Thanks as always! I worry about the effects of climate on future agriculture. The planet already has lots of hungry people, and current agricultural practices are destroying our soil. Add in the effects of climate change, and I think we are in real trouble!
Global malnutrition is at record lows, crop yields are are record highs, and deaths from climate events are down 95% in the last 100 years despite massive population growth.
Recommend diversifying your sources of information.
Ag scientists have done experiments that showed that crops suffer just by increasing the heat (especially the overnight lows), even with the same water supply. I'm not sure that GMOs can keep up with the rate that heat increases, especially with the increasing trends in both"flash droughts" and mass rain events.
In any case, independent of climate change, many of the world's agricultural regions have been mining out their groundwater supplies, aggravated by stupidly wasteful practices and choices of crops. In the US that includes California's Central Valley and the Ogallala Aquifer in the Midwest.
Surface water has been disappearing, too, both from human overuse and climate patterns of reduced rainfall and faster evaporation in the increasing heat (again, with night-time heat increasing faster). Besides the long-predicted trends in increasing aridification in many areas, rainfall loss in South America is being aggravated by the removal of the Amazon rainforest. Rapid changes in glacier melt are already causing agricultural and social problems in the Himalayas and the Andes.
Along heavily farmed river deltas (e.g., Mekong, Ganges), saltwater intrusion from sea level rise is another problem.
Some good news is that policymakers and ag communities are starting to take water conservation more seriously, and developing more projects to recharge aquifers during rain events and shading irrigation canals to reduce evaporation.
Elevated atmospheric CO2 improves plant water-use efficiency (WUE) by inducing partial stomatal closure, reducing transpiration rates by 14–19% or more. Because plants lose over 90% of their water through stomata, these smaller pores allow them to gain carbon for photosynthesis while losing less moisture, enhancing drought resistance.
Key Aspects of CO2 and Reduced Water Usage: Stomatal Closure: When CO2 levels are high, plants do not need to open their stomata (breathing pores) as wide to obtain the necessary for photosynthesis, reducing water loss.
Increased Water Use Efficiency (WUE): Studies indicate that doubling atmospheric CO2 can improve WUE by 70 to 100% or more, allowing plants to produce more biomass with less water.
Improved Drought Resistance: Higher CO2 helps plants manage water stress better by maintaining higher total water potentials and improving root-to-shoot ratios, helping them survive in water-scarce conditions.
Reduced Evaporation: Less water escapes leaves, which can reduce water stress, particularly in water-stressed conditions, according to a study from the National Institutes of Health.
Great elaboration by Andrew and his explanation of Dr Hansen's intent. Andrew alludes a good point.. we can do everything right to reverse climate change but war will still feed the beast.
Andrew, All the news feels bad lately. “The hit at Ras Laffan has taken almost 20% of output (i.e. roughly 3% of global LNG volumes) offline for *3-5 years*.” I can’t find photos but did this burn? And if Methane is 80% more warming to the planet than carbon, how wrecked are we now?
The only reason anybody ever talks about nuclear is because it's profitable, because there's a vertical trade for the never ending fuel supply, just like carbon. That's the problem with re, there's nothing to buy after the system is installed. The rest of it is just noise. Any talk of re being unable to provide a Base load is simply misinformed. We here in the US live in a bubble, and most people are completely ignorant as to what's going on in the rest of the world.
I am under the (misapprehension?) that there are two additional and related climate bomb possibilities: methane clathrates and permafrost decay itself releasing vast quantities of CH4. Yes methane has a relatively brief atmospheric lifespan, but 80 years is plenty long enough to entirely destabilize the cryosphere, hugely increase polar albedos, and cause havoc in Europe as the AMOC slows or shuts down, with enormous consequences globally. Rightly so, not Venus, yet not a bright future for humanity within broader stable ecosystems either.
Very cool article. we need more people talking about what matters.
I too have a blog wherein I get people accustomed to climate and sustainability in 3 min reads twice a week, So they at least understand the basics to follow the conversation
Wrote about the big bad methane and what is it that makes it worse especially due to some agricultural practices with some cool facts! Hope it’s interesting
As a few others have mentioned, the geologic carbon cycle provides a negative (stabilizing) climate feedback because silicate weathering is proportional temperature. Plate tectonics is mostly temperature independent and keeps supplying fresh rock for reaction with water + CO2. Mostly.
