To My Fellow Pessimists

[gigantes1966]

lots of nice material posted in this thread- i've enjoyed it. 'enjoyed' that is, in the sense that it's more-or-less confirmed me or clarified points in my pre-existing view that GCC is here & going to get much worse, which will probably soon be the final set of nails in global civilisation's casket... not so much enjoyable thoughts on their own.

the earlier posts discussing one scientist's gloomy pessimism as early as 1977, as well as mondrian's observation that 'even the greens are approaching the GCC problem as an engineering problem instead of part of our drift from nature' really got me thinking.

in the late-nineteenth century US, a number of naturalists and conservationists observed the rate and amount of habitat loss and cried foul... and worked to change the situation. in the 1920's or roundabouts, many prominent writers, artists & thinkers recognised an alien nature in civilisation- a bleakness and loss of something vital, and deemed it a bad kind of trend for humanity. then, of course, scientists well before the end of the nineteenth century had discovered the greenhouse effect and the fact that CO2 (and other gasses) we were generating were key players. if i have that quite right.

thus, i keep turning back to that scientist in 1977- could he really have been the first scientist or intellectual to come to the conclusion that modern humanity was going kaput soon? did any of the people i mentioned, or others along history, move beyond a kind of local pessimism regarding their issues of concern to an 'overall' pessimism?

after a little pondering i can see strongly contributing factors all along the line: flaws (or characteristics) in the very mechanisms of the earliest life, the arrival of homo s. s. on the scene, the move out of the tribal model, feudalism, the relentlessly increasing population growth, the renaissance, and the industrial age. not to mention the ever-increasing tendency to terraform away from natural habitats, whatever their diverse and 'non-productive' form.

hindsight is 20-20, of course, but it all looks so clear and easy-to-predict in retrospect. evidence of GCC was not necessary, was never necessary, in order for an informed individual to understand that civilisation has a built-in expiration date and that species populations that consume too much and expand too greatly will experience a massive die-off at some point. not to mention other ways of reading the situation, even up to the non-scientific thought, related by joseph campbell, that 'when we kill nature, we kill the song, and thereby kill ourselves'. if i have that right.

and yet, across the decades, across the centuries, people who had sufficient evidence and sufficient brainpower to see the equation, and to -maybe- -possibly- alter it, resisted the conclusion and the action. perhaps because of some very telling psychology... a willfull dismissal of the super-ego / pre-frontal cortex... a cleaving to the very core behavior of the earliest pre-cells, the dear little scoundrels.

...

those people mentioned in an earlier post who will be holding that gathering -- the one to strategise for the coming cataclysm -- sound like they have the right general idea, to me. now that the sword dangling above is clearly perceived, on it's downward motion probably, how does one continue to live one's life? any changes, or no? a new meditation routine, perhaps?

life has such an incredibly strong imperative to treat the local particulars as the overall particulars, perhaps the most 'sane' response is to do a little extracurricular self-manipulation- engage harder in the buildup of one's ego... in willful ignorance... in the increase of activities that bring self-gratification. meet the storm surrounded by as many friends and loved ones as possible, taking solace in a shared fate. i don't know... i'm still pretty confused about this part. :P

well i'm no scientist, and perhaps this was the wrong place to post this (sorry!), but thanks for reading, and feel free to comment. i almost feel i'm working out a script for a darryl cunningham cartoon.

[wibble]

Originally Posted by gigantes1966

thus, i keep turning back to that scientist in 1977- could he really have been the first scientist or intellectual to come to the conclusion that modern humanity was going kaput soon?

I for one very much doubt it. I'm sure a great many people have been saying much the same thing for quite some time, from 'The End Is Nigh' sandwich board bearer on the street to the guy crying alone into his beer in the corner of the bar.

Optimism thrives, pessimism is dismissed, often out of hand. Especially so in the Land of the Fee and the Home of the Depraved.

Nice, thoughtful post, gigantes: thanks. And thanks for the Daryl Cunningham cartoon link. Interesting, that, to think that there are (clearly) people who are so poorly educated that they actually ask such questions as "why are there still apes if they are allegedly our ancestors?". I particularly like the 'allegedly' - quite revealing of the mindset. (Yes, I know that evolution is just a theory -- just like anthropogenic climate change, and, oh, yes, gravity).

