Global warming: Regional climate change impacts

[johngalt]

That's quite correct, except that
(1) i do not think that "people will die", i think less people will die (cf earlier discussion).
(2) i am quite confident that nobody in power really wants to act to limit GHG emissions.
Every thought what the international "+2°C" goal really means ?
Well it can be :
- "stop all human activities now" if climate sensitivity is on the high end of its uncertainty range, or
- "you can emit all know proven and probable fossil reserves" if climate sensitivity is on the low end of its curent uncertainty range.
Quite a wide range

Don't trust me ?
IPCC AR5 : "Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C [per doubling of CO2 concentration]".
Simple computation :
Pre-industrial CO2 : 280 ppm
Curent CO2 level : 400 ppm (current rate : + 3ppm/yr)
+2°C => CO2 ranges from 400 ppm (280*(1+(2/4.5)) to 700 ppm (280*(1+(2/1.5)).
That's what the science says.
Now, how much can we still burn : stop everything now or consume all of it ?

[jacob]

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/ ... d-noaa-say --- 2015 beats 2014.

[black_son_of_gray]

@ Jacob (or anyone who knows): What's the deal with that cold patch around Iceland? Does it have anything to do with the North Atlantic Gyre and the thermohaline circulation?

[jacob]

Yes, it's a slowdown of the AMOC due to Greenland melt water run off. Consequences would be colder and stormier weather in that area and higher sea water levels on the US east coast. For more up-to-date detail, see https://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-r ... eady-today and http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/ ... e2554.html if you have access.

[black_son_of_gray]

There are some unexpected consequences to the appropriate response to the California drought.

Trees, which give lots of benefits, are dying.

Tax incentives at the state level are being treated as income at the federal level and taxed

Residents started conserving so much water that the utilities have to raise rates (so much for supply/demand)

and...

The water pinch has had several other unfortunate side effects. As customers cut back on the length of their showers, the number of times they flushed their toilets, and the clothes and dishes they washed, they lowered the outflow of water needed to push waste through sewage tunnels.

The nation’s outdated sewers were designed to receive about 120 gallons per household per day to shove wastewater through the systems. “But the flow has dropped to 50 gallons,” said George Tchobanoglous, professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Davis.

“You have solids that you flush and there’s not enough water to carry the material,” he said. That material often sits and releases the telltale, rotten-egg odor of hydrogen sulfide. Besides smelling bad, it corrodes pipes. “When the city says buy low-flush toilets because we all want to save water and save the world, no one can resist,” he said. “But no one thinks about the consequences. It really is a double-edged sword.”

[jennypenny]

That's crazy. It's like the argument that people should consume more to keep the economy afloat.

Our whole system is based on over-consumption.

[theanimal]

I'm a bit more cynical, but I don't necessarily see this as a terrible thing. Those trees would have to die sooner or later. They are not native to the area and are being artificially sustained. This isn't saying giant swaths of national forest lands are dying but rather trees in urban environments. Most of California is a desert. Deserts don't have these types of trees.

California was due for higher water rates for a long, long time. This shouldn't be much of a surprise. Anyone paying a few cents a gallon for water in the desert is getting quite the steal.

I believe this is just the tip of the iceberg for California. It may be a bit misanthropic, but I find it fun to watch... This was all self-induced. Maybe finally people will begin to realize that California can't sustain a population much larger than a few million.

[IlliniDave]

I've resigned myself that rather than peaceful boreal forest, by the time I retire my northwoods getaway will be awash in palm trees and tiki bars. But at least there is not much indication that there will be an issue there with water in my lifetime. I think those who are part of the population explosion in the southwest USA over the last 60-80 years could be in for a lot of hurt. My understanding is that in the paleo records there is evidence of much longer periods of drought than what they are experiencing now in southern California (80 years versus the current 15 or so). Don't have a source to link, but it was an interview with a panel of California water managers from a number of the coastal cities discussing ways to address the current problems where one of them cited the indications of 80-year drought cycles in the past.

[workathome]

When will the values of California ocean front property collapse? No one seems concerned about water levels rising, even though so many are purported liberals...

[johngalt]

When will the values of California ocean front property collapse? No one seems concerned about water levels rising, even though so many are purported liberals...

Now that's a good question... but why do you think any of the buildings in most of California should be worth anything when you know they are all built on a massive geological fault with record slip deficit (source) ? That could be a little more troubling for investors and homeowners than 0.3mm/yr sea level rise don't you think ?

