With the Green House Gas emissions that we have been putting into the atmosphere over the last 200 years of industrialization, the upper 10 percent of the ocean is losing the capacity to buffer the increasing concentrations. We are closer to a tipping point than previously thought. Even “moderate additional” greenhouse emissions are likely to push Earth past “critical tipping points” with “dangerous consequences for the planet.”
Joe Romm relays a report that saturation of one the world’s primary carbon sinks has apparently started. The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world’s oceans has reduced.
As Christopher Sabine, an oceanographer at the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, had noted, global heating could have been a lot worse. The CO2 level in the atmosphere would be about 55 parts per million greater than currently observed if the ocean had not removed anthropogenic carbon emissions amounting to an estimated 118 billion metric tons.
Thus, there is a reason why the Big Gav is jumping up and down on his soon to be ex-continent about the rain forest burning again. As the BBC reports, there are two major natural carbon sinks: the oceans and the land “biosphere”. They are equivalent in size, each absorbing a quarter of all CO2 emissions.
Scientists are 90% confident that anthropogenic carbon emissions, of which coal-fired power plants and the transportation sector are the biggest contributors, correlate to climate changes that are becoming catastrophic.
Now if the oceans are unable to take up CO2, and the biosphere has a diminished ability to take up CO2, not to mention that vegetation is becoming less able to absorb anthropogenic carbon emissions, then the atmosphere inevitably must take up more, accelerating global heating and climate change.
But, does it help to go about screaming “Holy Oceans of Acid“. This blog recently noted the advice from Nordhaus and Shellenberger that apocalyptic warnings “tend to provoke fatalism, conservatism, and survivalism among voters” rather than better environmental policy.
Such an observation would seem to fit in the Transtheoretical Model of Change. When people are in the Contemplation phase…
They are more aware of the pros of changing but are also acutely aware of the cons. This balance between the costs and benefits of changing can produce profound ambivalence that can keep people stuck in this stage for long periods of time. We often characterize this phenomenon as chronic contemplation or behavioral procrastination. These people are also not ready for traditional action oriented programs.
O.K., what would you do if where you lived had no water and no gasoline to fill the Dodge with which to depart Hell? And, by the bye, the lights have gone out since the power plants lack coolant.
In terms of intervention with oil addicts during the contemplation phase, a strategy is to explore the ambivalence toward change, including reasons to change and reasons to continue with Business As Usual And Above All Else. At this stage, people may be receptive to information about climate change that is the consequence of global heating.
While Nordhaus and Shellenberger are correct that such information can provoke fatalism, conservatism, and survivalism, it also could indicate transition to the next stage, where people develop plans of action, a.k.a., transportation, energy and environmental policy consistent with mitigation of the worst effects from our previous patterns of GHG emissions.
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O.K., O.K., Southeasterners and Southwesterners, don’t like that scenario, so how about this one from the NY Times:
The Royal Society, one of the world’s most prestigious science academies, addresses some of the counterclaims presented as fact by climate change deniers in the wake of Al Gore receiving the Nobel Prize.
O.K., O.K., O.K.! I’ll stop picking on just certain regions of the United States…
Mike Millikin also relays the news from University of East Anglia, specifically about the inability of the Atlantic Ocean to buffer further GHG emissions.
Notes GCC, “The direction of the change was worrying, she added, and there were some grounds for believing that a saturation of the ocean sink would start to occur.”
ABSTRACT
A time series of observations from merchant ships between the UK and the Caribbean is used to establish the variability of sea surface pCO2 and air-to-sea flux from the mid-1990s to early 2000s. We show that the sink for atmospheric CO2 exhibits important inter-annual variability, which is in phase across large regions from year to year.
Additionally, there has been an inter-decadal decline, evident throughout the study region but especially significant in the northeast of the area covered, with the sink reducing >50% from the mid-nineties to the period 2002-2005. A review of available observations suggests a large region of decrease covering much of the North Atlantic but excluding the western subtropical areas. We estimate that the uptake of the region between 20o and 65oN declined by ~0.24 Pg C yr-1 from 1994/1995 to 2002-2005. Declining rates of winter-time mixing and ventilation between surface and subsurface waters due to increasing stratification, linked to variation in the North Atlantic Oscillation, are suggested as the main cause of the change. These are exacerbated by a contribution from the changing buffer capacity of the ocean water, as the carbon content of surface waters increases.
The Naib relays information about The Synthesis Report, the final part of “Climate Change 2007″ reported by the IPCC.
Jolting Joe Romm has seen the Synthesis Report that draw upon “bottom-up” and “top-down” studies. According to the IPCC report, these studies indicate, with a high degree of agreement and much evidence, that there exists substantial economic potential over the coming decades for mitigating global GHG emissions. In other words, if action is taken, then it could offset the projected growth of global emissions, and even reduce emissions below current levels.
“In fact, the bottom up studies — the ones that look technology by technology, which I believe are more credible — have even better news,” says Romm.
“Anderson, an expert at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at Manchester University,” the Guardian intones, “was about to send the gloomiest dispatch yet from the frontline of the war against climate change.”
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[...] frightening”, it is, says Joe Romm2, because “the climate is changing” (and the sinks saturating) “FASTER than the models suggest.” Also, some climate scientists have criticized the [...]
[...] and it is evident that Congress is indisposed toward action of sufficient import. While people can remain stuck in a Contemplation Stage for long periods of time, we lack the time. This entry was [...]