One of those practices was based on the use of historical experience to determine best practices.
Projects that build computer software models which project future events, as well as the software eventually built, work better when a beneficial dataset can be used to drive the projection logic that will eventually be used to project what seems to be the most likely future scenario.
To be sure, Fig. 1 is an example of that, i.e., dataset that were used to very accurately project CO2 levels from 2009 through 2015 (the model was written before 2009).
Fig. 2 (click to enlarge)
It is an example of accurate datasets being used to build robust projection models.
Taking that up a notch, Fig. 2 shows the model projected out much further, some 85 years, to 2100 (see IPCC CO2 projections).
For a background and a source for realizing why the datasets are useful in developing projection models, Fig. 3 shows that our current environment has been rendered into quite a different one from the CO2 environment that has existed for many thousands of years.
Fig. 3 (click to enlarge)
All that having been said, the purpose for paying close attention to the modelling of CO2 emissions is to use that dataset to enhance a sea level rise (SLR) projection model I am developing for Dredd Blog use.
The injection of green house gases leads to temperature increases, which in turn lead to SLR, which is a catastrophic danger to civilization (New Climate Catastrophe Policy: Triage - 12).
The factor that makes SLR projection more difficult than temperature or CO2 emission projections is the double lag or delay of impact.
How long does it take, after CO2 is injected into the atmosphere, for a temperature rise to manifest (first lag), and further, how long after the temperature rises does it take for SLR to manifest (second lag)?
The element of the IPCC modelling that has been inaccurate has been SLR projection, which has consistently underestimated SLR.
So, I am not trying to reinvent the wheel here, I am just trying to make that wheel round, like the other IPCC projection elements that are well rounded.
So, by adding another partner (the CO2 model) to my SLR projection model (which already uses the 4 deg. C IPCC projection dataset), I hope to improve the SLR projection model.
The average of CO2 ppm projected by circa 2100, per IPCC, is about 750 ppm, (up from about 400 ppm in the atmosphere now).
The figures I posted recently (before adding the CO2 dataset), from a slice of the data printout, were:
It does not change much, so, if my assumptions and implementation of the dataset has been properly done, it is a reasonable projection.
Fig. 4 (click to enlarge)
Later, I took out the commonly accepted 21 cm. increase in SLR (from 1750 to now) in the database by setting it to zero.
Including it may have caused some confusion concerning SLR "from now on" with that 21 cm. of past history in it.
The graph Fig. 4 shows only SLR beginning at zero SLR, which I think is more clear in the sense that we are now only talking about SLR from now on, rather than including the past.
One impact is that it moves the 3 ft. of SLR somewhat, as shown by comparing the two detail print outs above, with this one:
The main impact is that the 3 ft. SLR shows up circa 2031-32 rather than at 2029-30, but, it also shows how touchy or delicate SLR projections are.
I am going to keep at it until I am satisfied that the assumptions and implementations are correct, then declare how it is done (and share the code with any who would like to check it out).
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
Well then, since Californians, and others, think that California leads the nation, let's rub California's nose trance in it first: California Thinks It Leads The Nation.
My complaint, then, is that wrong leadership is worse than no leadership:
"Officials have implored Californians to cut down on water usage, but recent data show residents saved less water in February than in any other month since the state started tracking water conservation. Southern California residents actually used more water than average that month."
(California ... Worst Drought In 1,200 Years, emphasis added). The California reaction to a clear and present danger seems to be "keep on keeping on", "what, me worry?", "what water shortage?", "we never have bad weather like you do" - Bill Maher (paraphrased), and/or "who cares!"
Like you of course, at that time I had no idea that the Ferguson phenomenon would begin some months later on August 9, 2014.
In fact, by the time of the Ferguson phenomenon, I had already posted about half of the posts now contained in this series (Symbolic Racism: A Look At The Science, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).
This post today will be an attempt to hold to the concepts I set out to present as stated in the first sentence of the first post of this series: "The subtitle for this post might be 'Symbolic Racism: One Result of Cultural Toxins of Power'."
