Large swaths of Earth may be uninhabitable by 2300.
www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/05/earth-2300-too-hot-for-humans.html So, mean global temp is now ~14 degs C. So, they were figuring the mean by 2300 AD at 26 degs C, which is a balmy 78.8 degs F. Just right for you, right? But what's a typical annual variance? +/- 12 degs C? So, that would mean most humans would spend a good portion of their lives at MEAN DAILY temperatures above 100 degs F. The problem is: humans can't survive sustained wet-bulb temperatures above 95 degs F (35 degs C.). And where's the fresh water coming from to sustain that level of sweating all day all night for weeks? Oh yes, fresh water depends on snow caps, glacier melt, etc., all curtailed by global warming. No luck there.
By the way, improved climate models have darkened their spin on global warming. I.e., older climate models were mostly using slab (1-vertical layer) for the radiative portion of the model, which thus predicted logarithmic temperature increase with CO2 increase. But that was a major mistake, since global temperatures are really dominated by CO2 and H2O levels in the upper atmosphere. So, those old slab models were no good.
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/chaos-and-climate/comment-page-2/#comments
"The third conclusion is that the current GCMs are wrong. This has already been pointed out by Professor Pielke Sr. I have amazed myself by finding the error, and later discovered that Professor Pierrehumbert was already suspicous of the same algorithm. In Section 3.5 of his "A First Course in Climate" he wrote "This shows that something is wrong with the slab atmosphere model" geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/geo232/Notes.pdf The GCMs use Schwarzschildâ's equation to calculate radiative heat flow through a slab, however Schwarzschild wrote that the equation only applied where Kirchoff's law of black body radiation was true. The Earth's atmosphere does not radiate a pure thermal radiation, ie continuous black body radiation. It absorbs and emits pressure broadened lines. This means the slab model is wrong and that surface temperatures rise linearly with greenhouse gas concentration, rather than logarithmically as believed at present. Water vapor increases non-linearly with temperature and hence produces a non-linear greenhouse effect." www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090610154453.htm
www.cccma.ec.gc.ca/papers/ngillett/PDFS/nature08047.pdf
Well, heck, then improving the CGCMs only made our global warming prospects look even worse. Well...tough. That's just how life is lately. Turns out, with a multi-vertical layer radiative emissions model, temperature increase looks closer to linear with CO2 increase, not logarithmic, just like James Hansen has been saying for years. Just can't get rid of that Hansen. Stays on the money, again and again.
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/
www.aip.org/history/ohilist/24309_1.html
So, as far as plausible, non-geoengineered, mitigating mechanisms for global warming:a) Photosynthesis? Generally speaking - insufficient. I.e., Insufficient response to increased CO2 due to insufficient nitrogen, phosphorus, iron, water, trace elements, top soil, usable land, and active human-assisted or impelled global desertification and deforestation. First off, Calvitti's claim that natural plant growth will just absorb all additional CO2 by itself is plainly not happening at all. It's not just that Calvitti's notion belies the natural tendency of negative feedback to be only partly compensatory (the usual physical force-restore modeling response). There's also no historical or current data or any other evidence to support Calvitti's proposition. Indeed, the evidence prevailing since humans began burning fossil fuels BIG TIME from ~1850 AD shows quite the opposite. Humans are now inducing about 4.4ppmv of CO2 annual emissions (~35 gigatons) but only about half of that is being absorbed. This is called the NOT airborne fraction. Thus, the current annual CO2 rise rate is averaging ~2.2 ppmv, or about a 40% rise from 280 to 392 ppmv since 1850, and lately accelerating significantly.cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/contents.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_fraction Moreover, another way to look at this is to view just the "totality constraint" which shows how ludicrous the increased photosynthesis idea is, even if it were to be implemented ACTIVELY, not just passively. "stabilizing the atmospheric CO2 concentration would require gathering up the equivalent of 1 to 2 times the world’s existing above ground vegetation and putting it down abandoned oil wells or deep in the ocean. While CO2 fertilization could help to increase above ground vegetation a bit, storing more than a few tens of percent of the existing carbon would be quite surprising, and this is likely to be more like a few percent of global carbon emissions projected for the 21st century."
