Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

The words do not have to be perfect.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Consistently wrong since 2002

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

You are here: Home / 007, 007, and Oceans 11

007, 007, and Oceans 11

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Al Gore was very fat last year:

Average surface temperatures in 2016, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than 2015

If you look at charts, the surface temperatures have gone up about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 25 years.

This is even scarier, while oceans have risen an average of about 0.11 inches a year since 1983, that could accelerate rapidly:

If high levels of greenhouse gas emissions continue, they concluded, oceans could rise by close to two meters in total (more than six feet) by the end of the century. The melting of ice on Antarctica alone could cause seas to rise more than 15 meters (49 feet) by 2500.

Reader Interactions

80Comments

  2. 2.

    catclub

    oy

    The melting of ice on Antarctica alone could cause seas to rise more than 15 meters (49 feet) by 2500.

    In contrast to the melting of the ice of Antarctica and Libya, which would raise sea level by … more than 15 meters.

    The ONLY other major source of ice is Greenland, and Antarctica has a lot more than Greenland.

  5. 5.

    David Evans

    I think it may be a mistake to talk too much about what might happen in the year 2500. The threats from climate change are much closer than that. If we survive them in good shape I would expect us to invent efficient ways of sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere and reversing the temperature rise long before 2500.

  9. 9.

    Jeffro

    Not to worry: the DeVos Intelluhgents Academeez will be sure to let our kids know that rising oceans are all God’s will.

  10. 10.

    Elizabelle

    I will never tire of that photo.

    Wish we could send it hourly to the fuck the fucking NY Times.

  11. 11.

    Kryptik

    @Jeffro:

    Pruitt will also inform us that the environmental benefits of rising oceans may very well outweigh the detriments, and that increased temperature will just mean more viable land for us industrious types.

  15. 15.

    Roger Moore

    @Kryptik:

    increased temperature will just mean more viable land for us industrious types

    I have heard that Putin’s government likes the idea of global warming because they think it will make Russia more viable.

  17. 17.

    Brachiator

    Good think that climate change is a hoax, or started by the Chinese, or something. Because if it were a real thing, you know that the new president would tell us and the Republicans would get right on it. Dem Rude Boys cannot fail.

    Would you like another serving of hydrocarbons?

  18. 18.

    Ian G.

    I wonder at what point the government of China decides we (as in the US) are hopeless, and if they want 2099 to indeed be the capstone on the Chinese century, they need to create an artificial Mt. Pinatubo eruption and start shooting aerosols into the upper atmosphere?

    I almost want them to do it, at least until we’ve invented a device to capture carbon in the atmosphere that can drop the PPM down to 250 or so.

  19. 19.

    Spanky

    @Roger Moore: Uh. Suuuuure.

    I kinda had the Rooskies pegged for scientific literates, and maybe they would understand the consequences of melting all that permafrost.

    Oh well!

  21. 21.

    gene108

    @Spanky:

    I kinda had the Rooskies pegged for scientific literates, and maybe they would understand the consequences of melting all that permafrost.

    The Rooskies have the great tradition of Lysenko to uphold:

    Science is under assault in the land that has produced some 17 Nobel Prize winners in the sciences. It’s not just that funding has been slashed (though it has) or that the field struggles with corruption and brain drain (though it does). Members of the scientific community say one of the biggest issues they face is the recent embrace of pseudoscientists like Yermakova by the Russian state. The Kremlin has elevated and institutionalized their ideas, often mixing them with a healthy dose of anti-Western rhetoric for good measure.

    Yermakova, for example, in addition to her TV spots, has appeared as an expert before the Russian parliament, where populist lawmakers use her to back up their case against genetically modified foods. “Russia has been pressured into GMO after its accession to the [World Trade Organization],” majority party member of parliament Yevgeny Fedorov told state channel Rossiya 24 in 2014 in words that echoed Yermakova’s views. “This is political pressure; its goal is to create risks of sterilization” to shrink the Russian population, he said. Russia passed a law in July banning production of genetically modified foods, despite repeated protests by the Russian Academy of Sciences.

