When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job

[G_j]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a36228/ballad-of-the-sad-climatologists-0815/

Among many climate scientists, gloom has set in. Things are worse than we think, but they can't really talk about it.


In the photo: Glaciologist Jason Box, left, at work on the Petermann Glacier on Greenland's northwest coast, which has lost mass at an accelerated pace in recent years. Box and his family left Ohio State for Europe a couple years ago, and he is relieved to have escaped America's culture of climate-change denial (Photo: Nick Cobbing).

--

The incident was small, but Jason Box doesn't want to talk about it. He's been skittish about the media since it happened. This was last summer, as he was reading the cheery blog posts transmitted by the chief scientist on the Swedish icebreaker Oden, which was exploring the Arctic for an international expedition led by Stockholm University. "Our first observations of elevated methane levels, about ten times higher than in background seawater, were documented . . . we discovered over 100 new methane seep sites.... The weather Gods are still on our side as we steam through a now ice-free Laptev Sea...."

As a leading climatologist who spent many years studying the Arctic at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at Ohio State, Box knew that this breezy scientific detachment described one of the nightmare long-shot climate scenarios: a feedback loop where warming seas release methane that causes warming that releases more methane that causes more warming, on and on until the planet is incompatible with human life. And he knew there were similar methane releases occurring in the area. On impulse, he sent out a tweet.

"If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we're f'd."

The tweet immediately went viral, inspiring a series of headlines:

CLIMATOLOGIST SAYS ARCTIC CARBON RELEASE COULD MEAN "WE'RE FUCKED."

CLIMATE SCIENTIST DROPS THE F-BOMB AFTER STARTLING ARCTIC DISCOVERY.

CLIMATOLOGIST: METHANE PLUMES FROM THE ARCTIC MEAN WE'RE SCREWED.

Box has been outspoken for years. He's done science projects with Greenpeace, and he participated in the 2011 mass protest at the White House organized by 350.org. In 2013, he made headlines when a magazine reported his conclusion that a seventy-foot rise in sea levels over the next few centuries was probably already "baked into the system." Now, with one word, Box had ventured into two particularly dangerous areas. First, the dirty secret of climate science and government climate policies is that they're all based on probabilities, which means that the effects of standard CO2 targets like an 80 percent reduction by 2050 are based on the middle of the probability curve. Box had ventured to the darker possibilities on the curve's tail, where few scientists and zero politicians are willing to go.

...more...

[hobbit709]

1. Correct terminology for the situation.

[Electric Monk]

2. I've cross-posted to the Environment & Energy Group. Also, K&R :)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112788650

[Uncle Joe]

3. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, G_j.

[Anansi1171]

4. Huge bump, boy were fucked!

[pampango]

5. If my job (99%) or my corporate profits (1%) are threatened if we do something,

I propose that we do nothing. Hey, I will probably be dead from old age before climate change is catastrophic. Who cares what happens to my children and grandchildren.

People who care only about themselves and say so are at least honest. People who pretend to be concerned with future generations when it comes to the national debt but not climate change are hypocrites and dangerous.

[JDPriestly]

12. So true. Thanks.

[Duppers]

29. bingo!

Well said.

[daleanime]

6. kick, kick, kick....

[Octafish]

7. That is a most important article.

Explains all the cops.

Koch Brothers have played an $80 million role in the climate denial picture.

Thanks for the heads-up, G_j.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

8. Does anyone know what the ratio of temperature to melting ice is? Hopefully I asked that right.

For instance, how much faster does ice melt per degree of increased temperature?

[world wide wally]

9. Why do people insist that climate science is a matter of opinion?

Does that mean math and physics are too?

[blm]

10. Listened on NPR earlier today.

The sadness is as deep as it gets.

[JDPriestly]

11. The environmental scientists need to think beyond science and start working with

artists, film-makers, storytellers, novelists, people whose gifts are artistic, who use their imaginations, to tell the public the story of climate change.

All these numbers, the stuff about methane gas, etc. is not real to people because it is presented in terms of the technical.

It has to be presented in terms of metaphor and myth and image and sound and methods that touch our emotions. The pictures of white snow and a few penguins are touching, but they don't convey the horror of what the release of that methane gas or the melting of the iceburgs really means.

[ffr]

22. HOME - a bit long, but it's in HD and lays out where we are

If it doesn't automatically start at 22:29m, fast forward to it. Sit back a relax.

CultureChange.org

[JDPriestly]

28. I'm bookmarking this to watch later. Thanks.

[Cheese Sandwich]

26. This is a seriously important point

You said it well as usual JDPriestly.

