Assessment of humanity's future in the context of CO2 levels now being PERMANENTLY above 400 pats per million.

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Source: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/

In mid-November of 2015 Earth exceeded a critical climate threshold. CO2 levels passed the 400 parts per million (ppm) threshold for the final time in countless millennia to come. Never again, after this month, for the next 10,000 years and more, will these levels ever fall below 400ppm. The consequences of this will be unimaginably dire.

Robertscribbler, a blog favored by many climate scientists, notes that:

In total, Greenland holds enough ice to raise seas by 23 feet. And, in the geological past, just 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius worth of temperature increase above Holocene averages was enough to melt much or all of it. Currently, human warming by Greenhouse gasses has pushed global average surface temperatures into a range about 1 degree Celsius hotter than the 1880s. It's a temperature running into ranges that are now comparable with the Eemian -- the interglacial period that occurred between 115,000 to 130,000 years ago. A period when oceans were about 13 to 20 feet higher than they are today. But perhaps even more concerning is the fact that global greenhouse gas concentrations in the range of 400 ppm CO2 and 485 ppm CO2e are enough now to warm the Earth by 2 to 4 degrees Celsius long-term. It's a heat forcing that would likely spell the end for Greenland's ice if it remained in place for any significant period. A heat forcing more comparable with Pliocene and Miocene ranges when the world's glaciers were even more greatly reduced and seas were 30 to 130+ feet higher than they are presently. (1)

We ALREADY have sufficient future warming "locked in" as a consequence of past and present emissions to ensure a 4 to 7 degree Fahrenheit (F) temperature rise in the coming decades! These estimates are based upon unrealistically conservative assumptions, originating with the politically influenced UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For example, IPCC forecasts willfully omit the effects of atmospheric methane. The reason given for this, is that methane release is not well understood, so its corresponding contribution to overall warming are not yet quantifiable.

The above graph is courtesy of Sam Carana at Arctic News.

Using NASA supplied data, the above graph depicts the remorseless rise of methane levels in our atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse (heat trapping) gas, up to 100 times more powerful than CO2 over a period of months to several years. Frozen methane is now sublimating (transitioning from ice directly to gas) at an accelerating rate from shallow areas of the Arctic ocean--particularly the Lapatev Sea. This sublimation process is driven by rapidly warming air, and especially, sea temperatures.

Source: http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2015/11/ocean-heat.html

What the actual data actually show is terrifying. Consider the corresponding rise in methane levels in the atmosphere:

The above graph is courtesy of Sam Carana at Arctic News.

Additionally carbon trapped in Arctic permafrost is also rapidly melting. This carbon is released as both CO2 and methane. A recent study by Researchers at Cambridge University and the University of Colorado states that:

As carbon dioxide and methane are released from melting Arctic permafrost in coming decades, University of Cambridge and University of Colorado say that the resulting economic damage from increased greenhouse gas emissions could add up to at least $43 trillion by the end of the next (22nd) century--on top of previous estimates. These scientists modeled that economic impact in a recent letter in the journal Nature Climate Change. (2)

Note that this permafrost release is on top of, additive to, the methane releases originating in the Arctic seabed! All of this is excluded from the IPCC forecasts! Actual temperature rises in the next few decades, if not sooner, will exceed 10 degrees F, and could approach 20 degrees F!

Consequentially, "weather weirding" is now occurring. Robertscribbler observes:

So why are the poles still tending to remain very warm even as the Equator warms? The first answer is that high greenhouse gas concentrations from human fossil fuel emissions tend to preferentially warm these regions. This is due to the fact that greenhouse gasses have their greatest warming impact during times of darkness or when the sun is at a low angle. Compounding this impact for the Arctic is the fact that a high overburden of both CO2 and methane hangs over the region -- possibly due to heightening emissions from thawing permafrost, increasing forest fires, and increasing ocean-to-atmosphere carbon fluxes. A second answer is that the overall atmospheric impacts of the current Monster El Nino may not have come into full swing yet. We do still have a very warm pool of water in the Northeastern Pacific and this warm pool has tended to somewhat resist the polar wind field intensifying effects of a strong El Nino. This warm pool has also given the current El Nino a springboard upon which to further intensify. So the push and pull between these two hot water zones may not be over yet. All in all, this pattern points to more and more weather weirding on tap for this winter. Jet Streams and storm tracks may run further to the north as a result -- especially in the areas of the Pacific Northwest and in Northern Europe. Troughs may also tend to dig a bit deeper along the Central and Eastern US and on out into the North Atlantic. This is not exactly the forecast we would expect with such a strongly positive Arctic Oscillation. But the related cool air pool has retreated so far north as to, at least for now, not fully result in a strong El Nino + strong Arctic Oscillation related weather pattern. Instead, for now, what we are seeing is a weird kind of hybrid weather pattern that appears to be incorporating the influences of a Monster El Nino, of ongoing polar amplification, of the cool pool in the North Atlantic, of the abnormally warm Barents Sea, and of the Hot Blob still firmly entrenched in the Northeastern Pacific. (3)