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/co_2-fertilization/ Estimates from another study suggest that global reforestation could only sequester maybe 6 to 12 years worth of CO2 emissions over the 30 year period required to grow an ultra-fast growth forest. So, fast growing euphorbia might uptake 20-40% of emitted CO2 over their 30 years growth period, at best. Then what? Where's there further additional land, not taken from agriculture or cities?
www.springerlink.com/content/n3v122106252535q/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforestation#cite_note-4 Then again, living forests also exhaust methane, as also do decaying dead trees. And methane is somewhere between 20 and 60+ times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 is, depending on how you figure the impact of methane half lives. This is why you'd have to bury all the vegetation impermeably. In short, NOT REMOTELY DOABLE. Of course, this is not going to happen. But even thinking about the potential for human-assisted reforestation is plainly ludicrous. Since, what's really happening instead is exactly the opposite: extremely rapid anthropogenic deforestation.
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/01/forests.conservation
"Global deforestation sharply accelerated around 1852.[75] [76] It has been estimated that about half of the Earth's mature tropical forests —between 7.5 million and 8 million km2 (2.9 million to 3 million sq mi) of the original 15 million to 16 million km2 (5.8 million to 6.2 million sq mi) that until 1947 covered the planet[77] —have now been cleared.[78] [79] Some scientists have predicted that unless significant measures (such as seeking out and protecting old growth forests that have not been disturbed) are taken on a worldwide basis, by 2030 there will only be ten percent remaining,[75] [78] with another ten percent in a degraded condition.[75] 80% will have been lost, and with them hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable species.[75] "
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation#cite_ref-Wilson_74-1 Plus coupled carbon-climate models all indicate net positive feedback to warming by 2100 AD, due to increased plant respiration rates with a warmer climate. This then pretty much kills all notion of increased photosynthesis as a viable global warming mitigator.
www.atmos.umd.edu/~haifee/research/clivar04_c4mip_poster.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event#Major_oceanic_anoxic_events
b) How about possible Oceanic thermohaline circulation shutdown to re-cool the poles? Short answer: not enough fresh water infusion to drive it. Sudden draining of the enormous Canadian Laurentide lake/ice sheet when it broke through to the St. Lawrence sea way during the Younger Dryas period, 12,800 years ago, was a 1-time deal. There is no fresh water body approaching the Laurentide's volume now. AND CO2 levels are also more than 40% higher now - not a small difference.www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7074/full/439256a.html
www.newscientist.com/article/dn8398
www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7156/full/448844b.html
www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/357.htm
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/01/atlantic-circulation-changes/
rivernet.ncsu.edu/courselocker/PaleoClimate/Bond%20et%20al%201999%20%20N.%20Atlantic%201-2.PDF
www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL021929.shtml
www.goodplanet.info/goodplanet/index.php/eng/Contenu/Points-de-vues/Le-role-de-la-circulation-thermohaline-dans-les-changements-climatiques/
www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data3.html Note that the above references seem to indicate in toto that increased global warming is more likely than cooling in the advent of a merely weakened thermohaline circulation, as manifest in most CGCM outputs. Moreover, even if the thermohaline circulation were to shut down completely, the atmospheric Hadley/synoptic storm system circulation would simply take up much of the resulting slack.
c) How about all-out nuclear war? Well, yeah, that might do it. Then again, more recent refinements of the 1979 TTAPS model suggest only nuclear autumn, not a nuclear winter. Let's all hope so, right? Because then that'll make a huge difference to humanity and the Earth's biota, right? NOT. d) Explosive methane seepage? Hey, if all-out nuclear war only models as nuclear autumn, what chance is there for explosive methane? Practically ZILCH.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
pangea.stanford.edu/research/Oceans/GES205/methaneGeology.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
e) chaotic deviations? ROTFL! Chaos is a summary math description, not a physical forcing. And there is no evident
chaotic deviation in the historical data at the required time scales. In fact, there's consensus among paleoclimatologists that ice ages are initiated by slow solar orbital fluctuations. The shortest such, the ~1,470 year Dansgaard-Oeshger events are most likely a superposition of two other weaker shorter term orbital fluctuations. And they all tend to manifest as abrupt warming/slow cooling cycles, not the reverse. So, there's no likely global cooling coming from such mechanisms any time soon.
