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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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Posted by: AGelbert
« on: August 05, 2023, 05:25:04 pm »


The Crucial Years

This newsletter goes out free to everyone, thanks to the generosity of those who can afford the pay the modest and voluntary subscription fee. I fear they get nothing extra in return, save my heartfelt thanks.

August 5, 2023 by Bill McKibben
   
'Where Should I Live?'

In a 😬 terrifying summer, a search for safety


SNIPPET:

I’ve given a lot of talks about climate change over the years—that’s part of what organizers do. And I can predict with great confidence the questions that people will raise their hands to ask. “Isn’t the real problem overpopulation?” (Not really; most population growth is coming in places that use incredibly small amounts of energy). Or “what about nuclear?” (keep the plants we’ve got open if we safely can; new ones are incredibly slow and expensive to build, though someday a generation of yet newer ones could conceivably change that; in the meantime rely on the nuclear reactor hanging a safe 93 million miles up in the sky).

I can also predict the questions people will ask later, privately, as the crowd drifts out of the auditorium. One—”is it okay for me to have a kid?”—is almost unbearably painful; no one should have to ask it. The other—”where should I move” —is a (little) less traumatized. And I think it’s on a lot of minds, especially right now, as it becomes clear that many parts of our earth won’t be habitable going forward. As I tried to explain in a recent book, global heating is systematically shrinking the size of the board on which humans can play the game of life.

On the one hand, the question implies a certain self-centered approach to the climate crisis—how do I avoid this huge communal disaster—as well as a certain quanta of 💵 privilege: most people in this world, especially the ones who really need a new home, lack the resources or the legal ability to pick up and move. Still, we each get one life and we need to live it somewhere.

It’s easier, actually, to figure out where not to live. Phoenix may be the fastest-growing big city in the country, but anyone who moves there after this summer is not paying attention: 31 straight days over 110 Fahrenheit, and emergency rooms filled with people who burned themselves by… falling on the sidewalk. But it’s not just obvious places, like the middle of the desert. Last week, at four thousand feet in the Andes the temperature topped 95 degrees—in winter. (Weather historian Maximiliano Herrera described it as “one of the extreme events the world has ever seen”). Or take Athens is one of those places we like to call a cradle of western civilization, but two years ago the city’s “chief heat officer” was already warning it might be becoming uninhabitable; last month, during the longest heatwave in the city’s history, authorities closed the Acropolis to tourists in the afternoons.

Even in places used to dealing with extremes, life is getting harder; India’s monsoon, for instance, is ever more “violent and unpredictable.” In Himachal Pradesh, for instance, “the state has already received 1,200 percent more than its annual rainfall, according to data from the India Meteorological Department. Landslides and floods have claimed nearly 100 lives.” I could muster these kinds of statistics for virtually any place you want to name: a recent study found that every time the temperature rises another tenth of a degree Celsius, another 140 million humans find themselves living outside what scientists call the “human climate niche,” the zone with temperatures where our species flourishes.

But as this summer—with the increase in global temperature at least temporarily topping the 1.5 degrees Celsius that the world swore to avoid in Paris—demonstrates, no place is really safe, even within those supposedly habitable zones.

Full article:
https://open.substack.com/pub/billmckibben/p/where-should-i-live

AGelbert COMMENT:
Without a massive rejection of the "greed is good" Social Darwinist ideology that permeates TPTB, all the progress in neighborliness in Vermont, or anywhere else on this planet, will not amount to a hill of beans on behalf of the survival of our species. WHY? Because the morbidly rich, who are over 80% (or more) responsible for this runaway Catastrophic Climate Change, will continue to ignore absolutely everything you and all the scientists of good will, who have warned us for over 40 years that we need to change our biosphere degrading, suicidal stupidity, say BECAUSE those morbidly rich greedballs REALLY believe they can "survive" while over 90% of our species ☠️ perishes.

I did not write the following for the benefit of the elite greedball corporate polluters, mostly responsible for trashing our biospshere and dooming most of us, but I am certain many of them see it as a "solution":
How to Survive When, NOT IF, Catastrophic Climate Change Makes Earth's Climate Unsuitable For Humans
https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/catastrophic-climate-change/future-earth/msg602/#msg602

I agree with you that no place is really safe, but you will never convince the rich of that. They were totally invested in the Thatcher and Reagan egocentric stupidity long before Thatcher and Reagan, and the other neoliberal legerdemain water carriers (SEE: Milton Friedman) corrupted our government(s) with that morally bankrupt ideology. That said, I continue to be grateful to you for your efforts in warning anyone who can add and subtract objectively in biosphere math of how dire our situation is. Only people with a functioning moral compass will listen. Unfortunately, that excludes most people in the top 1% and politics. It's the Social Darwinism.

August 2, 2023 Shocking satellite images shows melting Greenland ice
 https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/catastrophic-climate-change/128681-global-climate-chaos-976065039/msg1219/#msg1219
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: August 01, 2023, 01:42:21 pm »


More Climate Updates based on Dr. Peter Carter’s Slides


Paul Beckwith 27.1K subscribers 4,945 views  Jun 28, 2023
Title speaks for itself. Lots of climate updates, reads like a Stephen King horror novel, but it’s real, and happening on a planet near you.

Please donate at http://PaulBeckwith.net to support my research and videos connecting the dots on abrupt climate system change.
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: July 28, 2023, 04:42:17 pm »

CleanTechnica

July 27, 2023 by Steve Hanley

The Collapse Of The Gulf Stream — An Epitaph For A 🥵 Dying Planet

The most recent study says the Gulf Stream may shut down as early as 2025, with devastating climate effects for the entire world.

SNIPPET:

What happens when the Gulf Stream collapses? According to The Guardian, it will severely disrupt the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America, and West Africa. It will increase storms and lower temperatures in Europe. It will lead to rising sea levels on the east coast of North America and further endanger both the Amazon rain forest and Antarctic ice sheets. “I think we should be very worried,” says Peter Ditlevsen. “This would be a very, very large change. The AMOC has not been shut off for 12,000 years.”

The Gulf Stream collapsed and restarted repeatedly during the ice ages that occurred from 115,000 to 12,000 years ago. It is one of the climate tipping points scientists are most concerned about as global temperatures continue to rise.

The new study, published July 25 in the journal Nature Communications, used sea surface temperature data stretching back to 1870 as a proxy for the change in strength of the Gulf Stream over time. They compared the date to the path seen in systems that are approaching a particular type of crossover point called a “saddle-node bifurcation.” We would call it a “tipping point.”

The data fit that model “surprisingly well,” Ditlevsen said.

Full article:
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/07/27/the-collapse-of-the-gulf-stream-an-epitaph-for-a-dying-planet/

AGelbert COMMENT (there are more at the article comments area): This article should be SHOUTED FROM THE ROOFTOPS!

But 😞, the Hydrocarbon Hellspawn and their bought and paid for morally bankrupt lackeys in government, the media AND Wall Street will, as Steve Hanley asserts, pretend AMOC decay to nothing is ... (see below):



Readings for reality based people:

Quote
"When a mystery is complicated, the French tell us to look for a woman; but in sleuthing among corporations, we found it was much better to look for the chief accountant." -- James Stewart Martin -- ALL HONORABLE MEN

Fascists, like termites, are able organizers, and thoroughly attached to their way of life.  -- ALL HONORABLE MEN by James Stewart Martin

Quote
"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by 🦕🦖 😈 evil men." - Plato

To say that Fossil Fuel Industry 🦕🦖 😈 disinformation isn’t the whole story is to knock down a straw man: the fact remains that it is a major--and perhaps the most important--part of the story.

"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

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

Quote
There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love. Washington Irving

How to Survive When, NOT IF, Catastrophic Climate Change Makes Earth's Climate Unsuitable For Humans

NOTE: THIS is what the Hydrocarbon Hellspawn will soon be pushing (see graphic below). You are warned: A Space Mirror will NOT work. WHY? Because, as the credentialed scientists that have studied this in detail point out, reducing the amount of incoming solar radiation (i.e. insolation) will not be able to counteract the runaway greenhouse effect from too much CO2, CH4 AND H2O in vapor form.