In other words, to discuss at least some of the cultural dynamics at work, rather than personal individual dynamics, which die with the individual racist.
II. The Purpose of This Series
What this series was designed to get at is that racism is perpetuated by something beyond and/or other than individual racists, as indicated by another sentence in that first post:
Subconscious social dynamics are always at work in cultures, tugging, pushing, and pulling this way or that way, subtly shaping and forming cultural activity and cultural evolution.
(Symbolic Racism: A Look At The Science). Often times we hear about individuals who, during their lifetime, want to perpetuate themselves by various treatments.
They do fantasy, hoping in vain to attain some form of perpetual existence, or at the very least to live a lot longer.
This is not a problem for the culture of a nation or civilization, because societies tend to be naturally perpetuated:
"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."
(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee). Toynbee was not saying that there are no predators on society, rather, he was saying that the main predator is the culture itself, the society itself, yes, the civilization itself.
The difference we are envisioning, then, was bolstered by the second post, which pointed out that “[t]here is no genetic basis for race” (Symbolic Racism: A Look At The Science - 2), i.e., no scientific basis in terms of genetics.
Race is not what it is cracked up white-washed to be.
III. The Overwhelming Scientific/Historical Evidence
Racism, like anything else, can become an addiction because the addiction is not a phenomenon generated by a substance, a material, or a thing, rather, it is a mental dynamic, a problem within the thinking (The "It's In Your Genes" Myth).
But, as individuals, we do not tend to know how the culture became so addicted, or how its addiction is tied into cultural racism.
So, let's get some background, beginning with the seed and finishing with the monster:
"It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this?" [Thomas Paine, 1794]
"Now comes “The Barbarous Years,” the next installment. It circles back to a period that most Americans don’t hear much about in school: the chaotic decades from the establishment of Jamestown (England’s first permanent colony in the Americas) in 1607 up to King Philip’s War (the vicious conflict that effectively expelled Indians from New England) in 1675-76. Bailyn’s goal is to show how a jumble of migrants, “low and high born,” sought “to recreate, if not to improve, in this remote and, to them, barbarous environment, the life they had known before.” As the title indicates, the story is as grim as it is fascinating: a group portrait in tones of greed, desperation and brutality. In recent years conservative writers dismayed by historical revisionism have flooded stores with books extolling the character and sagacity of America’s founders. “The Barbarous Years” is not one of them.
“Death was everywhere,” Bailyn writes of Jamestown. The colony was a commercial enterprise, started by the Virginia Company with the sort of careful financial evaluation that in the more recent past was the hallmark of the dot-com boom.
English people kept coming anyway, lured by a discovery that the Crown and company hated: tobacco. Hip, fun, disdained by stuffy authorities and wildly addictive, the smoking weed was an ideal consumer product. Thousands of migrants were willing to risk death for the chance to cash in on England’s squadrons of new nicotine junkies. The Chesapeake Bay became a barely governed swarm of semi-independent tobacco fiefs, owned by families, operated by squads of indentured servants, all squabbling with one another, Protestants against Catholics, English against other Europeans, everyone against Indians." [The Barbarous Years]
"The addiction to oil ... at least to the wealth and to the products made accessible to us by oil ... look at the negative consequences on the environment we are destroying the very Earth that we inhabit for the sake of that addiction. Now these addictions are far more devastating in the social consequences than the cocaine or heroin habits of my ... patients. Yet they are rewarded and considered to be respectable. The tobacco company executive that shows a higher profit will get a much bigger reward ... doesn't face any negative consequences legally or otherwise ... in fact is a respected member of the board of several other corporations ... but tobacco smoke related diseases kill 5.5 million people around the world every year. In the United States they kill 400,000 people a year".
...
