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American actress Lily Tomlin is credited with the expression, “No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.” With respect to climate science, my own efforts to stay abreast are blown away every week by new data, models, and assessments. It seems no matter how dire the situation becomes, it only gets worse when I check the latest reports.

THE ACTORS
The response of politicians, heads of non-governmental organizations, and corporate leaders remains the same. They’re mired in the dank Swamp of Nothingness....

Near-term extinction of humans was already guaranteed, to the knowledge of Obama and his administration (i.e., the Central Intelligence Agency, which runs the United States and controls presidential power). Even before the dire feedbacks were reported by the scientific community, the administration abandoned climate change as a significant issue because it knew we were done as early as 2009. Rather than shoulder the unenviable task of truth-teller, Obama did as his imperial higher-ups demanded: He lied about collapse, and he lied about climate change. And he still does.

Worse than the aforementioned trolls are the media. Fully captured by corporations and the corporate states, the media continue to dance around the issue of climate change....

Mainstream scientists minimize the message at every turn. As we’ve known for years, scientists almost invariably underplay climate impacts. And in some cases, scientists are aggressively muzzled by their governments.... [i.e. USA]...

WE THINK CHANGE WILL COME SLOWLY
Gradual change is not guaranteed, as pointed out by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in December 2013: “The history of climate on the planet — as read in archives such as tree rings, ocean sediments, and ice cores — is punctuated with large changes that occurred rapidly, over the course of decades to as little as a few years.” [because].... “a suite of amplifying feedback mechanisms, such as massive methane leaks from the sub-sea Arctic Ocean, have engaged and are probably unstoppable.” .... Skeptical Science finally catches up to reality on 2 April 2014 with an essay titled, “Alarming new study makes today’s climate change more comparable to Earth’s worst mass extinction.” The conclusion from this conservative source: “Until recently the scale of the Permian Mass Extinction was seen as just too massive, its duration far too long, and dating too imprecise for a sensible comparison to be made with today’s climate change. No longer.” If you’re too busy to read the evidence presented below, here’s the bottom line: On a planet 4 C hotter than baseline, all we can prepare for is human extinction .... 4 C terminates the ability of Earth’s vegetation to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide.

On the topic of tipping points, we crossed the Rubicon in 2007 at about 0.76 C warming. At this point, according to David Spratt’s excellent September 2013 report, “Is Climate Already Dangerous?”, not only had Arctic sea-ice passed its tipping point, but the Greenland Ice Sheet was not far behind, as the Arctic moves to sea-ice-free conditions in summer. Glaciologist Jason Box, an expert on Greenland ice, agrees. Box was quoted in a 5 December 2012 article in the Guardian: “In 2012 Greenland crossed a threshold where for the first time we saw complete surface melting at the highest elevations in what we used to call the dry snow zone. … As Greenland crosses the threshold and starts really melting in the upper elevations it really won’t recover from that unless the climate cools significantly for an extended period of time which doesn’t seem very likely.”


These [IPCC] assessments fail to account for significant self-reinforcing feedback loops. The IPCC’s vaunted Fifth Assessment continues the trend as it, too, ignores important feedbacks. As with prior reports, the Fifth Assessment “has been altered after the expert review stage, with changes added that downplay the economic impacts of a warming planet.” Consider, for example, the failure to mention Arctic ice in the Working Group Summary released 31 March 2014.

We have not yet begun to see the warming that this recent doubling of greenhouse gases will bring.”... [and yet]... We’ve clearly triggered the types of positive feedbacks the United Nations warned about in 1990... And, as reported in the journal Global and Planetary Change in April 2013, every molecule of atmospheric carbon dioxide since 1980 comes from human emissions. Not to be outdone, methane levels reached an average mean of 1800 parts per billion (ppb) on the morning of 16 June 2013. Tacking on a few of the additional greenhouse gases contributing to climate change and taking a conservative approach jacks up the carbon dioxide equivalent to 480 ppm. [A level not seen in 3-5 million years]


THE POSITIVE FEEDBACKS

1. METHANE HYDRATE
Methane hydrates are bubbling out the Arctic Ocean (Science, March 2010). As described in a subsequent paper in the June 2010 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, a minor increase in temperature would cause the release of upwards of 16,000 metric tons of methane each year. According to NASA’s CARVE project, these plumes were up to 150 kilometers (90 miles) across as of mid-July 2013. Global-average temperature is expected to rise by more than 4 C by 2030 and 10 C by 2040 based solely on methane release from the Arctic Ocean ....

