Should We Just Adapt to Climate Change?
Should We Just Adapt to Climate Change?
I have been invited to contribute a piece to Zocalo Public Square for an event next week in Culver City, California. It is called Should We Just Adapt to Climate Change? If you are local, then it looks like an interesting event to attend with good people. To get more idea of the event from a previous event see Lost in Space. My piece is focused on California, but you will get the picture.
Should We Just Adapt to Climate Change?
The Earth is warming, sea levels are rising, and the weather is changing. We know that the Earth has warmed and will continue to warm due to the carbon dioxide we are releasing into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels—and the warming is and will be disruptive. Five years ago the talk was “if” we limited the increase in the average surface temperature of the Earth to 2 degrees Celsius, then we would avoid “dangerous” climate change. It is now quite obvious that we see large, consequential, and disruptive changes with even less warming—for example in the melting of the Arctic Sea ice. The commitments the world has made have us on a path toward 3.5 degrees of warming or more. If we burn all our fossil fuels, the warming will be much greater.
We have no choice but to adapt to this warming world. We have adapted to changes in the climate for the past 10,000 years—it is something we do. Now, scientific investigation has given us a vision of the future that is credible and actionable. This is unprecedented in history, and it gives us the opportunity to take responsibility and plan to adapt. We know that the Earth will warm; we know it will warm fast. We also know that the weather will change, and when the weather changes the way rain and snow are distributed will be different.
To take advantage of this knowledge, we need to think through scenarios of what will happen to real places. We need to look at the impact of rising sea level on the Sacramento River Delta. We need to focus on how much water is stored in the snowpack of the Sierra Nevada and drought impacts on the forests, grasslands, and rangelands. We must move away from sweeping statements about more droughts and greater floods and instead play out the scenario and the cost of this warmer world to Culver City, California, to the people of California, and to the people of the United States. Then we can decide whether to build sea walls or move inland, rather than patching different strategies together as fragmented responses of emergency management.
Should we just adapt—and not worry about our continued emissions of our energy waste into the atmosphere, ocean, and land? What would be adapt to? We started talking about the “new normal” when we calculated, in 2011, the 30-year average of temperatures from 1981 to 2010, and a new, warmer average “replaced” the 30-year average of some earlier period. In 10 more years we will have the next warmer “climate,” then the next, and the next—the “next normals.” There is no new normal. And the warming will be speeding up. There is no “just adapting” to this; there is no stable climate to adapt to. We must manage and limit our carbon dioxide waste or we will still be chasing the “new normal” in a thousand years.
It won’t just be getting warmer. Ecosystems will have to adapt far faster than they did in the past 10,000 years. The trees of California will die from hot, dry weather. Intrusion of the sea into the Sacramento Delta will make Katrina in New Orleans seem like a quaint artifact of the “old normal.” The accelerated release of methane and carbon dioxide as the Arctic melts will accelerate the warming. The oceans will become acidic, and there will be vast changes to phytoplankton and zooplankton. The oceans will become warm and will release the carbon dioxide we take comfort in their storing. There is no “just adapting.” We will be required to adapt, and the rate of change will make adaptation ever more challenging. We need both aggressive reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the future changes, and we need aggressive adaptation to cope with the changes already occurring and those that are in store.
Reader Comments
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I hope this simple explanation was able to help clear up some of your misconceptions.
(On a side note, trying to drive traffic to your own non-WU blog by frequently and repeatedly linking to it is frowned upon as spam, and could land you in trouble. And at the very least, citing only your own anonymous, non-peer-reviewed writings will certainly do nothing to bolster the credibility of your many outlandish claims.)
Steve Goddard, is that you?
Seriously, nonsense won't last long on this blog. You should probably stop posting it.
oy gevult.
You have accomplished at least one of your goals here because (God forgive me) I looked at your blog and so gave you one added click to help your standing in the search engines. Which, by the looks of it, you really need, because my google search did not show your blog in the first several pages. Instead, it turned up a blog for a similarly named Canadian startup company that was trying to get work from petroleum companies. That company seems to have failed in 2005. So is this you starting over?
But in neither place do you say anything that makes much sense. There are a bunch of other criticisms I could bring, but what's the point? I would very much like to pouf you, but until such time as Admin decides you really are the troll you appear to be, I feel a certain responsibility to help inform other newbies here about what you're doing.
