Arctic now locked into devastating temperature rise, UN report says

I'm constantly reminded of the cartoon where a heckler is standing up during a Climate Change presentation, yelling, "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?"

I'm a big believer in the scientific method. I think wherever possible we should gather evidence to confirm or deny our hypothesis. But sometimes we have to make decisions without time for all the facts, all the calculations to come in. You could stand there in the street as a car careens toward you, slide rule in hand, being absolutely sure the car will collide with you before finally stepping out of the way. But, of course that's ridiculous.

So, the fear is that making the necessary changes to society would be far too disruptive, too expensive, resulting in ultimately more death and devastation than what Climate Change may or may not bring.

That's quite a gamble. We seem totally fine spending trillions of dollars on other experiments [cough] tax cuts [cough]. We go to war, sacrificing lives and national treasure on uncertain outcomes, on shaky premises, and on and on. Why, with this one issue, are we so reluctant to make the leap with a significant scientific consensus around the issue?

Climate scientists, in an effort to avoid panic, are downplaying the calamity and timescale of this crisis. It's common knowledge in the climate science academic community that the 2018 IPCC report was overly conservative in its modelling of CC progression by lacking any mention of self reinforcing feedback loops.

The two most impactful of these loops are the Arctic sea ice reflectivity loss (less ice -> less incoming light reflected back into space -> more heat captured by earth -> less ice) and the Siberian arctic shelf methane loop, arguably the most devestating one because we already know it caused Earth's worst extinction[0], and it is beginning to happen again[1].

It will be refreshing to see if the scientific community's consensus on how silent to be about the severity of the climate crisis will change as the facts of how rapidly the feedback loops are progressing essentially implicate near-term (10-20 years) civilisational collapse.

More info from the World Research Institute on climate feedback loops:

https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/08/why-positive-climate-feedba...

[0]: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/earth-permian-mass...

[1]: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/04/28/...

Lands warm up more than oceans. We're already past 1.5°C of temperature rise and we probably won't do anything to prevent 2°C. Most probably, we'll hit +3-+4°C in 2100. However even +2°C is a global average; oceans are cooler, and 75% of the surface. It can easily be +1°C on the oceans, and +5°C on land, averaging to +2°C.

The situation of complex systems such as climate, the world economy and global ecosystems doesn't simply gently degrade over time. There are quick, catastrophic changes that occur rapidly when reaching certain thresholds. So all could be mostly fine for 1 year, or 5, or 10, then collapse suddenly any time because we've gone through one particular threshold we don't know (ocean acidity, surface temperature, oxygen concentration, forests dying from the heat and becoming carbon sources, etc).

Prepare for a tough, violent future. Be scared to death.

So i tried to find the actual UN report. The article linked to this http://www.grida.no/publications/431 but it doesn't appear to exist anymore (??) Luckily there is a Google cached version http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:w_-_g9l... which links to the report https://gridarendal-website-live.s3.amazonaws.com/production...

In the cbc article, they say "According to one study cited in the report, up to 70 per cent of Arctic infrastructure could be threatened because of thawing permafrost by 2050. ". This refers to page 17 of the report, which cites this study https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07557-4

In the abstract, they clearly state "We show that nearly four million people and 70% of current infrastructure in the permafrost domain are in areas with high potential for thaw of near-surface permafrost." While the CBC sub-headline says "70% of infrastructure will be threatened because of thawing permafrost by 2050"

Seems quite misleading. CBC will have people think that 70% of all infrastructure is threatened (subjective interpretation) whereas the study clearly indicates it's 70% of the infrastructure in the permafrost domain, which affects a whopping 4 million people. I'm sure there will be plans to help those affected in time.

I'm not saying it's not a problem, I'm just saying, as usual, the media hypes and sensationalizes it, most likely for some ulterior agenda.

On one hand I wonder what is the breakthrough that is going to happen that will save us all? Some new energy or carbon removing technology. I fear this will not happen soon enough and that brings me to the other hand at what point will climate change break a nation and what is going to be their response when their back is against the wall and other nations are already strained by climate change. If no one takes them in, what measure will they take to ensure their children live on? At what point will we start seeing other nations carbon emissions as hostile? It seems pretty selfish the way we run the earth now. Perhaps we need to truly pay for our individual emissions. Like sure you want to be a millionaire and run a private jet sure but you will be responsible for not just the cost of it's gas but it's entire emissions as well. You want to sell something that causes emissions, sure but you better add that cost into your products you sell as you will pay for the emissions. And by pay for emissions I mean the true cost. If current world tech costs 100$/kg to remove then you pay 100$ for every kg you release. And by law that money is used for that actual purpose. It seems pretty obvious some industries are reaping the rewards of high emissions with little pay back. That needs to stop. It completely reminds me of the plastic problem where people are selling these products with copious amounts of plastic packaging that ends up in landfills and city's are left trying to deal with the cost of it all.

Would unfreezing some of these soils make the soil hospitable to carbon-consuming plants?

Seems like the effect of permafrost melt may be partially mitigated by increased plant growth in those areas: through both gas and soil nutrient sequestration.

The poles are a reservoir of factors that could further contribute to a warming climate and rising sea levels, and with their disruption, the processes will escalate.

The emergence of similar reports might finally cause the conversation around climate change to move out of talking about vague if dire impacts and about policies that resemble austerity pledges, and about mitigation and adaptation. Those seem to have been a taboo so far, but that can't continue.