Catastrophically rapid release of methane in the Arctic is further supported by Nafeez Ahmed as well as Natalia Shakhova’s 29 July 2013 interview with Nick Breeze (note the look of abject despair at the eight-minute mark).

In early November 2013, methane levels well in excess of 2,600 ppb were recorded at multiple altitudes in the Arctic. Later that same month, Shakhova and colleagues published a paper in Nature Geoscience suggesting “significant quantities of methane are escaping the East Siberian Shelf” and indicating that a 50-billion-tonne “burst” of methane could warm Earth by 1.3 C. Such a burst of methane is “highly possible at any time.” By 15 December 2013, methane bubbling up from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean had sufficient force to prevent sea ice from forming in the area. Nearly two years after his initial, oft-disparaged analysis, Malcolm Light concluded on 22 December 2013, “we have passed the methane hydrate tipping point and are now accelerating into extinction as the methane hydrate ‘Clathrate Gun’ has begun firing volleys of methane into the Arctic atmosphere.”




2. WARM ATLANTIC WATER IS DEFROSTING THE ARCTIC
as it shoots through the Fram Strait (Science, January 2011). Subsequent melting of Arctic ice is reducing albedo, hence enhancing absorption of solar energy. “Averaged globally, this albedo change is equivalent to 25% of the direct forcing from CO2 during the past 30 years”.

3 SIBERIAN METHANE VENTS
have increased in size from less than a meter across in the summer of 2010 to about a kilometer across in 2011 (Tellus, February 2011). According to a paper in the 12 April 2013 issue of Science, a major methane release is almost inevitable, which makes me wonder where the authors have been hiding. Almost inevitable, they report, regarding an ongoing event.

4. PEAT IN THE WORLD'S BOREAL FORESTS
is decomposing at an astonishing rate (Nature Communications, November 2011)

5. INVASION OF TALL SHRUBS
warms the soil, hence destabilizes the permafrost (Environmental Research Letters, March 2012)

6. GREENLAND ICE IS DARKENING
(The Cryosphere, June 2012)

7. METHANE RELEASE FROM THE ANTARCTIC TOO
(Nature, August 2012). According to a paper in the 24 July 2013 issue of Scientific Reports, melt rate in the Antarctic has caught up to the Arctic and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is losing over 150 cubic kilometres of ice each year according to CryoSat observations published 11 December 2013, and Antarctica’s crumbling Larsen B Ice Shelf is poised to finish its collapse, according to Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Further confirmation of large methane releases is revealed by noctilucent clouds over the southern hemisphere from 21 November 2013 to 6 December 2013.

8. RUSSIAN FOREST AND BOG FIRES ARE GROWING, AS ARE FIRES IN N AMERICA
(NASA, August 2012), a phenomenon consequently apparent throughout the northern hemisphere (Nature Communications, July 2013). The New York Times reports hotter, drier conditions leading to huge fires in western North America as the “new normal” in their 1 July 2013 issue. A paper in the 22 July 2013 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates boreal forests are burning at a rate exceeding that of the last 10,000 years.

9. Cracking of glaciers accelerates in the presence of increased carbon dioxide (Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, October 2012)

10. BEAUFORT GYRE REVERSES COURSE
(U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, October 2012)

11. ACCELERATED CARBON EMISSIONS FROM ACCELERATED PERMAFROST THAWING
Exposure to sunlight increases bacterial conversion of exposed soil carbon, thus accelerating thawing of the permafrost (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 2013). Subsequent carbon release “could be expected to more than double overall net C losses from tundra to the atmosphere,” as reported in the March 2014 issue of Ecology. Arctic permafrost houses about half the carbon stored in Earth’s soils, an estimated 1,400 to 1,850 petagrams of it, according to NASA.

