Humboldt Power

Sounds like good news. I'm sure all large power generating projects have some down side to them, but the ones that put CO2 into the air are just not alright any more. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere currently is at 409 parts per million.  The last time it was at that level was 3 million years ago and there was no ice in the northern polar region. The ocean was 60 feet higher and all of Florida was under water.

That is where we are at and that is our future even if we stop putting CO2 into the atmosphere today. We have already sealed our fate. The atmosphere and the polar ice sheets are simply out of equilibrium currently.  The northern ice sheets are massive and it just takes awhile to melt.  The northern ice is currently like a frozen lasagna set on the countertop, thawing just takes awhile.

Scientist are feverishly trying to figure out how long it will take Greenland and the rest of the northern ice to melt, but melt it will.  The current atmosphere we have created won't sustain a northern polar ice cap.  Carbon dioxide is a long lived molecule and once it's added to the atmosphere, it hangs around for a long time: between 300 to 1,000 years. Thus, as humans change the atmosphere by the continued emitting of carbon dioxide, those changes will endure on the timescale of many human lives.

Now 90% of the worlds ice is in Antarctica and the real battle now is not to create an atmosphere that will melt Antarctica also.  If we do that then we are done as a species. Humans are in for a wild and not enjoyable next hundreds of years. This is a very slow motion train wreck that is easy to dismiss because it is happening over a relatively long time frame in relation to any one single lifespan.

Over the last 3 million years or so the earth has cycled between Glacial periods (times of Northern polar ice) and Interglacial periods ( times of minimal or no northern ice.)  These cycles have been happening on a geologic time scale of about every 100,000 years.  The last Glacial period ended about 12,000 years ago and we went into an Interglacial period which would have lasted about 100,000 years with the northern ice slowly receding.  We have just speeded up the process to a lightning speed.

The earth has never warmed this fast before.  What is happening on a hundreds of years timeframe normally happens over tens of thousands of years.   Species have been shown to be able to adapt to climate change over long time scales. What happens when the earth warms so fast is an unknown.  We are running this experiment in real time. Can species adapt to this rapid warming?  Can Humans adapt?  Our offspring over the next 3 to 6 generations will find out.  

Hopefully that clown "Booby" Kennedy Jr. doesn't have a home near there. He might object.