Acceleration of Climate Change Is Not what you think
The human echo bubble of human months, political intrigue, and the web - just isn't real to the actual world of mass extinctions and the fate of our species. Read on.
The Earth has experienced five mass extinctions before the one we are living through now. Humans have caused a loss of biodiversity that can only be characterised as a mass extinction.
To Survive Humans will have to go Underground; to Mars: Into Space
To give rise to us, the Earth has had to sacrifice, and that is on-going. The uninhabitable earth, we're probably coming to that, we just don't realize it yet. We've led to countless species dying. We've led to most forests in the world, disappearing.
It's ironic that we'll witness our own judgement day, but it won't be a day of horror, it will be a slow burn of decades and titanic events of a few more centuries.
Forest fires that turns to famines, 3 degrees of warming, a sun that sears and cuts cities into rising oceans and makes climate migrants out of New Yorkers.
We have this idea that it's for our grandchildren, but 2100 for humans, is right around the corner and the Earth then will be very different than it is today.
This winter when unusually warm temps basked the North Pole, a weird omen of things to come.
Climate Change is the Start of Most Extinctions
As for the mass extinctions, only once did an asteroid come that killed the dinosaurs, climate change produced by greenhouse gas is the usual culprit, and whether we triggered this or not; it's coming.
One of the major ones, started with carbon warming the planet by 5 degrees, the warming triggered the release of methane in the Arctic, that killed 97% of all life. A blink of an eye for evolution, 252 million years ago by our imperfect standards.
We're actually adding carbon to the atmosphere at a considerably faster rate that during that extinction; by most estimates, at least ten times faster.
Arctic Permafrost Released Accelerates Global Warming
We are 10x faster to doomsday than the last mass-extinction, the most notorious one ever. The fact is, it's irreversible at this point, no plausible program of emissions reductions alone can prevent climate disaster (the serious climate scientists know this).
There is a long-tail fatalism and desperation that will occur over the next few decades as more members of species realize what this means.
Arctic permafrost contains 1.8 trillion tons of carbon, more than twice as much as is currently suspended in the Earth’s atmosphere.
It will thaw and as its released, the carbon may evaporate as methane:
- Methane is 34x as powerful a greenhouse-gas warming agent as carbon dioxide (over 100 years)
- But over (20 years), it's 86x as powerful.
This means, there will be a runaway acceleration in climate change; that humans likely won't be able to mitigate.
By the end of the century, the World Bank has estimated, the coolest months in tropical South America, Africa, and the Pacific are likely to be warmer than the warmest months at the end of the 20th century.
In the scale of evolution, this is happening tomorrow.
Which means we'll have an existential pressure to relocate, protect ourselves and safeguard our own fight against extinction on a serious level.
This is not a story that's going away, because the Earth has already hit the reset clock.
The Big Swish - Over 3 Degrees Increase
Humans, may be the reason for it.
Places like Miami and Bangladesh won't exist by 2100.
Two degrees of warming used to be considered the threshold of failure, of catastrophe, but now it's our goal. It's turning out, that's not even a realistic goal.
The "albedo effect" (less ice means less reflected and more absorbed sunlight, hence more warming) is a quickening thing, and our children and their children are about to find out just how fast our doomsday might be. The simulations have had trouble tracking it.
The history of the planet shows that temperature can shift as much as five degrees Celsius within thirteen years.
The Earth waited millions of years for us, and in a few thousand years we paid her back with coal, plundering her for oil, with cities of concrete, erecting glass towers, and billions of people who consume what the solar system placed there for us, all in the blink of an eye.
The Famine Years of the Big Collapse
Historically even when our planet is 4 degrees higher (2130 AD), the oceans are hundreds of feet higher.
The five warmest summers in Europe since 1500 have all occurred since 2002.
The trend is clear, it's the speed of it that's so commonly misunderstood. Even if you don't believe humans caused it; it's going to happen.
Drought and famine may be commonplace in the years ahead, which we can hardly imagine much less adequately prepare for. This is on top of the climate migrants that will continually have to leave coastal regions in large waves.
In an ironic twist of fate, retreating permafrost can also expose ancient pathogens that could turn into climate plagues. It's unclear how dangerous this may be, but it is a possibility. Curiously, some epidemiologists worry not of ancient diseases, but existing scourges relocated and altered by warming that may be dangerous.
It's almost certain that by by 2090, more than 2 billion people globally will be breathing air above the WHO “safe” level. Can anyone guess how this might increase cases of autism? It does, quite dramatically.
Recession Beneath a Scorching Sun
In just 30 years, wildfires are expected will be twice (2x) as destructive as they are today; in some places, the area burned could grow fivefold. As we are seeing in southern California and in British Columbia this year, this can be a major problem.
The “airpocalypse”and smog in Chinese cities is already reducing life-expectancy significantly.
For all the dangers of extinction, normal (privileged by birth) humans need to worry about the economics of climate-change for their plumb narcissistic retirement:
Every degree Celsius of warming costs, on average, 1.2 percent of GDP
The economic cost of global warming will be far more severe than projected. What will kill us, will make us stronger. A world only two thirds as big, only produces that much.
If you don't think 600 million people living within ten meters of sea level today is a lot, remember, a third of the world’s major cities are on the coast.
What happens when a third of the world’s carbon is NOT sucked up by the oceans? Ocean acidification will be very real and the usual "coral bleaching". Hydrogen sulfide is not your friend, and herein lies the ultimate problem.
In a universe that is many billions of years old, with star systems separated as much by time as by space, civilizations might emerge and develop and burn themselves up simply too fast to ever find one another.
Climate change will impact most people even in our lifetime, even in a minor way.
Humans have to overcome the "environmental filter", the barrier that separates successful civilisations and those who fail.
But over the long term, global warming will likely mean an extinction challenge for our species in the few next generations that follow us.
It will cost less to re-locate the species at the turning point, than to geo-engineer back the Planet. With the help of artificial intelligence we'll discover this, and everything after will be planned accordingly.
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Conservation Management
7ySpot on article. I hope we do not succeed in plaguing any other planets after Earth.
Author "The Larger Spiritual Order & Universal Scheme of Things-Simplified" at www.fay-louisekapec.com
7yCow manure plops change the atmosphere more than anything else-Methane gas from this manure is the largest of anything. On a warm day, a person can see the gas going into the atmosphere. Stop eating meat so the amount of plops are lessened as the need for cattle diminishes. Also dairy is not good for mankind; it is good for cattle babies but not for humans. Climate change has been occurring since the Earth was formed from the Sun, and it shall continue to change until it implodes and feeds the Universe. There is a reason Humans are living on Earth, and God or the Universal Life Force shall take care of things.