Our Oceans Are Reaching the Climate Change Tipping Point, Warn Scientists

I'm not going to debate about the reality of climate change, global warming, or any other label being placed on the current and projected changes affecting the environment. I also don't want to try and convince you that the climate changes we are seeing worldwide are manmade, a normal pattern of earthly change, or intervention by aliens to save the planet. There are plenty of people and organizations ready to do battle for their favorite belief. What is absolutely essential is the need to acknowledge that change is occurring and finding ways we can survive and adapt in the changing physical world with variable weather, depleted resources, human and wildlife migrations, overpopulation, and the failure of governments and individuals to acknowledge and adapt to these changes. Maybe we can provide for 7 billion people, but what about 10 billion in 20 years or less? What happens when the cyclical El Nino becomes a permanent event, when the Atlantic ocean circulation patterns are disrupted by increased fresh water from melting glaciers and North Pole ice sheets, when toxic algae blooms increase and poison the fish we depend on or pollute the very air we breath? When the droughts, floods, major hurricanes (or lack thereof), or other infrequent occurrences become commonplace or start to affect us all instead of "someone else". When over 98% of the scientific community worldwide agree that the world is warming at an unprecedented rate, and banks, insurance companies, and wall street are taking steps to limit their liability for damages caused by climate change, then maybe, as Alana says, we need to pull our heads out of the sand and start dealing with reality.

(tu)

Exactly, islandnewbie! You aren't letting the trees get in your way of seeing the forest. If we as a population insist on throwing in the towel in slowing the temperature rise, we should, at the very least, be focusing on adapting to a climate that's changing faster than we can keep up.

we should, at the very least, be focusing on adapting to a climate that's changing faster than we can keep up.

Since every major extinction level event has been due to large meteor strikes on the earth; I think the only thing we should be focusing is how to prevent that from happening again.

Near the end of the last Ice Age 12,800 years ago, a giant comet that had entered the solar system from deep space thousands of years earlier, broke into multiple fragments. Some of these struck the Earth causing a global cataclysm on a scale unseen since the extinction of the dinosaurs. At least eight of the fragments hit the North American ice cap, while further fragments hit the northern European ice cap. The impacts, from comet fragments a mile wide approaching at more than 60,000 miles an hour, generated huge amounts of heat which instantly liquidized millions of square kilometers of ice, destabilizing the Earth’s crust and causing the global Deluge that is remembered in myths all around the world. A second series of impacts, equally devastating, causing further cataclysmic flooding, occurred 11,600 years ago, the exact date that Plato gives

http://sacredgeometryinternational.com/graham-hancockjoe-rogan-and-randall-carlson-together-on-111915

Once we get that threat managed, we can work on other items of interest.

we should, at the very least, be focusing on adapting to a climate that's changing faster than we can keep up.

Since every major extinction level event has been due to large meteor strikes on the earth; I think the only thing we should be focusing is how to prevent that from happening again.

Um no. Better check your facts re: the major extinctions.

Once we get that threat managed, we can work on other items of interest.

Yes, because it makes perfect sense to plan for an uncontrollable possibility rather than a mitigable.probability. Thanks for the laugh.

The good folks at the International Chemtrail Association have this under control with their heavy metal nanoparticle dispersal systems. Dimmer skies for a brighter future!

Since every major extinction level event has been due to large meteor strikes on the earth; I think the only thing we should be focusing is how to prevent that from happening again.

Um no. Better check your facts re: the major extinctions.

Oh yea? please do show me where major global mass extinction events come from if not from meteor strikes... even the bible's "great flood" myth is based entirely on one of these

Once we get that threat managed, we can work on other items of interest.

Yes, because it makes perfect sense to plan for an uncontrollable possibility rather than a mitigable.probability. Thanks for the laugh.

it's actually completely controllable; unless you are one of those moon landing hoaxers.

if we can go into space, if we can launch missiles into space, if we can laucnch drones onto the face of mars.....

if ALL of that is possible we can CERTAINLY re-direct an asteroid a few degrees so it misses our planet entirely... the fact that you think we cannot shows me how little you understand about inertia and the vastness of the cosmos.

this is COMPLETELY controllable by us if we choose to do so.

