Abstract
This chapter is an extension of the preceding one. It examines some scenarios of accelerating climate change and sea level rise resulting from action by two fundamental mechanisms: climate feedbacks and tipping points. Both mechanisms explain, for example, the Hothouse Earth hypothesis (Stephen et al. 2018), which has become all the more likely given the combined influence of at least five closely interconnected positive climate feedback mechanisms on the magnitude and speed of warming. One aspect of these climate feedbacks deserves special attention: the ongoing processes that release carbon, especially methane, into the atmosphere at high latitudes. Some studies in recent years project melting of the permafrost (land and subsea) that will be faster, if not much faster, than previously supposed. Climate feedback loops and tipping points also accelerate sea level rise. Currently (2012–2017), we observe a global mean sea level (GMSL) rise of 5 mm per year. How much the GMSL rise will be by 2030, 2050, and 2100 is uncertain. In 2017, NOAA raised the upper limit of this rise to 24 cm, 63 cm, and 2.5 meters, respectively. Hansen et al. (2016) project a GMSL rise of “several meters over a timescale of 50–150 years,” based primarily on the amplifying feedbacks caused by ongoing thawing in Antarctica and Greenland. It is now estimated (CoastalDEM) that land currently home to 300 million people will fall below the elevation of an average annual coastal flood by 2050.
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Notes
- 1.
“Climate forcing has to do with the amount of energy we receive from the sun, and the amount of energy we radiate back into space. Variances in climate forcing are determined by physical influences on the atmosphere such as orbital and axial changes as well as the amount of greenhouse gas in our atmosphere.” http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/radiative-climate-forcing.
- 2.
See Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE), Epistolarium Moralium ad Lucilius 91,6: Esset aliquod inbecillitatis nostrae sollacium rerumque nostrarum si tam tarde perirent cuncta quant fiunt: nunc incrementa lente exeunt, festinatur in damnun (“It would be some consolation for the feebleness of our selves and our works if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.” Translated by Richard Gummere).
- 3.
Cf. G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline. Part I: Science of Logic (1817), par. 108, article: “Measure.” Translated by Klaus Brinkmann and Daniel O. Dahlstrom. Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 170
- 4.
See “The ‘Doomed Earth’ Controversy.” Kavli Conversations on Science Communication at NYU. Michael Mann in conversation with David Wallace-Wells. Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, 30/XI/2017. https://journalism.nyu.edu/about-us/event/2017-fall/the-doomed-earth-controversy/.
- 5.
The term tipping element, introduced by Timothy Lenton and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (2007), describes “those components of the Earth System that are at least sub-continental in scale and can be switched — under particular conditions — into a qualitatively different state by small perturbations.” See also Lenton et al. 2015.
- 6.
See also the UNEP GEO5 Assessment, 2012 p. 74. http://www.unep.org/geo/sites/unep.org.geo/files/documents/geo5_report_full_en_0.pdf>.
- 7.
This is for the values of the radiative forcing of methane relative to the global warming potential (GWP) of CO2, adopted by IPCC/AR4, based on G. Myhre. See “Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis,” chapter 2.10.2: Direct Global Warming Potentials.
- 8.
“The major CH4 sinks are oxidation by OH* in the troposphere, biological CH4 oxidation in drier soil, and loss to the stratosphere” (IPCC AR4 7.4.1.1 Biogeochemistry and Budgets of Methane).
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
Methane hydrates (CH4·5.75H2O or 4CH4·23H2O), also called methane clathrates, are solid structured cage-like substances in which a large amount of methane is trapped. They form a crystal structure of water similar to ice.
- 12.
See IPCC AR4 Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis. Chapter 4.7.2.4 Subsea Permafrost: “Although the potential release of methane trapped within subsea permafrost may provide a positive feedback to climate warming, available observations do not permit an assessment of changes that might have occurred.”
- 13.
See, for instance, David Armstrong McKay and Rachael Avery, “Fact-check: is an Arctic ‘Methane Bomb’ about to go off?”, climatetippingpoints.info, 13/V/2019.
- 14.
See, for instance, Peter Wadhams, “Arctic Amplification, Climate Changing, Global Warming. New Challenges from the top of the world.” Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, Milan, 12/V/2015 (YouTube), and Paul Beckwith’s many videos on abrupt climate change, mostly in the Arctic. See, for instance, “Jaw-Dropping Methane Levels up to 9 times Global Average Measured Recently Over Arctic Shelf” (two parts), 10/X/2019 (YouTube).
- 15.
A water column is a conceptual column of water from the surface of a sea, river, or lake to the bottom sediment.
- 16.
Thermokarst is “the process by which characteristic landforms result from the thawing of ice-rich permafrost or the melting of massive ice” (Shakhova et al. 2019).
- 17.
Cf. “Siberian Methane Release is on the Rise, and That’s VERY Frightening.” Nature World News, 31/XII/2014
- 18.
See AMEG Strategic Plan 12/IV/2012 http://a-m-e-g.blogspot.com/.
- 19.
See IPCC 31st Session, Bali 26–29 October 2009, p. 90: “Some thresholds that all would consider dangerous have no support in the literature as having a non-negligible chance of occurring. For instance, a ‘runaway greenhouse effect’—analogous to Venus— appears to have virtually no chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities.”
- 20.
Cf. “Seas may rise 2.3 metres per degree of global warming: report.” World Bulletin, 13/VII/2013
- 21.
Cf. NOAA, Global Sea level Rise Scenarios for the U.S. National Climate Assessment, 6/XII/2012
- 22.
Cf. “Trend watch,” Nature, 518, 26/II/2015, p. 461
- 23.
Cf. Global Trend. Forced Displacements in 2016. UNHCR http://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2016/.
- 24.
Cf. “Flood Risk at Nuclear Power Plants.” Union of Concerned Scientists
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Marques, L. (2020). Climate Feedbacks and Tipping Points. In: Capitalism and Environmental Collapse. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47527-7_8
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