Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Climate Change Forum Tipping Point Looming?

Most "tipping points" are hidden within the complexities of a system, and only become apparent after they have been passed through. After a tipping point, the difficulty in reversing course becomes increasingly obvious--and that serves to highlight and clarify what constituted the tipping point.

Occasionally a tipping point can be seen coming in advance. This new information seems to qualify as one of those rare cases. [31 March 2013]

Greening of Arctic will be dramatic, say scientists
...no doubt many will see "greening" of the Arctic as a good thing, but the maintenance of our Temperate Climate depends upon the ice at the poles.
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"This has a positive feedback [vicious cycle] to climate warming: the more vegetation there is, the more warming will occur."

Isn't science funny? Positive feedback is generally bad, since it leads to runaway effects. Negative feedback is good, in general, since it prevents vicious circles and leads to stability.

So when we can see a runaway cycle such as tree growth and albedo loss, looming on the horizon, shouldn't we recognize that as a tipping point?

~

sam

I have crossed over to the other side of the fence.

I believe that we were heading into a ice age in the 1800's
due to the number of volcanic events and our population growth and industrialization is what has
prevented the onslaught of a ice age.

although we are still heading in that direction in my opinion,
we now have the ability to move underground to avoid the cold.

note: in the chart the year 2019 is colder than today.

[img]http://www.theplaintruth.com/.a/6a00e554d79b028833011570f2a609970b-800wi[/img]

The other side? Huh? anti-physics? anti-religion? over to incomplete science? over to gay... or straight? That's okay, I don't hang much significance on labels or defined positions anyway; reality is what it is, however we define or translate it.

...the plaaaneTruth DotCom? Really? Eh, that don't sound biased.... All that variation in your linked picture--those "wild swings" in climate--look like a flat line (75 MINOR swings) when you compare how climate normally varies between glacial and temperate, or temperate and tropical conditions. ...and I'd prefer the complete complexity--the nuanced, true bits--over the "plain" bits of truth. History, and perspective, can teach us much if we will learn.

Certainly there have been more than 75 volcanoes over the past 4500 years; and fairly randomly over both the "warming" and "cooling" blips; haven't there been? And volcanoes add only a transient fluctuation to the climate. Only CO2 is "forever" (well technically, only 24/7/365/ year after year/ decade after decade/ century after century/ for many millennia/ and also from pole to pole), unlike volcanoes or any other climate forcer.
===

Sure.... You're right about the "Little Ice Age" thing, but what is your point? Haven't you read the book, 1491? ...& learned about the "die-offs" and "rewilding" of the Western Hemisphere during that period? History is revealing.

We've been staving off a decline toward ice-age conditions for thousands of years--fairly unintentionally--as populations developed agriculture, silviculture, and pyroculture. We've been oxidizing enough carbon to counteract the natural ice-age trend since the Copper Age, or even since rice cultivation became established, and increasingly ever since. [know of Wm. Ruddiman?] ...DotEdu...
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8014.html

or: http://cires.colorado.edu/events/lectures/ruddiman/

or: http://hol.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/12/24/0959683610386983.abstract
Providing a historical climatic perspective and rationale for building soil carbon and forest....
Kaplan J. et al 2010
Holocene carbon emissions as a result of anthropogenic land cover change
Anthropogenic activities led to the stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentrations at a level that made the world substantially warmer than it otherwise would be....


It is only since we have overcompensated for the natural cooling trend that we could easily see the connection. But now that we comprehend that connection between how we manage the carbon balance (between the oxidized carbon in the air and the reduced carbon in the soil... or fossilized lower down), we could choose to intentionally manage our resources in such a way as to maintain whatever climate we prefer.

The Arctic ice cover was crucial for the evolution of a temperate climate in the mid-latitudes. Without arctic ice, the mid-latitudes will become tropical again--as during the Eocene. Our agriculture evolved in the relatively stable, temperate, mid-latitudes; and our food supply won't grow well in tropical, variable, or higher latitude conditions, which will become our predominate choice after the Arctic becomes temperate. GMOs?

