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The Last Drop: Confronting the possibility of a global catastrophe
Michael Specter, New Yorker
…Water is often seen as the most basic and accessible element of life, and seemingly the most plentiful. For every gallon in rivers or lakes, fifty more lie buried in vast aquifers beneath the surface of the earth. Yet at least since the cities of ancient Sumeria went to war over control of their rivers-long before tales of Moses parting the Red Sea or the Flood described in the Bible-water has been a principal source of conflict. (The word “rivals” even has it roots in fights over water, coming from the Latin rivalis, for “one taking from the same stream as another.”)
By 2050, there will be at least nine billion people on the planet, the great majority of them in developing countries. If water were spread evenly across the globe, there might be enough for everyone. But rain often falls in the least desirable places at the most disadvantageous times. Delhi gets fewer than forty days of rain each year-all in less than four months. In other Indian cities, the situation is worse. Somehow, though, the country has to sustain nearly twenty per cent of the earth’s population with four per cent of its water. China has less water than Canada-and forty times as many people. With wells draining aquifers far faster than they can be replenished by rain, the water table beneath Beijing has fallen nearly two hundred feet in the past twenty years.
Most of the world’s great civilizations grew up around rivers, and few forces have so clearly shaped the destiny of human populations. When full and flowing, rivers have brought prosperity to the cities and nations they feed.
(13 Oct 2006 issue)
Long, superbly written piece.
Interview with the author. -BA
Atlantic current came to halt for 10 days in 2004
James Randerson, The Guardian
Scientists have uncovered more evidence for a dramatic weakening in the vast ocean current that gives Britain its relatively balmy climate by dragging warm water northwards from the tropics. The slowdown, which climate modellers have predicted will follow global warming, has been confirmed by the most detailed study yet of ocean flow in the Atlantic.
Most alarmingly, the data reveal that a part of the current, which is usually 60 times more powerful than the Amazon river, came to a temporary halt during November 2004.
… Warm water brought to Europe’s shores raises the temperature by as much as 10C in some places and without it the continent would be much colder and drier.
Researchers are not sure yet what to make of the 10-day hiatus. “We’d never seen anything like that before and we don’t understand it. We didn’t know it could happen,” said Harry Bryden, at the National Oceanography Centre, in Southampton, who presented the findings to a conference in Birmingham on rapid climate change.
… Lloyd Keigwin, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Massachusetts, in the US, described the temporary shutdown as “the most abrupt change in the whole [climate] record”.
He added: “It only lasted 10 days. But suppose it lasted 30 or 60 days, when do you ring up the prime minister and say let’s start stockpiling fuel? How can we rule out a longer one next year?”
(27 Oct 2006)
UPDATE (Nov 1). Jerome a Paris today quotes Norman, a fellow writer at European Tribune, who maintains that The Gulf Stream is -NOT- Shutting Down:
…the decrease observed in Bryden’s work of 2005 falls under a normal variation within the measurements. Meaning: the decrease could simply be part of a natural fluctuation – and not be part of a significant slowdown. As the RealClimate honestly reports, the Guardian reporter missed out on that important bit of nuance. And the myth of an actual slowdown perseveres. Not that a permanent thermo-haline shutdown is inconceivable – it has happened in geologic history – but right now, good old alertness is needed, and not panic stories.
Rasslin’ swamp gas
David Archer, Real Climate
In the early 1990’s, in defiance of IPCC projections, the methane concentration in the atmosphere abruptly stopped rising, and has remained nearly constant since then. Methane is a crouching tiger in the carbon cycle, with potentially enough available as hydrates and from peats to really clobber the Earth’s heat budget. The big question is, will atmospheric methane start rising again?
Climate impact of methane release
The climate impact of methane differs from that of CO2 in that methane is a transient gas, while CO2 accumulates. The climate impact of methane release depends on whether it’s released quickly or slowly, relative to the methane lifetime.
If it’s released quickly, over just a few years or less, there would be a decade-timescale warming spike, followed by a recovery toward the lesser warming from the CO2 that the methane would oxidize into. The amount of available methane is staggering. If just 10% of the ocean hydrate reservoir were to escape to the atmosphere within a few years, it would be the radiative equivalent of a ten times increase in atmospheric CO2, truly catastrophic.
