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 An Immediate Problem... Some of the problems brought on by global warming are
here now, and much
greater ones are pending right now. The matter is far more serious - and
urgent - than has been let on about in public, even by alarmists. Things
we need to be doing right now, bear heavily on whether we survive these
next few years, individually or as a nation and civilization.
Why you haven't heard the main issues:
To function as a scientist, one has to avoid being seen too far outside
the limits of professional and public expectation. To be a scientist one
must DO science; to do science these heavily capitalized days, requires
a large and unwavering flow of money and support. For any of our
scientists to tell the full story, would effectively mean the end of his
or her career. Here is an example of what that situation has done to the
news you receive:
Summary of Greenland Ice Melt Effects:
The amount of ice still locked up in Greenland's ice cap at this time,
if melted, would release enough water to raise ocean levels 22 feet all
over the Earth. Yet, what you've heard are predictions of anywhere from
three inches to three feet by the end of this century. - By when?
The Northern Hemisphere has a geologic history of sudden ice cap
collapses. Greenland's melting has accelerated and accelerated badly,
and could well collapse into the sea within 8-12 years. Greenland's ice
cap gone into the sea would raise ocean sea level 22 feet within that
8-12 years, not the end of the century but between 2014 and 2018. If
this happens, multiply New Orleans by some 700 times. A majority of the
human race would have to be evacuated.
Here in the Northern Hemisphere, 15,000 or so years ago the ice cap over
the British Isles suddenly collapsed, flooding the Mediterranean Basin.
A little later the ice cap over Scandinavia collapsed, lifting ocean
levels another hundred feet or so. Over central North America, we saw a
recurrent situation where the ice cap built up and suddenly collapsed
out through what is now the spectacular Columbia Gorge and basin. These
were abrupt floods, with little or no warning.
Now it transpires that melting has accelerated in Antarctica as well,
not only in Greenland. I don't know what the geologic record is in the
Southern Hemisphere, especially as regards sudden collapses of ice caps.
Nor do we know when, but simple measurements tell us that if the ice cap
there goes, oceanic sea level increases by 200 feet.
Here in the northern hemisphere, we have had an impressive geological
history of suddenness, not only of warming and ice cap collapse, but of
sudden freezes. The onset of the last Ice Age was so sudden it caught
all those animals, including wooly mammoths, across Siberia so suddenly
that they were perfectly preserved all these thousands of years later,
even to the contents of the food in their stomachs. I don't know enough
to say whether similar suddenness holds in the southern hemisphere. So
far as I know, geologists thus far can only speculate about the
mechanisms which made for such sudden changes here in the Northern
Hemisphere. But we can see some of it in action with ice caps melting
faster and faster, in an apparent runaway cascade.
Even if it were only the Greenland ice cap by 2015 or so, it's not just
New York City that would have to move. Three quarters of our greatest
cities are seaside and near sea level, two thirds of the human race
would suddenly have to move (to where other people are now living!),
with food supplies badly interrupted, not only the economy.
From the scale of just these sea-level change effects, you can see why
no practicing scientist wants to tell the whole story and lose his job.
Three inches in a century! - it would be pitiful or absurd, except that
timidification of figures has badly misled the public and so further
endangered the planet.
Storms, Droughts, Chill and Heat where they ought not to be:
You have heard accurately that our planet's increasing warmth is
starting to inconvenience the economy and agriculture. - - Not only the
spiraling number of great storms which cost the Gulf Coast so severely
last summer, but a greater incidence of floods and droughts, great
wildfires, late frosts and freezes. More and more it is becoming the
case that people no longer know where, when and how to plant crops or
hunt fish. We still have food on the tables and shelves and even some in
surplus storage - in what are now the more favored regions of the Earth
- but that can change in a year or two. That WILL change when the
climate changes escalate, as they abruptly would if the Greenland cap
goes, unless we take certain steps to anticipate and offset these
effects.
When the Greenland cap goes, suddenly the whole bases for global
climates will be very different. It will take decades for oceanic
currents to settle into their new patterns and, until they do, weather
fluctuations will be extreme. At the very time that most of our people
and most of our cities abruptly do a New Orleans, our economy is
massively wrecked and our food supply is profoundly interrupted. Without
key steps taken now, this is not expected to be a very jolly time.
There may be still further Effects:
One might think this was enough to be concerned about, but Mankind's
reckless warming of the planet has pointed us toward new territory for
which geology is unable to show us precedents.
What we do know is that even if we stopped adding CO2 and other
greenhouse gasses to our air today, Earth would continue to warm further
over the next century or so.
We also know that in the geologic past, there have been periods when the
Earth was as much as eight to ten degrees warmer than it is now. Life
survived and continued those intervals.