On top of that, Venus doesn’t have Earth-style plate tectonics constantly exposing fresh rock to weathering, which means it can’t run the same long-term carbon ‘thermostat’ we have—another reason we’re not about to flip into Venus mode overnight.
Thanks for the explanation. I check X to stay informed since mainstream media is always lagging way behind, but I only run into deniers or doomers who spike my anxiety and almost give me a panic attack. Are the current models even accounting for this record-breaking rise in ocean temperatures, especially since El Niño hasn't even hit yet? It feels like something broke back in 2023 because temperatures never went back to the average and now they're skyrocketing again.
Thanks a million for helping out with this without falling into catastrophism.
Your napkin math assumes a constant f. Obviously that isn't correct, as melting that last little bit of arctic snow must be an f ~0. Why is this an OK simplification?
Why are there such large error bars on estimated f? Isn't that something you can easily measure?
You're correct that the values of f will be state dependent, so that they can change as the climate changes. The large error bars occur because it is very hard/impossible to directly measure, you have to infer it from other data. See, e.g., this paper: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019RG000678
Considering my area had a very summery winter, I worry about fire season and tree mortality. I worry about climate change far more than I do Cascadia, but less than I do the current regime, so …….
Thanks as always! I worry about the effects of climate on future agriculture. The planet already has lots of hungry people, and current agricultural practices are destroying our soil. Add in the effects of climate change, and I think we are in real trouble!
But CO2 is what plants crave!
Major changes in rainfall patterns and increasingly higher temps can't hurt plants if they have enough CO2!
Global malnutrition is at record lows, crop yields are are record highs, and deaths from climate events are down 95% in the last 100 years despite massive population growth.
Recommend diversifying your sources of information.
Ag scientists have done experiments that showed that crops suffer just by increasing the heat (especially the overnight lows), even with the same water supply. I'm not sure that GMOs can keep up with the rate that heat increases, especially with the increasing trends in both"flash droughts" and mass rain events.
In any case, independent of climate change, many of the world's agricultural regions have been mining out their groundwater supplies, aggravated by stupidly wasteful practices and choices of crops. In the US that includes California's Central Valley and the Ogallala Aquifer in the Midwest.
Surface water has been disappearing, too, both from human overuse and climate patterns of reduced rainfall and faster evaporation in the increasing heat (again, with night-time heat increasing faster). Besides the long-predicted trends in increasing aridification in many areas, rainfall loss in South America is being aggravated by the removal of the Amazon rainforest. Rapid changes in glacier melt are already causing agricultural and social problems in the Himalayas and the Andes.
Along heavily farmed river deltas (e.g., Mekong, Ganges), saltwater intrusion from sea level rise is another problem.
Some good news is that policymakers and ag communities are starting to take water conservation more seriously, and developing more projects to recharge aquifers during rain events and shading irrigation canals to reduce evaporation.
Elevated atmospheric CO2 improves plant water-use efficiency (WUE) by inducing partial stomatal closure, reducing transpiration rates by 14–19% or more. Because plants lose over 90% of their water through stomata, these smaller pores allow them to gain carbon for photosynthesis while losing less moisture, enhancing drought resistance.
Key Aspects of CO2 and Reduced Water Usage: Stomatal Closure: When CO2 levels are high, plants do not need to open their stomata (breathing pores) as wide to obtain the necessary for photosynthesis, reducing water loss.
Increased Water Use Efficiency (WUE): Studies indicate that doubling atmospheric CO2 can improve WUE by 70 to 100% or more, allowing plants to produce more biomass with less water.
Improved Drought Resistance: Higher CO2 helps plants manage water stress better by maintaining higher total water potentials and improving root-to-shoot ratios, helping them survive in water-scarce conditions.
Reduced Evaporation: Less water escapes leaves, which can reduce water stress, particularly in water-stressed conditions, according to a study from the National Institutes of Health.
https://www.masterresource.org/carbon-dioxide/co2-increased-water-use-efficiency
Are you pretending that the ag scientists don't know this?
