NPR: Global Warming Is Irreversible, Study Says

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99888903

Environment

Global Warming Is Irreversible, Study Says

by Richard Harris

All Things Considered, January 26, 2009 · Climate change is essentially irreversible, according to a sobering new scientific study.

As carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, the world will experience more and more long-term environmental disruption. The damage will persist even when, and if, emissions are brought under control, says study author Susan Solomon, who is among the world's top climate scientists.

"We're used to thinking of pollution problems that are things we can fix," Solomon says. "Smog, we just cut back and everything will be better later. Or haze — it'll go away pretty quickly."

That's the case for some of the gases that contribute to climate change, such as methane and nitrous oxide. But as Solomon and colleagues suggest in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it is not true for the most abundant greenhouse gas: carbon dioxide. Turning off the carbon dioxide emissions won't stop global warming.

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[Ian David]

1. If only eight years ago we'd had someone in charge who knew what they fuck they were doing. n/t

[hatrack]

12. Oh, I'd argue that Bush knew exactly what he was doing.

He just didn't give a shit, that's all.

[OKIsItJustMe]

14. Let me offer a slightly softened version

Remember when Bush sat immobile on "9/11" because he didn't want to scare the children?

OK, now, what if the same man thought there was a decent chance that "Global Warming" may not have been something Al Gore dreamed up. What if he thought there might be disastrous consequences. Let's see, do I tell everybody?… Do I reverse what I've said; and what my Dad said about Gore?…

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. NOAA: Global Warming Is Irreversible, Study Says

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090126_climate.html

New Study Shows Climate Change Largely Irreversible

January 26, 2009

A new scientific study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reaches a powerful conclusion about the climate change caused by future increases of carbon dioxide: to a large extent, there’s no going back.

The pioneering study, led by NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon, shows how changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions are completely stopped. The findings appear during the week of January 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Our study convinced us that current choices regarding carbon dioxide emissions will have legacies that will irreversibly change the planet,” said Solomon, who is based at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/">NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.

“It has long been known that some of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years,” Solomon said. “But the new study advances the understanding of how this affects the climate system.”

…

Geoengineering to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere was not considered in the study. “Ideas about taking the carbon dioxide away after the world puts it in have been proposed, but right now those are very speculative,” said Solomon.

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[AndyTiedye]

3. What If We Plant More Trees?

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. By all means, plant them, but don't think that will be sufficient to reverse things

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99888903

…

"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide, the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years. What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than 1,000 years," Solomon says.

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[Baby Snooks]

21. Reforestation

There has been so much deforestation that it probably would be 1,000 years before there was any restoration of the oxygen/carbon dioxide balance that existed a century ago and it would take a century before restoration would be at a level where there would be any impact of the reforestation. We have decimated the rainforests around the world which are our planet's lungs.

[DCKit]

19. Bananas, Citrus and Coconut palms above the 44th parallel.

Just kidding. I'll be 20 years before we have frost-free winters.

[tom_paine]

5. Which probably means it was already irreversible a decade or more ago.

Gonna be a bumpy century.

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. "Bumpy Century?" More like bumpy milenium

The take home message should not be "we're doomed" though. Instead, it should be, "We need to act."

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090126_climate.html

…

Climate impacts were less severe at lower peak levels. But at all levels added carbon dioxide and its climate effects linger because of the ocean.

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The scientists emphasize that increases in CO₂ that occur in this century “lock in” sea level rise that would slowly follow in the next 1,000 years. Considering just the expansion of warming ocean waters—without melting glaciers and polar ice sheets—the authors find that the irreversible global average sea level rise by the year 3000 would be at least 1.3–3.2 feet (0.4–1.0 meter) if CO₂ peaks at 600 parts per million, and double that amount if CO₂ peaks at 1,000 parts per million.

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[tom_paine]

9. Whatever the nature of the next millenium, there's a good chance there won't be many or any

human beings around to give shit meaning by putting it on TV.

Sure, we need to act now. We needed to act yesterday. We needed to use our frontal lobes 50 years ago, and 100 years ago, and 500 years ago.

But most every human who has dared to that, has been murdered or otherwise destroyed.

What makes you think this planet of diseased chimpanzees that have the nerve to think of ourselves as "higher life forms" has any capacity to do anything but what we have done? Which is to bull our way forward shortsightedly and foolishly, to borrow a phrase from Joe Bageant, "surfing the waves of power with our dicks pointed off into the susnset".

Sorry, guy, but it's quite obvious that there is probably a 90% chance or higher that humanity is an evolutionary dead end.