"And these people are addicted to what? To profit, to such a degree are they addicted that they are actually in denial about the impact of their activities, which is typical for addicts, is denial. And that is the respectable one. It is respectable to be addicted to profit no matter what the cost. So what is acceptable and what is respectable is a highly arbitrary phenomenon in our society. And it seems like the greater the harm the more respectable the addiction" (Dr. Maté). "One of the most important comments on deceit, I think, was made by Adam Smith. He pointed out that a major goal of business is to deceive and oppress the public.
And one of the striking features of the modern period is the institutionalization of that process, so that we now have huge industries deceiving the public — and they're very conscious about it, the public relations industry. Interestingly, this developed in the freest countries—in Britain and the US — roughly around time of WWI, when it was recognized that enough freedom had been won that people could no longer be controlled by force. So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control ..." [Chomsky]
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.
They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons — a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty [now 320] million — who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world ... It is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the mechanism which controls the public mind, and to tell how it is manipulated by the special pleader who seeks to create public acceptance for a particular idea or commodity. It will attempt at the same time to find the due place in the modern democratic scheme for this new propaganda and to suggest its gradually evolving code of ethics and practice." [Bernays]
Not only that, we didn't even end up in the United States, rather, we ended up in the U.S.eh? as it were:
1) Slavery was a key driver of the formation of American wealth.
2) In its heyday, slavery was more efficient than free labor, contrary to the arguments made by some northerners at the time.
3) Slavery didn't just enrich the South, but also drove the industrial boom in the North.
4) Slavery wasn't showing any signs of slowing down economically by the time the Civil War came around.
5) The South seceded to guarantee the expansion of slavery.
(Symbolic Racism: A Look At The Science - 7). Another cultural addiction followed in the footsteps of tobacco and cotton, which eventually grew up to become the Big Brother of all such addictions.
IV. A Lying Racist Petroleum Civilization Evolved
We have seen that, from the machinations and imaginings of the tobacco plantations of the 1600's, slavery addiction eventually took hold on our society.
It became a cultural addiction to the point that slaves were basic assets of the society (some of our presidents just had to have them).
The reality relating racism and oil addiction is that they are twin cultural addictions, born of the same parental culture, even having similar DNA.
Thomas Paine in 1794, as quoted above, spoke of the seed in a lying culture, which by now has grown into a basic, fundamental, American right:
Saints may always tell the truth, but for mortals living means lying. We lie to protect our privacy (“No, I don’t live around here”); to avoid hurt feelings (“Friday is my study night”); to make others feel better (“Gee you’ve gotten skinny”); to avoid recriminations (“I only lost $10 at poker”); to prevent grief (“The doc says you’re getting better”); to maintain domestic tranquility (“She’s just a friend”); to avoid social stigma (“I just haven’t met the right woman”); for career advancement (“I’m sooo lucky to have a smart boss like you”); to avoid being lonely (“I love opera”); to eliminate a rival (“He has a boyfriend”); to achieve an objective (“But I love you so much”); to defeat an objective (“I’m allergic to latex”); to make an exit (“It’s not you, it’s me”); to delay the inevitable (“The check is in the mail”); to communicate displeasure (“There’s nothing wrong”); to get someone off your back (“I’ll call you about lunch”); to escape a nudnik (“My mother’s on the other line”); to namedrop (“We go way back”); to set up a surprise party (“I need help moving the piano”); to buy time (“I’m on my way”); to keep up appearances (“We’re not talking divorce”); to avoid taking out the trash (“My back hurts”); to duck an obligation (“I’ve got a headache”); to maintain a public image (“I go to church every Sunday”); to make a point (“Ich bin ein Berliner”); to save face (“I had too much to drink”); to humor (“Correct as usual, King Friday”); to avoid embarrassment (“That wasn’t me”); to curry favor (“I’ve read all your books”); to get a clerkship (“You’re the greatest living jurist”); to save a dollar (“I gave at the office”); or to maintain innocence (“There are eight tiny reindeer on the rooftop”).
