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Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice: for they shall be filled. Mine eye also shall see my desire on mine enemies, and mine ears shall hear my desire of the wicked that rise up against me. The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in his works. He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: he toucheth the hills, and they smoke. I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the Lord. Let sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless thou the Lord, O my soul. Praise ye the Lord.

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AGelbert

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Future Earth
« on: March 14, 2022, 06:02:20 pm »
Welcome to the Sober Thinking Forum.

This is the continuation of the Renewable Revolution Forum, with the same categories and boards arrangement. In order to provide topic thread continuity, this post will be duplicated in frequently viewed tpoic threads along with selected posts from that topic at the Renewable Revolution Forum. I will gradually, as time permits, copy pertinent articles posted there, update them, and post them here for your convenience.

I have no intention of closing the Renewable Revolution Forum, so any links you have to posts, articles and graphics there are valid for the time being. Nevertheless, I advise you to 🦉 copy and save any posts, articles and graphics that you wish to preserve for posting somewhere else on the internet. I am 75 years old. As long as my spirit hasn't permanently left my body, the Sober Thinking Forum will be kept open.   

Although guests are encouraged to post and become members, this forum is mostly a library reference of important historical information and timeless articles that you are encouraged to pass on, with or without attribution.

In addition, relevant recent news will be posted almost daily, so be sure to 🧐 stop by often.

I have changed the title and the front page background graphic for two reasons:

1. My purpose, nearly a decade ago, of convincing most reality based people everywhere that human civilization, in order to stop and reverse (i.e getting back to 350 PPM of atmospheric Carbon Dioxide is sine qua non) the multiple extinctions causing biosphere degradation (i.e. the Sixth Mass Extinction Event now upon us), must VERY rapidly transition away from Hydrocarbon Energy Sources to Renewable Energy Sources, has been largely achieved. I have been one small voice among many that have made it clear  that clean energy must be made available to everyone, not just the wealthy, if we are to survive Catastrophic Climate Change.

2. Celebrated social theorist and geographer David Harvey asked, "Is there a way to capture what (to the detriment of human civilization) is going on now"?

My answer: YES.

It's the SOCIAL DARWINISM, stupid!

No matter how much progress we make in cleaning up the biosphere, as long as the egocentric, morally bankrupt, empathy deficit disordered, Social Darwinist Ideology continues to be embraced by TPTB, we do not have a snowball's chance in Hell of surviving our Existential Crisis.

Social Darwinists believe that ethics based principles are 'limitations pretending to be virtues'. To them, ethics are 'feel good illusions' that humans invented to pretend our species has empathy. To Social Darwinists, empathy is irrefutable evidence of inexcusable weakness. To them, all who are guided by ethics are deluded fools that should be eliminated from the human 'apex predator' gene pool for the "good" of our species.

The ideology of the Social Darwinist is indistinguishable from the despicable ideology of NAZI Germany, clearly exemplified in their brutally enforced morally bankrupt concentration camp law: “Eat your own bread, and if you can, that of your neighbor.”

Social Darwinism is actually based, not on "survival of the fittest", but on fear of tomorrow, a morally bankrupt excuse for rejecting altruism and empathy and embracing a selfish greed dominated hoarding modus vivendi.
Quote
Every prudent man acts with knowledge, But a fool lays open his folly. --  Proverbs 13:16

Quote
"One who fears tomorrow does not offer his bread to others. But one who is willing to divide his food with a stranger has already shown himself capable of fellowship and faith, the two things from which hope is born." -- Primo Levi, author of Survival in Auschwitz

Social Darwinism is the world view that spawned the profit over people and planet neoliberal ideology. Neoliberal intellectuals like Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman were all Social Darwinists long before they renamed laissez-faire liberalism (that had been thoroughly discredited by the Great Depression) with the catchy title of "Neoliberalism".
 
The celebrated social theorist and geographer David Harvey explains that neoliberal ideology serves the following principle:

"There shall be no serious challenge to the absolute power of money to rule absolutely. And that power is to be exercised with one objective: Those possessed of money shall not only be privileged to accumulate wealth endlessly at will, but they shall have the right to inherit the earth, taking either direct or indirect dominion, not only of the land and all the resources and productive capacities that reside therein, but also assume absolute command, directly or indirectly, over the labor and creative capacities of all those others it needs. The rest of humanity shall be deemed disposable."

"In human society, the amount of inequity is directly proportional to the amount of iniquity." -- A. G. Gelbert

Sober Thinking requires that we all recognize the fact that a society that is founded on altruism, not the "invisible hand" of greed, is not optional if we wish to avoid exctinction. Capitalism's "invisible hand" modus operandi is rooted in the ideology of Social Darwinism.

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“Capitalism is the astounding belief, that the most wickedest of men, will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.” — John Maynard Keynes

 

The main purpose of the Sober Thinking Forum is to convince you, regardless of your religious beliefs or lack of them, to soberly think about these two quotes, embrace altruism, reject greed, and convince as many people as you can that altruism is not optional for human society:

Quote
"Look at our world, our country, our interactions with each other……… this is not the mark of a healthy society, and if these are the self-appointed leaders of this flaming meteor…..it’s time to move on to new ideas and new people. Let’s relegate these fools to history. They perpetuate a narrative that it is right to behave in a strictly selfish, exploitative manner towards all. We simply can’t survive it any longer. Things will change because they have to." -- Kathleen Wallace

"Technical knowledge of Carrying Capacity will not save us; Only a Massive Increase in Caring Capacity will." -- A. G. Gelbert

« Last Edit: March 29, 2022, 04:08:06 pm by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

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AGelbert

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Cosmic Journeys - Earth in 1000 Years
« Reply #1 on: March 14, 2022, 06:08:55 pm »
April 23, 2014


SpaceRip 884K subscribers

This edition of COSMIC JOURNEYS explores the still unfolding story of Earth's past and the light it sheds on the science of climate change today. While that story can tell us about the mechanisms that can shape our climate. it's still the unique conditions of our time that will determine sea levels, ice coverage, and temperatures.

Ice, in its varied forms, covers as much as 16% of Earth's surface, including 33% of land areas at the height of the northern winter.  Glaciers, sea ice, permafrost, ice sheets and snow play an important role in Earth's climate. They reflect energy back to space, shape ocean currents, and spawn weather patterns.

But there are signs that Earth's great stores of ice are beginning to melt. To find out where Earth might be headed, scientists are drilling down into the ice, and scouring ancient sea beds, for evidence of past climate change.  What are they learning about the fate of our planet... a thousand years into the future and even beyond?
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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Is climate change a crime against humanity? Let's go with... Yes.
« Reply #2 on: March 14, 2022, 06:16:27 pm »
Published on Thursday, May 22, 2014 by TomDispatch

The 95% Doctrine: Climate Change as a Weapon of Mass Destruction Is climate change a crime against humanity? Let's go with... Yes.

by Tom Engelhardt

The fossil fuel industry is waging a war on the planet's ecosystem and her people.
It's not only unnecessary and obscene, but should be considered a crime.

Who could forget? At the time, in the fall of 2002, there was such a drumbeat of “information” from top figures in the Bush administration about the secret Iraqi program to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and so endanger the United States. And who -- other than a few suckers -- could have doubted that Saddam Hussein was eventually going to get a nuclear weapon? The only question, as our vice president suggested on “Meet the Press,” was: Would it take one year or five? And he wasn’t alone in his fears, since there was plenty of proof of what was going on.

 For starters, there were those “specially designed aluminum tubes”  that the Iraqi autocrat had ordered as components for centrifuges to enrich uranium in his thriving nuclear weapons program. Reporters Judith Miller and Michael Gordon hit the front page of the New York Times with that story on September 8, 2002.

Then there were those “mushroom clouds”  that Condoleezza Rice, our national security advisor, was so publicly worried about -- the ones destined to rise over American cities if we didn’t do something to stop Saddam. As she fretted in a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer on that same September 8th, “[W]e don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” No, indeed, and nor, it turned out, did Congress!

And just in case you weren’t anxious enough about the looming Iraqi threat, there were those unmanned aerial vehicles -- Saddam’s drones!  -- that could be armed with chemical or biological WMD from his arsenal and flown over America’s East Coast cities with unimaginable results.  ::)  President George W. Bush went on TV to talk about them and congressional votes were changed in favor of war thanks to hair-raising secret administration briefings about them on Capitol Hill.

In the end, it turned out that Saddam had no weapons program, no nuclear bomb in the offing, no centrifuges for those aluminum pipes, no biological or chemical weapons caches, and no drone aircraft to deliver his nonexistent weapons of mass destruction (nor any ships capable of putting those nonexistent robotic planes in the vicinity of the U.S. coast). But what if he had? Who wanted to take that chance? Not Vice President Dick Cheney, certainly. Inside the Bush administration he propounded something that journalist Ron Suskind later dubbed the “one percent doctrine.” Its essence was this:

if there was even a 1% chance of an attack on the United States, especially involving weapons of mass destruction, it must be dealt with as if it were a 95%-100% certainty.

Here’s the curious thing: if you look back on America's apocalyptic fears of destruction during the first 14 years of this century, they largely involved three city-busting weapons that were fantasies of Washington’s fertile imperial imagination. There was that “bomb” of Saddam’s, which provided part of the pretext for a much-desired invasion of Iraq. There was the “bomb” of the mullahs, the Iranian fundamentalist regime that we’ve just loved to hate ever since they repaid us, in 1979, for the CIA’s overthrow of an elected government in 1953 and the installation of the Shah by taking the staff of the U.S. embassy in Tehran hostage. If you believed the news from Washington and Tel Aviv, the Iranians, too, were perilously close to producing a nuclear weapon or at least repeatedly on the verge of the verge of doing so. The production of that “Iranian bomb” has, for years, been a focus of American policy in the Middle East, the “brink” beyond which war has endlessly loomed. And yet there was and is no Iranian bomb, nor evidence that the Iranians were or are on the verge of producing one.

Finally, of course, there was al-Qaeda’s bomb, the “dirty bomb” that organization might somehow assemble, transport to the U.S., and set off in an American city, or the “loose nuke,” maybe from the Pakistani arsenal, with which it might do the same. This is the third fantasy bomb that has riveted American attention in these last years, even though there is less evidence for or likelihood of its imminent existence than of the Iraqi and Iranian ones.

To sum up, the strange thing about end-of-the-world-as-we’ve-known-it scenarios from Washington, post-9/11, is this: with a single exception, they involved only non-existent weapons of mass destruction. A fourth weapon -- one that existed but played a more modest role in Washington’s fantasies -- was North Korea’s perfectly real bomb, which in these years the North Koreans were incapable of delivering to American shores.

The "Good News" About Climate Change

In a world in which nuclear weapons remain a crucial coin of the realm when it comes to global power, none of these examples could quite be classified as 0% dangers. Saddam had once had a nuclear program, just not in 2002-2003, and also chemical weapons, which he used against Iranian troops in his 1980s war with their country (with the help of targeting information from the U.S. military) and against his own Kurdish population. The Iranians might (or might not) have been preparing their nuclear program for a possible weapons breakout capability, and al-Qaeda certainly would not have rejected a loose nuke, if one were available (though that organization’s ability to use it would still have been questionable).

In the meantime, the giant arsenals of WMD in existence, the American, Russian, Chinese, Israeli, Pakistani, and Indian ones that might actually have left a crippled or devastated planet behind, remained largely off the American radar screen. In the case of the Indian arsenal, the Bush administration actually lent an indirect hand to its expansion. >:(  So it was twenty-first-century typical when President Obama, trying to put Russia's recent actions in the Ukraine in perspective, said, “Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors. I continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan.”--

Once again, an American president was focused on a bomb that would raise a mushroom cloud over Manhattan. And which bomb, exactly, was that, Mr. President?

Of course, there was a weapon of mass destruction that could indeed do staggering damage to or someday simply drown New York City, Washington D.C., Miami, and other East coast cities. It had its own efficient delivery systems -- no nonexistent drones or Islamic fanatics needed. And unlike the Iraqi, Iranian, or al-Qaeda bombs, it was guaranteed to be delivered to our shores unless preventative action was taken soon. No one needed to hunt for its secret facilities. It was a weapons system whose production plants sat in full view right here in the United States, as well as in Europe, China, and India, as well as in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, and other energy states.

So here’s a question I’d like any of you living in or visiting Wyoming to ask the former vice president, should you run into him in a state that’s notoriously thin on population:
How would he feel about acting preventively, if instead of a 1% chance that some country with weapons of mass destruction might use them against us, there was at least a 95% -- and likely as not a 100% -- chance of them being set off on our soil? Let’s be conservative, since the question is being posed to a well-known neoconservative. Ask him whether he would be in favor of pursuing the 95% doctrine the way he was the 1% version.

After all, thanks to a grim report in 2013 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we know that there is now a 95%-100% likelihood that “human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming [of the planet] since the mid-20th century.” We know as well that the warming of the planet -- thanks to the fossil fuel system we live by and the greenhouse gases it deposits in the atmosphere -- is already doing real damage to our world and specifically to the United States, as a recent scientific report released by the White House made clear. We also know, with grimly reasonable certainty, what kinds of damage those 95%-100% odds are likely to translate into in the decades, and even centuries, to come if nothing changes radically: a temperature rise by century’s end that could exceed 10 degrees Fahrenheit, cascading species extinctions, staggeringly severe droughts across larger parts of the planet (as in the present long-term drought in the American West and Southwest), far more severe rainfall across other areas, more intense storms causing far greater damage, devastating heat waves on a scale no one in human history has ever experienced, masses of refugees, rising global food prices, and among other catastrophes on the human agenda, rising sea levels that will drown coastal areas of the planet.
From two scientific studies just released, for example, comes the news that the West Antarctic ice sheet, one of the great ice accumulations on the planet, has now begun a process of melting and collapse that could, centuries from now, raise world sea levels by a nightmarish 10 to 13 feet. That mass of ice is, according to the lead authors of one of the studies, already in “irreversible retreat,” which means -- no matter what acts are taken from now on -- a future death sentence for some of the world's great cities. (And that’s without even the melting of the Greenland ice shield, not to speak of the rest of the ice in Antarctica.)

All of this, of course, will happen mainly because we humans continue to burn fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate and so annually deposit carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at record levels. In other words, we’re talking about weapons of mass destruction of a new kind. While some of their effects are already in play, the planetary destruction that nuclear weapons could cause almost instantaneously, or at least (given “nuclear winter” scenarios) within months, will, with climate change, take decades, if not centuries, to deliver its full, devastating planetary impact.

When we speak of WMD, we usually think of weapons -- nuclear, biological, or chemical -- that are delivered in a measurable moment in time. Consider climate change, then, a WMD on a particularly long fuse, already lit and there for any of us to see. Unlike the feared Iranian bomb or the Pakistani arsenal, you don’t need the CIA or the NSA to ferret such "weaponry" out. From oil wells to fracking structures, deep sea drilling rigs to platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, the machinery that produces this kind of WMD and ensures that it is continuously delivered to its planetary targets is in plain sight. Powerful as it may be, destructive as it will be, those who control it have faith that, being so long developing, it can remain in the open without panicking populations or calling any kind of destruction down on them.

Continued in next post:
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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Is climate change a crime against humanity? Let's go with... Yes.
« Reply #3 on: March 14, 2022, 06:22:38 pm »
Continued May 22, 2014 article:

The companies and energy states that produce such WMD remain remarkably open about what they’re doing. Generally speaking, they don’t hesitate to make public, or even boast about, their plans for the wholesale destruction of the planet, though of course they are never described that way. Nonetheless, if an Iraqi autocrat or Iranian mullahs spoke in similar fashion about producing nuclear weapons and how they were to be used, they would be toast.

Take ExxonMobil, one of the most profitable corporations in history. In early April, it released two reports that focused on how the company, as Bill McKibben has written, “planned to deal with the fact that [it] and other oil giants have many times more carbon in their collective reserves than scientists say we can safely burn." He went on:

The company said that government restrictions that would force it to keep its [fossil fuel] reserves in the ground were 'highly unlikely,' and that they would not only dig them all up and burn them, but would continue to search for more gas and oil -- a search that currently consumes about $100 million of its investors’ money every single day. 'Based on this analysis, we are confident that none of our hydrocarbon reserves are now or will become "stranded."'

In other words, Exxon plans to exploit whatever fossil fuel reserves it possesses to their fullest extent. 

Government leaders involved in supporting the production of such weapons of mass destruction and their use are often similarly open about it, even while also discussing steps to mitigate their destructive effects. Take the White House, for instance. Here was a statement President Obama proudly made in Oklahoma in March 2012 on his energy policy:

Now, under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years. That's important to know. Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states.  We’re opening up more than 75% of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some.

Similarly, on May 5th, just before the White House was to reveal that grim report on climate change in America, and with a Congress incapable of passing even the most rudimentary climate legislation aimed at making the country modestly more energy efficient, senior Obama adviser John Podesta appeared in the White House briefing room to brag about the administration’s “green” energy policy. “The United States,” he said, “is now the largest producer of natural gas in the world and the largest producer of gas and oil in the world. It's projected that the United States will continue to be the largest producer of natural gas through 2030. For six straight months now, we've produced more oil here at home than we've imported from overseas. So that's all a good-news story.”

Good news indeed, and from Vladmir Putin’s Russia, which just expanded its vast oil and gas holdings by a Maine-sized chunk of the Black Sea off Crimea, to Chinese “carbon bombs,” to Saudi Arabian production guarantees, similar “good-news stories” are similarly promoted. In essence, the creation of ever more greenhouse gases -- of, that is, the engine of our future destruction -- remains a “good news” story for ruling elites on planet Earth.

