#Climate Change Feedback Loops

[thoughtlessarse]

In the vast white expanse around Churapcha in eastern Siberia, the ever more rapid thaw of the permafrost is changing the landscape, cracking up houses and releasing greenhouse gases. A growing number of little mounds are appearing across the region of Yakutia in the Russian Far East. Known as "bylars" in the Yakut language, the tiny hillocks are no more than a meter high and have an almost regular polygonal shape. "The peaks of these formations are stable. It is the space between the mounds that is sinking," said Nikita Tananayev, director of the climate laboratory at the Federal Northeastern University in the regional capital Yakutsk. "With climate change, the ice is melting faster," he told AFP. -The mounds' distinctive shape is due to the fact that the underground ice that is melting is shaped in polygons. Permafrost is a layer of soil that is never supposed to thaw and covers around 65% of Russia's territory.

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[collapseofindustrialcivilization]

AI-Driven Cyberattacks, Climate Change, and the Fragility of Modern Civilization

The weaponization of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems stands as one of the most plausible and catastrophic risks facing modern civilization. As AI capabilities accelerate, so too does their potential to destabilize the complex, interdependent systems that sustain our societies—namely, power grids, communication networks, and global supply chains. In a scenario increasingly discussed…

[eruditic-akechi]

WAOT AS I WAS EDITING OUT MY USERNAME I REMEMBERED THAT I MADE THE DUMBEST ALCHEMY JOKE ON MY ECOLOGY TEST JDKSKFKDBDJSJ

[nova-linnaeus]

Melting Glaciers, Ignited Volcanoes

Introduction Recent research suggests that as climate change strips away Earth’s ice, long-dormant volcanoes could spring back to life. When colossal ice sheets retreat, the immense weight they once pressed on the crust is lifted, allowing magma and gases to expand and explode to the surface. When you take the load off, it’s just like opening a Coca-Cola bottle or a champagne bottle, says…

[manashimaya]

In a startling twist to what scientists once believed, the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is undergoing a rapid and counterintuitive transformation.

[theapacheviking210]

Exponential Growth 2: The Resource Boogaloo

You know what’s great about being the douchebag? I’m usually right about things. You know what sucks about it? I’m usually right about things that are bad. Case in point, in my previous video, I talked about the report from MIT scientists that was eventually turned into a book entitled Limits to Growth, by Dr. Donella H. Meadows. Now in my last video, I mentioned that the predictions that were made in the original report from 1972 were being overly generous. Remember that? Remember how I said that it was probably going to be a lot worse than that?? Yeah, that’s why I hate being right about things. And a lot like the expected outcomes for most of my current dating prospects, it’s most likely not going to be good. 

Case in point, the original Limits to Growth report was updated in 2023, and a lot like scientists in the movie that try to warn us of an impending catastrophe and go completely ignored, the scientific community slapped us with one big fat “I fucking told you so.” Imagine a night at the neighborhood cantina and after too many shots of tequila, you get into your car so you can go play a game of chicken parallel to a fast moving train on its tracks. You manage to weave in front of it a couple of times, with a few thrilling but dangerously close calls. However, by the third attempt, that’s when you underestimate and the train plows right into your vehicle, slicing your car in half and killing everyone inside! So basically in this scenario, the human race is the drunk driver playing chicken with the train of our own consequences. 

So it turns out that in the 1972 report, it was expected that we would overshoot our ability to carry our population's capacity by the mid to late 21st century. But in the revised 2023 report, it seems like we have overshot our capacity already. So like a restaurant that’s over crowded, with a bunch of hungry and angry customers demanding more drinks and food. Except there aren't even plates or silverware now, never mind drinks or food to eat. Well now the restaurant has over 8.1 billion of us and the owner is ready to collect on the tab. We’ve overrun our credit limit and it’s not going to be a lot of fun when the bill collector comes to take it out on all of our collective kneecaps. We fucked up folks. Yep, we sure did.

One of the most glaring pieces of information in this revised 2023 report is our hopeless addiction to fossil fuels. We knew for a long time now that it wasn’t sustainable. But like the kid that didn’t study for the test, the day of the final exam is here and we didn’t fucking study at all. And a lot like parents who neglect their children by sticking a tablet in their face so that they can watch Skibidi toilet, brain rot content, we collectively said to ourselves "well we tried not changing anything, but that didn’t work.” And once again, the scientific community collectively shook their heads and said, “nice going, you dumb bastards.”

But in words of the late TV infomercial salesman Billy Maze when he read about the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Faucet, “but wait, there’s more!” There is hope in this report as well. It’s only a flicker, but hope nonetheless. We can still switch to renewable energy technologies. However, the updated 2023 report also says that we need to stop suckling at the golden tit of perpetual economic growth. We’re like a reality star of My 600-lb Life on a diet of lard straight out of the bucket and chugging pure high fructose corn syrup, then complaining why our diabetes insulin isn’t fixing the problem and our knees are literally buckling under our gargantuan weight. I guess we just don’t learn, do we folks?? 

