Agnotology: The Surge - 4

"My daddy said there ain't no global warming."

In this series Dredd Blog has been looking at the social science called Agnotology, which seeks out then studies "ignorance generators" within current civilization.

The discipline is focused on "particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data."

That may sound like an easy task at first blush, but as the post "What Is Pseudo Science?" shows, it really depends on the degree of the accuracy of available scientific knowledge at a given time in history.

I ran across some of that "holy ignorance Batman" yesterday concerning two recent posts here on Dredd Blog.

The frenetic and ignorant criticism which Dredd Blog received concerned the most recent posts in an ongoing series (Government Climate Change Report - 5 and Government Climate Change Report - 4) and a related series (On The Origin and Future of Nomads).

Some people just cannot do thought experiments in order to be able to figure out what is happening all around them, for instance, to solve this "mystery":

In a paper published June 7 in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography, researchers present evidence that over the past century, vegetation has been gradually moving toward the poles and up mountain slopes, where temperatures are cooler, as well as toward the equator, where rainfall is greater.

Moreover, an estimated one-tenth to one-half of the land mass on Earth will be highly vulnerable to climate-related vegetation shifts by the end of this century ... according to the study.

The results came from a meta-analysis of hundreds of field studies and a spatial analysis of observed 20th century climate and projected 21st century vegetation.

The meta-analysis identified field studies that examined long-term vegetation shifts in which climate ... was the dominant influence. The researchers found 15 cases of biome shifts since the 18th century that are attributable to changes in temperature and precipitation.

(Major Vegetation Shifts Worldwide). There is no mystery to the reality that when the Earth's axial precession, which is the rotation of the Earth's axial tilt, is at 180 degree variance, the plants, animals, and the climate will all react.

Another post at the Ecocosmology Blog makes the long term impact of the Earth's axial precession reality quite stark and clear:

10,948 B.C. (0 degrees)
(Winter) June, July, August
(Spring) September, October, November
(Summer) December, January, February
(Autumn) March, April, May
...
==========================
2012 A.D. (180 degrees)
(Winter) December, January, February
(Spring) March, April, May
(Summer) June, July, August
(Autumn) September, October, November
==========================
...
14,972 A.D. (360 degrees)
(Winter) June, July, August
(Spring) September, October, November
(Summer) December, January, February
(Autumn) March, April, May

(A Savvy Ecocosmological Earth Calendar - 2). As the Earth's axial tilt causes the Northern Hemisphere to lean toward the Sun over a prolonged period, and then slowly changes the tilt another 180 degrees, to then cause the Northern Hemisphere to lean away from the Sun over another prolonged period, the weather characteristics of each month will gradually change.

And as shown by the quotes above, taken from scientific papers (e.g. "Major Vegetation Shifts Worldwide"), the species in the biosphere will naturally detect the change and then react accordingly.

Migration is one such reaction.

That scientific paper ("Major Vegetation Shifts Worldwide") concerns Anthropogenic Climate Change unnaturally brought on by civilization's use of fossil fuels.

Natural axial-precession-induced warming or cooling also has that effect, however, it is more gentle and is done over great spans of time so that adaptation can take place without extinction.

The point is that when civilization does not take this long term reality into consideration, as well as the anthropogenic counterpart, there will be consequences.

When civilization accelerates the natural climate change cycle with anthropogenic unnatural global warming, then the results occur thousands of years too early, occur out of sync, and occur catastrophically.

As was pointed out in the Dredd Blog post On The Glut of Superhero Movies, it is not a good thing when ignorance generators are working around the clock to make everyone unaware of this reality.

Scientists of the Agnotology discipline will continue to watch the surge of ignorance generators in our culture, as well as continuing to watch the catastrophes which ignorance is bringing on all of us:

“We’ve got the highest rate of sea level rise on the East Coast,” said Skip Stiles, executive director, Wetlands Watch, who will be making a presentation on the historic, current and future sea level changes and potential impact on the Eastern Shore.

Stiles said some of the evidence of sea level rise visible to people who spend time around the water include seeing wetlands disappear, ditches going tidal, backyard vegetation changes, and “ghost forests” — full grown trees that are dead along the shore because the water is “moving in underneath them.”

"As goes the N. Pole so goes the ..."

...
Stiles said all of the Virginia tide gage measurements are showing about the same rise of a foot and a half over the last 100 years.
...
Mann says the Pacific islands, which are only 4.6 metres above sea level at their highest point, are facing the imminent prospect of flooding, with salt water intrusion destroying fresh water supplies and increased erosion.

Suggesting evacuations would accelerate a change in public consciousness around the issue of climate change, he said: "Thousands of years of culture is at risk of disappearing as the populations of vulnerable island states have no place to go.

"For these people, current sea levels are already representative of dangerous anthropogenic interference because they will lose their world far before the rest of us suffer.

"I think it is an example, one of a number, where the impacts are playing out in real time. It is not an abstract prediction about the future or about far off exotic creatures like polar bears. We are talking about people potentially having to evacuate from places like Tvulu or the Arctic's Kivalina, another low lying island which is already feeling the detrimental impacts of sea level rise."
...
Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.
...
Some of the earliest climate change refugees are those that must relocate due to rising sea levels. A threat to people living around the world, from northern Canada to the Maldives, those in Panama are currently feeling the crush of closer waves. Thousands of native Panama Islanders are being forced to move away from their ancestral homes and relocate to the mainland as sea levels rise ...
...
Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present.
...
Many more impacts of human-caused climate change have now been observed.
...
Americans are noticing changes all around them.
...
Residents of some coastal cities see their streets flood more regularly during storms and high tides. Inland cities near large rivers also experience more flooding, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. Hotter and drier weather and earlier snow melt mean that wildfires in the West start earlier in the year, last later into the fall, threaten more homes, cause more evacuations, and burn more acreage. In Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded, and fall storms now cause more erosion and damage that is severe enough that some communities are already facing relocation.

(Government Climate Change Report - 4). Stay tuned-in to the reality while you stay tuned-out of the ignorance based denial.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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NASA video of projected warming:

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