A concerning text I received from my gardener friend.

[c-rational]

Found this on Twitter: Posted by a teacher in Paris named Ben See.
Source web site is ecological-emergency.org

1. Global crop failures hit at 1.5- 2°C.
2. Billions die at 3°C.
3. Most humans dead at 4°C.
4. Earth uninhabitable at 6°C.
5. We're heading for 1.5°C by 2025.
6. We're heading for 2°C by 2035.
7. We're heading for 4- 6°C by 2075.

And this morning in the Washington Post an article on whether the tipping point has been reached in the Amazon.

We humans may be an 'intelligent' species but we as a whole are a stupid lot at times. Where is our Leadership?

I posted this yesterday in the General Discussion Group and it was suggested I cross post here for checking. As a civil environmental engineer with an undergraduate degree in civil-environmental engineering and a masters degree in environmental engineering and decades of experience (many on the design and construction of municipal water pollution control plants or mathematical modelling of natural systems), I do find these numbers realistic and compelling. I do not know why they are not being shouted from the rooftops. Also, just personal observations of the changes in our environment over the last several decades give me pause. I made a point of visiting coral reefs in 2012 because I do believe no matter what we do at this point they will not be with us in 2050. Most just do not recognize what that loss will mean to the planet.

[dewsgirl]

1. And unfortunately many and I mean right wingers, don't care.

After all they won't be here. Terrifying especially for our, children and grandchildren.😔

[CousinIT]

2. Humans are destroying the planet and with it, themselves. They refuse to vote

and refuse to vote intelligently. In fact in cult circles, intelligence is seen as elitism and shunned via shit like Fox "News", which IMO should be outlawed and taken off the air, relegated to the underground due to the ignorance it promotes.

Humans are stupid collectively. They are easily led and misled. And they are possessed by mob mentality. Someone posted this yesterday and it's a good read. Sadly, until people learn to vote and vote INTELLIGENTLY, we're doomed. To cap that, we're just doomed. Nobody should be having children now. They won't survive.

https://thoughteconomics.com/?p=6590

"Populism is the act of politicising and mobilising ignorance to the point of political and moral insanity. Nationalism as we know, comes from the phenomena of nation-states – and it’s quite ironic therefore that we are now talking more and more about the failure of nation states and the failure of supranational and international institutions as well… and meanwhile neo-nationalism is on the rise.

It’s not about the maturity of your democracy, it’s not about the strength of your institutions either…. Once the cancer of authoritarianism gets into the veins and organs of society, it’s not easy to get-out – they have this very specific way of paralysing political mechanisms and dismantling the fundamental human logic.

[mopinko]

3. i believe we are already tipping hard, and i had shocking evidence on my farm this year

of something that came out of left field for me.
i live about 6 blocks from lake michigan. i am in the historical bowl of the lake, about 20k years ago, iirc.
my biggest challenge has always been keeping things watered w this kind of drainage. always.
when things get deep roots, they are fine, because the ground water is not that deep.

this year we had such a cold, rainy spring, and wet summer, i basically had a slow motion flood on my hands.
i have never, ever had standing water in my yard, but i had a standing puddle all summer this year.
i lost a 30 yo grapevine, and my 25 yo magnolia tree is hanging on, but took so much damage it will take a couple of years to restore it's shape.
i had several other grapevines and fruit trees that were outright chlorotic, tho they perked up once it got warm.
this soggy soil clearly had it's biome disrupted. the mud stunk. badly.
lake michigan is at a historic high level. our beaches are being beaten to death here.
so, the water table is right there.

i do not recall anything like this being talked about, but then the soil biome is not a big topic of discussion in most places.
another week of cold and rain this spring would have been catastrophic.
and this has been the pattern over the 7 years i have been doing this- colder, wetter, longer spring weather. it has hurt me badly right there, but souring my soil? jebus i'm in trouble.

[DENVERPOPS]

6. I am assuming

that you live in the U.S.? And what state? The color of your state??

What about the wildfires in the entire country of Australia, The entire state of Alaska and across Siberia.
the thawing of permafrost in vast areas above the arctic circle, etc etc etc........

It is time for everyone to start reading about what is going on in the entire world including the North and South Poles of all places. The scariest thing is the amount of methane and unknown viruses that are being released from the snow and ice melt in the arctic........

[mopinko]

18. i'm in chicago.

i'm just pointing out that this was a totally unexpected situation. i have never heard it mentioned. and that includes a lot of time in the weeds on the issue of soils and soil building.

the shifting seasons were expected, and at least by me, expected not to be linear.
i really felt i have the tools to work through that, but if i poisons my soils, i have my work cut out for me.
lucky i am already employing a great deal of hugelkultur, i can go higher.
i can use season extenders. but it is way more than i thought i was grappling w.

[flying_wahini]

8. As a former resident of the Houston area (I was for IKE) I can testify that rain bombs are real

And VERY scary. We got an Inch of rain every 5-10 min.
Also, as a Master gardener I would recommend lava rock poured around the base of your water logged trees. If they are big trees then use two bags each. If you can find lava rock already ground up, even better. Not close to the trunk but out under the drip line. Just mho.