12. The microbes have joined the party, too, according to a paper in the 23 February 2013 issue of New Scientist

13. SUMMER ICE MELT IN ANTARTICA ALSO REDUCES ALBEDO
Summer ice melt in Antarctica is at its highest level in a thousand years: Summer ice in the Antarctic is melting 10 times quicker than it was 600 years ago, with the most rapid melt occurring in the last 50 years (Nature Geoscience, April 2013). A research paper published in the 28 August 2013 of Nature indicates the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) has undergone rapid changes in the past five decades. The latter is the world’s largest ice sheet and was previously thought to be at little risk from climate change. But it has undergone rapid changes in the past five decades, signaling a potential threat to global sea levels. The EAIS holds enough water to raise sea levels more than 50 meters.

14. INCREASED ARIDITY AND TEMPERATURE SOUTHWEST NORTH AMERICA
facilitates movement of dust from low-elevation deserts to high-elevation snowpack, thus accelerating snowmelt, as reported in the 17 May 2013 issue of Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.

15. FLOODS SILTING UP THE BEAUFORT SEA
painting brown a wide section of the Arctic Ocean near the Mackenzie Delta brown (NASA, June 2013). Pictures of this phenomenon are shown on this NASA website.

16. ICE SHEET MELTING
softening the ice and letting it flow faster, according to a study accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface (July 2013). It appears a Heinrich Event has been triggered in Greenland. Consider the description of such an event as provided by Robert Scribbler on 8 August 2013: In a Heinrich Event, the melt forces eventually reach a tipping point. The warmer water has greatly softened the ice sheet. Floods of water flow out beneath the ice. Ice ponds grow into great lakes that may spill out both over top of the ice and underneath it. Large ice damns (sic) may or may not start to form. All through this time ice motion and melt is accelerating. Finally, a major tipping point is reached and in a single large event or ongoing series of such events, a massive surge of water and ice flush outward as the ice sheet enters an entirely chaotic state. Tsunamis of melt water rush out bearing their vast floatillas (sic) of ice burgs (sic), greatly contributing to sea level rise. And that’s when the weather really starts to get nasty. In the case of Greenland, the firing line for such events is the entire North Atlantic and, ultimately the Northern Hemisphere.

17. BREAKDOWN OF THE THERMOHALINE CONVEYOR BELT
(Like The Day After Tomorrow) is happening in the Antarctic as well as the Arctic, thus leading to melting of Antarctic permafrost (Scientific Reports, July 2013). In the past 60 years, the ocean surface offshore Antarctica became less salty as a result of melting glaciers and more precipitation, as reported in the 2 March 2014 issue of Nature Climate Change.

18. LOSS OF ARCTIC SEA ICE
is reducing the temperature gradient between the poles and the equator, thus causing the jet stream to slow and meander (see particularly the work of Jennifer Francis). One result is the creation of weather blocks such as the recent very high temperatures in Alaska. As a result, boreal peat dries and catches fire like a coal seam. The resulting soot enters the atmosphere to fall again, coating the ice surface elsewhere, thus reducing albedo and hastening the melting of ice. Each of these individual phenomena has been reported, albeit rarely, but to my knowledge the dots have not been connected beyond this space. The inability or unwillingness of the media to connect two dots is not surprising, and has been routinely reported (recently including here with respect to climate change and wildfires) (July 2013)

19. ARCTIC ICE GROWING DARKER
hence less reflective (Nature Climate Change, August 2013)

20. EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS
drive climate change, as reported in the 15 August 2013 issue of Nature (Nature, August 2013)

21. DROUGHT INDUCED TREE MORTALITY
contributes to increased decomposition of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and decreased sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Such mortality has been documented throughout the world since at least November 2000 in Nature, with recent summaries in the February 2013 issue of Nature for the tropics and in the August 2013 issue of Frontiers in Plant Science for temperate North America.

One extremely important example of this phenomenon is occurring in the Amazon, where drought in 2010 led to the release of more carbon than the United States that year (Science, February 2011). In addition, ongoing deforestation in the region is driving declines in precipitation at a rate much faster than long thought, as reported in the 19 July 2013 issue of Geophysical Research Letters. An overview of the phenomenon, focused on the Amazon, was provided by Climate News Network on 5 March 2014.

