Guy McPherson's talk 28/2/14

[emordnilap]

A YouTube recording (about an hour-and-three-quarters, though his talk is only 45 minutes) in Traditions Café, Olympia, Washington, Friday 28th February 2014 here.

Anyone any issues with his analysis?

"Even [industrial] collapse takes us to 2ºC."

[emordnilap]

Here's the headline referred to in his talk:

NPS researchers predict summer Arctic ice might disappear by 2016, 84 years ahead of schedule

[Tarrel]

There's a Schedule??

[UndercoverElephant]

Just watched his bit. There's a couple of bits and pieces he doesn't get quite right (e.g. El Nino and La Nina are in a sense "opposite", but it is wrong to think every year has to be one or the other. Most years are neither), and I disagree that we are heading for human extinction within a few decades.

There is no doubt that climate change, with positive feedback, is out of control and we are heading for at least a 5 degree increase before the end of the 21st century. 10 degrees is possible.

Does this mean human extinction? I don't think so. We are going to render most of this planet uninhabitable, but we are incredibly adaptable creatures and even with a 10 degree rise there will be places where humans can survive (e.g. parts of the antarctic coast, northern Canada and Russia). And once human numbers get down under six figures, then there is a limit to how much additional damage we can do on a global scale.

To put this in perspective, there are currently only 50,000 gorillas left on Earth, and only 60,000 orang-utans. If I had to guess, I'd say the human population is going to crash right down to this sort of level within 200 years. And while there is a difference between this and human extinction, the difference is pretty much irrelevant from our point of view in 2014, because in both cases it means our children and grandchildren are going to live through the most traumatic and horrific period of human history.

Don't know what boards he posts on, but I came up with "Homo sapiens should have been called Homo callidus" (Clever Ape rather than Wise) several years ago. Perhaps it's just obvious.

[emordnilap]

Yeah, I think he gets some stick for his 'NTE' (a TLA for 'Near Term Extinction') schpiel but he's entitled to his views.

I agree, I tend to think that some humans will survive anything the species can come up with. He does have some salient points to make. One such that comes to mind is that the soils of the newly-warmed countries in the north simply won't have the food-producing capacities of currently temperate and near-equatorial soils. Finland has nothing to look forward to there.

[biffvernon]

we are heading for at least a 5 degree increase before the end of the 21st century. 10 degrees is possible.

That's certainly at the extreme end of the scenarios.

[kenneal - lagger]

Do the scenarios account for a methane burp?

[biffvernon]

Never say never and one can create whatever scenario one fancies but methane burps don't figure large in AR5.

[UndercoverElephant]

we are heading for at least a 5 degree increase before the end of the 21st century. 10 degrees is possible.

That's certainly at the extreme end of the scenarios.

Yeah, but the scenarios are continually being revised worsewards. 2 degrees is already inevitable, and it looks very much like the feedback effects from those 2 degrees will send global temperatures up a further 2 degrees, plus we still haven't taken our foot of the accelerator. Finally, as McPherson points out, once industrialised civilisation starts collapsing and the sulphur emissions drop, we get another burst of warming even as the greenhouse emissions finally start falling.


I don't believe 5 degrees (above baseline i.e. start of the industrial revolution) is an "alarmist" prediction.

[Ralph]

A YouTube recording (about an hour-and-three-quarters, though his talk is only 45 minutes) in Traditions Café, Olympia, Washington, Friday 28th February 2014 here.

Anyone any issues with his analysis?

Sure. Who baselines temperature change from the end of a cyclic low without mentioning the variation that would be happening without the influence, any influence, of the Industrial Revolution?

The same someone who won't mention the work quantifying just such things (Kobashi, et al, 2011), and certainly won't include ice core information from the end of the last ice age to put natural temperature change into perspective?

When you want Rapture…I mean NTE…you don't have to TRY so hard…particularly when the main conclusion is to relax, enjoy life, and let what happens, happen.