    Other believers in fringe pseudoscience who have been elevated to positions of authority include Mikhail Kovalchuk, a physicist from Vladimir Putin’s inner circle who presides over the Kurchatov Institute, a nuclear energy research institution. Last year (the same day Moscow began its bombing campaign in Syria), Kovalchuk gave a presentation to Russian senators warning that the global elite, overseen by the United States, is developing a special human subspecies — a genetically different caste of laboring “servant people” who eat little, think small, and reproduce only on command.Kovalchuk gave a presentation to Russian senators warning that the global elite, overseen by the United States, is developing a special human subspecies — a genetically different caste of laboring “servant people” who eat little, think small, and reproduce only on command. (Buried beneath the wacky conspiracy theory and anti-Western hyperbole was a lobbying pitch for more state funding so that his institute could stay ahead of the curve on groundbreaking research.)

    Link

  23. 23.

    ? Martin

    A fairly wonderful thing showed up a year ago, California Sunday magazine. It’s wonderful not because it talks about California, rather the state is merely the backdrop for some really, truly wonderful writing. But they have a new piece out, part of a series on California vs Trump titled The Great Exception.

    I commented yesterday about how my political focus was now inward on the state, and I wanted to further clarify that. I still think of myself primarily as a New Yorker. It’s where I grew up, but clearly I think CA is a pretty great place. What’s important to understand about NYC is that it’s a city that in many ways is more significant and more powerful than the state that contains it. NY State is nice and all, but the state politics are a fucking shitshow, and it’s only a blue state by virtue of NYC. On any given day, you’re more likely to hear national news from the mayor of NYC than the governor of the state. It’s a city that succeeds despite the state it’s in. It’s a city that to a large degree carries the state as a whole. Personally, I think it’s the most distinctly American city. Its history personifies everything about the nation – diversity, naked capitalism, violence, and so on. For good or bad, it’s the story of America rolled up in one tiny place.

    California is at such a moment, IMO, in that it has the potential to overshadow the nation in many regards. We’ve been doing that on energy and environmental policy for ages but we can potentially do it on other fronts as well. The reason is that CA is so economically strong, but also because CA is moving so strongly to the left at a moment when the leadership of the nation is lurching strongly to the right (seemingly against the desires of the broader electorate). That creates an opportunity for CA to be the liberal or at least moderating voice that much of the nation potentially seeks. It’s a window of opportunity that CA can choose to pass through, and there’s growing evidence that the state will do so.

  24. 24.

    gvg

    melting permafrost=methane into atmospere which is worse than simple co2. collapsing peatlands can lead to falling cities, railroads and oil pipes. peat fires are worse than forestfires. rising oceans and changing weather may reroute rivers that irrigate areas that are doing well now including their main bread basket. However cold and ice have always been a problem for them so they tend to think less cold has to be good.
    Land that hasn’t had much growing for thousands of years may have very little organic matter so even if it becomes warmer, it may not be that fertile at first. Un mined minerals may be available and Russia has staked claims anticipating warming. Not to mention all the foreign refugees that may swamp them in their least stable areas. this is just from a quick google too, i am not especially aware of this issue.

  25. 25.

    Calouste

    @Spanky: There are apparently some rather unexpected consequences to the thawing of permafrost:
    Anthrax Outbreak In Russia Thought To Be Result Of Thawing Permafrost

    In the early 20th century, there were repeated anthrax outbreaks in Siberia. More than a million reindeer died. Now there are about 7,000 burial grounds with infected carcasses scattered across northern Russia.

    “It’s not that easy to dig in the permafrost to bury these animals,” Evengard says. “So they are kind of very close to the surface.”

    That means anthrax outbreaks in Siberia could occur every summer, she says. And it’s not just anthrax that could be a problem.

    People and animals have been buried in permafrost for centuries. There could be bodies infected with all kinds of viruses and bacteria, frozen in time. She says scientists are just starting look for it.

    “So we really don’t know what’s buried up there,” she says. “This is Pandora’s box.”

    For example, researchers have found pieces of the 1918 Spanish flu virus in corpses buried in mass graves in Alaska’s tundra. There’s also likely smallpox and the bubonic plague buried in Siberia.

  27. 27.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Kryptik: The soil in Siberia and in northern Canada is too thin to be viable for agriculture. So this idea that growing climates/belts move north as temperature rises is a fallacy.

  30. 30.

    Jewish Steel

    Can anyone imagine the Republicans doing anything about climate change?

    Them a loot
    Them a shoot
    Them a wail

  32. 32.

    Roger Moore

    @Ian G.:

    I almost want them to do it, at least until we’ve invented a device to capture carbon in the atmosphere that can drop the PPM down to 250 or so.

    We don’t necessarily need to invent a device to do that. You should be able to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere by growing plants and then burying them in anoxic environments where they can’t decompose. This is basically where fossil fuels came from in the first place, so it’s a logical way of reversing the process of having burned them.