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/chaos-and-climate/#comment-5427
amselvam.webs.com/ASPAP/Chaos1.htm
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/chaos-and-climate/
www.grist.org/article/chaotic-systems-are-not-predictable
f) Speaking of slow solar orbital fluctuations? Hmm..Berger and Loutre did the calcs on that, predicting another ice age maybe in 50k years. Yeah, let's hold our breath on that one.
www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/297/5585/1287
f2) As I said, short-term solar fluctuations....can't cover the cooling load at all.www.skepticalscience.com/ACRIM-vs-PMOD-the-rematch.html
campus.udayton.edu/~physics/rjb/PHY399Winter2007/Berger%20-%20Long%20Interglacial.pdf
www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/297/5585/1287
www.nature.com/nature/journal/v429/n6992/full/nature02599.html
downloads.climatescience.gov/sap/sap3-4/sap3-4-brochure.pdf
www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7065/abs/nature04121.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
g) Major comet or asteroid strike? Hey. Now you're talking! On the evolutionary scale, what comes up after mammals? I'm just itching to know.h) volcanos? Not enough stuff emitted to do much. Humans emit ~300 times as much CO2 as volcanos do on average.
www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_02/ General articles on global warming:DATA SOURCES: www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/
img254.imageshack.us/i/tempobsrvvsco2ct4.png/
www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/domec/domec_epica_data.html
cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/contents.htm SUMMARIES:
dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/materials-based-on-reports/reports-in-brief/Science_Report_Brief_Final.pdf
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/
www.pnas.org/search?fulltext=tipping+points&sortspec=date&submit=Submit&andorexactfulltext=phrase
https://www-pls.llnl.gov/?url=science_and_technology-earth_sciences-climate_modeling
www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/59509/title/Discounting_the_future_cost_of_climate_change
www.grist.org/article/climate-models-are-unproven
www.nationalacademies.org/includes/G8+5energy-climate09.pdf
geology.com/records/sahara-desert-map.gif
climateprogress.org/2010/05/16/nasa-easily-the-hottest-january-and-hottest-jan-april-in-temperature-record/
http://www.killerinourmidst.com/index.html#anchorContents
Most recent IPCC Report, full text: www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_report_wg1_report_the_physical_science_basis.htm
www.cccma.ec.gc.ca/papers/ngillett/PDFS/nature08047.pdf
www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/refs/Wahl_ClimChange2007.pdf
www.aip.org/history/climate/Public.htm#L000
www.newscientist.com/article/dn11638-climate-myths-human-cosub2sub-emissions-are-too-tiny-to-matter.html sea level rise:
www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/2/2/024002/erl7_2_024002.html
iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/2/2/024002/ Oh, and don't forget that there are at least five more ice cap melt mechanisms than were included in the CGCM modeling suite discussed in the IPCC AR4 report. www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/8364/title/Fits_and_Starts 1. Earthquakes driven by glacial recession:
www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/7290/title/Greenland_glacial_quakes_becoming_more_common www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/4589/title/Earth_sometimes_shivers_beneath_thick_blankets_of_ice 2. surface melt water pouring into fissures, expanding them via pressure
www.sciencenews.org/view/access/id/24011/title/a541_3103.jpg 3. Toppling icebergs - domino effect:
www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/3413/title/Toppling_icebergs_sped_breakup_of_Larsen_B_ice_shelf 4. Glacial acceleration following ice shelf break-up
www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/3653/title/Slippin_Slide_Glaciers_surge_after_ice_shelf_collapses 5. Lubrication of bedrock moorings via pre-existing subglacial lakes:
www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/38642/title/Subglacial_lakes_flood%2C_glaciers_speed_up There may be more mechanisms we don't know about yet at all.
