Tipping Points, Bifurcation Theory, and the Justification For Whole System Thinking

For those who wonder why a "tipping point" matters, or why critical thinkers are now talking about "whole system thinking"...

 

Tipping point (climatology) – the point beyond which unstable global climate does not return to a previous equilibrium state but gets more unstable until it finds a new equilibrium

 

Tipping point (sociology) -  is the event of a previously rare phenomenon becoming rapidly and dramatically more common
 

Tipping point (ecology) – exceeding planetary boundaries, in which living within the boundaries' stable state retains planetary habitability on Earth
 

Tipping point (catastrophe theory)  - the value of the parameter at which the set of equilibria abruptly change
 

Tipping point (civil engineering - angle of repose) - the maximum angle of a stable slope of granular materials before it destabilizes
 

Tipping point (economics) - the point at which a dominant technology or player defines the standard for an industry-resulting in an permanent market advantage & "winner-take-all" economies of scale and scope (market advantage = loss of equilibrium)

{Ed: Tipping Point (everything) – that point at which the stable state of system parameters, or system equilibrium, is sufficiently disturbed that the system cannot return to that steady state (or equilibrium) without significant external influence. The system will invariably seek a new equilibrium state, that may require complete annihilation of many previous system factors}

Bifurcation Theory - is the mathematical study of changes in the qualitative or topological structure of a given family, such as the integral curves of a family of vector fields, and the solutions of a family of differential equations. Most commonly applied to the mathematical study of dynamical systems, a bifurcation occurs when a small smooth change made to the parameter values (the bifurcation parameters) of a system causes a sudden 'qualitative' or topological change in its behavior. Bifurcations occur in both continuous systems (described by ODEs, DDEs or PDEs), and discrete systems (described by maps).

Catastrophe Theory, a branch of bifurcation theory in the study of dynamical systems, originated with the work of the French mathematician René Thom in the 1960s, and became very popular due to the efforts of Christopher Zeeman in the 1970s, considers the special case where the long-run stable equilibrium can be identified with the minimum of a smooth, well-defined potential function (Lyapunov function).

Bifurcation theory studies and classifies phenomena characterized by sudden shifts in behavior arising from small changes in circumstances, analyzing how the qualitative nature of equation solutions depends on the parameters that appear in the equation. This may lead to sudden and dramatic changes, for example the unpredictable timing and magnitude of a landslide.

Small changes in certain parameters of a nonlinear system can cause equilibria to appear or disappear, or to change from attracting to repelling and vice versa, leading to large and sudden changes of the behavior of the system. However, examined in a larger parameter space, catastrophe theory reveals that such bifurcation points tend to occur as part of well-defined qualitative geometric structures.

Look back at the list above.  It includes climate, physical events, sociology, economics, and is only a part of what our world system is.  Certainly the political systems we are so vitally interested in here are wrapped up in it all in very complex ways. Here is what I am driving at:  we are now facing a variety of instabilities all at once.

Again a partial list:
climate change
ocean acidification

global warming

pollution

polarized elections

wars
bees and birds, insecticides
agricultural crises
water surplus and drought
economic turmoil
communications, internet, technology
many, many more

No one of these can be studied adequately isolated from the others yet we try so desperately to do just that.  In climate science alone we keep seeing new things as changes progress that potentially change everything.

Maybe we humans are an "intelligent" species.  Yet we are also arrogant if we believe the progress briefly described here is enough to adequately deal with what is coming and seems to be coming faster and faster.  Is there an answer?  The only answer is to become as flexible as possible and maybe some adaptation will be possible.

Summarized from “Are you ready for this? A multi-dimensional tipping point” by Don Mikulecky (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/25/1316743/-Are-you-ready-for-this-A-multi-dimensional-tipping-point?detail=email#)

Thanks for being there and being you... and thanks for reading. Your comments and thoughts are appreciated and solicited.

The Smokemaster

We don't need to DEFINE or DESIGN anything - We need to DO THE DESIGN that already exists!

In the early stages of our cultural shift, I am seeing a lot of people reflecting the question “What should I do?” or reflecting that they are feeling intimidated or scared by this whole coming together – good, empowered, but intimidated. Others are framing the whole coming together and talking and sharing as a good thing but lacking in substance unless we are “doing things” to make this change, this SHIFT, happen.

First we need to agree on some basic "rules of the road" in our current journey to "the light". These are an assortment of blinding flashes of the obvious and other insights that have come to me over the years as immutable "truth".