And we don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk, as reflected by the popularity of plastic surgery, elevator shoes, wood veneer paneling, cubic zirconia, toupees, artificial turf and cross-dressing. Last year, Americans spent $40 billion on cosmetics — an industry devoted almost entirely to helping people deceive each other about their appearance. It doesn’t matter whether we think that such lies are despicable or cause more harm than good. An important aspect of personal autonomy is the right to shape one’s public and private persona by choosing when to tell the truth about oneself, when to conceal and when to deceive. Of course, lies are often disbelieved or discovered, and that too is part of the pull and tug of social intercourse. But it’s critical to leave such interactions in private hands, so that we can make choices about who we are. How can you develop a reputation as a straight shooter if lying is not an option?
(US v Alvarez). That little cultural seed grew up to outlast all of us, all individual humans.
It is still living on long after we mere mortals die, long after the originators of the society have returned to dust.
Like slavery, propaganda (the art/science of lying) got hold of the culture, from the top officials down to the dog catchers like Alvarez, who faked being what he thought was a hero.
Like I said, from the top down:
Of the first five presidents, four owned slaves. All four of these owned slaves while they were president.
Of the next five presidents (#6-10), four owned slaves. Only two of them
Of the next five presidents (#11-15), two owned slaves. Both of these two owned slaves while they were president.
Of the next three presidents (#16-18) two owned slaves. neither of them owned slaves while serving as president.
The last president to own slaves while in office was the twelfth president, Zachary Taylor (1849-1850).
The last president to own slaves at all was the eighteenth president, Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877).
So twelve of our presidents owned slaves and eight of them owned slaves while serving as president.
(The Germ Theory - of Government - 7). Recapping, the 1600 A.D. tobacco industry ideology eventually infected cotton and other plantations, and thereby spread the cultural lie that "slavery is good for the national economy."
But, Big Tobacco (BT) did not die out like Big Cotton did, no, BT is still around and still lying about life and death.
BT developed insidious and warped ways of telling people that BT poison is good for all, and that there is no proof that cigarette smoking is bad for anyone.
BT then passed the baton of using deceiving propaganda on to the oil industry, to Oil-Qaeda (The Exceptional American Denial).
V. A Danger To Many Is Weak Compared To A Danger To All
Today, then, in preparing for a conclusion, I want to go on to show that this cultural racism, i.e. racism built into the public thinking, was built firmly into the original constitution.
It is now perpetuated by cultural dynamics lasting decades and centuries, and thus it is more dangerous by far than individual racism is.
The way I want to do that is to show how the leader of Petroleum Civilization, Oil-Qaeda, evolved from and within cultural trances.
Trances that eventually led, not only to one addiction after the other, but also led to our current predicament.
The deadly addiction that is still with us is far more deadly than those addictions from once-upon-a-time were (Keeping Up With The Jones Addiction).
Now, our culture is addicted to fossil fuels such as dirty oil, lethal gas, and toxic coal, in a way that makes it the worst addiction ever experienced.
But, it sprang from our first cultural addiction (exceptionalism on steroids), which molded cultural thinking both then and now (The Universal Smedley - 2, Viva Egypt - 2).
VI. The Infections Must Die
In a healthy society people ought to innately or naturally know that saying "The Common Good" is also the common way of saying "I've got your back" (The Common Good, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).
A blogger, commenting on the prudence of having insurance, wrote: "[as] far as frequency you could figure that 0.317% of households ... 0.276% of housing units had a fire in the year."
Nevertheless, fire insurance is not only required for mortgages, it is also a custom of our culture to have fire insurance, and in fact even with those very low odds (less than 1%) that our own fire insurance protection will be used in the context of catastrophic circumstances, as a society we still practice "better safe than sorry" insurance ideology.
II. What About Global Flooding Insurance?
How should that cultural norm of having insurance, even when the chance of using it is slight, inform us about insuring ourselves in sea level rise (SLR) scenarios?
How can we be safe, rather than sorry?