Overcompensating for a pending glacial cycle, by rocketing off toward a tropical and acidified world, is an over-reaction; wouldn't it seem? Plus, it'd be such a shame to undo 10-30 million years of intricately evolved biodiversity. That is also beyond when our branch on the tree sprouted. We shouldn't push the world to lose its hard-won, long-evolved, cryosphere.
===

Paul, maybe in Europe, where Ice-Age conditions could easily develop regionally (as the cryosphere warms and readjusts), they will need to "move underground;" but there is no danger of another global Ice Age, as long as CO2 levels are above the 300-350 ppm range--regardless of what the Milankovitch Cycle could do. Do you know about some other cooling forcer of that magnitude?

~

so, basically your agreeing with me then sam.

I was just pointing out that our current ice age that we would
have already been plunged into has been postponed and you seem
to agree with me.

don't worry about it we don't have enough fossil fuels left to
do any real harm to the climate or to seriously deflect the ice age.

what we should really worry about is the cost of fossil fuels
becoming too high for 3rd world nations to purchase.

china has done a great job of postponing the cold using coal
however china is located in a position that could be recieving
extreme cold that could inhibit its ability to produce the needed co2 for the winter months.

so, a new place to produce the co2 must be found , perhaps
Africa would serve as the new place.

Australia will probably become an ice sheet during its winter months , if not it might be capable of serving this role.

you don't seem to think that volcanic activity has a great affect on the climate , but in fact the dust that volcanoes
throw into the atmosphere cause an immediate effect globally
in temperature fluctuations.

these fluctuations can linger for decades.

sort of like a wave.

charts are nice but they don't really show why temperatures
fluctuate they only show the fluctuations.

but they are handy to have to try and determine the reasons why
temperature fluctuations occur.

you act as if you didn't understand my "other side of the fence" , so to put it in simpler terms , I no longer believe that we need to curtail fossil fuels usage , I believe we should encourage fossil fuels usage.

this is my position , you don't need to agree with me.

and I don't feel a need to defend my position , after all I'm
always right but the climate is weird and sometimes it takes me awhile to put all the pieces together.

don't be upset



yes there is!
sudden swings of inadequate co2 levels could cool the earth
too quickly and this causes volcanic activity that could bring on an ice age.

understand that our human co2 injection is why we are not already in an ice age.

but it wont be enough , we can't really avoid it , we can only
adjust around it.

Paul, you are so right... and so close to getting the big picture.

Look at the past 50 Myr especially--when mammals (especially the herbivorous megafauna), grasses, and temperate soils first evolved in the mid-latitudes. And over 500 Myr CO2 levels kept the planet warm enough while the sun was cooler. And the planet warmed, generally, as the sun warmed--except when life would find some evolutionary mechanism to radically pull the CO2 out of the atmosphere (as when trees evolved, but before wood-rot fungus evolved) to create a relatively short IceAge era (often demarking extinction/diversity events and geologic ages). See also "oceanic anoxic event"

You understand that Milankovitch forcing only changes the distribution of total solar input (heating), but not the amount of total solar insolation (heating), to "bring on" or cause the "current" Pleistocene glacial advances. Right?

But the past 50 Myr (with the sun more warmed up--after 500 Myr of life evolving on land and producing soils of various tropical, leached, and fungal/bacterial slimey, mucky nature/characters) has witnessed the evolution of a new soil type (temperate, arable soil), which helped store the excess CO2 that is not needed in our atmosphere anymore to keep the planet warm, after the sun itself warmed enough... from a Gaia sort of perspective.

Temperate soils stored so much carbon (along with the newly frozen high-latitude paleosols) that the planet cooled enough to establish a new Ice Age pattern a few million years ago. The Milankovitch cycle has dominated the pattern of ice cover feedbacks, relative to the background forcers such as continental position, mountain range growth, ocean current changes, etc., until we interrupted the pattern through drastic soil and forest oxidation--commonly called "land-use changes."


...only the past 10 millennia average a level slope. Does any other 10 millennial period (or even 5 millennial period) come close to averaging a level slope?

But in one short century we have upset that long-evolved, rhizospheric thermostat, and "locked in" almost 30 Myr of climate forcing. That pushes us way beyond the "near Ice Age" conditions that first made a temperate climate possible in the mid-latitudes. That pushes us back to globally tropical conditions (except at the poles where temperate conditions can develop). That is where the temperate soils first evolved!

... http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13111
"Understanding Earth's Deep Past: Lessons for Our Climate Future" ...it's free....