[mopinko]

17. oh thank you!!

i've only been a gardener for 60 years, so i still have a lot to learn.
and old knowledge is flying out the window at the same time.

seem to always be playing catch up.
easy tip. will do. thx.

[Harker]

4. A true leader follows the facts...

while many "leaders" do nothing but follow the money.

There are corrupt people all over the political spectrum, but only one party in this country for whom it's intrinsic.

[3Hotdogs]

5. But "Greed is good."

Its all about greed.

[Prospero1]

7. We may not even have that long...

The melting poles will change the salinity and acidity of the oceans. This could kill the plankton. 50% or more of the photosynthesis occurs in the earth's oceans. (see [link:https://earthsky.org/earth/how-much-do-oceans-add-to-worlds-oxygen|). Flooding would be the least of our problems.

[paleotn]

12. Ugh.

Yes and no. Ocean salinity and acidity changes will be damaging to ocean life, but those changes won't be homogeneous across all oceans. So no. it isn't going to kill all phytoplankton. No offense, but ugh.

[CaptYossarian]

9. We will die with the Amazon. There are 3 things killing it:

Climate change, Bolsonaro, and the beef industry--and not in any order.

[paleotn]

10. Unrec. Sounds like hyperventilating to me...

And I thought I was a climate change extremist. Yes, climate change will reorder human civilization in terrible, horrible ways, but lets keep it in scientific fact and not hyperbole. That's a bad enough outcome for anyone.

1. Temp changes aren't the same across the planet. They're averages, with temps increasing much more in extreme northern and southern latitudes than mid latitudes. It will take more than 1.5 to 2 C to fail crops globally. A more important issue are changes in weather patterns with more extreme droughts and heavy rains. Crop yields, overall will drop, but global crop failure? BS.

2. Billions die? Why? Global crop failures at 1.5 to 2 C? I've already covered that. Global conflict due to water shortages? That's possible. And more like millions potentially in fragile places like south Asia and central Africa. Globally? Doubtful, but more realistic than 1,2 and 4.

3. 4 C? Humans extinct? Utter and complete BS. 100K years ago, maybe, as there were far fewer Homo sapiens on the plant. Now? Not going to happen. Total BS.

4. Ever hear of the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum...PETM? Look it up. That was 5 to 8 C higher than today. Not a world I'd want to live in and getting their will destroy much of human civilization, but uninhabitable? Bullshit.

Lastly....No offense, but I call BS on your fallacy of authority towards the end. Your arguments aren't logical on their face, so I don't care how many degrees you have. Keep it real, folks, or our detractors will have a field day and climate change WILL run uncontrolled.

[nilram]

14. One googles the opening line

Global crop failures hit at 1.5- 2°C

And one finds the original thread with many links to scientific research and researched articles summarizing the same.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1205985246031863808.html

[The_jackalope]

24. It depends on one's definition of "global crop failure"

The entire world's cereal crop output doesn't need to decline to 0 in order to qualify, IMO. The majority of such crops are grown in the northern hemisphere:



Would a caloric reduction of 25% or 30% across the northern hemisphere qualify? I can see such a problem occurring as a result of extreme weather events (droughts,floods and heat waves) around the world during a single growing season.

Mechanisms have been identified that could lead to simultaneous (same-year) reductions in output.

Summer weather extremes linked to stalled Rossby waves in the jet stream

Early summer heatwaves in Western Europe and North America set new temperature records in 2018, while other regions of the northern hemisphere were hit with torrential rain and severe flooding. Now researchers in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands say that these events were linked by a pattern of stalled waves in the jet stream. They add that this wave pattern appears to have increased in frequency and persistence in recent years and may occur more frequently in the future due to climate change.

The northern jet stream is a river of fast-moving air that circles the northern hemisphere in the mid-latitudes. Travelling from east to west at an altitude of around 10 km, these winds drive large-scale weather systems around the globe.

Jet-stream winds generally travel at the same latitude, but they can shift into a wave-like pattern, known as Rossby waves, where they meander from north to south and back again. When this happens, warm air fills the peaks of the wave, while cold polar air drops into the troughs. Rossby waves normally continue to move from east to west – shifting high- and low-pressure weather systems with them. However, they can also stall – which can lead to heatwaves, droughts and floods as the regions of hot and cold air hover over the same regions for days, or even weeks.

In June and July 2018 extreme heatwaves hit North America, Western Europe and the Caucasus, while south-east Europe and Japan experience heavy rain and flash flooding. Norway set a new maximum temperature record and received just half of its average July rainfall, the United Kingdom experienced the second hottest July since records began, and various locations in the western United States broke temperature records. Meanwhile in Japan severe floods and landslides caused by heavy rain destroyed more than 10,000 houses.

The northern jet stream is already disrupted (at less than a 1.5C average temperature rise) exhibiting increased waviness and slowing that support this hypothesis.