  36. 36.

    Kryptik

    @Gin & Tonic:

    That’s just the liberal environmentalist cabal speaking lies again, like the lie about that “Ozone Hole”, or the myth of the North Pole.

  37. 37.

    chris

    @tpherald: Just to back that up, the Daily fucking Caller (nope, no link) tells us that sea level is not rising. Instead, Miami is sinking. I expect the mayor would beg to differ.

  39. 39.

    Fair Economist

    @Roger Moore:

    I have heard that Putin’s government likes the idea of global warming because they think it will make Russia more viable.

    Not working that way this winter. The Arctic Ocean still isn’t frozen over properly, and the result has been heat released from the water, bringing low pressures over the water and high pressures and record cold over the land. It’s possible that as warming progresses this may become the normal state of affairs in the winter. That would mean Russia will get hotter in the summer but actually colder in the winter with global warming. Whoops.

  40. 40.

    Ian G.

    @Roger Moore:

    However you want to do it, it’d be nice if a rising power that actually values scientific thinking and has a lot more to lose due to global warming (India, China, whomever) does it. Maybe you eventually slap sanctions on the US if it refuses to go along with the plan.

    You can talk all you want about cutting carbon emissions, and we need to do that too, but we’re at a point where CO2 needs to be actively removed from the atmosphere.

  41. 41.

    ? Martin

    @Major Major Major Major: Not quite.

    Arctic ice generally isn’t a problem. Any floating ice that melts won’t change sea level because sea level was already supporting that mass. There are two related issues, though:

    1) Non-floating ice (Greenland, Antarctica) that melts will contribute to rising sea levels because that mass is being supported by land, not by water. So that is a net mass transfer from land to ocean. There’s a lot of water locked up in Greenland…

    2) The effects of either warming arctic waters or the the effects of adding freshwater (different density) to ocean currents. There’s a bit of concern that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is slowing down. Part of what that circulation does is pull warm water up from the gulf of Mexico and tropics along the eastern seaboard and then across to Europe. It’s why England isn’t an icy hellhole and why hurricanes often veer away from the eastern seaboard instead of smacking dead into it all the time. There are models that show that this circulation could suddenly collapse with sufficient global warming. Not imminent, probably not in our lifetimes, but once that die is cast, it’s pretty much impossible to uncast it.

    The issue isn’t really that it would all go at once. It’s rather that the trajectory of action would become irreversible. Think of a ball pushed off a flat surface onto an inclined plane. It was stable, and now it starts rolling. It’s going to take a while to get to the bottom, but there’s no fucking way to get back up to the flat surface. The question is really whether we’re still on the flat surface or whether we’re on the inclined plane. Scientific consensus is that we’re still on the flat surface, that if we can arrest emissions immediately that we’ll stay there. But if we don’t, we’ll soon hit that inclined plane and once we do, there’s nothing we can do any longer to prevent the inevitable. Today we have some control, if we choose to exercise it. But soon (a decade or so) we lose control and it doesn’t matter what policy decisions we come up with, it won’t matter. We’ll have missed our chance – the ball will be rolling.

  44. 44.

    Aleta

    @chris: Next up, our panel of experts debate whether 3 is a large number or a small number. One panelist says large, another says small, while the third has concluded it is a question for open debate.

  48. 48.

    ? Martin

    @Roger Moore: Right, but our CO2 emissions are still accelerating. What the public doesn’t understand is that even if we stop the acceleration today, the CO2 levels will continue to rise. We need to immediately stop the acceleration, and immediately start to reduce emissions levels. What the scientists are trying to tell us is that we need to be at 350ppm for CO2. We’re at 404 and adding 2ppm per year. If we hit 450, we’re done – no going back. What that means is that if we hit 450 and everyone recognizes, “oh shit, we need to go no further” – that means no CO2 output AT ALL. None. No emissions. No power plants. No internal combustion engines. None – anywhere on earth. That means in 23 years at our current trajectory, we need to turn industrialization off completely.

    If globally we reduce emissions today at the rate that CA has done, we at least stand a chance to add some carbon capture and stay under 450. If we delay, we’ll need massive carbon capture to stay under 450. If we keep growing, we’re fucked.

  49. 49.

    vhh

    @catclub: Not sure about what you are saying. Ice in Libya? And you say Antartica twice . . Looks like some autocorrect issues. . . .

  50. 50.