The 2023 updated report doesn’t hesitate to throw some pretty hard punches right into our collective kidneys. We’ve been collectively in a state of both denial and procrastination. It’s like we, collectively as a species, broke into the zoo late at night, snuck into the bear exhibit, jammed our fingers right into a sleeping grizzly bear's butthole, only to act surprised that we’re about to get brutally mauled. The report is practically begging us as a species on bended knees to get our shit straight. To urge us to embrace sustainability and actually start acting like intelligent human fucking beings. I know it’s asking a lot, folks. But let’s consider the consequences if we don’t. 

But douchebag, you dialectic describer of despair inducing, impending doom, you now say. What is the takeaway from this report? What can we do about all this? Is it still possible to repair the damage we have done or is it already too late? Well my fellow foolish, fossil fuel, fart sniffer friends, the takeaway is a punch in the stomach, a kick in the teeth, and a wakeup call that needs to be taken seriously and fast. To say that we need to fix this would be a moot point. We needed to fix it almost fifty years ago, and time is running out. 

The 2023 updated report to our finite resources and exponential growth is a very, very fucking grim reminder that we need to grow up and we needed to do it quite a while ago. Mother nature is holding up a mirror, and we’re not liking what we are seeing. Instead of a human face, there is a snarling, insatiable ghoul that wants nothing but to selfishly feast upon fossil fuels and it’s the reason that almost everything out there is getting more and more expensive by the day. It’s the reason that jobs pay less, and basic needs cost more. It’s the reason it’s getting hotter. The reason we're getting sick more often. The reason we’re dying younger. The time to act is not only now, but has been the case for quite a goddamned while now. Because if we don’t… we’re not going to make it.

[johniac]

SciTech Chronicles. . . . . . . .May 3rd, 2025

[droneboi]

The funny thing about conservatives and their "Might makes Right"...

is that one day might will absolutely make right. It'll make RIGHT like you wouldn't believe, buddy and you won't be around after it's finished.

Wether Earth's weather systems wipe out all of humanity or the proletariat and the scapegoats extinguish the last of the reactionary egocentrists, might will have made right like never before or again.

I look forward to it.

[sustainableyadayadayada]

2024 in Review

Intro What I do here is list all the posts I picked each month as most frightening, most hopeful, and most interesting. Then I attempt some kind of synthesis and analysis of this information. You can drill down to my “month in review” posts, from there to individual posts, and from there to source articles if you have the time and inclination. Post Roundup Most frightening and/or depressing…

[reasonsforhope]

No paywall version here.

"Two and a half years ago, when I was asked to help write the most authoritative report on climate change in the United States, I hesitated...

In the end, I said yes, but reluctantly. Frankly, I was sick of admonishing people about how bad things could get. Scientists have raised the alarm over and over again, and still the temperature rises. Extreme events like heat waves, floods and droughts are becoming more severe and frequent, exactly as we predicted they would. We were proved right. It didn’t seem to matter.

Our report, which was released on Tuesday, contains more dire warnings. There are plenty of new reasons for despair. Thanks to recent scientific advances, we can now link climate change to specific extreme weather disasters, and we have a better understanding of how the feedback loops in the climate system can make warming even worse. We can also now more confidently forecast catastrophic outcomes if global emissions continue on their current trajectory.

But to me, the most surprising new finding in the Fifth National Climate Assessment is this: There has been genuine progress, too.

I’m used to mind-boggling numbers, and there are many of them in this report. Human beings have put about 1.6 trillion tons of carbon in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution — more than the weight of every living thing on Earth combined. But as we wrote the report, I learned other, even more mind-boggling numbers. In the last decade, the cost of wind energy has declined by 70 percent and solar has declined 90 percent. Renewables now make up 80 percent of new electricity generation capacity. Our country’s greenhouse gas emissions are falling, even as our G.D.P. and population grow.

In the report, we were tasked with projecting future climate change. We showed what the United States would look like if the world warms by 2 degrees Celsius. It wasn’t a pretty picture: more heat waves, more uncomfortably hot nights, more downpours, more droughts. If greenhouse emissions continue to rise, we could reach that point in the next couple of decades. If they fall a little, maybe we can stave it off until the middle of the century. But our findings also offered a glimmer of hope: If emissions fall dramatically, as the report suggested they could, we may never reach 2 degrees Celsius at all.

For the first time in my career, I felt something strange: optimism.

And that simple realization was enough to convince me that releasing yet another climate report was worthwhile.

