Oil-Qaeda is also paying media operatives to spread the false notion that all humanity is responsible for addicting civilization to oil, seeking to minimize the greatest crime against humanity in all history (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).
The psychology involved in this has been detailed, and the dynamics of imagined or mythical guilt are well understood:
"... collective guilt is a psychological experience, it need not involve actually being guilty in any sense of the word. This is an important distinction. Indeed, one of the most striking features of collective guilt is that it can be experienced by group members who were not in any way involved in the harm doing ... The essential ingredient of personal responsibility for the harm done can be absent when collective guilt is experienced, although this is an important prerequisite for "being guilty" in the legal sense. Feeling guilt for events that an individual is not personally responsible for is possible because people can and do categorize themselves as members of a group ... These theories explain how group membership shapes the cognitions, emotions, and behavior of individuals. From a social identity perspective, the actions taken by the ingroup can elicit an emotional response to the extent that the self is linked with the ingroup. Immoral actions and outcomes caused by other ingroup members link the self to the wrongdoing via shared group identity. People "bask in the reflected glory" of their group when other ingroup members are responsible for successes, and they can attempt to "cut off reflected failure" when other group members' actions harm the ingroup's image ... Because part of people's identity is based on their group membership, the desire to feel positive about their group will frequently result in group-serving explanations for ingroup actions. However, when those justifications fail or become impossible to sustain, people may feel collective guilt to the extent that the ingroup's past actions are perceived as violating the current moral standards of the ingroup."
Regular readers know I finished version 1.0 of the Dredd Blog sea level rise (SLR) projection software (The Evolution of Models, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).
I came across a statement yesterday which made me glad about the design of that software.
Interestingly, the big boys with their million lines of code programs had to rewrite their software related to Greenland.
I am not privy to that code so I am not sure exactly what they will remodel.
They explained that "results of these studies are expected to improve predictions of the future of the entire Greenland ice sheet and its contribution to sea level rise as researchers revamp their computer models of how the ice sheet reacts to a warming climate" (Hidden Movements of Greenland Ice Sheet, Runoff Revealed). [which means they want it to stop underestimating SLR].
I made the Dredd Blog software "data driven," so, the software does not need to change as research data changes.
As the data improves the predictions will improve, but not only that, different value scenarios can be animated in "what if" projections. As an example of that, the three "what ifs" that Dr. James Hansen speaks about in one of his papers can be matched exactly with the same code (The Evolution of Models - 7).
Quite a few posts have pointed out that the general Arctic current is warming and having an impact on Greenland which then impacts the U.S. East Coast with SLR (Series Posts, # "Sea Level Rise"). Today I am providing some review of just how radical the Arctic is being changed by global warming (see the videos below, and read Arctic Is Changing Radically, PDF).
What Happens In Greenland Stays In New England
Of the two factors, the Arctic in general, and Greenland in particular, Greenland is the focus as the source of SLR.
That said, we can tell to some degree how Greenland SLR will be impacted by the changes in the Arctic Ocean, which is why the two videos below contain very important information.
The oscillations of Greenland melt can fool us into false hope and complacency when its melt vacillates, so remember the trend (see Fig. 2).
Which then impacts the ice shelf floating on the ocean in north Greenland, which weakens, and then like the Larsen B in Antarctica, no longer sufficiently resists glacier flow into the ocean.
Regular readers know that I have been focusing on sea level rise (SLR) recently.
The gravity of the danger has been overlooked by our corporate "news" media.
So, I want to continue to hone in on SLR so as to sharpen the focus of all but the deniers.
For those who are just now checking in, and who want to get up to speed on the recent posts concerning SLR, click on the tab "Series Posts" at the top of the page, then move down to the heading "Sea Level Rise".
There you will find a list of posts concerning this matter, from the Dredd Blog System, that have been written and posted over the past few years.
II. The Status Quo
Over the years I have pointed out that the East Coast of the United States, from Cape Cod down to Cape Hatteras, has already experienced a foot or more of SLR:
“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.”