Weapons of Planetary Destruction

We know exactly what Dick Cheney -- ready to go to war on a 1% possibility that some country might mean us harm -- would answer, if asked about acting on the 95% doctrine. Who can doubt that his response would be similar to those of the giant energy companies, which have funded so much climate-change denialism and false science over the years? He would claim that the science simply isn’t “certain” enough (though “uncertainty” can, in fact, cut two ways), that before we commit vast sums to taking on the phenomenon, we need to know far more, and that, in any case, climate-change science is driven by a political agenda.

For Cheney & Co., it seemed obvious that acting on a 1% possibility was a sensible way to go in America’s “defense” and it’s no less gospel for them that acting on at least a 95% possibility isn’t. For the Republican Party as a whole, climate-change denial is by now nothing less than a litmus test of loyalty, and so even a 101% doctrine wouldn’t do when it comes to fossil fuels and this planet.

No point, of course, in blaming this on fossil fuels or even the carbon dioxide they give off when burned. These are no more weapons of mass destruction than are uranium-235 and plutonium-239.

In this case, the weaponry is the production system that’s been set up to find, extract, sell at staggering profits, and burn those fossil fuels, and so create a greenhouse-gas planet. With climate change, there is no “Little Boy” or “Fat Man” equivalent, no simple weapon to focus on. In this sense, fracking is the weapons system, as is deep-sea drilling, as are those pipelines, and the gas stations, and the coal-fueled power plants, and the millions of cars filling global roads, and the accountants of the most profitable corporations in history.

All of it -- everything that brings endless fossil fuels to market, makes those fuels eminently burnable, and helps suppress the development of non-fossil fuel alternatives -- is the WMD. The CEOs of the planet's giant energy corporations are the dangerous mullahs, the true fundamentalists, of planet Earth, since they are promoting a faith in fossil fuels which is guaranteed to lead us to some version of End Times.

Perhaps we need a new category of weapons with a new acronym to focus us on the nature of our present 95%-100% circumstances. Call them weapons of planetary destruction (WPD) or weapons of planetary harm (WPH). Only two weapons systems would clearly fit such categories. One would be nuclear weapons which, even in a localized war between Pakistan and India, could create some version of “nuclear winter” in which the planet was cut off from the sun by so much smoke and soot that it would grow colder fast, experience a massive loss of crops, of growing seasons, and of life. In the case of a major exchange of such weapons, we would be talking about “the sixth extinction” of planetary history.

Though on a different and harder to grasp time-scale, the burning of fossil fuels could end in a similar fashion -- with a series of “irreversible” disasters that could essentially burn us and much other life off the Earth. This system of destruction on a planetary scale, facilitated by most of the ruling and corporate elites on the planet, is becoming (to bring into play another category not usually used in connection with climate change) the ultimate “crime against humanity” and, in fact, against most living things. It is becoming a “terracide.” 

© 2014 TomDispatch.com

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/05/22-6
« Last Edit: March 14, 2022, 06:24:56 pm by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #4 on: March 14, 2022, 06:31:53 pm »
May 27, 2014

Syria Today Is A Preview Of Memorial Day, 2030 👀 
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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Extinction is the End Game Dec 2016
« Reply #5 on: March 14, 2022, 07:12:30 pm »
Saturday Dec 2016

Extinction is the End Game


Posted  by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil, Pollution, Wall Street Fraud   

Civilizations are living organisms striving to survive and develop through predictable stages of birth, growth, maturation, decline and death. An often overlooked factor in the success or failure of civilizations are cultural memes—the knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors passed down from generation to generation. Cultural memes are a much more significant driver of human evolution than genetic evolution. Entire civilizations have been weeded out when their belief system proved maladaptive to a changing environment. One such cultural meme holding sway over today’s governments, institutions, and society is our economic system of capitalism. The pillars of capitalism represent a belief system so ingrained in today’s culture that they form a sort of cargo cult amongst its adherents. Cargo cults are any of the various Melanesian religious groups which focused on obtaining material wealth(manufactured Western goods that came on cargo ships) through magical thinking, religious rituals and practices. Today the term “cargo cult” is used to describe a wide variety of phenomena that involve superficial imitation of a process or system in order to fabricate a successful outcome without even the basic understanding of its mechanism.

The tenets of capitalism are ritually followed in the proclaimed belief that “a rising tide lifts all boats”, i.e. so-called improvements in the general economy will benefit all participants in that economy. Centuries of unbridled capitalism have demonstrated beyond any doubt that it does not lift all boats. A new study finds that half of Americans are “shut off from economic growth”. The rules of the game are so stacked against the masses that this week a professor said “only all-out thermonuclear war might fundamentally reset the existing distribution of resources.” Capitalism’s imperative for expansion, growing profit levels, and efficiency has ultimately dehumanized our culture.


Not even when our basic life support systems are being torn asunder do the vast majority question the path we are on. We are all a captive audience to the system and those few dissident voices are snuffed out under the wheels of “progress”.

Truth be told, the corporate elite have long written off all those people living hand to mouth. Trump’s pick for Labor Secretary said, unlike workers, machines are “always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case.” Massive global unemployment resulting from the automation revolution has not yet been addressed by governments. Roughly half of all jobs in the U.S. are at risk of automation and two-thirds in the developing countries. This is all coming at a time when humans are fast destroying the ecosystems underpinning the very foundation upon which human civilization has developed over thousands of years. Mass migration of climate refugees will only further destabilize governments, stoke ethnic and cultural tensions, and give rise to fascist political movements. No conspiracy is needed to exterminate the “useless eaters”, just allow mother nature to take its course and climate change will be killing billions by mid century.


Those in military planning know this and periodically express their fear of what is coming, but business-as-usual rolls on.



Capitalism’s constant impetus to shift costs, risks, and burdens off industry and onto the environment and society carries on under the guise of “being more competitive”. It’s a way of externalizing costs to maximize profit and if these costs were truly taken into account, none of the world’s top industries would be profitable (Interestingly, the link to this study has been scrubbed from the internet).


It’s the height of magical thinking to put so much faith in some mystical “invisible hand of the free market” to solve existential threats such as an ever-widening wealth gap and the wholesale destruction of planetary life-support systems. There is no benevolent “invisible hand” turning individual self-interest into the common good. The primary mandate of capitalism is to protect and grow capital. The “invisible hand” is just a bunch of people 🦀 scrambling to make as much money as possible, not caring or oblivious to those they hurt in the process. F u c k the invisible hand of the market. The invisible hand of mother nature will punish those who squander Earth’s rich but finite resources.



It’s been clear for some time that we have past the point of no return, triggering multiple tipping points in Earth’s living systems. New findings are continually confirming scientists’ worst nightmares. A key glacier in the Antarctic that holds back 10 feet of sea level rise was just described as breaking apart from the inside out. In other grim news, the long feared carbon bomb has now been quantified and is projected to release the emissions equivalent of an industrial country like the U.S. in the next few decades, prompting researchers to say that “climate change may be considerably more rapid than we thought it was.” Biodiversity loss is another critical threshold we have breeched: “New research shows that local extinctions have already occurred in 47% of the 976 plant and animal species studied.” A new study also reveals that the planet’s tallest animal is facing extinction after its numbers have plummeted in recent years, with the ominous warning that “many species are slipping away before we can even describe them.” Forests are being wiped out by armies of invasive insects. Because of a rapidly changing climate and the vast scale of the problem, the idea that reforestation will somehow save us is a pipe dream. Those forests won’t stay healthy enough to serve as carbon sinks and besides, seven times Earth’s land area would need to be in cultivation in order to reduce the planet’s atmospheric CO2 level down to 350ppm.

Biodiversity hot spots of 80% of biosphere's species endangered by Global Warming Pollution

Note that the Permian Mass extinction is estimated to have happened anywhere over the course of 200,000 years to 15 million years. The current 6th mass extinction is happening orders of magnitude faster due to a multitude of factors including deforestation, habitat fragmentation, chemical pollution, poaching, etc., making this current disaster very unique in Earth’s history:

The team of geologists and biologists say that our current extinction crisis is unique in Earth’s history due to four characteristics: the spread of non-native species around the world; a single species (us) taking over a significant percentage of the world’s primary production; human actions increasingly directing evolution; and the rise of something called the technosphere. – Link

Perhaps the fate of humans was written in stone once we stood upright and developed tools. To a large degree, modern technology has been an expression of the energy-dense hydrocarbon fuels we discovered and are not willingly giving up anytime soon. Once fossil fuels ignited the Industrial Revolution and the Haber–Bosch process unleashed the human population bomb, nothing could stop the deadly carbon consumption feedback loop, not even decades of scientific warnings.


From a throwback to our primate ancestors, modern humans have been hard-wired to ignore threats that are not immediate or local; global ecological overshoot(of which climate is just one aspect) is imperceptible to the real-time cognitive processing of humans and represents the ultimate under-the-radar threat able to undermine our reasoning and response:

Psychological concepts of how we view the world around us, including ‘creeping normalcy’ or ‘landscape amnesia’, block day-to-day comprehension of what accelerating human activities represent—whether it is human population, the number of dammed rivers, forest destruction, or the impact of motor car emissions in a timespan that is geologically brief. Creeping normalcy refers to slow trends concealed in noisy fluctuations that people get used to without comment, while landscape amnesia describes forgetting how different the landscape looked 20–50 years ago (Diamond 2005: 425).

In his study of how societies fail, biogeographer Jared Diamond calls global warming a pre-eminent example of a ‘slow trend concealed by wide up and down fluctuations’ (2005: 425). He likens the denial of climate change impacts by leading politicians, including former US president George W. Bush (and his contemporary John Howard in Australia), in the late 1990s and early 2000s to the elite of ‘the medieval Greenlanders [who] had similar difficulties recognizing that their climate was gradually becoming colder, and the Maya and Anasazi (in Central and North America) [who] had trouble discerning that theirs was becoming drier’ (2005: 425). – link

We evolved to react to imminent dangers, not slow-rolling and seemingly invisible catastrophes as an unintended consequence of our cushy lifestyle. From lofty corporate boardrooms to the filthy streets of skid row, the mass of humanity is following the same biological script of overshoot and collapse seen in every organism from bacteria to reindeer herds. Fossil fuels only enabled the destruction to multiply a million-fold, culminating in one final and spectacular explosion of human activity that will leave the planet nearly barren for eons.

Open-ended growth appears to be inherent in nature, all the way from the DNA to the arthropods to mammals, including humans. Open-ended growth is the psychology of a cancer cell. I am not sure I know of a species which has learnt how to limit its own growth. Unfortunately species which transcend their environmental resources can hardly survive – the final arbiter of the climate impasse will be nature itself. ~ Andrew Glikson, Earth and paleo-climate scientist, Australian National University

The beauty and wonder of this planet is being trashed by a naked ape whose cleverness in tool-building has far outstripped his ability to handle it in any restrained or judicious manner. Nature’s rich book of life is being pancaked into a cheap, crumpled comic book.

Add in the development of mass consumerism, planned obsolescence, and the hypnosis of corporate-sponsored TV and you have a passive, malleable population happily marching towards the slaughterhouse. It’s fitting, then, that the masses would be swindled by a megalomaniac bankruptcy artist who dabbled in Reality TV.

Every one of Trump’s cabinet picks is a big middle finger in the faces    of those who fell for his pseudo-populist rhetoric: billionaires, Wall Street sharks , Goldman Sachs alumni , and hard core laissez-faire capitalists chomping at the bit to deregulate, monetize, and privatize every last bit of what remains.



The allure of capitalism has always been that you’re just one lucky break away from becoming one of those fat cats, if only someone would give you a chance. A prescient observation by Ugo Bardi from earlier this year:

Quote
Trump is a symptom of the ongoing breakdown of the social pact…capitalizing on this breakdown by…playing on the attempt of the white (former) middle class to maintain at least some of its previous prosperity and privileges. Trump is…an unavoidable consequence of resource depletion. – Link

The bottom line is that a swing towards authoritarianism happens when resources become scarce.


Climate change is simply a symptom of humans overshooting the planet’s carrying capacity. Free market ideologues 🦀 🦕 🦖 🐉are nearly always climate ‘skeptics’ ;) because acknowledging the reality of human-induced climate change would be an admission that industry must be curtailed or controlled. Left-leaning people nearly always accept the science because it goes along with their criticisms of capitalism which externalizes social and environmental costs for the benefit of just a few at the top of the economic hierarchy. Thus we see parasitic Trump 🦀 surrounding himself with right-wing, climate denying, fossil fuel corporatists and insiders who will be doing everything in their power to dismantle health and environmental regulations including privatizing social services which are barriers to capitalist expansion.

To be blunt, our chance of developing a sustainable culture passed us by a long time ago. People will try to adapt until they cannot, and myths will be created to explain away harsh realities. A dystopic future in all its horrific glory has arrived: baked-in biospheric collapse, the inherent and irreconcilable contradictions of techno-capitalism, a dysfunctional political system unable to come to terms with root causes, and the cognitive dissonance of the masses blind to the bigger picture.


Our numbers are not a safeguard from extinction.


https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/category/wall-street-fraud/
« Last Edit: March 14, 2022, 07:28:28 pm by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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December 11, 2023

Agelbert NOTE: Originally published in September of 2015, I'm reposting it, with a few graphics changes, for you to pass on to friends and family. Its message continues to be of the utmost importance to intelligent, caring humans.


The following article post makes a case for the premise that ignoring, deriding or mocking the high probability of the existential threat we face from anthropogenic climate change is irresponsible. Anyone who is alive after around 2040 will pay for their present default embrace of the spiritually and environmentally destructive Social Darwinist Ideology.

Unfortunately, the innocent will suffer equally along with the criminally negligent reprobates who support woefully inadequate incremental measures to deal with this existential threat. Have a nice day.

The essay, "What it Means to be Responsible - Reflections on Our Responsibility for the Future" by Theresa Morris, State University of New York at New Paltz references the work of Fitzpatrick, Jonas, Aristotle and others. I have summarized the essay to save the readers time.
Theoretical & Applied Ethics Vol. 1, Issue 42 2, Spring 2011

What it Means to be Responsible
Reflections on Our Responsibility for the Future
Theresa Morris, State University of New York at New Paltz

The concept of responsibility is a central one in ethics but it seems to require rethinking when we consider the fact that oftentimes the consequences of actions in contemporary, technological society extend far into the future. To whom or what are we responsible, and how far into the future do our obligations extend?

In this essay, I consider the question of our possible responsibility for the future, specifically the future state of our planet, and the well-being of future people and other beings. I argue that we do have responsibilities to future people and an obligation to try to preserve and protect the planet and its living beings for the future, and I present a new concept of responsibility, one that provides a way of understanding our actions in light of concern for the future.


The central problem with an argument that considers the effects of present actions on the future world lies in the fact that those acting today will not exist in the world they are affecting with their actions.


Why should people, now living, care about the consequences of their actions on a future world whose inhabitants are currently non-existent? Even if held accountable by those future generations, no price for wrongful actions can be extracted from the dead. We lack the usual motivations for acting ethically in situations that might impact future generations, and though we may imagine angry voices condemning us for our lack of forethought and care some several generations into the future, we will never hear those words of contempt.

Despite this, Attfield (1998) argues that "intergenerational justice remains a serious possibility, as actual future generations which come into being, and find that they have been deprived by earlier generations of opportunities for satisfying some of their most basic needs, could reasonably criticize their ancestors for failing to facilitate the satisfaction of foreseeable vital interests" (p.211).


Ethical arguments struggle, however, when lack of proximity is a factor, for it is difficult to take into consideration the impact of our actions on those spatially distant from us.


This problem arises whenever we are asked to take into consideration or contribute to the welfare of those who live in distant places, those who do not share our community, and those whose suffering we do not directly experience.


Without the presence of the other face-to-face, without a real relation to the other person, it is difficult to remain aware of and concerned about his or her need.

How much more difficult then, to take into consideration those who do not yet exist, those others we will never know and can only imagine.

The difficulty is further complicated by the fact that often the choices we make today, choices that involve use of finite resources, for instance, or the use of technology that may have deleterious aftereffects, may seem at the time to be valuable for the comfort, health or well-being of the contemporaneous human population. Indeed, most of our ethical deliberation is concerned with present actions.

In what way and how can it be argued that sacrifices or restrictions on some very useful and beneficial activities and technologies must be made in order to benefit future peoples who do not yet exist?



Responsibility in Aristotle

For Aristotle, the capacity human beings have to think about what they will do is what lies at the root of our responsibility for our actions. We are free to act, within certain necessary limits, and we have the capacity to think about our choices, therefore responsibility accompanies actions when, as Aristotle says, the "source is in oneself."

Rational beings with the capacity to choose among actions and bring about ends cannot escape from the notion of responsibility. It is a given, provided one is free from coercion in one's actions. Here responsibility is not responsiveness to the Other, not responding to another's need or want, as in Levinas. Rather, it is that since we are free to make choices and commit acts, we must accept responsibility for the consequences of those choices.

For Aristotle, to act responsibly is to act beautifully, because when a person does so he or she engages the greatest capacity available to human beings; that is "thinking things through," dianoia . What differentiates ethical choice from willing, desiring, and wishing, for Aristotle, is that it involves deliberation (NE 1112a 15).

To think things through is to look ahead and estimate consequences using imagination and forethought and to make judgments about possible actions based on experience and memory; this is the kind of reasoning that responsibility requires.

Aristotle says, "We deliberate about things that are up to us and are matters of action" (NE 1112a32). Choice is not something that is shared by irrational beings, it is the mark of a being with self-control (NE 1111b15).

Thus choice is firmly in the realm of practical, ethical action. With his emphasis on dianoia, Aristotle offers one way to think about responsibility to the future; it is the lack of "thinking things through," in preference for shortsightedness regarding means and ends, that results in acts of harm, both to the environment and to future people.

