global warming maybe faster than biology can adapt

[auroraglacialis]

Carbon release to atmosphere 10 times faster than in the past, geologists find
A culture of insanity: turbocharged global warming / Klimaerwärmung mit Turbo

The rate of release of carbon into the atmosphere today is nearly 10 times as fast as during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 55.9 million years ago, the best analog we have for current global warming, according to an international team of geologists. Rate matters and this current rapid change may not allow sufficient time for the biological environment to adjust.

So much for that idea that there were times with more CO2 in the Earths past and life survived. Even the PETM, which probably turned the oceans anoxic was only 1/10th when it comes to the speed of the change than what is happening now. The CO2 emissions nowadays are unprecedented in the past 60 million years and possibly in all of Earths history. This is uncharted terrain here. Human civilization is not a CO2 spewing volcano, it is a meteror strike causing a sixth mass extinction when it comes to its appearance on the geological timescale...

... and the world burns (literally)

[Advent]

It'd eventually come back to its pristine state. How long that takes, I don't know. Hundreds, thousands, many millions of years..

Well, it had to happen sometime. And to be honest, it's no surprise whatsoever.

[auroraglacialis]

What this says is that what is happening now with the CO2 and climate is unprecedented. So it may recover or it may spiral out of control - we cannot know because we cannot look to the Earths history for anything that compares. Up to now we thought that we have comparable events and can thus estimate how bad it could get and if recovery will be possible. Not anymore - everyting is uncertain again... the "Venus scare" is open again

[Vawm tsamsiyu]

Too bad we can't cancel it out with a great oxygen event

[auroraglacialis]

Here is another related article:
Current carbon dioxide emission higher than it was just before ancient episode of severe global warming

Our findings suggest that humankind may be causing atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase at rates never previously seen on Earth

[Advent]

^ No surprise there either.

[Fosus]

The feeling I get whenever I read this kind of articles is _very_ difficult to explain. Needs more Arjen Lucassen quotes..


Time
but a passageway
the beginning of the end
an end that never was
time
but a curve in space.

[Tsyal Makto]

Sometimes, when I look at some of the world's amazing natural places, and some of the efforts made to protect and foster them, and those who are working for ways to get mankind back in harmony with nature, I feel so much hope...

...and other times I see articles like this, or about Belo Monte, or Peruvian gold mining destroying the Amazon, and I just think, "Pandora, take me now."

*sigh*

[applejuice]

From Carbon release to atmosphere 10 times faster than in the past, geologists find

However, the researchers note in the current issue of Nature Geoscience, that the source of the carbon, the rate of emission and the total amount of carbon involved in this event during the PETM are poorly characterized.

It is a hypothesis, for the moment. The results have to be evaluated more by peers.
From the same source Global Warming: Scientists' Best Predictions May Be Wrong

[...]something other than carbon dioxide caused much of the heating during the PETM. "Some feedback loop or other processes that aren't accounted for in these models -- the same ones used by the IPCC for current best estimates of 21st Century warming -- caused a substantial portion of the warming that occurred during the PETM."

[auroraglacialis]

Regarding the article, applejuice writes:

Originally Posted by applejuice

It is a hypothesis, for the moment. The results have to be evaluated more by peers.

The data is published. Yoiu can find it here: Slow release of fossil carbon during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum : Nature Geoscience : Nature Publishing Group - as it is published (and in "Nature Geoscience" even, which has a high impact factor) the data was peer reviewed and you can be sure that at least 3 reviewers had to read and approve the article before it is published. That is the common practice.

And the part you quoted from the article

[...]something other than carbon dioxide caused much of the heating during the PETM. "Some feedback loop or other processes that aren't accounted for in these models -- the same ones used by the IPCC for current best estimates of 21st Century warming -- caused a substantial portion of the warming that occurred during the PETM."

does not invalidate anything that is claimed. The claim made is that currently the speed of CO2 emissions is 10x higher than at the PETM. The next claim attached to it is, that CO2 causes a lot of global warming and other problems. That one was not part of this particular study, it is part of the scientific consensus about CO2, greenhouse gases and global warming. What the article says though is that even at the slower emissions of CO2 during the PETM, the increase in temperature was extremely rapid, potentially feedback mechanisms or other gases. Roughly 50% of the warming can be explained by the CO2 though and the other mechanisms are very likely ones that react to previous rises in temperatures. For example due to general global warming to which CO2 contributes significantly, the ice caps shrink, the water can absorb more heat and the temperature rises more, the permafrost thaws and methane is released, so the temperature rises even more. A lot of these feedback mechanisms is yet not included in the climate models, because they cannot yet be quantified, we just know they exist.

So in any case, CO2 levels do rise 10x faster than in the past, definitely causing probnlems by that and potentially pushing climate change that is partly emphasized by other mechanisms and sources (methane, feedbacks, ...) to a speed that is faster than it would be with less emissions.