The SLR scenario has both certainties and uncertainties:
"A key area of glaciological study in recent years is ice sheet mass balance. The mass balance of an ice sheet is the difference between its total snow input and the total loss through melting, ablation, or calving. So long as an ice sheet gains an equal mass through snowfall as it loses through melt, ablation, and calving from glaciers and ice shelves, it is said to be in balance. Because ice sheets contain so much ice and have the potential to raise or lower global sea level so dramatically, measuring the mass balance of the ice sheets and tracking any mass balance changes and their causes is very important for forecasting sea level rise. Scientists monitor ice sheet mass balance through a variety of techniques. No measurement method is perfect, however, and ice sheets' sheer size makes exact measurement difficult."
(NSIDC SOTC: Ice Sheets, emphasis added). In other words it is not easy to watch SLR exactly, but since it is critical, we have to try our best.
That lax is tantamount to only 1% of home owners having fire insurance, instead of a very high percentage having it.
III. Measurements Are The Best Ever Now
There is enough information to inform those with common sense that perfection should not get in the way of improvement in the form of an extremely serious and energetic reaction.
Acceleration, as expressed in the following quotes, is one clear reason for an emergency call to action :
Coastal sea levels along continental margins often show significant year-to-year upward and downward fluctuations. These fluctuations are superimposed on a longer term upward trend associated with the rise in global mean sea level, with global mean sea level rising at roughly 3 mm per year during the recent 20 years of accurate satellite measures. For society, it is the regional changes along any particular coastal zone that are most important. Our analysis of multi-decadal tide gauge records along the North American east coast identified an extreme sea-level rise event during 2009–2010. Within this relatively brief two-year period, coastal sea level north of New York City jumped by up to 128 mm. This magnitude of inter-annual sea level rise is unprecedented in the tide gauge records, with statistical methods suggesting that it was a 1-in-850 year event.
On May 22nd, 2014, global sea surface temperature anomalies spiked to an amazing +1.25 degrees Celsius above the, already warmer than normal, 1979 to 2000 average. This departure is about 1.7 degrees C above 1880 levels — an extraordinary reading that signals the world may well be entering a rapid warming phase. ...
It is very rare that land or ocean surface temperatures spike to values above a +1 C anomaly in NOAA’s Global Forecast System model summary. Historically, both measures have slowly risen to about +.35 C above the 1979 to 2000 average and about +.8 C above 1880s values (land +1 C, ocean +.6 C). But since late April, sea surface temperatures have remained in a range of +1 C above 1979 to 2000 values — likely contributing to NOAA and NASA’s temperature indexes hitting first and second hottest in the climate record for the month. During May, ocean surface heating entrenched and expanded, progressing to a new high of +1.17 C last week. As of this week, values had exceeded +1.2 C and then rocketed on to a new extreme of +1.25 C (See Deep Ocean Warming is Coming Back to Haunt Us).
"Since the beginning of the 20th century, the seas have continued to rise at an average rate of 1.7 ± 0.5 mm per year, according to the IPCC ... first noted increase ... 1963 ... 1.8 ± 0.5 mm per year ... 1993 to 2003 ... 3.1 ± 0.7 mm yr ..."
Measurements from ESA’s CryoSat mission have been used to map the height of the huge ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica and show how they are changing. New results reveal combined ice volume loss at an unprecedented rate of 500 cubic kilometres a year.
...
The resulting maps reveal that Greenland alone is reducing in volume by about 375 cubic kilometres a year.
...
The researchers say the ice sheets’ annual contribution to sea-level rise has doubled since 2009. [Table 1 type contribution - i.e. thermal sea level rise (additional) is not included in that doubling]
Glaciologist Angelika Humbert, another of the study’s authors, added, “Since 2009, the volume loss in Greenland has increased by a factor of about two and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet by a factor of three."
(Will This Float Your Boat - 5). That post discusses the specific target catastrophe we should pull out all stops to avoid: that catastrophe is "a 3 ft. SLR."