• What's supposed to happen does. What's NOT doesn't.
• What goes around, comes around (Karma is real) 
• There is no such thing as life balance, because balance is static and life is dynamic.
• There is life equilibrium, which is dynamic balance
• In a closed biological system the accumulation of resources is  -
• a zero sum game (your gain is someone else's loss - definitively)
• the most serious disturbance of the forces of equilibrium
• unsustainable
• Western civilization has been unsustainable almost from the start

 Several significant points need to be recognized:
1) If we do nothing the SHIFT will happen. WE will not be involved in it in the same way, but it will happen. We, none of us, either collectively or individually, control this. The outcome may be different than we would like. That is one of my motivations for being here - to influence as best I can the outcome - to be favorable for humanity. My BEING HERE does that. THat means it qualifies as "doing something".

2) Our Presence and Engagement Here ARE substantial action in, and of, themselves. Whatever else we do,  so much the better. The very fact that we are engaging routinely around conscious evolution and co-creation, coherence and resilience, and that we are here to enable that, IS taking a SERIOUS action step, because we are creating an ever more substantial and sustaining resonant morphic field that flows between us and around us to everyone we connect with, within which the SHIFT will occur in profoundly meaningful ways as a matter of emergence.

3) Expanding on #2, EVERYTHING that we are doing in this resonant field is “doing things” of substance – talking, contemplating, writing poetry, creating blogs, planting a garden, building community, or making presentations to critical decision makers, whatever…it’s all GOOD. We have no master plan that has been handed to us, nor do we have to create one.

4) Just as an engine has operational limits but it is designed, even optimized to do certain things well, so are we... and we have not yet reached our full potential. The SHIFT will bring us an order of magnitude (or two) closer to fulfilling that opportunity... if we can make it successfully. We have an inherent "design" in our nature and being. We cannot change that anymore than the engine can change it's engineering. Whether you chose to see that as "externalized" deified design or the natural design of the universe in 200,000 years of evolution (more actually) is of no matter.

5)That said, we do NOT need to design or define ANYTHING! We just need to DO THE DESIGN that we "are" the best it can be done.

Sometime we get too wrapped up in the issue of "What should we do?" and the answer is always the same "What we SHOULD do!" It is frequently our lack of faith in ourselves that keeps us from doing what we SHOULD do, but rarely a lack of knowing what that is. Sometime the knowing is broad. It is a sense of things rather than a detailed knowledge of things. That's OK. Listen to that small quiet voice that is INSISTENT. Most of our guidance doesn't come with burning bush credentials. The detailed knowledge will come when it is time.

Ultimately, it is about alignment with Source, individually and collectively. That’s the premier benefit of this environment, and this interaction, is to promote and facilitate in each of us the opportunity to better align ourselves, and help others align, with Source, better and more consistently than we would be or do without this. Some of you know Source as God, others have a variety of other names. That’s all good too. Don’t get hung up on the name.

We don't need to DESIGN and DO, we just need to DO THE DESIGN that already exists (in each and everyone of us) to enable and empower our co-creative capacity. We are not creating a new technology here - we are realizing our place in a higher capacity that has always existed. We exist as a group because it was time for this part of the design to emerge, to happen (see Functioning Collectively - my next blog :-) . All of this will take effort, more for some than for others. Rarely is anything just “easy” when it’s your first time doing it. Some have just been “doing” this for somewhat longer already.

Your comments are welcome :-)

Smokemaster John

Root Cause & Human Domestication

The problem is that we cannot have this discussion about conflicting interests and (to quote Gar Alperovitz) "what then must we do?" without first being willing to recognize that the so called conservatives that have been mentioned - not conservative in any meaningful use of the word but conservative in that their capacity for future vision is so limited it cannot encompass their OWN possibilities much less a greater possibility for mankind - are a direct and terrible end product of the selective breeding process incidentally conducted by politico-industrial social engineering (control of living conditions, education, & media) and Madison Avenue (marketing & sales) interests for well over 100 years.

ANY social/physical stratification and brainwashing of the foundationally ignorant in a society WILL result in a dumbing down of the selected populace over a relatively short period of time by what can only be called "unnatural selection". This was the same way that Luther Burbank accomplished what he accomplished with fruit trees and vines - put the characteristics that you want in close proximity to each other, nurture their biological "success" (regardless of whether Nature would have nurtured it), and then facilitate their cross pollination and - voila! - you get hybrid fruit! After a few rounds of such "selective" breeding, you can start crossing them back into each other and get "true breeding" fruit that will stay "as bred" over time.

