Thursday, May 3, 2018

Security: Familyland, Fatherland, or Homeland? - 6

Rise of the Strong Man
This series, among other things, is about what makes the "strong man" attractive to a particular segment of a culture (Security: Familyland, Fatherland, or Homeland?, 2, 3, 4, 5).

That can be analyzed from several perspectives within several academic disciplines.

Today, I want to revisit this phenomenon from the perspective of how it hovers always just below the covers in the United States (and nations like the United States).

It is the psychological or social perspective of groups that I am getting at.

According to expert observers, it is a surprisingly common understanding that liberals and conservatives alike are aware of and generally have agreement about:
A NAZI Family?
The photo to the left is a photo of a family in the NAZI governed Germany of long ago.

Have you ever noticed how many "family" words are associated with the concept of "nation" in literature, politics, and government?

A quick check of a few relevant metaphors (forefathers, father of the constitution, Uncle Sam, motherland, fatherland, homeland, father of the nation, founding fathers, mother of the nation, family of nations, etc.) makes me want to look at perhaps the key source-metaphor for this notion:
... a common metaphor, shared by conservatives and liberals alike -- the Nation-as-Family metaphor, in which the nation is seen as a family, the government as a parent and the citizens as children ...
(The Nation-as-Family Metaphor). To expand upon this concept a bit, consider these comments:
It’s no accident that our political beliefs are structured by our idealizations of the family. Our earliest experience with being governed is in our families. Our parents “govern” us: They protect us, tell us what we can and cannot do, make sure we have enough money and supplies, educate us, and have us do our part in running the house.

So it is not at all surprising that many nations are metaphorically seen in terms of families: Mother Russia, Mother India, the Fatherland. In America, we have founding fathers, Daughters of the American Revolution, Uncle Sam, and we send our collective sons and daughters to war. In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, the voice of the totalitarian state was called Big Brother.

As George Lakoff discussed at length in his 1996 book, Moral Politics, this metaphorical understanding of the nation-as-family directly informs our political worldview. Directly, but not consciously. As with other aspects of framing, the use of this metaphor lies below the level of consciousness.
(The Nation As Family, PDF). It is important to remember the part of the concept indicating that "the use of this metaphor lies below the level of consciousness", because in this post today we are going to try to take a look at part of that iceberg we can see, which is not only conscious, but is also attached to the bulk that is not conscious.
(Security: Familyland, Fatherland, or Homeland?). That quote from the first post in this series begs the question: "how does that take shape?"

That question spawns the following answer:
"The answer came from a realization that we tend to understand the nation metaphorically in family terms: We have founding fathers. We send our sons and daughters to war. We have homeland security. The conservative and progressive worldviews dividing our country can most readily be understood in terms of moral worldviews that are encapsulated in two very different common forms of family life: The Nurturant Parent family (progressive) and the Strict Father family (conservative).

What do social issues and the politics have to do with the family? We are first governed in our families, and so we grow up understanding governing institutions in terms of the governing systems of families.

In the strict father family, father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has the ultimate authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says, which is taken to be what is right. Many conservative spouses accept this worldview, uphold the father’s authority, and are strict in those realms of family life that they are in charge of. When his children disobey, it is his moral duty to punish them painfully enough so that, to avoid punishment, they will obey him (do what is right) and not just do what feels good. Through physical discipline they are supposed to become disciplined, internally strong, and able to prosper in the external world. What if they don’t prosper? That means they are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. This reasoning shows up in conservative politics in which the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving, and the rich as deserving their wealth. Responsibility is thus taken to be personal responsibility not social responsibility. What you become is only up to you; society has nothing to do with it. You are responsible for yourself, not for others — who are responsible for themselves."
(Understanding Trump, by Dr. Lakoff, Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, emphasis added).

When events are seen in ways that indicate "things are going bad," the reactionary members of the populace who hold this strict father world view become sycophants and/or authoritarian followers (Beware of the Sycophant Epidemic, 2).

History tells us that it solves nothing and in fact brings the house down on our heads:
For example, the Encyclopedia Britannica pointed out the ingredients of the DNA of that history, which incidentally, also applies to our current culture's genetic code:
"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. Unlike Spengler in his The Decline of the West, Toynbee did not regard the death of a civilization as inevitable, for it may or may not continue to respond to successive challenges. Unlike Karl Marx, he saw history as shaped by spiritual, not economic forces."
(Stockholm Syndrome: The Declaration of Intellectual Dependence). Take note of the three genes in the cultures of suicidal civilizations: "nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority".
(Previous Post). What remains to be seen is whether the strong man disease will infect enough despots to become "the new normal" (Follow The Immunity - 4).

