The Mandelbear's Musings

Tragedy:

A drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances.

-- definition of tragedy by The Free Dictionary (emphasis mine)

I'm really not sure where to put the cut tag on this post. Today I'm talking about Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy [PDF], by Professor Jem Bendell. The author has a link to resources on emotional support in the sidebar of his home page. As I said back on Sunday, it's a pulling-no-punches prediction of the likely consequences of global warming.

Links and some commentary have been seen elsewhere on my DW reading list (fayanora, siliconshaman, ysabetwordsmith). ysabetwordsmith points out that Very little of this is actually new; what's new is that some people are actually listening this time.

It's pretty clear that the paper is an attempt to shock enough people into listening to make a difference. Um... is this the right place to mention that this is The Climate Change Paper So Depressing It's Sending People to Therapy? Probably.

Okay, I think that's enough of a warning. Please consider your headspace before proceeding, and maybe find a cat or a stuffie to hold, because it's that bad. ( We are very screwed. )

There's some support from this study, Deadly heatwaves could affect 74 percent of the world’s population (The paper is under a paywall, but the abstract is free.) The maps are frightening. That 74% figure is for 2100 if emissions continue to rise at their current rate. With "aggressive" reduction (and I don't know whether that means to zero emissions -- I doubt it) it's 48%. And see above about feedback. And don't forget Bitcoin!

The same group points out that Greenhouse gas [is] triggering more changes than we can handle because it's more than just heat waves -- there are other changes going on that are usually studied separately rather than together.

Scared yet? I don't know -- nobody knows, really -- whether Bendell's most extreme predictions are true, nor what the timescale will really turn out to be. The bottom line, though, is things are worse than most people think, and getting worse faster than anticipated in the studies that led to the 2-degree rise by 2100 target.

I don't profess to understand much of the "Deep Adaptation" section of the paper. It gets into politics, sociology, and psychology, none of which are my strong points. But the main point is that we need to make drastic changes at a societal level, based on the certainty that things will get worse, and the high probability that they will get much worse. We might be able to save civilization, if we can stop making things worse and adapt quickly enough to the changes we can't stop.

If we can't, well, at least the tardigrades will probably make it through. I'm not so sure about the cockroaches.

siliconshaman points to this article which says, in part,

Ominous reports are leaking past the BP Gulf salvage operation news blackout that the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico may be about to reach biblical proportions.

[...]

Methane is now streaming through the porous, rocky seabed at an accelerated rate and gushing from the borehole of the first relief well. The EPA is on record that Rig #1 is releasing methane, benzene, hydrogen sulfide and other toxic gases. Workers there now wear advanced protection including state-of-the-art, military-issued gas masks.

Reports, filtering through from oceanologists and salvage workers in the region, state that the upper level strata of the ocean floor is succumbing to greater and greater pressure. That pressure is causing a huge expanse of the seabed-estimated by some as spreading over thousands of square miles surrounding the BP wellhead-to bulge. Some claim the seabed in the region has risen an astounding 30 feet.

I agree with siliconshaman that calling it a potentially "mass extinction level" event is almost certainly exagerated. But things don't look good for the states and countries around the gulf. Maybe not biblical, but at least a good disaster novel.

Note that methane is not only a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2, it's also highly flammable. Can you say "fuel-air explosive"? I knew you could.

A tip of the hat to this post by ysabetwordsmith.