What we do not know: is the point in temperature where the oceans are
warm enough to start releasing CO2 instead of absorbing it and turning
it into carboniferous rock deposits safely removed from the atmosphere.
Some night look up at the beautiful Evening Star or Morning Star, that
high point of brightness we call Venus in the deepest blues of the
verges of night. - Not so beautiful closer up, with temperatures hot
enough to melt lead, an atmosphere of carbon dioxide laced with
sulfuric acid, the words "desert" and even "Hades" are inadequate to
describe Earth's twin sister.
Venus is even hotter today than Mercury, which is so much closer to the
sun. Scientists today believe Venus once had oceans and a temperate
climate similar to ours. Many scientists privately express their concern
that the Earth may, once the oceans are warm enough to start releasing
their carbon dioxide instead of trapping it, be trapped in a runaway
heat-build-up trap that can only end the way our "evil twin," Venus,
has.
Playing With Fire:
If we find a way to at least rein in today what we are doing to cause
our one and only home in the cosmos at present to warm up, we probably
will stop the warming trend at or just short of the high point that
Earth has reached several times in the geologic past. That has been
short of the point where the oceans would have started giving back their
CO2 to our atmosphere. But each day we let our present emissions
continue, carries us toward, through and beyond that point. We don't
know how much margin we have left. Each day that we don't correct our
emissions problem, we are playing with fire.
The earlier-cited effects can end a civilization. The later effects -
after the economic base for any heroic countermeasures has long since
collapsed - if allowed to reach that tipping point, will mean the end of
our species and the end of life on Earth altogether.
I would much, much rather be writing about positive matters, which
usually I am. There are a lot of them. But this has to be dealt with.
The people we've given the responsibility over our lives and well-being,
have not dealt with this responsibly - rather the reverse. If there are
things which you and I can do to head off or even ameliorate these very
serious matters, these should have our immediate attention and
deliberation. I should very much like for all the things I have striven
for, that you have striven for, the goals we have worked toward, the
good things we have managed to do, the stakes we've been trying to build
not only toward our future lives but toward those of our children - I
should like for the mistakes learned by and paid for, the great arts,
the great scientific discoveries, the great and uplifting ideas that
have lit our past and present like flares released over a midnight
forest - I should like for all of that to have meaning, and to not have
its ending in a spatter of sulphuric acid in a 200-mile-an-hour
800-degree-Fahrenheit wind blowing over a semi-molten barrenness.
What Can L'il Ol' Us Do?
The following is a simple brainstormed list of what "we" can do. Some of
these are things we as individuals can do to survive some of the most
immediately pending effects now bearing upon us. Other measures reflect
what communities can do, what corporations can do, what nations can do
and even the global community, not only to survive the effects of global
warming but to stop global warming in its tracks or even turn it around.
Instead of the feelings of apathetic hopelessness which pervade now, it
turns out there is a great deal that can usefully be done.....
I have not sorted out which "we" with each of the following entries
because they are pretty self-evident, the list of options is still
growing and changing. You yourself can add to it and I certainly hope
that you do. Each viable option, at least, increases somewhat the
chances that "we" - as individuals, as communities, as corporations, as
nations, as a civilization, even as a species - can continue to survive
and even thrive.
Making the First Cut: How We - and Civilization - Can Survive When
the Oceans Rise. Measures now to Ensure Survival then.
Prevention is best in the first place, but there is no indication anyone
will do that. So here are some other ways to contend with global warming
and/or its effects:
-
Cool the globe by putting Mylar sunshades in
orbit - arrays with solar-powered cesium ion motors to maintain
station, and/or computer-trimmed solar sails for that purpose.
-
Now that we are beginning to develop a
technology for moving asteroids around to prevent their
collision with Earth: extend that to towing one or more comets
into orbits between Earth and the sun, so arranged as to be in
position between us and the sun for extended periods of time as
a diffuse sunshade. It would be quite a few years before each
comet would "wear out" from the effects of the sun.
-
Delicately baffled ocean currents to encourage
re-accumulating snow and ice at poles and on Greenland and
mountain glaciers elsewhere. The baffles do not have to be
massive metal and masonry affairs. They can be bubble curtains,
similar to those mentioned just below and described for oceanic
fish farming at http://www.winwenger.com/hurrican.htm and at
http://www.winwenger.com/beachbld.htm
-
Use our "blue revolution" bubble-up to create a
surplus of oceanic fish farms. The catastrophic shortfall of
agriculture is the worst threat to civilized, even human,
survival over the first few years of the oceans' rise. The
proposed fish farms would be easy and relatively inexpensive to
create, could immediately and greatly increase the world's food
supply and protein supply, and could, if already in place,
easily and immediately offset any failure of food supply coming
from land-based agriculture during climate change.