All of the →300 million trees← that died in the Texas drought in 2011 had these stomata on their leaves.
Hope helps.
I cycle through hope, cynicism, escapism, distraction and red mist rage.
I'm not living on the same EARTH than you.
Great elaboration by Andrew and his explanation of Dr Hansen's intent. Andrew alludes a good point.. we can do everything right to reverse climate change but war will still feed the beast.
Excellent analysis as usual
Andrew, All the news feels bad lately. “The hit at Ras Laffan has taken almost 20% of output (i.e. roughly 3% of global LNG volumes) offline for *3-5 years*.” I can’t find photos but did this burn? And if Methane is 80% more warming to the planet than carbon, how wrecked are we now?
Prudent countries concerned about national and economic security are moving to be less dependent on petrostates and volatile fuels.
“Sunlight doesn’t depend on narrow and vulnerable shipping straits. Wind blows without massive taxpayer-funded naval escorts.”
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16032026/un-climate-chief-iran-war-fossil-fuel-dependency
The only reason anybody ever talks about nuclear is because it's profitable, because there's a vertical trade for the never ending fuel supply, just like carbon. That's the problem with re, there's nothing to buy after the system is installed. The rest of it is just noise. Any talk of re being unable to provide a Base load is simply misinformed. We here in the US live in a bubble, and most people are completely ignorant as to what's going on in the rest of the world.
I am under the (misapprehension?) that there are two additional and related climate bomb possibilities: methane clathrates and permafrost decay itself releasing vast quantities of CH4. Yes methane has a relatively brief atmospheric lifespan, but 80 years is plenty long enough to entirely destabilize the cryosphere, hugely increase polar albedos, and cause havoc in Europe as the AMOC slows or shuts down, with enormous consequences globally. Rightly so, not Venus, yet not a bright future for humanity within broader stable ecosystems either.
Those are probably not going to push the planet into a runway. They would be better thought as a tipping point that could bring a lot more warming in a short amount of time. I wrote about that here: https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/a-truly-worst-case-climate-scenario
Good to know that we haven't mastered how to turn Earth into Venus yet.
Very cool article. we need more people talking about what matters.
I too have a blog wherein I get people accustomed to climate and sustainability in 3 min reads twice a week, So they at least understand the basics to follow the conversation
Wrote about the big bad methane and what is it that makes it worse especially due to some agricultural practices with some cool facts! Hope it’s interesting
https://substack.com/@susitout/note/p-193457928?r=3pcwen&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
As a few others have mentioned, the geologic carbon cycle provides a negative (stabilizing) climate feedback because silicate weathering is proportional temperature. Plate tectonics is mostly temperature independent and keeps supplying fresh rock for reaction with water + CO2. Mostly.
On top of that, Venus doesn’t have Earth-style plate tectonics constantly exposing fresh rock to weathering, which means it can’t run the same long-term carbon ‘thermostat’ we have—another reason we’re not about to flip into Venus mode overnight.
Thanks for the explanation. I check X to stay informed since mainstream media is always lagging way behind, but I only run into deniers or doomers who spike my anxiety and almost give me a panic attack. Are the current models even accounting for this record-breaking rise in ocean temperatures, especially since El Niño hasn't even hit yet? It feels like something broke back in 2023 because temperatures never went back to the average and now they're skyrocketing again.
Thanks a million for helping out with this without falling into catastrophism.
Your napkin math assumes a constant f. Obviously that isn't correct, as melting that last little bit of arctic snow must be an f ~0. Why is this an OK simplification?
Why are there such large error bars on estimated f? Isn't that something you can easily measure?
You're correct that the values of f will be state dependent, so that they can change as the climate changes. The large error bars occur because it is very hard/impossible to directly measure, you have to infer it from other data. See, e.g., this paper: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019RG000678
Considering my area had a very summery winter, I worry about fire season and tree mortality. I worry about climate change far more than I do Cascadia, but less than I do the current regime, so …….
Quote the passage where Lazard says it's conclusions are now inverted, that renewable energy is more expensive. Show me.
Don't let them destroy chances for tomorrow PEACE.