So... in dealing with the so called conservatives that have been mentioned (but not really discussed) many times in the course of many discussions, we have to recognize that they are quite literally "a breed apart" and are so different in terms of their inculcated values that they might as well be an alien life form. This "fruit", this arm-chair quarterback, this couch potato has been bred to work hard, follow orders, think that they are entitled to a certain amount of "entertainment" (that is dutifully served up by media - for a price!) challenge any who question authority, rationalize and tolerate progressively harder living circumstances, believe in fairy tales and sea stories (the difference between fairy tales and sea stories is that one of them begins with "Once upon a time..." and the other begins with "This is no shit!"), and spend everything they make on the designed obsolescent goods produced by their fellow wage slaves to enrich those who own the largest herds of fiduciary cattle (wage slaves in large groups)*.

*[ Industrial Agricultural Note: Fiduciary chattle and Moron-o sheeple are the most productive animals to keep because they are self-herding - they group up and proceed to their working environments by themselves in the morning, they group up and herd themselves back to their stalls at night, they put up with almost everything they get being taken back by the same industrial capitalists that gave it to them, and they just low or bleet when anyone asks them a meaningful question or challenges their thinking.]

Unfortunately, these folks are still considered people, or more basically "human", and so there is the self-sustaining industrialist belief that they (industrialists) cannot lose because any planned departure from the true breeding "norm" will require the agreement of the "herds" - which will never be forthcoming! It's actually fascinating how many people in my discussions over time have failed to recognize this fundamental issue, and persist in thinking "they" are just like "us"! No, no they aren't - and they WILL KILL you to protect their personal comfort without ANY thought to the future.

As a matter of point, if you took the average beef steer or dairy cow and morphed it into the shape of a human w/ speaking ability, but retained all the other characteristics of livestock, you'd have something not much different from many of our fellow "citizens" ( I use the term loosely!). That is, quite literally, how different they are. The same things that have been bred out of earlier versions of cattle to make them MORE domestic and more docile have been bred out of the majority of our society over the last 100 years FOR THE SAME REASON.

This is diametrically opposed to the intent of the "founding fathers" in the institution of public education and the focus on a liberal arts education, but notice how far off THOSE rails we've gotten! Education now is to prepare people for obedient servitude in the ranks of wage slavery, not free thinking, self determination. How would THAT benefit industrial capitalists"? It wouldn't! This is exactly what I'm referring to when I talk about the citizens (back when they were) being seduced by the materialism of the "new" industrial age" - and you'll please notice that keeping that appearance "new" is a vital component of the industrial marketing complex - keep up that facade at all cost! New, goods, new fashions, new YOU... you're not REAL if you don't have the NEW whatever...when does it stop? What it really comes down to IS the same thing that has also been raised many times in these discussions - change comes from the edges, the margins. Thanks your lucky stars that you still have some "wild" in you, that you're STILL on the edge of the herd!!

So... back to my original quote from Gar Alperovitz "What Then Must We Do?" - which happens to be the title of his new book. Recommended reading!! More to come (bet you couldn't have guessed that :-) on this subject!! Don't move that dial! We'll be back after news and the weather... :-) 

Be Well,

The Smokemaster

The Tea Party Coup of 2010

There is a desperate need for the Republicans to recognize that they aren’t loosing elections and referendums. They have lost their party! By a process of well coordinated strategies and tactics, an extraordinarily well funded and well organized semi-covert effort was put in place before the second election of the President, to essentially co-opt the Republican party for the benefit of the “new Right”, more commonly known to the prevailing sheeple as the Tea Party. Consider this – if the unbalanced, extremism of the Tea Party had surfaced in the usual ways it would have been sidelined as yet another of the “extremist” third parties such as the Green Party, The Libertarian party, and so on. The people involved didn’t want that to happen and they knew that the only way to avoid that in our system of politics was to shape the face of the party to be pseudo-Republican, and then conduct a coup on Republican leadership by casting them as the “liberals” and back-sliding bums that needed to be thrown out. To the fearful, ignorant, insecure, parochial, rapidly dwindling guardians of the un-American dream (unfair advantage, unlevel playing field, uneducated, unfathomable influence, unrealistic wishes for “the way it used to be” – when you could get away with all that…) this was a dream come true – the only visible way to regain their past glory! In severely gerrymandered districts where these political illiterate now held sway – it could happen! And so the coup on the real Republican party began. 

