How Bad Is Global Warming?

[seemslikeadream]

Capital Weather Gang
Gulf of Mexico waters are freakishly warm, which could mean explosive springtime storms
By Jason Samenow March 22 at 10:30 AM

Sea surface temperature difference from average. (WeatherBell.com)
Water temperatures at the surface of the Gulf of Mexico and near South Florida are on fire. They spurred a historically warm winter from Houston to Miami and could fuel intense thunderstorms in the spring from the South to the Plains.

In the Gulf, the average sea surface temperature never fell below 73 degrees over the winter for the first time on record, reported Eric Berger of Ars Technica.

Galveston, Tex., has tied or broken an astonishing 33 record highs since Nov. 1, while neighboring Houston had its warmest winter on record. Both cities have witnessed precious few days with below-normal temperatures since late fall.

Average temperature rankings along the coast of the western Gulf of Mexico this winter. (Southeast Regional Climate Center)
More often than not, temperatures have averaged at least 10 degrees warmer than normal. “The consistency and persistence of the warmth was the defining element of this winter,” said Matt Lanza, a Houston-based meteorologist, who has closely tracked the region’s temperatures.

Warmer-than-normal weather is predicted to continue in Galveston and Houston, with afternoon temperatures of 80 to 85 degrees through the weekend (normal highs are in the mid-70s).

“A steamy Gulf has meant that any time winds blow out of the south, we’re not going to cool down that much overnight, and daytime temperatures can warm pretty quickly,” wrote Berger, who also pens the Houston weather blog Space City Weather.

To the south of Galveston and Houston, Brownsville, McAllen and Harlingen all posted their warmest winters on record, by large margins. “Call it the ‘Usain Bolt’ of records: Leaving the others in the dust!” tweeted the National Weather Service forecast office in Brownsville.

The abnormally warm temperatures curled around the Gulf, helping Baton Rouge and New Orleans reach their warmest Februaries on record.

Meanwhile, a ribbon of toasty sea surface temperatures streamed north through the Straits of Florida supporting record-setting warmth over parts of the Florida peninsula.

Miami and Fort Lauderdale both posted their warmest winters on record. Climate Central, a nonprofit science communications firm in Princeton, N.J., found 80 percent of the winter days in Miami, Orlando and Tampa were above normal.


(Brian McNoldy)
“Out of 90 days this winter, Miami saw a record setting 69 of them reach 80°F or warmer!” wrote Miami broadcast meteorologist John Morales for the website WxShift, a project of Climate Central. “In addition, 11 daily record high temperatures were set as were 8 daily record warm low temperatures and 2 monthly record warm low temperatures.”

[Forty years ago Miami saw its only snow. These days, it’s simmering in record heat.]

Brian McNoldy, a tropical weather researcher at the University of Miami, said that in addition to the warm water temperatures, a lack of cold fronts penetrating into Florida played a big role in the warmth. “We’ve not had strong, long-lasting cold fronts make it this far south,” he said.

Effects of warm Gulf waters on thunderstorms and hurricanes

The warm water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, in particular, could mean that thunderstorms that erupt over the southern and central United States are more severe this spring. Berger explained in his Ars Technica piece: “While the relationship is far from absolute, scientists have found that when the Gulf of Mexico tends to be warmer than normal, there is more energy for severe storms and tornadoes to form than when the Gulf is cooler.”

(NOAA)
A study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in December found: “The warmer (cooler) the Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures, the more (less) hail and tornadoes occur during March–May over the southern U.S.”

Victor Gensini, a professor of meteorology at the College of DuPage, agreed that the warm Gulf could intensify storms this spring but cautioned that additional ingredients will need to come together. “The water is only one piece,” he said.

An additional key component for severe thunderstorms is a phenomenon known as the elevated mixed layer, a zone of hot and dry air at high altitudes that develops over Mexico’s high plateau and can flow into the southern and central United States. When it interacts with the warm, moist air from the Gulf, the resulting instability can give rise to explosive thunderstorms.

“This year we have both ingredients,” Gensini said. “With them coming together, we’re already seeing tornado levels as high as they’ve been since 2008.”

Another favorable ingredient for severe weather this spring is the configuration of water temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean. When there is a warm pool of water off the coast of Peru (which has contributed in extreme flooding there) and a cold pool off the U.S. West coast, such a pattern strongly correlates with high tornado activity, according to research conducted at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Gensini, who leads a team that produces severe weather outlooks up to three weeks into the future, is calling for above-average thunderstorm activity for the week beginning March 26, with high confidence.

