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Posted Fri Sep 19 2008: from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory:
IMPACTS: On the Threshold of Abrupt Climate Changes http://apocadocs.com/s.pl?1221834472
"There are lots of names for abrupt climate change: nasty surprises, the jokers in the deck, the tipping point," Collins says. "When the national lab participants first met to decide on the most significant potential sources of abrupt climate change in future, the first thing we had to do was define what we meant: a large-scale change that happens more quickly than that brought on by forcing mechanisms -- on a scale of years to decades, not centuries -- and that persists for a very long time." ... Only half joking, Collins refers to these [four types of forcing mechanisms] as "the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."
[Read more stories about: faster than expected, climate impacts, feedback loop]
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'Doc Michael says:
Those wacky scientists -- what a bunch of cards!
Seriously -- this is a pretty interesting project, bringing together six different high-powered groups to address what could be a really scary scenario: abrupt climate change, in the few-year to ten-year span.

That kind of change would be transformative, and is, alas, kinda likely: if the permafrost melts and rots, enormous amounts of CO2 and methane will be released. What would that do? A lot -- and a lot bad.

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More stories:
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  • 'Buckyballs' have high potential to accumulate in living tissue
  • (IMPACTS: On the Threshold of Abrupt Climate Changes)
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