The Bering Sea, between Alaska and Russia (see Fig. 1; @ 12 O'clock click to enlarge), has been having a reputation and personality change too (NOAA, Bering Climate).
Those warming waters of the Bering Sea flow into the Arctic Ocean along with waters
All of this is changing the reputation and personality of the Arctic Ocean.
Next comes the era when it loses its albedo, totally loses its personality as a sunlight reflecting ice mass with reflecting ability up the wazoo, to become neo-Arctc.
This neo-Arctic absorbs sunlight, warms more than ever, loses its reputation because it is no longer the ice cap it once was.
Especially when it causes the whole commercial aviation system, together with the infamous homeland security gang (disorganized into a strange meme-complex) to go nuts too?
* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.
* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.
(Washington Post). That only scratches the surface, the story is also that no one knows all about it or how much it costs, hence, it is out of control.
(The Keystone Complex To The Rescue). That story reveals a shocking anti-American development on its own, but the story is all the more egregious in the context of the republicans wanting to cut education, health care, social security, etc., but not those senseless republican behemoths.
For a decade these same luddites have been weakening, or trying to weaken, NASA climate scientists who have been warning "two if by sea" as they should.
But they have been weakened and damaged by those who should be strengthening them:
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.
On the Series Posts page (tab at top of Dredd Blog pages), under the heading "SEA LEVEL RISE" are links to posts about the invader.
Those posts will inform readers of the meaning of this quote on the Dredd Blog quotes page:
"One thing is for sure on the subject of global warming induced climate change: if there was ever a time to err on the safe side, it was long ago." - Dredd
If I was a terrorist:
A 1958 video which shows we went into the catastrophe with our "eyes wide open."
I pointed out in a Dredd Blog series that there is no denying the threat of nuclear war as a means of human extinction (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch - 2).
It was also pointed out in that post that those who inhabit the home of climate change deniers, the GOP, agree with that assessment of nuclear war (ibid).
Today, I want to argue the case that sea level rise (SLR) is the greatest threat to civilization at this time, even though it is not the greatest threat to human species (extinction) at this time (Civilization ≠ human species).
The graphic and link under the graphic captures the concept, because it shows a city abandoned when SLR has reached a certain level (causing the city to have to be abandoned) because, among other things, the people that once thrived there have had to move inland because infrastructure is severely impaired.
The people are not yet extinct, but the coastal part of the city is.
When about fourteen percent of just one glacier, the Totten Glacier, melts or flows to the sea, or when about one percent (1.14%) of all the world's ice melts and/or flows to the sea, civilization as we know it goes lights-out, and a different "maybe civilization" emerges:
The harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized. The Government’s own objective assessment of the relevant science and a strong consensus among qualified experts indicate that global warming threatens, inter alia, a precipitate rise in sea levels, severe and irreversible changes to natural ecosystems, a significant reduction in winter snowpack with direct and important economic consequences, and increases in the spread of disease and the ferocity of weather events. [quoting U.S. Supreme Court] ...
"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." [quoting NOAA 'Ports']
(Will This Float Your Boat - 10). If you are having a difficult time wrapping your mind around this, look at the depiction of New York harbor at the top of the post.
Ask yourself how all those container ships can come into that harbor to load or unload "95 percent of U.S. international trade" (their cargo).
The roads to and from the harbor are closed, the power is off, everyone is gone inland to camps, etc., and it is that way at every port at every coastal area.
Food, clothing, oil, coal, gas, and other goods and bads cannot go back and forth in the manner of Current Civilization's established international intercourse.
We are talking about a game changer, and it could happen far more quickly than you have yet heard.