Since every major extinction level event has been due to large meteor strikes on the earth; I think the only thing we should be focusing is how to prevent that from happening again.

Um no. Better check your facts re: the major extinctions.

Oh yea? please do show me where major global mass extinction events come from if not from meteor strikes... even the bible's "great flood" myth is based entirely on one of these

Once we get that threat managed, we can work on other items of interest.

Yes, because it makes perfect sense to plan for an uncontrollable possibility rather than a mitigable.probability. Thanks for the laugh.

it's actually completely controllable; unless you are one of those moon landing hoaxers.

if we can go into space, if we can launch missiles into space, if we can laucnch drones onto the face of mars.....

if ALL of that is possible we can CERTAINLY re-direct an asteroid a few degrees so it misses our planet entirely... the fact that you think we cannot shows me how little you understand about inertia and the vastness of the cosmos.

this is COMPLETELY controllable by us if we choose to do so.

The causes of the major extinctions, some happening over hundreds of thousands of years, are mostly undetermined. If you have additional scientific data to help determine what definitively caused any of these, I suggest you contact some scientists that actually study these and share. They would be grateful. Here's a summary. And many sources concur. I have not seen ANY reputable source that attributes all extinctions to extraterrestrial sourced impacts.

National Geographic

As for preventing a major impact from hitting Earth, it's probably doable. Although since Bruce Willis came so very close to failing, it's a long shot. I mean, do we really have any oil rig workers more qualified than Bruce? 🙂 But it would be much more expedient if we would take the current predictable threat more seriously, no matter what the cause. One threat does not cancel out the other.

I have not seen ANY reputable source that attributes all extinctions to extraterrestrial sourced impacts.

These findings are all fairly new, within the last decade or so...& this is just the beginning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event#Chicxulub_asteroid_impact

http://australianmuseum.net.au/the-mesozoic-extinction-event

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/cowen1b.html

http://www.livescience.com/26933-chicxulub-cosmic-impact-dinosaurs.html

http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2003/011790/meteor-likely-caused-earths-greatest-extinction-event

http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Natural_Disasters/impacts.htm

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/147978-finally-confirmed-an-asteroid-wiped-out-the-dinosaurs

As for preventing a major impact from hitting Earth, it's probably doable. Although since Bruce Willis came so very close to failing, it's a long shot. I mean, do we really have any oil rig workers more qualified than Bruce? 🙂 But it would be much more expedient if we would take the current predictable threat more seriously, no matter what the cause. One threat does not cancel out the other.

Simply exploding a missile on one side of a meteor would knock it off course if done soon enough (aka far enough away from us).

You're right, nothing comes close to this threat; there is nothing more serious that should be worked on right now then the meteor issue. we know a strike basically ENDED nearly ALL live on the planet, if that happens again we won't survive & will suffer a society reset (if we live at all, we could go the way of the dinosaurs).

I have not seen ANY reputable source that attributes all extinctions to extraterrestrial sourced impacts.

These findings are all fairly new, within the last decade or so...& this is just the beginning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event#Chicxulub_asteroid_impact

http://australianmuseum.net.au/the-mesozoic-extinction-event

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/cowen1b.html

http://www.livescience.com/26933-chicxulub-cosmic-impact-dinosaurs.html

http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2003/011790/meteor-likely-caused-earths-greatest-extinction-event

http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Natural_Disasters/impacts.htm

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/147978-finally-confirmed-an-asteroid-wiped-out-the-dinosaurs

As for preventing a major impact from hitting Earth, it's probably doable. Although since Bruce Willis came so very close to failing, it's a long shot. I mean, do we really have any oil rig workers more qualified than Bruce? 🙂 But it would be much more expedient if we would take the current predictable threat more seriously, no matter what the cause. One threat does not cancel out the other.

Simply exploding a missile on one side of a meteor would knock it off course if done soon enough (aka far enough away from us).

You're right, nothing comes close to this threat; there is nothing more serious that should be worked on right now then the meteor issue. we know a strike basically ENDED nearly ALL live on the planet, if that happens again we won't survive & will suffer a society reset (if we live at all, we could go the way of the dinosaurs).