A vigorous jet stream disturbance, originating from the Pacific Ocean, will crash into the southwestern United States around March 28. Once it enters the Plains around March 29 and March 30, it is likely to tap into the warm Gulf water and encounter the elevated mixed layer. Then severe storms may erupt.

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Such conducive environments for severe weather may increase due to climate change, Gensini said, although he expects high year-to-year to variability — something already being observed.

[Studies: Tornado seasons peaking earlier, becoming more volatile]

The implications of the warm water for hurricane season, June 1 to Nov. 30, are less clear. Warmer-than-normal water temperatures can make tropical storms and hurricanes more intense, but wind shear and atmospheric moisture levels often play more important roles in hurricane formation, Berger reported.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/cap ... 6d725e51e4

[Luther Blissett]

Release of Arctic Methane "May Be Apocalyptic," Study Warns
Thursday, March 23, 2017

A scientific study published in the prestigious journal Palaeoworld in December issued a dire -- and possibly prophetic -- warning, though it garnered little attention in the media.

"Global warming triggered by the massive release of carbon dioxide may be catastrophic," reads the study's abstract. "But the release of methane from hydrate may be apocalyptic."

The study, titled "Methane Hydrate: Killer Cause of Earth's Greatest Mass Extinction," highlights the fact that the most significant variable in the Permian Mass Extinction event, which occurred 250 million years ago and annihilated 90 percent of all the species on the planet, was methane hydrate.

In the wake of that mass extinction event, less than 5 percent of the animal species in the seas lived, and less than one-third of the large land animal species made it. Nearly all the trees died.

Methane hydrate, according to the US Office of Fossil Energy, "is a cage-like lattice of ice inside of which are trapped molecules of methane, the chief constituent of natural gas."

While there is not a scientific consensus around the cause of the Permian Mass Extinction, it is widely believed that massive volcanism along the Siberian Traps in Russia led to tremendous amounts of CO2 being added to the atmosphere. This then created enough warming to cause the sudden release of methane from the Arctic sea floor, which kicked off a runaway greenhouse effect that led to sea-level increase, de-oxygenation, major oceanic circulation shifts and increased acidification of the oceans, as well as worldwide aridity on land.

The scenario that humans have created by way of the industrial growth society is already mimicking these eventualities, which are certain to worsen.

"The end Permian holds an important lesson for humanity regarding the issue it faces today with greenhouse gas emissions, global warming, and climate change," the abstract of the recent study concludes.

As the global CO2 concentration continues to climb each year, the threat of even more abrupt methane additions continues to escalate along with it.

The Methane Time Bomb

The methane hydrate situation has, for years now, been referred to as the Arctic Methane Time Bomb, and as been studied intensely.

A 2010 scientific analysis led by the UK's Met Office, published in the journal Review of Geophysics, states clearly that the time scale for the release of methane in the Arctic would be "much shorter for hydrates below shallow waters, such as in the Arctic Ocean," adding that "significant increases in methane emissions are likely, and catastrophic emissions cannot be ruled out.… The risk of rapid increase in [methane] emissions is real."

A 2011 study of the Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS), conducted by more than 20 Arctic experts and published in the Proceedings of the Russian Academy of Sciences, concluded that the shelf was already a powerful supplier of methane to the atmosphere. The conclusion of this study stated that the methane concentration in the atmosphere was at levels capable of causing "a considerable and even catastrophic warming on the Earth."

Scientists have been warning us for a number of years about the dire consequences of methane hydrates in the Arctic, and how the methane being released poses a potentially disastrous threat to the planet. There has even been a study showing that methane released in the Arctic could trigger "catastrophic climate change" that would cost the global economy $60 trillion.

Of course, that level of planetary heating would likely extinguish most life on the planet, so whatever the economic costs might be would be irrelevant.

"Highly Possible at Any Time"

The ESAS is the largest ice shelf in the world, encompassing more than 2 million square kilometers, or 8 percent of the world's total area of continental shelf.

In 2015, Truthout spoke with Natalia Shakhova, a research associate professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks' International Arctic Research Center, about the ESAS's methane emissions.

"These emissions are prone to be non-gradual (massive, abrupt) for a variety of reasons," she told Truthout. "The main reason is that the nature of major processes associated with methane releases from subsea permafrost is non-gradual."

Shakhova warned that a 50-gigaton -- that is, 50-billion-ton -- "burp" of methane from thawing Arctic permafrost beneath the ESAS is "highly possible at any time."

