Generic Other (22,548 posts)
Rolling Stone: The Point of No Return: Climate Change Nightmares Are Already Here
Historians may look to 2015 as the year when shit really started hitting the fan. Some snapshots: In just the past few months, record-setting heat waves in Pakistan and India each killed more than 1,000 people. In Washington state's Olympic National Park, the rainforest caught fire for the first time in living memory. London reached 98 degrees Fahrenheit during the hottest July day ever recorded in the U.K.; The Guardian briefly had to pause its live blog of the heat wave because its computer servers overheated. In California, suffering from its worst drought in a millennium, a 50-acre brush fire swelled seventyfold in a matter of hours, jumping across the I-15 freeway during rush-hour traffic. Then, a few days later, the region was pounded by intense, virtually unheard-of summer rains. Puerto Rico is under its strictest water rationing in history as a monster El Niño forms in the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifting weather patterns worldwide.
...sea levels could rise 10 times faster than previously predicted: 10 feet by 2065. The authors included this chilling warning: If emissions aren't cut, "We conclude that multi-meter sea-level rise would become practically unavoidable. Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea-level rise could be devastating. It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization...."
So far, dead zones have remained mostly close to the coasts, but in the 21st century, deep-ocean dead zones could become common. These low-oxygen regions could gradually expand in size — potentially thousands of miles across — which would force fish, whales, pretty much everything upward. If this were to occur, large sections of the temperate deep oceans would suffer should the oxygen-free layer grow so pronounced that it stratifies, pushing surface ocean warming into overdrive and hindering upwelling of cooler, nutrient-rich deeper water.
...Enhanced evaporation from the warmer oceans will create heavier downpours, perhaps destabilizing the root systems of forests, and accelerated runoff will pour more excess nutrients into coastal areas, further enhancing dead zones. In the past year, downpours have broken records in Long Island, Phoenix, Detroit, Baltimore, Houston and Pensacola, Florida.
Evidence for the above scenario comes in large part from our best understanding of what happened 250 million years ago, during the "Great Dying," when more than 90 percent of all oceanic species perished after a pulse of carbon dioxide and methane from land-based sources began a period of profound climate change. The conditions that triggered "Great Dying" took hundreds of thousands of years to develop. But humans have been emitting carbon dioxide at a much quicker rate, so the current mass extinction only took 100 years or so to kick-start.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-point-of-no-return-climate-change-nightmares-are-already-here-20150805?page=4
Alarming article.
bemildred (83,230 posts)
3. Yep.
Wait until the West Antarctic Ice Sheet starts to slide off in the sea ...
**** Tierra del Fuego
Sunlei (10,195 posts)
7. think if a huge piece slid off at once it would make a tusunami wave so high it would wash over
central America and into the gulf?
Oh, how they love to scare themselves.
bemildred (83,230 posts)
8. They estimate a sea level rise measured in meters when that happens.
Like ten meters.
Probably too slow to cause a tsunami.
"They" are charlatans and hucksters.
You know how Proglodytes always bitch about religion being a way to terrify children into obedience with lurid stories of damnation?
Yeah. This would be that.
n2doc (38,970 posts)
4. That comments section is a sewer of denialists
God I hate those scum
truebrit71 (19,917 posts)
17. Simply unreal...delusional arsholes every single one...
Yeah, but while you were out studying gay penguins we were grabbing all the power, money and resources.
Sunlei (10,195 posts)
5. is there anyway a giant 'airstone' could be lowered into sea deadzones to force some cold water
circulation? or pump up deep cold sea water and dump it over to force more circulation?
or passive move sea water to inland dry tinder filled dead zones and let it soak in slowly.
passive = use siphons.
si·phon
/ˈsīfən/
noun
noun: syphon
1. a tube used to convey liquid upwards from a reservoir and then down to a lower level of its own accord. Once the liquid has been forced into the tube, typically by suction or immersion, flow continues unaided.
How many carbon credits would I have to buy to set this idiot on fire?
It'd be worth it.
tblue (16,056 posts)
10. But let's defund Planned Parenthood
Because that's what's really important.
(In case it's necessary to add.)
jalan48 (1,014 posts)
16. It's time to prioritize the issues.
When I see articles like this I'm reminded that some of the other stuff we are arguing over is trivial in comparison. Everyone believes their particular issue is 'the most important', but is it really when compared to this?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027048009