If we fail to think things through to the consequences of our actions we are not acting responsibly.

And ignorance is no justification for poor choices, for Aristotle points out that we can be ignorant and still responsible. If we deliberately become irrational, as when we become drunk, or when we ought to know something and yet fail to, we are still held responsible, "on the grounds that it is up to people themselves not to be ignorant, since they are in control of how much care they take" (NE 1114a).

Aristotle is rigorous in his insistence that human beings, because they are rational and have the capacity to "think things through," are responsible for their actions.


But perhaps, Aristotle says, "one is not the sort of person who takes any care" (NE 1114a5). Perhaps here we have the crux of it; that there are people who don't care, who are careless.


We must act on Global Warming: Climate Change has already made the world three times more dangerous.


Aristotle says such people, despite their lack of care, are still responsible because it was always in the beginning up to them to use their intelligence to make good choices and the fact that they don't care is the result of a long line of deliberations that denigrated the value of their own beautiful actions, the concerns of others, and the consequences of their actions on themselves and others.


The Problem of Responsibility Today

To think things through would be to take into account in deliberating about our choices the realities that face us, the sure consequences of some of our actions, those that we have experience and knowledge enough to foresee.  If the consequences of our actions today extend far into the future, this would require that we take that far future into consideration in our actions.


It is just because of this farther extension of consequences into the future that Jonas argues that human action today differs radically from human action in Aristotle's time. As he says, "modern technology has introduced actions of such novel scale, objects, and consequences that the framework of former ethics can no longer contain them" (Jonas, 1984, p. 6). Powerful technologies in use today have effects that extend far into the future, and this includes harms that arise directly from their manufacture and use, such as resource depletion and pollution from hazardous waste, as well as harms that occur because of the scope their reach, as in climate change. The negative effects are not limited to the earth and its ecosystems but include effects on communities of people whose livelihoods are harmed and whose basic goods, such as water and air, are polluted and rendered unusable.

These consequences affect living beings over their lifetimes, threaten the health of the planet, and are passed down to future generations as the integrity of the global ecosystem is damaged over time.

Particularly, Jonas has in mind the repercussions of genetic engineering, nuclear technologies, and other technologies that have the capacity to impact the future in highly significant ways: "more specifically, it will be my contention that with certain developments of our powers the nature of human action has changed, and since ethics is concerned with action, it should follow that the changed nature of human action calls for a change in ethics as well, in the more radical sense that the qualitatively novel nature of certain of our actions has opened up a whole new dimension of ethical relevance for which there is no precedent in the standards and canons of traditional ethics" (1984, p. 1).

For example, the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf had consequences that extend far into the future, affecting marine and coastal ecosystems, the livelihood of human beings dependent on a healthy environment for sustenance, and marine life far from the origin of the spill.

Ecosystems are by nature interconnected and interdependent, and the reach of the spill was extensive. Its impact is not limited in space or time. As well, we might ask who exactly is responsible for the oil spill in the Gulf? Is it the technicians and engineers, the government regulations that allow drilling to be done in extreme conditions, the companies making a profit, or the consumers whose desire for cheap fossil fuel drives the market?

This kind of diffusion of responsibility, a diffuse collective responsibility that Stephen Gardiner refers to as a "fragmentation of agency," means that it is difficult to assign responsibility.

As Gardiner points out, "climate change is caused not by a single agent but by a vast number of individuals and institutions not unified by a comprehensive structure of agency. This is important because it poses a challenge to humanity's ability to respond" (2010, p. 88).

How much is up to us then, to use Aristotle's term, in today's technological, global world? The notion of collective responsibility is pertinent because in a democratic society responsibility for collective actions like oil drilling would seem to rest with all citizens.

How we are to understand democratic responsibility, diffused among many, is a significant problem given the altered nature of human action and the extended reach of the consequences of our actions. And because the consequences will fall primarily on future generations, there is a disincentive to alter our behavior, particularly if that might make current lives more difficult.




While a new ethical understanding that takes into consideration the extended consequences of our actions in a technological society seems necessary, another question arises: where do our obligations end if we begin to think of extending them to future beings and the future existence of a livable planet?


How might such seemingly open-ended obligations be argued for? And if, to be responsible, as Aristotle claims, is to "think things through," are there limits to our capacity to be responsible?


Rethinking Responsibility

Here I think it is a good moment to turn to Jonas, who argues in The Imperative of Responsibility that, difficult as it may seem, we do have a responsibility for the future.

He presents an argument for responsibility based on the presence of an objectively existing good, and he claims that fulfillment of the human good results from taking the effects of our actions on the future into account (Jonas, 1984, pp. 80-82).

When we are not able to predict the long-term consequences of our actions he argues that we should proceed with prudence, even to the extent of being guided by fear, in order to ensure that we do not create extensive future harms.


For Jonas, the human being occupies a special place in the lifeworld. Jonas sees the human being as that being which is uniquely capable of responsibility, and the presence of this capacity entails that it must be acted on if a one is to fully become the being one is capable of becoming.

The capacity for responsibility contributes to the "what it is to be" a human being and as such, informs the telos of human being. Jonas says that
For Jonas, the fact that each organism desires and pursues the continuance of its own life points to the fact that life is a value for each being. Life is a good and as such it presents the being with the capacity to take responsibility with an imperative to protect and preserve it, to recognize the value it is for all living beings. The particular human good lies in the capacity of the human being to recognize and respond to the imperative of responsibility.

For Jonas, the imperative of responsibility commands us to respond ethically for the sake of the good that is evidenced in Being, a good that reveals itself in each living beings' pursuit of its own continuance, its desire for life.

As well, responsibility includes protecting the possibility for the continued existence of human freedom and ethical responsiveness.

As Jonas says, "the secret or paradox of morality is that the self forgets itself over the pursuit of the object, so that a higher self (which indeed is also a good in itself) might come into being.

As Jonas tries to show, the good of the human and the good in the world are not separate but the same.


Rights and Responsibility

Another means of arguing for responsibilities to future generations, one that is less metaphysical and more supportive of political action, is to consider the question of the rights of future people. A proponent of this view is Hiskes (2009), who argues that "global warming and climate change have made it abundantly clear that the human impact on the environment is an emergent one, the product of uncounted individual decisions and choices on one hand, and public policies and political omissions on the other, which make every one of us responsible for putting all the rest of us in a new situation of risk, and not only "all of us" but those who come after us as well" (p.146).

Hiskes goes on to explain that "rights are necessarily the legal response to harms, real or potential. The fact that they are new and collective harms that do not fit within the traditional individualist language of either rights or responsibility do not alter the equation of rights as a response to harm.

New harms demand new rights. Because they are emergent harms, the rights that they begat will share their emergent ontological nature" (p. 146).

Future people are continually coming into existence, even as the effects of our actions emerge over long periods of time. There is a synchrony in terms of the emergence of future beings and the emergence of harms.

Both are initiated in the present, in the actions of present day beings, and both concern a time after present day actors are gone.

Future needs are predictable and future beings are coming into being all the time. It is not as if the future exists at some point far into the distance, with no connection to the present. The future is always coming into being, it follows closely on the heels of the present, and while we see changes in each generation, physical human beings will always need clean air to breathe and water to drink, as well as fire to stay warm.

In a similar vein, Fitzpatrick (2007) argues that a conception of justice based upon a notion of "mutual advantage among cooperating parties of roughly equal power and vulnerability" is too restrictive (p. 377).

Justice, insofar as it relates to rights and obligations, is a concept not limited to those sharing space and time. He says that, "attribution of rights to future generations will therefore be legitimate if we can speak of an earlier generation's wronging future generations by spoiling the environment the former was given and has relied upon for its flourishing in the same way that future generations depend upon it for theirs" (Fitzpatrick, 2007, p. 377).

Future generations have a right to inherit a healthy ecosystem, just as we did, and this right entails an obligation on the part of the living to pass down a viable planet. The responsibility to do so is centered in the right future generations have to be protected from harms caused by others, as well as the right to inherit and enjoy what previous generations have inherited and enjoyed.

That people depend upon a healthy environment to flourish, and that a diminished environment is harmful to people is at the basis of Fitzpatrick's argument.

He considers future people to be the moral equals of presently living people, and therefore claims we cannot disregard their rights or turn aside from our responsibility not to cause them harm.

He argues that "if we fail to conserve limited natural resources, or to control dangerous waste, or to curb greenhouse gas emissions, then we will be causing people harm, not merely failing to benefit them" (Fitzpatrick, 2007, p. 377).

The fact that these people do not exist simultaneously with us is not a reason to fail to take them into ethical consideration. Fitzpatrick concludes by arguing that we need to reconsider the meaning of justice rights in order to include responsibilities to future generations in our consideration because there is simply no justification possible for disregarding the effects of our actions on the future.



In the next and final section, I take a brief look at the way in which an ethic of care might provide the needed motivation for the difficult changes that taking future generations into ethical consideration might require.


Motivation and Care

To accept the burden of responsibility for what is up to us, difficult as it is where our technological reach is so extended and agency is so fragmented, is to strive to fulfill the capacity we have to respond to the good and protect and preserve it.


This task, however, is difficult, not only because of the extent of effects in time and space, fragmentation of agency, and the difficulty of predicting harms, but also because in many cases we may benefit now from actions that result in harms to future generations.


What could motivate us to make the necessary sacrifices required by responsibility of this scope and nature?

Jonas turns to the human capacity for care for an answer to this question. He uses the analogy of the parent and child to demonstrate that we are attuned to caring in a fundamental way (Jonas, 1984, pp. 98-108).

 Jonas sees that caring is a mode of being for the human being, one that is demonstrated naturally in the attention and love parents give to their children as they nourish these beings who will exist in the future.

It can be argued that the care of children is ultimately selfish, a way to project particular and individual genetic material forward. Yet, at the same time, most stable societies demonstrate their concern and care about the future through the fostering of all children in the society and through their concern with passing down cultural and physical artifacts to posterity.

Jonas’ example of the statesman as a paradigm of responsibility toward the future reflects the important role of democratic social institutions and governments in responsibility. Established to foster and preserve culture and enable the orderly transfer of power from generation to generation, governments, at their best, are concerned with bettering the conditions of the people and ensuring that opportunities, values, artifacts, inventions, techniques, and other "objects" cultivated and produced by society are preserved and passed down.

This example illustrates the presence, in social institutions, of a fundamental care and concern with the future and future peoples that can serve as an example and guide for a practical ethic of responsibility for the future.

It is only through care of the future that we can extend the reach of our grasp on life through bequeathing a planet that is livable and viable, one that preserves and protects the cycle of life for the beings who will inhabit it.

The natural drive toward transcendence of finitude through leaving behind works, objects or beings of lasting value can be engaged as a motivating force in an ethics that is concerned with extending its reach to future generations.


Perhaps we should reframe the question of an ethics of responsibility for the future, because it can be argued that we are motivated to moderate and measure our actions toward nature and to care about the health and continued viability of the Earth because of our love for it, and for the life it offers.

We are capable of caring not only about those potential beings of the future who will inherit this planet but also about the planet itself as a living being we will pass down.[1] Inspired by the beauty of existence, fleeting though it is, we desire its continuance even though we will not be here to enjoy its pleasures forever, and this too is reflective of our ethical capacity.

Conclusion

In the preceding I've shown what I see is a need for a reconsidered understanding of the meaning and extent of responsibility today, and I've talked about some of the difficulties facing us in attempting to accept responsibility for the future, as well as some of the motivational forces that might help us overcome those difficulties.

To begin to take responsibility for the Earth and future generations we can consider ourselves as caretakers, trustees or stewards. We can pursue sustainable practices that conserve resources and other basic goods for future generations to benefit from and enjoy.

Recognizing the presence of the good in existence, we can protect it by considering the long-term effects of our choices and actions on the future. The damage we've done has been done collectively, as Fitzpatrick points out, and the only way to prevent further damage and protect the future is through collective action.


Taking responsibility will require thinking about ourselves differently, as well. We must develop a new self understanding, one that reflects our increasing knowledge concerning the extent of the effects of our actions on the Earth and the future. The human capacity for responsibility is a reflection of what Jonas calls "the higher self," a good-in-itself that comes into being when we recognize the value of life, reflect on the consequences of our choices, and take responsibility for the harms we cause.

Thus, a significant aspect of the good of the human being is the human capacity to bear responsibility.

The continued existence of the good for all beings rests on humans assuming that responsibility, and the time for us to recognize that is now.

If we fail to take responsibility it will be a failure of justice and of love, towards both future beings and the planet.


Notes

1. "When men act for the sake of a future they will not live to see, it is for the most part out of love for persons, places and forms of activity, a cherishing of them, nothing more grandiose. It is indeed self-contradictory to say: 'I love him or her or that place or that institution or that activity, but I don't care what happens to it after my death.' To love is, amongst other things, to care about the future of what we love" (Passmore, 1980, p. 53

References

Adam, G. (2011). Futures Tended: Care and Future-Oriented Responsibility. Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society,
31, 1, 17-27.

Aristotle. (2002). Nicomachean Ethics, J. Sachs (trans). Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing.

Attfield, R. (1998). Environmental Ethics and Intergenerational Equity. Inquiry, 41, 2, 207-222.

Fitzpatrick, W. J. (2007). Climate Change and the Rights of Future Generations: Social Justice Beyond Mutual Advantage.

Environmental Ethics, 29, 4, 369-388.

Gardiner, S. M. (2010). A Perfect Moral Storm. In Climate Ethics. NY: Oxford University Press.

Hiskes, R. P. (2009). The Human Right to a Green Future. NY: Cambridge University Press.

Jonas, H. (1984). The Imperative of Responsibility. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Passmore, J. (1980). Conservation. In Responsibilities to Future Generations. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

https://blogs.montclair.edu/tae/files/2011/03/Vol.-1-Issue-2-Morris.pdf

Agelbert NOTE: The mens rea of the fossil fuel industry and almost half of the world’s 100 largest companies, including Procter & Gam ble and Duke Energy, has been recently exposed. They all funded lobbyists and propagandists in order to obstruct climate change legislation.

I use the Latin legal expression, "mens rea", because the above obstructionists of climate change legislation were knowledgeable over 40 years ago of the damage that burning fossil fuels causes to the biosphere in general and humans in particular.

As Theresa  Morris made quite clear in her essay, these corporations made the wrong choice. And they made that choice because they refused to think things through.

Theresa  Morris said, "Ethical considerations aside for a moment, the people in these powerful corporations are not stupid. They love their own children."

So, if they knew, because over 40 years ago ExxonMobil scientists laid out the facts to oil executives, who then secretly joined with several other corporations to fund denial of climate change and obstruct climate change legislation, why did they, with malice and aforethought, engage in disguising the fact that they were, and are, getting an F in viable biosphere math?

Some will say that it's a no brainer that they did it for profit. While that is partially true, it ignores the fact that big oil corporations DO believe their own scientists. It also ignores the fact that fossil fuel corporations DO NOT believe the happy talk propaganda that they fund.

They plan ahead. They plan to take advantage of the 'Fragmentation of Agency' mentioned by  Stephen Gardiner. The corporations did not get limited liability laws passed because they wanted to be socially responsible. I believe they will use the 'Fragmentation of Agency', in regard to biosphere damage claims, to unjustly limit their liability in a typically unethical "damage control" exercise.

One of the themes about human history that I have tried to communicate to readers over and over is that predatory capitalist corporations, while deliberately profiting from knowingly doing something that causes pollution damage to the populace, always plan AHEAD to socialize the costs of that damage when they can no longer deny SOME liability for it. Their conscience free lackey lawyers will always work the system to limit even PROVEN 100% liability.

When 100% liability is blatantly obvious, as in the Exxon Valdez oil spill, they will shamelessly use legalese to limit the liability. ExxonMobil pulled a fast one on the plaintiffs by getting "punitive", rather than "compensatory" damages. See what the learned counselor said, "The purpose of punitive awards is to punish, not to destroy, according to the law". Ethics free Exxon and its ethics free lawyers KNOW how the Court System "works". JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAW [Vol. 18:151] The purpose of this comment is to describe the history of the Exxon Valdez litigation and analyze whether the courts and corresponding laws are equipped to effectively handle mass environmental litigation..

While the profits are rolling in, they will claim they are "just loyal public servants, selflessly providing a service that the public is demanding", while they laugh all the way to the bank. When the damage is exposed, they will claim we are "all equally to blame" (i.e. DISTORTED Fragmentation of Agency).

This is clearly false because polluting corporations, in virtually all cases, AREN'T non-profit organizations. If they were NOT PROFITING, THEN, and only then, could they make the claim that "we all benefited equally so we all are equally responsible to pay equally for the cost."

Those who presently benefit economically from the burning of fossil fuels, despite the scientific certainty that this is ushering in a Permian level mass extinction, will probably be quick to grab on to a severely distorted and duplicitous version of the 'Fragmentation of Agency' meme, in regard to assigning the proportionate blame for the existential threat our species is visiting on future generations.

Privatizing the profits and socializing the costs is what they have done for over a century in the USA. They have always gotten away with it. That is why, despite having prior knowledge that their children would be negatively impacted by their decisions, they decided to dispense with ethical considerations.

They assumed that, with all the profits they would accumulate over the last 40 years (or as long as the populace can be blinded to the truth of the existential threat), they could protect their offspring when things got "difficult".

They know that millions to billions of people, in all probability, will die. But they think their wealth can enable them to survive and thrive.   

As for the rest of us, who obtained a pittance in benefits in comparison to the giant profits the polluters raked (and still continue to rake) in, we can expect an army of corporate lawyers descending on our government(s) demanding that all humans, in equal portions, foot the bill for ameliorating climate change.

