Thursday, October 31, 2024

"What Next, Mass Depraved-Heart Murder? - 3"

There is history and there is herstory:


The Lighthouse
 
[Verse 1]
I have my scars, you have yours
Don't let them take your power
Don't leave it alone in the final hours
They'll take your soul, they'll take your power
Don't close your eyes and hope for the best
The dark is out there, the light is going fast
Until the final hours, your life's forever changed
And all the rights that you had yesterday
Are taken away
And now you're afraid
You should be afraid
Should be afraid

[Verse 2]
Because everything I fought for
Long ago in a dream is gone
Someone said the dream is not over
The dream has just begun, or
Is it a nightmare?
Is it a lasting scar?
It is unless you save it and that's that
Unless you stand up and take it back
And take it back

[Chorus]
I have my scars, you have yours
Don't let them take your power
Don't leave it alone in the final hours
They'll take your soul, they'll take your power
Unless you stand up and take it back
Try to see the future and get mad
It's slipping through your fingers, you don't have what you had
You don't have much time to get it back

[Verse 3]
I wanna be the lighthouse
Bring all of you together
Bring it out in a song
Bring it out in stormy weather
Tell them the story

[Pre-Chorus]
(Oh) I wanna teach 'em to fight
(Oh) I wanna tell 'em this has happened before
(Oh) Don't let it happen again

[Chorus]
I have my scars, you have yours
Don't let them take your power
Don't leave it alone in the final hours
They'll take your soul, they'll take your power
Unless you save it and that's that
Unless you stand up and take it back
Try to see the future and get mad
It's slippin' through your fingers, you don't have what you had
You don't have much time

[Bridge]
You gotta get in the game
You gotta learn how to play
You gotta make a change
You gotta do it today

[Verse 4]
In the midnight hour, they'll slam the door
Make you forget what you were fighting for
Put you back in your place, they'll shut you down
You better learn how to fight, you better say it out loud

[Outro]
(Oh)
(Oh)


About

“I wrote this song a few months after Roe v. Wade was overturned. It seemed like overnight, people were saying “what can we, as a collective force, do about this…” 
For me, it was to write a song.

It took a while because I was on the road. Then early one morning I was watching the news on TV and a certain newscaster said something that felt like she was talking to me~ explaining what the loss of Roe v. Wade would come to mean. I wrote the song the next morning and recorded it that night.

That was September 6, 2022. I have been working on it ever since. I have often said to myself, “This may be the most important thing I ever do. To stand up for the women of the United States and their daughters and granddaughters ~ and the men that love them.
This is an anthem.”

(Stevie Nicks via X).

The previous post in this series is here.




Sunday, October 27, 2024

Contra Scientists Gong, Mathieu, and Hilmar

The "Doomsday Glacier" (CNN)
There are two hypotheses about how sea level changes when tidewater glaciers melt and enter the oceans around the globe. 

One is that most change is because of ice flowing as a sort of ice river towards the ocean:

"Numerical modeling of ice sheet dynamics is a critical tool for projecting future sea level rise. Among all the processes responsible for the loss of mass of the ice sheets, enhanced ice discharge triggered by the retreat of marine- terminating glaciers is one of the key drivers. Numerical models of ice sheet flow are therefore required to include ice front migration in order to reproduce today’s mass loss and to be able to predict their future. However, the discontinuous nature of calving poses a significant numerical challenge for accurately capturing the motion of the ice front."

(Numerical stabilization methods for level-set-based ice front migration, 2024). This is the traditional perspective .

The other is that the major quantity of tidewater glacier melt takes place where the glacier meets the tidewater at or near its grounding line:

"... in the Antarctic Peninsula we paid a lot of attention also in the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet sector in the Pine Island and Thwaites glacier. This glacier is a hundred and twenty kilometers wide. All of these glaciers feel the effect of more warm water. They are [speeding] up by 75%. They are retreating at one to two kilometers per year. There's not a single glacier on the face of the earth in Alaska alpine landscape or Himalaya ... that [melt more]. These are the fastest retreating glaciers on the face of the earth. But you wouldn't see it with a naked eye because it's happening a kilometer below the surface [but] you can see it with satellite techniques. Another glacier that ... got [my] attention is Totten glacier. This is a single glacier in East Antarctica which holds 3.5 meter[s of] sea level rise ..."

(Eric Rignot video below, beginning at about 20:16; cf. at about 8:45-9:25). A paper published by Eric, Enrico, and Bernd illustrates the point further (Widespread seawater intrusions beneath the grounded ice of Thwaites Glacier, 2024).

The answer to the question "How many glaciers each one kilometer wide would it take to match the width of the Thwaites glacier?" is "one hundred and twenty glaciers" (Totten Glacier adds another thirty, totaling 150 'normal sized' glaciers to match the volume of those two Antarctic glaciers).

Closing Comments

I think that improving the "models" that estimate the anticipated acceleration of the "grounding area" melt rates of tidewater glaciers in Antarctica is a better scientific endeavor than estimating how fast glaciers slide on the solid ground beneath them.