Lost in a haze of hyperreal distractions and the
weakening of our body politic, we forget in fact how our planet came
into being: Violent eruptions, long periods of stability, sometimes
equilibrium. But its eruptions were serious, and nothing to shrug off.
I'm talking extinction events like the Permian-Triassic, romantically known as
the "Great Dying", a climate change nightmare to end all nightmares.
The hangover took millions of years to recover from.
So it would stand to reason -- ah, those were the days -- that were such events heading our way, we'd do something about them faster than Blackwater. We'd fire indiscriminately into the encroaching dangers, run like hell to our Green zones, and wait out the storm. But we're not.
And things are getting worse. Exponentially worse.
According to a recent reports, the InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change was off in its estimates. Way off, as expected if you were a student of exponents, which have a tendency not to accrue in equal chunks but snowball over themselves, growing bigger by the revolution. Speaking of snowballs, the IPCC misread our quickly shrinking sea ice, which has unmoored itself from itself and is now snowballing into the ocean-at-large at increasing rates. It figured the melt would be measurable, which is another way of saying an amount it could lowball to a public too busy with aptly named virtual realities like Survivor, Lost, Second Life and so on. But the IPCC failed to see the replicating threat on the horizon.
In short, the IPCC claimed the
melt would tickle global coastlines with 20 to 60 centimetres of
water, but it was wrong. The figure has now exponentially grown to two
metres and climbing, which is over six feet for those on the inch
standard. And if you think that's Chicken Little talking, take a look at these maps illustrating some
of America's coolest cities, post-deluge. They might change your mind.
The reality is, fittingly, worthy of disaster cinema. Holes have developed in the sea ice through which water as large as Niagara Falls has plummeted back to the ocean, greasing the wheels, so to speak, for an even faster melt. Which in turn, getting back again to exponents, is pushing the ice across the sea even faster, and so on. Speaking of disaster cinema, how about this blockbuster? The glacier at Ilulissat, rumored grandpa of the iceberg that sank the Titantic, is now hurtling three times faster into the sea than it was a decade ago. Other glaciers and ice shelves are doing the same dance of doom.
And they're coming our way.
Think of them as one giant pain machine made of ice, skating across the planet to smack down some land and its self-important inhabitants. Think of it as Saddam plus Osama plus Kim Jong plus Iran plus every other creep you've been arming yourselves against. Think of it as the Bush administration, extraordinary renditioning you into Egypt for some "coercive interrogation."
But think of it. Because if the IPCC got the depth wrong, they almost certainly got the dates wrong. And they were giving an ETA of around 2100 for the worst of what global warming has to throw at humanity. That deadline has now been upgraded to, well, how does tomorrow work for you?
I'm not kidding. Because it's not just water that's plunging into the ocean and jacking up coastlines and currents, screwing the equilibrium that has allowed Earth to stay cool for thousands of years. It's also sediment, plants, animals and much more, matter of all types torn apart by the earthquakes and other violent eruptions these melts have caused. Call it the "Great Drowning." At least for now.
Because it's about to get hot in here. Real hot. Once those ice shelves melt, they'll no longer be around to reflect the sun. That will be left to the sea, which will heat and blast out the type of CO2 emissions that would make Exxon, Chevron and onward proud. And all of it will happen faster and faster until the new equilibrium comes.
Our time would be better spent on issues other than batshit pop stars or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It would be better spent on things like living, breathing, not dying by our own hands. It would be better spent thinking about how to capitalize on our own misfortune, an irony that still hasn't settled in even though I wrote it moments ago. It would be better spent working this problem than any other cultural, religious or racial hyperrealities built to sucker us into thinking we're different from each other and don't want our spaces invaded.
Because we're not different from each other in the slightest. We're all earthlings, and we're all going to find out what that means before 2100 comes to pass. Likely we will find out that we are different not from each other, but from every other species in the universe. Which means our time would be better spent right now, not tomorrow, not when our kids wake up and ask us, "What the fuck were you thinking?" We want to have a good answer for them. We had them, after all. We should have known better.