    Fair Economist

    @Calouste:

    People and animals have been buried in permafrost for centuries. There could be bodies infected with all kinds of viruses and bacteria, frozen in time. She says scientists are just starting look for it.

    “So we really don’t know what’s buried up there,” she says. “This is Pandora’s box.”

    For example, researchers have found pieces of the 1918 Spanish flu virus in corpses buried in mass graves in Alaska’s tundra. There’s also likely smallpox and the bubonic plague buried in Siberia.

    The H1N1 virus disappeared from humans for 20 years, from 1957 to 1977. The reappearance is suspected as due to accidental laboratory release from Russia, and I’ve seen some claims (can’t find a link though) that it coincided with the Russians poking around in just that, permafrost-frozen samples from earlier pandemics.

  53. 53.

    Roger Moore

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Arctic ice has the possibility of all going into the drink at once, basically, right? A tipping point situation?

    Yes, but not quite the way you think. The arctic ice is floating, so it melting would have relatively little effect on sea level, the same way ice cubes in your drink melting don’t cause the glass to overflow. The big worry about the arctic ice melting is that it changes the color of the polar region from fairly white (reflects light well) to deep blue (absorbs light well), so the whole earth starts absorbing more more solar energy and heats up more. There are also worries about changes in oceanic circulation patterns, which could cause serious local climatic shifts but probably wouldn’t do much to global temperatures.

  54. 54.

    chris

    @gene108: Jesus, that’s terrifying. Worse the reptilian overlord will be sworn in on Friday. WASF

    Seriously, folks, go read the article in Foreign Policy. The Russians are coming and they’re weirder than you imagine.

    “Pseudoscience exists in all countries, but it is like cancerous cells: A healthy organism rejects them and does not let them grow,” said Svetlana Borinskaya, a geneticist who works at the Institute of General Genetics. “A sick organism is not able to react.” There are signs in Russia that the cancer is taking hold: An annual study by the Higher School of Economics, a research university in Moscow, found in 2015 that the number of Russians who felt that science and technology bring more harm than good was 23 percent. The ratio of positive to negative views of science places Russia 30th out of 31 countries in a ranking of how much they value scientific progress; the study called it a “worrying signal.”

    “Even educated people are starting to talk about reptilians that have taken over and are plotting in the world government,” Borinskaya said.

  56. 56.

    ? Martin

    @Major Major Major Major: Well, not quite. No explosions at least. One thing the models are trying to contend with is that as glaciers melt, the water eventually drills down to the bottom and flows underneath the glacier, reducing the friction between the glacier and the rock its sitting on. This is the same mechanism that makes ice skates work – the sharp blade creates enough pressure on the ice to melt a bit of it which sits in a channel below the blade – this is what you glide on. The worry is that the same mechanism may affect glaciers allowing them to flow much more quickly toward the ocean than the historical models might suggest.

    “This system is huge,” Nisancioglu continued, referring to the ice stream we were standing on. “It has a lot of water to drain. So it could keep going for a long time. How far can it go? Will it keep accelerating indefinitely until it runs out of ice? This is unknown.” All on its own, the negis has the potential to raise global sea levels by three feet.

  61. 61.

    sigaba

    @chris: While most Republicans have only a hobbyist interest in denying global warming and they could really go either way depending on what Fox News had to say, Florida politicians have concrete and immediate reasons to deny it — it will collapse the real estate market, which is pretty much where all the money in Miami is (that and porn, of course).

  62. 62.

    Major Major Major Major

    @? Martin: thank you for the link–this is what I was remembering:

    Rignot, who grew up in France, studies both Greenland’s ice sheet and Antarctica’s. Two years ago, he published a paper arguing that a key section of the West Antarctic ice sheet, the Amundsen Sea sector, had gone into “irreversible retreat.” The Amundsen Sea sector contains more than two hundred thousand cubic miles of ice, meaning that, if Rignot’s analysis is correct, it will, inevitably, raise global sea levels by four feet.

    “This Is What a Holy Shit Moment for Global Warming Looks Like,” Mother Jones declared when the paper was released.

  65. 65.

    ? Martin

    @Major Major Major Major: Pretty close. Scientists say that it’s effectively impossible for us to avoid the 1.5C scenario – we’ve chucked enough CO2 out there and we need to remain functioning as a society, and theres a certain impedance between choosing to cut emissions and when things are in place to do so. Power plants aren’t built overnight. So, we’ve pretty much already failed the Paris agreement, we just don’t see the effects of it yet.