The previous post in this series is here.



Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Greenland 2.0

Fig. 1 The Greenland
I. Background

This post is like Antarctica 2.0 (Antarctica 2.0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & supplements A, B, C, D, E, F) except that in this case we analyze the Cryosphere of Greenland (both the mythological Greenland and the real Greenland).

One of the myths about Greenland (like Antarctica) is that it only recently began to melt.

The reality is that it began to melt, primarily from atmospheric causes, a few decades after the Industrial Revolution began circa 1750 (Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 54, The Gravity of Sea Level Change, 2, 3, 4).

The World Ocean Database (WOD) data for Greenland is sparse, so, I have updated my Greenland dataset with data from the NASA project "Oceans Melting Greenland" (OMG) because it at least has robust in situ ocean temperature and practical salinity measurements for the years 2016 and 2017 (OMG began recently).

II. Future Work

My intent for future posts, as the volume of in situ ocean water measurements increase, is to have some form of area focus for Greenland as I have for Antarctica.

Work remains to be done on links to Greenland glaciers listed on Wikipedia and on the software module that generates the graphs shown in today's post.

Past area-focus posts pertaining to Greenland have had to do with primarily atmospheric impact areas (The Question Is: How Much Acceleration Is Involved In SLR? - 10).

The oceans, for now, IMO are the main source of melting, and therefore the main focus of this series.

III. The Greenland Picture Now

Both WOD Zone data and OMG data (ocean water measurements) are not yet robust or
Fig. 1a WOD Zones of Greenland
even completely adequate for all Greenland areas and zones.

The map in the paper linked to and shown in Fig. 1 is composed of aerial data and other data.

That is, the data set is not based on in situ measurements of underwater conditions.

So, I am presenting graphs and links that I have now, sorted by Zone, based on in situ measurements processed into TEOS-10 values by the TEOS-10 toolkit.

Where there is a link to glaciers in a zone, I present that link.

The same goes for zones where there is WOD data available to generate a graph of values from that zone.

In Section IV below, I present a graph of all data from all individual zones (those WOD Zones are shown in Fig. 1a as superimposed on the Fig. 1 map).

I generate the best graph I can with current data:
WOD Zone [7802]
Hagen Bræ

WOD Zone [7803]
Academy

WOD Zone [7804]
Wordie

WOD Zone [7805]
Ryder
Steensby

WOD Zone [7806]
Petermann
Zone 7806

WOD Zone [7701]
Zachariae Isstrom

Zone 7701

WOD Zone [7702]
Akuliarutsip Sermerssua
Charcot
Daugård Jensen
Ejnar Mikkelsena
Ejnar Mikkelsenb
Gerard De Geer
Jætte
Kofoed Hansen Bræ
L.Bistrup Bræ
Rolige Bræ
Storstrømmen
Vestfjord
Waltershausen
Zone 7702

WOD Zone [7705]
Cornell
Hayes
Illullip Sermia
Inngia Isbræ
Kangilleq
Kjer
King Oscar
Nordenskiöld
Nunatakavsaup Sermia
Perlerfiup Sermia
Qeqertarsuup Sermia
Rink

Zone 7705

WOD Zone [7706]
Bowdoin
Harald Moltke Bræ
Humboldt
Knud Rasmussen
Peary

Zone 7706

WOD Zone [7602]
Christian IV
Kronborg
Zone 7602

WOD Zone [7603]
Christian IV
Helheim
Kangerdlugssuaq
KJV Steenstrups
Midgårds

Zone 7603

WOD Zone [7604]
Bernstorf
Avaqqat Kangerlua
Danell
Guldfaxe and Rimfaxe
Gyldenlove
Heimdal
Igutsaat
Ikertivaq
Kangerluluk

Zone 7604

WOD Zone [7605]
Jakobshavn Isbræ

Zone 7605

Fig. 2 All WOD Zones @ Greenland
IV. Conclusion

Where there is no specific link to a specific glacier name, I link to a neighbor glacier, to a fjord where the glacier is located, or to a scientific paper that mentions that glacier.

Note that the general purpose of this post is to reveal the subsurface ocean water dynamics that are working to melt the tidewater glaciers in Greenland.

The graph at Fig. 2 is the combined trend (mean average) of all of the WOD Zone  listed.