So, when you hear, about 5 or six years from now, what a "great solution" to Catastrophic Global Heating a Space Mirror costing 100's of trillions 😵 of global economy crushing dollars is from our "😇 loyal servants" in the 😈 Hydrocarbon fuels "industry", don't fall for that 📢 LIE.


The following is NOT optional if TPTB REPENT of their suicidally stupid and greedy ways and EMBRACE reality based Climate Remediaton and Repair:
 Economist Steve Keen: "We need a World War Two mentality to deal with the real breakdown of nature."

Posted by: AGelbert
« on: April 01, 2023, 05:08:25 pm »

Global Warming: The 😈🐘🦕🦖🐍 Decade We Lost Earth



Simon Clark 470K subscribers 118,227 views  Mar 17, 2023
The story of how one man cost us a world with less than 2°C of warming in 1989. To try everything Brilliant has to offer—free—for a full 30 days, visit https://www.brilliant.org/simonclark. The first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant's annual premium subscription.

This is a follow-up video to Global Warming: An Inconvenient History, going into much more detail of events from 1979 to 1989. In particular this is the story of the "villain" of climate change, a man you've likely never heard of before. But is that a fair description? You be the judge.

Previous video on the Inconvenient History of Global Warming:   

MAIN SOURCES
Merchants of Doubt: https://geni.us/merchantsofdoubt

Losing Earth: https://geni.us/losingearth

INSPIRATION
BobbyBroccoli:   
 / @bobbybroccoli 
Jon Bois:   
 • Jon Bois 

You can support the channel by becoming a patron at http://www.patreon.com/simonoxfphys

--------- II ---------

More about me https://www.simonoxfphys.com/

--------- II ---------

Music by Epidemic Sound: http://epidemicsound.com
Some stock footage courtesy of Getty.
Directed and edited by Luke Negus.

This video essay in the style of Jon Bois and BobbyBroccoli is about the history of climate change, and how John Sununu is the villain of the story, preventing a binding agreement on carbon emissions at the Noordwijk conference of 1989. Who is to blame for climate change? Who caused global warming? Why was John Sununu so important? These questions and more are answered in this video about the history of science and global warming.
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: March 30, 2023, 06:09:22 pm »

MARCH 29, 2023 By BILL MCKIBBEN

Regular Old Intelligence is Sufficient--Even Lovely

Thinking through the other possible apocalypse

Precisely twenty years ago, I published a book called “Enough” that outlined my fears about artificial intelligence and its companion technologies like advanced robotics and human genetic engineering. It did well enough, even coming out in a number of foreign editions (it turns out that the German for ‘enough’ is the delightful ‘genug.’) But like most warnings it came too early; indeed, warnings generally come too early until they are too late.

Now, however, we may be in a brief window when we have ears to hear. And so I’m going to take a day off from fretting about the thermometer to talk about this other peril—though, as we shall see, they’re related.

This newsletter, I hope, is helpful. It’s free so that all can read, but if you can afford the modest subscription without undue hardship, that’s very kind of you.

The cascading releases of chatbots over the last few months—the GPT family, Bing, Bard—have made it clear that some powerful new force is entering our world. These devices, ‘large language models’ trained by exposure to vast swaths of the internet, have cheerfully explained to people how to build explosives and how to secretly buy guns; they’ve tried to break up marriages and conspired to figure out how to escape the safeguards with which they’ve been equipped. Much of our interaction with them so far has been trivial—we’ve taught them tricks, as if they were pets, and asked them to write limericks. Experts have raised reasonable questions about whether they’re as yet sentient—they work, after all, like giant auto-correction devices, working their magic by guessing what word should come next.

There’s much about them we don’t understand—see Sue Halpern’s excellent essay in the New Yorker today, which points out how opaque the companies marketing these new entities have been. And as is usually the case, most commentary is glib: Tom Friedman has pronounced it “Promethean,” pointing out brightly that it could be “a tool or a weapon.”

But there’s clearly an undercurrent of profound unease. Friedman’s Times colleague, Ezra Klein, has done some of the most dedicated reporting on the topic since he moved to the Bay Area a few years ago, talking with many of the people creating this new technology.

He has two key findings, I think: one is that the people building these systems have only a limited sense of what’s actually happening inside the black box—the bot is doing endless calculations instantaneously, but not in a way even their inventors can actually follow

And second, the people inventing them think they are potentially incredibly dangerous: ten percent of them, in fact, think they might extinguish the human species. They don’t know exactly how, but think Sorcerer’s Apprentice (or google ‘paper clip maximizer.’) 

Taken together, those two things give rise to an obvious question, one Klein has asked: “’If you think calamity so possible, why do this at all?’ Different people have different things to say, but after a few pushes, I find they often answer from something that sounds like the A.I.’s perspective. Many — not all, but enough that I feel comfortable in this characterization —
feel that they have a responsibility to usher this new form of intelligence into the world.”

That is, it seems to me, a dumb answer from smart people—the answer not of people who have thought hard about ethics or even 💣 outcomes, but the answer that would be supplied by a kind of cultist. (Probably the kind with stock options). Still, it does go, fairly neatly, with the default modern assumption that if we can do something we should do it, which is what I want to talk about. The question that I think very few have bothered to answer is, why?

When you read accounts of AI’s usefulness, the example that comes up most often is something called ‘protein folding.’ One pundit after another explains that an AI program called Deep Mind worked far faster than scientists doing experiments to uncover the basic structure of all the different proteins, which will allow quicker drug development. It’s regarded as ipso facto better because it’s faster, and hence—implicitly—worth taking the risks that come with AI.

But why? The sun won’t blow up for a few billion years, meaning that if we don’t manage to drive ourselves to extinction, we’ve got all the time in the world. If it takes a generation or two for normal intelligence to come up with the structure of all the proteins, some people may die because a drug isn’t developed in time for their particular disease, but erring on the side of avoiding extinction seems mathematically sound. We’ve actually managed a great deal of scientific advance—maybe more than our societies can easily handle—without AI. What’s the rush?

The other challenge that people cite, over and over again, to justify running the risks of AI is to “combat climate change,” which everyone reading this newsletter knows a bit about. As it happens, regular old intelligence has already give us most of what we need: engineers have cut the cost of solar power and windpower and the batteries to store the energy they produce so dramatically that they’re now the cheapest power on earth. We don’t actually need artificial intelligence in this case; we need natural compassion, so that we work with the necessary speed to deploy these technologies.

Beyond those, the cases become trivial, or worse. Here’s Klein, playing devil’s advocate: “I wish that I could draw things I can't. It's neat for me, that I can tell the computer what to draw and it will draw. It allows me to play around in art in a way I couldn't before.” Actually, though, playing Etch-a-Sketch with Dall-E, the drawing bot, isn’t really likely to produce deep satisfaction: what we know about human creativity is that is that for us to really lose ourselves we don’t need to be good at something, we just have to be at the limit of whatever our ability is. It’s in the struggle that we achieve the kind of bliss that comes with art, or chess, or whatever. Making it easier actually lessens the pleasure: the athletic equivalent of artificial intelligence is artificial strength or artificial endurance, achieved with various drugs. But as we’ve thought about them, we’ve decided that undermines the whole point of the enterprise. Running a marathon as fast as you can is the point; if finishing the distance as fast as possible was the goal, you could just drive a car.

All of this is a way of saying something we don’t say as often as we should: humans are good enough. We don’t require improvement. We can solve the challenges we face, as humans. It may take us longer than if we can employ some “new form of intelligence,” but slow and steady is the whole point of the race. Unless, of course, you’re trying to make money, in which case “first-mover advantage” is the point. But that’s only useful for a tiny group of shareholders, not for the rest of us.

Allowing that we’re already good enough—indeed that our limitations are intrinsic to us, define us, and make us human—should guide us towards trying to shut down this technology before it does deep damage. A letter began circulating today, signed by dozens of AI professors and futurist thinkers like Yuval Harari: It calls on “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least six months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” Some have challenged the motives of the signatories, and the fact that Elon Musk is backing it should either give you pause or remind you of an adage about stopped clocks. But slowing down all this work, by whatever peaceful means we can, seems sane to me. GPT-4 is in a remarkable rush: Friedman exults about how it produces mediocre poetry in a flash, and then translates it into Mandarin in another flash (mediocre Mandarin would be my guess). But what’s the hurry? We’re not short of good poetry—we’ve got far more of it than people read already, in any language.