It is important to understand that before this coup, one reason for the prevalence of a predominantly two party system was the unspoken but understood reality of governance, accepted primarily between those two, that starts with “We Go To Washington To Govern – On Behalf of: 1)ALL the people in our district, not JUST those who voted for us.  2) ALL the people of the State from which we come not JUST the people who voted us in, and 3) All the people of the United States, not JUST the state from which we come.” It is, after all supposed to be a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” This implied a state of committment to governance and a willingness to work together for the national benefit. This appears to have been forgotten… or deliberately disavowed as a function of the Tea Party coup-de-gross. In fact, there is a fairly straight forward indication of this that constitutes the Congressional oath of office –

“  I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God. “

Which the Tea Party Congressmen (I will not continue to dishonor the Republican party by referring to Tea Party representatives as Republican) were manifestly in violation of, with their recent antics over the Affordable Healthcare Act. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leo-w-gerard/congressional-republicans_b_4014217.html) To quote from the above link –
“The purpose of the U.S. Constitution as stated in the preamble, is pretty clear: 

'We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.'


The GOP threatening to shut down the government, threatening to default on its bills, does the reverse of promoting domestic tranquility and general welfare. It creates domestic turmoil and general chaos. The Constitution defines the authority of each branch of government. The first two powers it lists for Congress specify that it collects taxes, pays bills and borrows money when necessary.” 
 
That doesn’t say “borrows money in concert with the beliefs of a minority of the citizens of the US.” It says (for emphasis) “borrows money when necessary.”  What exactly is MORE necessary than keeping our government in play and continuing to pay its bills? Well if you’re a Tea Party member, it may be the subversion of the United States of America, it’s rightfully elected government, and its majority approved way of life. 

So… To The Tea Party Congressmen - Don’t get up on your stump and keep saying that the Affordable Healthcare Act is the government “not listening to the will of the people”. It’s the government enacting something that the MAJORITY of the people want! Remember, the majority of the people wanted President Obama.  It’s THOSE people not listening to the will of “your people”! If things were the way they are supposed to be, you WOULD be a third party and there would be one, maybe two, Tea  Party congressional representatives.

In a Future Post – how to reverse the coup!

Thanks for being here, and being you!

The Smokemaster

A Discussion of "Right Living"

The basis for “right living” as

Opportunity + Integrity + Respect + Community = “Right Living”, sustainably manifested

Where 

1) no harm is done, 

2) opportunity is realized, 

3) community is created, and 

4) all constituencies come out ahead

A small case study - 

The opportunity – we notice large nuts in the street in their husks (walnuts?) and circle the block noticing the apples in the backyard, and  (integrity) stop out front to ask about picking up the nuts. We get a reasonable response (Sure, we aren’t going to do anything with them!) and (respect) we respond in appreciation. [This is the opening gambit of connecting people based on some mutual interest, which is the basis for all community.] The opportunity - we pick up the nuts in the street (butternuts it turns out) and these young folks mention that there are hazelnuts in the backyard and, oh, there’s an apple tree too (the one we had noticed). 

Joyce (a grandmother, who is a grand mother) is engaging with the young mother who’s come out, about the baby /young toddler who she is carrying (respect, community – life nurturing), as I get plastic grocery bags and continue into the back yard with Red (community - communication) talking about life and the things that can be done with these natural “resources”. We talk about life in the local area, the landlord, the lack of interest in the fruits and nuts, job availability, and other things (community – finding common values). 

We come back to the front, and I give them some fresh corn for their dinner (integrity, opportunity –for them, community - reciprocity) and Joyce says she’ll bring them back something from the apples (integrity, opportunity – for them, community – sharing value). We talk about the Jeep and Joyce holds the baby for a bit longer (community – group bond, respect) and we leave on good terms. We will go back with an apple pie (community – sharing value, integrity, respect).

We have transcended every possible division between us  - income, interests, age, possessions, living situation, education, and skill sets – to connect in a lasting way, perhaps change their “routine” in small, subtle ways, come away with a respectable amount of natural resource value, and open the door for much, much more all in 30 minutes through rapid and effective application of the principles noted above . We have demonstrated integrity, and have treated, and been treated, with respect. The opportunity is both the natural resources that were being ignored (nuts & fruits) AND the opportunity to “create community” beyond the nebulous community of physical proximity (in modern times). None of the elements of “class” division listed above are given entry into the situation, and as a result, there are no barriers to "right living" manifesting easily in this situation.