The lawyer speak will probably take the form of crocodile tears about the "injustice of punitive measures" or, some double talk legalese limiting "punitive damage claims" based on Environmental LAW fun and games (see: "punitive" versus "compensatory" damage claims).

This grossly unjust application of the 'Fragmentation of Agency' is happening as we speak. The poorest humans are paying the most with their health for the damage done by the richest. The richest have avoided most, or all, of the deleterious effects of climate change.

When the governments of the world finally get serious about the funding needed to try to clean this mess up (present incremental measures ARE NOT sufficient), the rich plan to continue literally getting away with ecocide, and making sure they don't pay their share of the damages for it. 

As Kevin Anderson (after showing the alarming rate of increase in CO2 emissions) states, the 1% bear about 50% of the blame.

Quote
Consider Pareto’s 80-20 rule, which states that 80 per cent of something relates to 20 per cent of those involved – a surprisingly useful and robust rule of thumb. Applied to climate change this would mean that 80 per cent of emissions derive from roughly 20% per cent of the population. This relationship holds fairly well within different nations as well as globally. What if we then look at the 20 per cent group and apply Pareto to them – and then repeat the process again? What we find is that about 50 per cent of the world’s emissions come from about 1 per cent of the world population.


Since, according to the U.N., the richest 20% of the world's population uses 80% of the resources, the 'Fragmentation of Agency' pie chart for the damage done to the biosphere should look like this:


The way the fossil fuel industry, and almost half of the world’s 100 largest companies, will want that 'Fragmentation of Agency' pie chart to look like is as follows:


The world of business has made many Empathy Deficit Disordered, unethical choices. We are all paying for their rejection of  their responsibility to use dianoia in their decision making process.

But they are relatively few in number. Their chicanery would cease from a huge public outcry if they did not have so many people aiding and abetting their unethical biosphere destroying modus operandi.

Those are the comfortable millions who have swallowed the corporate happy talk propaganda.

Those are the people that continue to delay progress on the implementation of the drastic government action we must demand, which is desperately needed to stem, or eliminate, the length and breadth of the climate change damage existential threat.

The people who think that this climate change horror can be addressed by incremental measures are, as Aristotle said, deliberately becoming irrational.

Dianoia is sine qua non to a viable biosphere.

Please pass this on with attribution to Theresa Morris, State University of New York at New Paltz. I just summarized her essay and added images to enhance the gravity and importance of her message. We are in a world of trouble. 

A. G. Gelbert
Colchester, Vermont

« Last Edit: December 14, 2023, 12:16:51 am by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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Algae - natures answer to fossil fuels and plastics!!   


Just Have a Think 382K subscribers

Algae has been used by humans for thousands of years, but the idea of using algae as a secret weapon to combat climate change is definitely a modern day concept. The more scientists delve into the biology of algae, the more species they find and the more they discover just how incredibly versatile this primordial organism really is.

Help support this channels independence at
http://www.patreon.com/justhaveathink


Anthony Gelbert 25 minutes ago
Algae has two problems that make it unsuitable, both as a bio-fuel and as a CO2 reduction type of autotroph.

1. All algea species are extremely hydrophilic, so sun drying prior to further processing must be enhanced with electrical energy powered heat, which lowers the Energy Return on Energy Invested to a point where it is economically unattractive to use algea to make bio-fuels unless governments throughout the world, instead of giving subsidies to the hydrocarbon fuels "industry", governments give them to a massive worldwide algea bio-fuels and CO2 reduction project. I don't see the 🦖 fossil fuelers letting go of the subsidy swag from all the governments 😈 they have corrupted any time soon.

2. All algea species are extremely temperature sensitive. While it is true that their growth rate far exceeds that of any other type of plant life, the increase in global range needed to make algae reduce CO2 in our atmosphere is not feasable.

I have researched this thoroughly. There is no plant life that can beat algea at rapid photosynthesis, which is the sine qua non requirement for reaching the 350 PPM goal, but algae is so hydrophylic (water loving) that too much energy is required to dry it for storage. 👎 No, passive solar energy will not work to dry algae. That has been tried unsuccessfully. Also, algea can grow rapidly only in a very narrow range of the biosphere.👎 Algea is not the answer.

🤔👨‍🔬

But, there is a floating plant, the tiniest angiosperm (flowering plant) known to science, that can do the job of rapid photosynthesis that we need on a planetary scale. 🌍🌎🌏🌞

► It is extremely hardy.

► It grows in nearly all areas of the planet, with a longer growing season that any other plant life form except phytoplankton.

 ► It doubles it's mass every 48 hours or so, depending on the availability of Sunlight, Carbon Dioxide and cheap fertilizer like pig feces.

► It is tiny, but not microscopic. It can easily be harvested without heavy machinery.

► Unlike microscopic algae, Drying these tiny plants with passive sunlight is also easily done.

► It is easily stored.

► It can even be used as animal feed AND supplemental nutrition for humans too.

► It has been used to clean ponds and lakes of toxic heavy metals. When used for this pupose, it becomes poisonous and must be treated as hazardous waste.

The common name is Duckweed, of which there are a number of species of floating plants. My favorite is Lemna minor ✨🌞

The science based case for a planet scale Lemna minor project has actually been made by evidence of a floating plant when the Arctic had shallow freshwater seas (millions of years ago). Scientists now believe a rapid cooling that took place at that time, even though the CO2 level was even higher then than it is today, was directly caused by the proliferation of Azolla floating plants in that sea. They rapidly lowered the CO2 levels, sinking when they died and being replaced by others, until ice formed over them. They cooled ALL of Earth's atmosphere ⛄ from a CO2 PPM concentration that was higher than the one we are saddled with now.

"This freshwater surface layer allowed Azolla to repeatedly spread across the ocean surface forming mats of vegetation during a succession of episodes called the ‘the Arctic Azolla Event‘. The event lasted for almost a million years from about 50 to 49 million years ago."

It happened before. We can make it happen again, and we don't need a million years to do it. We CAN DO IT in a few decades. 💫

Learn more:
👉 Duckweed, the plant that may save mankind by enabling our species to live symbiotically, instead of parasitically, with the biosphere

william armstrong 11 days ago
It is great to hear about a Carbon Capture system that for once does not create more CO2 than they can recover from the atmosphere, or result in more oil extration.

Anthony Gelbert > william armstrong 27 minutes ago
Agreed.
I've thought about the Carbon Dioxide issue for several years. I have always questioned the motives behind the hydrocarbon industry cheerleading CO2 capture and sequestration.

IMHO, after looking at this from several reality based angles (unlike the unreality based happy talk pushing MO of the 🦕😈🦖 fossil fuelers), the fact that the best present day technology to keep the CO2 concentration down (which is used in Nuclear Submarines, which are forced to surface every six months because they cannot keep CO2 below 8,000 PPM after that time period) cannot get CO2 levels anywhere near 5,000 PPM, never mind the 350 PPM we desperately need to get back to in order to avoid the worse effects of the Sixth Mass Extinction now in progress from excessive GHG emissions, evidences that the proposed CO2 reduction technology, euphemistically called "capture and sequestration" technology, is a fraud. 👎

IOW, all the technofixes out there refuse to admit that the GOAL here is NOT to keep the Hydrocarbon Industry profitable. The GOAL is 350 PPM, period. Anything else is simply wishful thinking.

The only reality based way to solve this problem lies with Biological solutions involving rapid photosynthesis. I think Duckweed is better choice than algea.
🧐 Duckweed, the plant that may save mankind by enabling our species to live symbiotically, instead of parasitically, with the biosphere
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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March 14, 2022 By James Thornhill (Bloomberg)

Could A Subsea Solar Power Cable Link Australia To Singapore? 

Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes and iron ore magnate Andrew Forrest have committed more cash to a A$30 billion ($21.9 billion) project to export solar power from Australia’s Northern Territory to Singapore via an undersea cable.

Sun Cable completed a A$210 million Series B capital raising with existing shareholders to accelerate the progress of the Australia-Asia PowerLink, as well as other projects in its portfolio, the company said in a statement Monday. The raising was led by Cannon-Brookes’ investment group Grok Ventures and Forrest’s Squadron Energy.

Sun Cable plans to lay a 4,200-kilometer (2,600-mile) high-voltage cable to supply enough electricity to meet 15% of Singapore’s demand from a giant solar and battery complex deep in the Outback. The project also plans to supply power to the northern Australian city of Darwin from late 2026.

The company now has sufficient funding to take it to financial close on the project by the end of 2023, David Griffin, Sun Cable’s chief executive officer, said in a phone interview. A formal process was underway with Singapore’s Energy Market Authority to obtain necessary import licenses, Griffin said, adding that he expected progress on that front by the end of this year.

“This brings Australia one step closer to realizing our renewables exporting potential,” Cannon-Brookes said in a statement. “We can power the world with clean energy and Sun Cable is harnessing that at scale.”

Transition Finance

Cannon-Brookes has been a vocal campaigner for the clean energy transition in Australia, which still gets around 60% of its power from coal, teaming up with investment giant Brookfield last month in a failed bid for generation company AGL Energy Ltd. The partners had planned to accelerate the closure of AGL’s coal-fired plants and replace them with renewables.

Forrest is looking to transform his iron-ore empire into a major clean energy producer over the next decade and has been scouring the planet for opportunities to invest in renewables and green hydrogen projects. © 2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Related Video 🌞

https://gcaptain.com/subsea-solar-power-sun-cable-singapore/
« Last Edit: March 15, 2022, 03:01:33 pm by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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"Do you like going to the beach? Too bad. They’re all doomed."
« Reply #9 on: March 28, 2022, 02:05:18 pm »


March 27, 2022 By Kim Stanley Robinson (Bloomberg) – Do you like going to the beach? Too bad. They’re all doomed.


Science Fiction Guide To Keeping Doomsday Glacier Hanging On May Be Within Our Technological Capabilities

SNIPPET:

I say this because beaches are by their nature located right at sea level. Waves break on them to make their sand; tides move that sand around. There are a few beaches around the world where sand is so copious that giant dunes have formed, as in Namibia or the California coast north of Santa Barbara. Those might manage. But most form a coastal verge not much higher than the current highest tides.

New projections released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S. put minimum sea-level rise at 12 inches within the next 28 years. That number doubles, at least, by the end of this century — and possibly rises to as high as 8 feet. Even the low-end estimates, almost sure to be reached because of the anthropocentric warming that’s already occurred, would be enough to submerge almost every beach in the world. Kiss them goodbye. 🤦‍♂️


This sad prospect has haunted me for a long time. Beaches saved my suburban youth. Many people love them, as I do, for their ease and beauty. They contribute to a big part of the world’s tourist economy, and they mean even more to the people who depend on them for their livelihood. The coastal life is an ancient one, which still feeds and supports millions.

And, of course, every coastal city is built right to sea level. So the coming rise, even in its earliest phases, will devastate a major part of human civilization. Why this oncoming disaster isn’t discussed more is a mystery to me. Possibly it’s because people feel it’s too far in the future to worry about or too sad to contemplate. Maybe it’s because we think there’s nothing to be done about it.

For me it’s been like a recurring nightmare, portrayed again and again in my science fiction over almost three decades. I first had a volcano erupt under the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet, causing it to break up and float away. A billionaire near the end of Green Mars looks down from a space plane on the disintegration: “That’s it for every beach in the world,” he says. Fictional engineers in another book, as a stopgap measure, try to pump water back up onto Antarctica so it will refreeze there. In 2312, published in 2012, planners of the future are building dams to save glaciers in Greenland. I’ve also depicted restorations in the aftermath of lost glaciers, such as sucking sand out of the shallows to rebuild the beaches on higher ground, or figuring out how to coexist with ocean water sloshing over most of Lower Manhattan.


Now the latest findings show things are speeding up more than seemed possible. The ice shelf floating off the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica , for instance, looks like it might break up in the next five years. Whenever it happens, the giant glacier’s ice will slide into the sea unimpeded, at a much faster speed than before. The loss of Thwaites alone would raise sea level by 2 feet.

This doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do. Of course, rapid decarbonization is the main thing. But there are other methods within our power to slow the big glaciers down. These are untested, obviously, but well within our technological capabilities.


Full article:
https://gcaptain.com/science-fiction-guide-to-keeping-doomsday-glacier-hanging-on-may-be-within-our-technological-capabilities/
« Last Edit: March 28, 2022, 02:34:37 pm by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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Polar Bears are Smarter Than Scientists Thought
« Reply #10 on: June 20, 2022, 02:27:54 pm »


June 17, 2022 by Fermin Koop in Animals, Environment, News, Science

A population of polar bears in Greenland is adapting to a life without sea ice

They survive by hunting from freshwater ice that pours into the ocean from Greenland’s glaciers -- an unusual strategy for polar bears.

SNIPPETS:

A polar bear stands on a snow-covered iceberg that is surrounded by fast ice, or sea ice connected to the shore, in Southeast Greenland. Image credit: The researchers.

Polar bears have long been seen as the poster child of global warming’s impact on the natural world, and for good reason: the bears rely on sea ice to hunt seals, so climate change could destroy the habitats the bears desperately need, which puts the species at risk of extinction.

However, in a rare piece of good news, scientists have discovered a group of bears in southeast Greenland has adapted to hunting using freshwater platforms — something which was thought to be impossible. ... ...

The study shows the Southeast Greenland bears have access to sea ice just for four months of the year, between February and late May. This gives them the platform that most Arctic bears use to hunt seals. For the rest of the year, the bears take a different approach. They hunt seals from blocks of freshwater ice breaking off the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Full article:
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/polar-bears-in-greenland-are-adapting-to-a-life-without-sea-ice-17062022/

AGelbert COMMENT: The key word here is, "ADAPTATION". Please remember that when some Evolutionist true believer scientist disingenuously tries to spin this as "Evolution". Yes, they are already trying hard to do that. In the article, you can detect the frustration the study scientists experienced when they couldn't identify these Greenland polar bears as a "new species". Their genetics are exactly the same as that of polar bears everywhere. Adaptating to changing environmental conditions with an unchanged genetic package is what these polar bears are doing. Evolutionists hate to admit that said genetic package enables polar bears to ADAPT to environmental conditions they have never before experienced because, that ability, not only totally excludes "Natural Selection" as the cause of this Adaptation, but irrefutably evidences 👉 Intelligent Design.    
« Last Edit: June 20, 2022, 03:19:11 pm by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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Updated June 20, 2022

Agelbert NOTE: I am reposting this article due to the fact that the graphics in the original have been so thoroughly hacked by the 🦖 Hydrocarbon Hellspawn, that anyone trying to read it would be discouraged from the missing graphics. I laboriously recovered the graphics, so the first part is, once again ;D, legible and instructive for those who care about the future of our biosphere and want to know where, EXACTLY, to assign the blame for the continued profit over people and planet multiple extinctions causing rampant degradation. Remember, somebody (i.e. 🦕😈🦖) out there hacked the crude oil tanker picture, the RCP scenario graphics, the scientists 2 degree C rise danger warning pictures and ALL the ECM graphics because they did not want YOU to know the Global Warming facts. All the graphics unrelated to climate change and hydrocarbon fuels were not hacked. The hacking is VERY targeted. For that reason alone, I encourage you to read it and pass it on.


Climate Change, Blue Water Cargo Shipping and Predicted Ocean Wave Activity

PART ONE OF THREE PARTS

In this three part article I explain what the scientific community defines as the "Business as Usual" scenario in regard to atmospheric pollutants fueling Global Warming. A brief review of the existential threat to marine life that this scenario represents will follow.

Subsequently, I discuss global shipping. I provide a summary of the tremendous importance of blue water (deep ocean) cargo shipping to global civilization. You will be surprised at how vital to global civilization blue water cargo shipping is. All the military vessels, all the pleasure yachts and even all the fishing fleets are insignificant in tonnage compared to that of ocean going cargo and tanker vessels.

I then leave the subject of shipping and the types of cargo vessels, which I return to at the end, to provide the reader with a graphic climate history of the Northern Hemisphere, from the last Glacial Maximum to the present, followed by the, scientifically based, predicted sea level and land vegetation changes in the "Business as Usual" scenario within the next 85 years.

The discussion then returns to cargo ships and their behavior in rough seas. I provide graphics to explain what has been learned about ocean waves in the last 40 years that shocked the scientific community and caused them to go back to the drawing board on the science and math formulas of hydrodynamics in regard to maximum wave heights. Some tragic cargo vessel losses from "rogue" waves (that turned out not to be as "rogue" as science had thought) are presented as evidence that the oceans are becoming increasingly dangerous to shipping.

Finally, the Hansen et al paper, published in June of 2015, is referenced as evidence of a coming abrupt sea state change that will make modern blue water surface cargo shipping either too costly or impossible. The reason for this will be explained in detail with graphics showing ocean wave action and modern shipping design limitations.

Included in the last section that ties all the others together is a reference to another scientific paper published in July of this year (2015) that provides evidence that the worst case scenario ("Business as Usual") modeled by the scientific community severely understates the amount of sea level rise in the next 85 years.

I conclude with recommendations on what the governments of the industrialized countries of the world need to do within the next decade in order to prevent a collapse of civilization (or worse) within the next 25 years.

Let us begin with these nuggets of climate science from NASA:

Carbon Dioxide Controls Earth's Temperature

Water vapor and clouds are the major contributors to Earth's greenhouse effect, but a new atmosphere-ocean climate modeling study shows that the planet's temperature ultimately depends on the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide.

Without non-condensing greenhouse gases, water vapor and clouds would be unable to provide the feedback mechanisms that amplify the greenhouse effect.

