Government Climate Change Report - 4

Global Tilt Is Built Into The System

The history of science records many instances where scientists have been unimaginably wrong about the real world around us (What Is Pseudo Science?).

One of the reasons for failures of scientific awareness from time to time is that sometimes a lack of cross-discipline discussion between or among scientists becomes a serious deficit.

Today's post in this series focuses on what is happening concerning The Global Climate System, as well as what is not yet happening in scientific discussions about that global system (see Government Climate Change Report - 3).

Further, today's post focuses on the ongoing scientific dialogue which does not have sufficient cross-communication among Astronomers, Microbiologists, and Climate Scientists.

Today, Dredd Blog focuses on that lack of cross-discipline discussion because that lack could cost many lives as well as the loss of large amounts of property and/or property value.

You may be thinking: "Dredd, what do Microbiologists or Astronomers have to do with climate?", which is a fair enough question, so consider this:

A major question in ecology has centered on the role of microbes in regulating ecosystem function. Now, in research published ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Brajesh Singh of the University of Western Sydney, Australia, and collaborators show how changes in the populations of methanotrophic bacteria can have consequences for methane mitigation at ecosystem levels.
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The selection hypothesis states that a small number of key species, rather than all species present determine key functions in ecosystems.
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There are an estimated 10³¹ viruses on Earth. That is to say: there may be a hundred million times more viruses on Earth than there are stars in the universe. The majority of these viruses infect microbes, including bacteria, archaea, and microeukaryotes, all of which are vital players in the global fixation and cycling of key elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. These two facts combined—the sheer number of viruses and their intimate relationship with microbial life—suggest that viruses, too, play a critical role in the planet’s biosphere.

(Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 19, emphasis added). Add to that the fact that the biosphere and the climate system have interaction with each other:

The climate system is the highly complex system consisting of five major components: the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the land surface and the biosphere, and the interactions between them.

(On The Origin and Future of Nomads, emphasis added). Ok, consideration of the Global Biosphere naturally relates to the Global Climate System in relevant ways.

Let's now include the Astronomer's discipline too, by considering this:

Why does any of this matter, and what does it have to do with a good or bad calendar, in terms of long range planning by civilizations?

The first factor to consider is the axial tilt:

The Earth's axis remains tilted in the same direction with reference to the background stars throughout a year (throughout its entire orbit).

This means that one pole (and the associated hemisphere of the Earth) will be directed away from the Sun at one side of the orbit, and half an orbit later (half a year later) this pole will be directed towards the Sun.

This is the cause of the Earth's seasons.

(Wikipedia, Axial Tilt). Next consider what happens when the axial tilt rotates during the cycle of axial precession:

Variations in Earth's axial tilt can influence the seasons and is likely a factor in long-term [non-anthropogenic] climate change.

(ibid). Thus, the Long Range Calendar would divide the 26,000 Tuns into five segments of 5,200 Tuns each, which would give such a calendar the utility to help civilizations determine when and how ecocosmological climate change, i.e., natural cosmic climate change would take place in the different hemispheres of the Earth.

Why is that important?

Because it would tell, among other things, when polar ice caps would naturally melt to cause natural sea level rise that would flood coastal areas, when the poles would naturally ice over to again cause natural sea level drop once again, how the flora and fauna would begin to adapt as those climate changes gently and slowly began to take place, as well as many other fundamental things civilizations need to know to happily survive on a planet like the Earth (see e.g. this and this).

(A Savvy Ecocosmological Earth Calendar). Ok, so the axial tilt causes the seasons of normal annual [non-anthropogenic] climate change, but the axial precession (~26,000 year rotation of the axial tilt) causes long-term (~26,000 year cycle) normal [non-anthropogenic] climate change.

So, there is the reason Astronomers, Microbiologists, and Climate Scientists need to collaborate to consider each other's scientific papers and what not, because there are factors in all three disciplines that impact, in varying degrees, the global climate system.

The Astronomers study axial tilt and axial precession, Microbiologists study the way microbes, including viruses, impact the flora, fauna, and the ecosystems in the biosphere, while Climate Scientists primarily study the five major components of the climate system (atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, land surface, and biosphere).

That they each have key information to share with one another, so as to help grasp the entire picture of sea-level rise, will be shown below.

A recent paper relies on computer models over centuries of time matched with the geological records concerning eons of time:

Sea-level projections show a robust, albeit highly uncertain, increase by the end of this century...

Uncertainties in the paleo-reconstructions, however, necessitate additional strategies to better constrain the sea-level commitment. Here we combine paleo-evidence with simulations from physical models to estimate the future sea-level commitment on a multi-millennial time scale and compute associated regional sea-level patterns.

(The Multimillennial Sea-level Commitment of Global Warming). The scientist used the jargon "to better constrain the sea-level commitment", which simply means to get a better handle on expected or predicted sea-level rise in terms of more accurate and consistent numbers.

In today's post Dredd Blog criticizes the study (and those similar to it) because there was no consideration whatsoever, in that study, as to where the axial precession position was at any given time, nor therefore what the degree of tilt away from or toward the Sun was at the particular geographical location where the geological data they used in the study was taken from.

This even though those facts could have significant bearing on the global climate system at that, or any other, given time in history.

Thus, with a cafeteria style data gathering technique, a scientist chooses and interprets the data without applying the science of other disciplines that have a substantial bearing on the matter.

This results in a wide range of expectations and predictions of future global climate system events, from sea-level rates of rise to storm frequencies.

Likewise, it is not the proper scientific way "to better constrain the sea-level commitment."

As an example of the paper's lack of practicality ("2,000" years from now), notice current sea-level rise realities that are zero years from now:

“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.”
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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.

(Social Dementia Causes Heated Misunderestimations - 2). The same is real now, in other parts of the globe:

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."

(Perfect Storm: New Global Ground Zero). And this is also quite real, not abstract future math:

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.

(Will This Float Your Boat?). On the other side of the globe, other island peoples suffer the same fate:

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 ...

(Sea Level Rise Forces Panama Islanders to Relocate). There is little reason to wonder why Dredd Blog quoted the more practical government report which this series is about:

Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present.
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Many more impacts of human-caused climate change have now been observed.
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Americans are noticing changes all around them.
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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). The "2,000 y" numbers in the "The Multimillennial Sea-level Commitment" scientific report mentioned above will not change the reality going on before our eyes now.

But better numbers, based on all relevant and practical factors mentioned above, will help the coastal cities prepare to do the same thing that those people, whose land has been inundated by sea-level rise, have had to do.

That is, to begin to think about the way to migrate to higher ground (Has The Navy Fallen For The Greatest Hoax?), which is better than gathering courage from fantasy movies (On The Glut of Superhero Movies).

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