The "melt" lines on each graph show the temperature of the ice that just turned into water and mixed with the water that melted it.

The next post in this series is here.



Monday, April 30, 2018

Shadow of Time Governs The Earth - 3

Time is natural
Deniers scoffed at the Dredd Blog series about "ghost water," but eventually the truth came out (NASA Busts The Ghost).

Oil-Qaeda operatives scoffed at Dredd Blog in a book written by one of their agents of propaganda (Oil-Qaeda & MOMCOM Conspire To Commit Depraved-Heart Murder- 6).

Meteorologists may have scoffed in private but would not say so in public:
Earlier I mentioned the "politics of tornadoes", which I discerned from a post at a climate blog:
"And so right now I'd say that the jury is still out as to how global warming will affect tornadoes, which of those two variables will win out," Cullen said. "But when it comes to things like heat waves, when it comes to things like heavy rainstorms, drought, wildfires, we know that the atmosphere is on steroids, if you will. So basically we know that we'd have to deal with weather-related risks. We live in a country that has always seen extreme weather. We're basically moving in a direction where we're going to see more and more of certain of these extremes."
(Heidi Cullen, Climate Central, emphasis added). The "jury is still out" ... what jury, a "balanced committee" composed of an equal number of deniers and scientists?

She knows that the "atmosphere is on steroids" but she is not sure that atmosphere has anything to do with tornadoes?
(On The Origin of Tornadoes, Dredd Blog, May 2013). That was back when I began to associate the coming demise of tornado formation (as the Polar Vortex entered a phase of demise) along with the Arctic sea ice:
Somewhere in the previous posts of this series I indicated that it was likely IMO that the number of tornadoes would go down as the Polar Vortex disintegrated ...
...
In the most recent post of this series I noted that 2014 was continuing a downward count trend ...
...
The hypothesis I offered was that when the Polar Vortex completely bit the dust then tornado counts would go up again, because the impediment caused by the disintegrating vortex would fade away eventually ...
(On The Origin of Tornadoes - 7; cf. On The Origin of Tornadoes, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; Watching The Arctic Die, 2, 3, 4). It does not take an Einstein to figure out that cold weather impairs tornado development.

However, it takes cross-discipline awareness for experts to avoid the myopia of being focused on partial sets of relevant evidence (Jerry X. Mitrovica).

Regular readers know that I watch the Cryosphere as well as the oceans (where the components of the Cryosphere go when they morph into melt water).

The Global Climate is a system made up of individual parts that behave in a systematic way, so one must use cross discipline analysis by, among other things, becoming aware of multiple subsystems (The Damaged Global Climate System, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

That is how I hypothesized about the coming demise of tornado formation in the mid-west (cold air breaking off off of the vortex will impair tornado formation).

Back then, that is how I "saw" the current reality coming:
"In fact, no tornadoes have been reported in Oklahoma, which has set a new record ... Kansas is also yet to see its first tornado in 2018 ...Overall for the U.S., fewer tornadoes than average have occurred so far in 2018, and portions of the Plains that would typically expect at least a few tornadoes by now have not seen any of these dangerous twisters ..."
(Weather dot com, emphasis added). Nevertheless, there are, and will continue to be, those in Deniersville who will cross-talk that "we are not in Kansas anymore Toto."

Myopia is not an honest replacement for a robust cross-discipline outlook (Penn State researchers join international effort to study Antarctic ‘doomsday’ glacier).

The doomsday glacier they focus on is only one of a thousand points of light (Antarctica 2.0 - 6, & supplements A, B, C, D, E, F).

Myopic focus is not an effective way to keep everything from happening at once, because something else does that ("Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once." - Brainy Quotes).

Conclusion: time is not on our side when we ignore it:
In the middle of February, one-third of the ice covering the Bering Sea off Alaska’s West Coast vanished within a week when an enormous pulse of heat swept over the Arctic. Scientists were stunned.
...
“We’ve fallen off a cliff: very little sea ice remains in the Bering Sea,” tweeted Rick Thoman, an Alaska-based climatologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, on April 29.

Thoman said that the ice disappeared this year four weeks earlier than in any other year except 2017, when its extent was also well below normal.

The ice extent over the Chukchi Sea, just north of the Bering Sea abutting Alaska’s northwest coast, is also abnormally depleted. It recently began its melt season earlier than ever before measured.
(Seattle Times). That is what fragments the Polar Vortex nowadays.

The previous post in this series is here.