31 thoughts on “The North Atlantic meltdown is getting even worse”
gs
Yes, global climate change is the single most pressing issue the human species faces. Disruptions in the availability of food and water are all you need for all-out war.
Blowing shit up is absolutely the stupidest possible activity under "normal" circumstances and blowing shit up when we should be doing everything we can to stave off the worst consequences of ever-increasing CO2 is even stupider. There is a carbon footprint for every piece of concrete on the planet and when you destroy it you render the utility pointless.
Americans sit on the couch, safe and secure, and jump up at half time and shout "freedom or death" for Ukraine and then they go get another beer and get back to the game. Billions and billions of dollars worth of weapons are still being shipped to Ukraine for yet another proxy war against the Soviet Union - I mean, Russia.
Americans sit on the couch, safe and secure, and jump up at half time and shout "kill them raghead Gazans" and then they go get another beer and get back to the game. Billions and billions of dollars worth of weapons are still being shipped to Israel so that they can exterminate every Gazan unable to flee under fire to another country.
Anyhoo, thanks for the global warming post, Kevin. Don't see many of those here.
Austin
“Americans sit on the couch, safe and secure…” oookay. I mean sure Americans are comfortably fat, intellectually lazy and politically apathetic. But it’s not like other countries are powerless to form international agreements to cut carbon without the US. For example, the EU is a bloc of like 400+ million people, big enough to compel economic changes on stuff it cares about from smaller trading partners all over the world. Why don’t they take the lead on forming effective climate change agreements with China and India and whomever else?
“Don't see many of those here.” Huh? Kevin talks about climate change all the time. Maybe not literally every day, but he constantly returns to something climate changey every few weeks. I know it’s the most important issue to humanity, but there is lots of other stuff going on too. (I’m guessing climate change isn’t as much of a concern to people under attack in various parts of the world who don’t know if they’re going to live to see tomorrow. It’s ok to talk about those problems too.)
Anandakos
Um, er, ah, I think the "Don't see much of that here." comment was snark.
So far as "the most important issue to humanity", Nah. While billions of us may perish of flood and famine, H. Sapiens isn't going extinct any time soon. We'll retreat underground if we have to. It's only for a few hundred years before the carbon is re-captured in living things and we start worrying about "the Little Ice Age".
ConradsGhost
No. It takes thousands of years, tens of thousands, for carbon to be removed from the atmosphere, mostly through reactions with calcareous rock (e.g., the Himalayas - see D. Archer, "The Long Thaw). Also, once all or most Earth's biotic and abiotic systems have collapsed (already in process, see 2019 IPBES policy maker's report; 2023 Richardson, et al, ”Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries"; 2023 Abrams et al, “Committed Global Warming Risks Triggering Multiple Climate Tipping Points”) a return to anything like Holocene Earth system conditions will again take thousands to tens of thousands of years.
Once the ice goes, and it’s going fast, that’s endgame. The speed and magnitude of AGW change has been obvious in the research for twenty years, but mainstream consensus (necessarily political) is just now beginning to catch up. All the major petro-states and corporations have openly reneged on any real or feigned commitment to fossil fuel production. India is not going to stop industrializing and growing its patterns of consumption. The global rich are not going to stop growing their obscene patterns of consumption. The US and Canada will not meaningfully reduce their exponentially growing patterns of consumption. Russia is out of control, and will dig every last ounce of coal and pump every drop of oil. The Arctic is the next big petro target, and will be exploited to the fullest. Africa’s population is exploding, projected to double by 2050 or sooner.
That’s reality.
ScentOfViolets
It takes thousands of years, tens of thousands, for carbon to be removed from the atmosphere, mostly through reactions with calcareous rock (e.g., the Himalayas - see D. Archer, "The Long Thaw).
The process can be speeded up considerably, in fact that's precisely the CO2 remediation strategy known as geoweathering. I'm a big fan, incidently and why I responded to your post.
Art Eclectic
Based on history, Africa will have another period of starvation and genocide due to inability to control population.
No political controlling entity in the first world is willing to risk the economic backlash of telling people to change their lifestyles. The first world, high consumption lifestyle is the sacred goal all around the world. Good luck telling all the third world people that a wealthy, high consumption lifestyle is out of their reach. They already risk life, limb and families trying to attain it by migrating.