This, Shakhova said, means that methane releases from decaying frozen hydrates could result in emission rates that "could change in order of magnitude in a matter of minutes," and that there would be nothing "smooth, gradual or controlled" about it. She described it as a "kind of a release [that] is like the unsealing of an over-pressurized pipeline."

In other words, we could be looking at non-linear releases of methane in amounts that are difficult to fathom.

A study published in the prestigious journal Nature in July 2013 confirmed what Shakhova had been warning us about for years: A 50-gigaton "burp" of methane from thawing Arctic permafrost beneath the East Siberian sea is highly possible.

Such a "burp" would be the equivalent of at least 1,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide. (For perspective, humans have released approximately 1,475 gigatons in total carbon dioxide since the year 1850.)

The UK's Met Office considers the 50-gigaton release "plausible," and in a paper on the subject added, "That may cause ∼12-times increase of modern atmospheric methane burden, with consequent catastrophic greenhouse warming."

[82_28]

This is dumb and counter to probably anything, but why not just light them on fire? Stupid stupid stupid and I ain't no scientist but like the methane that gets loose in landfills gets lit on fire. Always a constant flame. It just burns it off. But this is much larger than a landfill. But there is something there and I am sure something along these lines is being considered as some sort of a band aid.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I do believe that burning methane does produce CO2. Might be less than leaking though, I'll try to find a good link when I have more time.

[Luther Blissett]

Because it's essentially spread out across the entire Arctic circle and, I'm sure IamwhoIam could explain better, but this would just hasten the greenhouse effect. I think it's preferably kept in the atmosphere as CH4 if it's going to be released at all.

[Luther Blissett]

No, I'm wrong, it's better to burn. It's just impossible to do without setting the world on fire.

[Iamwhomiam]

Yes, it is far better to burn methane, CH4, than to release it into the atmosphere. The waste from oxidizing methane, CH4 is only CO2 and H2O, which yields energy or heat.

The warming potential of Methane is 86 times as great as Carbon dioxide over a 20 year period. To save me a lot of words, take a look at these two source materials:
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials
(^^ Be sure to click the embedded link under Methane)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential

However, those numbers have now become near meaningless, as we're soaring past crucial warning figures and temperatures to some point of no return.

How well functioning are the redundant cooling systems in our aged nuclear power plants?

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Yes, it is far better to burn methane, CH4, than to release it into the atmosphere. The waste from oxidizing methane, CH4 is only CO2 and H2O, which yields energy or heat.

The warming potential of Methane is 86 times as great as Carbon dioxide over a 20 year period. To save me a lot of words, take a look at these two source materials:
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials
(^^ Be sure to click the embedded link under Methane)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential

However, those numbers have now become near meaningless, as we're soaring past crucial warning figures and temperatures to some point of no return.

How well functioning are the redundant cooling systems in our aged nuclear power plants?

This is the predicament and a sane society would not only be asking that very question, it would be front and center in any calls for the deindustrialization we desperately need. There needs to be a collective wake-up now. Unfortunately, with the Empire's 'bread and circuses' clearly focused on maximizing the circuses, I don't see that happening in the next four years.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Record Low Sea Ice Maximum a Lock as Arctic Continues Trend of Ridiculous Warmth

Anyone who’s been paying attention to the Arctic knows that it’s been a ridiculously warm fall and winter during 2016 and 2017. And, unfortunately, new predicted temperature spikes appear to be on tap for the coming days in one of the more climate-sensitive regions of our world.


(Another big Arctic temperature spike is predicted for later this week with readings expected to hit as high as 5.1 C above average for the entire Arctic. So much warmth in this region will continue to put melt press on sea ice, snow packs, permafrost and glaciers. Image source: Climate Reanalyzer.)

High amplitude waves in the Jet Stream, according to the Global Forecast System Model, are set to drive dual warm air invasions into the Arctic. The first warm air invasion is taking place over North-Central Siberia and is the continuation of a general pattern of warm air delivery that has now lasted for about two weeks through the region of the Kara, Laptev, and East Siberian seas. The second, and albeit weaker, warm air delivery is set to run northward through the Northwest Territories of Canada and on into the Beaufort Sea and Canadian Archipelago.

Temperatures in these warm air invasion zones are expected to rise to between 10 and 30 degrees Celsius above average (18 to 54 F above average). In some places covering these warm wind invasion zones, we are also expected to see sporadic above freezing readings and, in the case of the Laptev — periods of liquid precipitation over the sea ice.

https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/846375 ... 72/photo/1

(The record low maximum sea ice extent for 2017 looks more and more like a lock as another big temperature spike rushes into the Arctic.)

