The Way of Civilizations - 2

It Is What It Is

I. What

What is 'civilization' in the context of this and other Dredd Blog series?

Especially the series (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

The answer is:

"World civilization means the nations of the world interconnected by trade, travel, treaties, and international commerce.

So, when climate change scientists talk about dangers to the existence of civilization they do not mean that the population of human beings as a species is going to become extinct.

In other words, the human species would live on even if civilization ended.

For example, Greenland alone has enough ice that if that ice was to melt it would raise the world's ocean level by 21 feet (~7 meters).

That alone would destroy the ocean-port cities of the civilized world, and thereby destroy world civilization by destroying its primary commerce.

But if you add Antarctica to the equation, much more than just the coastal ports would be lost, because the ocean level would rise beyond belief."

(What Do You Mean - World Civilization?). In our time civilization has become intertwined perhaps more than in previous versions.

Just in case any readers are thinking that 'it can't happen here', let's remember history and herstory in terms of the story of bad choices:

"But always TCS [the creep state] is primarily the population segment diagnosed as a despotic minority which the once most-often-quoted historian, Toynbee, fingered as one of the members of the trinity of extinction that he found in all civilizations that were about to become very successful at becoming extinct:

That something is the dementia that produces and ends up in suicide:

"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). There is no cure for the final symptom of that group dementia, there is only prevention by way of avoiding it altogether in the first place.

The components of that group dementia were pointed out in an encyclopedia piece concerning that historian quoted above:

"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" ...

(Encyclopedia Britannica, emphasis added). The show stopper, in terms of remedy, in this type of group dementia is that it is a contagious dementia.

(Etiology of Social Dementia - 18). That particular "minority" is not a racial or ethnic minority, rather, it is primarily composed of a destructive suicidal trance (Choose Your Trances Carefully, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

(Arrested Development: The Creep State). The long and the short of it is that cultures devolve over and over again because bad choices exceed good choices."

(How To Enjoy The End Of Bad Choices). It is no deep dark secret that civilizations typically and habitually die out from the bad choices they make.

II. Where & Who

Our current civilization's membership nations, in various degrees, contain instances of nationalism, militarism, as well as despotic minorities.

But the 'minorities' Toynbee is talking about is 'their leaders', which is another way of saying their governments ("Civilizations declined when their leaders...").

The governments, the leaders, are in attendance at COP26, but I don't expect the high level talks or news reports to mention 'the grounding line', so I will.

The appendices to today's post show the seawater temperatures at depths where the seawater is in contact with the ice at tidewater glaciers in Antarctica (and Greenland).

The "Conservative Temperature, Quantum Proportion, Photon Count, and Heat Content" Graphs show temperatures at three pelagic depths (epipelagic(0-200m), mesopelagic(201-1000m), and bathypelagic(1001-4000m)).

In particular, these graphs show the difference in the seawater temperatures at the north (layer 0) and south (layer 16) polar regions, as well as at the equator (layer 9).

Notice that the deeper waters (green and brown colors) are warmer than the shallow waters (red color) in the polar regions.

To the contrary, in the equatorial area the deeper waters are colder than the shallow waters.

Compare that to the appendix containing the Ice Melt Temperature Graphs which reveal that the warmer waters reach down to the grounding line of tidewater glaciers (in all five Antarctic coastal areas).

III. When

Table 1. Estimated potential maximum sea-level rise from the total melting of present-day glaciers and polar ice caps. Source: USGS
Location	Volume (km3)	Potential sea-level rise, (m)
East Antarctic ice sheet	26,039,200	64.80
West Antarctic ice sheet	3,262,000	8.06
Antarctic Peninsula	227,100	.46
Greenland	2,620,000	6.55
All other ice caps, ice fields, and valley glaciers	180,000	.45
Total	32,328,300	80.32
Note: 80.32 meters = 263.5 feet

Which means that right now, about 270 years after the industrial revolution began, forces are marshaling to take-out yet another civilization.

The ice sheets are in jeopardy of melting catastrophically.

This is a significant factor in terms of sea level change because the warmer waters, which are above (warmer than) the ice-melt temperature, are in contact with tens of thousands of kilometers (~58,000 km) of glacial ice.

The previous post in this series is here.

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