Water, water everywhere

[unixronin]

Pointed out by Peter Murray and dmmaus, respectively:

Tom Engelhardt of TomDispatch.com published this article which, among other things, covers Mike Davis's discussion of climatic tipping points, which in turn comments on such events as Hurricane Catarina -- the first South Atlantic tropical hurricane in meteorological recorded history -- and the accelerating decline in Arctic sea ice that has already made the long-fabled Northwest Passage all but a reality.  He raises the disturbing possibility that we might be on course for a runaway warming event far worse than postulated under the current mainstream position:

Where other researchers model the late 21st-century climate that our children will live with upon the precedents of the Altithermal (the hottest phase of the current Holocene period, 8000 years ago) or the Eemian (the previous, even warmer interglacial episode, 120,000 years ago), growing numbers of geophysicists toy with the possibilities of runaway warming returning the earth to the torrid chaos of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM: 55 million years ago) when the extreme and rapid heating of the oceans led to massive extinctions.

...

[...] the August 23rd issue of EOS, the newsletter of the American Geophysical Union ... [included] an article entitled "Arctic System on Trajectory to New, Seasonally Ice-Free State," co-authored by 21 scientists from almost as many universities and research institutes ... [who made] a new observation -- that this process is probably irreversible.  "Surprisingly, it is difficult to identify a single feedback mechanism within the Arctic that has the potency or speed to alter the system's present course."

An ice-free Arctic Ocean has not existed for at least one million years and the authors warn that the Earth is inexorably headed toward a "super-interglacial" state "outside the envelope of glacial-interglacial fluctuations that prevailed during recent Earth history."  They emphasize that within a century global warming will probably exceed the Eemian temperature maximum and thus obviate all the models that have made this their essential scenario.  They also suggest that the total or partial collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet is a real possibility -- an event that would definitely throw a Younger Dryas wrench into the Gulf Stream.

For some altogether colder water, NASA's Cassino mission has discovered strong evidence of liquid water on Saturn's moon Enceladus:

High-resolution Cassini images show icy jets and towering plumes ejecting large quantities of particles at high speed.  Scientists examined several models to explain the process.  They ruled out the idea that the particles are produced by or blown off the moon's surface by vapor created when warm water ice converts to a gas.  Instead, scientists have found evidence for a much more exciting possibility -- the jets might be erupting from near-surface pockets of liquid water above 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), like cold versions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone.

The new finding offers an explanation for large amounts of free oxygen detected by Cassini in the vicinity of Saturn.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Natural processes don't work like that. They buffer themselves. When a stream gets too much crap in it, it marshes in and forms a natural filter. When air gets hot, it expands, which tends to cool it. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, even Mr. Newton knew that hundreds of years ago.

Now, the natural cycle may be a lot *bigger* than stodgy old city planners are willing to deal with (see also, New Orleans).... but that doesn't mean the planet is going to be a bubbling stewpot in the forseeable future. Maybe temperate like the era of dinosaurs, yes.

The implication here is also that we puny humans could do anything big enough to actually influence that cycle. Do the math. Ice takes 30 cal/g to melt. Integrate over the Greenland ice sheet... and tell me how many gigatons worth of kaboom that represents.

Six bits says the end of the article says "needs more study, gimme more money"....

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The Greenland ice sheet is already falling into the sea. It doesn't have to all melt. It just needs to get into the ocean, and the latent heat of the ocean will melt it. All it needs to set that in motion is enough meltwater under the ice to lubricate the ice flow and increase the rate at which it flows to the ocean -- and that's already happened and is continuing to accelerate. The Greenland ice sheet is losing 220 cubic kilometers of water a year at the present rate. We don't have to do the work of melting it; once it's in the ocean and the icecap is gone, the sea and the sun will do that.

Yeah, natural processes have buffers. But a buffer can only take so much before it saturates, and once it saturates, you may get the unpleasant surprise that the buffer was hiding the extent of the damage you were doing from you.

The implication here is also that we puny humans could do anything big enough to actually influence that cycle.

This is the same fallacy, or mental block if you prefer, that has led to the crash of most of the major fisheries in the world -- cod on Newfoundland's Grand Banks, anchovy off the coast of Peru, halibut off Alaska. Yes, that's right, the halibut you get off the pier at the Ballard locks or in Pike Place Market. They're harvesting juvenile fish now, because there's nothing bigger left. But less than a hundred years ago -- and there were a lot less of us then -- we were so certain that the bounty of the sea was infinite, that nothing mortal man could ever do could ever deplete it.

We can't influence nature? The Three Gorges Dam isn't even fully filled yet, and the hyper-productive, high-fertility area offshore from the mouth of the Yangtse has shrunk from 114,000 square miles to 16,000 - and much of the phytoplankton even in that area has been replaced by dinoflagellates. You know, red tides?
We can't influence nature? Village farmers in India with cheap electric pumps are pumping fossil water out of the ground three times faster than India's annual rainfall replenishes it. In Gujarat province, the water table is 150 meters down now, and dropping six meters a year. The same thing is happening in China.
We can't influence nature? Look at the size of the dead zone off the mouth of the Mississippi. It extends several hundred miles out into the Gulf. Look at all the fertile land we destroyed in the Dust Bowl. Look at the changes in the Nile Valley as a result of the Aswan High Dam -- and as a result of Uganda stealing "just a little bit" of water from Lake Victoria for hydroelectric projects.


Oh, HELL YES we "puny" humans CAN influence nature, and we do. Just ask Pele next time you talk to her. Honestly, it continues to gobsmack me that you, of all people, buy into the Big Oil kool-aid on this one. Park your techno side in front of a good book for a while, and think about this: what does your shaman side tell you about the shape the world is in? Are we being good custodians of this world? Or are we screwing the pooch with all our technological might in the holy name of making a fast buck?

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

sheee-it, we done fuckered up the world years ago, now it's comin to bite us all in the arse!

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

You, sir, have crossed a line. Nobody tells me how I ought to think, much less how my gods are supposed to think. That, sir, is tantamount to an act of violence, and is the very reason we have a First Amendment in this country. And, for that matter, a Second Amendment.

Godwin's Mother's Law being invoked, this conversation is hereby terminated.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Bad ass. It's too cold anyway.

-Ogre