And here’s the thing: pausing, slowing down, stopping calls on the one human gift shared by no other creature, and perhaps by no machine. We are the animal that can, if we want to, decide not to do something we’re capable of doing. In individual terms, that ability forms the core of our ethical and religious systems; in societal terms it’s been crucial as technology has developed over the last century. We’ve, so far, reined in nuclear and biological weapons, designer babies, and a few other maximally dangerous new inventions. It’s time to say do it again, and fast—faster than the next iteration of this tech.

We’re good at building things, but so are beavers and bees. Human beings are fascinating precisely because we can also not build things. It may be our highest calling.
https://open.substack.com/pub/billmckibben/p/regular-old-intelligence-is-sufficient

AGelbert COMMENT: The problem with AI has absolutely nothing to do with AI and everything to do with the ideology of the programmers that write the iterative algorithms within the AI. AI is actually a misnomer, because AI never has, and never will, be a form of "thinking". AI has always been a way to boost the speed of machine decision(s) on what to do when a given cascade of electronic inputs from sensors flags a need for some sort of action, or when there is a need to plow through some gigantic data base to gather stats on some kind of data.
 
Because of the 'greed is good' based assumption that, as long as pecuniary gain is the result of AI software decisions, regardless of whether they result in biosphere degradation, the "Intelligence" attributed to AI is also a misnomer. In a reality based world, ANY decision to profit over planet cannot, by any stretch of the Social Darwinist wishful thinking imagination, be considered "intelligent".

AI will ALWAYS reflect the ideology of the programmers that wrote the iterative algorithms. IF said ideology is the morally bankrupt, profit over people and planet, Social Darwinist Ideology, then AI will put this evil on steroids because AI just does, whatever it does, faster. IF, on the other hand, the ideology of the programmers is "Depart From Evil (i.e. DO NO direct or indirect HARM!), Do Good, Seek Peace, AND Pursue It", AI will actually help humanity. And YES, you CAN have an ETHICS BASED BUSINESS that is PROFITABLE. In a reality based, irrefutable biosphere math world, that would be the ONLY type of business model that is not subject ot criminal prosecution. Unfortunately for us, too many members in good standing of TPTB are Social Darwinists. Like Neo-Darwinists, NONE OF THEM are reality based.

New Peer-Reviewed Paper Challenges Neo-Darwinism

Finally, let me warn all those people out there that are bombarded with all this hype about AI doing "all these great things for us". AI is a TOOL. TPTB are NOT interested in using that TOOL to make the world a "better, safer and healthier place", no matter what they claim. The proof of that is that you have NEVER HEARD ONE WORD about using AI to run the Courts! Now why do you suppose they don't want AI in there? Isn't it "faster"? Isn't it "good"? Isn't it "smart"? Isn't it "ethical"? If AI is such a "big benefit to society", why isn't it used to make our Criminal "Justice" System REALLY JUST?

I'm glad you ;) asked. AI is not allowed in the Courts because AI is CONSISTENT in whatever, good or evil, it does. 

   THINK, people!
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: February 16, 2023, 07:17:22 pm »

RADIO ECOSHOCK

February 15, 2023

Mass Extinction with Apocalyptic Economics
https://www.ecoshock.org/2023/02/mass-extinction-with-apocalyptic-economics.html

AGelbert NOTE: In the second half of the Radio Ecoshock Podcast, Keen explains in the interview that wind transporting heat from the low-latitudes to the high-latitudes would destroy the Ozone layer in less than a decade, ending human civilization

STEVE KEEN: INSANE ECONOMICS TAKES US TO RUIN

An Ecoshock listener wrote: “you have got to hear this!” We all need to hear Australian economist Steve Keen explain why corporations and governments are operating on crazy economic theories about the impacts of climate change.

I remember when the Garnaut Climate Change Review was released in Australia, back in 2008. Garnaut talked about the cost to Gross Domestic Production of a 3 to 4 degree C warming. It would be costly, but business would go on as usual he thought.

Starting in the 1990’s, Yale economist William Nordhaus started us down this dangerous track. Without a real basis in science, Nordhaus assured the world that 2 degrees C of warming would be the upper “safe” limit. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change went along with that for a couple of decades, even as their own scientists raised more and more damages coming not just at 1.5 degrees C, but right now at just over 1 degree warming.

But I’ve read plenty of business-oriented reports suggesting 3 or 4 degrees C. warming is no big deal. Now we know that would be disastrous, likely a civilization-ending event. Business does not go on. Maybe humans do not go on, at least not billions of us.

Steven Keen blows up the Nordhaus theology and all the fellow-travelers who operate as climate minimizers, sometimes with fossil fuel related funding. Keen was an associate professor of economics at University of Western Sydney. He became Head of Economics at at Kingston University in London, and now does independent research. This man knows economics, and he is 📢🚨 blowing the whistle.

Keen tells us: it’s not just corruption. It is just what economists believe. They can become a zealot for capitalism. They reject any opposition or criticism. William Nordhaus said 85% of workers will not be affected by climate because they work indoors, in controlled environments.

By their formula, 6 degrees C of warming leads to an 8% fall in GDP. Keen calls it crazy. He is working on a research project on this right now.“ It’s just nonsense”.
Keen thinks only a major disaster will bring any change. Until the public is freaked out, they will not accept mandated changes to their lifestyles. Politicians cannot get too far ahead of that. To have a chance to maintain a civilization, he says we need to have some reserves, like grain stored in case of disaster, and a ration-based economy, so everyone gets a share. We need a World War Two mentality to deal with the real breakdown of nature.

In the second half of this show, you hear “Exposing Apocalyptic Economics with Steve Keen” as posted January 30, 2023 by theAnalysis.news. My thanks for permission to rebroadcast.

You can listen to Steve Keen and host Colin Anthes 🔊 here.

WARMING COULD CHANGE THE WHOLE ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION SYSTEM (which leads to a very different ☠️ planet…)

During the interview, Keen points to a hair-raising possibility: the entire atmospheric circulation system could shift during global warming. The result would be a band of deserts around the mid-latitudes (like America, China, and Europe) as we now find in the Middle East. High amounts of rain and snow would pour down at both Poles.

This is well explained in this piece from Harvard research:

“The atmosphere transports heat throughout the globe extremely well, but present-day atmospheric characteristics prevent heat from being carried directly from the equator to the poles. Currently, there are three distinct wind cells – Hadley Cells, Ferrell Cells, and Polar Cells – that divide the troposphere into regions of essentially closed wind circulations. In this arrangement, heat from the equator generally sinks around 30° latitude where the Hadley Cells end. As a result, the warmest air does not reach the poles.

If atmospheric dynamics were different, however, it is plausible that one large overturning circulation per hemisphere could exist and that wind from the low-latitudes could transport heat to the high-latitudes. As an explanation for equable climates, Brian Farrell presented this idea in 1990 and advocated that during equable climates, the Hadley Cells extended from the equator to the poles (Farrell, 1990).”

The 1990 Farrell paper is called “Equable Climate Dynamics”.

You can follow up with this 2014 Open Access paper: Weakening of the global atmospheric circulation with global warming.
https://www.ecoshock.org/2023/02/mass-extinction-with-apocalyptic-economics.html

For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator. 1st Peter 4:17-19

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. -- 2nd Peter 3:10


The heart of the prudent getteth knowledge; and the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge. -- Proverbs 18:15
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: January 30, 2023, 03:14:44 pm »

 January 30, 2015, 07:53:34 pm
Quote
JD Here's something for you to ponder:
Wrong Brothers at Kitty Hawk to Mach 1: 1903 to 1955
Mach 1 to a space station along with a few Newtonian physics sling shot maneuvers to send probes hither and yon: 1955-2015...

I DON'T THINK SO. WHERE do you get the idea that technological progress SLOWED DOWN after Mach 1? I think it didn't "slow down". I think it has ACCELLERATED. But 🦖 fossil fuel profits had to be 😈 preserved. It's REALLY that simple, JD.

People here (Doomstead Diner) talk about how the elite are going to off the "useless eaters" with all kinds of devilish plans. ::) RE is RIGHT to claim we don't DO separate biospheres well.