[776281]

Why I remain deeply pessimistic.

Feel free to tell me I am wrong. I want to be wrong.

Currently our atmospheric CO2 is 392.39ppm, a level not seen for many millions of years. Thus comparisons with any period in the last 800,000 years only tell us what will happen on the way to where we are headed. In addition to the CO2 there are increases in other greenhouse gases, some of which never existed before.

Paleontologists look to the past to tell us how fast things might change, but the rate of change in CO2 is unprecedented. Thus shouldn't we expect climate changes to be faster than any previous epoch.

Climate modelling takes into account the fast feedbacks, slower feedbacks such as methane from the melting permafrost are not included. Gamma, the amount the biosphere will absorb is assumed to remain constant, but we know that the biosphere will become a net source of CO2 as temperature increases. Already we are seeing tree deaths across many species from a variety of causes. Marine biology is changing from lifeforms that will sequester CO2 as they fall to the bottom to lifeforms where the carbon will remain available (eg Jellyfish) The ocean itself will hold less CO2 as sea temperatures increase.

Even without climate change we face very serious environmental problems. Even without environmental problems, we face ever increasing social unrest. Energy is getting increasingly scarce. Multiple problems that will wack us either together or in rapid succession.

As a society we have traded resilience for so called efficiency. We are so fragile in so many ways. Think about how much damage was done to the world economy by the collapse of one bank.

But wait, if you can't put a number to it it does not count and I can't put numbers to the above. We are saved.

[776281]

http://geoengineering.googlegroups.c...011.pdf?part=4

Critical Issues in the Domain of Climate Dynamics
By
David Wasdell

David Wadsell has put numbers to the problem I discussed in the previous post. Now we are doomed.

The threat to biodiversity and the intensity of the Anthropocene Extinction Event depend on the value of climate sensitivity. In addition to initiating the process of global warming, the anthropogenic disturbance of the climate system has also triggered the action of a complex web of interconnected feedback mechanisms which amplify the effect of the original disturbance. The value of the amplification factor determines the eventual increase in average surface temperature required to re-balance the dynamic thermal equilibrium of the planet. Using new visualisation techniques, this presentation offers a trans-disciplinary re-evaluation of climate sensitivity with profound implications for our current strategic approach to the mitigation of climate change.

In climate models, the value of the amplification factor depends on which feedback mechanisms are taken into account, and on the competence of the modelling of the various feedback mechanisms and their complex interactions

The implications are profound. The whole international strategic response to climate change is based on the output of the computer ensemble. The basis is recognised to be “conservative”, but to be under-representing the threat by a factor of two-and-a-half is a culpable collusion with a process of collective denial.

Wadsell does not appear to have taken other non-natural greenhouse gases into account.

[776281]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...5-simulations/

The term Earth System Model is a little ambiguous with some people reserving that for models that include a carbon cycle, and others (including me) using it more generally to denote models with more interactive components than used in more standard (AR4-style) GCMs (i.e. atmospheric chemistry, aerosols, ice sheets, dynamic vegetation etc.). Regardless of terminology, the 20th Century historical simulations in CMIP5 will use a much more diverse set of model types than did the similar simulations in CMIP3 (where all models were standard coupled GCMs). That both expands the range of possible evaluations of the models, but also increases the complexity of that evaluation.

Personally, I am far more interested in the inclusion of the paleo component in CMIP5 (see Braconnot et al, p15). Paleo-climate simulations with the same models that are being used for the future projections allow for the possibility that we can have true ‘out-of-sample’ testing of the models over periods with significant climate changes.

[gigantes1966]

thanks for the feedback, wibble. my one quibble with the sandwich-boarders and urban streetcorner ranters is that i question their rationality. did they think the whole business through and avail themselves of the best evidence before arriving at their conclusions? ...or quite possibly you simply got me on that one.


in a way, i look at this situation as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience the fall of atlantis first-hand. because we ourselves are more qualified than any ancient civilisation that may or may not have existed to bear that name.

we are the ones who have reached to unprecedented, staggering technological heights, spurning self-sustainability and spurning the idea of living in accord with nature, and are now on the growingly-rapid slide towards an enormous, world-wide crash, along with most of the other earth species. but maybe, possibly, some humanity will survive, or another intelligent species will arise, and discover our remains and say "WOW!" hopefully before the tectonic plates containing all the evidence slide through their 'molten cleansing' phases- if i understand such correctly.