In the communist run countries they might have a chance, but even there you'll get a rebellion and revolution if you try enforcing more modest living standards - which will fail early because the internet and self publishing will reveal just how many people are still living the rich life and the mobs will come for them. This is why the wealthy have been buying private islands and defensible land, they know it's coming. American booted Jimmy Carter for telling us to put on a sweater and turn down the heat, Biden will be the last elected leader to champion energy efficiency and lifestyle change unless a large swath of the country is really hurting and can clearly blame a changing climate for their misfortune instead of immigration.
Greg_in_FL
Looking forward to hurricane season here in Central FL. Frankly it looks like we may start with storms before June 1 this year. And just to make matters more interesting, our property insurer (Farmers) is leaving the state. Thanks, Gov. Ron, for keeping your priorities straight, like punishing Florida's biggest private sector employer and ignoring the insurance crisis while you were busy doing your vanity run for President. How'd that work out again?
golack
It's BIDEN"s fault!!!!
Citizen99
Speaking of hurricane season, there are two things to know.
1. The fuel for super-powerful hurricanes is warm ocean waters. But it's el Niño that heats up the ocean, and el Niño also increases wind shear that tends to break up storms before they get really big.
2. In la Niña conditions, ocean waters are cooler, but wind shear in the N Atlantic is also lower, which favors the development of really powerful storms.
So the pattern that portends a mind-blowing hurricane year is if we have a really strong el Niño through the fall and winter, heating up the water, and then we shift to a la Niña pattern with lower wind shear just in time for hurricane season to begin. The water will remain hot for a long time, but wind shear will be reduced. Bam! Super Bad Hurricane Season in the N Atlantic.
Guess what we have right now. Exactly that.
So now let's all hold hands and use our psychic powers to steer that upcoming Category 6 superstorm straight toward Mar-a-Lago. I think we can do it!
golack
Yes. But it snowed today coating all the spring flowers, so global warming must not be real.
/s
Boronx
Tomorrow it'll be hot and global warming will be real. The day after? Who knows!
somebody123
yup, and you know what the worst possible thing for it is? a southern California suburban lifestyle
Five Parrots in a Shoe
Wrong. The average Californian causes 7.7 tons of CO2 emissions per year. That's 4th *lowest* among US states. The worst state is Wyoming, where the average citizen emits almost 100 tons per year.
This took me less than two minutes on Google. Get off your butt and educate yourself.
ConradsGhost
He's only here to "woke" Kevin. Rather retarded, I think.
cmayo
Where are you sourcing these numbers from? Are you taking the total statewide emissions and dividing it by the number of people in the state? If so, that's rather ridiculous, as agriculture-related emissions are better allocated to the country as a whole rather than the state they're produced in.
Five Parrots in a Shoe
Which means California's per-capita emissions are even lower than the numbers suggest.
We're #1 in agricultural production, you know.
Art Eclectic
We are well past the point of no return, now it's really about resilience and survival. First world countries will close their doors completely in the next 10 years to those fleeing failing economies, even if Biden squeaks out another win he will be followed by some version of Trump and all-out war against all immigration.
First world folks will hold onto their lifestyles at all costs, they will barricade themselves in and keep on consuming and generating mountains of waste. China will keep making more good for consumption and spewing massive amounts of waste and pollution in the process.
painedumonde
I agree we are near a tipping point. I think Greenland will be the last straw and it's half dropped already. Sea ice and Great Lake ice are extremes...
Anyway, I think environmental fascism in some sort of dictatorship is around the corner, and everyone will look inward. Supply chain disruptions - hah - we haven't seen anything yet. The worst part is that the loudest to cry out against what's coming were the biggest contributors. I detest those kinds of tears.
ConradsGhost
Bingo. Spot on.
Justin
Category 5 super storms wreck Florida.
Governor DeSatan, denying the threat, is killed in a flash flood.
Headlines I hope to see in 2024.
DarkBrandon
But EVs are unacceptable because we demand cannonball-run speeds, wearing Depends and chugging Ensure, and no more than 12 minutes of refueling time per 1000 miles of travel. Also, I cannot be expected to pay attention to how much range I have left before finding a charger: that is inhumane.
