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Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

reuters.com

11–20 of 251 posts

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#12
Please don't take this as snark -- I'm dead serious. There are climate change deniers who will point to this as support of their position. "See, those climate scientists' predictions are always wrong."

The fact is the IPCC is well aware of the political headwinds it faces and its reports are conservative -- they have always underestimated the likely outcome because it is hard enough to get sign-off on even that, plus the consequences of overstating it is harmed credibility.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#13
post #7

Maybe I don't understand the ramifications of this, but it kind of sounds like we missed the offramp where we just stop burning carbon. Shouldn't we just be moving to something drastic like a massive sun shade project ASAP?

We could have had nuclear but nope too scary!

We do have nuclear, and have had it for decades. Concerns about what to do with the waste are indeed an issue, but the bigger problems is nuclear hasn't been cost competitive with coal and more recently natural gas. It is complex trade-off and just blaming it on NIBMY sentiment is not really engaging the issue.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#14

Please don't take this as snark -- I'm dead serious. There are climate change deniers who will point to this as support of their position. "See, those climate scientists' predictions are always wrong." The fact is the IPCC is well aware of the political headwinds it faces and its reports are conservative -- they have always underestimated the likely outcome because it is hard enough to get sign-off on even that, plus…

"The Adorable Optimism of the IPCC" - https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433

It’s been a couple of weeks now since the IPCC report came out. You know what it says. If the whole damn species pulls together in a concerted effort “without historical precedent”— if we start right now, and never let up on the throttle— we just might be able to swing the needle back from Catastrophe to mere Disaster. If we cut carbon emissions by half over the next decade, eliminate them entirely by 2050; if the species cuts its meat and dairy consumption by 90%; if we invent new unicorn technologies for sucking carbon back out of the atmosphere (or scale up extant prototype tech by a factor of two million in two years) — if we commit to these and other equally Herculean tasks, then we might just barely be able to keep global temperature from rising more than 1.5°C.[1] We’ll only lose 70-90% of the word’s remaining coral reefs (which are already down by about 50%, let’s not forget). Only 350 million more urban dwellers will be exposed to severe drought and “deadly heat” events. Only 130-140 million will be inundated. Global fire frequency will only increase by 38%. Fish stocks in low latitudes will be irreparably hammered, but it might be possible to save the higher-latitude populations. We’ll only lose a third of the permafrost. You get the idea.

We have twelve years to show results.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#15

This is the associated paper, sorry for the paywall. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019...

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_P..., RCP 4.5 predicts a maximum of 2.6 degrees warming by 2100. But we're currently on pace to most likely hit 3.3 degrees by then, so it doesn't seem odd that we're ahead of that pace. https://climateactiontracker.org/global/cat-thermometer/

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could have had nuclear but nope too scary!

We do have nuclear, and have had it for decades. Concerns about what to do with the waste are indeed an issue, but the bigger problems is nuclear hasn't been cost competitive with coal and more recently natural gas. It is complex trade-off and just blaming it on NIBMY sentiment is not really engaging the issue.

> We do have nuclear, and have had it for decades.

Not enough. Some countries that had it even ran from it recently (like Germany).

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#17
I was up at Camp Muir on Mt. Rainier for the first time in 29 years last weekend. It's located at 10,000 feet and is surrounded by glaciers. The temperature was around 60F in the sun. We're getting temps in May/June that were rarely seen in August in previous decades.

The impressive thing is how quickly the glaciers are receding. The Nisqually glacier, which used to be down near 4000 feet in the 1970s is about a mile shorter. The ablation boundaries on many of the glaciers appear to be high up the mountain (like around 12,000 feet), which means they are going to shrink quite a bit more.

I didn't expect this but there's a possibility that many of the Mt. Rainier glaciers will be gone in the next 30 years. This is a massive change to ecosystems from sea level up to the highest peaks.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#18
post #7

Maybe I don't understand the ramifications of this, but it kind of sounds like we missed the offramp where we just stop burning carbon. Shouldn't we just be moving to something drastic like a massive sun shade project ASAP?

Exactly! But instead of one massive sunshade we would be better off using many small ones, which would allow us to control the local weather. Two possible technologies that seem promising to me are large nitrogen filled balloons with solar elements and several kilometer high solar updraft towers.

The updraft tower depending on configuration can transport large amount of dust upwards helping to create clouds, or condensate the moisture in the air (which is particularly effective in arid regions near the sea).

The balloon-solar plants would also help to reduce the temperature.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#19
This phenomenon is curious, in a morbid sort of way. There is literally no way to stop it; we are, as Noam Chomsky fears, a lethal mutation. We developed the ability to create industrial and economic activity on such a scale, and with such sophistication, that we've overcome the planet's ability to cope, but we have no mechanism in place that seems remotely capable of remedying that situation without a global catastrophe of unimaginable scale.

There are no brakes. There's nothing you can say to any leader, politician, or pleb that can shock them into action. CO2 at 400+ ppm? Shrug. Global temperature rise nearing the acceptable limit for 100 years from now happening in much less than half that time? Shrug. Permafrost melting 70 years ahead of schedule? Yawn.

Not only is there no system in place that can fix this now, no system can arise that would have any hope of slowing it, or even slowing its acceleration. Get used to it. This isn't a movie. There are no heroes. You're all dead. And you have no idea.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#20

Please don't take this as snark -- I'm dead serious. There are climate change deniers who will point to this as support of their position. "See, those climate scientists' predictions are always wrong." The fact is the IPCC is well aware of the political headwinds it faces and its reports are conservative -- they have always underestimated the likely outcome because it is hard enough to get sign-off on even that, plus…

Your prediction has already turned out to be true in the IMO terrifying twitter comments to this very article ("climate science is pseudoscience" etc) https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1141061681495363584
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