Something has changed in the United States, and not just the climate. State, local and tribal governments all around the country have begun to take action. Some politicians now actually campaign on climate change, instead of ignoring or lying about it. Congress passed federal climate legislation — something I’d long regarded as impossible — in 2022 as we turned in the first draft.

[Note: She's talking about the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Act, which despite the names were the two biggest climate packages passed in US history. And their passage in mid 2022 was a big turning point: that's when, for the first time in decades, a lot of scientists started looking at the numbers - esp the ones that would come from the IRA's funding - and said "Wait, holy shit, we have an actual chance."]

And while the report stresses the urgency of limiting warming to prevent terrible risks, it has a new message, too: We can do this. We now know how to make the dramatic emissions cuts we’d need to limit warming, and it’s very possible to do this in a way that’s sustainable, healthy and fair.

The conversation has moved on, and the role of scientists has changed. We’re not just warning of danger anymore. We’re showing the way to safety.

I was wrong about those previous reports: They did matter, after all. While climate scientists were warning the world of disaster, a small army of scientists, engineers, policymakers and others were getting to work. These first responders have helped move us toward our climate goals. Our warnings did their job.

To limit global warming, we need many more people to get on board... We need to reach those who haven’t yet been moved by our warnings. I’m not talking about the fossil fuel industry here; nor do I particularly care about winning over the small but noisy group of committed climate deniers. But I believe we can reach the many people whose eyes glaze over when they hear yet another dire warning or see another report like the one we just published.

The reason is that now, we have a better story to tell. The evidence is clear: Responding to climate change will not only create a better world for our children and grandchildren, but it will also make the world better for us right now.

Eliminating the sources of greenhouse gas emissions will make our air and water cleaner, our economy stronger and our quality of life better. It could save hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives across the country through air quality benefits alone. Using land more wisely can both limit climate change and protect biodiversity. Climate change most strongly affects communities that get a raw deal in our society: people with low incomes, people of color, children and the elderly. And climate action can be an opportunity to redress legacies of racism, neglect and injustice.

I could still tell you scary stories about a future ravaged by climate change, and they’d be true, at least on the trajectory we’re currently on. But it’s also true that we have a once-in-human-history chance not only to prevent the worst effects but also to make the world better right now. It would be a shame to squander this opportunity. So I don’t just want to talk about the problems anymore. I want to talk about the solutions. Consider this your last warning from me."

-via New York Times. Opinion essay by leading climate scientist Kate Marvel. November 18, 2023.

[alchemusprime]

Life's Principles in Biomimicry 3: Being Locally Attuned and Responsive Part III

Previously, we shared two of the strategies of this life’s principle: leveraging cyclical processes and using readily available materials and energy. In this post, we share two more exciting ones. The first is using feedback loops. A positive feedback loop is when one variable increases, leading another to increase too, or move in the same direction. One example from nature is the increasing…

[collapseofindustrialcivilization]

The Naked Apocalypse: How Industrial Civilization Made Human Extinction Thinkable—and Possible

Human Extinction: From Unthinkable to Imminent The possibility of human extinction—our complete disappearance as a species—has become a defining anxiety of the twenty-first century. This is not merely a product of scientific speculation or dystopian imagination, but a reflection of profound shifts in how we understand ourselves, our place in the cosmos, and our relationship to the biosphere. The…

[crimethinc]

The Eye of Every Storm: Anarchist Response to Hurricane Helene

http://crimethinc.com/HurricaneHelene

At the end of September 2024, Hurricane Helene laid waste to western North Carolina. In the following reflection, a local anarchist involved in longstanding disaster response efforts in Appalachia recounts the lessons that they have learned over the past six weeks and offers advice about how to prepare for the disasters to come.

At a time when misinformation, rising authoritarianism, and disasters exacerbated by industrially-produced climate change are creating a feedback loop of escalating crisis, it’s crucial to understand disaster response as an integral part of community defense and strategize about how this can play a part in movements for liberation.

[the-real-daddy-van-der-bellen]

this post is probably very doomerist, skip if you're having a nice day

but I was just taking a walk along the local mid-size river in my town, the river bed there is fairly deep, i am bad at estimating that kind of stuff, but probably five or six meters in height, fairly steep. And up to the very top, there was still debris caught in the trees, from the flood two months ago. So the water was at least up that high, maybe more, but the path was cleared now so I can't tell. I just know that is was a scary, devastating amount of water but we all know that.

and i know some people just say, floods happen, floods have always happened, 10 years ago, 50 years ago, hundreds of years ago. that is true of course, but i think it would be ridicuous to pretend that this big flood has nothing to do with climate change. maybe it would have happened regardless, but from what I know, climate scientists agree that the severity was due to factors that are due to the climate crisis.