-
Very strong marketplace incentives to cut
greenhouse emissions, invest in appropriate technologies, mostly
through tax credits and taxes.
-
Advance planning for evacuations and
humanitarian assistance
-
Advance planning for new inland cities and urban
areas with a re-arranged rump economy. Have things ready to go,
and ready to go up, for when we suddenly have millions of
displaced human beings and enterprises needing to get productive
again quickly.
Other Food-Related Steps to Take:
-
Corporations should begin to shift their
headquarters to inland cities. Perhaps a slight tax credit could
help spur that process along.
-
Households and even corporations should stock up
on long-term survival goods. To be adequately effective, this
also may need to be encouraged by tax credits whether through
local communities, states or nationally.
-
Expand, protect, and in many instances relocate
agricultural surpluses by government and by private enterprises.
-
Adjust curriculum of agricultural science in
colleges and universities to reflect anticipated changed
climates.
-
Set up agriculture-related research stations in
high-latitude and tundra areas destined to become arable once
the climate has changed.
-
Set up careful land-grant system in
high-latitude and tundra areas expected to become arable once
the climate has changed.
-
Open up curriculum around oceanic farming,
whatever methods
Other Measures To Take:
-
Replant trees and grasses in and around the
great deserts, now!
-
Research the resources of the Sahel and other
marginal lands which are not quite deserts, prepare emergency
contingency plans for their rapid industrial and agricultural
development.
-
Put a light but increasing tax on all non-port,
non-sea-food, non-ocean-farming related uses of land and
facilities below 200 feet above sea level, to gradualize the
dislocations. Provide a temporary exemption from such measures
for seasonal recreational uses pending further development of
data.
-
Develop surplus electric power capacity, all in
installations well above 200 feet altitude above sea level.
-
Create tax credits to private industry for
planning and anticipatory adjustments, to likewise gradualize
the dislocations and to keep a viable economy going during the
transition.
Still Other Kinds of Steps To Take:
-
National Guard and other branches of military to
develop contingency planning to assure smooth continuance of
public order during transition, despite massive migrations of
dispossessed people into and out of local police jurisdictions.
-
Land will be scarce and at a premium after the
oceans have risen. Preliminary surveying to determine which
lands can be salvaged or even saved from the sea by some
judicious planting of dykes - perhaps by bulldozing some hills
together and planting them with trees.
-
The transition especially is likely to be a time
of great storms. A major effort to plant trees and windbreaks
could save a lot of damage.
-
Private incentives to writers and screenwriters
who popularize the issues, problems, and possible solutions of
the pending flooding, to get the public better acquainted with
what's coming and with how to survive it.
-
Contingency government plans for temporary
nationalizing of key agriculture-related, industry and transport
operations during the worst parts of the transition, with
built-in sunset and restitution provisions.
-
Tax incentives toward new technology for
floating cities, with land about to become far scarcer and
costlier.
-
Cultivate especially warm relations with Canada,
Russia, and Scandinavia whose northern tundras and highlands
will become main sources of food supply, and with Peru and Chile
and Mongolia whose high-altitude deserts are likely to become
well-watered as ocean currents change.
-
Rewrite treaties so that other countries besides
Argentina can peacefully or cooperatively colonize Antarctica if
and when the ice cap collapses.
-
The great national libraries will have to be
moved or duplicated. Likewise such of the great museums we wish
to preserve.
-
Shipping, shipping-related industries, marine
recreational enterprises, all must prepare to move, as must all
enterprises below 200 feet elevation. The problem is most acute
for shipping and marine related enterprises, though, because we
don't know how rapidly the waters will advance toward their
final levels. Other industries can simply relocate in highlands
but not the marine-related enterprises.
-
Meanwhile, put a lot more monitors on the ice
caps, north and south. If they slide suddenly into the sea, we'd
experience not only sudden sea rise but tsunami. People should
have at least a few hours warning. Tsunami are much less likely
toward the end of the transition than at or near the beginning,
so that sea-related damage is likely to mostly remain within the
projected 200 feet of immersion.
-
Prepare for having a lot of icebergs coming into
the shipping lanes - with stormy weather masking visual
sighting.
-
Prepare for plagues and pests and diseases which
move around in the changing climate. We in the USA don't have
much experience with tropical diseases or much resistance to
them.
-
Tax credits for vacation/second homes in the
mountains. In fact, tax credits for locating new homes and
business in higher elevations generally.
-
Make enterprise super-zones out of Appalachia
and the Dakotas.
-
Survey river valleys even above 200 feet
elevation, for potential flooding backups.
-
Not only in deserts - plant a lot of trees now
throughout most lands above 200 feet elevation. These can help
hold the land during the time of storms, and then serve as badly
needed building material once things settle and people set out
to remake their lives. So, install major tax credits for
planting more trees now.
