POTENTIAL RUNAWAY GLOBAL WARMING IN NEXT DECADE OR TWO

by Frank Thomas

It’s shocking what one learns after taking the time to get informed and to understand the key interrelated factors – some simple and some complex – affecting the intensity and speed of heat trapping gases accumulating in the atmosphere, forcing CO₂ concentration levels higher and higher. (see: “Human CO2 Contribution to Planet Earth – GOOD or BAD,” by F. Thomas, California Free Press, 2 April, 2017; “Conversion to Renewable Energy Is Going Too Slowly To Avoid Catastrophe, Part 4” by F. Thomas & J. Lawrence, San Diego Free Press, Feb. 24, 2015).

For ten years now, I’ve been studying scientific papers, peer-reviews and summaries of same on climate change trends pre-industrial and up to today. It’s indisputable that excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps radiated heat from the sun and, along with methane expanding emissions and deforestation, are warming the planet at an unprecedented Scale and Speed. Carbon dioxide concentrations have been as high as 411 ppm recently (310 ppm in 1961), a 131 ppm rise above prior 800,000 year maximum concentration of 280 ppm. And 77% of this rise has occurred since 1961 – an infinitesimally short planet time of less than 60 years.

In the past millions of years and five extinctions, we do know that much higher buildups and vast declines of CO₂ in the atmosphere were processes that took place gradually over many hundreds to thousands of years when there were no humans. Cataclysmic natural events were often the cause. Many living species went extinct but some had a considerably longer period to ‘adapt.’ Humans are now contributing to a potential, FAST relatively ‘unadaptable’ eventual extinction with the role they have been playing in building up atmospheric CO₂ concentrations at a rate and level not seen in a million years – CO₂ concentrations that are also being amplified by a powerful mix of positive feedbacks.

Since 1950, there’s been an immense increase in industrialization/consumption driven by an exponential 5 billion population growth to 7.5 billion today. The resultant dependence on burning massive quantities of fossil fuels has turned long-buried carbon into carbon dioxide – thus creating drastic changes in greenhouse gases and solar radiation that are forcing the climate away from a natural balance of energy entering and leaving Earth. This in turn has led to steadily rising concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere in a geologically breathtaking record time and scale – amplified by positive feedbacks that are becoming a major force behind the intensification in global warming. Arctic News published in 2016 some ‘Wake-Up’ warning reports on the rise of average earth temperatures since 1900, explaining how much has been due to humans and how much more may well be caused by feedbacks over the next decade. Sources:

Abrupt Warming - How Much And How Fast?

Graph created by San Carana

Will humans be extinct by 2026?

Created by Sam Carana

 

How Much Warming Have Humans Caused?

These reports dramatize significant recent changes and upward trends such as increases in CO₂ concentrations, temperature rise, and permafrost-glacier-sea ice declines based on polynomial trends - rather than linear trends that go far back in time - using NASA land and ocean data from January 2012 and February 2017. The reports reveal that even as CO₂ emissions stabilize and are slowly reduced, there still remain the Huge ongoing effects of feedbacks (^e.g. methane’s global warming potential is more than 130 times that of CO₂ over a period of 10 years, 84-87 times over 20 years, 28-36 times over 100 years). Some extremely disturbing feedbacks include, for example, albedo changes in the Arctic from rapid snow cover loss and sea ice loss; warming of immense Arctic shallow waters and consequent releases of methane stored in seafloor sediments in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf that holds up to 1,700 Gt (gigatons) of methane; rising temperatures leading to much more water vapor in the atmosphere; extra water vapor coming from Arctic albedo changes and seafloor methane releases; also, water vapor feedback amplifies albedo feedback and strong cloud positive feedback; polluting aerosols from burning fossil fuels masking a major part of the human warming from greenhouse gases. But aerosols must be reduced … which means the mask is taken away leading to an added potential earth warming of 2.5º C from this one element alone.

Arctic ocean ice cores and ice sheets have been subject to a continuing rapidly huge shift to meltdown within the minutely short time of thirteen years. And, until 2016, we have never experienced a doubling in the global average temperature for 100 years. BUT, based on NASA data, the global average temperature reached a doubling peak increase of 1.6 C in 2016 from 1900 level, and a peak increase of 2º C on land in the Northern Hemisphere! The Paris Agreement pledged to limit the global average temperature rise to below 2 Cº by 2050 above pre-industrial times. Adding in the 0.3º C rise before 1900 to the global average peak increase of 1.6º C in 2016, it becomes evident the 2º C Paris maximum targeted rise has already nearly been reached! And on a worst – but not comfortably unlikely – scenario the average temperature could go up another 7º C just from feedbacks by 2026! The combined local warming potential of snow cover loss, sea ice loss and abrupt eruption of methane from the Arctic seafloor alone (ignoring Antarctica) is mind-boggling. Even if this scenario is half the 7º C rise above current 1.6º C level of increase and even if it takes twice as long, the risks to living species will still become exponential and the effects existentially devastating within a very short time frame.

One informed American on the science of climate change summed up the serious situation like this:

“What is really apparent to anyone with the ability to think is that the downside of ignoring this threat to our future (over next 50-75 years) is infinitely greater than the inconvenience and expense of removing the primary cause, combustion fueled energy sources. The worst thing that could happen is that we only get a pollution free atmosphere and water not being poisoned by tailing runoff and the toxic chemicals used in fracking – plus an enormous, sustainable net growth in jobs. What we are looking at is a sector of our society that has adopted a stance and through a mulish (stubborn) stance cherish their blissful ignorance and clutch it to their breasts as a child does a beloved stuffed animal. Not sad, just incredibly stupid.”

Frank Thomas The Netherlands June 23, 2017