If "the dam breaks" massively at either Greenland or Antarctica, lights-out will happen before governments and their citizens can prepare for what is to come quickly:
Following the 2002 disintegration of the northern and central parts of the Larsen B Ice Shelf, the tributary glaciers of the southern surviving part initially appeared relatively unchanged and hence assumed to be buttressed sufficiently by the remnant ice shelf. Here, we modify this perception with observations from IceBridge altimetry and InSAR-inferred ice flow speeds. Our analyses show that the surfaces of Leppard and Flask glaciers directly upstream from their grounding lines lowered by 15 to 20 m in the period 2002–2011. The thinning appears to be dynamic as the flow of both glaciers and the remnant ice shelf accelerated in the same period. Flask Glacier started accelerating even before the 2002 disintegration, increasing its flow speed by ∼55% between 1997 and 2012. Starbuck Glacier meanwhile did not change much. We hypothesize that the different evolutions of the three glaciers are related to their dissimilar bed topographies and degrees of grounding. We apply numerical modeling and data assimilation that show these changes to be accompanied by a reduction in the buttressing afforded by the remnant ice shelf, a weakening of the shear zones between its flow units and an increase in its fracture. The fast flowing northwestern part of the remnant ice shelf exhibits increasing fragmentation, while the stagnant southeastern part seems to be prone to the formation of large rifts, some of which we show have delimited successive calving events. A large rift only 12 km downstream from the grounding line is currently traversing the stagnant part of the ice shelf, defining the likely front of the next large calving event. We propose that the flow acceleration, ice front retreat and enhanced fracture of the remnant Larsen B Ice Shelf presage its approaching demise.
Nations will become more isolated, in terms of volume of shipping, and will have to rely on themselves (use more local products) orders of magnitude more than they have been (Will This Float Your Boat - 9).
The next post in this series is here. HBO Vice: "Our Rising Oceans", with Dr. Eric Rignot:
-----------------------------------
2:43 - "One meter [of SLR] would be a global catastrophic event, 3 meters would remap the world as we know it?"
Today's post deals with one of those subjects that our mind can't easily wrap itself around:
"In United States law, depraved-heart murder, also known as depraved-indifference murder, is an action where a defendant acts with a "depraved indifference" to human life and where such act results in a death. In a depraved-heart murder a defendant commits an act even though they know their act runs an unusually high risk of causing death or serious bodily harm to someone else.If the risk of death or bodily harm is great enough, ignoring it demonstrates a "depraved indifference" to human life and the resulting death is considered to have been committed with malice aforethought. In most states, depraved-heart killings constitute second-degree murder."
(Wikipedia, Depraved Heart Murder, emphasis added). The notion of conspiracy is also becoming more and more difficult to understand too, even though "[o]ver one-quarter of all federal criminal prosecutions and a large number of state cases involve prosecutions for conspiracy" (On The Origin of "Conspiracy Theory", 2, 3, 4).
Perhaps the subject can be understood better if I point out that there are degrees of murder (e.g. first, second, third):
"Criminal homicide takes many forms including accidental or purposeful murder. The crime committed in a criminal homicide is determined by the mental state of the committing person and the extent of the crime."
The beginning point in the analysis of this type of murder is criminal negligence:
"Department of Just Us"
To constitute a crime, there must be an actus reus (Latin for "guilty act") accompanied by the mens rea ["guilty mind"]. Negligence shows the least level of culpability, intention being the most serious, and recklessness being of intermediate seriousness, overlapping with gross negligence. The distinction between recklessness and criminal negligence lies in the presence or absence of foresight as to the prohibited consequences.
(Wikipedia, Criminal negligence, emphasis added). Is there evidence that burning fossil fuels is the cause of greenhouse gas pollution, sufficient to give a reasonable person "a heads up", i.e. foresight?
Which is to ask, "is human death a reasonably foreseeable result of such pollution?"
The presstitutes and McTell News still grapple with an understanding of where they are (You Are Here), but does that excuse the federal government?
McTell News journalists are continually failing to comprehend that there is clear and convincing evidence, and even evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, that an alleged murder-suicide pact is a real threat, not a mere suspicion:
The Obama administration on Monday gave conditional approval to allow Shell to start drilling for oil off the Alaskan coast this summer, a major victory for the petroleum industry and a devastating blow to environmentalists.
(New York Times, "NYT", 5/11/15). NYT coverage here constitutes a false frame, which wrongly considers the matter to be nothing but a political struggle between the petroleum industry and environmentalists.
Do the prestitutes, McTell News, and OIl-Qaeda, really think that only environmentalists have died in the past, are dying now, and will continue to die in the future from AGW induced catastrophe, caused by the use of fossil fuels?
Either way, their professional lunacy is surpassed by the Obama Administration Environmental Policy, which is also in bed will all manner of madness:
The move came just four months after the Obama administration opened up a portion of the Atlantic Coast to new offshore drilling.