Sorry, you caught me at a bad time this morning. I started reading Andrew Guzman's book "Overheated: the Human Cost of Climate Change", which enforces what I've learned on here about GW/ACC but goes on to explore the truly terrifying consequences. There are real problems in this world, supported by real science, but instead of addressing them, you are fiddle-farting around in here trying to stir up interest in your pathetic blog! Re-think your business plan, man! If it's money you need, this is a time when there is money to be made in doing good for people and the planet.
The other day I joined Neven's Arctic Sea Ice Forum and decided to start a thread regarding the Global Impact of Climate Change. Within 4 days, it has resulted in over 30 replies and is nearing 300 page views. For those interested in the future we are facing, please take a look and either comment there or here on Dr. Rood's blog.
AGW Consequences
Link doesn't work for me. Some 'security message' comes up.
Here is a little backing to your "opinion" which is, by the way, spot on:
Roberts, Callum (2012-05-24). The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea Penguin Group.
The comments on this page of Neven's blog sort of explain what's going on with the security stuff: Link
Unfortunately, I don't know how to get from that page to Old Leatherneck's thread, but he'll probably let us know.
You can ignore that security message. The site is secure.
It is posted as a topic in the Consequences folder under AGW in General
Arctic Sea Ice : Forum » AGW in general » Consequences
thanks for posting that chart, being new i was getting confused because people were posting different charts that countered each other. I think I need to study what everyone is posting. thank you to all that responded to my questions.
Upwelling has always always occurred in that area & yes the PDO affects it.. In the past when the PDO was in the cool faze it wasn't bringing up such acidic water killing off the food source along the coast there..indigenous people have lived off that ocean shellfish harvest in that area for many PDO cycles this is really the first time they are being impacted like this for this reason..
No one has researched it that I've seen but watching the satellites, the new laws letting them burn crud for fuel in the ships in the NW Pacific quite often keeps that area from getting direct sunlight...I'm not surprised the PDO is going cool with so much cloud cover & that it is occurring in time with the law changes..
Lastly & unrelated to our delightful debate...WeatherUndergound doesn't take kindly to spam...usually it's an instant perma-ban. It's been noted by others you are repeatedly spamming your site. You are a long time member so you get a warning, probibly beyond this to maybe remove some of your spam & not continue to put it out there.. One or two links are okay but we've seen it now, discussed it.. so stop the spamming.
thanks I do need to study more. I am very new to this topic and have a very open mind.
For the reasons explained in the article you linked to:
"[...] With less ice cover, the Arctic Ocean absorbs heat and solar energy from the sun that the ice would have reflected back into space. The heating of Arctic sea water can shift weather patterns in the Arctic and also affect the jet stream, Stroeve said. The jet stream is a persistent river of air that circles the planet, and has a strong influence on winter storms and movement of frosty polar air. Dips and troughs created by the shifting Arctic wind patterns could let Arctic air sneak south, studies show..."
That's refreshing. :)
thanks for taken the time to explain things.
The "cool skin" of the ocean (and all water surfaces) is involved in an astonishing energy exchange with the lower atmosphere that is reciprocal, nearly instantaneous, and greater than the energy we recieve from the sun. If the sun were a 100w bulb, the surface radiates 117w to the atmosphere, and the atmosphere 100w back down. An additional 25w is transferred to the atmosphere by evaporation using some quantum of the downwelling energy.
I fully agree that in theory the thermal mass of GHG's and indeed the entire atmosphere will reduce the net radiation from the surface skin, but only if it warms proportionally itself.
We are faced with a puzzling predicament where for 16 years the atmosphere has refused to recieve additional enthalpy, either water vapor or heat, from a warming ocean.
ENSO adjustment is irrelevant for this consideration. If atmospheric thermal mass is reducing net surface radiation, from any initial condition they both move together.
That is nonsense. The atmosphere has indeed warmed over the last 16 years. Either you are unacquainted with the facts or you are purposely misrepresenting them --both generally and specifically.
You also have ignored the fact that you were mistaken to compare the energy needed to melt the Arctic sea ice to Earth's total energy budget rather than the excess energy retained. Such failure is a denialist fingerprint. Denialists make a claim which is subsequently corrected. Rather than acknowledge the mistake and continue the discussion of that topic, the denialist simply moves on to a new claim...ad infinitum.