Paul, only if we get CO2 back below 250 ppm for some decades or centuries, and wait for the right phase of the Milankovitch cycle, will we be in danger of restoring the global ice-age pattern of the past few Myr--the Pleistocene. Short of that, we will intentionally manage carbon or we won't; and either way, temperate or tropical, we are out of the Pleistocene and at the dawn of the Anthropocene.

~

not a level slope but a steady slope downwards before the methane clathrate release that warmed the earth 11 millenia ago.

if you will note there was a level slope around 180 millenia ago when avg temps were -8 degrees below.

if it were not for that release the earth would still be in an ice age.

that release is what stabilized the climate and methane is
one of the most potent global warmers.

the warming brought more abundant oxygen breathing life.

the added co2 that oxygen breathing life released has helped the plant life to thrive.

the abundant plant life has the ability to store co2 as you noted and as the plant life dies and rots more methane is released to keep the planet warm.

I think the earth understands the need for climate stability
more than we do.

and although we work against the earths efforts, the earth along with the plant and animal life has achieved the current level of balance with a little help from us but
our changes are just a blip as you say that only seems to us to have greatly changed the climate.

the Antarctic ice is advancing early again this year by 5 days.
it has been advancing early for several years.

maybe the correct place would be a place that would deposit some of the global warming soot onto the Antarctic to maintain our current level slope.

Africa , Australia , maybe even the Antarctic itself.

I know it sounds manipulative but look at the chart , we were not capable of doing that type of thing before , we are now.

we could do what the earth and plant life cannot to help to
maintain the level slope.

And we can also take steps to cushion the consequences, attenuate that terrible future, and ameliorate our blame. We can undo much of the climate heating that is "locked in" to that future scenario. We can't "cut" our way out of these problems, but we can "grow" our way into a new frontier, the rhizosphere. There is a sustainable way forward into the future!
===

Soils store thousands of gigatonnes of labile carbon, and soils exchange over 100 gigatonnes of carbon yearly... and we currently manage soils with little regard to carbon loss. So we have an opportunity to intentionally manage soil carbon--shifting the naturally occurring agricultural annual flux by just a few percent--to compensate for our 10 gigatonnes of annual emissions. Basically it is utilizing photosynthesis to pull excess oxidized carbon from our atmosphere, and feed more root exudates to the soil. [...just search rhizosphere, and/or "root exudates"]

Pursuing this path for several generations will allow future generations to restore the Arctic Ice Cap, and thus maintain mid-latitude, temperate-climate parameters; hopefully before tropical conditions establish new evolutionary trends in the mid-latitudes.

Biosequestration, enriching soil carbon, offers a 10-fold type of advantage over cutting emissions. Soil-based biosequestration has the capacity to offset current emissions and suck down past emissions, restoring the balance between oxidized carbon in the air (CO2) and organic carbon in the soil (humus, rhizomes, etc.). Plus, co-benefits realized through restoring enriched soils also help solve many socioeconomic problems, health problems, and ecosystem resource problems--most of the Millennium Development Goals and Food Security Steps.

~

I don't plan to get in on this discussion as is, but I do want to comment on one of Paul's comments.


The Earth doesn't understand anything, it doesn't care about anything, and it doesn't need anything. The Earth is an inanimate body that has things happen to it.

I just wanted to point out that anthropomorphizing inanimate objects can lead to misunderstandings.

Bill Gill

"You will never find a real Human being - Even in a mirror."

Anthropomorphizing some people can lead to misunderstandings as well.

I'm sure we all understand that the planet isn't self-conscious. I think Paul's comment comparing the planet's competence with our species' own was appropriate, especially considering I had already brought up that perspective to explain how a recently evolved soil could "store excess CO2 that is not needed in our atmosphere anymore to keep the planet warm, after the sun itself warmed enough... from a Gaia sort of perspective."

I agree the planet is more competent than is our individual species. In fact the planet could be seen as competent enough to "evolve" a new, "needed" species; especially a species that could utilize fire as a tool to change albedo, as well as the balance of labile biospheric carbon, on a regional and global scale. Nature abhors an empty niche.