The U.S. represents 25% of the global warming gasses produced by 5% of the global population and probably represents most of the effort to downplay the problem. The problem here in the U.S. is not so much global warming gasses as the almost uniquely American exceptionalist attitude of who cares what happens to the rest of the world when you are dead, life is good and well deserved and, anyway, this is all really quite boring. I'll do something about it when I can fit it into my busy schedule. Don't worry, be happy!
The "it's all about me" attitude is what is preventing the solution.
And you guys worry about cars and factories??
The biggest forseeable problem on the horizon is a negative feedback loop in which thawing soils and warming oceans release vastly more carbon in the form of methane; carbon dioxide on steroids. This, in turn, will cause the process to speed up uncontrollably.
carbon has the effect of acidifying oceans, making them increasingly uninhabitable to creatures not evolved to handle the PH levels. Marine life will start to go extinct. Rising temperatures will cause desertification of much of the present temperate and tropical zones of the world. Terrestrial creatures will start to go extinct.
Storms will intensify and grow increasingly frequent until such a time as ocean currents cease to flow and distribute heat from the equator to the poles. Extent habitable lands will then burn and the newly created breadbaskets will freeze. Mankind will then go extinct.
But, otherwise, "leftist scientists" are just acknowledging routine "geological" sic changes. Don't worry, be happy. This is the rapture that conservatives have all been waiting so impatiently for.
whoo-hoo!!!
So a question then. Since this is expotentially happening now, why have we not heard of one coastal area being flooded or having rising sea levels? Not one. But all of this has been happening now, faster than we thought no less, but yet, no reports of any flooding anywhere. Hmmm.
And since you raised it and said that the IPCC was wrong about the amount and probably the time, then why is so hard to believe that they have the whole damn thing wrong? And wasn't the IPCC behind the whole global cooling fiasco of the 70s? Wow, they were WRONG on that one weren't they?
And this warming is not man-made, as much as the left has pumped that lie, so what are we to do about it anyways?
If you understood exponents, you wouldn't ask your foolish question. Exponential growth starts out slowly enough, but begins to steadily balloon. We are still in the slow end of the growth but are still seeing rising sea levels. Several islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans are already going under.
This warming IS in large part due to human activity. It is the right that is pumping the lie that it is not. Unless, of course virtually every climate scientist not paid by the energy industry is a leftist.
Again, all I am saying is that climate change is real, but it is not caused by humans and can not be reversed by humans. We can only adapt just like every other species has done for millions of years.
So a question then. Since this is expotentially happening now, why have we not heard of one coastal area being flooded or having rising sea levels? Not one. But all of this has been happening now, faster than we thought no less, but yet, no reports of any flooding anywhere. Hmmm.
And since you raised it and said that the IPCC was wrong about the amount and probably the time, then why is so hard to believe that they have the whole damn thing wrong? And wasn't the IPCC behind the whole global cooling fiasco of the 70s? Wow, they were WRONG on that one weren't they?
And this warming is not man-made, as much as the left has pumped that lie, so what are we to do about it anyways?
You go Wilson33-hit 'em with that 'old ice' meme again--it must grow more satisfying with each repetition. The Bible doesn't mention Global Warming! Why should the rest of us even care?!? right Wilson?
So, fast forward to now, using the data they have NOW, they are concluding that we (humans) are the main cause of warming and the main fix to it. Isn't there a possiblity they are wrong, that it is just mother nature and we did not contribute to it and can not fix it?
And for everyone to just ignore the sun's role in all of this is mind boggling as well. Can you explain why other planets in our solar system are warming too? Does Mars have coal burning power plants or SUVs destroying it as well?
The same way the FEDERAL RESERVE works today.
This endless supply of debt creating money has given rise to over indulgence, waste and destruction of our natural resources. The higher the debt the faster resources must be turned into grabage.
The Interest Monster presses onward DEMANDING businesses to seek new streams of income. Just about anything even if it will hurt their own children now or in the furture.
If the Federal Reserve System had never been allowed where would man kind be? Growth would be limited by the amount of money the government spent into the Economy and there would be no interest to be paid. So there would never be a rush to make money just to pay the interest payments.
The Natural Resources would only be used as needed not to feed to ever growing debt into money machine.
Now water is going to be a doubled edged sword. Little to drink but lots to swim in. We should be asking the same question about Gloable Warming and our Economy.
"HOW LONG CAN YOU TREAD WATER"