Either you are denying the results of all the satellite groups and now the IPCC, or you are relying on the efforts of Ramshorf to expunge ENSO from the record. Even Kevin Trenberth has stated that this is impossible. ENSO is imbedded at many different levels and involves Kelvin and Rossby waves and IMO the thermohaline circulation in ways that simply do not express in our index rectangles in the Pacific.
Do you think ENSO is noise? I do not. It is how our planet works. Was the 1997 El Nino such a kahuna that it overshot 16 years worth of trend. No. The 1986 El Nino was a bit stronger.
Let's not move on. Let's stay right here until you understand that "excess energy retained" would be ocean enthalpy because atmospheric enthalpy has been flat. The misconception I was addressing was that the atmosphere had not warmed because the ice was melting. If you want to compare the energy to melt the ice to ocean enthalpy, it becomes more laughably miniscule.
Obviously the surface warming in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans has a lot to do with the melting, but the stratospheric warming gives pause...
Feel free to check for yourself.
Your ENSO pleading is unpersuasive and smacks of conspiracy-theory babble.
Please bring your discussion to Dr. Roods new blog.
I'm not interested in niggling over tenths of degrees per decade. Maybe it's up, maybe its down, maybe it's flat. It is within measurement error and it is definitely not on the same slope as between 1975 and 1997 and definitely not on the same slope as ocean enthalpy.
How do you explain the drastic change in slope if it has in fact warmed at all?
Please bring your discussion, and your comments,
to Dr. Roods new blog.
Thanks. :)
First of all, good blog!
There isn't enough room on a comment to contain the scope of the current peak oil/resources argument but the gist is that tight-oil output cannot keep up with ongoing declines in conventional fields worldwide. EIA and energy company prognosis calls for 30 million barrel per day shortfall (BP) to 70 million (Petrobras). More on the subject:
http://www.postcarbon.org/publications/postcarbon -articles/
As with climate scientists, the peak oil analysts understate current conditions. High costs for new crude + customers going broke fast worldwide = permanent shortages starting in 2 years ... or less, IMO.
Afterward comes economic disruptions and 'conservation by other means'.
Meanwhile, the shale gas 'revolution' is a ponzi scheme ... so say the resource companies themselves!
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/natural-gas -drilling-down-documents-4-intro.html
... and Art Berman:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/us/26gas.html?p agewanted=all
Technology and wishful thinking won't save us or anything else, only stringent conservation.
BTW, there are definite steps that are low cost and more easily implemented that would not threaten the current status quo as much as an embargo on CO2 emissions. More on that later.
There are 7 billion of us only because we have had a stabile climate that has allowed for us to build coastal cities and the ports that allow for huge numbers of people to find shelter and imported food.
Cities in the past sourced their food and energy from the surrounding farm land that had the benefit of a predictable climate. If the local/regional climate changed through natural causes or through deforestation or locusts or war or whatever the city declined in population through lack of food and energy.
Modern cities (of the last 500 years or so) grew past the ability of regional food and material resources by constructing ever larger ports and ships to bring food energy and materials from distant sources. When a modern city's port silted up or was otherwise shutdown the city likewise suffered a decline in population. We will be faced with the same scenario only on a global scale.
Our ports and coastal cities will no doubt attempt to hold back the rising oceans but as the melt progresses ever more rapidly through feedback our ability to contain the destruction of storm surges will require more energy than our non warming energy sources can provide.
We can not adapt in any climate stabilizing way unless we stop the burning now. We can do that only if we can ratchet up our concern and care for ourselves and others including those species that we will take to extinction with us.
People are emotional and will, I believe, be best motivated to change behavior when they are given a challenge that requires the connection and cooperation of the entire human tribe pulling together. Finding and deploying carbon free energy sources so as to stop the burning of fossil fuels is that challenge.
What are you all doing to stop the burning?
New record low temperature for Northern Hemisphere set in Russia's Siberia
Extreme Weather
February 24, 2013
By: Justin Berk
http://www.examiner.com/article/new-record-low-te mperature-for-northern-hemisphere-set-russia-s-sib eria
Now, here's a better--and more authentic--record from Chris Burt's blog: On February 27, Abu Na'Ama, Sudan measured a temperature of 112.1F. That's the warmest reliably-measured temperature on record for the month of February anywhere in the northern hemisphere.
112.1? In February? Now that is newsworthy.
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