...
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.
...
There is virtually universal agreement among scientists that the sea will probably rise a good meter or more before the end of the century, wreaking havoc in low-lying coastal counties. So the members of the developers’ lobbying group NC-20 say the sea will rise only 8 inches, because … because … well, SHUT UP, that’s because why.
That is, the meter or so of sea level rise predicted for the NC Coastal Resources Commission by a state-appointed board of scientists is extremely inconvenient for counties along the coast. So the NC-20 types have decided that we can escape sea level rise – in North Carolina, anyhow – by making it against the law. Or making MEASURING it against the law, anyhow.
(Will This Float Your Boat - 3, 2013). That is half-way to the 1m / 3ft. catastrophe level mentioned by the climate scientist, Dr. Rignot, who specializes in the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica (see section III and videos below).
We are half-way to the 1m / 3ft. catastrophe level already, is that all?
Not quite:
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. [5.04 inches]
(Will This Float Your Boat - 5, emphasis added). That abrupt event is due to surges caused by the oscillation of, among other things, the Greenland Ice Sheet melt which is not a linear dynamic (see Fig. 1).
This particular notion of catastrophe is not a notion of orderly progression, so stable and linear that even bureaucrats can plan for it in a business as usual manner.
To spark your interest, and bind you to a sober view of this phenomenon which is called "The Biggest Story in the World" (according to a worldwide circulation news source), first consider the following quote from the video below:
2:43 - "One meter [of SLR] would be a global catastrophic event, 3 meters would remap the world as we know it?"
2:50 - "Yes, absolutely."
(emphasis added). This allows us to focus our attention on 1m / 3ft. of SLR, because it would be "a global catastrophic event."
The delicacy of the issue can be seen by realizing that only 1.14% of the ice volume needs to melt to get us there (3 ft ÷ 263.5 ft. = 0.011385 = 1.14%).
Since some East Coast areas are half way there already, the percentage of global ice that needs to melt to get us to "a global catastrophic event" is now 0.57% (one half).
Or, if a certain percentage of one glacier (the Totten Glacier) in East Antarctica melts, or otherwise slides into the sea, the same will happen:
How little it will take can also easily be seen by a statement from a scientist who is studying those locations closely and regularly:
"One of them, Totten glacier, holds the equivalent of seven metres of global sea level."
Since we were looking at those events individually, as separate, singular occurrences, consider that if both take place at the same time, we would divide the 7.15% and 0.57% in half to derive even smaller percentages.
So, if 3.575% of the Totten glacier makes it to the sea at the same time as 0.285% of the rest of the worlds ice does, we reach about 1m / 3ft of SLR in those places that already have 1.5 ft or more of SLR (e.g. U.S. East Coast).
I won't belabor the point further, today, since only deniers will not detect how close we are to the edge of "a global catastrophic event".
IV. Today's Candidate
Previous posts have dealt with the New York harbor and the Chesapeake Bay areas, while skipping the Delaware Bay area.
So, today's focus will be on the Delaware Bay area.
Which means that we will be taking a look at one of the oldest, busiest ports:
Philadelphia's importance and central location in the colonies made it a natural center for America's revolutionaries. By the 1750s, Philadelphia had surpassed Boston to become the largest city and busiest port in British America, and second in the British Empire, behind London.
(Wikipedia, Philadelphia, emphasis added). Many probably do not think of Philadelphia, PA as a port city.
SLR is probably not associated with "Philly" either, so let's expand the focus on Philly as a port city:
The port itself claims the ranking of the #1 perishables port in the United States. The combined ports along the Delaware River, which include Philadelphia and Wilmington together, rank #3 in the U.S. for steel imports, and are among the United States' key entry points for forest products and for cocoa.
The bay is one of the most important navigational channels in the United States, its second busiest waterway after the Mississippi River. Its lower course forms part of the Intracoastal Waterway. The need for direct navigation around the two capes into the ocean is circumvented by the Cape May Canal and the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal at the north and south capes respectively. The upper bay is connected directly to the north end of Chesapeake Bay by the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.