so playing the role of 'archeologist in a time machine' seems like it might be interesting. although 'who exactly do you share your conclusions with?' is a little trickier.

another way might be to look at the mechanisms of the cosmos and meditate on the fact that it's a vast playground of matter, dimension and time repeatedly being bubbled up in to form, only to melt back in to nothingness. even the smallest players don't escape oblivion, such as subatomic particles, which are themselves due to fall apart eventually. i think the hardcore buddhist monks and several others types are so far ahead of us in these types of understandings, although through a different means of rationality than classical science. but i think now might be a very good time to take a page out of these folks' book, look at the larger picture, and cultivate some daily tranquility via meditation.

or meet the end screaming and kicking... i don't know. :P

apart from the local weather disasters and their effects, and the dangers of rioting and crazy destructive behavior by people angry about the growing loss of privilege and earnings, i reckon the next big step downward is going to be a worldwide collapse of the markets and economies. later, whether govts will be able to maintain things in a kind of hellish "make room, make room" (SF book that's the basis of the film "soylent green") way, or whether the various countries break up into a kind of 'mobs and warlords', "mad max" kind of way, i guess will depend upon the region. possibly compounded by various countries or groups using nuclear warfare in attempts to gain or to hang on to dwindling food & energy resources.

pure nightmare, which is why it's probably not even worth thinking about.

however, one of my ongoing daydreams is to imagine what a youngish, healthy family or small group of families with sufficient resources might be able to do to plan ahead. such as finding some area (mid-to-northern canada? some tiny island?) to try building a self-sufficient and remote existence in. plenty of survival skills and the right equipment required, of course. and the knowledge that eventually the climate will probably catch up to your group, regardless. or roving, starving refugees, or nuclear winter, whatever. but still, one might get lucky, and at least it's a plan... and might buy your group a lot more time than the body of humanity.

note: when i realised how much this site had slowed down, i made no hurry to keep checking for replies after my last post. but if that were to change, i would probably try to be more active...

[wibble]

Gigantes - your post reminds me of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, in which he commented that we are a way for the cosmos to know itself. I humbly offer you a link to one of my attempts at poetry. I keep coming back to that one, and the feeling in me grows that my subconscious was trying to get a message through to me: the universe knocking at my own private door.

Here's to the sandwich-boarders. I hope we make it.

[gigantes1966]

The only one who’s truly sane
Is nobody.

very nice...

although i think the one who's truly sane is the one who is brave enough to understand what's actually going on and yet willing to avoid blaming individuals... and to cultivate a sense of humor about the whole thing. which is certainly not very easy for most people to do.

the earth is only about five billion years old in it's ten billion-year lifespan (based on the life of the sun), so i do wonder what will happen when our techno remains are one day discovered by another intelligent race. that is, will it outright doom them, or will they treat our remains with skepticism, based on the fact that we didn't make it?

there is another way of looking at it: that for 100,000+ years, modern man lived in tribal units, and flourished. the expenses of their lifestyle met the needs of sustainable nature, and however much we look down on tribal man, that system -does- work better than ours in terms of sustainability.

so maybe it's best that (if we survive GCC) we return to that reality?

opinions?

[776281]

Could my deep pessimism be wrong? Absolutely. People who know much more than me keep saying so. Stephen Schneider said no change and utter disaster were the least likely results, William Connelly is confident we will have summer ice past 2030.

Why is William so confident that ice extent trends are so much more valid than PIOMAS trends? The two give very different answers. PIOMAS is not as accurate as extent, but unless it is very wrong summer sea ice will not exist past 2020 (maybe a few small remnants). We do know the summer ice is getting thinner and thinner, younger and younger as well as less in extent.

William is much more knowledgeable than me, but why the utter confidence?

To my mind that we have changed the forcing an order of magnitude faster than anything in the paleo record we should at least expect a response from the climate faster than the paleo record. Yet we expect sea level rise to be at most 2 meters by centuries end when the paleo record shows rises up to 4 meters per century. James Hansen used the current rates of doubling to show a 5 meter rise by 2107, that analysys would seem to be on track.

