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How Climate Change could be like bankruptcy [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-02-10  

www.theguardian.com/…

(The attached article is less concerned with when the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (the Gulf Stream current here in the US is a part of it) will collapse and more with the speed with which the climate will react to it.)

We get there in exactly the same way: Slowly at first, then all at once.

While I try not to be a doomer on climate change (we know what needs to be done to ameliorate the worst effects of climate change). It’s just a matter of under what conditions will we find ourselves in, when we begin to start actually reducing our carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions and removing them from the atmosphere on a global basis. We have also destabilized the caps on immense natural reservoirs of methane in the permafrost, (thankfully, less stable in the air than CO2, but more efficient at holding heat when it is there). We can’t do much to fix that ourselves in the short run, the only way to re-stabilize them is to do what needs to be done, anyway. It’ll just take a while longer to do it.

I am a pessimist on climate change, however. We are bombarded by greenwashed advertising touting the environmental good that is being done by corporate America, while they continue their historical practices and pump, process and burn ever increasing amounts of fossil fuels. Advertorials are a particular pet peeve of mine.

Current predictions give a window on the timing of the AMOC collapse as soon as 2025 out to 2095. I’d wager on sooner, rather than later, given that we seem to see negative climate benchmarks, that were meant to be achieved 10, 20, 30 or more years from now, being met more and more often these days. (I suppose that could just be confirmation bias on my part.)

Anyway, the paper referenced in the article predicts that the speed of climate change will increase 10 fold as a result of the AMOC collapsing.

“It also mapped some of the consequences of Amoc collapse. Sea levels in the Atlantic would rise by a metre in some regions, inundating many coastal cities. The wet and dry seasons in the Amazon would flip, potentially pushing the already weakened rainforest past its own tipping point. Temperatures around the world would fluctuate far more erratically. The southern hemisphere would become warmer. Europe would cool dramatically and have less rainfall. While this might sound appealing compared with the current heating trend, the changes would hit 10 times faster than now, making adaptation almost impossible.” (emphasis mine)

Of course, this meter of sea level rise is going to be supplemented by the ‘normal’ accelerating melting of the world’s icecaps and glaciers currently underway and unstoppable, unless we can do what needs to be done.

The way our ports are set up, with the modern crane and shipping container system we have in place, there is a maximum height above the water a cargo ship can be and still fit underneath the crane to be unloaded, or loaded, as well, for that matter. Assuming that the trucks can get there to pick the containers up and take them where they need to go. (It’s a shame we didn’t build the ports on floats or hydraulic lifts, or something when we had the chance!)

A rapid 1 meter sea level rise where I live near the S. Jersey coast will dramatically reduce the size of our barrier islands (or inundate them completely), which are visited by millions of tourists each year and provide an economic anchor and buffering storms for our mainland communities among other benefits.

Until the financial industry and the political/corporate classes have to live with the consequences of their decisions on the climate, the injuries to our planet will continue to be inflicted and not much will change until then. They have to feel it in their wallets first, then change will come. We can help them feel that pain, but it won’t be easy to overcome the consumer lifestyle we have enjoyed in our lifetimes, even if we are of a mind to do so. Heck, nobody wants to make do with less. But we need to learn how to make do, doing it differently than we do today.

I just hope they learn to look beyond the next quarter’s earnings call before the worst case scenario is staring us in the face.

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