Your links cover 2 (and actually mostly 1) of the 5 major extinction events, which supports my original statement. The meteor issue is being worked on, as it has for decades. It's still not an excuse for not putting energy into the global climate threat.

Your links cover 2 (and actually mostly 1) of the 5 major extinction events, which supports my original statement. The meteor issue is being worked on, as it has for decades.

Here's a few more events:

65 million years ago -- A 10-kilometer asteroid strikes north of the Yucatan Peninsula, causes a global firestorm, then a cold snap and finally a global warming that extinguishes the dinosaurs. Mammals move to center stage. dinosaur icon Some eventually make important discoveries like bingo, the Edsel, and the painful effects of asteroids.
3.3 million years ago -- An impact in Argentina precedes numerous extinctions and a global cooling trend (more on this later).

50,000 years ago -- An iron meteorite a few dozen meters across gouges the 1.2 kilometer Barringer meteorite crater in Arizona.

1490 -- About 10,000 people die in the Chinese city of Chi1ing-yang when an asteroid breaks overhead.

icon of an asteroid1908 -- An asteroid estimated at 50 meters across explodes above Tunguska, Siberia, blowing down trees across 2,000 square kilometers and killing a thousand reindeer, but apparently no people. Because the stony object exploded in the atmosphere, there's no crater.

1937 -- Asteroid Hermes -- about a kilometer in diameter -- misses Earth by 600,000 miles. Hermes, although smaller than the 'roid that snuffed the dinosaurs, could have been a true "category killer," able to cause epic devastation and kill millions.

There are more papers being published on meteor strikes here on earth, once we found the indicating geological formations on land masses it became easy to find a lot of enormous impact sites.

But who is in charge of stopping a meteor? if it's being worked on, who is working on it? (no one that I know of) it's hardly even being discussed at all. Nasa monitors them, but they don't really have a plan to stop them.

we are GUESSING about what's now ambiguously called "climate change" & they at least have the IPPC. we KNOW about meteor strikes and there's nothing, no commity, no company, no government agency; nothing preparing to deal with this situation.

It's still not an excuse for not putting energy into the global climate threat.

first off, there is no climate threat that we know of, data is all over the place unless you cherry pick it otherwise there would be no controversy.. we don't even know where to "measure" to get an "average global temperature" it's all nebulous & nothing is panning out as it was predicted previously.(at best it's guess work)

we DO know a meteor impacted the earth and killed almost everything, we can see on every planet near us (and our very own planet, even our tiny moon) evidence of hundreds to thousands of giant meteor impacts.

We live in a galactic shooting gallery and have been lucky to not have any major strikes recently.

If things were slightly different this event in 2013 could have been terrible (and it was a TINY meteor):

The Chelyabinsk meteor was a superbolide caused by a near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013 at about 09:20 YEKT (03:20 UTC), with a speed of 19.16 ± 0.15 kilometres per second (60,000[5]–69,000 km/h or 40,000[5]–42,900 mph).[6][7] It quickly became a brilliant superbolide meteor over the southern Ural region. The light from the meteor was brighter than the Sun, up to 100 km away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor

Oh good grief, y'all!

I think we'll be impacted by climate change, massive pollution, and others things we need to be dealing with, now, way before we are impacted by a meteor strike.

The writing is on the wall with unprecedented floods and droughts, etc., globally. Not to mention all the other crap going on.

Liquid Floride, did we just not go thru a drought that lasted here in the VI for 8 - 9 months? That was unprecidented here in my lifetime.
Were you not buying water to sustain your animals, constantly.
We were lucky it only lasted that long. Have you not seen the increases in the strength and category of hurricanes, not just here but globally?

Meteor strikes are the last thing we need to concern ourselves with.
Why don't we try to fix what we can?
We're already on the road to an extinction event, if we are not very careful.

We are not very good stewards of the only planet that has sustained us, thus far.