[Moco Loco]

I really hope I die before I see Earth begin to turn into a venus. I hope that the worst I see is the temperature rising a lot. Of course, I ideally hope somehow governments start functioning better, people become more educated, and that we can turn it around. But if we can't, Canada, Scandinavia, and north Asia are about to get really crowded

[GhostTiger]

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

Sometimes, when I look at some of the world's amazing natural places, and some of the efforts made to protect and foster them, and those who are working for ways to get mankind back in harmony with nature, I feel so much hope...

...and other times I see articles like this, or about Belo Monte, or Peruvian gold mining destroying the Amazon, and I just think, "Pandora, take me now."

*sigh*

I feel like this too.

[applejuice]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

Regarding the article, applejuice writes:

The data is published. Yoiu can find it here: Slow release of fossil carbon during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum : Nature Geoscience : Nature Publishing Group - as it is published (and in "Nature Geoscience" even, which has a high impact factor) the data was peer reviewed and you can be sure that at least 3 reviewers had to read and approve the article before it is published. That is the common practice.

The reviewers just make sure there's not any obvious mistakes that could discredit the publication, hence the note of the poorly characterized CO2 sources. Still has to be thoroughly analysed by other institutions.

does not invalidate anything that is claimed. The claim made is that currently the speed of CO2 emissions is 10x higher than at the PETM. The next claim attached to it is, that CO2 causes a lot of global warming and other problems. That one was not part of this particular study, it is part of the scientific consensus about CO2, greenhouse gases and global warming. What the article says though is that even at the slower emissions of CO2 during the PETM, the increase in temperature was extremely rapid, potentially feedback mechanisms or other gases. Roughly 50% of the warming can be explained by the CO2 though and the other mechanisms are very likely ones that react to previous rises in temperatures. For example due to general global warming to which CO2 contributes significantly, the ice caps shrink, the water can absorb more heat and the temperature rises more, the permafrost thaws and methane is released, so the temperature rises even more. A lot of these feedback mechanisms is yet not included in the climate models, because they cannot yet be quantified, we just know they exist.

So in any case, CO2 levels do rise 10x faster than in the past, definitely causing probnlems by that and potentially pushing climate change that is partly emphasized by other mechanisms and sources (methane, feedbacks, ...) to a speed that is faster than it would be with less emissions.

No, the article says:

"In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record," said oceanographer Gerald Dickens, a co-author of the study and professor of Earth science at Rice University. "There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models."

During the PETM, for reasons that are still unknown, the amount of carbon in Earth's atmosphere rose rapidly. For this reason, the PETM, which has been identified in hundreds of sediment core samples worldwide, is probably the best ancient climate analogue for present-day Earth.

In addition to rapidly rising levels of atmospheric carbon, global surface temperatures rose dramatically during the PETM. Average temperatures worldwide rose by about 7 degrees Celsius -- about 13 degrees Fahrenheit -- in the relatively short geological span of about 10,000 years.

Lets suppose that Mankind suddenly decides to aggressively cut the CO2 emissions but the Earth's temperature keeps rising. Where would that put us? That's why Scientists should be encouraged to make more investigation about such issues, the IPCC fiasco over the manipulation of data to blame Mankind's derived CO2 emissions did help little for the understanding of such matters by fuelling the claims of biased investigation.

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by applejuice

The reviewers just make sure there's not any obvious mistakes that could discredit the publication, hence the note of the poorly characterized CO2 sources. Still has to be thoroughly analysed by other institutions.

You asked for peer review. That is what is done by these reviewers. They read the paper and see if it conclusive, if the interpretation and the methodology is good and so on. I did that job myself before. What you probably really look for is an independent confirmation, someone else repeating the same study. That is almost never done, because it will not give a publication unless it contradicts the first study using better and more trustworthy methods. All scientific results are falsifiable - that is the principle. So surely someone else can go ahead and prove that theory wrong, but one has little chance in Science than to go ahead and take the results and use them unless there is doubt about them.

lets suppose that Mankind suddenly decides to aggressively cut the CO2 emissions but the Earth's temperature keeps rising. Where would that put us?

Ok, 4 options:

                             | we cut CO2 emissions | we dont cut CO2 emissions
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CO2 emissions                |  YAY - we stopped    |  OH NO, we're so screwd!
lead to global warming       |  climate change      |  (Venus, here we come)  
-----------------------------+----------------------+---------------------------
CO2 emissions do not         | BUMMER, we could     | Yeah,
lead to global warming       | have cheap energy a  | We got cheap energy a few
or global warming happens    | while longer before  | more years before they
even if we stop now          | fossils ran out      | ran out

More investigation is always good, in the meantime, I think the precautionary principle is a good concept looking at the options... (given that the only "Oh NO" is in the right column)

And the fact that the consensus of over 90% of the scientists of the relevant fields is that cutting CO2 emissions will be a good thing is actually quite amazing. Usually, if you ask 10 scientists, you get 12 different answers - to reach a consesnus of that magnitude, the evidence for it probably is rather compelling...