IV. Is Triage / Adaptation Insurance Enough?
The reason for such an emergency effort becomes clear with the contemplation of the answers to a certain question.
What would "a 3 ft. SLR" paralyzation of sea ports, and/or paralyzation of international sea-based trade, do to civilization?
Here is why that question matters:
"By volume, more than 95 percent of U.S. international trade moves through the nation's ports and harbors, with about 50 percent of these goods being hazardous materials."
(NOAA PORTS, emphasis added; cf. Ports & Harbors). If our ports and harbors are destroyed or paralyzed by a 3 ft. SLR, civilization is in for trouble.
Nevertheless, all these signs and signals of things to come are evidently not sinking into the minds of those who deal with harbors, bays, and ports:
"As ports are operational hubs for the logistics supply chain, it is appropriate for ports to undertake an assessment in partnership with key logistics providers and /or local governments. While climate change may impact ports locally, it is often disruptions to the supply chain and local infrastructure that compound disruptions at the actual port, emphasising the need to work collaboratively on a broader climate risk and adaptation strategy [think global SLR impact].
However, several barriers to climate adaptation have been recognised (Becker 2011, IAPH 2011, UKCIP 2007), including inconsistency between organisational planning timeframes (5 – 15 years) compared with climate projections of 30 – 90 years; as well as the uncertainty of local climate projections leading to decision-makers delaying action until there is perceived to be more certainty. To help address these concerns, this report proposes a hybrid “risk / vulnerability” approach to understanding and adapting to climate change. That is, consideration of current day vulnerabilities to extreme weather events, integrated with an assessment of future climate risks." (Climate Resilient Ports, emphasis added).
"First proposed more than 20 years ago, the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project has been studied and delayed more times over the past two decades than anyone can count. So it’s no surprise that the big news at the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) this year has been the approval of the massive project to deepen the Savannah River and harbor to expand the Port of Savannah’s capacity.
The Savannah Harbor Expansion Project (SHEP) finally got the go-ahead in October – 15 years after it first received a congressional OK in 1999 – when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Georgia Department of Transportation and the GPA signed a Project Partnership Agreement (PPA). After years of studies, delays and lawsuits that both stalled the project and pushed projected costs sky high, construction was scheduled to begin by the end of 2014 on what has been called the most critical infrastructure development project in Georgia in decades." (Georgia Trend, emphasis added).
(The Agnotology of Sea Level Rise Via Ice Melt). We hear repeatedly several "solutions" to the SLR we face as a civilization: 1) denying that SLR is caused by civilization (some "solution" eh?), 2) greenhouse gas emission reductions, 3) switching away from fossil fuels, or 4) continuing business as usual but with additional "adaptation" mechanisms.
"Adaptation" really means "triage" (clean up the mess, bury the bodies, but don't stop doing what is causing the problem).
V. Unintended Consequences
There are also unintended consequences that have either not been, or cannot be, addressed in much of the planning for "adaptation."
That is because "adaptation" is an idea floated by Oil-Qaeda to preserve their imaginary status quo, which cannot and will not be maintained.
The only real solution is to leave the petroleum in the ground.
The increase in SLR around the globe, when ice melts and leaves the polar regions to join the oceans, will cause tidal torque, trigger earthquakes, bring strong and unprecedented pressures to harbors and ports, and maybe even some disruptions to magnetic fields (Is A New Age Of Pressure Upon Us?, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).
There are scientifically documented cases revealing scenarios where tidal movements in the Earth's surface crust, compelled by surface pressure and/or gravity, contribute to triggering major earthquakes (Tidal Triggering, PDF).
Now, think about one of the many port cities that built a port using concepts and engineering from long ago.
Concepts during a time, near the beginning of the industrial revolution, when sea level was at a relative low, perhaps 21 cm. lower than its level is today.
Think of the stresses on those old ports as the tides change, stronger tidal currents flow, and the weight of it all shifts daily during the transitions from low, to neap, to high tide, and back again.