The Milankovitch cycles are by nature incredibly gentle, yet the climate has reponded with massive change. Looking at the graphs the climate seems so much more sensitive on an upswing than on a downswing. Yet scientists are confident sensitivity would only lead to temperature change of about 3.5 degrees for a doubling of CO2.

Dr Semiletov has just discovered some huge methane plumes in the Arctic
"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," But we should not worry new and more sensitive equipment has discovered what may have always been there. Gee at the very least, even if they had been there for a long time, we may have to reassess the sensitivity of the clathrates.

Some consider 1,000ppm concentrations of CO2 possible, Peter Ward would say this puts the oceans on the threshold of a Canfield state. This would to my mind constitute utter disaster. The odds of any humanity surviving such an event would be minimal.

I could be wrong, but if I knew why I was wrong I could sleep much easier? I want to be wrong.

[776281]

Society as we know it is an incredibly complex system. Even the sub element systems are very complex and interrelated. The biosphere is an interrelated complex system and society is dependant on the biosphere. The climate is a complex system and the biosphere is dependent upon the climate.

There are many serious stresses on society, financial, social, political and we have placed many systems in the biosphere under considerable stress.

Now let us consider the concept of catastrophic cascade of failure. Usually applied to electricity networks where a small part of the system fails and unexpectedly causes massive outages. Catastrophic cascade of failure becomes so very much more likely where parts of the system are operating at or near capacity.

We are using the biosphere beyond capacity and our other systems are stressed. Catastrophic failure could happen much sooner than anyone's nightmare, and come from a totally unexpected source.

Our drive for economic efficiency has often been at the cost of resilience. A factory operating on just in time principals is quickly stopped on a failed delivery of just one component. A just in time delivery system for a power station could come to grief because of a simple derailment, although power stations are usually an exception to just in time planning and try to always have reserves.

Build your own resilience, plant a veggie garden, keep more food in the cupboard, never let the fuel tank get near empty and keep some cash on hand. Be prepared and stay prepared; a go bag full of clothes a few sizes too small is not much use.

I do not know what will happen, I don't know how it will happen, I don't know where it will happen, or when it will happen. As pessimistic as I am, about everything, it is almost certain I will be surprised.

[776281]

COMFORT FROM THE BIBLE?
Some draw comfort from the Bible, I do not. Maybe it is my sense of doom affecting how I read things, but I find it very scary how the Bible mirrors where I see us heading.

One sure sign we are headed to trouble is the level of denial, about everything, from finance, politics, peak energy, ocean acidification, nitrogen cycle, phosphorus and climate change. Now from Mathew 13

13Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.

14And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive:

15For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

AS for the Christian Right from Matthew 15

Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying,

8This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.

Now lets have a look at Mark 13

8For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.

14But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains:

Is that to avoid the Hydrogen Sulfide?

19For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, neither shall be.

20And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect's sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days.

24But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,

25And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.

Geo engineering gone wrong? Or Just the amount of stuff we are throwing into the atmosphere?

We think we will be better protected in the developed countries, but the complexity of our food production and distribution argues against that. Complexity is a trap as is efficiency often the reverse of resilience.

11But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.

After the first world has destroyed itself.

Then there is Revelations 6 where we have the four horsemen. So perhaps there was divine inspiration in the Bible, except they didn't get that it is what we would be doing to ourselves.

2012, the end of the Mayan calender, then the beginning of a new age. What is the start of a new age, getting rid of the old one. All it would take to set off a huge chain reaction is the wider awareness of what we face.

Over the last 50 years there have been any number of after the apocolypse books. After nuclear war, after the tripods, after the triffids, after the magnetic storm. Perhaps what is to come is so bad the resonance these books have is a pre image, a foreboding.

[776281]

Two Posts back I said

Society as we know it is an incredibly complex system. Even the sub element systems are very complex and interrelated. The biosphere is an interrelated complex system and society is dependant on the biosphere. The climate is a complex system and the biosphere is dependent upon the climate.

There are many serious stresses on society, financial, social, political and we have placed many systems in the biosphere under considerable stress.