Overall, Arctic average temperatures above the 66 degree north latitude line are expected to range between 3 and 5 degrees Celsius above average over the next seven days. As anomaly departures tend to tamp down a bit as spring emerges, these are very high temperature deltas for this time of year.

These continued very high temperature anomalies and what is a trend of extreme and extraordinary warmth for the Arctic has kept sea ice extent measures in record low ranges throughout much of late March. Over the coming days, the most recent warm spate will likely produce an ongoing weakening of ice on the Russian side even as the warmer readings across the Beaufort and Canadian Archipelago will tend to tamp down late season ice thickness building (as typically occurs during late March through April) over the last remnants of multi-year sea ice.



(NASA satellite shot of sea ice shows considerable early melt along the Russian side of the Arctic Ocean.)

In the image above, we find that the ice on the Russian side is already broken, thinning, and opening up into numerous polynyas. Ice is particularly reduced in the Kara (lower right) for this time of year. And the break-ups and mobility of the non-fast ice in the Laptev and East Siberian seas are considerably advanced.

As we reported last week, Arctic sea ice volume trends are now in considerable record low ranges and the excess heat on the Canadian and Russian sides will continue to put pressure on those values. Another instance of the ongoing downfall of global sea ice that kicked into high gear during 2016 and 2017 as human forced warming of the climate system through fossil fuel burning took another step toward ever-warmer conditions.

[Iamwhomiam]

Same video, two urls. Worthy of discussion?

https://nyti.ms/2nHrfTi
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000005012153/trump-vs-obama-on-greenhouse-gas-emissions.htm

And this, worthy of having its own thread:

Women's Crucial Role In Combating Climate Change

By Alina Tugend April 1, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/01/us/womens-crucial-role-in-combating-climate-change.html?_r=0

[Iamwhomiam]

How business views global warming: What is my exposure to risk and what are the costs to reducing it?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/upshot/what-financial-markets-can-teach-us-about-managing-climate-risks.html


The "social cost of carbon" helps policy makers devise a sort of insurance policy against global warming. Scientists say climate change will increase the risk of events like the flooding in Baton Rouge, La. last August.

"...the greenhouse gases we release today will alter the climate for centuries."

[Luther Blissett]

Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage': scientists despair at latest coral bleaching data
‘Last year was bad enough, this is a disaster,’ says one expert as Australia Research Council finds fresh damage across 8,000km

Back-to-back severe bleaching events have affected two-thirds of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, new aerial surveys have found.

The findings have caused alarm among scientists, who say the proximity of the 2016 and 2017 bleaching events is unprecedented for the reef, and will give damaged coral little chance to recover.

Scientists with the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies last week completed aerial surveys of the world’s largest living structure, scoring bleaching at 800 individual coral reefs across 8,000km.

The results show the two consecutive mass bleaching events have affected a 1,500km stretch, leaving only the reef’s southern third unscathed.

Where last year’s bleaching was concentrated in the reef’s northern third, the 2017 event spread further south, and was most intense in the middle section of the Great Barrier Reef. This year’s mass bleaching, second in severity only to 2016, has occurred even in the absence of an El Niño event.

Mass bleaching – a phenomenon caused by global warming-induced rises to sea surface temperatures – has occurred on the reef four times in recorded history.

Prof Terry Hughes, who led the surveys, said the length of time coral needed to recover – about 10 years for fast-growing types – raised serious concerns about the increasing frequency of mass bleaching events.

“The significance of bleaching this year is that it’s back to back, so there’s been zero time for recovery,” Hughes told the Guardian. “It’s too early yet to tell what the full death toll will be from this year’s bleaching, but clearly it will extend 500km south of last year’s bleaching.”

Last year, in the worst-affected areas to the reef’s north, roughly two-thirds of shallow-water corals were lost.

Hughes has warned Australia now faces a closing window to save the reef by taking decisive action on climate change.

The 2017 bleaching is likely to be compounded by other stresses on the reef, including the destructive crown-of-thorns starfish and poor water quality. The category-four tropical cyclone Debbie came too late and too far south for its cooling effect to alleviate bleaching.

But Hughes said its slow movement across the reef was likely to have caused destruction to coral along a path up to 100km wide. “It added to the woes of the bleaching. It came too late to stop the bleaching, and it came to the wrong place,” he said.