22. OCEAN ACIDIFICATION
leads to release of less dimethyl sulphide (DMS) by plankton. DMS shields Earth from radiation. (Nature Climate Change, online 25 August 2013). Plankton form the base of the marine food web, and are on the verge of disappearing completely, according to a paper in the 17 October 2013 issue of Global Change Biology. ** As with carbon dioxide, ocean acidification is occurring rapidly, according to a paper in the 26 March 2014 issue of Global Biogeochemical Cycles. **

23. SEA LEVEL RISE
causes slope collapse, tsunamis, and release of methane, as reported in the September 2013 issue of Geology. In eastern Siberia, the speed of coastal erosion has nearly doubled during the last four decades as the permafrost melts.

24. RISING OCEAN TEMPERATURES
will upset natural cycles of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and phosphorus, hence reducing plankton (Nature Climate Change, September 2013)

25. EARTHQUAKES
trigger methane release, and consequent warming of the planet triggers earthquakes, as reported by Sam Carana at the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (October 2013)

26. SMALL PONDS
in the Canadian Arctic are releasing far more methane than expected based on their aerial cover (PLoS ONE, November 2013). This is the first of several freshwater ecosystems releasing methane into the atmosphere, as reviewed in the 19 March 2014 issue of Nature.

27. MIXING OF THE JET STREAM
is a catalyst, too. High methane releases follow fracturing of the jet stream, accounting for past global-average temperature rises up to 16 C in a decade or two (Paul Beckwith via video on 19 December 2013).

28. FEWER CLOUDS AS THE PLANET WARMS
meaning less sunlight is reflected back into space, driving temperatures up further still” (Nature, January 2014)

29. EVEN MORE METHANE... NOT JUST THE OLD STUFF
“Thawing permafrost promotes microbial degradation of cryo-sequestered and new carbon leading to the biogenic production of methane” (Nature Communications, February 2014)

30. SLOWING OF DEEP OCEAN CURRENTS
According to one of the authors of the paper, “we’re likely going to see less uptake of human produced, or anthropogenic, heat and carbon dioxide by the ocean, making this a positive feedback loop for climate change.” Because this phenomenon contributed to cooling and sinking of the Weddell polynya: “it’s always possible that the giant polynya will manage to reappear in the next century. If it does, it will release decades-worth of heat and carbon from the deep ocean to the atmosphere in a pulse of warming.” (Nature Climate Change, February 2014; model results indicate “large spatial redistribution of ocean carbon,” as reported in the March 2014 issue of the Journal of Climate)

31. ARCTIC DRILLING
Arctic drilling was fast-tracked by the Obama administration during the summer of 2012

32. SUPERTANKERS
Supertankers are taking advantage of the slushy Arctic, demonstrating that every catastrophe represents a business opportunity, as pointed out by Professor of journalism Michael I. Niman and picked up by Truthout (ArtVoice, September 2013)


As nearly as I can distinguish, only the latter two feedback processes are reversible at a temporal scale relevant to our species. Once you pull the tab on the can of beer, there’s no keeping the carbon dioxide from bubbling up and out. These feedbacks are not additive, they are multiplicative: They not only reinforce within a feedback, the feedbacks also reinforce among themselves. Now that we’ve entered the era of expensive oil, I can’t imagine we’ll voluntarily terminate the process of drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic (or anywhere else). Nor will we willingly forgo a few dollars by failing to take advantage of the long-sought Northwest Passage.

The climate situation is much worse than I’ve led you to believe, and is accelerating far more rapidly than accounted for by models. The Arctic could well be free of ice by summer 2015, an event that last occurred some three million years ago, before the genus Homo walked the planet. Among the consequences of declining Arctic ice is extremes in cold weather in northern continents (thus illustrating why “climate change” is a better term than “global warming”).

An increasing number of scientists agree that warming of 4 to 6 C causes a dead planet. And, they go on to say, we’ll be there much sooner than most people realize.

