Wednesday, June 26, 2019
How Long Do We Have?
Last week, I ventured into the
chilling territory of the Artic News blog. I don't do this
regularly, because invariably the news is terrifying. For years, I
have feared a potential rapid extinction event from a huge upwelling
of methane from the shallow shelves of the Arctic (East Siberian)
Sea. The man who posts this material is the affable Peter Wadhams, expert on all things Arctic. This time, he makes the case for a potential mass
extinction event in 2026, trumping Guy McPherson, who has predicted
mass extinction in the northern hemisphere by 2033. The next morning
I woke with the thought, "My cat will still be alive then."
As I went through my annual
fact-checking ritual, I found once again the reasons I was able to
sleep again last time, with peers arguing for a much more gradual
process of climate disruption, and the surprising response from Gaia:
methane-eating bacteria populations seem to increase every time
methane bubbles do.
One of the articles that popped
up from an online search really caught my eye. A contributor to Skeptical Science, a site that debunks climate
prediction errors (Wadhams has been cited twice before) made the
point that, despite the fact that Wadhams was an "alarmist"
whose claims needed to be tempered, he was nevertheless a "respected
scientist," and that climate deniers were far more egregious in
the damage they did. So, the writer argued, the site needed to work
much more vigorously at countering their falsifications than
scientists like Wadhams.
I still live far from where most
of the climate disruption occurs, and it is hard to remember on a
mild summer day in the southern mountains that we are encountering
tipping points that make a mockery of humanity's slow awakening and
politicians' gradualist approaches (I include the Green New Deal). Wadhams and folks like him remind us that the stakes are huge,
and that time is of the essence.
One of Wadhams' claims is that
the jet stream, driven by the polar vortex, will likely collapse
within five years (a factor in his 2026 warning), bringing a wave of
heat from the Equator to the North Pole. This would exacerbate the
already rapid warming of the Arctic, now averaging more than 3C,
versus 1C for the planet, and all the processes driven by that
warming. (Last spring, there were spikes in spring temperature in
Siberia 35C above average, with the average daily temps up to 20C
higher than average for the Arctic overall.) One of the biggest
concerns is the effect upon the mid-northern latitudes, humanity's
breadbasket. Instead of the gradual shift northward of the grain
belt predicted by the IPCC, such an event would effectively end grain
production overnight, due to the huge, sudden increase in
temperature.
My searches to corroborate this
position, however, have found nothing to support Wadhams' assertion.
Climate modeling once predicted a tightening of the polar vortex,
moving closer to the north pole. Then scientists started using a
"gray radiation scheme," which omits the effects of water
vapor and clouds, which reflect incoming radiation. This model
predicted that the jet stream would shift towards the Equator, which
is what we have observed in recent years, the telltale wobble that
has led to extreme weather events, of both hot and cold. Last
spring, Arctic temperatures were far warmer than in Europe, which has
unusual cold temps and snowfall.
But the most recent research corroborates a shift of the jet stream northward (wobble
continuing, because it continues to weaken), by employing a "simple
four-factor long wave radiation scheme" that re-incorporates the
effect of water vapor on the system. (Question: why in the world
would scientists ever leave out such a huge factor???)
What I gather from a 48-hour
review of a dizzying amount of information is that climate science is
exceedingly complex, and that predictions like those from Wadhams are perilous. As for the effect to date on grain-growing, the
net effect up to 2016 has been to increase corn yields in the
American Midwest (as predicted in early studies of climate change),
due to more rainfall. This spring, however, catastrophic flooding
has prevented farmers from planting. Jet stream wobbles mean that
the uncertainties associated with farming are amplified, but it is
not leading clearly - at least not yet - to a breakdown of the polar
vortex altogether.
Labels: arctic methane emergency group, grain yields, gray radiation scheme, Green New Deal, Guy McPherson, human extinction, jet stream, Peter Wadhams, plar vortex, Skeptical Science
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