How will global warming become out of control?

Many scientists to say that if emissions aren't reduced by X amount in Y years, global warming will become out of our control.





Why? Is it because of the permafrost in Russia will melt, or because there will be too much carbon in the atmosphere to make a difference?How will global warming become out of control?
What do you mean wit ';out of control';?


If you think, it wil be a run away to sky high temperatures, this will not happen. Climate is able to stabilise on a higher temperature, when the changing forces stabilise first.


But, if you think about impacts on human civilisation and culture, these effects are already beyond our control. Take hurricane Katrina as example. Although climate change is not really to blame for this, you see, how difficult it is, to prevent such events and how difficult it is to repair the damage. Think about only 1m rise in sea level. This will generate about some hundred million refugees worldwide, not only in Bangladesh, in USA too, not to forget the vast amounts of money to protect the coasts against the sea.





That, what scientists say is, if we do not reduce production of carbon dioxide to halv the amount of todays production untill 2050, with start next year, we will get it warmer than 2 centigrade.


If we wait to 2015 we have to reduce to 1/10th of todays production. Do we wait longer than 2015, we do not have a chance to to brake at a temperature rise of 2 centigrade.


But be aware, already with 2 centigrade rise there will be a rise in sea level of 1-2 m, with huge problems following this.


nevertheless, a rise of temperature above 2 centigrade will not be a problem for you as individual. Temperature will level out only higher than 2 degrees, but it is very likely that we have to face a runaway in melting of sea and inland ice of the Arctic and Antarctic and Greenland, and this will mean a rise in sea level of about 70 m.How will global warming become out of control?
Water vapour is another greenhouse gas. Hotter air can hold more water; so, when you raise the average temperature of the earth by a few degrees you may be increasing the amount of water vapour in the environment. If this increase in water vapour causes the temperature to increase further, you get caught in an uncontrolled feedback situation and temperatures would spiral out of control.





No one is certain if this would happen, though, but some people do speculate it.
there will be too much carbon because the emissions from carbon dioxide will be so much to the point that currently trees and shrubs have a hard time filtering out these emissions which in return converts it to oxygen. therefore, asthma is common in areas with various plants. Also, the permafrost in russia: on that note, there will be a lot of melting of ice, which if there glaciers around, will cause more polar bears to become extinct.
They think that at some point there will be an irreversible breakdown in the reverse feedback loops that maintain the world's temperature in a narrow band. I cannot see how they can seriously propose such a foolish theory: the laws of thermodynamics mean there will be cooling cycles as long as there is water on Earth. The Gaea effect is the term for the natural world's tendency to return things to normal - It gets hotter, more water evaporates which consumes heat, reducing the temperature. It gets colder, water falls as rain, raising the temperature. Too much CO2? Plants and plankton grow faster, as CO2 is a plant food, reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere. If it got too hot for plants to survive that would break the Gaea effect's ability to reduce CO2, and you would then be heading for out-of-control CO2 levels, but not even the most alarmist Warmists are predicting temperatures beyond the ability of plants to survive. The most dire predictions I have seen are for a measly 2 degrees warmer - for most of the world, that will be a marked improvement in the climate. Most of the inhabited parts of the planet are too cold much of the time. Global Warming? Bring it on - but I bet it isn't going to happen in my lifetime or my grandchildren's either.
They worry about a phenomenon known as feedback loop.





Assume the snow caps at the poles and all the mountain tops have melted, then there are less white stuff to reflect sunlight back into the sky. i.e more solar energy will be absorbed and more snow will be melted. The loop just continues because it is feeding on itself. By then, whatever you do may not make a difference anymore.





Good luck to human kind. The roaches will rule the world.
Technically it is out of control now, because we've barely got a fix on all the variables involved and we haven't fully implemented the steps that can be taken to begin to get a handle on it. But if by 'out of control' you mean far more pronounced, I'm not sure most of us will see it manifest itself that way. Coastal areas will bear the brunt of the more horrific impacts. Lots of adaptation measures being identified and implemented there.





As for the ';why,'; there's a lot of modeling involved in trying to project what's happening out there, but instead of blathering on I will offer you some links I've found useful that discuss carbon and the effects of the melting of the Arctic summer ice and glacial retreats. But I'll not paint a typical ';doom and gloom'; scenario for you. I'm hopeful that the more people empower themselves by learning about what's happening, the better we can interpret what we hear and read, the more effectively we can interact with our elected officials to ensure that they are being proactive in addressing the crisis.
Is the most easy answer ;every day we use chemical products when we go to the bathroom,when we wash the dishes or the clothes,when we use simple aids to pro-tec humans from a simple bugs or animals,all this chemical products use water to wash away products not good for the product,this water is spilled in rivers,lakes,or seas.


We use a car every day,you can see a brown cloud over the big population areas,that is what we smell and breath,then we destroy the natural resources when we cut the trees,to build Beautiful hotels or high priced houses whit just a few trees,but they mess whit the water a lot,when they trow junk ?


then the big industry,they use a lot of water to clean their own products,that water is trowed to the main rivers,seas,lakes,and the other living creatures of this world die.(the ones to survive this thing blame us for the mess we do)just a little tip never vote for a people who give you money for the destroy of our natural resources?
The one thing everyone is oblivious to is the impact it is already having on farmers. They are either suffering from drought, flooding rain, or late freezes. Food prices are already going up. Food shortages will be next. It doesn't even matter whether it's man made or natural.
It is the natural cycle of the Earth and the will of Jah.