Why do you values of California ocean front property don't collapse ?
Well, simply because people like ocean views (check out this book for example, or just ask around you).

[jacob]

I believe this is just the tip of the iceberg for California. It may be a bit misanthropic, but I find it fun to watch... This was all self-induced. Maybe finally people will begin to realize that California can't sustain a population much larger than a few million.

Without the Haber Bosch process to break the natural nitrogen cycle by introducing industrially manufactured ammonia as fertilizer coupled with a genetic revolution to develop high-yield crops that are able to thrive on these high nitrogen levels, we would need to turn half of planet's landmass into farmland.

The Haber-Bosch process incidentally uses natural gas as a feedstock for the required hydrogen and energy. About 80% of the nitrogen in the average persons body was manufactured industrially. It could be argued that 80% of the human population is being artificially sustained as well.

[jacob]

When will the values of California ocean front property collapse? No one seems concerned about water levels rising, even though so many are purported liberals...

As a whole, never. Individually, house by house. (Watch the tax rates go up.) People regularly risk loss by living in potential disaster areas places for all sorts of reasons. Farmers live in flood plains and on the side of active volcanoes because the soil is better there. Retires live in tsunami zones because they have beach access. People go to Vegas to gamble. Individuals in general don't have long time horizons. Suppose you were 60 years old. Would you move to Miami, FL if there was a 50 year risk of your house getting wiped out? Many would. Same reason many convert $200,000 worth of home equity into a luxury RV that depreciates to scrap metal in 20 years. #YOLO

The property values that do collapse would be something like industrial properties with 100 year depreciation rates near SFO or OAK. That is, corporations that own beach property ... because corporations live forever. See, e.g. all those nice apartment buildings in Honolulu, HI.

[7Wannabe5]

Many of the solutions are known. Just likely that they won't be implemented soon enough to avoid a good deal of pain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sazhRzEV2Y

[oldbeyond]

What about Scandinavia in general and the west coast of Sweden in particular? I guess all coastal areas will be affected, but particulars are always interesting. I hope I didn't miss anything searching through the thread.

[7Wannabe5]

jacob said: Without the Haber Bosch process to break the natural nitrogen cycle by introducing industrially manufactured ammonia as fertilizer coupled with a genetic revolution to develop high-yield crops that are able to thrive on these high nitrogen levels, we would need to turn half of planet's landmass into farmland.

Only if you apply the same sort of thinking that caused the problem to solve the problem. Basically, we are going to have to rewind the little filmstrip on The Progress of Human Civilization to the invention of the plow and then do better. The process of tilling the soil initiates a fast burn will always eventually result in the need for amendments. So, you can't solve the problem with a story problem that asks "How much farmland will we need?" because the whole concept of "farm" needs serious revision. How much industrially manufactured ammonia would be needed if every person who was fed by a monoculture field of corn walked out on to it to pee every day? What if nitrogen fixing legumes were interplanted with the corn and chop-dropped as mulch?

The way agriculture is mostly being conducted these days exactly mirrors the rest of our wasteful consumerist culture. I really liked the thread Ego started about making profits by scavenging because it is so illustrative of this problem with waste. Ego rescued "tools" that had high value from a flea market dealer who was willing to sell these items for $2. Therefore, it is highly likely that the flea market dealer directly rescued these "tools" from a situation in which they were heading for a landfill. When a person is being paid $50/hr to help design an ammonia manufacturing facility, then it is not in his self-interest at the margin to spend a couple hours figuring out how to fix the "tool" he previously purchased for $80. Easier and more profitable to simply toss it and spend 10 minutes ordering another one on Amazon to be on-demand-manufactured in China and over-night-delivered to his porch.

I'm just as much of a consumerist as everybody else. That is the situation into which I was born. Just like I was born into a racist culture in 1960s Detroit. It's not easy, but I am trying and failing-a-little--bit-every-day to just not be quite that f*cking stupid anymore. Quite possible that human population is not sustainable at current levels, but we really can't know because we do not engage in sustainable practices.

[jacob]

@7wb5 - Yes, I didn't consider giving up farming We definitely can't rewind back to pre-farming. Likely, the solution will be some kind of human-labour intensive gardening ala Asian terraced rice growing where people collected their waste(*) and cycled it into the rice paddies. I'm not sure at all that this will be sufficient. The longest standing population centers on the planet has generally been those receiving free nutrients from an upstream river, e.g. the Nile and the Yangtze rivers. Farming is probably good for a couple of thousand years. However, topsoil nutrients depreciate by 1-2%/decade as far as I remember... so we're sort at a Pareto peak here. This is all coming together.