It’s not merely scientists who know where we’re going. The Pentagon is bracing for public dissent over climate and energy shocks, as reported by Nafeez Ahmed in the 14 June 2013 issue of the Guardian. According to Ahmed’s article: “Top secret US National Security Agency (NSA) documents disclosed by the Guardian have shocked the world with revelations of a comprehensive US-based surveillance system with direct access to Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants. New Zealand court records suggest that data harvested by the NSA’s Prism system has been fed into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance whose members also include the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.” In short, the “Pentagon knows that environmental, economic and other crises could provoke widespread public anger toward government and corporations” and is planning accordingly. Such “activity is linked to the last decade of US defence planning, which has been increasingly concerned by the risk of civil unrest at home triggered by catastrophic events linked to climate change, energy shocks or economic crisis — or all three.”

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I think what this person is saying is that PLANTS can't survive, the OCEAN can't survive, and therefore not a single large mammal (his characterization) will survive either.

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The only E.L.E. I see is the complete loss of reason and common sense by people who ought to know better than be fooled by such rubbish.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
FWIW I've sat with more than one relative as they died. My repeated mistake has been to hold on to hope far longer than was realistic.

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Originally posted by CHRISISALL:

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The only E.L.E. I see is the complete loss of reason and common sense by people who ought to know better than be fooled by such rubbish.

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If you are not here to discuss the possibilities because you either do not want to or do not have the High School science background fresh in your memory to understand the discussion on some level, I'd invite you not to post.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
So, from what I can see, at that point the plants that are the sink for CO2 will become a source. At that point CO2 will increase exponentially in a positive feedback loop.

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Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
As for Antarctica,

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Originally posted by Jongsstraw
As for Antarctica, I guess you missed the recent news event when climate scientists doing research there got stuck in the record amount of ice. Their rescue ship also got stuck in the record amount of ice. They all had to be airlifted out from the record amount of ice.

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Originally posted by CHRISISALL:

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Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
As for Antarctica,

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Yes, yes, the ice down under has had a decade of growth. And the ice up north a decade of decline. No one said climate change (aka global warming) would be a simple + & - that any novice would understand. You need to, you know, study stuff & s**t.

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Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
Whatever you say Mr. Wizard. I still can't jump start my car battery with a potato. Betcha I'm using too much sour cream.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
AFAIK what the author is saying is that CO2-driven warming has triggered methane release, which is already in a positive feedback state.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Even if people die off completely

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Originally posted by CHRISISALL:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Even if people die off completely

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Die off? I don't wanna die off.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Where's that get fun ?

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
"You, who live in any kind of comfort or convenience, do not know how these people can survive these things, do you? They will endure because there is no immediate escape from endurance. Some will die, the rest must live." -Sanora Babb, "Whose Names Are Unknown"

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Originally posted by G:
I remember when I lived there, walking from our car in an outdoor parking lot in the dead of winter, to the front door of a movie theatre. It started out as a casual walk and then turned into a run as the cold was so searing on any exposed skin. And yet MPLS thrives because they have adapted. Sure, if it was like that year round it would be much less populated, but many would remain and tough it out. From my years there I'd say some would even like the cold thinning out the population.
If the wet bulb scenario happened we'd adapt as well. In a similar manner to MPLS' indoor, hamster warren of tunnels and enclose city walkways, we'd probably find solace underground. Tunnels and caves and underground living have been a refuge for many human from many bad things over our lifetime on earth. Solar & wind on the surface to run air circulation, de-humidifying, and lights for plants and humans and other services. Maybe we need a good kick up the back side to put things into perspective?

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And yet MPLS thrives because they have adapted. Sure, if it was like that year round it would be much less populated, but many would remain and tough it out. From my years there I'd say some would even like the cold thinning out the population.
If the wet bulb scenario happened we'd adapt as well. In a similar manner to MPLS' indoor, hamster warren of tunnels and enclose city walkways, we'd probably find solace underground. Tunnels and caves and underground living have been a refuge for many human from many bad things over our lifetime on earth.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Really, quite frankly, I think we may have already passed the tipping point into thermal runaway.

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Originally posted by Oonjerah:
Theory:
Self-sustaining habitats have been built in secret.

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Originally posted by Oonjerah:
Are you too young to remember the Gold Standard?

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Originally posted by G:
I was giving you a proposal for what to do if that Event time comes.

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I'm more worried about all the nukes on this planet, and all the nuts that have their fingers on the button. I saw On The Beach as a kid and it still haunts me.

I think saying 2040 is being way too generous.

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