The study ties in to the geologic record in which carbon dioxide levels have oscillated between approximately 180 parts per million during ice ages, and about 280 parts per million during warmer interglacial periods. To provide perspective to the nearly 1 C (1.8 F) increase in global temperature over the past century, it is estimated that the global mean temperature difference between the extremes of the ice age and interglacial periods is only about 5 C (9 F).

"When carbon dioxide increases, more water vapor returns to the atmosphere. This is what helped to melt the glaciers that once covered New York City," said co-author David Rind, of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "Today we are in uncharted territory as carbon dioxide approaches 390 parts per million in what has been referred to as the 'superinterglacial'."

"The bottom line is that atmospheric carbon dioxide acts as a thermostat in regulating the temperature of Earth," Lacis said.
Quote
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has fully documented the fact that industrial activity is responsible for the rapidly increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

It is not surprising then that global warming can be linked directly to the observed increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and to human industrial activity in general
."

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/co2-temperature.html

So, if you read some happy talk from the fossil fuel industry that it's the "water vapor" that is causing global warming, be sure and reference the above study (and the companion study also mentioned at the link) just before you call them on their ignorance, or worse, their duplicity.


You just read about the huge difference a mere 5 degrees C (Centigrade) can make.
Here's a graphic to give you an idea about how effective our greenhouse gas (GHG) shell is at keeping us from turning into a ball of ice.


Greenhouse gases are vital to regulating Earth's temperature. But there is a goldilocks band of these gases that must be adhered to in order to provide a viable biosphere.

In addition, GHG changes in concentration within that band must proceed, down or up, at or slower than a certain rate in order to allow the organisms that live in that biosphere to adapt to the changes or they will go extinct.

Industrial civilization has BOTH exceeded the upper margin of the GHG band by a huge margin AND has done it at a rate far above the ability of most complex non-microscopic organisms to adapt to these violent changes. Mammalian vertebrates, among the complex organisms on Earth, are the least able to adapt to rapid GHG concentration changes.


There is no precedent in the geological record for the increase in CO2 caused by the burning of fossil fuels over the last century. And the rate those fossil fuels are being burned is increasing, not slowing down or ceasing.

Non-self aware mammalian vertebrates, unlike us, cannot use technology to adapt. This is the part the CEO of ExxonMobil (Rex Tillerson) forgot accidentally on purpose when he said, "We will adapt to that". Mr. Tillerson is an idiot or a liar (possibly both). Those "qualities" seem to be a job requirement for those that work in the fossil fuel industry.

Mr. Tillerson's optimistic happy talk is not based on climate science or the geological record.

Quote
"Mass extinctions due to rapidly escalating levels of CO2 are recorded since as long as 580 million years ago."

http://theconversation.com/another-link-between-co2-and-mass-extinctions-of-species-12906

Whether we humans want to admit it or not, we need the 75% of all of Earth's species in danger of extinction from climate change. I know it is really hard for the fossil fuel industry predators 'R' US crowd to wrap their greedy heads around this, but it's hard to live on a diet of hydrocarbons. And if we don't stop burning them, both our plant and animal food supply, along with thousands of other species of other earthlings that make this planet viable, will go extinct.

This is not hyperbole. Mass extinctions are part of the geological record. In all but one of those mass extinctions, the rapid rise in GHG was the cause of the extinctions. Furthermore, in all the former mass extinctions, the RATE of rise in GHG was much slower than today.
Quote

"As our anthropogenic global emissions of CO2 are rising  at a rate for which no precedence is known from the geological record with the exception of asteroid impacts, another wave of extinctions is unfolding."

http://theconversation.com/another-link-between-co2-and-mass-extinctions-of-species-12906


According to the latest scientific studies on Global Warming, "Business as Usual", touted as the basis for the continued health of global civilization, is actually the greatest threat to global civilization and our species that we have ever faced.

Before we get to what exactly is meant by, "Business as Usual", let us first review the human caused pollution effects on ocean physical chemistry and temperature and marine species biochemistry.

The following review references an analysis of oceans that totally omits a growing problem for worldwide shipping. Although the review is mostly very bad news, it may turn out to be, in terms of what deals the collapse triggering blow to human civilization as we know it, the "good" news.

The World Ocean Review

The ocean may be buffering the most severe consequences of climate change for now. But in the long run we can only hope to avoid these if we strictly curb GHG emissions today.

Experts are concerned that hundreds of thousands of tonnes of methane hydrate could break down due to the warming of seawater – gas masses that are lying inertly in solid, frozen form in the sea floor sediments today. A portion of the methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas, could then rise into the atmosphere and further accelerate the process of climate change – a vicious circle.

The oceans absorb many millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. They are the largest “sink” for anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The excess carbon dioxide, however, upsets the chemical equilibrium of the ocean. It leads to acidification of the oceans, the consequences of which are unpredictable. Acidic water disrupts the sense of smell in fish larvae, carbonate formation by snails, and the growth rates of starfish. The phytoplankton, tiny algae in the ocean and vital nutrient basis for higher organisms, are also affected by acidification.

The coastal environment is still being damaged by effluent and toxic discharges, and especially by nutrients conveyed to the ocean by rivers. Thousands of tonnes of nitrogen and phosphorus compounds flow into the ocean around the world, causing an explosion in algal reproduction. In many coastal regions the catastrophe begins with the death of the algae. Bacteria feed on the algal remains and consume oxygen in the water. In these oxygen-depleted zones all higher life forms die off. Efforts to reduce nutrient levels have been successful in Western Europe.

Worldwide, however, the input of nutrients is becoming increasingly problematical. People are, without a doubt, abusing the oceans in many respects, and this is increasing the stress on marine organisms. Through over-fertilization and acidification of the water, rapid changes in water temperature or salinity, biological diversity in the ocean could drop worldwide at increasing rates. With the combination of all these factors, the disruption of habitats is so severe that species will continue to disappear.

Clearly the oceans continue to be the “last stop” for the dregs of our civilization, not only for the persistent chemicals, but also our everyday garbage. Six million tonnes of rubbish end up in the ocean worldwide every year. The trash is a fatal trap for dolphins, turtles and birds. Plastic is especially long-lived and, driven by ocean currents, it collects in the central oceans in gyres of garbage covering hundreds of square kilometres. A new problem has been identified in the microscopically small breakdown products of plastics, which are concentrated in the bodies of marine organisms.

http://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/wor-1-in-short/

That World Ocean Review I just quoted from, after laying out the hard facts, incredibly goes on to happily discuss ocean mining opportunities and methane hydrate harvesting plans for "energy products" for "energy independence". The only caveat they supply is more of an epitaph for human willful denial of facts than a precautionary warning. Please file the following in the WTF!? category.

Quote
Energy from burning ice

In addition to abundant minerals, there are large amounts of methane hydrate beneath the sea floor. Some countries hope to become independent of energy imports by exploiting marine gas hydrate deposits near their own coasts. The technology for production, however, is not yet available. Furthermore, the risks to climate stability and hazards to marine habitats associated with extraction of the methane hydrates
must first be clarified.
http://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-3-overview/methane-hydrate/


Yes, it seems the DANGER of extracting methane hydrates has not been "CLARIFIED" enough. Neither the Permian Extinction geological record nor the PETM (Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum) geological record has "clarified" the methane issue enough.

Hello? Is this, a more recent pre-human epoch, CLARIFICATION enough for you fellows providing your business friendly "World Ocean Review ", claiming, among other wonders of optimistic prose, that the sea level is only going to rise about 180 cm by century's end?


The following alarming, but still too conservative, MIT study EXCLUDES the ABRUPT climate change positive feedback loop effects we are now beginning to experience.

Do they think this MIT study needs "clarification"?

And the DANGER of an acidified ocean to most marine species, which will clearly be exacerbated by the methane bomb, has not been clarified? Didn't Professor Gerardo Ceballos, lead author of a study published in June of 2015 on the Sixth Mass Extinction we are now entering, with particular emphasis on marine mammal extinction threats, get the word?

I think he and his fellow scientists CLARIFIED the methane issue AND the CO2 pollution issue rather well. For those that do not get it, the CO2 pollution, now baked in, is already threatening marine mammals with extinction. When methane hydrates are added to the mix from a warmed ocean, acidification will accelerate and trigger anoxic conditions throughout the ocean water column, thereby destroying the food chain. That is a death sentence for most non-microscopic marine life and a large portion of the microscopic oxygen producing microscopic phytoplankton as well.


These scientifically challenged, insultingly naive, business friendly, bland statements sold as "sober advice" are precisely the kind of double talk that has placed humanity in the polluted situation it finds itself.

Some have blamed the scientific community.



They forget that scientists are mostly employees. They forget that businesses gag their reports or keep their published, peer reviewed papers from the public on a regular basis. So the criminally negligent here are business leaders, not scientists.

My experience with reading these big picture reviews of our terribly polluted situation is that they seem to feel obligated to give some peppy, optimistic, happy talk at the end.

Do these people understand what "business as usual" means? It appears that either they don't or willfully avoid doing so.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has a scientific name for Business as Usual. They have modeled it. They have a number for it. It's called the RCP-8.5. RCP stands for Representative Concentration Pathway.


Business as usual is a death sentence for over 75% (or more) of life on Earth.

The people that defend business as usual are deluded. There is evidence, which I will present, that even the RCP-8.5 scenario is too conservative. And yet the methane issue needs "clarification"?

Dr. Scott Goetz (Deputy Director and Senior Scientist of the Woods Hole Research Center) has that thousand yard stare for a reason.

CHANGES IN THE ARCTIC AND THEIR CLIMATE FEEDBACK IMPLICATIONS: Interview with Scott Goetz


Friends, there is a crime being committed. But the guiltiest parties do not want to pay for their share of the damage. And that is why these reviews lack the urgency that they need to have in order to successfully convince government policy makers to alter our destructive trajectory.

But I have discussed that in my recent article, Dianoia is sine qua non to a viable biosphere. So, I will move on to other matters of concern to humanity.


Global shipping

Human civilization has come to rely on the relatively inexpensive movement of millions of tons of cargo over the oceans.

It is difficult or impossible to avoid a collapse without the use of the oceans.

To underline the importance of cargo shipping as the lifeblood of civilization, you need to look at the massive amount of tonnage these ships move globally on a daily basis.

]

Tankers, bulk carriers and container ships are the most important means of transportation of our time. Each year they carry billions of tonnes of goods along a few principal trade routes. Containerization has revolutionized global cargo shipping, bringing vast improvements in efficiency.

Throughout history the oceans have been important to people around the world as a means of transportation. Unlike a few decades ago, however, ships are now carrying goods rather than people.


Deadweight tonnage (abbreviated to dwt) or tons deadweight (TDW) is a measure of how much mass a ship is carrying or can safely carry; it does not include the weight of the ship.

Agelbert NOTE: Please take note of the caveat, "safely carry".  More on what that means later.

In terms of carrying capacity in dwt,


tankers account for 35 per cent,


bulk carriers account for 35 per cent,


container ships 14 per cent,


general cargo ships 9 per cent


and passenger liners less than 1 per cent.
In all, the global merchant fleet has a capacity of just under 1192 million dwt.

The growth of the global merchant fleet according to type of vessel (as at 1 January [sic]) 2009.
http://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/transport/global-shipping/

There is a LOT of shipping out there and a LOT of ships. If the above graphics have not brought home to you how much shipping is going on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, take a look at this:


In summary, this is what is out there going hither and yon across the oceans on a regular basis:



Most of those affordable products in our homes are a direct result of a the uninterrupted global lifeblood of efficient blue ocean shipping. If that shipping was no longer possible, global civilization would be impossible because it would be unaffordable. It is, therefore, extremely important to ensure that human civilization can use those oceans for routine cargo transportation. 

The oceans, as was pointed out earlier in this article, are a giant heat sink. The more CO2 we pump into the air, the hotter the oceans get. When the oceans get hotter, they become more active. This means trouble for shipping.

Insurance companies do not like that. They analyze the risks of blue water shipping and track any trends that might increase those risks. They have actuaries that pay a lot of attention to losses of insured ships.

All commercial shipping is insured. You and I are billed for insuring, not just the merchant fleets, but the military ships too! That's what the "defense budgets" lobbied for by all those welfare queen corporations, constantly whining about that "dangerous world out there", are all about.

Well, it looks like all shipping is going to find out how DANGEROUS the oceans, not some invented threat about bellicose humans, can be. The insurance actuaries already know that the "terrorist" or piracy threat on the high seas is insignificant compared to the threat of sinking from rough seas.

Of course you haven't read that in the papers. But you will read it here. And I will provide evidence for it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. To understand what is happening in the oceans today, we need to go back in time about 20,000 years. We need to go back to the Last Glacial Maximum.

WHY? Because the sea state, as well as the sea level, is a function of the average global temperature. In addition, the vegetation changes that accompany changes in the average global temperature can have deleterious effects on the sea state, totally separate from the dire extinction threat these temperature changes represent to marine organisms.

The Environmental Change Model (ECM)

The following series of graphics deals with accurately modeled representations of the climate in a large part of the Northern Hemisphere centered on the Arctic. A link to the science and the source is provided. The average global temperature and pertinent data on the ice cover and types of vegetation is provided. Of particular importance to the reader are the different types of Tundra coverage. The legend has color codes for the graphical representations.

NOTE: The Greek letter "DELTA" ="Δ". It is used in science to mean, "Change in". The referenced average global temperature is what we have today (about 15 degrees Centigrade = T).

So, ΔT = - 6C is a change in average temperature of minus 6 degrees centigrade from today. THAT was when there was a two mile high glacier sheet edge near what is now New York City. That was also when the oceans were 120 meters = 394 feet lower than they are today.

http://cci-reanalyzer.org/ECM/

Notice how much dry and moist Tundra there was.
Notice the range and size of the types of forests and the polar desert coverage too. At a glance you can see that this was a very dry world in comparison to our world.

Fast forward to ΔT = - 0.5C.
This was the Little Ice Age of 1850. That was just before the industrial pollution revolution had gotten up to full biosphere trashing speed.

Sea level is close to the present level. Notice how the forest cover has changed. Notice how the Tundra moved north as the ice retreated. Notice how the forests and the forest Tundra transition changed.


Tundra responds in one of two ways when it goes above freezing. It has to do with the available oxygen. If there isn't enough in the soil, the microbes resort to anaerobic metabolism and make lots of methane. This is NOT methane locked in the Tundra. This is NEW methane. This is unrelated to the methane hydrates frozen on the ocean bottom, but it is still an additional feedback mechanism that increases the RATE of atmospheric heating. So these mechanisms are, by definition, not linear. They can become self reinforcing. That means they can go exponential.

Below, please find, the world we all grew up in (ΔT = 0C.). I have labeled some areas for clarity. The Tundra continues to shrink, as does the ice coverage. The forest transition area creeps north and the forests grow along with the prairie grass covered areas. There is less ice.


Which brings us the IPCC RCP-8.5 scenario labeled "Business as Usual".

This scenario is considered "worst case". It does not expect us to hit  ΔT = plus 2C until 2050. The boundless optimism of the IPCC sounds a lot like those fellows doing the "World Ocean Review" that mentioned the methane "issue" needed "clarification" right after they admitted that the PRESENT conditions were causing the extinction of most marine animals. 

Please look at this graph:

The line with the number "1" is the  IPCC RCP-8.5 scenario. The temperature increases in lines 2 and 3 ARE NOT in the IPCC RCP-8.5 scenario.

ΔT = plus 2C is considered extremely dangerous.
 

The IPCC projects a mere 0.5 meters sea level increase by 2050. But the July 2015 study that I reference in the graphic claims a sea level rise greater or equal to 6 meters (over 19 feet!) is evidenced in the geologic record for this type of temperature rise.

The IPCC projected sea ice decline to 2010 will give you more context to understand why it is unrealistic to believe that we will not hit the  ΔT = plus 2C until 2050.


But nevertheless, the IPCC RCP-8.5 scenario for ΔT = plus 2C is instructive because the Tundra is disappearing. You know what that means for increased methane release, don't you?


A note about the word, "Equilibrium" on the graphic: The word "Equilibrium" means that the full effects of the temperature change are being felt throughout the planet. Glaciologists had previously thought that "equilibrium" effects on ice sheets took centuries or millennia.

Now, because of empirical observations on the Greenland ice sheet, Antarctica and various glaciers in the world, they have come to accept that equilibrium is reached in decades or in years, depending on the temperature anomaly increase. As you know, or should know, the polar regions have warmed over 3C MORE than the rest of the planet in the last 50 years. 

The huge differential was not plugged in to the IPCC models so they are too conservative on ice retreat and sea level rise. So, if somebody tells you that all this is a long way off, they are uninformed or working for the fossil fuel industry.

I will return to the dangers of the ΔT = plus 2C (and beyond) world in a moment.

For now, I wish to show you the rest of the IPCC RCP-8.5 scenario projections. Please remember that they are conservative projections and the effects portrayed will most likely arrive 25 years or more earlier than predicted. Also please remember that the actual sea level increase (see graphic below that I added CO2 PPM as of March of 2022), according to the
 July 2015 paper
referenced previously, will be several METERS, not feet, above the predictions. 

Science 10 July 2015: Vol. 349 no. 6244 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa4019
Sea-level rise due to polar ice-sheet mass loss during past warm periods

ΔT = plus 3C

Sometime after the loss of the ice cap, all the Tundra will have thawed. ALL the trapped gases, be they CO2 or CH4, will be released. Added grasses absorbing CO2 will not be enough to counteract the warming acceleration.

There are those who expect a negative feedback from the stopping of the thermohaline oceanic current circulation (stopped by all the cold fresh water melted off the Greenland ice cap into the oceans). Perhaps that will help slow the heating (north of about 45 degrees latitude - below that they will roast even more!) for a decade or so. But it will do nothing to calm the ocean surface.