They tried that in a Mars Colony setup right here on earth. ALL the atmosphere, water, soil, plants, people and so on were self contained in large concrete and glass building.

But they forgot to figure in the fact that fresh concrete absorbs a lot oxygen (concrete cures for DECADES after it first sets, absorbing oxygen at lesser and lesser rates as it cures).

Guess what happened to the scientists in the Mars colony biome?  Remember, these are dedicated, brilliant individuals. 

They began to have arguments. They formed cliques and began increasingly hostile exchanges and hate filled and hysterical arguments and accusations. To avoid violence the experiment had to be aborted for a brief period.

As soon as the scientists exited the biome, they immediately recovered their civilized demeanor and were thoroughly chagrined by their video taped descent into sniping and false accusations of research sabotaging.

THEN they found that the oxygen level when the paranoia and sniping began had dropped below 18% because the concrete was sucking it up. The plants could not keep up. People were NOT getting headaches like typical anoxia victims get that would have warned them. No the instrumentation in the biome DID NOT register dangerous oxygen levels for some reason - it's in the article - they fixed it  (I've been there as a pilot - When you've got a headache and you are above 10,000 feet without on board oxygen, you KNOW why and you descend).

So, it is EASY to turn us into a bunch a of even more barbaric and insane bastards than we are RIGHT NOW! :o  I can take every single person here and have them ready to go to war with anybody else over imagined paranoia by simply lowering the oxygen from the normal (about 21%) to 18% or lower (without telling them about it, OF COURSE 😈. They won't notice! They'll just turn into savages and eventually start murdering each other!

So the "elite" doesn't need to gas us with hydrogen sulfide or any other expensive plan. ALL THEY NEED TO DO is keep burning those 🦖 fossil fuels full tilt while ☠️ reducing the photosynthetic phytoplankton and flora through heated oceans and desertification. It's SIMPLE! It's also a GREAT BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY!

When word gets out that, unfortunately , the 21% we are used to isn't "holding", SOMEBODY is going to make a LOT OF MONEY selling bottled oxygen...


I'll dig up the article if you want. It's all DOCUMENTED. This is not hyperbole or scare mongering. Our intelligence, morality and civilized demeanor vanishes when we go below around 18% oxygen in the air we breathe, period. I suppose our body senses something isn't right and our brain proceeds to look for someone to blame for it. And that's with oxygen. There are other QUITE COMMON atmospheric gasses than bring about all sorts of "interesting" (depending upon your point of view) responses from Homo SAPS. We are VERY fragile.


"As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come." Proverbs 26:2
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: November 16, 2022, 11:51:38 am »

NOVEMBER 15, 2022 by BILL MCKIBBEN 🌞✨


Someday the climate fight will be dull--and that's how we'll know we're winning

Egypt Dispatch 5: Looking back at America's elections from Sharm el Sheikh

Let us stipulate that climate change shouldn’t be a politically polarizing issue—physics has assigned us a straightforward task, which is to stop burning fossil fuel, and given us a tight timeline. As a world, we should be hard at work; it would be a hard task, but—especially if we’d started when we got our first warnings—well within our powers as a species.

Let us further stipulate that it clearly is a politically polarizing issue, probably the biggest of all time, because power and money are at stake, and the people who possess them under the current system (Exxon, Putin, the Koch Brothers) will do anything they can think of to avoid losing those possessions. That’s what this COP and all the others are really about: an effort to somehow overcome, or work around, that power. There are 636 registered fossil fuel lobbyists on hand here, and the biggest single delegation is from the United Arab Emirates; it’s quite possible that more of the people here want to keep the current order than undermine it.

This is a fighting newsletter. The fight is in its decisive stages, and the next years will tell, so this comes to you for free. But if you can afford the modest monthly subscription without financial hardship, you’ll help keep it coming .

Upgrade to paid

Because the climate movement was decisively losing this fight, we needed to make it dramatic—we needed, say, to go to jail. That was absurd, at some level—why should someone have go to jail on behalf of physics? But changing the narrative requires getting people’s attention. That’s why my dear friend Svitlana Romanko got carried out of a room at the Egypt talks today—she’s the Ukrainian climate activist fighting fossil-fueled Russian fascism, and she refused to sit silently while Russian ‘diplomats’ told their lies. “I am glad that I named evil by name and I was able to tell them what all Ukrainians would like to tell them if they were here,” she said. “You are a terrorist state, you are genociding, torturing and killing us daily for nine months, your oil and gas are killing us. You are war criminals, you must not be here but in international court.”

But our job is not forever and just to make trouble; eventually, when we start to win, it’s the other side that will need to get desperate. And slowly, too slowly, it’s happening. This fall’s elections are mnore important than anything that’s happening here at Sharm el Sheikh, I think—the one in Brazil last month, and the ones across America last week, and the one that could come in Georgia early next month.

These elections were not, for the most part, fought on climate change, which in itself is something of an accomplishment. In the U.S., Biden’s main legislative accomplishment was the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is mostly a climate bill, and arguably the most expensive new attempt by the federal government to proactively tackle a problem since the LBJ years. So the fact that the GOP didn’t go after it indicates they understood its basic popularity.

But the news is better than that. Exit polling indicates that for voters considered climate change the second most important issue facing the country—actually, it tied with abortion, and came in ahead of crime, despite the fact that those issues were the centerpieces of Democratic and Republican strategy. (The first place issue, of course, was “economy/jobs”, which is pretty much always the first place issue, because everyone needs a job and has to live in the economy.) A tenth of the populace now understands that climate counts more than anything else—which means that a much larger percentage understands that it counts an awful lot. In any event, a tenth is a big share. And that tenth is obviously concentrated among younger voters—who turned out in larger than expected numbers, and helped turn the election from a toxic red tide into something we can build on.

Still, the political fight continues, and will always continue as long as serious money and power continue to be at stake. Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock come next, in a Georgia runoff in early December. It’s a crazy battle—between the man who may be the single most articulate U.S. Senator, and the one who would definitely be the least. Walker seems slightly fixated on climate change—early on he explained that we send “good air” to China so…nevermind. This week he added to his legend with a stirring defense of “gas guzzlers,” which is not what their defenders usually call them, but he was saying the noisy part out loud. Even Walker, however, understands there must be some problem associated with the internal combustion engine, so he added—mysteriously—”we got the good emissions under those cars.” And he said (and again, note the concession to some kind of reality) “If we was ready for the green agenda, I'd raise my hand right now. But we're not ready right now.”

This has become the remaining defense of the  fossil fuel industry—’it would be good to get rid of us, but we can’t yet, so 😈 wait a while.’ It’s dangerous nonsense, but it does illustrate how far we’ve moved the reality needle. Raphael Warnock, meanwhile, is not particularly noted as a climate warrior (he’s got other issues where he’s leading) but he too illustrates how far we’ve come: one of his big boasts headed into the runoff is that he helped land a big new battery plant near Augusta. And here’s how he spoke about it: “Georgia is open for business, and today’s announcement is good news for both Georgia’s growing clean energy economy and Augusta workers.  I was proud to fight for and help secure the $178 million needed for this new facility, and I’ll continue to work closely with businesses looking to start or expand in Georgia to secure critical investments that will help create local, good-paying jobs.” Which is not the way I’d describe it—I’d go on and on about the low-carbon future or some such, which is why I’d lose the Georgia elections by a mile. (Also I live in Vermont). But it’s the right way for him to speak about it, because it’s almost dull.

In other words, Democrats have begun to normalize the transition we need to make, to assimilate it into the standard language of politics, and Republicans increasingly look like…morons. Walker actually seems quite dumb, but in this case it’s not his fault; he’s stuck by virtue of his party defending something stupid (“gas guzzlers”). It’s a harder and harder case to make with each passing quarter, because more and more people can read the future. Earlier this year the University of Georgia (whose football glory represents Walker’s main claim on voters) announced a big new center focused on “electric mobility.” “Developments in battery technology, the growth in electric vehicle sales, and the transition to renewable energy are a trifecta for significant societal and economic change delivered by higher levels of energy efficiency and cheaper electricity,” said Regents Professor Richard Watson. “UGA is poised to help Georgia switch on a new future.” The trustees of the University of Georgia are probably not particularly liberal, but they understand about $178 million battery factories.

