The Year of Missing Information
Anyone who has been following climate science or has read the terrifying scenarios foretold in Gwynne Dyer’s book Climate Wars knows that we’re standing on the threshold of an ominous age. The Arctic caps are melting and sea levels are rising at a much faster rate than predicted, and now new research has uncovered that a number of planetary feedback mechanisms are amplifying the effects of our greenhouse gas emissions in frightening ways.
Scientists have long known that any melting of the permafrost – the permanently frozen soil under and around the Arctic ocean – will cause high levels of carbon dioxide and methane to be released. There are about one million square kilometers of permafrost, and new studies have shown that it contains much more carbon dioxide and methane than we thought: three trillion tons in fact – more than all the CO2 we’ve pumped into the atmosphere over the last 100 years. If even a tiny fraction of that were to be released, the planet would be sent hurtling into a catastrophic warming cycle.
Other studies show that as the Earth warms, the oceans are actually able to hold less carbon dioxide. It’s the same principle that causes warm beer to go flat. The oceans, which have always absorbed about one third of the CO2 that humans pump into the atmosphere, are increasingly unable able to do so; and our carbonated oceans are slowly going flat with every ton of carbon we emit.
The concern is that we don’t really know where the tipping points are … scientists tell us that two degrees warmer will probably not trigger runaway scenarios, but they admit that’s just a guess … we have no idea how many degrees warmer is enough to get the permafrost bubbling and the oceans fizzing in unstoppable ways. Even two degrees could do it … and once that scenario is triggered, we would suddenly find ourselves on an escalator that would carry us all the way up to five or six or even 12 or 15 degrees hotter, with no way to get off.
How come we’re not furiously debating this? The mainstream media largely ignores the issue of unknown tipping points; it’s relegated instead to the distant fringe of scientific journals. There is a number – somewhere out there – that once hit, will send the Earth into a planetary tailspin that it will be impossible to recover from. Wouldn’t you like to know what that number is? Until we do, nothing on this planet – or in Copenhagen – will make much sense.
Kalle Lasn
24 comments on the article “The Year of Missing Information”
Displaying 1 - 10 of 24
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ken vallario
singularities, rise of the machine, crop circles, climate catastrophes, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering. how will these larger than life issues converge? it is either the most exciting time to be alive or the most horrifying, probably both. great article. i too, wonder what will become of us.
i've noticed that fiction writers have stopped writing about futures that warn of disasters, rather, like Margaret Atwood's latest, the books predict what living will be like in a world crumbling into anarchy.
the american dream was so real for so many people, that we are all having a difficult time believing it cannot be resurrected.
ken vallario
www.kenvallario.com
ken vallario
singularities, rise of the machine, crop circles, climate catastrophes, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering. how will these larger than life issues converge? it is either the most exciting time to be alive or the most horrifying, probably both. great article. i too, wonder what will become of us.
i've noticed that fiction writers have stopped writing about futures that warn of disasters, rather, like Margaret Atwood's latest, the books predict what living will be like in a world crumbling into anarchy.
the american dream was so real for so many people, that we are all having a difficult time believing it cannot be resurrected.
ken vallario
www.kenvallario.com
Hadrian, London, ON
It's an incredibly difficult topic to debate because it is, as Kalle admits, so speculative. I agree that we need to be informed on the issue but even the concrete evidence can be interpreted in a variety of ways that lead to very different conclusions. This is especially problematic for the policy-makers in Copenhagen because even if they believe that 'something' must be done it is almost impossible to say what exactly they should do and to what degree.
Is it worth dramatically reengineering our economies and standards of living if it means we will only be able to limit temperature increase to 12 degrees? 6 degrees? How about 2? Forget about the global 'tipping point', what is the societal tipping point at which climate change becomes scary enough for us to acknowledge and do something about it?