The bay offers several challenges to mariners: a significant current of up to three knots, which quickly builds a nasty chop when the wind is in opposition; mainly shallow water, with its channel often occupied with ocean-going vessels; and relatively few places to take shelter.
(Wikipedia, Delaware Bay, emphasis added). It is an estuary too, like New York and Chesapeake are:
The Delaware Estuary is the tidal portion, or the lower half, of the Delaware River Basin. It includes all of the watersheds draining into this portion of the Delaware River and Delaware Bay. The area surrounding the estuary stretches as far west as the Schuylkill River’s headwaters near Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and as far east as the Rancocas Creek’s headwaters near Fort Dix, New Jersey. The vastness of this watershed makes the Delaware Estuary one of the largest estuaries in the country, or approximately 6,800 square miles (18,000 km2) in size. Within these boundaries are over 200 species of fish, the continent’s second-highest concentration of shorebirds, and over 400,000 acres (1,600 km2) of wetlands.
(Wikipedia, Delaware Estuary, emphasis added). Thus, yet another large population and international commerce and intercourse location is at risk to SLR.
V. Going Nuclear
Furthermore, like other estuaries, nuclear power plants have been built on the shores of the Delaware Bay estuary:
Nuclear reactors are often located near the ocean because they need plenty of water to cool their reactors. The fact that many are built at low elevations further exposes them to hazards of rising sea levels due to global warming and climate change.
The nine major US nuclear plants are within two miles of the coast.
In response to the threat, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ordered nuclear facilities in the US to review assessments of their vulnerability to flooding and earthquakes and plans to address the risks.
The overall concern pointed out in Dredd Blog posts mentioned above was economic, which has turned out to have been a realistic view:
“The 21st century will be a contest for supremacy in the Pacific because that’s where the growth will be,” Lee said. U.S. President Barack Obama, he said, must understand this.
“If you do not hold your ground in the Pacific you cannot be a world leader,” Lee said, “That’s number one.”
“Number two, to hold ground in the Pacific, you must not let your fiscal deficits and dollar come to grief,” he said.
(Economic War Of The Pacific, 2009). That may have been ignored, because the results expected were confirmed:
Hang on to your hats, America.
And throw away that big, fat styrofoam finger while you’re about it.
There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it: We’re no longer No. 1. Today, we’re No. 2. Yes, it’s official. The Chinese economy just
overtook the United States economy to become the largest in the world. For the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was president, America is not the leading economic power on the planet.
It just happened — and almost nobody noticed.
The International Monetary Fund recently released the latest numbers for the world economy. And when you measure national economic output in “real” terms of goods and services, China will this year produce $17.6 trillion — compared with $17.4 trillion for the U.S.A.
As recently as 2000, we produced nearly three times as much as the Chinese.
To put the numbers slightly differently, China now accounts for 16.5% of the global economy when measured in real purchasing-power terms, compared with 16.3% for the U.S.
This latest economic earthquake follows the development last year when China surpassed the U.S. for the first time in terms of global trade.
(Economic War Of The Pacific - 5, 2015). That eventuality sets the stage for the next concern, the "reserve currency" used by international commerce and intercourse.
Here is what Dredd Blog posted concerning that issue:
China’s central bank governor has issued a bold proposal to overhaul the global monetary system and one day replace the dollar as the world’s main reserve currency with the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Special Drawing Right
One of the concerns of US financial experts is the removal of the dollar as the "reserve currency" of the world:
The United States of America, if we didn't have the dollar as the de facto reserve currency of the world, we'd be Greece. I mean, we are broke, bankrupt. Really bankrupt.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Monday of living beyond its means "like a parasite" on the global economy and said dollar dominance was a threat to the financial markets.
"They are living beyond their means and shifting a part of the weight of their problems to the world economy," Putin told a Kremlin youth group while touring its summer camp north of Moscow.