But we have the distinct pleasure of watching our own stupidity and demise in Real-Time, and that's something no human has ever had the pleasure of doing. It's the greatest disaster film ever!

Might as well have fun. When stranded on a planet of diseased chimpanzees who think we are so smart and yet are so stupid we never learned not to shit in our beds or drinking water, do as the diseased chimpanzees do!

It's an End of the World Party!

:party:

[Baby Snooks]

22. They don't really know about sea level rise...

There are many factors involved besides the melting of the icecaps and the ice shelves. But if Antarctica does begin to "melt" there will be a significant enough rise to force coastal cities to install seawalls and levees - we forget even though the sea level rise might not be a problem high tides might. They could potentially flood quite a few of our coastal cities. Only time will tell. One thing is for sure. There is no way to stop the melting cycle that began, I believe, about 20 years ago when mountain ranges began to lose their permanent snowlines.

Scary future for all of us. One of the many legacies of the Bushes.

[tavalon]

23. The reason they hide much of this from us is because of the tendency to give up

Fact of the matter is, even if every human being and every corporation did every single thing right from here on out, we will still face a huge culling. We need to do the right thing because it is the right thing not because it will help our individual fates. We need to do it for Gaia. She put up with us plenty long enough, now we need to help her because it's the right thing for her. Most of us will still die but that is no reason not to do the right thing.

It's a hard thing to grasp and frankly why that isn't what is being told to us. We're still in the me stage, when we need to be in the thee stage.

[GliderGuider]

6. Dang. I guess charcoal won't fix it after all...

One billion by 2100?

Every time I turn around, science and current events are proving that the pessimists were actually optimists.

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. I believe that falls under "Geoengineering"

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090126_climate.html

…

Geoengineering to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere was not considered in the study. “Ideas about taking the carbon dioxide away after the world puts it in have been proposed, but right now those are very speculative,” said Solomon.

…

[tom_paine]

10. And it's not even close to over, Paul. You and I will one day be viewed as optimists.

I cannot tell you how many times, I have been accused of being a "peesimist" then have the same person who just called me that express amazement that I am crazy enough to think human beings are still going to be around in 2000 or 5000 years, even if if it is during the Death Phase of our species.

Cognitive Dissociation and the Discount Rate, as Universal Human Characteristsic, are further indicative that we simply are nbot smart or conscious or self-aware enough as species to pull oursels out of it.

And yet, our predictions today will likely seem optimistically naive to the poor bastards left alive in 2100, whether there's one billion of them, five billion of them or 50,000 of them clusteed near the last habitable lands near the poles.

[OKIsItJustMe]

13. I'm afraid I fall in that category as well

Whenever someone says, we just need to stop pumping CO₂ into the atmosphere, let "Nature" take care of it, I trot out the ice core data again. Last time, it took "Nature" around 100,000 years to bring CO₂ levels down from 280ppm without our interference. How long do you think it will take "Nature" to bring them down from 380ppm?

The answer(s) should be obvious:

1. It will take "Nature" forever, so far as humanity is concerned.
2. If CO₂ levels are going to be lowered, (the rest of) "Nature" is going to need some help from the species that helped raise them in the first place.

[bertman]

20. I'm thinkin a no-bid contract to Halliburton oughta solve things toot sweet.

At least my wife is gonna enjoy it. She HATES cold weather.

[Nihil]

24. I agree that the answer(s) should be obvious ...

> 1. It will take "Nature" forever, so far as humanity is concerned.
> 2. If CO2 levels are going to be lowered, (the rest of) "Nature"
> is going to need some help from the species that helped raise them
> in the first place.

No objection to #1. That is what I believe will happen whether we like
it or not.

With your #2, "Nature" could do with less "help" than this species tends
to provide, especially when it's greed-driven selfish nature is made to
react quicker (and with less forethought than usual) due to panic.

If this species can't even do the comparatively trivial task of stopping
emissions, there is NO point in attempting the various pie-in-the-sky
"solutions" that are being bandied around as
i) it diverts energy (=time, money, education) from the "stop emissions" drive,
ii) it runs a severe risk of accelerating the existing rate of biosphere damage,
&
iii) it allows the moronic polluters a get-out clause to continue their ways.

Unless you fix the ongoing emissions problem in a timely ("overnight")
manner, you are sunk. I don't believe that sufficient numbers of people
are that interested in fixing the problem - the majority because they
don't understand the scale, scope or timescale; the minority because
they directly profit from keeping the problem going.

[OKIsItJustMe]

25. I generally agree

Our first priority must be to cut emissions.