This normalization is crucial, and ongoing. Another important development along these same lines yesterday, as Ben Jealous was named the new head of America’s biggest environmental group, the Sierra Club. The fossil fuel industry has worked long and hard to try and carve away Black voters and politicians, with donations and with common-man rhetoric. (If you’ve never read the NAACP’s reports on this “fossil fuel foolery", they’re enlightening). But Black Americans remain among the staunchest supporters of action on climate change (because they are among its prominent victims). And now this tie will grow even stronger: Jealous, the former head of the biggest civil rights group in America (the NAACP), is going to lead its biggest green group. This represents a formidable kind of influence. (Jealous is also just good at what he does).

I don’t know if we can address the climate crisis in time; I do know it depends on this political evolution continuing, and speeding up. We have to break the effective power of the fossil fuel industry; it’s going to be close. We’ll need to continue being dramatic, because for now they’re still ahead. But we also need to be dull. Hail Mary passes, but also four-yards-in-a-cloud of dust grind-it-out running game. We’re starting to put points on the board.
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: October 16, 2022, 02:34:50 pm »

November 19, 2021

Agelbert NOTE: After the Glasgow COP26 COP-OUT, the news immediately thereafter of BIG BUCKS spent by Big Oil for NEW Oil Leases in the Gulf of Mexico AND MORE BIG BUCKS in CONTINUED Federal Government SUBSIDIES for the Hydrocarbon "Industry", there can be no doubt whatsoever as to WHO is In Charge of Policies by the governments of industrialized nations to address Catastrophic Climate Change.


So, this is an appropriate, to put it mildly, time to repost this article.

How to Survive When, NOT IF, Catastrophic Climate Change Makes Earth's Climate Unsuitable For Humans

By Anthony G. Gelbert

During many periods in human history, some were doing just fine and others lived on the edge of starvation in a constant state of collapse. Abrupt changes in climate, such as that caused in France by a massive Laki volcanic eruption in Iceland in 1783, have resulted in famine induced starvation. In that case, starvation was followed by social upheaval and revolution, instead of collapse. Civilization in Iceland was nearly wiped out with that eruption (over one third of the population was killed), but did not collapse.

For a collapse to occur, the society destroying pressure must last longer than a decade or so. For example, natural climate alterations that produced lengthy droughts caused some ancient starving civilizations to eventually collapse. 

SNIPPET From the March 21, 2016 article, "Ten Civilizations or Nations That Collapsed From Drought", by Jeff Masters:

Drought is the great enemy of human civilization. Drought deprives us of the two things necessary to sustain life--food and water. When the rains stop and the soil dries up, cities die and civilizations collapse, as people abandon lands no longer able to supply them with the food and water they need to live. While the fall of a great empire is usually due to a complex set of causes, drought has often been identified as the primary culprit or a significant contributing factor in a surprising number of such collapses. Drought experts Justin Sheffield and Eric Wood of Princeton, in their 2011 book, Drought, identify more than ten civilizations, cultures and nations that probably collapsed, in part, because of drought. As we mark World Water Day on March 22, we should not grow overconfident that our current global civilization is immune from our old nemesis--particularly in light of the fact that a hotter climate due to global warming will make droughts more intense and impacts more severe. So, presented here is a "top ten" list of drought's great power over some of the mightiest civilizations in world history--presented chronologically.

֍ Collapse #1. The Akkadian Empire in Syria, 2334 BC - 2193 BC.
 
֍ Collapse #2. The Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, 4200 years ago.

֍ Collapse #3. The Late Bronze Age (LBA) civilization in the Eastern Mediterranean. About 3200 years ago, the Eastern Mediterranean hosted some of the world’s most advanced civilizations.

֍ Collapse #4. The Maya civilization of 250 - 900 AD in Mexico. Severe drought killed millions of Maya people due to famine and lack of water, and initiated a cascade of internal collapses that destroyed their civilization at the peak of their cultural development, between 750 - 900 AD.

֍ Collapse #5. The Tang Dynasty in China, 700 - 907 AD. At the same time as the Mayan collapse, China was also experiencing the collapse of its ruling empire, the Tang Dynasty. Dynastic changes in China often occurred because of popular uprisings during crop failure and famine associated with drought.

֍ Collapse #6. The Tiwanaku Empire of Bolivia's Lake Titicaca region, 300 - 1000 AD. The Tiwanaku Empire was one of the most important South American civilizations prior to the Inca Empire. After dominating the region for 500 years, the Tiwanaku Empire ended abruptly between 1000 - 1100 AD, following a drying of the region, as measured by ice accumulation in the Quelccaya Ice Cap, Peru.

֍ Collapse #7. The Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) culture in the Southwest U.S. in the 11th - 12th centuries AD. Beginning in 1150 AD, North America experienced a 300-year drought called the Great Drought.

֍ Collapse #8. The Khmer Empire based in Angkor, Cambodia, 802 - 1431 AD. The Khmer Empire ruled Southeast Asia for  intense decades-long droughts interspersed with intense monsoons in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that, in combination with other factors, contributed to the empire's demise.

֍ Collapse #9. The Ming Dynasty in China, 1368 - 1644 AD. China's Ming Dynasty--one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history--collapsed at a time when the most severe drought in the region in over 4000 years was occurring, according to sediments from Lake Huguang Maar analyzed in a 2007 article in Nature by Yancheva et al.

֍ Collapse #10. Modern Syria. Syria's devastating civil war that began in March 2011 has killed over 300,000 people, displaced at least 7.6 million, and created an additional 4.2 million refugees. While the causes of the war are complex, a key contributing factor was the nation's devastating drought that began in 1998. The drought brought Syria's most severe set of crop failures in recorded history, which forced millions of people to migrate from rural areas into cities, where conflict erupted. This drought was almost certainly Syria's worst in the past 500 years (98% chance), and likely the worst for at least the past 900 years (89% chance), according to a 2016 tree ring study by Cook et al., "Spatiotemporal drought variability in the Mediterranean over the last 900 years." Human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases were "a key attributable factor" in the drying up of wintertime precipitation in the Mediterranean region, including Syria, in recent decades, as discussed in a NOAA press release that accompanied a 2011 paper by Hoerling et al., On the Increased Frequency of Mediterranean Drought.

A 2016 paper by drought expert Colin Kelley showed that the influence of human greenhouse gas emissions had made recent drought in the region 2 - 3 times more likely.

Ten Civilizations or Nations That Collapsed From Drought - lots of great pictures

As Dr. Jeff Masters evidenced above, extended drought, sometimes alternating with other harsh climate conditions like intense rains, can lead to starvation. Long wars exacerbate the situation, leading directly to collapse.

In addition to the above, there is another climate change based collapse level attack on human civilization, one that is 100% unavoidable now, that has wreaked havoc in the past.

SNIPPET from the March 23, 2018 article, "Humanity has contended with rising seas before — and it didn’t go well for us", by Alxandru Micu:

The Neolithic revolution was the first major transformation humanity had passed — the transition foraging to farming. Spreading out from the Middle East, this wave of change took peoples used to hunt and forage wherever they pleased and tied them down, hoe in hand, to sedentary — but oh so lucrative — farms and fields.

Around 7,600 years ago, however, the revolution paused — no new agricultural settlements seemed to pop up in Southeastern Europe around the time, existing communities declined, and the progress of civilization as a whole came to a standstill. Up until now, we didn’t have any inkling as to why this happened, but new research from the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, the Goethe University in Frankfurt, and the University of Toronto sheds some light on this mysterious period.

According to their findings, this lull in progress was due to an abrupt rise in sea levels in the northern Aegean Sea. Evidence of this event was calcified in the fossils of tiny marine algae preserved in seafloor sediments.

The impact this event had on societal dynamics and overall development during the time highlights the potential economic and social threats posed by sea level rise in the future, the team says. Given that climate-change-associated changes in sea level are virtually unavoidable, the team hopes their findings will help us better prepare for the flooding ahead.

“Approximately 7,600 years ago, the sea level must have risen abruptly in the Mediterranean regions bordering Southeastern Europe. The northern Aegean, the Marmara Sea and the Black Sea recorded an increase of more than one meter. This led to the flooding of low-lying coastal areas that would have been ideal areas for settlement,” says lead author Professor Dr. Jens Herrle.