ΔT = plus 4C


The worst effect is that Arctic ocean bottom frozen clathrates will thaw and the methane will be released. The planet will continue warming increasingly faster past  ΔT = plus 4C.

 That will exacerbate ocean conditions 🌊even more. With more and more heat energy present, the ocean surface will get increasingly more turbulent. And we will already be well past the ΔT = plus 2C mark.

As evidenced by the two referenced scientific studies, both published in 2015, and the woefully conservative IPCC predictions on the rate of the North Polar Ice Cap retreat, Antarctic and Greenland ice cap melt rates, and temperature rise rate, sea level will most likely rise a minimum of 6 meters within 10 years, not 35 years. We are talking about 2025, not 2050, for a ΔT = plus 2C world. We are not preparing adequately for that.

For those who will point to the increase in size of the floating ice around Antarctica as evidence that the Earth is not really warming, I beg to differ.

The fact that the Antarctic land mass IS losing ice has been measured with satellites. It is losing ice because of global warming. It is true that the floating ice around Antarctica has increased and will continue to increase as long as the Antarctic land mass is shedding melt water.

This is because of two factors. The first one is that there are very high winds around Antarctica, unimpeded by any land mass. The second factor is that fresh water freezes more rapidly on the ocean surface than salty water.

That's why salt is spread on roads in winter. On the ocean, the water molecules must rid themselves of the sodium and chloride ions dissolved in them before they can freeze. All the ice floating on the oceans is water ice. It has no salt in it.

And as long as that floating ice is the product of melt water from the Antarctic land mass, it will ADD to sea level.

And when the sea level goes up just 6 feet, never mind the 19 feet or more increase expected with CURRENT CO2 levels, all shipping port facilities (and most coastal airport facilities too!) in the world are no longer usable without gargantuan and heroic efforts requiring trillions of dollars in costs for every foot the land and port infrastructure must be raised.

It seems that the countries (see every industrialized country on the planet) dragging their feet on CO2 reduction actions do not understand this. There are, as of this writing, over 140 countries investing trillions of dollars in port facilities.

No, they aren't raising the level of the port facilities to prepare for rapidly rising sea levels. They are trying to cash in on container shipping by building more container shipping infrastructure.  


Don't these governments listen to their climate scientists?

End of PART ONE.

Climate Change, Blue Water Cargo Shipping and Predicted Ocean Wave Activity: PART TWO
« Last Edit: June 24, 2022, 01:15:20 pm by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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Climate Change, Blue Water Cargo Shipping and Predicted Ocean Wave Activity

PART TWO OF THREE PARTS

Updated June 22, 2022

On top of the disaster for civilization that a rise in seal level of 6 meters (over 19 FEET!) represents from the loss of coastal arable land, coastal cities, shipping ports and airports, there is the problem of wave activity. 

Which brings us back to shipping and the ocean surface.  Of particular concern to ocean shipping in a ΔT = plus 2C (and greater) atmosphere are the following facts about waves.

WHY?

Because that world will have more energy both in the oceans and in the atmosphere. That world will have, not just greater average wind speeds, particularly over unobstructed surfaces like the oceans, but a greater duration of higher wind velocities (speed in a relatively constant direction) over thousands of miles. High wind velocity and duration over hundreds or thousands of miles is a recipe for giant waves.

Here's a very brief primer on waves so you can grasp the impact of giant wave characteristics on shipping.

First, the high points of the waves are called "crests" and the low points of the waves are called "troughs". The crest is the part that starts to curl over and turn foamy when waves hit the beach. The difference in height between the crest and the trough is called the wave height.

The "amplitude" is one half the wave height. So if you have "50-foot seas", you have wave crests 25 feet above calm sea level and troughs 25 feet below it. The amplitude of 50-foot seas is 25 feet.

In the ocean, the trough of a wave is just as far below sea level as the crest is above sea level. 


Quote
Energy, not water, moves across the ocean's surface. Water particles only travel in a small circle as a wave passes.

How are waves energy?

The best way to understand waves as energy is to think of a long rope laid on the ground. If you pick up one end and give it a good snap --there's a ripple effect all the way to the other end -- just like the waves on the ocean! That means that energy is applied at one end and it moves to the other end.

What provides the energy?

In the case of ocean waves, wind provides the energy. Wind causes waves that travel in the ocean. The energy is released on shorelines. Some of the energy of waves is also released against the hulls of ships at sea. The larger the vessel surface being impacted by the wave, the more force is exerted against that surface. Being hit by a single giant wave from the front of the bow or the rear of the stern is normally within the structural design limits of a large vessel. But being broadsided can either sink a ship or severely damage it.

1973: A rogue wave off the coast of Durban, South Africa, strikes the 12,000-ton cargo ship Bencrauchan. The ship is towed into port, barely floating.

http://freaquewaves.blogspot.com/2006/07/list-of-freaque-wave-encounters.html

What determines the size of the wave?

The size of a wave depends on:

1. the distance the wind blows (over open water) which is known as the "fetch",

2. the length of time the wind blows, and

3. the speed of the wind.

The greater these three, the larger the wave.


The distance waves are apart is called the "wavelength". Wavelength is typically measured between the crests of two adjacent waves, but it could be measured from trough to trough or from any point on one wave to the same point on the next wave. You will get the same distance no matter where you measure.

Finally, the "frequency" of the wave specifies how many wave wavelengths go by in a set amount of time. So this is dependent not only on the speed of the waves, but on their wavelength.

http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/applets/xray/wavefront.html


The "period" of a wave must also be considered. The period of a wave is the amount of time it takes for one wavelength to occur. 

Frequency and period are distinctly different, yet related, quantities. The frequency of a wave is how many wavelengths occur in a given amount of time.
http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/waves/Lesson-2/Frequency-and-Period-of-a-Wave

Ship hulls are designed to withstand about 15 to 20 tons per square meter. They can handle up to 30 tons per square meter only if they bend to take the blow.


When a wave with a height of 30 meters (100 ft.) is spoken of, only half that much of it is what is above the sea level. That doesn't do a ship much good because the ship will ride down the 15 meter trough before it gets hit by the 30 meter monster.  And "riding" down the trough is somewhat of a misnomer.

Large ships, because of the combined weight of the ship and the cargo, have a lot of inertia. If the ship is moving forward at about 13 kts (15 mph) and a giant wave is approaching it a 45 mph (this has been documented and is routine), you have a relative speed of the wave to the ship of 60 mph. The wavelength of a 30 meter wave is about 230 meters (this has also been documented).
 
Even if the combined speed against such a wave is just 45 mph because the captain has slowed his ship to reduce hull stress, the ship experiences a drop of ocean beneath it of 50 feet in 6 seconds, followed by the a rise of 100 feet in another six seconds.

Initially the ship just dives bow first and everybody on it feels like they are in free fall. When the ship hits the trough bottom, its inertia is still driving the bow down as the seas rise 100 feet. The bridge superstructure is impacted and often the windows are blown in and the bridge, with all its electronics, is flooded.
 
If that causes the engines to fail, the ship will probably sink. That is because the waves and wind will then turn the ship broadside to the waves. When a ship is broadside to the waves, it will either get rolled and sink or get holed by the force of a giant wave. Whether it sinks  or not depends on how long the severe sea state continues. This ship was hit broadside by a "rogue" wave, but survived.


Thirty meter waves have a force of about 100 tons per square meter, depending on the frequency and period of the wave. Waves of the same height with a higher frequency and shorter period are traveling faster, so they have much more force.

1976: The oil tanker Cretan Star in Indian Ocean off Bombay radios for help: “Vessel was struck by a huge wave that went over the deck.” The ship is never heard from again. The only sign of the vessel's fate was 6 km oil slick.
http://ycaol.com/demons_of_the_deep2.htm

1980: A huge wave was reported to have slammed into the oil tanker Esso Languedoc off the east coast of South Africa. First mate Philippe Lijour, aboard the supertanker Esso Languedoc, took this rare photo.
http://www.theartofdredging.com/roguewaves.htm



1981: A giant wave seemed to want to teach a crude oil tanker named "Energy Endurance" (Gross tonnage, 97,005 tons. DWT, 205,808 tons) what REAL energy endurance is all about.
http://migciao.blogspot.com/2007/10/vagues-scelerates.html


There is no amount of cargo that a large vessel can safely carry under these conditions, regardless of the design claims about "safe" DWT tonnage for cargo and tanker ships you read about earlier in this article. 

Where are the largest waves found?

The largest waves are found in the open ocean. Waves continue to get larger as they move and absorb energy from the wind.
 
http://www.angelfire.com/crazy2/nur_filzah/new_page_2.htm

Waves at Sea

Waves at sea are created by winds blowing across the water surface and transferring energy to the water by the impact of the air. Small ripples develop first, and frictional drag on their windward side causes then to grow larger, or to collapse and contribute part of their expended energy to larger waves.

Consequently, large waves capture increasing amounts of energy and continue to develop as long as the wind maintains sufficient strength and constant direction.

As more and more energy is transferred to the water surface. waves become higher and longer, and travel with increasing velocities; 50-foot waves are not uncommon in the open ocean, and waves more than 100 feet high have been reported.
http://www2.fiu.edu/~kpanneer/lab_assignment/Lab8_Waves.pdf

2002: December 15, 2002, MS Hanseatic of the Radisson Seven Seas was struck by a large rogue wave while on a coastal cruise of New Zealand.
http://freaquewaves.blogspot.com/2006/07/list-of-freaque-wave-encounters.html


Above you see a scale simulation of two small vessels in 50 ft. seas. The wavelength is fairly large, so these vessels are handling a very dangerous sea state okay. The wave is 50 feet from crest to trough. The danger increases when the wind gets stronger. That is because the wind increases the wave height and the wave frequency while the wavelength gets shorter.

When large waves are present, the shorter the wavelength, the steeper and more dangerous the wave. And, as mentioned earlier, a higher frequency of large waves makes them even more dangerous because they have much more energy to be delivered as a force against the hull of a ship. It is simple physics that getting hit with a wall of water at 44 mph is potentially far, far more than twice as damaging as the same wall of water hitting you at 22 mph.

Larger vessels, while generally more sea worthy, have weaknesses that small vessels do not have. A small vessel with properly battened hatches can bob like a cork in a storm. In the above situation, the sail boat would probably have the sails reefed (taken in). It will survive as long as it isn't smashed against a reef or a rock. 

But a large vessel, because it is much longer than it is wide, is weakest in the middle and along the sides from bow to stern. The bow and stern act as giant levers moved by the wave crests and troughs with the fulcrum located somewhere in the middle.

The middle either sags or it "hogs" (bends up instead of down). There is no ship that can be made strong enough to handle the massive metal fatigue inducing stresses of repeated sagging and hogging that would occur in seas populated with 30 meter waves. Here is an example of a container ship that hit a reef. It did not sink right away. But you can see that it buckled and cra cked on the side from the up, down and sideways wave movement of the ends of the ship.


Individual "rogue waves" (also called "freak waves", "monster waves", "killer waves", and "king waves") much higher than the other waves in the sea state can occur.

NOAA ship Delaware II in bad weather on Georges Bank.
Quote

... the largest ever recorded wind waves are common — not rogue — waves in extreme sea states.


For example: 29.1 m (95 ft) high waves have been recorded on the RRS Discovery in a sea with 18.5 m (61 ft) significant wave height, so the highest wave is only 1.6 times the significant wave height.
Quote
The biggest recorded by a buoy (as of 2011) was 32.3 m (106 ft) high during the 2007 typhoon Krosa near Taiwan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_wave


Giants of the Oceans

Naval architects have always worked on the assumption that their vessels are extremely unlikely to encounter a rogue. Almost everything on the sea is sailing under the false assumption that rogue waves are, at worst, vanishingly rare events. The new research suggest that’s wrong, and has cost lives. Between 1969 and 1994 twenty-two super carriers were lost or severely damaged due to the occurrence of sudden rogue waves; a total of 542 lives were lost as a result.

G. Lawton. Monsters of the deep. New Scientist, 170(2297):28–32, 2001.

Freak, rogue or giant waves correspond to large-amplitude waves surprisingly appearing on the sea surface. Such waves can be accompanied by deep troughs (holes), which occur before and/or after the largest crest.

There are several definitions for such surprisingly huge waves, but the one that is more popular now is the amplitude criterion of freak waves, which define them as waves with heights that exceed at least twice the significant wave height. The significant height is the height of at least one third of the largest waves in a given area being traversed by a ship.


According to orthodox oceanography, rogue waves are so rare that no ship or oil platform should ever expect to encounter one. But as the shipping lanes fill with supercarriers and the oil and gas industry explores ever-deeper parts of the ocean, rogue waves are being reported far more often than they should.

The most spectacular sighting of recent years is probably the so-called New Year Wave, which hit Statoil’s Draupner gas platforms in the North Sea on New Year’s Day 1995. The significant wave height at the time was around 12 metres. But in the middle of the afternoon the platform was struck by something much bigger. According to measurements made with a laser, it was 26 metres from trough to crest.

Hundreds of waves been recorded by now that are at least twice the significant wave height, and several waves at larger than three times the significant wave height. Waves with an "Abnormality index" (Ai) larger than three (Ai > 3) are known.

Alexey Slunyaev Christin Kharif, Efim Pelinovsky. Rogue Waves in the Ocean. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.


The New Year Wave is an example of a wave with an Ai = 3.19.


Christian Kharif and Efim Pelinovsky. Physical mechanisms of the rogue wave phenomenon. European Journal of Mechanics - B/Fluids, 22(6):603 – 634, 2003.

I obtained the above information from a paper submitted to the mathematics department of the University of Arizona. Here is a summary:

"In this project, the rogue wave phenomenon is introduced along with its importance. The main equations governing both linear and nonlinear theory are presented. The three main linear theories proposed to explain the rogue rave phenomenon are presented and a linear model reproducing rogue waves due to dispersion is shown. A nonlinear model for rogue waves in shallow water is also exhibited."

I have skipped the math. The information is state of the art and the references are impeccable.

References
[1] Alexey Slunyaev Christin Kharif, Efim Pelinovsky. Rogue Waves in the Ocean. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.

[2] K.B. Dysthe, HE Krogstad, H. Socquet-Juglard, and K. Trulsen. Freak waves, rogue waves, extreme waves and ocean wave climate. Mathematics Departments in Bergen and Oslo, Norway. Available at: www. math. uio. no/-karstent/waves/index_ en. html, July, 2007.

[3] R.S. Johnson. A modern introduction to the mathematical theory of water waves. Cambridge Univ Pr, 997.

[4] Christian Kharif and Efim Pelinovsky. Physical mechanisms of the rogue wave phenomenon. European Journal of Mechanics - B/Fluids, 22(6):603 – 634, 2003.

[5] G. Lawton. Monsters of the deep. New Scientist, 170(2297):28–32, 2001.

[6] Pengzhi Lin. Numerical Modeling of Water Waves. Taylor and Francis, 2008. 13

And that is why the conclusions are so unsettling.

Conclusions

1. Precise physical mechanisms causing the rogue waves phenomenon remain unknown.

2. Rogue waves should be considered when designing ships and marine platforms to reduce the number of vessels sunk worldwide.

http://math.arizona.edu/~gabitov/teaching/101/math_485_585/Midterm_Reports/RogueWaves_Midterm.pdf

Ocean Ranger severely listing in a storm after being hit by a "rogue" wave.

Ironically, the first industry that started to feel the effects of an angrier ocean was the fossil fuel industry. You've already read about some oil tanker damage and losses. They continue to this day despite alleged vessel "design improvements".

But the 120 million dollar "unsinkable" Ocean Ranger, a giant ocean going oil platform damaged from a "rogue" wave, really got their attention. All hands perished. This was a wake up call to the scientists that studied waves and was of much concern to the fossil fuel industry.

The wave hit too high and damaged some electronics. The platform began to list. The operator made the right moves but the valves that should have closed, opened more. The last that was heard from them was that they were listing at about 15 degrees and going to the lifeboat stations.

Ocean Ranger reported experiencing storm seas of 55 feet (17 m), with the odd wave up to 65 feet (20 m), thus leaving the unprotected portlight at 28 feet (8.5 m) above mean sea level vulnerable to wave damage. Some time after 21:00, radio conversations originating on Ocean Ranger were heard on the Sedco 706 and Zapata Ugland, noting that valves on Ocean Ranger's ballast control panel appeared to be opening and closing of their own accord. The radio conversations also discussed the 100-knot (190 km/h) winds and waves up to 65 feet (20 m) high. Through the remainder of the evening, routine radio traffic passed between Ocean Ranger, its neighbouring rigs and their individual support boats. Nothing out of the ordinary was noted.


At 00:52 local time, on 15 February, 1982, a Mayday call was sent out from Ocean Ranger, noting a severe list to the port side of the rig and requesting immediate assistance. This was the first communication from Ocean Ranger identifying a major problem. The standby vessel, the M/V Seaforth Highlander, was requested to come in close as countermeasures against the 10–15-degree list were proving ineffective.

The onshore MOCAN supervisor was notified of the situation, and the Canadian Forces and Mobil-operated helicopters were alerted just after 1:00 local time. The M/V Boltentor and the M/V Nordertor, the standby boats of the Sedco 706 and the Zapata Ugland respectively, were also dispatched to Ocean Ranger to provide assistance.

At 1:30 local time, Ocean Ranger transmitted its last message: "There will be no further radio communications from Ocean Ranger. We are going to lifeboat stations." Shortly thereafter, in the middle of the night and in the midst of severe winter weather, the crew abandoned the rig. The rig remained afloat for another ninety minutes, sinking between 3:07 and 3:13 local time.