Now, add, one, two, three, and more feet to that sea level and its stresses, impacting those old ports all around the entire globe.
Since there will be major pressure redistribution everywhere in those ports, it becomes a complex system dynamic.
The weaknesses will be found out before Harbor & Port Czars address them (water finds all holes).
On another crustal movement front, the land level of Antarctica and Greenland are rising as the weight of ice is removed by melt, then redistributed over the crust down under the sea.
A crust that is historically accustomed to different pressures than these new melt induced, sea level rise induced, torques of easing here but increasing there.
This is not like putting one, two, three and more feet of water slowly into the backyard swimming pool.
We are talking about a lot of mass, weight, and force being taken away here to be redeposited there, impacting upon the many weak spots around the globe.
VI. Conclusion
Some cities are conceptually more on top of things than other cities are:
"Los Angeles, a metropolis perched on the edge of a coast, can expect to experience sea level rise of as much as two feet due by 2050 due to climate change, according to current projections."
Thus, the greater the consequences the greater the caution should be.
Being "conservative" under-estimators, as most establishment climate scientists have been about the dangers approaching, and therefore consistently underestimating them ("don't be a chicken little"), is the opposite of erring on the safe side.
It is, rather, erring on disaster's side.
That is not insurance against disaster, instead, it is insuring disaster.
So, today, we are going to use the "best estimate" of what life and death will be like in 2100.
How the IPCC decided to use "best" and "estimate" in the same sentence about the expected reality (~85 years from now) intrigues me.
For one thing, it intrigues me because I am aware of their conservative inclination to underestimate the size of "the monster under all our kids' beds" ("don't make it too scary").
But I digress, because as it turns out, the IPCC record has proven to be a long lasting "best."
So, I am going to go with their "best estimate," which shows a steep climb in this century up to about 4.25° C at or by the year 2100.
It is a steep climb, which they label "REALISED TEMPERATURE RISE" on their graph (Fig. 1) spanning 1850-2100.
I am also using it because, as we saw in the first post, they hit some balls out of the park on their 1990 report's projections concerning temperature increase.
Further, they still have a ~4 deg. C expectation in their most recent report:
Continuing business-as-usual emissions could mean the very worst-case IPCC scenario, where global temperatures rise by more than 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by 2100.
This helps to emphasize what I have been writing about models that project into the future: stick with the best foundational data.
Anyway, back to today's post.
The IPCC's 1990 assessment did not complete their sea level rise (SLR) projections in those reports.
So, those projections ended up being wild underestimations (Rising Waters: How Fast: "We all think that we’re committed to a meter of sea level rise. We just don’t know exactly how quickly").
Anyway, that 1990 temperature rise projection indicated that by circa 2100, we will have reached ~4.25° C of increased global average temperature.
To complete the missing SLR part of the IPCC report, we will use two very recent papers that can help fill in those blanks.
One is the Potsdam formula, which helps to convert temperature increase into meters of SLR, beginning with:
One paper found that for each 1°C of global average temperature rise there would, as a direct result, be a 2.3 meter sea level rise (SLR), according to Potsdam Institute.
It is more sobering to Americans if we convert meters to something we more readily relate to, which is "feet."
Let's render the 9.775 meters into feet: 3.280839895 * 9.775 = 32.070209974 feet.
That is ~32 ft. of SLR caused by a ~4.25° C temperature rise.
Next, the mysterious "law of when" comes into play here:
"The First Law of 'When': the more critical an issue is to the future of our civilization, the difficulty of determining when that critical issue will take effect tends to increase exponentially. The Second Law of 'When': the greater the amount of time it takes for that critical issue to play out completely tends to exponentially diminish Civilization's grasp of that critical issue. The Third Law of 'When': the more destructive the impact which that critical issue would have on civilization tends to exponentially increase the time when that critical event will be understood to have begun to take place."
(Quotes Page). We can talk formulas, impacts, and results all day, so long as the "when it will take place" is not too close for comfort.