The evidence supports a link between the two timeouts in the Neolithic revolution and the flooding events. The event 8,400 years ago coincides with archaeological findings suggesting that settlements in low-lying areas were under significant hardship from encroaching seas and other associated climatic changes. The renewed rise just 800 years later likely amplified these communities’ woes, keeping them from making the transition to agriculture.

“The source of this may have been Lake Agassiz in North America. This glacial meltwater lake was enclosed in ice and experienced a massive breach during this period, which emptied an enormous volume of water into the ocean.”

Past fluctuations in sea levels have already had a significant effect on human history during the early days of agriculture, the authors note, warning that it would be unwise to dismiss the challenges it will place in our path in the future.

"Humanity has contended with rising seas before — and it didn’t go well for us"

The article goes on to repeat the overly conservative estimate from the IPCC of a rise by up to "one meter over the next 100 years". That is the same IPCC that predicted the amount of ice depletion we have at present at the poles would not occur until 2070. That is the same IPCC that has NOT figured in the contribution of ice loss from Greenland to global sea level rise in any of the models.

So, if you are a logical person, I recommend you count on 3 to 6 meters, at least, of sea level rise several decades before the end of the century. As Peter Ward says (The Flooded Earth: Our Future In a World Without Ice Caps by Peter D. Ward), over 25% of the world's arable land is near sea level and will be flooded. Most major airports along coastlines will be flooded. Every harbor facility in the world will require a staggering amount of land fill to raise them as the sea level goes up. Most coastal real estate, currently highly assessed in value, will be flooded and become worthless.     

By the way, the latest science indicates that rapid sea level rise will be accompanied by a large increase in volcanic eruptions (which might slow down the heating due to a temporary increase in aerosols), and increase in earthquake activity. The volcanic aerosols, at most, will be a minor speed bump on the way to intolerable climate caos. So, please don't count on volcanic eruptions to 'save us' from global warming hell. That is wishful thinking.

I am not a voice "crying in the wilderness" on this issue. I will provide you some screenshots from the video of a scientist who recently wrote the book, "Waking the Climate Giant". He predicts a continued increase in volcanic activity, now observed in the data, due to terrain bounce from melting land ice and increased pressure on the surrounding seabed, as the the global average temperature increases. It's not the volcanoes that are increasing the heat, it's the greenhouse gases that are causing massive ice melt that, in turn, triggers earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Read his book if you disagree. I just watched the video but I think he is spot on.

On Earth, destructive climate change was not catastrophic before. The difference now it that the entire globe will be impacted. Humans have never lived on a planet with an average temperature of 3° C above pre-industrial. We will pass that mark up a half century before 2100 and continue towards PLUS 4° C and beyond, with no available technological or natural negative feedback mechanism to stop the continued acceleration, not slowing, of the rate of increase in temperature.

Already our atmosphere is being distorted by global warming to the point of pushing the dry subtropical bands on either side of the tropics towards their respective pole, thereby increasing drought conditions in highly populated areas and a large percentage of hitherto arable terrain.

SNIPPET from the February 2, 2016 article, "The mystery of the expanding tropics", by Olive Heffernan

As Earth's dry zones shift rapidly polewards, researchers are scrambling to figure out the cause — and consequences.

One spring day in 2004, Qiang Fu was poring over atmospheric data collected from satellites when he noticed an unusual and seemingly inexplicable pattern. In two belts on either side of the equator, the lower atmosphere was warming more than anywhere else on Earth. Fu, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, was puzzled.

It wasn't until a year later that he realized what he had discovered: evidence of a rapid expansion of the tropics, the region that encircles Earth's waist like a green belt. The heart of the tropics is lush, but the northern and southern edges are dry. And these parched borders are growing — expanding into the subtropics and pushing them towards the poles.

Tropical forest losses outpace UN estimates

Cities that currently sit just outside the tropics could soon be smack in the middle of the dry tropical edge. That's bad news for places like San Diego, California. “A shift of just one degree of latitude in southern California — that's enough to have a huge impact on those communities in terms of how much rain they will get,” explains climate modeller Thomas Reichler of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.


Elsewhere, there is evidence that tropical expansion is affecting the ocean. Where the Hadley cell descends, bringing cool air downward, it energizes the ocean and whips up currents to high speeds. This energy powers the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich waters towards the surface, which feeds some of the world's most productive fisheries. But there are hints that some of these regions are suffering because of shifts in the Hadley cell.

These upwelling zones could move south over time, or get weaker or stronger, depending on what happens to the Hadley cell, says Cook. In any case, it means that fishing communities that rely on these resources will not be able to count on traditional patterns.

On land, biodiversity is also potentially at risk. This is especially true for the climate zones just below the subtropics in South Africa and Australia, on the southern rim of both continents. In southwestern Australia, renowned as one of the world's biodiversity hotspots, flowers bloom during September, when tourists come to marvel at some of the region's 4,000 endemic plant species. But since the late 1970s, rainfall there has dropped by one-quarter. The same is true at South Africa's Cape Floristic Province, another frontier known for its floral beauty. “This is the most concrete evidence we have of tropical expansion,” says Steve Turton, an environmental geographer at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia.

Turton worries that the rate of change will be too rapid for these ecosystems to adapt. “We're talking about rapid expansion that's within half or a third of a human lifetime,” he says. In the worst-case scenario, the subtropics will overtake these ecologically rich outposts and the hotter, drier conditions will take a major toll.

The Mystery of the Expanding Tropics

Vermont is already experiencing the economy harming effects of climate change. A Vermonter, concerned about this, wrote about it. He has a right to be.

Watching Nature Collapse March 24th, 2018 by George Harvey

Sometimes it seems the best of everything is passing away.

SNIPPET:

A few years ago, someone threw a peach pit into shrubbery on the front yard of the house where I live. The tree that sprouted from the peach pit is now bearing fruit. Neighbors have paw-paw trees growing in their yards. But Vermont’s maple sugar industry, and the apple orchards, and the blueberry fields are all suffering. Vermont is fast becoming a place unlike what it has ever been, and it is not an improvement.

Watching Nature Collapse

Don't look at what he wrote as the "new normal" and just think we can 'adapt' to climate change by growing different crops and so on. This is the leading edge of climate that will soon, much sooner than many think, become intolerable for crop growing. We are not just on a treadmill moving in the wrong direction; our velocity on that deadly treadmill is increasing. Please keep that in mind so you are not lulled into thinking it would be 'nice' to grow palm trees in Burlington. Yes, the fossil fuel industry 🦖 does continue to try to pitch the 'warmer weather good' out of context propaganda happy talk. They'll do anything to keep their profit over people and planet suicide machine going. Stupid is as stupid does.

All these deleterious effects of Catastrophic Climate Change will continually get worse, not for a decade or so, but for over a century.

Temperatures unsuitable for human life are baked in for at least a couple of centuries, even if we stopped the insanity of constantly making things even worse by going on a crash program to stop burning fossil fuels. Yeah, we have to do that. Yeah, if we don't, we are all dead. But, regardless of what we do, it will take a while to catch up to all of us. I write this for those who, though sadly unable to stop the insane suicidal "business model" of the biosphere killing fossil fuel fascists, wish to survive as long as possible.


I wish to stress that, though many confused voices out there do not wish to face this, the one unifying aspect of the present threat 🌡️ to human civilization is Catastrophic Climate Change 🚩, NOT lack of fossil fuel based energy.

Have I got your attention? Good.

Then, look at this graphic from the Video, "Waking the Climate Giant", and ask yourself if it reflects our current situation:


The above graphic is already correct in its prediciton. In 2017 (the emissions data was for the years 2014, 2015 and 2016) the greenhouse gas emissions INCREASED. Consequently, there is a very, very high probability that the collapse of our civilization will occur much sooner than we think.

Some humans in different parts of the globe are already well acquainted with living on the edge of collapse. I am absolutely certain that many jungle tribes in Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, RIGHT NOW, live on the edge of starvation in a constant state of collapse, while most of the city dwellers nearby live not much better, but still avoid starvation.

My point in this quixotic exercise in hard truth logic is that the lack of food in the past has eventually triggered revolutions, not collapse of the civilization. It is after the social upheaval, when no solution to the lack of food problem is found, such as is in LONG WARS of aggression or extended harsh climate conditions, that collapse ensues.