It's About The Carbon In The Atmosphere! Let's Get Our Priorities Straight!

When we put everything in the balance, the bottom line on climate change, global warming, sea level rise, ice sheet melting, literally everything, is carbon in the atmosphere. There is literally no value to arguing about what caused it, or who. We're still getting our arms around the fine details of that, but the science is in and thousands of scientists around the world agree that there is significant anthropogenic impact in the global warming scenario.

The basic story goes like this: We live in a closed loop environment with the singular exception of energy being injected into our system 24/7 by our Sun. That closed loop has X amount of Carbon in it. For purposes of our discussion, this doesn't change (Conservation of Mass - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_mass). What does change is where the carbon is at any given time. When it's "out of the way" meaning someplace where it isn't a problem we say it's "sequestered". Sequestration can take the form of plant life, animal life, hydrocarbons (coal, oil, gas), and  non-organic carbon compounds in the earth, carbon dissolved in water, and so on. Usually it refers to anyplace other than in the air. When it is in the air, primarily in the form of gaseous compounds such as carbon dioxide, methane, carbon monoxide, propane, or any other gaseous hydrocarbon, it acts to reflect and absorb heat radiated back out toward space by the earth's surface, to varying degrees, depending upon the specific compound (Green House Gas effect). Methane for instance is about 25 times as potent at this function as carbon dioxide. This whole process that defines where the carbon is at any given moment is called the carbon cycle. We have seriously disturbed the "balance" of the carbon cycle, and the carbon cycle is what regulates the "just right" conditions of the Earth's atmosphere, supporting life on Earth.

An excellent illustration of the anthropogenic (human originated) activities that impact the carbon cycle and are at the heart of global warming and climate change is presented in this diagram from the World Resource Institute (http://www.wri.org/chart/world-greenhouse-gas-emissions-flow-chart)

The essence of the situation is that we are approaching a super saturated carbon condition in the atmosphere, with serious environmental tipping points. This will maximize the trapping of converted solar energy, that would otherwise escape into space. Passing the tipping points will mean we have gone so far in a particular direction that we can't go back in a functional time scale (many human life times) - if at all! The science is in, the situation is real. There is no point in arguing it because we have very little time to do something about it, and arguing will just waste more precious time. The question NOW is, what can we do about it?

The linked article gives a very coherent view of the issue with regard to certain aspects and increasing carbon dioxide (http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C52/carbon_emissions_2013) The article, in turn provides a link to Lester Brown's Plan B summary (http://www.earth-policy.org/press_room/C68/80by2020) with a free downloadable PDF of the summary for you consideration. This is NOT the only thinking going on but if you have not considered a focused plan for attacking this problem comprehensively, this is a good place to start. First and last - it's about the carbon, folks! If you want to know more about potential tipping points and their significance, read http://attheriskofbeing.blogspot.com/2013/07/that-was-then-and-this-is-now-paleocene.html

If not us, who? If not now, when? Thanks for being there and being you!

The Smokemaster

That Was Then, And This Is Now: The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum And What It Means To Us!

The Paleocene Epoch was the first epoch in the Cenozoic Era, which is the period including everything from the end of the Cretacious (extinction of the dinosaurs) to the present. As a point of note, this period includes the Tertiary and Quaternary. These two sub-periods of the Cenozoic are distinguished in time by the sequences of fossils present in rocks from these periods. There is further subdivision of the Tertiary into the Paleocene, the Eocene, the Oligocene, the Miocene, and the Pliocene, which  were distinguished by an even finer grading of the fossils present. The first epoch coming at the end of the Cretaceous Era was the Paleocene Epoch, followed by the Eocene, and then the Oligocene. These three make up the Paleogene, or the “old” period of the Cenozoic. ⁽¹⁾  The subject of this post is that period transitioning from the Paleocene to the Eocene during which an event referred to as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum occurred (sometime referred to by its acronym, PETM – also known in some literature as the LPTM for Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum).

The PETM event is significant because it was the last significant instance of serious global warming before what we are now experiencing. During this period the mean temperature of Earth’s oceans are estimated to have risen as much as 41 degrees Fahrenheit over a 20,000 year period. ⁽²⁾ As noted by the researchers in this study, pinpointing the cause of the PETM requires extremely accurate dating of the event so that it can be correlated or disassociated from other precisely calculated events of Earth’s past such as the peak of a Milankovitch Cycle or other known events. Based on their research, the most exact date span to date has been generated - between 55.728 and 55.964 million years ago. The significance of this is that it places the event outside the timing of a Milankovitch cycle and reinforces the notion that what we know as greenhouse gases were probably the root cause. 