Now let us consider the concept of catastrophic cascade of failure. Usually applied to electricity networks where a small part of the system fails and unexpectedly causes massive outages. Catastrophic cascade of failure becomes so very much more likely where parts of the system are operating at or near capacity.

We are using the biosphere beyond capacity and our other systems are stressed. Catastrophic failure could happen much sooner than anyone's nightmare, and come from a totally unexpected source.

Our drive for economic efficiency has often been at the cost of resilience. A factory operating on just in time principals is quickly stopped on a failed delivery of just one component. A just in time delivery system for a power station could come to grief because of a simple derailment, although power stations are usually an exception to just in time planning and try to always have reserves.

Ray Ladbury on Open Mind said
Ray Ladbury | January 5, 2012 at 2:06 pm |

Catastrophes do not occur by clockwork. Rather, the conditions to cause catastrophic failure come into existence, and then the system responds to a shock–perhaps even a minor one–by a cascading sequence of failures. You can see this in the Mortgage crash of 2008 or the Sovereign Debt crash of 2010 or the Collumbia and Challenger disasters,…

I estimate that the conditions for such a global economic catastrophe will likely be extant by 2050. We may have some respite if the predictions of a lull in solar activity pan out and last a few decades. I would say 2060-2070 is a good bet, but I would be very surprised (were I alive) if it didn’t happen before 2100.

There are lots of wildcards in such a prediction. China could precede the rest of the world in ecological collapse. This might slow growth in fossil fuels and draw out the scenario. Or Africa could take off economically, increasing the demand for fossil fuels.

One thing people often neglect in these scenarios is the fact that susceptibility to catastrophic failure is a matter of degree. In a mildly destabilized system, a large (and therefore rare) perturbation would be needed to bring about collapse. It may even be that we can reassert control before the worst of the damage is realized. However, in a system far out over the edge, even a small disruption will cause collapse, and it will likely run its course until all the damage is done. We need to remember that even if we cannot stop climate change, we can certainly make it worse by doing nothing.

As the climate warms the risk of cascading failure multiplies

If feedback thresholds are the appropriate form of analysis, then with a little more data and analysis we can work out the points exactly. If cascading failure is the appropriate form, then we will always be caught by surprise. Take that Hurricane that hit New York, the timing of high tide was just so important.

[776281]

Coffee, chocolate, wine all getting hit by climate change. What next? Maple syrup.
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/0...limate-change/

Along with the impact to tourism and recreation, one of the region’s most culturally-significant products may also suffer from increasingly warm winters: Maple syrup. Producers are noticing shifts in the length of the tapping season, and thus the amount of sugars contained in spring sap dripping from maple trees

Stressed trees are not coping well and are producing less sugar in the syrup. Trees are dying, and the syrup from some of the still living trees is often very dark. Most of the sugar maple will be gone frome New Hampshire by 2100.

[776281]

This is simiar to what I put in a comment at Climate Progress but it disappeared into moderation

Why am I still pessimistic:
1)There is a whole lot of methane. OK maybe it will not be as bad as I feared but still a worry.
2) The skies will clear, either we will get sensible, or we will just run out of fossil fuels. Currently our pollution is reflecting one and a bit watts per square meter. So when we stop polluting the problem actually gets worse. And it gets worse at the worst places and worst times. Unlike the current warming where the colder places and times warm fastest, warming from a clearing sky will be most noticeable in the warmer times and places. Days will get hotter and the nights may even cool, the topics will be more affected than the polar regions, altitude affected less than sea level.
3) The biosphere will respond to the temperature increases. The loss of phytoplankton is already significant, The forests are already starting to burn and the tundra is drying. The biosphere will go from a net sink towards being a net source, as the deniers keep saying CO2 follows temperature.
4)It does not stop in 2100.
5) The climate is an incredibly complex system, complex systems can have rapidly cascading failure. There will be surprises.
6) We are coming out of a very deep solar minimum and have a strong La Nina and yet we have near record heat. Have we changed from warming and cooling with a warming trend to warming and pausing? How soon to warming and faster warming.

And that is just the climate bits.

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http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-...pse-explained/
Huge Ancient Civilization’s Collapse Explained

The mysterious fall of the largest of the world's earliest urban civilizations nearly 4,000 years ago in what is now India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh now appears to have a key culprit — ancient climate change, researchers say.

Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia may be the best known of the first great urban cultures, but the largest was the Indus or Harappan civilization.

This culture once extended over more than 386,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges, and at its peak may have accounted for 10 percent of the world population.

They had cities ordered into grids, with exquisite plumbing, which was not encountered again until the Romans," Giosan told LiveScience.

"They seem to have been a more democratic society than Mesopotamia and Egypt — no large structures were built for important personalitiess like kings or pharaohs."

Like their contemporaries in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Harappans, who were named after one of their largest cities, lived next to rivers.

Eventually, these monsoon-based rivers held too little water and dried, making them unfavorable for civilization.

"The Harappans were an enterprising people taking advantage of a window of opportunity — a kind of "Goldilocks civilization," Giosan said.

Eventually, over the course of centuries, Harappans apparently fled along an escape route to the east toward the Ganges basin, where monsoon rains remained reliable.

Our civilization spans the globe, where are we going to flee to? Do we have the slightest idea how much chaos will result when there are billions on the move?

[SoranJK1956]

Australian study points to under-prediction in climate models http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/...models/4043622

I heard this on the Australian National broadcaster's morning show yesterday.

[776281]

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture11018.html
Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere
Anthony D Bandoski et al

Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state to another when they are forced across critical thresholds. Here we review evidence that the global ecosystem as a whole can react in the same way and is approaching a planetary-scale critical transition as a result of human influence. The plausibility of a planetary-scale ‘tipping point’ highlights the need to improve biological forecasting by detecting early warning signs of critical transitions on global as well as local scales, and by detecting feedbacks that promote such transitions. It is also necessary to address root causes of how humans are forcing biological changes.

A commentary
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/06/07-3

Humankind is facing an imminent threat of extinction, according to new research released on Wednesday by the science journal Nature. The report Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere reveals that our planet's biosphere is steadily approaching a 'tipping point', meaning all ecosystems are nearing sudden and irreversible change that will not be conducive to human life.

And I thought I was a pessimist

The "ultimate effects" of a state shift are unknown, but the researchers suggest it could have severe impact on the world's fisheries, agriculture, forests and water resources. And they warn that "widespread social unrest, economic instability and loss of human life could result."

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OUT OF LEFT FIELD

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0614142737.htm
Grasshoppers Frightened by Spiders Affect Whole Ecosystem

A grasshopper who is in fear of an attacker, such as a spider, will enter a situation of stress and will consume a greater quantity of carbohydrate-rich plants

This type of reaction will, in turn, cause chemical changes in the grasshopper and in its excretions, affecting the ecosystem it inhabits.

When the scared grasshopper dies, its carcass, now containing less nitrogen as a result of its diet change, will have an effect on the microbes in the ground

With less nitrogen available, the microbes will be decomposing the hard-to-break-down plant materials in the soil at a slower rate. Thus, the fear of predation may slow down degradation of complex organic materials to the simpler compounds required for plant growth.

Were you expecting that one.

"We are dealing here with an absolutely new kind of mechanism whereby every small chemical change in a creature can regulate the natural cycle, thus in effect affecting the ecology in total, such as the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere (through decomposition) and field crop productivity. This has tremendous consequences for our ecological understanding of the living world," said Dr. Halwena.

"We are gaining a greater understanding of the necessity of conserving all of the component parts of the ecosystem in general and of predators in particular. We are losing predators in nature at a much faster rate than other species," Dr. Halwena commented.

Perhaps not a brand new concept
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0214144403.htm

ScienceDaily (Feb. 14, 2008) — Predators have considerably more influence than plants over how an ecosystem functions, according to a Yale study published recently in Science.

And much like victims of crime, grasshoppers facing an imminent threat go into a heightened state of alert, taking refuge in the ecosystem's dominant plant, the goldenrod. Its mobility restricted, the grasshoppers dine on its own shelter, promoting habitat diversity in the process. The goldenrod's competitors--Asters, Queen Anne's Lace and a variety of clover and grasses--flourish, but the diversity comes at a price. With the demise of the goldenrod, nitrogen--a key fertilizer in the soil's renewal--is depleted.

Grasshoppers in both cases but different mechanisms both reducing nitrogen in the soil.