[PWPippinesq]

11. I have been noticing the rising of our water table, as well.

I live along the mid coast of Maine. For several years, I have had plants struggling to make it where they thrived before and birch trees dying well before their time. This past spring, vernal pools that are normally dry by late May, stayed full well into July, making the areas along our driveway look like a bayou with unprecedented mosquito production. My mother, an avid gardener, began commenting on changes in her garden in the Adirondacks decades ago. I fear that we passed the tipping point years ago.

[nilram]

13. The original thread is quite long

and has lots of authoritative references to scientific journals and other researched articles. Really concerning.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1205985246031863808.html

[c-rational]

15. Good information in that thread. Thanks for the link.

[modrepub]

16. Paleo Climate Record

As someone else noted, global temperatures in Earth's past history have been quite a bit higher than today. Even with all the green house gas additions, there are probably episodes in Earth history where natural out gassings have raised CO2 levels just as rapidly as we are experiencing today and at least some life forms adopted.

That doesn't mean we should ignore this problem or that there aren't going to be significant consequences for life on this planet due to our lack of action because there will. My concern is economic. If Greenland and Antarctic ice melts catastrophically in the next few decades some prime real-estate is going to become worthless and our banking system is going to have to deal with a significant write down; I could also see lots of prime farmland becoming worthless as climate changes adding more onto the other problem. That's my worry because we won't be able to deal with this problem if our economic system suffers something similar to what happened during the Great Depression times 20.

Right now off the coast of the NE US there are several thousands of megawatt producing wind farms in the planning stages. This administration is doing its best to slow these projects down and fast-track gas development and combined cycle gas plant development. To have this much renewable energy off the coast of some of the highest populated areas in the US will do a lot to reduce our fossil fuel habit and may actually show if these type of projects can function on a big grid.

I'm very hopeful and slightly curious to see how this "race" turns out. Do the natural gas combined cycle plants in Pennsylvania get built and tied into the grid before these big wind farms of the eastern sea board get built? Whoever comes in first will probably put the other out of business or in the case of these wind farms, make sure they never get built. Interesting times these are.

[NickB79]

19. We're currently changing the climate faster than at any point in the past 65 million years

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/todays-climate-change-proves-much-faster-than-changes-in-past-65-million-years/

Climate change is occurring 10 to 100 times faster than in the past and ecosystems will find it hard to adjust

Kind of sobering that humans are doing as much damage today as the combined forces of extreme volcanism and a 10-km-wide asteroid did 65 million years ago.

[modrepub]

21. Greenland Ice Core Record

According to the ice core records on Greenland, climate can change from glacial cold to interglacial warmth within a decade. That's with only slight perturbations and suggests the Earth's climate is far more sensitive than we thought. If you create a low salinity ocean in the North Atlantic from Greenlandic Ice Cap melt, under the right conditions you can freeze portions of the surrounding ocean, cut off the Gulf Stream flow to northern Europe and impose ice age conditions even though you've got CO2 level increasing and in excess of "normal" interglacial levels. How long that would last is anyone's guess however unlikely that were to occur.

As I said before, the climate change process is probably not going to impact us as much as the impact climate change will have on our economic system. There is an interesting theory by Kyle Harper that the collapse of the western Roman imperial system was in large part due to climate change. While I don't think the climate perturbations he is pushing are enough to account for what happened it's an interesting theory with some parallels to our current dilemma.

[NickB79]

22. Northern Europe is not the globe

The example you cite, which dramatic, is a localized climate event. What you cite has been a concern of climate scientists, but due to current levels of warming it would result in the tropics cooking as that latent heat is healed south.

What we're seeing now is change on a global scale.

[modrepub]

23. Global Temperature Changes

are the most dramatic at the poles, especially the northern hemisphere. Equatorial temperatures are somewhat mitigated by the oceans. I can see continental climate temperatures along the equator rising but the bulk of the global average will be impacted by the northern hemisphere polar temperatures. That has a lot to do with the surface snow-cover changes. Snow at the upper latitudes is a great reflector of solar radiation. It's also a great emitter in the infra-red spectral range so it has a double whammy on temperatures; it reflects sunlight preventing absorption and radiates heat further reducing temperatures. The loss of Arctic sea ice coupled with less year-round snow cover in the northern latitudes by itself leads to warming even without considering the impacts of rising CO2 levels.

The breakdown of the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic is a big deal. Theoretically lower temperature contrasts as the poles warm slacken the zonal wind fields, which weakens the Gulf Stream circulation. Greenland melt freshens the North Atlantic and makes it possible to shut the whole circulation down. The ice core record on Greenland is alarming because of how quickly the climate in our neck of the the world can change. It appears our climate acts more like a drunken college student lurching from one side of the street to another. That is just as dangerous to us as a gradual decadal warming trend we are currently marking and also explains why scientists have abandon the term Global Warming for Climate Change over the years.

[Sherman A1]

20. Thanks for posting

It is both interesting and sobering.