The University of Technology Sydney’s lead reef researcher, marine biologist David Suggett, said that to properly recover, affected reefs needed to be connected to those left untouched by bleaching.

He said Hughes’ survey results showed such connectivity was in jeopardy. “It’s that connection ultimately that will drive the rate and extent of recovery,” Suggett said. “So if bleaching events are moving around the [Great Barrier Reef] system on an annual basis, it does really undermine any potential resilience through connectivity between neighbouring reefs.”

Some reef scientists are now becoming despondent. Water quality expert, Jon Brodie, told the Guardian the reef was now in a “terminal stage”. Brodie has devoted much of his life to improving water quality on the reef, one of a suite of measures used to stop bleaching.

He said measures to improve water quality, which were a central tenet of the Australian government’s rescue effort, were failing.

“We’ve given up. It’s been my life managing water quality, we’ve failed,” Brodie said. “Even though we’ve spent a lot of money, we’ve had no success.”

Brodie used strong language to describe the threats to the reef in 2017. He said the compounding effect of back-to-back bleaching, Cyclone Debbie, and run-off from nearby catchments should not be understated.

“Last year was bad enough, this year is a disaster year,” Brodie said. “The federal government is doing nothing really, and the current programs, the water quality management is having very limited success. It’s unsuccessful.”

Others remain optimistic, out of necessity. Jon Day was a director of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority for 16 years until retiring in 2014.

Day, whose expertise lies in protected area planning and management, said the federal government’s approach to protecting the reef was sorely lacking. He said it was taking too relaxed an approach to fishing, run-off and pollution from farming, and the dumping of maintenance dredge spoil.

The government was far short of the $8.2bn investment needed to meet water quality targets, he said, and Australia was on track to fail its short-term 2018 water quality targets, let alone achieve more ambitious long-term goals.

“You’ve got to be optimistic, I think we have to be,” Day said. “But every moment we waste, and every dollar we waste, isn’t helping the issue. We’ve been denying it for so long, and now we’re starting to accept it. But we’re spending insufficient amounts addressing the problem.”

The Queensland tourism industry raised questions about the reliability of the survey, saying scientists had previously made exaggerated claims about mortality rates and bleaching.

“There is no doubt that we have had a significant bleaching event off Cairns this time around,” said Col McKenzie, of the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators.

“The far north probably did a little bit better, Port Douglas to Townsille has seen some significant bleaching,” he said. “Fortunately we haven’t seen much mortality at this time, and fortunately the temperatures have fallen.”

McKenzie said more money needed to be invested in water quality measures, and criticised what he saw as a piecemeal and uncoordinated approach to water quality projects up and down the coast.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

There's Now a Mathematical Equation Showing How Fast Humans Are Wrecking Earth
Our future appears set for a classic apocalypse blockbuster.
By Robin Scher / AlterNet
April 10, 2017

It is impossible to predict the future. What we can do is extrapolate a vision from our current body of scientific knowledge, mixed with a bit of good old-fashioned imagination. The result is a sort of trailer, which offers us a glimpse of what may be in store.

At the moment, our future appears set for a classic apocalypse blockbuster. Thanks to a new mathematical formula that charts the rate of humanity’s environmental impact, we may even have a rough idea of when to expect it at the cinema (and for that matter, everywhere else on the globe).

Named the Anthropocene equation, the formula was created by Will Steffen, a climate research professor at the Australian National University, and Owen Gaffney, a science journalist and communications consultant at the sustainability research firm Future Earth. According to their formula, recently published in The Anthropocene Review, human activity is altering the environment 170 times faster than under normal circumstances.

What do the authors mean by normal circumstances? Up until the Anthropocene age—our current geological age, during which human activity has exerted a dominant influence on the planetary ecosystem—Earth’s environment was shaped by three main determinants: astronomical forces (A), which affect insolation and mostly relate to the “gravitational effects of the sun and other planets”; geophysical forces (G), which include “volcanic activity, weathering and tectonic movement”; and internal dynamics (I), which pertain to the natural course of biological activity taking place on the planet.

But within the last century, the authors argue, these forces have largely paled in comparison to the overwhelming effects of human activity (H). Given this fact, Steffen and Gaffney were able to model their equation, which essentially suggests that due to massive population growth, consumption and technology, the (H) factor has become the sole force shaping the trajectory of Earth’s environmental system. The authors demonstrated this point using the rate of global temperature change over the past 7,000 years.