www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/05/earth-2300-too-hot-for-humans.html
By the way, improved climate models have darkened their spin on global warming. I.e., older climate models were mostly using slab (1-vertical layer) for the radiative portion of the model, which thus predicted logarithmic temperature increase with CO2 increase. But that was a major mistake, since global temperatures are really dominated by CO2 and H2O levels in the upper atmosphere. So, those old slab models were no good.
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/chaos-and-climate/comment-page-2/#comments
"The third conclusion is that the current GCMs are wrong. This has already been pointed out by Professor Pielke Sr. I have amazed myself by finding the error, and later discovered that Professor Pierrehumbert was already suspicous of the same algorithm. In Section 3.5 of his "A First Course in Climate" he wrote "This shows that something is wrong with the slab atmosphere model" geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/geo232/Notes.pdf
www.cccma.ec.gc.ca/papers/ngillett/PDFS/nature08047.pdf
Well, heck, then improving the CGCMs only made our global warming prospects look even worse. Well...tough. That's just how life is lately. Turns out, with a multi-vertical layer radiative emissions model, temperature increase looks closer to linear with CO2 increase, not logarithmic, just like James Hansen has been saying for years. Just can't get rid of that Hansen. Stays on the money, again and again.
www.aip.org/history/ohilist/24309_1.html
So, as far as plausible, non-geoengineered, mitigating mechanisms for global warming:a) Photosynthesis? Generally speaking - insufficient. I.e., Insufficient response to increased CO2 due to insufficient nitrogen, phosphorus, iron, water, trace elements, top soil, usable land, and active human-assisted or impelled global desertification and deforestation. First off, Calvitti's claim that natural plant growth will just absorb all additional CO2 by itself is plainly not happening at all. It's not just that Calvitti's notion belies the natural tendency of negative feedback to be only partly compensatory (the usual physical force-restore modeling response). There's also no historical or current data or any other evidence to support Calvitti's proposition. Indeed, the evidence prevailing since humans began burning fossil fuels BIG TIME from ~1850 AD shows quite the opposite. Humans are now inducing about 4.4ppmv of CO2 annual emissions (~35 gigatons) but only about half of that is being absorbed. This is called the NOT airborne fraction. Thus, the current annual CO2 rise rate is averaging ~2.2 ppmv, or about a 40% rise from 280 to 392 ppmv since 1850, and lately accelerating significantly.cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/contents.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_fraction
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/co_2-fertilization/
www.springerlink.com/content/n3v122106252535q/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforestation#cite_note-4
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/01/forests.conservation
"Global deforestation sharply accelerated around 1852.[75]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation#cite_ref-Wilson_74-1
www.atmos.umd.edu/~haifee/research/clivar04_c4mip_poster.pdf
b) How about possible Oceanic thermohaline circulation shutdown to re-cool the poles? Short answer: not enough fresh water infusion to drive it. Sudden draining of the enormous Canadian Laurentide lake/ice sheet when it broke through to the St. Lawrence sea way during the Younger Dryas period, 12,800 years ago, was a 1-time deal. There is no fresh water body approaching the Laurentide's volume now. AND CO2 levels are also more than 40% higher now - not a small difference.