"They are living like parasites off the global economy and their monopoly of the dollar."
...
"If over there (in America) there is a systemic malfunction, this will affect everyone," Putin told the young Russians.
"Countries like Russia and China hold a significant part of their reserves in American securities ... There should be other reserve currencies."
The group of emerging economies signed the long-anticipated document to create the $100 bn BRICS Development Bank and a reserve currency pool worth over another $100 bn. Both will counter the influence of Western-based lending institutions and the dollar. ...
“BRICS Bank will be one of the major multilateral development finance institutions in this world,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday at the 6th BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil.
The big launch of the BRICS bank is seen as a first step to break the dominance of the US dollar in global trade, as well as dollar-backed institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, both US-based institutions BRICS countries have little influence within.
(BRICS vs Western dominance). It could be that the secret, classified TPP is a reaction to the ongoing success of BRICS nations.
It is sometimes called "the pivot to Asia" which one documentary journalist sees as part of the preliminary dynamics of The Coming War Between America and China.
Surrounded
Another concern of mine, in this international trading scene, is sea level rise (SLR), even though it is mostly ignored.
Thus, the gunboat diplomacy of recent decades has been a waste of "blood and treasure" (the warmonger description).
We should have been addressing the unstoppable threats, which no international agreement can resist successfully (unless it is a comprehensive international agreement to halt civilization's burning of fossil fuels as a source of energy).
The map to the left shows the sea lanes from the West Coast to pacific trading partners.
Some of those nations have negative bottom lines, such as Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico, and Canada (5 nations @ $1.4 trillion), but others have positive bottom lines, such as Singapore, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, and Chile (6 nations, $142.5 billion).
My purpose, today, is not to discuss the good or bad financial dynamics in the context of the TPP.
Instead, since I have discussed SLR mainly in the context of its impact on the East Coast from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras, today I want to discuss, for the most part, the impact SLR will have on the ports of those nations.
It is a fact that SLR is involved in the contemplated international ocean-based commerce and intercourse whether they discuss the issue or not.
Some discussion of the San Francisco Bay and port area (the U.S. side of the coin), in the context of Pacific Ocean SLR has been posted:
2.4 Resources Threatened by Sea Level Rise
In any given area, rising seas pose a threat to many different types of resources. Among the vulnerable coastal systems are transportation facilities such as roadways, airports, bridges, and mass transit systems; electric utility systems and power plants; stormwater systems and wastewater treatment plants and outfalls; groundwater aquifers; wetlands and fisheries; and many other human and natural systems from homes to schools, hospitals, and industry. Any impacts on resources within the affected area may lead to secondary impacts elsewhere.
...
3,2 ... Facilities At Risk [@ 1 m/3 ft. SLR]
3.4.2 Ports
...
Our assessment of future flood risk with sea level rise shows significant flooding is possible at the Port of Oakland. The San Francisco and Oakland airports are also vulnerable to flooding with sea level rise. In addition to directly affecting port operations, sea level rise may cause other interruptions to goods movement at ports. Sea level rise can reduce bridge clearance, thereby reducing the size of ships able to pass or restricting their movements to times of low tide. Higher seas may cause ships to sit higher in the water, possibly resulting in less efficient port operations (National Research Council 1987). These impacts are highly site specific, and somewhat speculative, requiring detailed local study. We also note the connection between possible direct impacts of sea level rise on the ports themselves and possible flooding of transportation (rail and road) corridors to and from the ports.
...
4.1 Conclusions
Rising sea levels will be among the most significant impacts of climate change ...
We estimate that sea level rise will put 220,000 [people at risk] ... with a 1.0 m ... rise in sea levels ... A wide range of critical infrastructure, such as roads, hospitals, schools, emergency facilities, wastewater treatment plants, power plants, and wetlands is also vulnerable. In addition ... property is at risk ... with a 1.0 ... m rise in sea levels ...
(The Evolution of Models - 5, emphasis added; cf. this). Let that be an example, in terms of SLR, of the difficulties all of the following ports are facing.
