air temperatures soar and inhibit the reformation of the ice in future cold seasons. Though this effect keeps polar regions stable up to a point, beyond a critical threshold – already reached in the Arctic – ice melt acquires its own runaway dynamic.

Methane releases:

Mitigation of global warming: New technologies; taxes on carbon; contraction and convergence. See also Adaptation & Geoengineering.

Monsoon effects:

Ozone depletion:

Permafrost melting:

Radiative forcing:

Rainforest collapse:

Responses to climate change: see Mitigation of global warming, Adaptation to global warming, Geoengineering.

Runaway greenhouse effect:

Sea level rise: See effects. Global Warming: A Sea Change (Mandia).

Species extinction:

Thermohaline circulation collapse:

Tsunamis:

Water stress:

West Antarctic melting: Since much of the base of the West Antarctic ice sheet is grounded below sea level, warmer oceans stand to erode its edges and call its whole stability into question – especially as most of the center of the great ice mass is even deeper below sea level than the edges, penetrating sea water could lift the icecap off its seabed foundations. Although it is shielded by the massive Ross and Ronne ice shelves, if they were to disintegrate the West Antarctic would get uncorked – resulting in much faster glacial outflow and adding 5m to global sea levels within decades. (Already three shelves have disintegrated – the Wordie, Larsen A and Larsen B). Though the East Antarctic cap is shielded by the Transantarctic Mountains, is too is anchored beneath sea level so it could collapse via the back door – eventually raising sea levels by a further 50m. Destabilization of both Antarctic ice caps and Greenland will result in unmanageably rapid inundation of the world’s urban commercial centers and low-lying farmland.Entire nations like Bangladesh, Holland and Egypt will be put at risk; cities will become besieged fortresses under constant risk of catastrophic breakdown before the rising seas and gathering storms. Agriculture will need to move onto higher, more marginal lands. As the world’s coastlines retreat, the resulting economic shocks will destabilize society and break the insurance and credit systems – leaving fewer resources to support the hundreds of millions of newly-displaced people, as the world is wracked by the Scylla of inland drought and the Charybdis of coastal inundation. The Shelf: Down South, Shattering Ice Uncorks the Antarctic. Disintegration of Larsen B in 2002 – at the height of summer, melting snow formed ponds that put pressure on crevasses, wedging them open (water is denser than ice) and instigating the catastrophic collapse of 500bn tons of ice, releasing thousands of large icebergs. Other ice shelves are also in increasing danger, including the Ross and Ronne ice shelves. Though they of themselves won’t raise sea levels, since they are already floating, they do buttress the glaciers that feed them – like uncorking a champagne bottle, the “glaciers that once discharged their ice onto the Larsen B shelf are now flowing into the sea 8 times faster than they did before the shelf collapsed”.The Mercer Legacy: An Achilles’ Heel at the Bottom of the World. West Antarctica is vulnerable since it is “perched precariously on an archipelago of largely submerged islands”. Though apparently safe since it is buttressed on two sides by mountains, and on the other two sides by the Ross and Ronne ice shelves. Yet if they were to give way, the entire shift could lift off and float away – once begin, disintegration may be catastrophically rapid.It has a “weak underbelly” in Pine Island Bay, a large inlet on the Amundsen Sea. It is an outlet for two of Antarctica’s top five glaciers: Pine Island and Thwaites, which drain 40% of W. Antarctic ice sheet and are already the greatest contributors to global sea level rise. The surrounding ice shelves melt faster due to warmer waters; in turn, the two glaciers drastically accelerated. As ice shelves thin, more water penetrated beneath glacier…the “grounding line” is retreating 2km a year. Furthermore, inland amongst its tributaries the PI glacier sits on great lakes of melt-water. If the area they drain all melts, sea levels will rise by 1 2m. Thwaites taps into vast reservoirs of ice in the middle of the ice sheet…may drag them along with it. If you pull the plug, ice goes faster and there is thinning…will the plug reform further back, or will the ocean deliver enough heat for it to just blowtorch its way to the center? If the latter, the W. Antarctic ice sheet could collapse within the century.

Zones of uninhabitability: See Heat stress.

Maps of Climate Change

• Antarctica with no ice – 1.
• Antarctica with no ice – 2.
• Antarctica with no ice – 3.
• Arctic ice age in 2008.
• Crop yields in Europe under high emissions scenario.
• Crop yields in world by 2050.
• Desertification vulnerability.
• Early Eocene at PETM.
• Earth ice free.
• Europe with 100m sea level rise.
• Flood maps.
• Greenland with no ice – 1.
• Greenland with no ice – 2.
• Johnston’s space art.
• Paleoclimatology mapper.
• Sea level decrease of 120m.
• Sea level rise effects on world.
• World 4C warmer.
• World with 100m sea level rise.
• Zones of uninhabitability at 10-11C.

Related posts:

1. Simmered to the Edge of the World
2. Russia Burning: not Apocalypse, but its Prelude
3. The Century without an Indian Summer
4. The Collapse Party Fulfills Its Own Name
5. The Dilemmas of Global Dimming