Perhaps, that is why the Potsdam Study did not elaborate in a detailed manner about "when" their 2.3 m SLR per 1°C rise formula would substantially manifest ("2.3 m °C−1 within the next 2,000 y").
Their research paper noted a ~10 year time lag from the time when CO2 is injected into the atmosphere, until 90% of its temperature impact takes place (with the remaining 10% of impact playing out over up to ~40 years).
But there is something else about Arctic and Antarctic areas that needs to be dealt with too.
That something else is that they are warming faster than other areas of the globe:
In the Arctic, temperature has increased at twice the rate as the rest of the globe, and could increase by another 8°C (14°F) by the end of this century. The warming atmosphere along with new weather pattern extremes is causing Arctic sea ice to melt at an alarming rate—12% per decade—that suggests the Arctic will be ice-free by 2030. The impacts of dwindling ice cover in the Arctic are far-reaching, from species endangerment to enhanced global warming, to the weakening or shut-down of global ocean circulation.
(Arctic Sea Ice Decline, emphasis added). I don't see any need to use the "8°C" because civilization goes through at least a severe nervous breakdown at the "4.25°C" figure:
Thus, all we need to know is when the ongoing melt in Greenland and/or Antarctica will result in a 3 ft. global SLR (which is a function of acceleration of SLR).
So, how to we calculate, compute, and project the rendezvous with 3 ft. of SLR?
Fig. 2 is an example I will use to finish out today's post:
It is based on the ~"4.25°C" conservative temperature expectations of the IPCC reports.
I don't have the delay logic implemented (in my SLR software) as well as I would like, yet, but there is a rudimentary 10 yr. delay placed into the years immediately following 2015.
One thing the lag or delay does is cause a limit to the amount of SLR @ 2100 so it is less than the full 32 ft. (the 32 ft is reached later due to the delay).
One thing showing up is that Antarctica takes the lead in generating SLR under the IPCC projection data.
That Antarctica would be the top SLR contributor has been the scientific consensus in several papers.
So, even though the full delay, surge, and feedback is not yet developed or presented in the graph, it is a reasonable beginning landscape for things to come.
For a final look at the 3 Ft. SLR marker concept, let's look in the log file (a csv file) created by the program that generates the SLR projections:
This indicates a 3ft. SLR marker at ~2030, which is close (~2033) to the calculations that were not based on temperature per se, but rather were based on ice volume loss as reported by the Cryosat-2 ice volume tracking satellite (see Fig. 3 here).
This hypothesis comes at a time when we are "just finding out" some things we should have known about long ago.
That is, assuming we consider our civilization to be intelligent:
Scientific groups, for some time now, have realized that "determinations of when" have been consistently underestimated and/or overlooked:
Changes in the area and volume of the two polar ice sheets in Antarctica ... and Greenland are intricately linked to changes in global climate, and could result in sea-level changes that could severely affect the densely populated coastal regions on Earth. Melting of the West Antarctica part of the Antarctic ice sheet alone could cause a sea-level rise of approximately 6 meters (m). The potential sea-level rise after melting of the entire Antarctic ice sheet is estimated to be about 73 m. In spite of its importance, the mass balance (the net volumetric gain or loss) of the Antarctic ice sheet is poorly known; it is not known whether the ice sheet is growing or shrinking. As a result, measurement of changes in the Antarctic ice sheet has been given a very high priority in recommendations by the Polar Research Board of the National Research Council, by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), and by the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs.
(USGS 2005, emphasis added). Therefore, they are leaning toward changing that defect.
What was "poorly known," as recently as ten years ago, is now becoming known to "a more reasonable degree" (as pointed out by the earlier discussion of Cryosat-2 data).
What we see, then, is that civilization had spent untold trillions in order to make endless war, go to the moon, asteroids, comets, and other planets, but we had not all arrived on Earth yet (You Are Here).
We did not know about the great danger of Antarctic ice melt, which would bring down current civilization (240.53 ft. of SLR, see Fig. 1).