(Not that EVs will be enough to solve this, anyway)
Also, we need the sound of gasoline engines.
I am not making this up. These are our priorities.
Would I be paranoid for wondering why 2021 and 2022 are not included?
Coby Beck
They are. The graph has a whole wack of years, either all that there is data for or all of the last 50 or 60 or so. The current year and the previous record holder are highlighted.
D_Ohrk_E1
Climate scientist Zack Labe posts different data visualizations of the same data, and of other data tracking points. Here's one of them, of the North Atlantic SST anomaly over time.
Here's his post on the WMO state of the global climate for 2023.
Even if we assume 2023 was an anomaly, it's still well within the direction of temperature changes since the 60's when we started on this steep upward slope -- which matches the sudden upward slope of CO2 emissions.
The world needs trillions of dollars in mitigation investment, but I just don't see it happening. Protests and public sentiment against higher taxes and higher costs will surely prevent us from investing into mitigation.
Even when things get done, with each shift in the political winds, actions taken to mitigate climate change will be partially undone.
It won't be until the worst conditions linked to climate change have hit us, that minds will truly change and our actions will be aligned with our words.
ConradsGhost
No. Humans won't change as a consumptive and destructive species in any critical mass until there have been multiple catastrophic external forcings that sear into our socio-cultural DNA (and possibly our biological genetics) the self-imposed limits that allow sustainable existence within the constraints of any given ecology. We will consume everything, and destroy everything non-human in the process, through multiple iterations of collapse until hard limits are burned into our collective consciousness, or we go extinct, or we shrink to some small fraction of current numbers living in some kind of highly reduced circumstances. Look to history - the pattern over long stretches of time is clear. What the human is as a species - not what we want to believe or think it is, or want to project from highly privileged and non-representational perspectives - is crystal clear. The arc of history is crystal clear. Is change possible, on the scale needed? Anything’s possible. But in my world evidence trumps hope every time.
ScentOfViolets
Old Adam is dying as a consequence of his own actions. But he still has plenty of stink to spread around as he struggles against his erasure from the gene pool.
There's a reason this is an old and very hoary sf trope, and that's because there is more than a grain of truth to it.
Yes, global climate change is the single most pressing issue the human species faces. Disruptions in the availability of food and water are all you need for all-out war.
Blowing shit up is absolutely the stupidest possible activity under "normal" circumstances and blowing shit up when we should be doing everything we can to stave off the worst consequences of ever-increasing CO2 is even stupider. There is a carbon footprint for every piece of concrete on the planet and when you destroy it you render the utility pointless.
Americans sit on the couch, safe and secure, and jump up at half time and shout "freedom or death" for Ukraine and then they go get another beer and get back to the game. Billions and billions of dollars worth of weapons are still being shipped to Ukraine for yet another proxy war against the Soviet Union - I mean, Russia.
Americans sit on the couch, safe and secure, and jump up at half time and shout "kill them raghead Gazans" and then they go get another beer and get back to the game. Billions and billions of dollars worth of weapons are still being shipped to Israel so that they can exterminate every Gazan unable to flee under fire to another country.
Anyhoo, thanks for the global warming post, Kevin. Don't see many of those here.
“Americans sit on the couch, safe and secure…” oookay. I mean sure Americans are comfortably fat, intellectually lazy and politically apathetic. But it’s not like other countries are powerless to form international agreements to cut carbon without the US. For example, the EU is a bloc of like 400+ million people, big enough to compel economic changes on stuff it cares about from smaller trading partners all over the world. Why don’t they take the lead on forming effective climate change agreements with China and India and whomever else?
“Don't see many of those here.” Huh? Kevin talks about climate change all the time. Maybe not literally every day, but he constantly returns to something climate changey every few weeks. I know it’s the most important issue to humanity, but there is lots of other stuff going on too. (I’m guessing climate change isn’t as much of a concern to people under attack in various parts of the world who don’t know if they’re going to live to see tomorrow. It’s ok to talk about those problems too.)
Um, er, ah, I think the "Don't see much of that here." comment was snark.
