Climate change update

Ocean current system may collapse 

A Washington Post article brings up the periodically mentioned topic of deep Atlantic ocean currents and their slowdown. The currents act as Earth's air conditioner by distributing heat away from the equator to North Atlantic regions. Climate scientists have been warning about this issue for at least the last 20 years. If the current stops, and it can, the climate of Europe, eastern Canada, the eastern US and maybe other regions are projected to undergo major changes. 

The Washington Post writes:

Human-caused warming has led to an “almost complete loss of stability” in the system that drives Atlantic Ocean currents, a new study has found — raising the worrying prospect that this critical aquatic “conveyor belt” could be close to collapse.

In recent years, scientists have warned about a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which transports warm, salty water from the tropics to northern Europe and then sends colder water back south along the ocean floor. Researchers who study ancient climate change have also uncovered evidence that the AMOC can turn off abruptly, causing wild temperature swings and other dramatic shifts in global weather systems.

Scientists haven’t directly observed the AMOC slowing down. But the new analysis, published Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change, draws on more than a century of ocean temperature and salinity data to show significant changes in eight indirect measures of the circulation’s strength.

These indicators suggest that the AMOC is running out of steam, making it more susceptible to disruptions that might knock it out of equilibrium, said study author Niklas Boers, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

If the circulation shuts down, it could bring extreme cold to Europe and parts of North America, raise sea levels along the U.S. East Coast and disrupt seasonal monsoons that provide water to much of the world.  

“This is an increase in understanding … of how close to a tipping point the AMOC might already be,” said Levke Caesar, a climate physicist at Maynooth University who was not involved in the study.

Since we do not know at what point the currents might shut down, we are playing Russian Roulette with this aspect (and all others) of the environment. Under current conditions, i.e., heavily polluting modern civilization and ~8 billion humans on the planet, effects on ocean currents can be seen as an externality of modern civilization and unregulated business operations. Maybe there will be serious or catastrophic consequences, or maybe not. Maybe bad things will happen fairly soon, but maybe not.

Global warming has unleashed a new major source of natural methane emissions

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas pollutant, about 20 times more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide. At present, human activity releases about 12 gigatons more carbon into the air each year than the Earth can recycle by natural processes. One gigaton is 1 billion tons, or 1,000 million tons. Natural methane emissions contribute to an increasing atmospheric carbon level, which is the major cause of global warming and the climate changes that are now underway. A Washington Post article, Scientists expected thawing wetlands in Siberia’s permafrost. What they found is ‘much more dangerous,’ describes the situation:  

Scientists have long been worried about what many call “the methane bomb” — the potentially catastrophic release of methane from thawing wetlands in Siberia’s permafrost.

But now a study by three geologists says that a heat wave in 2020 has revealed a surge in methane emissions “potentially in much higher amounts” from a different source: thawing rock formations in the Arctic permafrost.

The difference is that thawing wetlands releases “microbial” methane from the decay of soil and organic matter, while thawing limestone — or carbonate rock — releases hydrocarbons and gas hydrates from reservoirs both below and within the permafrost, making it “much more dangerous” than past studies have suggested.

Nikolaus Froitzheim, who teaches at the Institute of Geosciences at the University of Bonn, said that he and two colleagues used satellite maps that measured intense methane concentrations over two “conspicuous elongated areas” of limestone — stripes that were several miles wide and up to 375 miles long — in the Taymyr Peninsula and the area around northern Siberia.

The study was published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Surface temperatures during the heat wave in 2020 soared to 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1979-2000 norms. In the long stripes, there is hardly any soil, and vegetation is scarce, the study says. So the limestone crops out of the surface. As the rock formations warm up, cracks and pockets opened up, releasing methane that had been trapped inside.  

Normally the frozen permafrost acts as a cap, sealing methane below. It also can lock up gas hydrates, which are crystalline solids of frozen water that contain huge amounts of methane. Unstable at normal sea-level pressure and temperatures, gas hydrates can be dangerously explosive as temperatures rise.

The study said that gas hydrates in the Earth’s permafrost are estimated to contain 20 gigatons of carbon. That’s a small percentage of all carbon trapped in the permafrost, but the continued warming of gas hydrates could cause disruptive and rapid releases of methane from rock outcrops.

So, it's not just methane in rocks, but also microbial sources of carbon production that can release carbon into the atmosphere. Since we do not know if there is a tipping point at which arctic methane and other carbon pollutants might be released rapidly or what the effects of that might be, we are playing Russian Roulette with this aspect (and all others) of the environment.

Context: it's a huge, high stakes war and we need 

powerful allies, regardless of motives

This post is intended to exemplify and make clear the global scope, urgency and seriousness of climate change.

Among a couple of other things, the post here yesterday, Chapter review: Moral Money, was intended to point out that there seems to be a major corporate and business change in thinking about the relevance of environmental damage that arises from normal business operations. In the past, the business community ignored or denied that environmental damage was real and/or important. There was a gigaton of deceit, emotional manipulation and lying to the public going on. 

Now, at least some of the business community leadership seems to be changing its mind about that. The motive behind that mindset change probably comes mostly from corporate greed, fear and self-interest, not altruism or anything else. But setting motive aside, dealing seriously with climate change will require acceptance by most of the leadership of most major corporations and financial institutions. It is clear by now, that the business and finance sectors have major political power and they get what they want via campaign contributions and lobbyists, both of which have worked ruthlessly and in as much secrecy as they could for decades to oppose serious regulation and political action on climate change. 

When one combines what is in this blog post with yesterday's Moral Money post, the absolute necessity of buy-in by the corporate and finance sectors becomes clear. The modern Republican Party is hell bent on stopping and reversing environmental protection laws in the name of their demagogic fascist, anti-government, anti-regulation ideology. That ideology, now amounting to an intolerant, aggressive religion in fact, will not change. Other than occasional fig leaf adjustments for public relations purposes, i.e., deceit and manipulation, here will be no help from the fascist GOP in dealing with climate change. The demagogic FGOP lie will remain the same as it has been for decades: government is bad and always fails, but unregulated free markets are always good and succeed.

Never forget the FGOP war cry: "I'm here from the government, and I'm here to help." That sums up the intense cynical hate and loathing of government that oozes from every pore and orifice in America's political right. Those are the folks hell-bent on playing Russian Roulette with the environment, mostly because they are hell-bent on accumulating ultimate power and wealth, the environment, society and everything else be damned. 'Everything else' includes democracy and the rule of law.

Questions: 

1. This comes back to yesterday's Moral Money post: Is the business and finance communities' commitment to fighting climate change real or just lies, deceit and empty public relations noise?

2. Is the FGOP as rigidly opposed to government action in dealing with climate change as described here, or is there a stirring of genuine concern among some real (non-fascist), mostly young, republicans?[1]

Footnote: 

1. NPR reported in September of 2020: 

A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll showed climate change is the top issue for Democratic voters. For Republicans, it barely registers overall, but there is a growing generational divide.

A recent Pew Research Center survey shows Republicans 18 to 39 years old are more concerned about the climate than their elders. By a nearly two-to-one margin they are more likely to agree that "human activity contributes a great deal to climate change," and "the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change."

Some of these young conservatives are starting environmental groups and becoming climate activists. And now they're pushing their party to do more.

Maybe some of the young 'uns believe that humans cause climate change, but do they reject government regulation or taxation as part of the solution and instead want deregulated markets to run free and wild to solve the problem? Whose side are they really on? Do they even know, i.e., because their ideology and tribe won't let them know?