People tend to fear other people more than deleterious climate. People can certainly be a threat to your life and stuff, but Catastrophic Climate Change is a much greater threat to everything you hold dear, past, present and future.

Catastrophic Climate Change is worse than a long war of aggression because it will last much longer than a human lifetime.

The climate change problem is intractable, but I believe some WILL beat it for maybe a century or so. For example, there are places near the equator with very high mountains. A world heated plus 4° C by around 2060, despite happy talk by certain wishful thinkers, will kill off most humans. BUT, in high mountains, the tree line will move way up while the temperature becomes temperate, even at the Equator. I stress the equator, though RE (Reverse Engineer internet handle - Joe Smith) will did vigorously disagree, because human civilization in a low food environment with over acidified seas (no easy fish or whales or seals to catch = NO ESKIMOS) with poor available sunlight is not a recipe for long term survival, even if the temperature is mild enough to grow crops.

There is a mountain in Ecuador (Chimborazo) about 20,000 feet high that will, because of the horrendously altered atmosphere, get plenty of rain even at high altitudes. There are several other candidates in the HIGH tropics around the world. This will enable the folks living there to grow enough food, thanks to an ABUNDANCE of sunlight all year round, with low tech methods. They just might be able to ride out the fossil fuel burning stupidity that dooms most of human civilization.

The tree line, the highest point on a mountain that trees will grow, varies between 5,000 feet and up to 13,000 feet above sea level. It varies so much mainly because of wind chill, though the length of the summer growing season is important as well. A tree in relatively mild wind conditions can grow all the way up to the maximum recorded tree line altitude at temperatures well below freezing (down to minus 40° F =- 40° C  ;D), provided its roots can get enough water.

Trees can have liquid water in their tracheal elements at such low temperatures because of a wonderful combination of two factors. The first is that the 'pumping' mechanism of a tree is more a sucking mechanism than a pumping mechanism. The transpiration of water vapor into the atmosphere at the branch leaf pores creates negative pressure on the water molecules inside the tree (as long as the tracheal elements vacuum is not breached by air intrusion).

Water molecules, as they travel up the inside of tree, aided by capillary action as well as transpiration, can be stretched by as much as negative 25 atmospheres! That is how those Giant Sequoias can move up to a 130 gallons of water a day over a 100 feet vertically.

The second factor is that the water in the tracheal elements, in addition to being thoroughly stretched, is extremely pure. This prevents the crystalization of water around non-water substances that would normally trigger freezing at 0° C. But, when the wind is howling during below freezing temperatures, the wind chill can cause the water in the tree to freeze and eventually kill the tree.

The closer to the equator a high mountain tree is located, the longer it's growing season will be. If the growing season is too short, like in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the tree line is only about 4,500 feet.

SNIPPET from an article about the Tree line:

The elevational limit of such suitable summer conditions varies by latitude. In Mexico, for example, treeline occurs somewhere around 13,000 feet, whereas farther north, in the Tetons, for instance, it occurs lower, at approximately 10,000 feet. Again, it’s a ragged line that may vary by hundreds of feet on any mountain, depending largely on shelter and exposure.

Because the elevational treeline is so closely tied to temperature, many suggest that it could be a particularly sensitive indicator of global climate change. Presumably, rising temperatures would increase the elevation of treeline in any locale, altering forest distribution and potentially ousting rare plant communities – and their inhabitants – that now exist above treeline. Although the specific physiological mechanism of treeline formation is not fully understood, there is growing photographic and other evidence of upward shifts in treelines worldwide.

Why Is the Treeline at a Higher Elevation in the Tetons than in the White Mountains?

A PLUS 4° C (and still going up) atmosphere by around 2060 will enable trees to grow at much higher altitudes. For every degree increase in average global temperature, a corresponding increase in humidity of at least 7% to 13% will take place. We will have an atmosphere expanding vertically, but also with increased humidity. This will accelerate warming because water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, but the good news is that high mountain areas will, in some areas, experience more rain higher up.

As noted at the beginning of this article, humans need water and other adequate growing conditions in order to have a viable civilization.

The Catastrophic Climate Changed world of 2060 will be a stormy place. The over acidified, mostly dead oceans, will be full of giant waves. The winds during storms will be off the charts in comparison to what we experience now. High up in the mountains, some type of barrier will need to be erected to keep the fierce winds from destroying the crops.

Finally, those hardy folks who carve out a life in year-round sunny high mountains will have to deal with UV radiation. It is a fact that, at present, the UV levels at around 10,000 ft. and above are particularly hazardous to humans.

However, with the expanded atmosphere in an overheated planet, this is the one area I see as hopeful for humans and animals living on very high mountains. You see, in said expanded atmosphere of plus 4° C and above, the massive increase in humidity will inhibit UV radiaiton.

Nevertheless. Since the equator alpine areas are infamous for high UV radiation, it would be prudent to plan to plant crops that have high UV tolerant foliage, like tubers. Hopefully, the greatly increased humidity will help protect the High Mountain Human Heroes.

SNIPPET:

Everyone is exposed to UV radiation from the sun and an increasing number of people are exposed to artificial sources used in industry, commerce and recreation. Emissions from the sun include visible light, heat and UV radiation.

The UV region covers the wavelength range 100-400 nm and is divided into three bands:

UVA (315-400 nm)
UVB (280-315 nm)
UVC (100-280 nm).

As sunlight passes through the atmosphere, all UVC and approximately 90% of UVB radiation is absorbed by ozone, water vapour, oxygen and carbon dioxide. UVA radiation is less affected by the atmosphere. Therefore, the UV radiation reaching the Earth’s surface is largely composed of UVA with a small UVB component.

Environmental factors that influence the UV level

Sun height—the higher the sun in the sky, the higher the UV radiation level. Thus UV radiation varies with time of day and time of year, with maximum levels occurring when the sun is at its maximum elevation, at around midday (solar noon) during the summer months.

Latitude—the closer the equator, the higher the UV radiation levels.  :(

Cloud cover— UV radiation levels are highest under cloudless skies. Even with cloud cover, UV radiation levels can be high due to the scattering of UV radiation by water molecules and fine particles in the atmosphere. :(

Altitude—at higher altitudes, a thinner atmosphere filters less UV radiation. With every 1000 metres increase in altitude, UV levels increase by 10% to 12%.

http://www.who.int/uv/uv_and_health/en/

What do you think are the chances of human civilization achieving what the following graph says we HAVE TO DO?


There is NO WAY in God's (formerly good) Earth that we can avoid a climate that is almost entirely unsuitable for human life. The above graphic illustrates that. Anyone who thinks that we can do what needs to be done to avoid a PLUS 4° C (and above!) climate that will kill most humans and cause the extinction of thousands of other vertebrate species is engaging in magical thinking.  >:( 

ALL the people near the surface in the tropics will die as crispy critters, period. Those in temperate zones will perish too. Those near the poles who live near the surface will last as long as the food they have lasts. Unless they can maintain some geothermally heated and powered high tech greenhouse CITY that includes PLENTY of crop growing quality light and plenty of water, they will die too.

I might add that those greenhouse giant domes, both near the poles ond on high equatorial mountains, had better be MASSIVELY strong. The storms that will visit them and the wind speeds they will face in a PLUS 4 ° C planet will make any recent hurricane look like a gentle breeze.

In Antarctica, some vegetables have now been (sort of) successfully grown.

SNIPPET:

These Antarctic vegetables were grown without pesticides, daylight, or even soil — but they look absolutely delicious.

Various vegetables which were harvested from the EDEN-ISS greenhouse at the Neumayer-Station III on Antarctica. Image credits: DLR

Germany’s southernmost workplace, the Neumayer-Station III, has harvested the first crop of Antarctic vegetables. Biologists report that they’ve successfully grown 3.6 kilograms (8 pounds) of salad greens, 18 cucumbers and 70 radishes grown inside a high-tech greenhouse, as temperatures around the research station were plummeting to -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit).

The plants were grown without soil, in a closed-water circle. No outside lighting was used — instead, researchers optimized and used an LED system. The carbon dioxide cycle was also closely monitored.