So far as "the most important issue to humanity", Nah. While billions of us may perish of flood and famine, H. Sapiens isn't going extinct any time soon. We'll retreat underground if we have to. It's only for a few hundred years before the carbon is re-captured in living things and we start worrying about "the Little Ice Age".
No. It takes thousands of years, tens of thousands, for carbon to be removed from the atmosphere, mostly through reactions with calcareous rock (e.g., the Himalayas - see D. Archer, "The Long Thaw). Also, once all or most Earth's biotic and abiotic systems have collapsed (already in process, see 2019 IPBES policy maker's report; 2023 Richardson, et al, ”Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries"; 2023 Abrams et al, “Committed Global Warming Risks Triggering Multiple Climate Tipping Points”) a return to anything like Holocene Earth system conditions will again take thousands to tens of thousands of years.
Once the ice goes, and it’s going fast, that’s endgame. The speed and magnitude of AGW change has been obvious in the research for twenty years, but mainstream consensus (necessarily political) is just now beginning to catch up. All the major petro-states and corporations have openly reneged on any real or feigned commitment to fossil fuel production. India is not going to stop industrializing and growing its patterns of consumption. The global rich are not going to stop growing their obscene patterns of consumption. The US and Canada will not meaningfully reduce their exponentially growing patterns of consumption. Russia is out of control, and will dig every last ounce of coal and pump every drop of oil. The Arctic is the next big petro target, and will be exploited to the fullest. Africa’s population is exploding, projected to double by 2050 or sooner.
That’s reality.
It takes thousands of years, tens of thousands, for carbon to be removed from the atmosphere, mostly through reactions with calcareous rock (e.g., the Himalayas - see D. Archer, "The Long Thaw).
The process can be speeded up considerably, in fact that's precisely the CO2 remediation strategy known as geoweathering. I'm a big fan, incidently and why I responded to your post.
Based on history, Africa will have another period of starvation and genocide due to inability to control population.
No political controlling entity in the first world is willing to risk the economic backlash of telling people to change their lifestyles. The first world, high consumption lifestyle is the sacred goal all around the world. Good luck telling all the third world people that a wealthy, high consumption lifestyle is out of their reach. They already risk life, limb and families trying to attain it by migrating.
In the communist run countries they might have a chance, but even there you'll get a rebellion and revolution if you try enforcing more modest living standards - which will fail early because the internet and self publishing will reveal just how many people are still living the rich life and the mobs will come for them. This is why the wealthy have been buying private islands and defensible land, they know it's coming. American booted Jimmy Carter for telling us to put on a sweater and turn down the heat, Biden will be the last elected leader to champion energy efficiency and lifestyle change unless a large swath of the country is really hurting and can clearly blame a changing climate for their misfortune instead of immigration.
Looking forward to hurricane season here in Central FL. Frankly it looks like we may start with storms before June 1 this year. And just to make matters more interesting, our property insurer (Farmers) is leaving the state. Thanks, Gov. Ron, for keeping your priorities straight, like punishing Florida's biggest private sector employer and ignoring the insurance crisis while you were busy doing your vanity run for President. How'd that work out again?
It's BIDEN"s fault!!!!
Speaking of hurricane season, there are two things to know.
1. The fuel for super-powerful hurricanes is warm ocean waters. But it's el Niño that heats up the ocean, and el Niño also increases wind shear that tends to break up storms before they get really big.
2. In la Niña conditions, ocean waters are cooler, but wind shear in the N Atlantic is also lower, which favors the development of really powerful storms.
So the pattern that portends a mind-blowing hurricane year is if we have a really strong el Niño through the fall and winter, heating up the water, and then we shift to a la Niña pattern with lower wind shear just in time for hurricane season to begin. The water will remain hot for a long time, but wind shear will be reduced. Bam! Super Bad Hurricane Season in the N Atlantic.
Guess what we have right now. Exactly that.
So now let's all hold hands and use our psychic powers to steer that upcoming Category 6 superstorm straight toward Mar-a-Lago. I think we can do it!
Yes. But it snowed today coating all the spring flowers, so global warming must not be real.