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http://www.pnas.org/content/early/20...52107.abstract
An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress

Steven C. Sherwooda and Matthew Huberb

Despite the uncertainty in future climate-change impacts, it is often assumed that humans would be able to adapt to any possible warming. Here we argue that heat stress imposes a robust upper limit to such adaptation. Peak heat stress, quantified by the wet-bulb temperature TW, is surprisingly similar across diverse climates today. TW never exceeds 31 °C. Any exceedence of 35 °C for extended periods should induce hyperthermia in humans and other mammals, as dissipation of metabolic heat becomes impossible. While this never happens now, it would begin to occur with global-mean warming of about 7 °C, calling the habitability of some regions into question. With 11–12 °C warming, such regions would spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently distributed. Eventual warmings of 12 °C are possible from fossil fuel burning. One implication is that recent estimates of the costs of unmitigated climate change are too low unless the range of possible warming can somehow be narrowed. Heat stress also may help explain trends in the mammalian fossil record.

There is a limit to what we can adapt to. But add to that.

http://climatesight.org/2011/02/17/e...n-and-climate/

Put simply, if climate change is large enough, quick enough, and on a global scale, it can be the perfect ingredient for a mass extinction. This is worrying, as we are currently at the crux of a potentially devastating period of global warming, one that we are causing. Will our actions cause a mass extinction a few centuries down the line? We can’t tell the future of evolution, but we can look at the past for reference points.

There have been five major extinction events in the Earth’s history, which biologists refer to as “The Big Five”. The Ordovician-Silurian, Late Devonian, Permian-Triassic, Late Triassic, Cretaceous-Tertiary…they’re a bit of a mouthful, but all five happened before humans were around, and all five are associated with climate change.

Even if we stay in the adaptable range the climate can change too fast to adapt.

And do not forget we will still get weather. Within a generally survivable climate we could get periods of extreme weather where outside work will be impossible through daylight hours.

Add to that the expanding range and increasing persistence of extreme weather, things could get difficult fairly soon. All it would take is a massive power outage during an extraordinary heatwave.

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http://www.iceandclimate.nbi.ku.dk/r...lacial/eemian/

So far the ice cores can only provide us a glimpse into the Eemian warm period. But we can already tell that Eemian climate was significantly warmer than the climate of the current Holocene interglacial - probably about 5°C warmer. As ice from the Eemian period (albeit disturbed) has been found at all drill sites, we also know that the Greenland ice sheet did not melt away entirely during the warmth of the Eemian. Close analysis of δ18O values in the Eemian ice does indeed suggest that the Eemian Greenland ice sheet was not dramatically smaller than today.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...7737919600011X

It is concluded that mean January temperatures were as much as 3°C higher at Amsterdam (The Netherlands), than at present, and mean temperatures in July were 2°C higher. However, the thermal maximum in winter was later (zone E5) than the summer thermal maximum (zone E4a). Winter temperatures changed parallel to rise and fall of global sea-level. Precipitation changes are more difficult to estimate

Two to three degrees celsius higher than today not as bad as five

http://www.grida.no/publications/oth...ar/wg1/075.htm

A high resolution North Atlantic record shows a lack of substantial fluctuations during the last inter-glacial but also indicates that the Eemian began and ended with abrupt changes in deep-water flow, with transitions occurring in less than 400 years (Adkins et al., 1997). In New Zealand, there were at least three periods of milder climate than typical of the Holocene during the last inter-glacial (Salinger and McGlone, 1989). Study of an Indonesian fossil coral indicates that ENSO was robust during the last glacial period (Hughen et al., 1999).

Current evidence indicates that very rapid and large temperature changes, generally associated with changes in oceanic and atmospheric circulation, occurred during the last glacial period and during the last deglaciation

Despite evidence that the overturning circulation is changing, we still will not exclude natural variation.

http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/7/4...7-463-2011.pdf
Is a modeling comparison with data exercise.

So what was the CO2 concentrations during the Eemian: it maxed out at less than 290ppm. Now we are over 390 ppm. I submit that there is no chance that we will keep climate change to less than 2 degrees long term. The Eemian is just a comparison of where we are headed short term, long term we will blow through that sort of climate like a whistle stop.

So many unknowns, we are assuming that the major ocean flows will remain unchanged. Yet we can be pretty sure that is not the case.