www.newscientist.com/article/dn8398
www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7156/full/448844b.html
www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/357.htm
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/01/atlantic-circulation-changes/
rivernet.ncsu.edu/courselocker/PaleoClimate/Bond%20et%20al%201999%20%20N.%20Atlantic%201-2.PDF
www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL021929.shtml
www.goodplanet.info/goodplanet/index.php/eng/Contenu/Points-de-vues/Le-role-de-la-circulation-thermohaline-dans-les-changements-climatiques/
www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data3.html
c) How about all-out nuclear war? Well, yeah, that might do it. Then again, more recent refinements of the 1979 TTAPS model suggest only nuclear autumn, not a nuclear winter. Let's all hope so, right? Because then that'll make a huge difference to humanity and the Earth's biota, right? NOT. d) Explosive methane seepage? Hey, if all-out nuclear war only models as nuclear autumn, what chance is there for explosive methane? Practically ZILCH.
pangea.stanford.edu/research/Oceans/GES205/methaneGeology.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
e) chaotic deviations? ROTFL! Chaos is a summary math description, not a physical forcing. And there is no evident
chaotic deviation in the historical data at the required time scales. In fact, there's consensus among paleoclimatologists that ice ages are initiated by slow solar orbital fluctuations. The shortest such, the ~1,470 year Dansgaard-Oeshger events are most likely a superposition of two other weaker shorter term orbital fluctuations. And they all tend to manifest as abrupt warming/slow cooling cycles, not the reverse. So, there's no likely global cooling coming from such mechanisms any time soon.
amselvam.webs.com/ASPAP/Chaos1.htm
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/chaos-and-climate/
www.grist.org/article/chaotic-systems-are-not-predictable
f) Speaking of slow solar orbital fluctuations? Hmm..Berger and Loutre did the calcs on that, predicting another ice age maybe in 50k years. Yeah, let's hold our breath on that one.
www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/297/5585/1287
f2) As I said, short-term solar fluctuations....can't cover the cooling load at all.www.skepticalscience.com/ACRIM-vs-PMOD-the-rematch.html
campus.udayton.edu/~physics/rjb/PHY399Winter2007/Berger%20-%20Long%20Interglacial.pdf
www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/297/5585/1287
www.nature.com/nature/journal/v429/n6992/full/nature02599.html
downloads.climatescience.gov/sap/sap3-4/sap3-4-brochure.pdf
www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7065/abs/nature04121.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
g) Major comet or asteroid strike? Hey. Now you're talking! On the evolutionary scale, what comes up after mammals? I'm just itching to know.
www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_02/
img254.imageshack.us/i/tempobsrvvsco2ct4.png/
www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/domec/domec_epica_data.html
cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/contents.htm
dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/materials-based-on-reports/reports-in-brief/Science_Report_Brief_Final.pdf
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/
www.pnas.org/search?fulltext=tipping+points&sortspec=date&submit=Submit&andorexactfulltext=phrase
https://www-pls.llnl.gov/?url=science_and_technology-earth_sciences-climate_modeling
www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/59509/title/Discounting_the_future_cost_of_climate_change
www.grist.org/article/climate-models-are-unproven
www.nationalacademies.org/includes/G8+5energy-climate09.pdf
geology.com/records/sahara-desert-map.gif
climateprogress.org/2010/05/16/nasa-easily-the-hottest-january-and-hottest-jan-april-in-temperature-record/
http://www.killerinourmidst.com/index.html#anchorContents
Most recent IPCC Report, full text: www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_report_wg1_report_the_physical_science_basis.htm
www.cccma.ec.gc.ca/papers/ngillett/PDFS/nature08047.pdf
www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/refs/Wahl_ClimChange2007.pdf
www.aip.org/history/climate/Public.htm#L000
www.newscientist.com/article/dn11638-climate-myths-human-cosub2sub-emissions-are-too-tiny-to-matter.html
www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/2/2/024002/erl7_2_024002.html
iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/2/2/024002/
www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/7290/title/Greenland_glacial_quakes_becoming_more_common
www.sciencenews.org/view/access/id/24011/title/a541_3103.jpg
www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/3413/title/Toppling_icebergs_sped_breakup_of_Larsen_B_ice_shelf
www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/3653/title/Slippin_Slide_Glaciers_surge_after_ice_shelf_collapses
www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/38642/title/Subglacial_lakes_flood%2C_glaciers_speed_up
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