(ibid, NYT, 5/11/15). "Drill Baby Drill" was considered to be the bumper sticker of lunatics when Obama was running for President.
But, now this Pontius Pilot has made it a fundamental policy of his administration, even though he says he is aware that it is the greatest threat to civilization:
And no challenge -- no challenge -- poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.
2014 was the planet’s warmest year on record. Now, one year doesn’t make a trend, but this does: 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century.
I’ve heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they’re not
scientists; that we don’t have enough information to act. Well, I’m not a scientist, either. But you know what, I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and at NOAA, and at our major universities. And the best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we don’t act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration and conflict and hunger around the globe. The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it.
(Global Warming Induced Climate Change Is A Matter of Law). When combined with a policy of enhancing the activity that produces climate change, this speech contains evidence of reckless indifference ("depraved indifference") toward human lives.
Allowing fossil fuel drilling in known danger zones, or anywhere else for that matter (which at best will worsen climate change damage and death even if no accidents take place during drilling), is a criminal, depraved-heart mentality (Global Warming Induced Climate Change Is A Matter of Law) .
Busted in the B.S. booth
Based on what Obama has said in public during his tenure, his administration has morphed into a depraved-heart criminal enterprise.
It has become one of many governments that should be prosecuted along with the criminal minds of Oil-Qaeda.
In some previous posts of this series the subject was: the number of people affected by sea level rise (SLR) in the North East.
Specifically, I focused on the Hudson River and "Hudson" / NY Bay area.
But, I also wrote "[e]xpand the scope of these wonderful opportunities south to New Jersey ..." (Will This Float Your Boat - 9).
So, today we will go a bit further south for a look at a well known area that has a similar SLR problem as the Hudson River Bay area, but one that is a larger estuary than the Hudson Bay: we will consider the ports and the estuary of Chesapeake Bay:
"With its expansive coastline, low-lying topography, and growing coastal population, the Chesapeake Bay region is among the places in the nation most vulnerable to sea-level rise." ...
"Average sea levels in the Chesapeake Bay have been rising. Many places along the bay have seen a one-foot increase in relative sea-level rise over the 20th century, six inches due to global warming and another six inches due to naturally subsiding coastal lands--a factor that places the Chesapeake Bay region at particular risk." ...
"Already, at least 13 islands in the bay have disappeared entirely, and many more are at risk of being lost soon."
(Chesapeake Bay and Global Warming, 2007-08, emphasis added). If you think that description reads like the description of the vulnerable coast of New England, at Hudson River Bay, it is because it is under the exact same threats from SLR:
The harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized. The Government’s own objective assessment of the relevant science and a strong consensus among qualified experts indicate that global warming threatens, inter alia, a precipitate rise in sea levels, severe and irreversible changes to natural ecosystems, a significant reduction in winter snowpack with direct and important economic consequences, and increases in the spread of disease and the ferocity of weather events. [quoting U.S. Supreme Court] ...
"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." [quoting NOAA 'Ports']
Likewise, for those who do not get the danger to current civilization, apply these principles and realities to the 196 countries with more than 4,764 ports of current civilization (World Port Source).
(World Ports: Virginia, Maryland). These ports that impact multiple millions of Americans (e.g. international commerce) are under the same threats as the New York and New England ports (danger of Greenland Ice Sheetmelt-collapse generated SLR).
The greatest danger is not recognizing the danger, and the second greatest danger is the inability to do anything about it in real time, once anyone even notices.
This was discussed in the context of other ports:
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).
Several states under neoCon control have been ignoring the SLR threat for years and decades, because "it does not compute" or "it is outside our comfort zone" (The Epistemology of Goldilocks RE: Sea Level Rise).
It is the folly of fools to think that ignoring this problem is going to make it go away.
The terrors frozen deep inside Greenland and Antarctica are rising to the song of an accelerated threat, rising to the song of global warming induced climate change, rising to drown the Earth destroyers (The Question Is: How Much Acceleration Is Involved In SLR?, 2, 3, 4).
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
If I was a Terrorist:
A 1958 video which shows we went into the catastrophe with our "eyes wide open."