All of Ocean Ranger sank beneath the Atlantic: by the next morning all that remained was a few buoys. Her entire complement of 84 workers – 46 Mobil employees and 38 contractors from various service companies – were killed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Ranger

It turns out that the math formulas for wave action were incorrect. But it took over a decade to get some proof that they were incorrect. The fossil fuel industry apparently filed the tragedy away as a freak incident. They certainly did not seem that concerned, considering they did everything possible to keep from having to build more sturdy (i.e. double hulled) tankers with the help of the Reagan and the first Bush Administration.

Scientists, up until the 1980's, had believed that it was impossible for an ocean wave on this planet to be higher than 80 feet. This, despite eye witness accounts from mariners to the contrary. As usual, the non-credentialed folks could not convince the scientists that there were waves out there that exceeded 100 feet.

AND that those waves appeared in seas that were only half as high (or less) as the giant wave(s) (sometimes they came in a group of three - they call them the three sisters - the women always get the blame - lol!). Impossible, proclaimed the scientist worthies. Fish tales! 

But in 1995, a laser wave height measuring device on an oil platform provided the first concrete evidence that the happy math was wishful thinking. :P You saw the graph of the 1995 New Year Wave earlier in this article. In this video it is modelled in 3D.


As you all know, when the fossil fuel industry wants action, it gets action. And it gets government funded action that you and I pay for and they don't pay a penny for. But I digress. ;D Faster that you can say fossil fuel profits are threatened, a three week satellite survey of the oceans was undertaken. Four giant waves were observed and measured in just three weeks! 

Not only was the math wrong, but, as referenced earlier in this article, "rogue" waves were not really "rogue" at all!

Of course, at that time, no connection to wave activity and global warming had been established.

Snark alert. ;D Yes, it's true that scientists are taught, like all the rest of us that cook every now and then, that warmer waters can be a bit more turbulent, but it's a big ocean out there, right?

Well, the attitude of the scientific community is changing, at least in regard to these giant waves.

The cause of rogue waves is still an area of active research. One theory under investigation cites “constructive interference,” which is a result of several smaller waves overlapping in phase, combining to produce one massive wave. Another working hypothesis is based on the “non-linear Schrödinger effect,” in which energy is “soaked up” from neighboring waves to create a monster wave. Still other researchers are looking into the possibility that wave energy is being focused by the surrounding environments, or that wind action on the surface is amplifying existing effects.
http://www.damninteresting.com/monster-rogue-waves/

Suggested mechanisms for the formation of freak waves include the following:


http://www.theartofdredging.com/roguewaves.htm

End of PART TWO.

If you missed PART ONE, you may read it HERE.

I updated Part three on June 20, 2022.

Climate Change, Blue Water Cargo Shipping and Predicted Ocean Wave Activity: Part 3 of 3 parts
« Last Edit: June 22, 2022, 05:55:03 pm by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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Climate Change, Blue Water Cargo Shipping and Predicted Ocean Wave Activity

PART THREE OF THREE PARTS Updated June 24, 2022

Whatever is finally determined by scientists as the exact combination of factors that forms these monster waves, it is well known that wave height and ferocity is a function of the ferocity and duration of the winds.

ΔT = plus 2C or greater guarantees ferocious winds of long during over wide areas in a consistent direction.

We are already experiencing the beginning of the abrupt climate change that is bringing these destructive winds due to the increase in frequency and severity of cyclonic movements over the oceans.

Hurricanes and typhoons are the DIRECT result of overheated ocean surface water. As heat increases, so will they continue to increase in frequency and severity, setting new records. As soon as the surface temperature of the ocean is at or above 27.8C (82F), they can form.

And the sea surface temperature (SST) continues to steadily rise.

From a June 20, 2017 NOAA article:

Don't let that average global temperature lull you into thinking the risk of hurricanes is the same as always. The sea surface temperature in the hurricane forming areas is much higher. Which means that, on top of everything else, we will get more hurricanes.

Recipe for a Hurricane


The higher the ocean surface temperature, the more often they will form to wreak havoc with ships and coasts.


We now must apologize for interrupting this article to bore you readers with some fine print:

Agelbert NOTE: The following includes snippets of an excerpt from the excellent scientifically accurate book, "The Wave. Copyright ©2010 Susan Casey. Published by Doubleday Canada, an imprint of the Doubleday Canada Publishing Group, which is a division of Random House of Canada Limited".

I am posting said snippets of said book review under Fair Use for the purpose of Commentary. I am not posting for commercial purposes. Even though Susan Casey and her publisher may benefit from my praise of her book, which provides ample evidence for increased giant wave activity, I do not benefit monetarily.

Consequently, I am sure these snippets of the book review excerpts posted below are done under Fair Use - for a limited and "transformative" purpose (i.e. Commentary) through which the public will reap benefits (it may even save thousands of lives). That ends the fine print.

Now to get back to benefiting the biosphere loving public!
 
Susan Casey gives us an eye opening look at giant waves.

The book titled, "The Wave" is the overall scope; Casey links how the Earth's weather is changing to how waves are growing, and there's no denying the stats: there is a clear correlation. She visits various scientists and marine salvage folks and shares their stories; they all agree that we're seeing the oceans get nuttier, and it's only just beginning.
 

The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean by Susan Casey

Susan Casey, National Post · Monday, Sept. 20, 2010
57.5° N, 12.7° W, 175 MILES OFF THE COAST OF SCOTLAND FEBRUARY 8, 2000

The clock read midnight when the 100-foot wave hit the ship, rising from the North Atlantic out of the darkness. Among the ocean's terrors a wave this size was the most feared and the least understood, more myth than reality -- or so people had thought. This giant was certainly real. As the RRS Discovery plunged down into the wave's deep trough, it heeled 28 degrees to port,
The above graphic is a scale simulation of 295 ft. ship heeling 28 degrees to port in the trough of a 100 ft. wave by Agelbert.

rolled 30 degrees back to starboard, then recovered to face the incoming seas. What chance did they have, the 47 scientists and crew aboard this research cruise gone horribly wrong? A series of storms had trapped them in the black void east of Rockall, a volcanic island nicknamed Waveland for the nastiness of its surrounding waters. More than 1,000 wrecked ships lay on the seafloor below.

Scale simulation by Agelbert

Captain Keith Avery steered his vessel directly into the onslaught, just as he'd been doing for the past five days. While weather like this was common in the cranky North Atlantic, these giant waves were unlike anything he'd encountered in his 30 years of experience.

And worse, they kept rearing up from different directions. Flanking all sides of the 295-foot ship, the crew kept a constant watch to make sure they weren't about to be sucker punched by a wave that was sneaking up from behind, or from the sides.

No one wanted to be out here right now, but Avery knew their only hope was to remain where they were, with their bow pointed into the waves. Turning around was too risky; if one of these waves caught Discovery broadside, there would be long odds on survival. It takes 30 tons per square metre of force to dent a ship.

A breaking 100-foot wave packs 100 tons of force per square metre and can tear a ship in half. Above all, Avery had to position Discovery so that it rode over these crests and wasn't crushed beneath them.

He stood barefoot at the helm, the only way he could maintain traction after a refrigerator toppled over, splashing out a slick of milk, juice and broken glass (no time to clean it up--the waves just kept coming).

Up on the bridge everything was amplified, all the night noises and motions, the slamming and the crashing, the elevator-shaft plunges into the troughs, the frantic wind, the swaying and groaning of the ship; and now, as the waves suddenly grew even bigger and meaner and steeper, Avery heard a loud bang coming from Discovery's foredeck. He squinted in the dark to see that the 50-man lifeboat had partially ripped from its 2-inch-thick steel cleats and was pounding against the hull.

Below deck, computers and furniture had been smashed into pieces. The scientists huddled in their cabins nursing bruises, black eyes and broken ribs. Attempts at rest were pointless. They heard the noises too; they rode the free falls and the sickening barrel rolls; and they worried about the fact that a 6-foot-long window next to their lab had already shattered from the twisting. Discovery was almost 40 years old, and recently she'd undergone major surgery. The ship had been cut in half, lengthened by 33 feet, and then welded back together. Would the joints hold? No one really knew. No one had ever been in conditions like these.

One of the two chief scientists, Penny Holliday, watched as a chair skidded out from under her desk, swung into the air and crashed onto her bunk. Holliday, fine boned, porcelain-doll pretty and as tough as any man on board the ship, had sent an e-mail to her boyfriend, Craig Harris, earlier in the day. "This isn't funny anymore," she wrote. "The ocean just looks completely out of control." So much white spray was whipping off the waves that she had the strange impression of being in a blizzard. This was Waveland all right, an otherworldly place of constant motion that took you nowhere but up and down; where there was no sleep, no comfort, no connection to land, and where human eyes and stomachs struggled to adapt, and failed.

Ten days ago Discovery had left port in Southampton, England, on what Holliday had hoped would be a typical 3-week trip to Iceland and back (punctuated by a little seasickness perhaps, but nothing major).

RRS Discovery in calm seas


Along the way they'd stop and sample the water for salinity, temperature, oxygen and other nutrients. From these tests the scientists would draw a picture of what was happening out there, how the ocean's basic characteristics were shifting, and why.

These are not small questions on a planet that is 71% covered in salt water. As the Earth's climate changes -- as the inner atmosphere becomes warmer, as the winds increase, as the oceans heat up -- what does all this mean for us? Trouble, most likely, and Holliday and her colleagues were in the business of finding out how much and what kind. It was deeply frustrating for them to be lashed to their bunks rather than out on the deck lowering their instruments. No one was thinking about Iceland anymore.

The trip was far from a loss, however. During the endless trains of massive waves, Discovery itself was collecting data that would lead to a chilling revelation. The ship was ringed with instruments; everything that happened out there was being precisely measured, the sea's fury captured in tight graphs and unassailable numbers.

Months later, long after Avery had returned everyone safely to the Southampton docks, when Holliday began to analyze these figures, she would discover that the waves they had experienced were the largest ever scientifically recorded in the open ocean. The significant wave height, an average of the largest 33% of the waves, was 61 feet, with frequent spikes far beyond that.

At the same time, none of the state-of-the-art weather forecasts and wave models-- the information upon which all ships, oil rigs, fisheries and passenger boats rely -- had predicted these behemoths. In other words, under this particular set of weather conditions, waves this size should not have existed. And yet they did.
http://www.samsmarine.com/forums/showthread.php?15984-Giants-of-the-Ocean-(Part-1)&s=3ce56fe6a5efb7cdccd8412c349f4bf2


You could call them whatever you wanted -- rogues, freaks, giants -- but the bottom line was that no one had accounted for them. The engineers who'd built the Draupner rig had calculated that once every 10,000 years the North Sea might throw them a 64-foot curveball in 38-foot seas. That would be the maximum. Eighty-five-foot waves were not part of the equation, not in this universe anyway.

But the rules had changed. Now scientists had a set of numbers that pointed to an unsettling truth: Some of these waves make their own rules. Suddenly the emphasis shifted from explaining why giant waves couldn't simply leap out of the ocean to figuring out how it was that they did.

This was a matter of much brow sweat for the oil industry, which would prefer that its multimillion-dollar rigs not be swept away. It had happened before. In 1982 the Ocean Ranger, a 400-foot-long, 337-foot-high oil platform located 170 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, was struck by an outsize wave in heavy weather. We'll never know how big the wave was exactly, for there were no survivors. Approved for "unrestricted ocean operations," built to withstand 110-foot seas and 115-mile-per-hour winds, considered "indestructible" by its engineers, the Ocean Ranger had capsized and sank close to instantly, killing all 84 people on board.

In the nautical world things were even more troubling. Across the global seas ships were meeting these waves, from megaton vessels like the Munchen -- oceangoing freighters and tankers and bulk carriers -- down to recreational sailboats.

At best, the encounters resulted in damage; at worst, the boat vanished, taking all hands with it. "Two large ships sink every week on average [worldwide], but the cause is never studied to the same detail as an air crash. It simply gets put down to 'bad weather,' " said Dr. Wolfgang Rosenthal, senior scientist for the MaxWave Project, a consortium of European scientists that convened in 2000 to investigate the disappearing ships.
http://www.samsmarine.com/forums/showthread.php?15984-Giants-of-the-Ocean-(Part-1)&s=3ce56fe6a5efb7cdccd8412c349f4bf2

MS München

December 12, 1978: Considered unsinkable, the Munchen was a cutting-edge craft, the flagship of the German Merchant Navy. At 3:25 a.m. fragments of a Morse code Mayday, emanating from 450 miles north of the Azores, signaled that the vessel had suffered grave damage from a wave.

Artist's conception of MS München facing a giant wave.

But even after 110 ships and 13 aircraft were deployed -- the most comprehensive search in the history of shipping -- the ship and its 27 crew were never seen again.

A haunting clue was left behind: Searchers found one of the Munchen's lifeboats, usually stowed 65 feet above the water, floating empty. Its twisted metal fittings indicated that it had been torn away. "Something extraordinary" had destroyed the ship, concluded the official report. *

The Munchen's disappearance points to the main problem with proving the existence of a giant wave:
If you run into that kind of nightmare, it's likely to be the last one you'll have.

The force of waves is hard to overstate. An 18-inch wave can topple a wall built to withstand 125-mile-per-hour winds, for instance, and coastal advisories are issued for even five-foot-tall surf, which regularly kills people caught in the wrong places.

The number of people who have witnessed a 100-foot wave at close range and made it back home to describe the experience is a very small one.
http://www.samsmarine.com/forums/showthread.php?15984-Giants-of-the-Ocean-(Part-1)&s=3ce56fe6a5efb7cdccd8412c349f4bf2


* Agelbert NOTE: The container ship El Faro sank during Hurricane Juaquin on October 1, 2015. All 33 crewmembers perished. The lifeboats on El Faro were also 65 feet above the water line. From the condition of the lifeboat that was recovered, the evidence indicates a giant wave sank the El Faro. The authorities never did admit this (as of September 9, 2019), but I am sure that I am not the only one that strongly suspects that the condition of the lifeboat is evidence that a giant wave sank El Faro (Spanish for "Lighthouse"). 


June 24, 2022 UPDATE: The final investigation did not admit a rogue wave caused the El Faro to sink, but the camera of the robot submersible that finally found the ship's recording device clearly showed that the entire superstructure of the bridge had been ripped off the ship :o and lay some distance away on the ocean floor (see excellent video by Brick Immortar below). If that wasn't caused by a giant wave, I am a blue nosed gopher.

Coast Guard Investigates El Faro Life Boat

Warming oceans are with us now and increasing the violence of the oceans. By chance, I recorded the SST (Sea Surface Temperature) off the East Coast of the USA the day before Hurricane Juaquin sank the El Faro container ship.


Here's two days later (one day after the El Faro Container ship sank). I superimposed the hurricane location. It is a one day average SST so the conditions when the El Faro sank are displayed.  I was not aware that the El Faro had been lost at the time I made these screenshots. Notice the cooler spot on the ocean precisely where Hurricane Juaquin is lashing El Faro. A hurricane transfers several degrees of water temperature directly to the atmosphere, which, in turn, increases the ferocity of the winds. Ferocious winds produce ferocious waves.


El Faro departed Jacksonville en route to San Juan, Puerto Rico.


Disastrous Indifference: The Loss of SS El Faro

Brick Immortar  103K subscribers
Quote
On October 1st, 2015 the Ro-Con ship El Faro plunged directly into Hurricane Joaquin, a Category 4 storm near the bahamas. This tragedy was the result of long-term negligence, poor decision making, complacency & indifference.
REFERENCES, SOURCES & FEATURED MEDIA: 
*Views presented are my own and the appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), NTSB & any other entities' visual information does not imply or constitute their endorsement.

The El Faro was one of TWO cargo ships that went down because of Hurricane Juaquin (the 215 ft. MV Minouche that went down didn't make national headlines, because people, perhaps, might start to get "unnecessarily alarmed" about the increasing shipping losses from our increasingly violent oceans). All 12 crew of the MV Minouche were rescued.

MV Minouche

The Coast Guard pilot's voice shakes as he describes conditions they have never before experienced in rescue attempts when they were searching for the El Faro and rescuing the crew of the MV Minouche.


US Coast Guard search for El Faro; 12 rescued from MV Minouche
The El Faro, that went down with a crew of 33, all lost, 294 cars, trailers and trucks, along with hundreds of containers, had a type of lifeboat that is a death boat in stormy seas.

Here's a comment by a fellow who's handle is deckofficer:

Hurricane Joaquin vs. M/V El Faro's final voyage, weather and decision-making...

I guess the only point I would like to make is some owners don't seem to value the lives of their crews. Schedules are tight and safety equipment is in many cases the bare minimum for certification. In the case of SS El Faro (it is my understanding this is a steam ship, not diesel) the open life boats as high on the super structure as they were meets requirements but certainly doesn't offer the all sea state conditions of deployment as free fall enclosed life boat capsules. If these souls are lost at sea, it is maddening that the simple added investment of better emergency egress would have saved their lives. I have done more lifeboat drills than I can remember, and for the older style gravity systems there was a good reason these drills only occurred on calm days.

When sea state is overwhelming and you have lost propulsion and need to abandon ship, do you want this....


Or this....




Bob
USCG Unlimited Tonnage Open Ocean (CMA)

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f122/hurricane-joaquin-vs-m-v-el-faros-final-voyage-weather-and-decsion-making-154191-3.html

Free fall enclosed life boat capsules are a great idea. They should be mandatory. The fact that they aren't is mute evidence of the neoliberal Empathy Deficit disordered "cost/benefit analysis" that values goods more than lives. As long as people continue to line up to crew the ships, management will cut corners on life support.