Until 45 years ago, this figure has decreased at 32°F per century. However, since our current age of industrialization, that rate has drastically reversed, with the figure now reflecting an increase of 35°F per century, which translates to a rate 170 times higher than the 7,000-year average.

This figure, Gaffney explained to New Scientist, reflects the fact that “far from living on a deeply resilient planet, we live on a planet with hair triggers.” The problem is that we have been “lulled into a false sense of security by the deceptive stability of the Holocene”—the previous geological era that spanned the last 11,700 years.

“Remarkably and accidentally,” Gaffney continued, “we have ejected the Earth system from the interglacial envelope and are heading into uncharted waters.”

Humanity has reached a tipping point. How our leaders decide to act now and in the next decade will drastically determine what direction our future takes. The authors themselves described their study as “an unequivocal statement of the risks industrialised societies are taking at a time when action is vital.”

If no drastic changes takes place, it could “trigger societal collapse.”

We face two very distinct possible realities. In one future, thanks to the greed of a small handful of global elites, humans will become extinct. How might we react to such an outcome? According to a recent psychology study by the University of Buffalo, the answer is—peacefully. Reported on iflscience.com, the study created its observational conditions by using the open world of a multiplayer online role-playing game called ArcheAge. A separate server was created for the study and all 270 million participants were told that in around 11 weeks, all their progress made in the game would be deleted. As the deadline approached, rather than grow more violent or greedy, players actually tended to become less aggressive and more cooperative.

Taken with a large pinch of salt, the study highlights an altruistic streak in human nature. But why wait until it’s too late to demonstrate it?

Enter the second possible future, forged through global unity, instead of division. It’s difficult to picture what form such unity should take, which makes it a challenge. What we do know, as the New Scientist article points out, is that instead of our current “dominant neoliberal economic systems [which] still assume Holocene-like boundary conditions,” what we need is “a ‘biosphere positive’ Anthropocene economics.”

Yuval Noah Harari is a historian and author of the book Sapiens, which provides a sprawling and incisive historical account of our species. His new book, Homo Deus, offers a similar expansive view of our future. In a recent TED Dialogue, Harari explored the need for a change in both our political and our economic thinking.

“The old 20th-century political model of left versus right is now largely irrelevant,” Harari said. “The real divide today is between global and national, global or local.” He noted that we now have a global ecology and economy, but a national politics, which makes our “current political system ineffective, because it has no control over the forces that shape our life.”

Like our two possible futures, Harari believes human society has two possible solutions: “Either de-globalize the economy and turn it back into a national economy, or globalize the political system.” The latter suggestion might sound a bit unrealistic at the present moment, but if humanity wants to avoid near-certain doom, it is probably the direction we will need to take.

Fortunately, in Harari’s view, humanity still looks like it could be on track for a happy ending. “I am an optimist,” he said. “I think the human race will rise to meet these challenges.”

The options may be correct, but the perspective is skewed. It's not just de-globalizing that should be done to the economy, but re-localizing, which is not contingent on maintaining nation-state status quo and the inherent carbon consumption that that entails. As far as the second option goes, "globalize the political system” sounds like a new code for "One World Government." I'd fight that shit like the plague.

[MacCruiskeen]

Great Barrier Reef: Two-thirds damaged in 'unprecedented' bleaching

BBC, 10 April 2017

Unprecedented coral bleaching in consecutive years has damaged two-thirds of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, aerial surveys have shown.

The bleaching - or loss of algae - affects a 1,500km (900 miles) stretch of the reef, according to scientists.

The latest damage is concentrated in the middle section, whereas last year's bleaching hit mainly the north.

Experts fear the proximity of the two events will give damaged coral little chance to recover.

[...]

The latest damage happened without the assistance of El Niño, a weather pattern previously associated with bleaching events.

The reef - a vast collection of thousands of smaller coral reefs stretching from the northern tip of Queensland to the state's southern city of Bundaberg - was given World Heritage status in 1981.

The UN says it is the "most biodiverse" of all the World Heritage sites, and of "enormous scientific and intrinsic importance".

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-39524196

[DrEvil]

A separate server was created for the study and all 270 million participants were told that in around 11 weeks, all their progress made in the game would be deleted. As the deadline approached, rather than grow more violent or greedy, players actually tended to become less aggressive and more cooperative.

The 270 million participants number is wildly wrong. ArcheAge has nowhere near those numbers. World of Warcraft has dipped below 10 million, and ArcheAge is much smaller.

Incidentally, ArcheAge also has a reputation for being incredibly toxic, so I'm a little surprised at the outcome regardless of the numbers involved.