When the Earth is done with us, we get flushed down like a toilet bowl flushing excrement out to sea.
The Democrats are out of control and want to raise Taxes


in a Cap and Trade Ponzi sheme. Then everything will cost


more for a hoax.
If the sun gets warmer...
First: No matter how bad global warming gets, it will never become ';out of control'; in the sense that it will increase to levels dangerous to the existence of life on the planet - as happened on Venus, which apparently once was quite earth-like, with liquid water and the whole 9 yards. ';Out of control'; in this context means that no matter how low carbon emissions are reduced to, it wouldn't help bring the temperature down any - in other words, beyond HUMAN control: natural feedback cycles will limit any warming to a certain amount, no matter what we do. That said, as others answering your question have pointed out, if the amount of warming gets up much over 2 C over pre-industrial levels (and large-scale industrialization of the world is generally considered to have started around 1900) by the year 2100, then we are in for a LOT of problems, which could include the loss of 30 to 40% of all species on the planet, as well as the reduction of the human population to substantially lower levels than the present. So, that's the ';magic number'; for warming: if we can take actions which will prevent the warming by 2100, from getting over 2 C above the 1900 level, then the consequences will be ';non-catastrophic'; - bad enough, but not to the point where ecological dissasters would occur.





The main question you ask, is why would the warming trend become ';out of control'; as in ';beyond the point where humans can do anything about it ';(at least by reducing emissions - we could in theory find ways to remove large amounts of CO2 and/or methane from the atmosphere by artificial means - this is called ';geo-engineering';). This would be because there are a number of feed-back loops which could reach ';tipping points'; where once something starts to happen it is nearly impossible to stop: something basic would be changed which would take a long time to repair. Think of a rubber band: it is elastic, and you can stretch it a long way before anything bad happens. BUT, if you stretch it too far, it just breaks and in order to repair it you'd have to resort to drastic measures such as melting the two ends together: not very easy to do!! The point where it breaks can be thought of as a ';tipping point';: once you reach it, going back is NOT easy. Some of the ';points of no return'; for the earth's climate, are:





1) Arctic multi-year sea ice melting completely: this would result in a completely open Arctic Ocean for a certain period each year after that point. Ice would of course form each winter, but it would all melt in the spring and summer. An ice-free Arctic Ocean would absorb a LOT more of the sun's energy than an ice-covered one does: snow and ice, being white and highly reflective, bounce most of the sun's energy back out into space unchanged. Water, on the other hand, absorbs most of the sun's incoming energy: very little is reflected back into space. The Arctic Ocean's ice cover is quite large now: 11 million square km in October, when the ice pack is smallest. If that amount of water were absorbing incoming solar energy instead of reflecting it, the difference would be substantial.... and it would be progressive: the Arctic Ocean would become considerably warmer, meaning that less and less ice would form during the winter months.... earlier melting of the ocean-covering ice in the summertime would result, leading to more warming and hence less ice the next winter - another feedback loop to further accelerate warming!





2) Permafrost - when it melts it releases large amounts of CO2 and methane. If permafrost in Siberia and Northern Canada becomes severe, vast amounts of greenhouse gases will be released.





3) Forests and wetlands worldwide are rapidly reaching the point where they will cross the line from ';carbon sink'; - absorbing more CO2 from the atmosphere then they return - to ';carbon source'; - emitting more CO2 (in the form of methane and CO2 - methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas on its own, but after a few decades it breaks down into plain old-fashioned CO2: in internet terms one could say it gets a ';second life';, lol!) than it removes from the atmosphere. If most of the world's mature ecosystems cross the line form sink to source, that would be a game-changing ';tipping point';.





4) The world's oceans are also approaching the ';sink to source'; point: until now, they have absorbed a large percentage of the extra CO2 we humans are pumping into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil hydrocarbons - but they can only absorb so much, at which point they become saturated with regards to CO2, and can absorb no more, even starting to emit it as they warm up (cold water can dissolve more CO2 than warm water can). That's another of the ';tipping points'; which we are approaching. (A side-effect of this is that when CO2 is dissolved in water it forms carbonic acid, and the Ph goes down - with possibly drastic consequences for much of the life in the sea. Look up in Google ';Ocean acidification';.)





5) Methane clathrates (also known as hydrates): There are HUGE amounts of methane in a chemical state at the bottom of the world's oceans where they are bound by water molecules - like birds in teensy tiny cages essentially. These clathrates are only stable below a certain combination of temperature and pressure (the deeper ones will be held stable for a longer time, because of the pressure from the water on top of them). Many of the world's enormous reservoirs of seaffoor methane clathrates are quite close to the point where they would become unstable and release the methane they now contain. If that ever happened, it would be catastrophic!! BUT, recent studies have shown that this is not likely to occur any time soon: they appear to be more stable than scientists originally thought they were. It would take quite a bit of warming to reach this particularly nasty Tipping Point, so don't worry about this one.





There are a few others that we know of (and probably some that we don't....), but i hope you get the drift of things from what i've written above. Feel free to drop by the Yahoo Group ';climate concern'; ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ClimateCon鈥?/a> (if link doesn't work, paste groups.yahoo.com/ group/ ClimateConcern into your browser's location bar and close the gaps after the / marks ) to ask further questions and join in our discussions!!








Cheers,


Ross Mayhew.