After Gutenberg

Subtitle: BAU == Business as Usual (and above all else); GHG == Green House Gases

To remind late comers to After Gutenberg, albedo is the ratio of reflected to incident electromagnetic radiation. Today, via Green Car Congress, we learn from The Independent about “albedo flip”, i.e., when the sunlight reflected by white ice is suddenly absorbed when the ice melts to become the dark surface of open water.

Reporters of The Indepedent read “Climate change and trace gases” (July 15, 2007), which is a horror story disguised as proceedings in the oldest English-language scientific journal in publication. The Independent tell us the scientific article is a report on research “led by James Hansen, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who was the first scientist to warn the US Congress about global warming… The other scientists were Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha and Gary Russell, also of the Goddard Institute, David Lea of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Mark Siddall of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York.” Nevertheless, it is a horror story; it involves trace gas biogeochemistry.

NASA Photo

These images illustrate the magnitude of the difference in ice cover, which is about 1.6 million km2, between 1980 and 2003. The comparison shows a dramatic decrease in the Arctic ice cover. One of the reasons for Al Gore to remark in recent testimony before Congress on global warming that “The planet has a fever.”

The researchers have inferred from palaeoclimate data “that a BAU GHG emission scenario would produce global warming of several degrees Celsius this century, with amplification at high latitudes.”

“That’s bad?”

Most assuredly since such warming would activate the albedo-flip trigger mechanism.

“OMG”

Yep, imagine that you and your main squeeze are ensconsed comfortably in your cottage listening to Spike Jones when you hear trucks pull up outside. Homeboyz start piling out; it’s right out of the final scenes in the Blue Brothers. They surround your home. More trucks arrive with “special equipment”. You know, the lights and amplifiers they use in hostage situations. They set up the equipment and turn it on. There is an ominous silence. Then Blackhawk helicopters swoop down, a VIP is escorted to the stage. It’s Dick Cheney dressed retro, wearing an Afro wig, carrying a Strat he borrowed from Blair. He strides over to this huge, modified Fender amp (in olive drab), plugs in the guitar, turns and looks directly at you. You feel a chill run down your spine. Then he turns and almost casually flips the albedo switch. He steps up to the microphone and snarls, “It’s the end of your Holocene, baby, now you going to learn ’bout positive feedback.” He strikes the first chord, as ice sheets disintegrate and there is a burst of added global warming. As the smoke bombs go off and the lasers flash, three other players appear dressed as Arab princes. You groan and fall to you knees, as you realize, it is the Haliburtons doing their hit single “Climate Forcing”.

In combination with warming of the nearby ocean and atmosphere, the increased surface melt would bring into play multiple positive feedbacks leading to eventual nonlinear ice sheet disintegration… An ice sheet response time of centuries seems probable, and we cannot rule out large changes on decadal time-scales once wide-scale surface melt is underway. With GHGs continuing to increase, the planetary energy imbalance provides ample energy to melt ice corresponding to several metres of sea level per century.