While this is a solid crop already, researchers are expecting much more in the future. The German Aerospace Center DLR, which coordinates the project, said that in the coming months, they expect to harvest 4-5 kilograms of fruit and vegetables a week.

Image shows engineer Paul Zabel with fresh salad he harvested in the EDEN-ISS greenhouse at the Neumayer-Station III on Antarctica. The project with — instead of soil — a closed water cycle, optimized lightning and carbon dioxide levels is a test of what may become part of the nutrition program for astronauts in future moon or Mars missions. Image credits: DLR.

Full article: Scientists harvest first batch of Antarctic vegetables

I am skeptical of the nutritive value of crops grown this way. Though it is good to know they used no pesticdes, the article says nothing about any nutritive mineral analysis of these vegetables, so there is no evidence yet that this is a sustainable crop growing method in a harsh climate changed plus 4 degrees C world.

The article ends with optimistic talk about using the above technique (and similar techniques like they use in the International Space Station) to eventually grow food in spaceships and on other planets.

Within a decade or less, successfully growing food near the poles will be far more important for the survival of humanity here on earth than in space or on some other planet. 

Speaking of activity near the poles to deal with Climate Change, Iceland is one of the few places on Earth that are seeing benefits from Climate Change. They may be destined to be one of the outposts of humanity in an increasingly overheated world.

Now they are planting evergreens. But, if we do not reverse the overheating trend, they will eventually have to plant these:🌴 :P



Vikings cleared the forests, now Iceland is bringing them back

Even with laudable efforts like the forest planting project in Iceland, humanity needs to do far, far more to survive.


We will need gigantic, and I mean "miles in diameter" GIGANTIC, greenhouses to get a reasonable amount of food grown near the poles and/or on the equatorial mountains.

The giant greenhouse domes situated in the high equatorial mountains would have to be something like the U.K. Eden Project Domes, but way up high on a mountain. In England they have an enclosed rainforest in these domes. They need to be ten or twenty times bigger for an equatorial alpine community. If the post collapse alpine community could control the atmospheric pressure in the giant domes, more UV protection is guaranteed and more comfortable living for humans too.


For those still worried about fellow humans trying to kill you for your stuff, remember that high mountains are a natural defense against warlike humans during the initial phases of the Climate Change Caused Collapse. The heat lower down will eliminate any human threat after a couple of decades. 



STOP thinking you are going to live on a planet that has the remotest resemblance to the one you have lived in all your life. THAT is WISHFUL THINKING! The LEAST of your problems is going to be worrying about the "zombie" humans getting your stuff.


Posted by: AGelbert
« on: October 11, 2022, 03:59:43 pm »

 
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October 11, 2022



Why Is The UN Letting Big Ag's 😇 Front 🐍 Groups Influence Effort To Reduce Ag Emissions?

At the COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last year, the US and United Arab Emirates launched a new initiative to fund research into solutions to agricultural emissions, called the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (Aim4C). Among its some 200 partners are plenty of nations and even more agricultural-oriented non profits, and for-profit companies.

Unfortunately, as Rachel Sherrington revealed at DeSmog last week as part of their new series on the issue, one of those groups is the North American Meat Institute. And they have some questionable views on climate change, with a "fact" sheet claiming the "degree" to which people are causing climate change (by burning fossil fuels and eating meat) is "unknown," despite their supposed Paris agreement pledge.

And it's not just NAMI. Sherrington also points to the Animal Agriculture Alliance and US Farmers and Ranchers in Action, both Aim4C "knowledge partners" and both featuring members of the American Farm Bureau Federation on their board, and both running off of funding from the industrial agriculture sector.

For those blissfully unaware of what goes on in the weeds of farm politics, AFBF is a long-time 👿 opponent of climate action, essentially the agriculture industry's version of the 😈 American Petroleum Institute. Inside Climate News called it "Big Oil's unnoticed ally" back in 2018, and more recently, reported on how the AFBF has led "a Charge Against SEC Rules Aimed at Corporate Climate Transparency."

The Farm lobby didn't let the fact that a rule applied to publicly traded companies and not farms (because "not a single farm in America is listed with the SEC") distract it from lobbying against climate action.

What sort of "knowledge" are these groups bringing to the "partnership" with Aim4C?

Likely not the kind that will be useful for farmers struggling to cope with climate change, pointed out Anne Maina of the Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya. She told Sherrington for another DeSmog story that “A focus on ag-tech is often hinged on profits for multinational corporations and not sustainable. Africa has workable alternatives right here at home, for resilient agriculture that works with nature.”

But “When the voice of African farmers and communities is not brought to the negotiating table, we end up with flawed initiatives like Aim4C." 

Specifically, Sherrington writes, "Aim4C argues that technology can increase productivity, help farmers adapt to the climate crisis, and cut emissions" with "climate-smart" solutions which sounds well and good- that's the point. The problem is that "climate-smart" ;) can be used "to promote contested ☠️ practices including the use of ☠️ pesticides and big data in farming have led to concerns that the concept could be used to 😈 “greenwash” polluting forms of agriculture."

And even if things like the "Greener Cattle Initiative" were successful, "it would only reduce methane emissions from the cattle. It doesn’t address the climate impacts of land use change, biodiversity loss, or deforestation associated with cattle production. And it doesn’t take into account the nutrient pollution from the pesticides you use to grow the rest of their feed, corn and soy.”
 
That's why Jennifer Jacquet, author of a book on industrial disinformation , likened "Green cattle" to "clean coal", saying that there's "no getting around" the fact that "beef is the coal of animal ag."

What works? Again, back to Maina: “We need to focus on agroecological solutions: Support resilient agriculture that works with nature, builds crop and diet diversity, and empowers marginalised farmers."

Instead, as Molly Anderson of IPES-Food said, "the kind of technology pursued by Aim4C is proprietary. It’s going into digitalization, it’s going into artificial intelligence. This technology is not available to low-income people. The technology being promoted are things that basically bolster the existing industrialised food system.”

In other words, if 😈 BigAg is allowed to steer Aim4C, what they may be aiming for is
4C of warming.
https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/20221011-julia-iran-oil-workers-megadrought-navajo

Agelbert NOTE: The following is the scientifically predicted ice free North Pole of a, thoroughly coastlines flooded, +3C world.



ALL the Tundra thaws and ALL that methane now trapped there comes out to overheat our biosphere up EVEN FASTER.


Reaching +3C means it is basically over for most mammaliam vertebrate species.

A +4C world would be even MORE hellish, eventually devoid of high order multi-cellular organisms.


If you are a farmer, think about the total insanity of trying to hang on to the profit over people and planet BigAg "business model" . Industrial farmers, STOP BEING STUIPD AND CRAZY!

Posted by: AGelbert
« on: August 14, 2022, 04:09:54 pm »





AGelbert NOTE: Some lyrics from an old song come to mind...

When Tomorrow is Today, the Bells Will Toll for Some, But Nothing Can Stop the Shape of Things to Come.

And no, this is not "alarmist" graphics hyperbole. Learn about about the GIANT 🌊 Wave activity that Climate Scientists predict is inevitable in our 2 degree Celcius, or more, Catastrophic Climate Changed world.


👉 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

👉 Climate Change, Blue Water Cargo Shipping and Predicted Ocean Wave Activity: Part 3 of 3 parts

Or, you can ignore all this "Chinese Hoax alarmist" stuff and continue your excellent imitation of an Ostrich...


Posted by: AGelbert
« on: July 25, 2022, 12:11:11 pm »

Agelbert NOTE: The graphics in this video are spectacular.


Antarctica: What happens if the 'Doomsday' Glacier collapses?

Mar 15, 2020


Just Have a Think
51.6K subscribers

Antarctica is home to some of the world's largest ice sheets and glaciers. They existed in a stable equilibrium of ebb and flow for millions of years until global warming started to melt them faster than the snow falls could replenish their ice. Now a new US / UK research collaboration has discovered that the rate of melt is even worse than scientists feared. What's driving this latest acceleration, and can we slow it down?

Help support and influence the growth of the Just Have a Think initiative here:
www.patreon.com/justhaveathink
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: July 11, 2022, 02:08:58 pm »


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



Posted by: AGelbert
« on: June 20, 2022, 10:30:01 pm »


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! 
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: June 20, 2022, 10:21:55 pm »


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