Hadrian, London, ON
It's an incredibly difficult topic to debate because it is, as Kalle admits, so speculative. I agree that we need to be informed on the issue but even the concrete evidence can be interpreted in a variety of ways that lead to very different conclusions. This is especially problematic for the policy-makers in Copenhagen because even if they believe that 'something' must be done it is almost impossible to say what exactly they should do and to what degree.
Is it worth dramatically reengineering our economies and standards of living if it means we will only be able to limit temperature increase to 12 degrees? 6 degrees? How about 2? Forget about the global 'tipping point', what is the societal tipping point at which climate change becomes scary enough for us to acknowledge and do something about it?
AnonymousCanadian
First, McAnonymous you are an idiot. Glad to clarify that for you.
Second, view the publicly available and clearly defendable stats tracking our cumulative consumption of oil and gas the last 100 years. I'm too lazy to provide the link but it's out there.
Point being, they don't call it 'fossil fuel' for nothing. Formed over millions of years and found underground from pole to pole, oil and gas was created during a much hotter and carbon-rich period. Imagine jungles from the arctic circle to antartica. Every land mass teeming with wall to wall vegetation, nevermind the wildlife.
Over millennia atmospheric carbon was stored and buried, covered over my many many ice ages. Locked away, underground. Or, in the ground, frozen.
Now I can't say at what point putting all that carbon back into the atmosphere will result in a noticeable change to indicate the greenhouse we all live in is heating up. Nobody can, really.
But at what point will you stop and recognize the connection between burning these stores of carbon, the environment that created this handy fuel, and the impact of putting it back into the atmosphere on our planet?
Personally I believe it's already too late. The change may not be seen in our lifetime but it's inevitable that pumping that concentrated carbon back into the atmosphere is going to have some significant impacts.
The change probably won't be global warming though. Not immediately. Once the ice caps and glaciers on Greenland melt, the oceans will cool significantly (after flooding huge landmasses). This will probably take 100-500 years. Then the greenhouse effect will kick in once the ocean warms up and starts evaporating, turning our planet into a nice humid steambath! Wish I could be around for that, but we're probably talking 1000 years. Still fast in geological time - very fast, a blink of the proverbial eye if your lifespan was billions of years as our earth's is.
The only thing that cheers me up after thinking about all the species our stupid actions will make extinct, is that the american dream will be a distant memory....
AnonymousCanadian
First, McAnonymous you are an idiot. Glad to clarify that for you.
Second, view the publicly available and clearly defendable stats tracking our cumulative consumption of oil and gas the last 100 years. I'm too lazy to provide the link but it's out there.
Point being, they don't call it 'fossil fuel' for nothing. Formed over millions of years and found underground from pole to pole, oil and gas was created during a much hotter and carbon-rich period. Imagine jungles from the arctic circle to antartica. Every land mass teeming with wall to wall vegetation, nevermind the wildlife.
Over millennia atmospheric carbon was stored and buried, covered over my many many ice ages. Locked away, underground. Or, in the ground, frozen.
Now I can't say at what point putting all that carbon back into the atmosphere will result in a noticeable change to indicate the greenhouse we all live in is heating up. Nobody can, really.
But at what point will you stop and recognize the connection between burning these stores of carbon, the environment that created this handy fuel, and the impact of putting it back into the atmosphere on our planet?
Personally I believe it's already too late. The change may not be seen in our lifetime but it's inevitable that pumping that concentrated carbon back into the atmosphere is going to have some significant impacts.
The change probably won't be global warming though. Not immediately. Once the ice caps and glaciers on Greenland melt, the oceans will cool significantly (after flooding huge landmasses). This will probably take 100-500 years. Then the greenhouse effect will kick in once the ocean warms up and starts evaporating, turning our planet into a nice humid steambath! Wish I could be around for that, but we're probably talking 1000 years. Still fast in geological time - very fast, a blink of the proverbial eye if your lifespan was billions of years as our earth's is.
The only thing that cheers me up after thinking about all the species our stupid actions will make extinct, is that the american dream will be a distant memory....