It has been over two months. The dehumidifyer in my apartment building is still running, non-stop, 24/7, day and night. I don't even want to know how much electricity that thing eats up. Which might seem petty, considering my ground floor neighbors had to move out and it will still be months until they can move back in. but i am not worried so much about the electricity bill. i am worried because electricity does not just appear from thin air.

The damage is economically devastating for many people, but I can't stop thinking about how many resources all the rebuilding takes. Electricity from the dehumidifyers. New furniture means a lot of wood and plastics. Not too long ago I walked past a gigantic pile of fridges that broke in the flood. So much electronic waste, so many resources required to replace broken things. How many houses were damaged bad enough that they need to be completely rebuilt? Even concrete is a finite resource.

When we talk about feedback loops regarding the climate crisis, we're usually thinking about the polar icecaps melting, which causes the earth to warm up even more. but I've been thinking about how natural catastrophes like floods and the rebuilding afterwards is also kind of a feedback loop, isn't it? It takes a ton of electricity for example to have dehumidifyers running for weeks nonstop, electricity that still comes, at least partially, from burning fossile fuels, which will in turn cause more carbon emissions. more climate change, more devastation, more rebuilding, and on and on and on.

I also think that we are now at a point in the climate crisis where we need to be realistic and need to expect disasters like the flood to happen more often. It's scary. And the worst is, as an individual, there is not much you can do about it.

Don't build a house near a river, yeah, sure. My apartment complex is nowhere near a risk zone. No one, absolutely no one, would have ever expected this here. Because we weren't hit by rising groundwater. It was the surface water running down the nearby hills and pooling around the houses. There are no measures that the muncipality or anyone could have taken to prevent that. You'd have to build a giant wall around the entire town or something, but that would obviously be ridiculous. It's a new apartment complex, the first half was finished only two years ago, the second half barely more than six months before the flooding. I saw the new groundfloor neighbors build garden beds and plant flowers over the summer and now they had to move out again because the entire ground floor is just ruined. They tore out the walls and the flooring and it will still be months until these apartments can be lived in again.

I know people living in the area where the groundwater rose dramatically and took a long time to go down again. At least one couple still had pools of water in their basement six weeks after the flood. You can't do anything about that. You can't pump the water out before the groundwater sinks, it will just come back and possibly destabilize your entire house.

Is that not insane? Is it not absolutely nuts that we are all just supposed to go on with our lives, knowing that we can expect events like this to happen several more times over our livetimes? A flood like this is supposed to be something anyone living only ever sees once in their live, and their children never experience like it, probably not their grandchildren, either.

My aunt and uncle, who admittedly live in a high-risk zone were hit with a similarily devastating flood only 15 years ago.

Makes you wonder when the next time will be.

It's terrifying, especially since there are still so many people in power, in austria and all over the world, who COULD do something, who could have started doing something 50 years ago but didn't.

But people in power will just move to their second or third home if their first home should ever be affected by a natural disaster. And the 100.000 or more Euros it takes to repair and rebuild may be devastating to the average household but for them it is pocket change.

And at this point, we can only scramble to try and fight the symptoms, because keeping the disease in check seems pretty much impossible. Airconditioning in the summer (again more electricity consumption), build flood protection (more resources needed), but also you now need irrigation systems for agriculture because instead of a flood, a drought could hit you just as likely. None of these things are bad, we need to find ways to live with the climate crisis, because at this point it can't be prevented, it is happening and has been happening for decades. But so many things we have to do because of the climate crisis feed right back into it and will make it even worse.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from The Revelator:

In these divided times, it seems everyone is ready to start an argument at the drop of a hat, especially on topics that have been made so politically polarizing, like climate change.

But is that true? Are conversations about climate change really doomed before they even start?

As it turns out, they’re not — we just think they are, so we avoid having these conversations in the first place.

Here’s the reality: According to multiple surveys and scientific studies, between 80-89% of people want the world’s governments to take stronger action against climate change. At the same time, the people who want action don’t realize they’re in the majority because not enough people are talking about it — especially in the media.

One new study, published April 17 in PLOS Climate, found that this lack of media coverage contributes to a negative feedback loop that perpetuates “climate silence.”

And it isn’t just the media: The study found that “perceived social norms” — specifically, the incorrect perception that other members of society may discount climate science — are the major factor influencing whether or not we have climate conversations.

The conclusions are clear: People don’t hear enough people talking about climate change, so they don’t talk about it themselves. And that inability or unwillingness to discuss such an overwhelming issue slows or stops climate progress on both individual and societal levels.

But we can escape this feedback loop. The paper suggested several ways to break through this climate silence: describing why climate change worries you or puts you or something you care about at risk; communicating the reality that most people are concerned about climate change; sharing news articles; and even including climate messages in public entertainment.