Without our signature traits (Fire, Ag, & Tool Use), Ice Age conditions likely would become relatively permanent, extending farther toward the equator as more and more carbon became incorporated into in the newly-predominant, temperate soils. It's as if the planet needed a "caretaker" or a land manager, and so created a fire-wielding, land-plowing species to moderate the Milankovitch influences.

http://farmersforthefuture.ning.com/profiles/blogs/so-god-made-a-farmer


p.s. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13111
"By the end of this century, without a reduction in emissions, atmospheric CO2 is projected to increase to levels that Earth has not experienced for more than 30 million years."

~

Again, the planet isn't competent. It doesn't make any effort to do any thing. All it does is exist in response to natural law. It will not do anything about carbon. The carbon dioxide level can go up or down, it can go completely away or the atmosphere can become 100% carbon dioxide and the planet will just keep on rolling around the Sun. If you are thinking about various life forms controlling the carbon dioxide level, they don't make any effort to do that. They still just exist and live or die based on their adaptation to the environment they are living in. The only species that worries about and tries to control the carbon level is Homo Sapiens.

Bill Gill

Right, not "competent...." I should have specified that I was agreeing with Paul's comment:
"I think the earth understands the need for climate stability more than we do."

Clearly (isn't it?) "competent" is used adopting a Gaia-theory perspective. [Lovelock, 1990: "....Lovelock stated "Nowhere in our writings do we express the idea that planetary self-regulation is purposeful, or involves foresight or planning by the biota".]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis

Gaia theory is especially useful in today's world of cross-disciplinary and integrated studies. It's hard to appreciate a complex system like soil, without knowing basic biology, physics, chemistry, geology, genetics, paleontology, and enough biochemistry and biophysics to form a comprehensive picture. To appreciate something described in the literature [QK644 .R445 2007; p.67] as "the rhizo-organism," the Gaia perspective, and consequent anthropomorphizing, seems appropriate enough.

A network of "simple robust chaotic systems" [good search term] will exhibit many lifelike qualities.
The planet doesn't have to be competent in order to behave as if it were competent.
But isn't this good news otherwise; about the ability and capacity for soils to be enriched, to provide co-benefits, and to "buffer" (or alter the balance of) CO2 levels?

~istm

Bill

when I compared the earth with humans by saying that
I think the earth understands the need for climate stability more than we do.

I was talking about everything on earth , in the earth and including all life other than humans.

you probably wouldn't agree that your brain need's any assistance from the rest of your body in order to function also.

is your brain just competent all by itself?

I could possibly say that you as a whole are a competent person.

but I could not say that your competency is in itself a singularity that needs no assistance.

just like I could say that your competency is the same as
the earths competency.

no single part or element can be considered to be competent
because all parts depend on all the other parts.


this is why I think that the earth understands the need for climate stability more than we do.

lets consider a single human cell.

inside that single cell there is more competency and understanding
than what can be found in the library of knowledge contained in your brain.

and that single human cell is made up of billions of atoms that are considered to be objects as you say.

sam

I like the link you posted ,it pretty much explain's what we are discussing and is very interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis

And once again I say that the earth doesn't understand anything. If you could say that the earth has any purpose it is to exist. It has existed now for 4.5 billion years, and during that time there have been massive changes. If the earth understood anything it would understand that change is normal and inevitable. And if you want to talk about climate stability don't talk about the earths climate. I believe that the climate was relatively stable for several billions of years. It was very unstable for quite a while, when it was covered with active volcanoes and being bombarded by celestial objects. Then it stabilized for a good while until life changed the climate by producing enough oxygen for more complex life forms to evolve. Since then there have been many changes. The oxygen level actually reached 35% about 300 million years ago. (Wikipedia). Since then it has dropped to the current level of about 21%. That doesn't sound much like climate stability.

Bill Gill

....thanks Paul, I'm surprised you didn't already know about the Gaia perspective; it must have just been intuitive for you.
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Stability is relative. We need the variability that generates the seasons and the ebb-n-flow of hydologic resources. But even that is so variable that prediction is difficult. And even if the weather was much more volatile and unpredictable, the average could still be fairly stable.

Bill, you seem to see the long evolution of our planet's atmosphere, especially after oxygen production came to be so significant--after the land plants gained a predominance during the last 10% of the planet's history. It is during the last 1% of Earth's time, roughly the past 50 Myr, that a network of simple robust chaotic systems co-evolved enough to support a broad mammalian diversity. It was during this period that enough stability arose, that the seasonality of temperate zones first became regular; the four seasons are a "recently evolved" manifestation!