Priorities:
One of the first questions we may have to resolve is whether to focus on
trying to save our cities, or to easing the transition and saving lives.
We may not have enough resources, even if our society became aroused to
these matters, to accomplish both.
If we try to save our cities by building levees, that is an enormously
expensive undertaking. It might conceivably protect against a Greenland
collapse, but against an Antarctic ice cap collapse we don't possess the
technology nor the economics.
Yet to let our cities be inundated wipes out most of the economic and
industrial base from which we need to cope with other effects of the
transition, and with other issues including the emergency that will have
developed in agriculture and food supplies. If our cities were intact,
roof gardens could spell the difference that prevents mass famine. But
an attempt to save the cities by levees, which fails, means billions of
lives lost in the aftermath.
A further difficulty is that a Greenland ice cap collapse derails the
Gulf Stream. Once this occurs, it may require several decades for any
kind of stable oceanic regimen to re-establish, and longer still for any
kind of stable climactic pattern which would allow large-scale
agriculture to resume.
The best cost-benefit perspective points toward marshaling attempts to
partially re-freeze the planet. We may not be able to impose, soon
enough, Draconian-enough measures to even level off the rate of increase
of the amount of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere much less reduce
them. What seems to be left to us as an option in this direction is to
increase the albedo - the reflectivity - of the Earth. This can be done
in small ways by periodically spray-painting white or reflective silver
the black lava wastelands of tropical and semi-tropical deserts,
creating credits against (property) taxes for more reflective rooftop
areas, etc. The main thing, though, has to be either to sow our own
upper atmosphere with reflective matter, or to design and put into Earth
orbit a series of sunshades.
1) Whether with a compound tailored for the purpose, or with a mist of
sulphur dioxide like that spewed by volcanoes with their cooling
effect, the big problems with sowing our own upper atmosphere are (A)
the lack of control, and (B) the irreversibility of the action. We would
have no margin for error, or for last-minute adjustments in a field full
of unknowns. Once the chemicals are floating up there in the upper air,
they are there until nature brings them down through attrition at her
own slow pace.
2) The reflective sunshades would have to be maintained in position,
either by solar sails or by high-efficiency ion propulsion units. Very
large sunshades, made of the same mylar as used in some of our high
altitude balloons, could be spaced in such a way as to reduce the
overall amount of sunlight reaching and heating the Earth, while
minimizing to a degree changes in the incidence of where on the Earth
the sunlight falls. That will minimize, but not entirely avoid, climate
effects and damage to agricultural production. The advantage here is
that of a system which can be controlled as needed and, if for reasons
not now known, things with the system were to go wrong, a system which
can be undone.
3) A balloon-supported sunshade system in the upper atmosphere is
another possibility, with similar advantages of control and
reversibility. However, how to maintain its component shades in place?
Tethering the balloons would represent a cost and possibly a
navigational hazard. Putting propulsion units of some sort on the
components will be an expense like that of the space-born shades.
Propulsion systems can be energized by abundant sunlight in the
cloudless upper atmosphere no less than in cloudless space, but ion
drives need a vacuum to work in. A sunshade system in the upper
atmosphere would need periodic refueling.
On the whole, then, the most realistic system for short-term cooling of
the Earth, to stave off the collapses of ice caps and to save our cities
and our economic base, would be what had seemed the most exotic of the
three options, putting a sunshade system into Earth orbit. Our
agriculture is still going to take a hit from changing climates, but it
doesn't have to take the all-out catastrophic hit which now appears
otherwise inevitable. Millions and billions don't have to die.
Action Step for Now:
I don't yet know who is here, reading this, that shares these concerns.
If you do, please let me know -
wwenger101@aol.com .
Also, if this article makes sense to you, you have my permission to
reprint it to share with others - Copyright 2006 by Win Wenger, Ph.D.,
wwenger101@aol.com ,
http://www.winwenger.com . You
may reprint this paper to share with others, in whole but not in part,
including this copyright notice.
If even a few people began to discuss this matter rationally; if even a
few of us could exchange ideas, if even a few of us could begin to use
some of the problem-solving methods found throughout
http://www.winwenger.com to
generate more and better ideas and possible solutions - and especially
if even a few of us could begin to feel empowered to influence this
situation instead of sitting around feeling helpless and apathetic - you
and we could begin to improve this situation. Our posterity might stand
a chance, instead of becoming part of another deadly Venus landscape. If
it's not us to take it up, who? If not now, when? Can we wait to find
out when? Respectfully, I propose that this matter is worthy of our
attention.
Please let me know if there is anyone here reading this. Thank you.
...win wenger
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