We need to reach people's hearts.

Too bad so many of best storytellers and creative types get pulled into marketing, advertising and stuff like that because they need the money.

[SusanCalvin]

13. I'm virtually certain things are going to get really bad in my lifetime,

and I'm 63.

I base this opinion on years of observing that scientific opinion keeps getting worse and worse and worse.

I've gotten to the point where, when new information comes out, I automatically increase the announced severity in my head, and I think I'm right.

[GliderGuider]

33. I'm 64, and I've known for a decade that I would see TSHTF before I die.

Talk about good timing! I get to watch it all fall apart, say "I told you so!" and then leave!

[SusanCalvin]

38. Yeah, I'm just scared of being old and frail in the middle of it. nt

[GliderGuider]

39. My wife and I have an exit door planned for that contingency.

[SusanCalvin]

40. As should I. nt

[ffr]

14. Vast human populations will run out of fresh water before 2030 anyway

So to say we're fucked just on the methane as a feedback loop problem is but one biggie staring humans in the face in the next 15 years. If human populations don't implode down to 3 billion within 15 years after that, I'd be surprised. More on that from NASA. Or you can just Google fresh water depletion.

For those who aren't counting, our current human population is 7.4 billion and is expected to be somewhere in the 8.3 to 9.5 billion range by 2030, right about the time fresh water that we depend upon hits critical mass.

[Ed Suspicious]

16. I always thought that amount of water in the world was relatively constant. Like the same water

that was here a million years ago is here today. Is that incorrect? Could technology such as desalination technology provide a solution to that problem?

[ffr]

20. Most land based life depends upon "fresh" water

15 years is about what is left of it, on the surface and underground. Look it up for yourself. Some observations say 30 years, but with increased demand from us, along with compounding environmental disasters looming: pollution and compromised fresh water resources, I'm going to go with 15.

Yes, desalinization is one possible workaround for some populations next to seas that can be converted. It's not a solution for 8.3 - 9.5 billion people nor is it a solution for filling polluted freshwater lakes and waterways that can no longer sustain other life forms and agriculture that WE depend upon and take largely for granted currently.

[roamer65]

19. The bankers and elites are designing a "fix" to the population problem.

It's called World War 3.

[hifiguy]

23. Nope. Not that.

Something much cheaper and more devious that leaves all the real estate untouched and nice big populations to enslave: Greece on a worldwide scale. Then the social safety net will be finally and completely destroyed, and you get a controlled die off of as many as they care to let die.

Years ago Henry Kissinger (war criminal and "defender of human rights" according to Hillary Clinton) was talking about the need to do something about the planet's "surplus eaters." This has been in the works for several decades.

[Kennah]

24. You accidentally included the sarcasm tag

[SusanCalvin]

30. Really. nt

[Spitfire of ATJ]

15. Once the boiling point of water is hit it's game over.

[kairos12]

17. He worries all the penguins with their heads

buried in the shrinking ice.

[Flaxbee]

18. I love my friends and family, but it may be time for humans to exit stage left...

we haven't done a very good job taking care of our only home, and we're not only ruining it for ourselves, but for billions of other sentient beings.

[roamer65]

21. This is the cold harsh truth.

How does all this CO2 and other greenhouse gases end up in the atmosphere? It ends up there by the ever increasing human population. I think it's time we start to implement mandatory population control procedures, or the planet will do the job for us, but in a much more drastic manner.

[riderinthestorm]

25. +10 million!!!! Nt

[Mnemosyne]

27. K&R! nt

[tex-wyo-dem]

31. Climate change is...

By a mile, without question, hands down the MOST IMPORTANT issue! Nothing else even comes close.

Yet it continues to be largely ignored by the MSM and politicians.

Absolutely insane...

[G_j]

32. agreed. Nt

[GliderGuider]

34. Except that climate change is only one (huge) part of an even larger set of problems

In order to wrap your mind around the larger issue you have to be a complex systems nerd who also understands geography, paleoclimatology, marine biology, agriculture, population dynamics, anthropology, archaeology, paleontology, sociology, economics, politics, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, cybernetics, non-equilibrium thermodynamics... They all play a role.

In the end the answer is that we've always been fucked, but we just didn't know it.

[J_J_]

35. clicked on this thinking you were talking about Rove and Cheney

n/t

[raouldukelives]

36. Thought it was going to be about daytraders.

Ah well, two sides of the same coin. One increases our woes, the others document it.

[Blue_Tires]

37. kick for truth