The past 5Myr, the most recent 1/10 of 1% of Earth's time, saw the development of stability so sensitive that slight orbital variations were regularly magnified by a relatively predictable planetary supersystem of climatic and biologic feedbacks. And during the last 10% of that time, some hominids learned to use predictability as an evolutionary benefit. For some it worked well enough that....

During the last 10% of that time, the past 50kyr, tool use based on fire technology became a quality defining a new species. And agriculture came to predominate during the last 10% of that time, the past 5kyr. Then during the last 10% of that time, the past 500 years, the Columbus legacy has brought new levels of interaction to the "recently introduced" and evolving systems of fire-based, agricultural land-management regimes.

And 50 years ago, the last 10% of that time, the "Green Revolution" brought land management to a new level of influence within that long-evolved, bio-climatic supersystem. Hilarity ensues.
===

So what is my point? I'm trying to show how each successive 10% (roughly, in general) of earth's history tends to "ratchet" biodiversity-based stability upwards, increasingly becoming more stable. And the past 5 years (the last 1/10 of a % of....) has seen a new ratchet tooth marked. We've become self-aware, in terms of our influence upon the biodiversity-based climate system complexities, and can now see how our management of land and carbon resources affects biodiversity and chemical equilibria on a global scale.

Also, it seems empowering to realize that we can recognize a pattern or trend or direction to the evolution of biodiversity-based stability. Seeing that it is not totally random, except for meteors and a few other parameters undoubtedly, allows us to make choices. Understanding the significance of "The Rhizosphere" [2007, ISBN: 9780120887750], and how the rhizosphere (soil plus....) is now as influential as atmosphere and water and light, should allow us to make better choices.

The stability of the Arctic, as a major part in that network of "simple robust chaotic systems," should be paramount in our decision process.

~

p.s. ...does this "picture" work?

Sam, I made a quick check of your link. To the extent that there is an interplay among all of the elements of the Earths subsystems it may be acceptable. This interplay may contribute to a more stable environment. When it comes to suggesting that the Earth is a self regulating system I have to question that. That tends to imply that there is a purpose to the interplay. In fact it is an emergent property of the earth and its biosphere. There is nothing that provides a guarantee that the stability will be maintained. It may be particularly subject to massive perturbations from comet collisions and massive volcanic activity. It may be subject to very subtle events that can massively unbalance the system, if we can say it was ever in balance.

What I am trying to say is that implying any kind of intention to the system is inappropriate. The way the system works is a result of random physical events.

Bill Gill

bill



LOL, should/can I talk about the climate stability of Mars perhaps?





where in the graph above is the "stable for several billions of years."

could you please please point out the time frame of the several billions of years of stability in the graph.



between which 2 point's on the graph could we find "quite a while"?



please point out the time frame of the "good while" on the graph


please point out the time frame's of the
unstable quite a while
stable for several billions of years
stabilized for a good while

so that we can compare them with other charts.



bill, the earths climate never has been stable.
it has reached a degree of stability several times.
as recent as 1.8 million years ago the climate reached
a degree of stability as shown in the above chart.

the below is a absolutely astonishing graph that show's the degree of stability that the climate has reached today along
with previous attempts at stability.



notice the last attempt ( apx 130,000 yr ago ) there was an almost level co2 stabilization which was not enough to prevent
the following ice age.

today our higher co2 level's are maintaining the temperature levels from plummeting preventing or stalling the next ice age from occurring.

at this point you either cry troll or back out claiming that
you have expended enough of your valuable time on this thread.

or some other troll will jump in and take over for you.

So I was wrong, sue me. But I am glad that you do agree that the Earth's climate has never been stable, and we probably can't expect it to be particularly stable in the future. Now we can do some to help stabilize it, but the Earth itself doesn't directly contribute to any stability that has existed. So my contention that trying to say that the Earth understands anything is still valid.

Bill Gill

ps, nothing to do with my reply, but when I hit the preview post button the text didn't wrap at the right margin the way it usually does. Then I noticed that the first graph in Paul's post, where it was quoted below the reply editing box, had been much enlarged and went far beyond the normal right margin of my browser. So my reply text went the same difference. That is a bit weird and I have no idea why it happened.

BG