“Global Warming in the Pipeline,” . . all the white that reflects solar energy back to space will be gone,

 

Ice Melt In the Pipeline

Why this won't be an Asian century.

THOMAS NEUBURGER

MAY 24, 2023

North America after 200 feet of sea level rise (see National Geographic Interactive map for more)

"For those who follow climate news, James Hansen is working on a paper, called “Global warming in the pipeline,” that examines long-term effects of human-caused climate change, slow feedbacks that when they are triggered, cause sudden change. 

Ice-free earth is one of them, since when that occurs, all the white that reflects solar energy back to space will be gone, all of it being converted into heat, not just some of it. Another “slow feedback” is change in the ocean currents, like the Gulf Stream. These changes may be slow to occur, but the results, once present will be fast — in this case, a sudden drop in European temperatures, making Paris in winter like Montreal. 

The paper is in draft at the moment and available for comment. The latest version is here.

Hansen and Sea Level Rise

Hansen announced this version of his paper to his mailing list, where he writes, among other things, that:

the present greenhouse gas forcing is 70% of the forcing that made Earth’s temperature in the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum at least +13°C relative to preindustrial temperature

and:

there are 60 m of sea level in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets between today and an ice-free planet[.]

In other words, 70% of the planet-wide energy imbalance that drove Earth temperature to 13°C higher than today, is present today.

About sea level rise: For Americans, 60 meters is about 200 feet. (For most of the rest of the world, it’s 60 meters.) Philip Bump, writing in the Atlantic, concurs, by the way; those sea level rise calculations are not in doubt. 

The So-Called ‘Asian Century’

The map at the top, courtesy National Geographic, shows North America after all ice melts. You can view their other maps at your leisure, but I want to draw your attention to Asia.

Notice that Beijing is now a coastal city. Notice also that the North China Plain, the Chinese “breadbasket” and engine of Chinese growth, is now under water. In the image below, the green area south of Beijing is the North China Plain. Green shows how close it is to sea level today. It will flood early in the process.

Needless to say, there won’t be a Asian Century.

. . .

How Much Should We Worry?

So, should we worry about sea level rise of “several meters in a century”? I would answer this way:

1. Everything in the climate prediction world is wrong to the slow slide. Things are happening faster and sooner than anyone predicts. For example, in a paper titled “Deep Adaptation,” Professor Jem Bendell writes:

   For instance, the IPCC previously assigned a probability of 17% for crossing the 1.5 °C global ambient warming mark by 2030, which underestimated a few key factors, which “bring forward the estimated date of 1.5 °C of warming to around 2030, with the 2 °C boundary reached by 2045” (Xu, et al. 2018). The natural fluctuations in the Pacific “raises the odds of blasting through 1.5 °C by 2025 to at least 10%”.

   The latest prediction is a 66% chance of crossing at least once above +1.5°C before 2027. I discussed the tendency, to be wrong to the slow side, here: “Erring on the Side of Least Drama.”

2. Sea level rise of “several meters in a century” places the problem of relocating coastal cities like New York in this generation. If the estimate is wrong and we do act anyway, it’s undeniably good. If it’s right and we don’t act at all, the country collapses before us as we watch.

3. Even if it takes a century or longer for these predictions to come true, they will come true. No one with power is slowing climate change. They’re offering excuses instead, or appealing to the manly virtues of “energy independence” — meaning, more fracked oil to sell; more money for the rich who control it; more warming for everyone else as the price of that wealth. The day will come when children of earth will scramble like mice from a burning barn, which they set on fire themselves — into a burning world they also lit up. Disbelieve that prediction when our betters act differently.

4. Even if this generation escapes and successfully passes the whole climate disaster on to its children, how is that not a world-historical act of shame? What does it say of us, if we condemn our kin to chaos and slavery so our own ability to eat more than we need, drive more than we should, consume the goods of the earth just to throw them away, can be preserved till we ourselves are dead? Nero on his couch of gold deserves more honor than a generation that sells out its own to save a life of excess for those who have it.

Single-use plastic. 380 million tons of this stuff are produced each near, then immediately thrown away. Modern life.

But frankly and ultimately, I don’t blame the many — the billions who struggle to walk the earth each day — for the state of our world. I blame the few — the thousands who live to control — for blocking the rest of us from fixing it.

We live to serve the few in so many ways. We’ll serve them in this as well, till we decide to stop."