Renewable Revolution

There was a marked decline in ocean pH during the PETM, as one might expect with atmospheric CO2 concentrations at 2300 ppm.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014PA002621/abstract

However, all the phytoplankton did not die.  There were SURVIVORS.  Phytoplankton Diners   
Currently, ocean pH is around 8.08



It appears to be decreasing about .05 every 20 years right now.  So in a Century, that is .25, bringing it down to  around 7.8.

As it looks right now, it will take a while to get to 7.4

RE

Agreed. But we know how the "how it looks now" has been working for the IPCC predictions for the past 30 years, don't we? And that 7.4 pH is a laboratory determined level that did not include open ocean conditions. You can be sure it is, as most scientific studies continue to turn out on this issue, overly conservative. And with a 40 to fifty year lag, what makes you think we will stop it if we aren't doing jack sh it NOW to stop the baked in pH acidity increase for the next 50 years?

RE, because phytoplankton populations constitute the main marine food chain base along with the zooplankton (which eat each other AND the phytoplankton too), you do not need more than a 20% or so reduction in viability to have a disproportionate impact on the other species. The numbers MUST be at least ten to one in biomass from prey to predators. You knock out 20% of the prey, you knock out a LOT MORE than 20% of the predators. That 's how it works.

And the forests are NOT going to even suck in the CO2 they have been sucking up to now because the added CO2 in the air degrades their ability to process CO2!. So you've got a double whammy reducing your oxygen production. This is NOT a trivial issue.

To make things WORSE,  the corporate kowtowing IPCC is setting up big business interests for a giant geo-engineering technofix SCAM to fleece we-the-people even more while they try a profit over planet Band-Aid disguised as a high tech planetary air conditioner. This is BAT SH IT CRAZY! But that's what they are ALL saying now in their measured, prudent tones that we MUST do, along with "reducing" our CO2 production. Anything to make corporate buck. 

This threat is HUGE, RE.  Because we live on a water planet, the EFFECT of the CO2 CAUSE has a 50 year lag, according to paleo-climate scientist Professor James White from Colorado.

I continue to believe that a few of many species will survive. Hopefully, we will be one of the 25% or so that make it. But we are vertebrates. According to Prof. Gerardo Cebellos, vertebrate mammals are particularly at risk in this sixth extinction because of their habitat requirements. We ARE extremely fragile.

I think it is more prudent to assume that most people will perish from environmental conditions AFTER the collapse. Humans operate basically on the rule of 3.

You die if you
1) lack sufficient oxygen for 3 minutes.
2) lack water for 3 days
3) lack food for three weeks.

Some people can do better than that, but most can't. And all this biosphere math operates on the margins. I keep seeing you look at the bright side, like it's a sure thing. It isn't. The most probable scenario is a slow death for the toughest of survivors. The fact that the outlier of the bell curve includes a portion that can pull through does not make it look any rosier to me.

When you can provide me proof that business as usual for the fossil fuel industry will stop in its tracks within ten years, I'll share your optimism. But if we haven't sh it canned fossil fuels within ten years, it's game over. I REPEAT, if we are still burning fossil fuels in 2025, it's game over within LESS than a century for mammalian vertebrates. Only Divine intervention can change things for the better at that point. I'm not holding my breath waiting for God to step in an contradict His law that the wages of sin are death.

Here's a video spelling things out without hyperbole. Guy does not do most of the talking and remains fairly low key. The evidence he presents is solid. We LEFT the linear climate changes behind and have entered the abrupt ones. That means that, with ocean sink degradation, the pH is going to drop SOONER than predicted. Already I have posted that a 0.5 pH drop can threaten most of the phytoplankton, mollusks and corals, according to the Royal Society in the UK. This is serious sh it.

Quote from: agelbert on September 30, 2015, 04:16:56 am

I keep seeing you look at the bright side, like it's a sure thing.

The only things I am certain of is that at some point in the future all life on earth will come to an end, and prior to that all multicellular organisms will die off.  What is something of a guessing game is what the timeline on this will be.  I definitely do not see a rosy picture out there for the forseeable future, the question is what can you do to make the best of a bad situation?

Far as Fossil Fuel burning, I think that is going to come to a halt on its own due to economics, but probably not as fast as you would like to see it happen.  Hills Report says 2020, I'll go out to 2025 as when most of the industrial economy has shut down.

The adjustment off of the FFs is the hardest part, and because that energy artificially inflated a population bubble, that bubble has to pop.  That's what makes projecting out anything past a 20 year timeline or so a complete crapshoot.  So I try to focus on what the individual and small community can do during this 20 year period to up survival chances.  No guarantees there of course, but just a better shot at it.

RE

This is not about when I would like to see fossil fuels stop being burned; this is about the science that demands fossil fuels stop being burned in order to ameliorate or prevent the existential threat we face from burning fossil fuels.

Making the best of a bad situation is precisely what militates that we all lend our voices to demand the end of burning fossil fuels within a decade. If we fail to do that, your extinction dice are LOADED. The "crapshoot" is survival, at that point.

In a remnant survival situation, expecting technological advances on the order of present day civilization is not realistic. So, when people hunker down, they won't be coming up with any super inventions to handle the hellish atmosphere in anything resembling the present day pace of technological development.

RE, we ALL get it that everything in this universe is finite. That is not the issue. The issue is that WE are shooting ourselves in the foot burning fossil fuels.  And the population bubble is the least of our worries. The coming collapse will take care of THAT problem, thank you very much.

It's the RUNAWAY greenhouse that WILL CONTINUE after most of humanity is offed that is the problem for the remnant humans. THAT is the issue because the window to solve that problem began to close during the Carter Administration. Carter tried to act but was cheated out of a second term.

That window, requiring us to Totally STOP burning of fossil fuels to save our asses, will CLOSE by 2025, thanks to business as usual (and that is a an optimistic outlook, by the way). Reagan and his fossil fueler pals leaned on the window with all their might to see how fast they could CLOSE IT!

20% of ALL the fossil fuels EVER burned were burned AFTER the Kyoto agreement was signed in 1997! Business as usual CONTINUES! WHY? (see the next paragraph) They PLAN AHEAD. Their plan SUCKS. It's MORE business as usual.      


Now those Empathy Deficit Disordered fossil fuel industry predators are gearing up for the big transition from the monopolistic fleecing of the people with the fossil fuels gravy train to the monopolistic fleecing of the people with a giant geo-engineering corporate gravy train.  

Do you REALLY think their plan is going to work? I don't.

The fact that everything will eventually die isn't at issue here. I do not understand why you keep bringing that up. The bare assed minimum survival timeline of all humans rotates around that rule of three I mentioned. And you can get THAT much sustenance in prison. A human society needs a hell of a lot more than that to survive. Reducing our "needs" to air, food, water and shelter is not realistic for a 1,000 year minimum timeline.

And as for the domes for the remnant, there are giant difficulties with that.

As you said, ANY technofix is necessarily temporary. The runaway greenhouse WILL NOT stabilize for at least 1,000 years. If the technofix cannot bridge that gap, you are screwed and tattooed. There is NO EVIDENCE that we have the technology to dome 12,000 humans or so for 1000 years in a PLUS 4C planet. I check around a lot! I'm the guy that has battled you over the years proposing technofixes that might work. You are the one that has batted me down each time.










NOTICE the IPCC conclusions are FOLLOWED by GEO-ENGINEERING cheerleading.