The countries and ports at issue in the TPP, in alphabetical order, are:
This re-emphasizes the point that governments are not publicly thinking about the SLR that is certainly coming!
Perhaps, because in their sovereign denial they cannot think about it.
Well, perhaps one U.S. Senator knows his stuff, suggesting that we stop building ports at sea level. 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?"
Regular readers know that I have been writing about sea level rise (SLR) a lot lately, which means reading a lot of research material.
In this post I want to point out, based upon that recent research, what I see written and spoken often.
It is a misunderstanding frequently printed and spoken by social and corporate media.
That misunderstanding is the notion that life-threatening SLR will first be tilted against the world's poorest people:
"As the coastal cities of Africa and Asia expand, many of their poorest residents are being pushed to the edges of livable land and into the most dangerous zones for climate change. Their informal settlements cling to riverbanks and cluster in low-lying areas with poor drainage, few public services, and no protection from storm surges, sea-level rise, and flooding. These communities – the poor in coastal cities and on low-lying islands – are among the world’s most vulnerable to climate change and the least able to marshal the resources to adapt, a new report finds."
A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.
“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report.
The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S.
I am not sure that they contemplated unrest caused by SLR, but they do expect that unrest is coming, thus, they have been training and preparing for it:
This lesson is designed to describe the nature and causes of disaffection and social unrest; define the potential for social unrest in the United States; identify the types of confrontations; define crowd behavioral and psychological influences; identify patterns of disorder. …
2. Application of Force.
a. General.
(1) Civil disturbance operations by federal forces will not be authorized until
the President is advised by the highest officials of the state that the situation cannot be controlled with nonfederal resources available. The mission of the control force is to help restore law and order and to help maintain it until such time as state and local forces can control the situation without federal help. In performing this mission, the control force may have to actively participate, not only in subduing the disturbance, but also in helping to detain those responsible for it. Control force commanders are authorized and directed to provide such active participation, subject to restraints on the use of force.
(2) Prior to committing any federal forces in the quailing of civil disturbance whether in CONUS or OCONUS commanders should train and continually brief the control force on the rule of engagement (ROE). The commander is responsible for drafting, interpreting, disseminating, and training the control force on the ROE. The staff Judge Advocate (SJA) should be included in the ROE development to ensure that it will not improperly constrain actions, but still will remain consistent with domestic and international laws, polices, and orders of the chain of command.
For quite a while now, the gist of that writing has been about what happens once the "put them all in camps to protect and care for them policy" degrades into an operation of killer-cop types:
“Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, ....whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance.”
(Thomas Jefferson, emphasis added). The current nationwide policy, of giving used-battle-gear and equipment to local police forces, shows that "there are many here among us" who are not human-rights, civil-rights, constitutional-rights, or democratic-rights oriented.
There have always been, and will continue be, those who chose to push the limit way past those concepts, and on into tyranny:
Recall what the breakdown of International Commerce and Intercourse due to SLR damage to ports causes:
"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."
(Will This Float Your Boat - 8). Obviously the camps will have to be activated, and the policies mentioned above will be implemented (think Japanese Interment Camps of the 1940's, but on a much more massive scale).
I hope you can envision the reality that SLR is a big-time game changers (at only ~1m / 3 ft.), because it is a trigger for causing a mega-domino cascade (Will This Float Your Boat - 10).
All of the international trading nations of this civilization will be impacted.
Don't forget to compute those damages as if they were choreographed at an ongoing Groundhog Day movie set, because the SLR is not going to stop just because we become uncomfortable (Will This Float Your Boat - 9).
The maximum stopping point is 263.5 feet of SLR.
I could go on, but I am sure you get the gist of it, so let's get back to the dynamics of SLR.
I have written, along with many others, about the dynamics of a warming Arctic that are now impacting the Greenland Ice Sheet, and the resulting danger to the U.S. North East coastal population areas and ports.
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?"