Rembrant
Wow, it seems like Al Gore stopped by and took a giant ideological dump all over this page. The comments on this page are only confirming the problem with global warming...if you can even call it that. Only idiots sit on their couches and complain that global warming is a myth. Only morons spend their time shouting about how inaccurate all of these new reports really are. But there are also many, many idiots out there that do the complete opposite. They shout about global warming, an eventual catastrophe, rising sea levels, melting permafrost, baby seals, the land before time, and all that jazz. But as this article shows, their are no answers, only questions. Like what will probably happen in Copenhagen, global warming has become a giant pissing match between those who agree and those who don't. Each side has it's scientists, each has it's studies, yet none of the them have common sense. The world has been around for millions of years...billions maybe who knows. It has gone through ice ages, and then intense warming periods, and then ice ages again. Its about equilibrium. Sure, if we all lived in huts and ate berries, the world might be a paradise. But by shouting about how damaging the human race has become is to essentially crap on every accomplishment we have ever made as a society....wow i'm rambling. We have done so many amazing things with technology as a human race, lets not focus on the one negative aspect of that.
Rembrant
Wow, it seems like Al Gore stopped by and took a giant ideological dump all over this page. The comments on this page are only confirming the problem with global warming...if you can even call it that. Only idiots sit on their couches and complain that global warming is a myth. Only morons spend their time shouting about how inaccurate all of these new reports really are. But there are also many, many idiots out there that do the complete opposite. They shout about global warming, an eventual catastrophe, rising sea levels, melting permafrost, baby seals, the land before time, and all that jazz. But as this article shows, their are no answers, only questions. Like what will probably happen in Copenhagen, global warming has become a giant pissing match between those who agree and those who don't. Each side has it's scientists, each has it's studies, yet none of the them have common sense. The world has been around for millions of years...billions maybe who knows. It has gone through ice ages, and then intense warming periods, and then ice ages again. Its about equilibrium. Sure, if we all lived in huts and ate berries, the world might be a paradise. But by shouting about how damaging the human race has become is to essentially crap on every accomplishment we have ever made as a society....wow i'm rambling. We have done so many amazing things with technology as a human race, lets not focus on the one negative aspect of that.
AnonymousCanadian
Yes, I agree with you that our species has done some marvellous things and solved some really puzzling questions. Maybe it's all just speculation and the fear mongering about climate change is yet another conspiracy theory that some shadowy world government is banking on to shift power to their direction.
I saw a cartoon the other day of some world leader or politician standing behind a podium, saying something to the effect of "What if all the climate change theories are wrong - then all this effort we put into cleaning up the air and water will be for nothing!!"
So I'm more of the mind that it shouldn't really matter about the theories - we should be reducing dependence on fossil fuels because it's the right thing to do. Fact is that other species are indeed going extinct. Fact is that in many countries its difficult to obtain clean drinking water. Fact is that many people die from pollution-related diseases and cancers or not even surviving past childhood. Those problems won't necessarily be solved by cap & trade. In fact those problems are probably not even being discussed in Copenhagen. So the question is, why are the world leaders going to all this effort? No simple answers but I believe money might have something to do with it.
AnonymousCanadian
Yes, I agree with you that our species has done some marvellous things and solved some really puzzling questions. Maybe it's all just speculation and the fear mongering about climate change is yet another conspiracy theory that some shadowy world government is banking on to shift power to their direction.
I saw a cartoon the other day of some world leader or politician standing behind a podium, saying something to the effect of "What if all the climate change theories are wrong - then all this effort we put into cleaning up the air and water will be for nothing!!"
So I'm more of the mind that it shouldn't really matter about the theories - we should be reducing dependence on fossil fuels because it's the right thing to do. Fact is that other species are indeed going extinct. Fact is that in many countries its difficult to obtain clean drinking water. Fact is that many people die from pollution-related diseases and cancers or not even surviving past childhood. Those problems won't necessarily be solved by cap & trade. In fact those problems are probably not even being discussed in Copenhagen. So the question is, why are the world leaders going to all this effort? No simple answers but I believe money might have something to do with it.
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