And the Libertarians will cheer them on demanding all those "government regulations" be eliminated so the shippers can make more money without "government interference". >:(
 
But the greedball shippers are increasingly going to have a bit more to worry about than whether they have a labor force or not. Thanks to the fossil fuel industry socialized cost of CO2 pollution (even though Big Oil is getting a bit of payback from the oceans with oil rig difficulties and tanker losses), this is no longer going to be about whether the "demand" for products "justifies" cargo shipping.

I am grateful to Paul Beckwith of the University of Ottawa for alerting me to the threat from violent oceans that mankind faces.

Paul Beckwith is a part time professor at the University of Ottawa and a post graduate studying and researching abrupt climate change, with a focus on the arctic.

An Ocean Full of 30 meter Tall Waves

by Paul Beckwith

Published on Jul 23, 2015

"Near the end of the previous warm period (Late-Eemian) when the sea level was +5 to +9 meters higher than today, persistent long period long wavelength waves 30 meters high battered the Bahamas coastline. Will we see these massive storm generated waves soon? No ship could survive this..." 


If the ships cannot handle the seas (NO ship is designed, or can cost effectively be designed, to handle anywhere near 100 tons per square meter of force on her hull), shipping itself will no longer be cost effective unless cargo ships morph into cargo submarines. The cost of doing that is staggering. Even if they designed them to ride just beneath the wave turbulence, they still would have to submerge to one half the wavelength of ocean waves.


The wave that hit the Draupner platform in 1995 was over 90 ft. high and had a wavelength of 231 meters (which it covered in only 12 seconds! - 45 mph). To avoid these waves, a submerged cargo vessel or tanker would have to withstand pressures at a minimum of 116 meters below sea level.

That may be a piece of cake for a normal submarine but it would cost multiples of what cargo and tanker vessels cost now to make cargo submarines and tankers capable of routinely submerging to 400 or 500 feet.

And in water that is too shallow to get under the wave action, they will not avoid being damaged or sunk. Those waves Paul Beckwith mentions will be visiting the coastlines regularly in a ΔT = plus 2C (and beyond) world.

During WW2 the Germans actually made submarine tankers. They nicknamed them "Milk Cows". The German type XIV U-Boat could resupply other boats with 432 t (425 long tons) of fuel. I'm sure ExxonMobil will look into it when the going gets REALLY rough on the oceans, instead of doing the right thing and giving up fossil fuels. They aren't known for their ability to consider the wider consequences of their greed based, short term profit motive stupidity. But I digress. ;D

Besides the large increase in sea level, the wave action predicted makes every hull design of modern shipping inadequate. It will be very hard to sustain our level of civilization without the benefits of modern shipping.

Redesigning hulls will not work for the simple reason that the waves, now called "rogue" waves, of those oceans will be routine. 30 to 35 meter tall waves exert forces on a hull of about 100 tons per square meter. No modern hull design exceeds 30 tons per square meter.

Hellespont Alhambra (now TI Asia), a ULCC TI class supertanker, which are the largest ocean-going oil tankers in the world

To give you a better idea of the huge threat a giant wave or three is to a large tanker or cargo vessel,  I took some screenshots from a video of a wave laboratory testing the effects of 72 ft. waves on a modern supertanker. I'm sure Big Oil is paying attention, regardless of what they say in public.  ;)


3D simulation of tanker model by Agelbert shown below the wave tank screenshot

5: The above is catastrophic for a tanker. 6: Supertanker scale model in scale 72 ft. waves is rolled and sinks.

The model tanker completely capsized. In a real world situation, this is a death blow to the crew because it happens too fast to get survival gear on or reach the lifeboats, even if they are the emergency egress sealed type you saw earlier. That is why both tanker and cargo ships do everything they can to avoid being broadsided. In the real world, when the engines are lost in these types of seas, the only way to survive is to immediately abandon ship on a free fall enclosed life boat capsule.

If the above series of screen shots are not convincing enough to the reader of the threat shipping faces from giant waves, the following video will leave no doubt in your mind that world shipping is incapable of handling the routine 30 to 35 meter waves that the Hansen et al June 2015 paper predicts for a ΔT = plus 2C (and beyond) world.

This brief video shows 10 monster waves caught on camera. Though it includes waves caused by a nuclear explosion and others by the Japan 2011 large earthquaqe, it  makes clear the difficulties that shipping faces with giant waves. With Catastrophic Climate Change caused large wave activity, waves like those of the Japan earthquake will become all too common. Absolutely nothing I have told you is exaggeration or hyperbole.

10 Monster 🌊 Waves CAUGHT ON CAMERA

Within a decade or two at most, these giant destructive waves will be too common to be labelled "freak" waves.

When Nature Strikes Back - Episode 105: Freak Waves

The threat is real and it is getting worse. This concerns our future as a civilization. We are not prepared for a ΔT = plus 2C  world (and beyond).



CONCLUSIONS

Global Civilization is threatened within 25 years or less by the scientifically predicted ocean surface wave activity in the Hansen et al June 2015 study * and the Dutton et al July 2015 study ** evidencing a 6 to 25 meter (19 to 82 feet!) sea level increase in the geological record when the CO2 parts per million (PPM) atmospheric concentration was between 300 and 400 PPM.

As of June 23 of 2022, the CO2 concentration is 🚨 420.86 ppm. It is increasing at about 3PPM per year.


* Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 15, 20059–20179, 2015 doi:10.5194/acpd-15-20059-2015 © Author(s) 2015. CC Attribution 3.0 License.

Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 C global warming is highly dangerous
J. Hansen1, M. Sato1, P. Hearty2, R. Ruedy3,4, M. Kelley3,4, V. Masson-Delmotte5, G. Russell4, G. Tselioudis4, J. Cao6, E. Rignot7,8, I. Velicogna8,7, E. Kandiano9, K. von Schuckmann10, P. Kharecha1,4, A. N. Legrande4, M. Bauer11, and K.-W. Lo3,4
www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/20059/2015/
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acpd-15-20059-2015.pdf

** Science 10 July 2015: Vol. 349  no. 6244  DOI: .1126/science.aaa4019 

Sea-level rise due to polar ice-sheet mass loss during past warm periods
A. Dutton1,*,  A. E. Carlson2,  A. J. Long3,  G. A. Milne4,  P. U. Clark2,  R. DeConto5,  B. P. Horton6,7,  S. Rahmstorf8,  M. E. Raymo9
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6244/aaa4019.abstract

Furthermore, the rate of increase is also rising, evidencing, not only the lack of concerted action by the governments of the industrialized nations of the world to stop using fossil fuels, but an increase in their use, along with the incredibly destructive policies of subsidizing the exploration for fossil fuels.

If drastic action is not taken to avert this violent oceans catastrophe for human civilization, our global civilization will collapse into "sea-locked" regions unable to conduct trade across the oceans except via air transportation, a method that is not economically feasible to use for bulk cargo.

Port facilities and coastal airport facilities will become unusable. In addition, the salt water fishing industry would also collapse, both from the violent oceans and the increasing rate of marine extinctions, creating joblessness, food shortages and widespread hunger.

At least 25 percent of the world's arable land, all of which is low lying and near sea coasts, will be lost due to salt water invasion of the water table, even several miles from the coasts.


RECOMMENDATIONS


To prevent a collapse of global civilization into a group of "sea locked" areas, we must act now to prevent the oceans from being too stormy for shipping.

This requires the following:

1. The manufacture of internal combustion engines, and spare parts, used to power utility scale power plants, land, sea and air vehicles and emergency generators for public or private use, be they large or small, is to be outlawed, unless they are designed to run exclusively (low temperature alloys ONLY - 2/3 lighter engine blocks - they break down due to high waste heat if run on fossil fuels) on ethanol or some other biofuel. All aircraft must be powered by biofuels until electrically powered or hydrogen powered aircraft replace current jet engines. All ocean going oil tankers are to be recycled for low cost EV metals. All remaining ships of all sizes must be electrically powered as well, unless they can be modified to run on biofuels. Biofuels must be used to bridge the gap while phasing out the internal combustion engine in industry, the military and transportation by air, land or sea.

2. All ships must have enclosed egress lifeboats capable of surviving 35 meter waves.

3. Small engines, like those used for lawn mowers, leaf blowers or weed whackers are to be outlawed. All ordinances requiring lawns are to be outlawed. All lawn, gardening or snow removal power equipment not running on E100 is to be electrically powered without any exceptions or grace period.

4. A program to phase out of all uses of fossil fuels within one year must begin immediately. All gasoline stations are to have at least two E100 pumps. A gasoline tax of one dollar per gallon is to be levied to existing gasoline or other distillate fuels tax. The tax is to be increased by one additional dollar per gallon every month.

5. All governments must provide an EV for gas guzzlers consumer trade program at no cost to the owner until all on road and off road vehicles that are not fueled exclusively with E100 (100% ethanol) have been recycled.

6. All public and private buildings (including the military) are to be modified to have 100% renewable energy for heating and cooling. Zero percent financing and a 30 year amortization period is to be provided to all private households and landlords for the purchase and installation of Renewable Energy infrastructure. No household is entitled to heat and cool more than 500 square feet per occupant (No exceptions). Monitoring devices are to placed on all large houses in general and mansions in particular with heavy fines for violations.

7. After all buildings are heated and cooled with renewable energy, the remaining energy needs, plus a surplus, are to be generated by renewable energy in order to begin the process of returning to less than 350PPM (Parts Per Million) of CO2 (Carbon Dioxide). Carbon will be sequestered with renewable energy machines.

8.The manufacture, sale or use of fossil fuel based pesticides or chemical fertilizers for agriculture is to be outlawed with a six month phase out grace period.

9. The manufacture and sale of any product, including, but not limited to, pharmaceuticals and plastics, using fossil fuels as a feed stock is to be prohibited by law. A one year grace period will be allowed for transition to the use of plant based carbohydrates as feed stock.

10. Water use is to be heavily regulated.

11. Military budgets are to be limited to no more than 5% of tax receipts.

12. All subsidies for fossil fuels are be declared null and void in every country in the world. All rigs, refineries, tanker trucks, pipelines and other fossil fuel industry plant and equipment are to be recycled within a five year period. The fossil fuel industry stock holders are to shoulder the cost of this. Corporate bankruptcies of fossil fuel corporations will not limit the liability of the corporation stock holders according to a worldwide proclamation of Force Majeure. Executives, board members and all other stock holders will be liable for all recycling costs according to ownership records over the last 50 years.


And, as "radical" as the above seems to status quo lovers, that is just the start of what MUST be done.

Massive conservation efforts must be undertaken to preserve and protect all animals now threatened with extinction. All governments must put these efforts on the level of war time demands simply because our survival as a civilization and possibly as a species is threatened.

A wartime mobilization scenario has been proposed that is somewhat less radical than what I propose. I would certainly support that action (Any Port in the Catastrophic Climate Change Storm 😇).


We cannot function without the use of the oceans. We will not be able to use those oceans if we don't lower the CO2 atmospheric content to at least 350 PPM.

And even then, with the 6 meter or more (over 19 feet!) rise in sea level locked into the  ΔT = plus 2C  world, we will lose the use of all port facilities, coastal cities and arable land near sea level within a decade or, optimistically speaking in regard to the IPCC RCP-8.5 "Business as Usual" scenario, by 2050. Our civilization does not have the money to rebuild and replant and relocate millions of people as the seas go up and fly all cargo when the seas can't be used, PERIOD.

It is only possible to avoid a collapse of global civilization by drastic measures, and only if those measures are undertaken within a decade.

If not, then mankind will be split into several "sea locked" groups watching the oceans acidify and the temperature increase to the point when the methane bursts from the thawed clathrates in the Arctic ocean bottom. Then the ΔT = plus 2C world will be a distant mild memory in comparison to the  ΔT = plus 4C and beyond runaway GHG hell.

Sadly, I do not see any evidence that any government is championing drastic action. 🤦‍♂️

🦉 Yes, ALL governments will eventually realize that we are in an Existential Catastrophic Climate Crisis. But every day of delay multiplies the costs of ameliorating the damage from climate change exponentially. 😵 😱


Oil Tanker named "Prestige" sinks. Is this the Writing on the Oil Tanker Hull Wall for Big Oil?

It is small consolation to me that these oil tankers will not survive the coming oceans. But there is a certain logic to it.

If you find this article of importance to our survival as a species or the survival of civilization, please pass it on with or without attribution. People need to properly understand the nature of our climate problem in general, and the fossil fuel industry's blame for profiting from it in particular, in order to embrace the outlawing of the burning of fossil fuels.

They must be held accountable and they must NOT be allowed to influence energy policy ever again. They successfully sabotaged and/or watered down all the reforms proposed, from the December 2015 COP21 Climate Conference to the 2021 COP26 Debacle, as they have done at all the other global climate conferences through corruption or threats. Our survival and the welfare of the children of the world depends on stopping these criminals NOW.


Please Help the Children have an Opportunity to Live in a Viable Biosphere.

Many will read this and scoff. They do not accept the FACT that Business as usual is a death sentence for global civilization. They do not accept the FACT that nature does not negotiate. They do not accept the FACT that Incremental/half measures are like being half pregnant with Rosemary's baby. 

They will say that there is absolutely no way that the governments of the world will undertake even a tiny portion of the recommendations I list as sine qua non for our survival as a global civilization. 

Perhaps they are right about the governments. If they are, then perhaps we will, because of the successful degrading of democracy and the biosphere by the fossil fuel industry over the course of about a century, experience the roaring oceans and the collapse of all human civilization, not just global civilization.


If so, then the ocean violence, including its dramatic effects on human civilization, now predicted by science, was accurately described in New Testament Scripture Prophesy a long time ago.

“And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken." -- Luke 21:25-26

But whether you believe the above prophesy is valid or not, I think it safe to assume that our future ocean surface will be very unsafe. And below the surface, it will be even worse for the marine species we all depend on.

Suggested viewing:

Agelbert NOTE: Learn about biological stability of systems, negative feedbacks, positive feedbacks, population trends, ocean acidification and the very important issue of increasing anoxic (oxygen starved) conditions in the oceans directly caused by the continued burning of fossil fuels in the video below. Dr. Lubchenco is one of several credentialed leading climate scientists at this conference:

Biological Extinction | Discussion #11

Casina Pio IV

Published on Mar 2, 2017
How to Save the Natural World on Which We Depend PAS-PASS Workshop
Casina Pio IV, 27 February-1 March 2017

On our 4.54 billion year old planet, life is perhaps as much as 3.7 billion years old, photosynthesis and multi-cellularity dozens of times independently around 3.0 billion years old, and the emergence of plants, animals, and fungi onto land, by at least the Ordovician period, perhaps 480 million years ago, forests appearing around 370 million years ago, and the origin of modern groups such as mammals, birds, reptiles, and land plants subsequently. The geological record shows that there have been five major extinction-events in the past, the first of them about 542 million years ago, and suggests that 99% of the species that ever lived (5 billion of them?) have become extinct. The last major extinction event occurred about 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, and, in general, the number of species on earth and the complexity of their communities has increased steadily until near the present.
 

Suggested Reading:

Greenland now a major driver of rising seas: study    June 26, 2017 by Marlowe Hood
https://phys.org/news/2017-06-greenland-major-driver-seas.html#jCp

More summer sunshine leading to increased Greenland ice melt June 28, 2017
A team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, has discovered that a marked decrease in summer cloud cover during the last 20 years has significantly accelerated melt from the Greenland ice sheet.
https://phys.org/news/2017-06-summer-sunshine-greenland-ice.html#jCp

Greenland ice sheet may melt completely with 1.6 degrees of global warming March 12, 2012
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120312003232.htm

Storms caused massive Antarctic sea ice loss in 2016   
June 26, 2017
https://phys.org/news/2017-06-storms-massive-antarctic-sea-ice.html#jCp

The Real Sea Monsters: On the Hunt for Rogue Waves
By Lynne Peeples | September 2, 2009
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rogue-waves-ocean-energy-forecasting/

Rogue waves are no fish tale

Once regarded as extremely rare, satellite photos and radar imagery have documented the existence of numerous rogue waves, and it turns out that they are far more common than previously thought.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/15284/rogue-waves-are-no-fish-tale

Hydrosphere Based Renewable Energy for Large Cities

If you missed the first two parts, you can read them at the links below.

Climate Change, Blue Water Cargo Shipping and Predicted Ocean Wave Activity: PART 1 of 3

Climate Change, Blue Water Cargo Shipping and Predicted Ocean Wave Activity: PART TWO

You may print or post any part or the whole of the three parts of this article, with or without attribution, as many times as you wish. Spread these timely warnings far and wide. Remember, the biosphere we need to preserve is the only one we have. Without a Viable Biosphere, we cannot survive. We cannot have a viable biosphere unless we stop burning fossil fuels.

"We do not need a 'new' business model for energy because we never had one. What we need, if we wish to avoid extinction, is to plug the environmental and equity costs of energy production and use into our planning and thinking. " -- A.G. Gelbert


The 🦕🦖 Hydrocarbon 👹 Hellspawn Fossil Fuelers DID THE Clean Energy Inventions suppressing, Climate Trashing, Government corrupting, human health depleting CRIME. Since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free crooks, they are trying to AVOID DOING THE TIME or PAYING THE FINE!  Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on! 
« Last Edit: June 24, 2022, 04:58:02 pm by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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JULY 8, 2022

THE CHRIS HEDGES REPORT: SPLINTERLANDS’ CLIMATE DYSTOPIA

Chris Hedges speaks with author John Feffer about his novels set in a not-so-distant future disrupted by climate chaos.

Full Transcript:
https://therealnews.com/the-chris-hedges-report-splinterlands-climate-dystopia



« Last Edit: July 11, 2022, 02:10:56 pm by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12