There are a whole lot of really bad things that can happen before mass extinction, some of which would probably make us wish for mass extinction. Seems reasonable to work on the cause of those really bad things that might happen in our lifetime or the lifetime of our children and grandchildren, instead of focusing on something that MIGHT happen some time in the next 10,000+ years. Just saying...

Thanks islandnewbie!(tu)

Exactly. By adopting GMOs we reduce the carbon footprint immensely over organic farming. Praise Science!

Oh good grief, y'all!

I think we'll be impacted by climate change, massive pollution, and others things we need to be dealing with, now, way before we are impacted by a meteor strike.

So the meteor strike (video) from 2013 I posted above doesn't count as anything?

The writing is on the wall with unprecedented floods and droughts, etc., globally. Not to mention all the other crap going on.

Liquid Floride, did we just not go thru a drought that lasted here in the VI for 8 - 9 months? That was unprecidented here in my lifetime.
Were you not buying water to sustain your animals, constantly.
We were lucky it only lasted that long. Have you not seen the increases in the strength and category of hurricanes, not just here but globally?

The earth is what, BILLIONS of years old? How does it make sense that what is happening over even the course of 100 years is not a part of some cycle that we barely grasp... we K N O W that the earth has gone into SEVERAL ice ages... we KNOW the climate naturally fluctuates in "dramatic" ways (North America was under over a MILE of ice during the last ice age).

right now we have nothing to go on, maybe a fluctuation of 1-3 degrees in decades (that are either within the margin of error or basically unknowable in origin & the last 20 years have been flat).

If you support this position and have not read the studies and where the data comes from I don't understand how you can support it at all. There is literally NOTHING to see on this topic; any major talking point has been dis-proven by the earth itself over the last 20 years or so & the best "climate change" has to go on now is more predictions that will probably fall to the wayside just like the "shrinking ice cap" and all that...

Meteor strikes are the last thing we need to concern ourselves with.
Why don't we try to fix what we can?
We're already on the road to an extinction event, if we are not very careful.

I'm not saying we shouldn't. but we CERTAINLY shouldn't lie about it, to our selves or others.

WHAT extinction event are we headed to, there is no data to back that up; at best there are guesses and postulations which are (again) backed by nothing that doesn't fall with in error margins.

We are not very good stewards of the only planet that has sustained us, thus far.

we certainly should be more conservative, I agree completely.

I'm trying to be realistic about this topic, not polarized, not chicken little.

http://climate.nasa.gov/news/2382/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/science/climate-chaos-across-the-map.html?ribbon-ad-idx=7&rref=science&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Science&pgtype=article

Fact-checking has never been LF's strong suit.

http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/01/05/new-threat-lurking-greenlands-melting-ice-sheets?cmpid=tpdaily-eml-2016-01-05

http://climate.nasa.gov/news/2382/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/science/climate-chaos-across-the-map.html?ribbon-ad-idx=7&rref=science&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Science&pgtype=article

we are certainly in some turbulent times!

Fact-checking has never been LF's strong suit.

Huh?

Correlation does not imply causation

we are going through a slow warming cycle, there is weather changes; that does not mean it's caused by man or is unnatural at all.

Fact-checking has never been LF's strong suit.

Btw, your attacking me personally is another logical fallacy: ad hominem lets discuss the issue shall we?

arguing is fun, but learning is better for all of us.

Here's a couple interesting links I came across this morning.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151103-antarctic-ice-growing-shrinking-glaciers-climate-change/

http://time.com/26618/study-says-climate-change-accelerating-greenlands-ice-loss/

Here's another:
http://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/125/

to LiquidFluoride:

A friend of mine frequently makes the same arguments that you do, about the eons of time and how we don't know if what is occurring now are natural occurrences and cycles etc yadda yadda yadda. Which is true.

However.

Since the dawn of the industrial age, man's activity on this planet has increased rapidly, chemicals and pollution have proliferated, along with overpopulation.

Man's activity has got to have a negative impact on the health of the planet.

It is a variable that didn't exist for eons in the past.

You can't argue otherwise.

My argument here is not very eloquent, nor quantifiable, but it is pure common sense.

Common sense isn't science. Nor are anecdotes. And before you jump on me I believe man is a culprit in the warming.