Incidentally, the Haber Bosch doesn't neeed to run on natural gas. It can also run on nuclear, wind, or solar. The question here being ... what exactly is their true EROEI. We do know that they're much lower than fossil fuels ... but how low? If it's close to 1, the human race as we know is in deep doo-doo and also, ironically in deep-dodo(**).

In any case, this simply illustrates that it's supremely hard to run a closed-loop sustainable system that supports humans. The only civilization that EVER figured that out was hunter-gatherers... or at least they have a track record of success of a couple of million years. Other methods ... not so much. Even Egypt relies on imports now ... as does the no longer that Fertile Crescent.

(*) People used to regularly collect their urine. Other than being a very nitrogen rich adjuster to composting (everybody go take a piss on the brown leaves in the back yard compost pile), You can boil it to make potassium nitrate, a key component in gun powder. Urine was also used for tanning. People used to sell their urine and the origin of being too poor to have a pot to piss in refers to this. I suppose a modern equivalent expression is too poor to afford an internet connection or "not even making minimum wage"

(**)

[7Wannabe5]

jacob said: In any case, this simply illustrates that it's supremely hard to run a closed-loop sustainable system that supports humans. The only civilization that EVER figured that out was hunter-gatherers... or at least they have a track record of success of a couple of million years. Other methods ... not so much. Even Egypt relies on imports ... as does the no longer that Fertile Crescent.

Right, extremely difficult to achieve, BUT the loop is so wide-open now, even large valuable tools are falling right into landfills. Permaculture uses intelligent design to speed up the process of natural succession and create forest-like environments that contain a much more nutrient dense mix for modern hunter-gatherers. It takes 8-10 years to see results in difficult environments such as Arizona but only around 5 years in fertile areas such as much of the Midwest, if you know what you are doing. I don't know what I am doing, so it will probably take me about 7 years. I'm pretty sure that I can create a closed system to sustain myself on my 3/10 of an acre, but it would only be beneficial as an example because there are giant streams of waste that could be composted back into some food system all around me. I mean, what's the point of accumulating nitrogen with plants that fix it from the air while 1000s of toilets are being flushed into the river and food waste is filling the dumpsters? Anyways, I am FAR, FAR, FAR, FAR, FAR away from being a great example of permaculture in action myself at this juncture. But, think about it, if we all start planting fruit and nut trees and nitrogen-fixing plants and rescuing stuff from dumpsters this year, maybe 10 years from now things will be a little bit better rather than rapidly worsening?

[jacob]

http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/3761/ ... 1-2016.pdf

Non-linear modelling of ice melt (a notoriously hard problem); implies the possibility of a 6-9 meter sea rise within <100 years at current surface temperature max targets (2C). Also, suggests that air surface temperature is not a good metric for the stability of the global energy balance. It's essentially the pond lilly parable.

[black_son_of_gray]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP-cRqCQRc8

Lead author discussing the paper Jacob linked to in previous post (in case you don't want to read a 50 page science paper)

[jacob]

New model predicts that the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) could melt much more rapidly than previously thought.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/scien ... .html?_r=0
... and the original
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v5 ... 17145.html

With ice melting in other regions, too, the total rise of the sea could reach five or six feet by 2100, the researchers found. That is roughly twice the increase reported as a plausible worst-case scenario by a United Nations panel just three years ago, and so high it would likely provoke a profound crisis within the lifetimes of children being born today.

The situation would grow far worse beyond 2100, the researchers found, with the rise of the sea exceeding a pace of a foot per decade by the middle of the 22nd century. Scientists had documented such rates of increase in the geologic past, when far larger ice sheets were collapsing, but most of them had long assumed it would be impossible to reach rates so extreme with the smaller ice sheets of today.

New York City is nearly 400 years old; in the worst-case scenario conjured by the research, its chances of surviving another 400 years in anything like its present form would appear to be remote. Miami, New Orleans, London, Venice, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Sydney, Australia, are all just as vulnerable as New York, or more so.

Here's an example from 2002 when the Larsen B shelf collapses within a timespan of weeks. It was the size of Rhode Island (3200km2^).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2a3Oemo1e4