Another silent alarm: Arctic albedo flip

We often see the point raised in various online conversations that what we need is some large, catalyzing event that wakes up the masses to our looming energy and/or environmental messes. While I take exception to this viewpoint (which I will expand on below), I couldn’t help but think of it as I read The Frightening New Evidence Scientists Have Just Learned About Global Warming:

Scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence that the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world at least a decade before it was predicted to happen.

Climate-change researchers have found that air temperatures in the region are higher than would be normally expected during the autumn because the increased melting of the summer Arctic sea ice is accumulating heat in the ocean. The phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, was not expected to be seen for at least another 10 or 15 years and the findings will further raise concerns that the Arctic has already passed the climatic tipping-point towards ice-free summers, beyond which it may not recover.

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Although researchers have documented a catastrophic loss of sea ice during the summer months over the past 20 years, they have not until now detected the definitive temperature signal that they could link with greenhouse-gas emissions.

However, in a study to be presented later today to the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, scientists will show that Arctic amplification has been under way for the past five years, and it will continue to intensify Arctic warming for the foreseeable future.

Computer models of the global climate have for years suggested the Arctic will warm at a faster rate than the rest of the world due to Arctic amplification but many scientists believed this effect would only become measurable in the coming decades.

However, a study by scientists from the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in Colorado has found that amplification is already showing up as a marked increase in surface air temperatures within the Arctic region during the autumn period, when the sea ice begins to reform after the summer melting period.

One of the biggest fears in climate change is that we don’t know exactly where the various positive feedbacks kick in. By dumping more than 25 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, we continue to nudge a huge boulder down a hillside overlooking a small village. Where exactly is the weak spot in the ground, the small divot in the terrain, the wet spot from a forgotten rain that will let the boulder slide just a bit more than expected, all ready to cause a runaway situation and tragedy?

As best I can tell from my reading, in climate chaos we have two huge feedbacks to be worried about. The first is Arctic amplification, caused by albedo flip–the increase in solar absorption when ice gives way to open water or land. This one we were sure was coming, even if we (once again) are surprised by its timing and strength. The other is a massive methane release from no-longer-perma frost and/or undersea methane hydrate deposits. While we are seeing an unsettling uptick in atmospheric methane in the last few years, there’s still considerable debate among real scientists whether a methane blast is an imminent threat or something “scheduled” for late in this century, if at all.[1] It better not happen soon, or we’re in almost indescribable trouble.

So, why is this a “silent alarm”, and why do I object to the notion of an alarm waking up mainstream consumers and voters? We keep having these alarms, in the form of temperature records, the massive number of heat deaths in Europe just a few years ago, record levels of Arctic sea ice melt, US-state-size blocks of ice breaking off of Antarctica, etc. And every time, the same thing happens: It makes big news in the science community, the energy and enviro geeks all blog about it and e-mail links to each other, and if we’re really, really lucky and there’s no good footage available that day of a water skiing squirrel or a human interest story about some guy building a 10,000-gallon replica of a Dixie cup, the national news spares 60 to 90 seconds for a blurb and a furrowed brow. And then it’s forgotten. Just one more stone tossed into the Great Lakes with barely a ripple, one more silent alarm. Hey–did you hear that Best Buy has iPods on sale?! Now that’s news!.

I know how snarkily pessimistic this sounds, and I sincerely apologize for my tone of late. I’ve been thinking a lot about where we’re headed as a country and a species in terms of energy and environmental issues, and I’ve come to some uncomfortable (for me) conclusions:

First, trying to change the world on these fronts via a grass roots movement–revenge of the recyclers, so to speak–is hopelessly naive. There’s just not enough people at the bottom pushing hard enough to stop that boulder in its downhill slide, let alone reverse its direction. I personally find this painful, as for a long time I believed the grass roots could do it. But seeing the response of American consumers to 2008′s $4/gallon gasoline–meaning their response between the ears, not at the pump–has convinced me that I grossly underestimated their potential to drive a major change in how the US produces and consumes energy products. If anything, I think that the environmental situation is even worse, given the longer lead times involved, the level of disinformation being strewn about, and the difficulty of the inherent concepts.

Second, trying to achieve this level of fundamental change via a grass roots political movement is equally naive.[2] A huge portion of the American public either ignores 90% of politics and votes the way it always has, or (and this is a tiny minority) are in the orbit of the hard core lefty or righty media and will think and vote however their favorite web site or TV talking head tells them to. As with the prior point, this is a very painful realization for me, and it’s in direct conflict with my basic faith in people, even those who don’t read this site.

Third, our only real hope is for genuine leadership at the top of our political hierarchy to wake up enough voters that they can pressure the people in the middle–politicians elected at the state and local levels, including members of the US House and Senate–to push through legislation that will do the right things, even if it means forcing a sizable number of US citizens to do things they’d rather not, like recycle, use CFL’s, buy much more efficient vehicles, drive less, etc. Did I just say that the fate of the world lies in the hands of Barack Obama? That’s a sizable exaggeration and an oversimplification, but if you want to boil it down to a bumper sticker, then the answer is yes. Not since FDR have we had a set of circumstances so primed for one president to make sweeping and needed changes to how we think and act. I am cautiously optimistic that he’s up to the task.

Finally, all the people who write on and read sites like this one are most definitely not wasting their time. We need to work as hard as ever to foster genuine dialog about these issues and relentlessly push a reality-based view of our shared problems, if only to help lay the groundwork for and help accelerate the coming awakening as the mainstream consumers and voters figure out what we’ve known for years, whether it’s triggered by true leadership or pain at the gas pump. In the process we must ignore the blithering idiots on both ends of the spectrum (yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, Apcolypticons and Cornucopians) who have nothing more than an ideology or a financial interest to drive their “analysis” and “opinions”, and instead insist on hard numbers and steely-eyed analysis of our situation and remaining options. It’s time for the adults to start doing our homework, for ourselves and all our children, whether they share our DNA or not.

[1] Let me be unmistakeably clear about “scheduled”: When we to pump all that very long-lived CO2 into the atmosphere year after year we wind up locking ourselves into an ever narrower range of future possibilities. If we continue with business as usual for long enough we will effectively commit ourselves to something truly horrendous, like a methane blast, even if it doesn’t happen for several more decades.

[2] Yes, I know that one of my favorite writers in this field, Bill McKibben, is pushing the political involvement angle. He mentions it again, albeit briefly, in this must-read interview in The Progressive.