(30 Oct 2006)
The Thirteenth Tipping Point
Julia Whitty, Mother Jones
…IN 2004, JOHN SCHELLNHUBER, distinguished science adviser at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the United Kingdom, identified 12 global-warming tipping points, any one of which, if triggered, will likely initiate sudden, catastrophic changes across the planet. Odds are you’ve never heard of most of these tipping points, even though your entire genetic legacy—your children, your grandchildren, and beyond—may survive or not depending on their status.
…So what will it take to trigger what we might call the 13th tipping point: the shift in human perception from personal denial to personal responsibility? Without a 13th tipping point, we can’t hope to avoid global mayhem. With it, we can attempt to put into action what we profess: that we actually care about our children’s and grandchildren’s futures.
…Recent research out of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium shows that cockroaches live in a democracy composed of individuals with equal standing that consult to reach consensus on decisions affecting the whole group. These decisions are made nonhierarchically and in the absence of perfect knowledge. Somehow these simple creatures balance the inevitable conflicts between cooperation and competition in ways that benefit all.
(November/December 2006 Issue)
Long and fascinating article which delves into both Schellnhuber’s 12 tipping points, and the evolutionary way out of the “prisoner’s dilemma” by exploring game theory and cockroaches! Ran Prieur comments that expecting humans to achieve this in the space of a few years is overly optimistic.
-AF
Nine ‘Laws’ of Ecological Bloodymindedness
A. Duncan Brown, Feed or Feedback (book)
BartB on Wednesday November 01, 2006 at 6:52 AM PDT wrote in a comment on The Oil Drum:
I like to share with you the Nine ‘Laws’ of Ecological Bloodymindedness form the work of A. Duncan Brown. In his book Feed or Feedback he shows our failure to understand those laws. He is especially concerned about phosphorus cycle with our current agricultural practices.
We, humans, have to find behaviour that comply with these ecological laws. A paradigma shift is needed. This will be the challenge for this century so we can deal with PO and GW.
Bart
—-
The First Law
For every action on a complex, interactive, dynamic system, there are unintended and unexpected consequences. In general, the unintended consequences are recognised later than those that are intended.
The Second Law
Any system in a state of positive feedback will destroy itself unless a limit is placed on the flow of energy through that system.
The Third Law
Any sedentary community, by virtue of its sedentism, will encounter problems of sanitation. The manner in which sanitation is managed will affect the manner in which supporting agriculture is managed.
The Fourth Law
For every increment in the agricultural surplus there is a corresponding increment in the volume of urban sewage.
The Fifth Law
Stability or resilience in ecosystems requires that all essential reactions within the system function within ranges of rates that are mutually compatible
The Sixth Law
The long-term survival of any species of organism requires that all processes essential for the viability of that species function at rates that are compatible with the overall functioning of the ecosystem of which that species is a part.
The Seventh Law
If any species of animal should develop the mental and physical capacity consciously to manage the ecosystem of which it is a part, and proceeds to do so, then the long-term survival of that species will require, as a minimum, that it understands the rate limits of all processes essential to the functioning of that ecosystem and that it operates within those limit.
The Eighth Law
Long-term stability or ‘sustainability’ in ecosystems (including agricultural systems) is dependent in part upon the recycling of nutrient elements wholly within the system or upon their replenishment from a renewable source, provided such replenishment is not itself dependent upon a finite source of energy.
The Ninth Law
If a population continues to grow exponentially it will eventually consume essential resources faster than they can be replenished. The provision of or access to additional resources will extend the ‘life’ of such resources, and hence the duration of growth of the population, only to a very small extent.
(1 Nov 2006)
Why haven’t we heard more about A. Duncan Brown’s 2004 book: “Feed or Feedback
Agriculture, Population Dynamics and the State of the Planet”? The original item at the publishers has more on the book and writer, but on the rest of the Web, very little. One exception: a Review in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy -BA