Concurrent with this, the rise in ocean levels is now unstoppable. A U.C. Irvine led study has found that Jacobshavn Glacier in Greenland is now melting at an accelerating rate as it is being warmed from above by warm air, and below, by warm waters. This ONE glacier ALONE has the mass needed to raise global seal level by about 18 inches!(4) The same process has made the collapse and melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet unstoppable. (5) Sea levels will, consequentially, rise at an ever accelerating rate. A one foot sea level rise will render all of South Florida--including Miami--uninhabitable. This because the entire water table will become brackish to salty as ocean waters flood the low lying peninsula. This event is not very far off.

The big picture is one of accelerating climatic instability, rapidly rising seas, intensified droughts and flooding, agricultural and industrial collapse, and shrinking habitable environments for humans as heat and humidity exceed human tolerance. (6) Clearly this is a recipe for absolute disaster! Sustained and continuing methane releases will in time, render the Earth uninhabitable for humans!

Avoiding this fate entirely is no longer possible. However, the longer we wait to act decisively, the more it becomes locked in. We MUST act DECISIVELY NOW, or prepare for utter doom! In the US, the only viable national political option WITHIN the ever more oligarchic political system is Bernie Sanders. Absent Sanders, there are no options whatsoever. Any Republican, or neoliberal Democrat--Hillary Clinton--will follow policies which lead directly to doom. The Republicans by simply ignoring climate change entirely until it is far too late. Clinton will accomplish the same end by trying to deal with climate change without hurting the financial interests of the Wall Street billionaires who effectively own her, and the entire controlling "New Democrat" wing of the Democratic Party.

Unfortunately, Nature simply does not bargain. Human industrial civilization, powered primarily by fossil fuels is now completely discordant with reality. We can expect the collapse of civilization in the coming decades as a direct consequence, unless we change radically NOW. Given the extreme direness of our situation, if political means are exhausted, then survival means the speedy and remorseless overthrow of the existing order, and its instant replacement by an environmentally rational one. This present year, 2015 has been described as being, climatologically speaking: ""unlike any other year in human history." (7)

Your future, your children's future, the very existence of ANY human future, of complex life itself, is now mortally imperiled! ACT! ACT DECISIVELY!

Notes:

1) http://robertscribbler.com/2015/11/13/11038/

2) http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/16867/20150921/permafrost-melt-43-trillion-cost-gas-release-2200.htm

3) http://robertscribbler.com/2015/11/10/more-weather-weirding-godzilla-el-nino-vs-a-mean-polar-amplification/

(4) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/11/12/scientists-say-greenland-just-opened-up-a-major-new-floodgate-of-ice-into-the-ocean/

(5) http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/west_antarctic_ice_cascades_toward_crisis_20151113

(6) http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/27/world/persian-gulf-heat-climate-change/index.html

7) http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/11/10/huge_el_nino_pushes_climate_toward_records.html

(Article changed on November 13, 2015 at 17:19)

(Article changed on November 13, 2015 at 21:34)

(Article changed on November 14, 2015 at 09:51)

(Article changed on November 15, 2015 at 10:33)

Authors Website: https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/3979729587610286911

Authors Bio:

Michael P Byron is the author of The Path Through Infinity's Rainbow: Your Guide to Personal Survival and Spiritual Transformation in a World Gone Mad. This book is a manual for taking effective action to deal with the crises of our age including global climate change, peak oil, and political failure to deal with these and other problems.

His previous book is Infinity's Rainbow: The Politics of Energy, Climate and Globalization.

Byron-has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine.--He teaches all aspects of Political Science and Political Economy in local colleges in the San Diego area.- He was the Democratic Party's candidate for United States Congress in California's 49th Congressional District in 2004. In 2002,-he- ran as a write-in candidate upon discovering that the Republican incumbent, Darrell Issa, had no major-party challenger.

Mike lives in Oceanside, CA with his wife, Ramona Byron. Both are Navy veterans.