/s
Tomorrow it'll be hot and global warming will be real. The day after? Who knows!
yup, and you know what the worst possible thing for it is? a southern California suburban lifestyle
Wrong. The average Californian causes 7.7 tons of CO2 emissions per year. That's 4th *lowest* among US states. The worst state is Wyoming, where the average citizen emits almost 100 tons per year.
This took me less than two minutes on Google. Get off your butt and educate yourself.
He's only here to "woke" Kevin. Rather retarded, I think.
Where are you sourcing these numbers from? Are you taking the total statewide emissions and dividing it by the number of people in the state? If so, that's rather ridiculous, as agriculture-related emissions are better allocated to the country as a whole rather than the state they're produced in.
Which means California's per-capita emissions are even lower than the numbers suggest.
We're #1 in agricultural production, you know.
We are well past the point of no return, now it's really about resilience and survival. First world countries will close their doors completely in the next 10 years to those fleeing failing economies, even if Biden squeaks out another win he will be followed by some version of Trump and all-out war against all immigration.
First world folks will hold onto their lifestyles at all costs, they will barricade themselves in and keep on consuming and generating mountains of waste. China will keep making more good for consumption and spewing massive amounts of waste and pollution in the process.
I agree we are near a tipping point. I think Greenland will be the last straw and it's half dropped already. Sea ice and Great Lake ice are extremes...
Anyway, I think environmental fascism in some sort of dictatorship is around the corner, and everyone will look inward. Supply chain disruptions - hah - we haven't seen anything yet. The worst part is that the loudest to cry out against what's coming were the biggest contributors. I detest those kinds of tears.
Bingo. Spot on.
Category 5 super storms wreck Florida.
Governor DeSatan, denying the threat, is killed in a flash flood.
Headlines I hope to see in 2024.
But EVs are unacceptable because we demand cannonball-run speeds, wearing Depends and chugging Ensure, and no more than 12 minutes of refueling time per 1000 miles of travel. Also, I cannot be expected to pay attention to how much range I have left before finding a charger: that is inhumane.
(Not that EVs will be enough to solve this, anyway)
Also, we need the sound of gasoline engines.
I am not making this up. These are our priorities.
EVs accelerate faster than ICE vehicles.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
The future's so bright, it burned out my eyes.
and I feel fine...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GFRcFm-aY
Would I be paranoid for wondering why 2021 and 2022 are not included?
They are. The graph has a whole wack of years, either all that there is data for or all of the last 50 or 60 or so. The current year and the previous record holder are highlighted.
Climate scientist Zack Labe posts different data visualizations of the same data, and of other data tracking points. Here's one of them, of the North Atlantic SST anomaly over time.
Here's his post on the WMO state of the global climate for 2023.
Even if we assume 2023 was an anomaly, it's still well within the direction of temperature changes since the 60's when we started on this steep upward slope -- which matches the sudden upward slope of CO2 emissions.
The world needs trillions of dollars in mitigation investment, but I just don't see it happening. Protests and public sentiment against higher taxes and higher costs will surely prevent us from investing into mitigation.
Even when things get done, with each shift in the political winds, actions taken to mitigate climate change will be partially undone.
It won't be until the worst conditions linked to climate change have hit us, that minds will truly change and our actions will be aligned with our words.
No. Humans won't change as a consumptive and destructive species in any critical mass until there have been multiple catastrophic external forcings that sear into our socio-cultural DNA (and possibly our biological genetics) the self-imposed limits that allow sustainable existence within the constraints of any given ecology. We will consume everything, and destroy everything non-human in the process, through multiple iterations of collapse until hard limits are burned into our collective consciousness, or we go extinct, or we shrink to some small fraction of current numbers living in some kind of highly reduced circumstances. Look to history - the pattern over long stretches of time is clear. What the human is as a species - not what we want to believe or think it is, or want to project from highly privileged and non-representational perspectives - is crystal clear. The arc of history is crystal clear. Is change possible, on the scale needed? Anything’s possible. But in my world evidence trumps hope every time.
Old Adam is dying as a consequence of his own actions. But he still has plenty of stink to spread around as he struggles against his erasure from the gene pool.
There's a reason this is an old and very hoary sf trope, and that's because there is more than a grain of truth to it.
Where Water Stress Will be Highest by 2050,
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fh5mv0ycvv3qc1.jpeg