Even if we were to hit on some scheme to safely suck CO₂ out of the air, whatever it is it will take time. Additional emissions only increase the challenge.

However, honestly, I fear that if we don't do something to actively remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, there's a decent chance that we're going to take this ecosystem down the tubes with us—at least the higher order plants, animals and sea life—the bacteria and such will find a way, they always have.

[OKIsItJustMe]

11. NBC News

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/28863694#28863694

[OKIsItJustMe]

15. Science Magazine: A Millennia-Long Greenhouse Disaster

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/126/1

A Millennia-Long Greenhouse Disaster

By Richard A. Kerr
ScienceNOW Daily News
26 January 2009

Climate scientists have painted an unpleasant picture of the end of this century if humankind keeps spewing climate-changing gases into the atmosphere. Now they are pointing out that the ill effects won't be going away for a long, long time. The carbon dioxide we're emitting this century is so slow to disappear and climate so slow to respond, they say, that the effects felt in a century or two will be almost as strong 1000 years from now.

The discouraging word comes in a paper published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Climate researcher Susan Solomon of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, and her colleagues report how they used results from two kinds of climate models--century-scale and millennial-scale--to calculate the climate out to the year 3000. The end results showed how two climate processes work against each other to sustain the peak warming to be seen a century from now until the year 3000: The slow escape of atmospheric carbon dioxide into the deep sea tends to ease the warming in models, the researchers note, but the equally slow drawdown of atmospheric heat into the deep sea tends to compensate for the carbon dioxide loss.

As a result of the counteracting processes, almost all of the warming that could be seen by 2100--1.5°C to 4°C, depending on how much carbon dioxide ends up being emitted--is still there in 3000. "The time constants are so slow, people have a hard time appreciating how long the climate change persists," says Solomon. A bevy of climate changes would accompany the persistent warming, Solomon and colleagues point out, but they highlight one: drought. Even given a modest 2°C global warming, southwestern North America, eastern South America, and southern Africa would suffer added summer dryness comparable to the dryness of the disastrous American Dust Bowl of the 1930s, but for centuries, not for just a decade or two. Northern Africa, southern Europe, and western Australia would have it twice as bad.

Essentially, irreversible climate change "is not a new idea," notes climate researcher David Archer of the University of Chicago in Illinois, "but it's widely misunderstood." Much of scientists' presentations to the public and policymakers "had made it seem like climate change was a century-scale issue," he says, but this latest work should help correct the misimpression.

[OKIsItJustMe]

16. NY Times: Emissions Cut Won’t Bring Quick Relief, Scientists Say

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/science/earth/27carbon.html

Emissions Cut Won’t Bring Quick Relief, Scientists Say

By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: January 26, 2009

Many people who worry about global warming hope that once emissions of heat-trapping gases decline, the problems they cause will quickly begin to abate.

Now researchers are saying that such hope is ill-founded, at least with regard to carbon dioxide.

Because of the way carbon dioxide persists in the atmosphere and in the oceans, and the way the atmosphere and the oceans interact, patterns that are established at peak levels will produce problems like “inexorable sea level rise” and Dust-Bowl-like droughts for at least a thousand years, the researchers are reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“That peak would be the minimum you would be locking yourself into,” said Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who led the work.

…

[OKIsItJustMe]

17. BBC: Global warming is 'irreversible'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7852628.stm

Global warming is 'irreversible'

A team of environmental researchers in the US has warned many effects of climate change are irreversible.

The scientists concluded global temperatures could remain high for 1,000 years, even if carbon emissions can somehow be halted.

Their report was sponsored by the US Department of Energy and comes as President Obama announces a review of vehicle emission standards.

…

The scientists say the oceans are currently slowing down global warming by absorbing heat, but they will eventually release that heat back into the air.

They say politicians must now offset environmental damage already done by man-made pollution.

…

[OKIsItJustMe]

18. AP: Report: Some climate damage already irreversible

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hMRqVHPx5vcRCKXVKbFlnKZrVJOQD95V4HBG0

Report: Some climate damage already irreversible

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID

WASHINGTON (AP) — Many damaging effects of climate change are already basically irreversible, researchers declared Monday, warning that even if carbon emissions can somehow be halted temperatures around the globe will remain high until at least the year 3000.

"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide the climate would go back to normal in 100 years, 200 years; that's not true," climate researcher Susan Solomon said in a teleconference.

Solomon, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., is lead author of an international team's paper reporting irreversible damage from climate change, being published in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

She defines "irreversible" as change that would remain for 1,000 years even if humans stopped adding carbon to the atmosphere immediately.

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