                We all know about CO² and its effect as a greenhouse gas (GHG). People frequently overlook, or are simply unaware, of the significance of methane as a GHG. Methane is estimated to be 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO² and there are huge quantities of it naturally sequestered on the ocean floor and the continental shelves facing the North Pole in the form of methane hydrate (note the red dots not on land in the Arctic region - basically ALL of the Arctic).⁽³⁾

 

The map shown above indicates where known deep sea and continental shelf deposits are located. Red dots indicate areas where it is considered highly likely that methane hydrate will be found in large quantities, yellow dots indicate areas that have proven to have large quantities.  Note a number of locations in the Arctic continental shelf areas, with more having been discovered since this map was generated. Virtually every red dot on this map has been proven to have large methane hydrate reserves in the period since 2005, when the data for this map was published.

                Methane hydrate is basically a pentagonal ice crystal with a methane molecule trapped in the middle. It is stable as a result of pressure and/or temperature – high pressure and/or low temperature. It would take a serious change in the processes that we are familiar with today in terms of ocean cycles, and the hydrologic cycle in general, to disturb most of those methane hydrate deposits… except for the methane hydrate on the Arctic continental shelves.⁽⁴⁾ The methane trapped there (900+ gigatons) is not in deep ocean so the only thing that keeps it  stable as methane hydrate is temperature.⁽⁵⁾ The cold necessary for hydrate stability was routinely a function of a thick covering of arctic sea ice, which is now gone.  Original predictions associated with global warming had complete disappearance of summer Arctic sea ice occurring by mid century. The latest estimates have it occurring by the summer of 2015.^(6,9)  The MOST recent reporting indicates a massive melt off has occurred early this year. ⁽⁷⁾ 

            The significance of all this is relatively straight forward. Based on careful work done by scientists studying the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum they have been able to model an effective cause for the PETM event – the abrupt release of methane into the atmosphere, probably from methane hydrate in the ocean, due to a sudden shift in ocean warming. ⁽⁸⁾ Any number of things could cause a sudden shift in ocean warming, but their notions of the time frame for the PETM event are around ten thousand years, and the abrupt release could have been over tens of years. 

            We have a scenario where we are on the doorstep of several significant factors in oceanic warming in the Arctic colliding in space and time – loss of sea ice in the summer, significantly increased absorption of sunlight by the Arctic ocean, general conditions of global warming and significant increases of methane release already documented in the Arctic. Is there any reason to think that these combined conditions won’t change any number of other things related to global warming and climate change? No. Is there any reason to think that the aggregate set of conditions won’t create sudden and serious changes in lower depth water temperatures? No. 

             Welcome to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum - Take 2… only this time it won’t take thousands  of years to peak because we face the probability of the abrupt release of 900+ gigatons of methane hydrate into the atmosphere of the Arctic over a matter of months and years, not decades and centuries… which (if you’ll pardon the pun) has, quite literally, explosive potential for harm. Imagine something that gets out of control in a few years and takes a hundred thousand years to rebalance, something that is SO sudden that nothing has time to adapt...

Bibliography

1. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/cenozoic/cenozoic.php     The Cenozoic Era
2. Charles, A. J., Condon, D. J., Harding, I. C., Pälike, H., Marshall, J. E. A., Cui, Y. & Kump, L. Constraints on the Numerical Age of the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary. Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 12, Q0AA17, doi:10.1029/2010GC003426
3. Hester, K.C. Brewer, P.G., Clathrate Hydrates In Nature, 2009, Annual Review Of Marine Science
4. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-currier/methane-emissions-urgency-now_b_1069646.html
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change
6. http://www.ameg.me/index.php/sea-ice
7. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/07/18/snow-and-arctic-ice-extent-plummet-suddenly-as-globe-bakes/
8. Gerald R. Dickens, Maria M. Castillo and James C. G. Walker, A Blast of Gas in the Late Paleocene: Simulating First Order effects of Massive Dissociation of Oceanic Methane Hydrate; Geology 1997;25;259-262
9. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iSsPHytEnJM   Arctic Methane: Why The Sea Ice Matters