    The next goal is to stay below 2.0C and the forces working to do that are completely overwhelmed by the forces working against it. To their credit, China is finally starting to mobilize, and also to their credit, when they choose to do something, they can do it VERY quickly, so there’s some hope there. But the forces in power in this country are working very hard to oppose that action. It’s to the point that I’ve asked the CA senators to introduce legislation that would prevent federal relief funds to states suffering from climate change that didn’t meet the goals in the Paris accord.

  66. 66.

    Ian G.

    @chris:

    Reason had a nice little run. Hopefully I’ll be dead before we’re sacrificing virgins while reciting incantations in Russian to try to keep the oceans from overtaking Manhattan.

  67. 67.

    chris

    @sigaba: Yup. State government employees are, so I’ve heard, forbidden to use the words, “climate change” or “sea level rise.” Same in South Carolina.

  71. 71.

    Seanly

    @David Evans:

    Right, if large-scale agriculture doesn’t collapse before 2035 due to soil temperatures being too high. If our civilization makes it all the way to 2500 (about 150 years past the events in Star Trek FYI), then I agree that we would probably have some very good tech for sequestering the CO2.

  72. 72.

    jake the antisoshul soshulist

    On the bright side (or maybe not, depending on your perspective), Humans may not become extinct. Even if we do, the the universe will have a few billion years to try another
    Evolutionary experiment. Good luck to the next one.

  73. 73.

    Another Scott

    @Doug R: Methane Hydrates in the oceans, also too:

    It is estimated that there could be more potential fossil fuel contained in the methane hydrates than in the ­classic coal, oil and natural gas reserves. Depending on the mathematical model employed, present calculations of their abundance range between 100 and 530,000 gigatons of carbon. Values between 1000 and 5000 gigatons are most likely. That is around 100 to 500 times as much carbon as is released into the atmosphere ­annually by the burning of coal, oil and gas. Their possible future excavation would presumably only produce a portion of this as actual usable fuel, because many deposits are inaccessible, or the production would be too expensive or require too much effort. Even so, India, Japan, Korea and other countries are presently engaged in the development of mining techniques in order to be able to use methane hydrates as a source of energy in the future (Chapter 7).
    2.18 > In hydrates, the gas (large ball) is enclosed in a cage formed by water ­molecules. Scientists call this kind of ­molecular arrangement a clathrate.

    Methane hydrates and global warming

    Considering that methane hydrates only form under very specific conditions, it is conceivable that global warming, which as a matter of fact includes warming of the oceans, could affect the stability of gas hydrates. There are indications in the history of the Earth suggesting that climatic changes in the past could have led to the destabilization of methane hydrates and thus to the release of methane. These indications – including measurements of the methane content in ice cores, for instance – are still controversial. Yet be this as it may, the issue is highly topical and is of particular interest to ­scientists concerned with predicting the possible impacts of a temperature increase on the present deposits of methane hydrate. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, around 20 times more effective per molecule than carbon dioxide. An increased release from the ocean into the atmosphere could further intensify the greenhouse effect. Investigations of methane hydrates stability in dependance of temperature fluctuations, as well as of methane behaviour after it is released, are therefore urgently needed.

    Scary stuff…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  74. 74.

    Gindy51

    @? Martin: Melting Arctic sea ice will change sea levels because as water warms, it expands. Folks sort of forget about that part of the equation…

  75. 75.

    Jim schimpf

    Er,nope. Water expands about .02% per degree C but expands about 9% when it freezes so it would have to go pretty high (steam) to match the ice volume. I think we would have some other problems if the Arctic Ocean were that warm.

  76. 76.

    J R in WV

    @Ian G.:

    Didn’t I see a report on nano-somethings used as catalysts to transform carbon and water into liquid fuels, or fluids that can be pumped away from the atmosphere. Yay!

    But the drillers and pumpers would need a new business plan… pumping the other way!

  77. 77.

    J R in WV

    @chris:

    Well, southern FL is soft limestone and the pH of the ocean is becoming more acidic, so it could be a mix of the two…

    No really~!!!

  79. 79.

    Stan

    @? Martin:

    NY State is nice and all, but the state politics are a fucking shitshow, and it’s only a blue state by virtue of NYC. On any given day, you’re more likely to hear national news from the mayor of NYC than the governor of the state. It’s a city that succeeds despite the state it’s in. It’s a city that to a large degree carries the state as a whole.

    As an upstate New Yorker, I heartily agree.

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