Asia After Full Glacial Melt

What is that a map of? (Answer at the bottom.)

The positive side of a full glacial melt is that the devastated Aral Sea will be reconstituted to its former glory, and more. Tourists may be able to travel from Missouri to the Aral Sea on electric cruise ships. Let’s notice in passing that shallow seas were characteristic of the Jurassic, and exerted a positive feed-back on the climate, which was remarkably warm and wet then… thanks to these shallow seas. The Earth was ice-free (except on the top of very high mountains).

The Decision Is Now. The Next Two Decades Will Decide If This Is What Will Be

Some may sneer, but there is tremendous inertia in the system. Here is a depiction of temperatures in the last half a billion years:

The Projection That We Are On Two Degree Centigrade Rise By 2050 Is Optimistic: It Ignores Positive Feed-Back On Ice Melt

As soon as we launch the shallow sea effect, it will feed-back on itself. That will be another feed-back on top of the ice melt feed-back. Scandalously, a European Union Commissioner just declared that the COP 21 treaty will be ratified in 2018 only. The French government has declared this “scandalous”, and intends to do something about it on Monday (EC Commissioners have been obviously on the take from major fossil fuel company such as Exxon, as stealth recordings recently showed).

Hence the moral quality of the following graph depicting Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, per capita, and per country:

GHG Per Capita: The Redder, The Worse. The Way Of Life Of Some “Leading” Countries Brings Us Back To The Jurassic

At this point, some always ask: what can we do? Shall we recycle? Recycling is a related question, yet mostly independent of the energy problem. It’s much more efficient than fighting racism by never saying “nigger”, but still, it pales relative to burning fossils. Energy procurement has got to change radically. One has to de-carbonize. Now. Not just in 2050: by then it will be too late.

To de-carbonize, there is just one way: tax carbon so heavily that silly activities such as frantic tourism by plane, disappear altogether. So those who want to do something moral should agitate for an enormous carbon tax (while compensating for the poor with some of the proceeds).

Something similar is to push for local sustainable energy. An example: San Francisco just passed a law requiring plants or solar panels on roofs of all new building less than ten stories tall (to start with). Starting January 1, 2017. The law is identical to a mandate passed in France last year that all new buildings be covered in partial green roofing or solar panels.

In France, buildings producing more energy than they use have been erected. In other French news, Paris organized its first car race since 1951… 65 years ago. It was done with Formula One style cars: monospaces. It was also remarkably silent: the cars were electric. An Audi driven by the Brazilian Di Grassi won this “Formula E” event. There will be another one, next year (a necessary way of fighting terrorism is to act and behave as if there was no terror).

If enormous de-carbonization is not imposed quickly, fabulous wars may ensue… Except if some countries have such a lead in military matters that none of the others will try anything; as is presently the case of the West, mostly the USA, relative to the Rest; a fascinating twist on might makes right.

However, morality means “the mores”, what has proven sustainable to a tribe. And this brings still another moral twist. Some tribes (also known as nations) have profited a lot from war, thus may not be, very secretly, deep down inside, that adverse to adversity of the lethal type. Indeed, if adversity enables them to unleash the Dark Side, their empire may extend. Or, at least, such is the computation. because, in the past, war always proved such an excellent lever. It is especially the case of the USA (although Russia also lives under that illusion; and giant countries such as Canada and Australia are not far behind in that same general mood; even China, considering its recent conquest of gigantic, highly profitable Tibet and Xing Kiang, may feel that way, all too much).

Notice in passing that the US emits close to 20 tons of GreenHouse Gases per year, per capita. That’s around three times more than the French. And France is not three times poorer, per capita. Actually, according to Hillary Clinton, France is richer, per capita, than the USA: she herself says that the USA cannot afford universal health care. Whereas the French can afford a universal health care system. It is even worse than that, as the French health care system (with the Italian and Swedish ones) is leading in quality, whereas the USA trails, in quality of health care, behind all developed countries.

Once again, what Hillary really means is that those who are paying for her propaganda and helping her with various services, cannot afford a country with universal health care, because they are too busy overdosing inside their private jets (allusion to Prince, one of many). One’s morality not better than one’s logic.

The naïve, gullible and thoroughly obsolete, often believe there is just one way to be logical. But logic can be pretty much anything. Anything goes in logic. Differently from cooking ,where a few rules apply. In cooking at the very least, one should not put too much salt, or burn food to such a crisp that it becomes, well, pure carbon.

However logic is much more adaptable. And thus, a fortiori, is morality.

Tomorrow’s morality has often be made from yesterday’s computation. And computations can sometimes go awry.

So what to do? Change the moods ASAP. Solar roofs are an example. Another is the just announced change of the Twenty Dollar Bill. It figures president Jackson. Jackson followed Jefferson’s example, conquering and annexing giant swathes of territory for the USA. Those two, with Washington himself, were the three most important presidents, in the sense that they created, not just the USA as a state, but also its extent and its mood. Jackson was as macho as Washington, if not more. He went on his conquests, as the head of the US Army, without any order, and Congress did not dare contradict him, lest he made a coup. He had no problem harboring a bullet or two from successful duels.

Nowadays, more and more people in the USA feel that Jackson’s mentality is something which should not be viewed as an example anymore. So Obama and his sidekicks want to replace him by an abolitionist ex-slave who happened to be a woman (I had never heard from, I think, demonstrating that the masses need to further their education, indeed.)  Not bad. At the last hour, Obama and Al. minister admirably the details. However, if one removes all the slave masters from US currency, one may be left with the insipid mild and neutral pseudo-bridges found on European currency.

Removing the face of slavery would not be progress, if all one did, was to forget, and thus deny, where one came from, institutionally speaking, and in the genealogy of moods.

Without its demonic males to lead and fabricate appropriately evil systems of thought, the USA would not have become the world’s leading empire it is now. Beyond whether this is right or wrong, it’s important to remember that, first of all, that’s what happened. Yes, the USA was fabricated by slave masters. This politely brings in the natural question: Is the USA still ruled by slave masters?

The first moral duty is always to the truth. When the morality used is the one closest to the essence of the genus Homo. Yet, special circumstances, (such as inheriting a continent which has been grabbed,) have incited special moralities to blossom.

Patrice Ayme’

 

Record Heat: Non Linear World

World Global Monthly Temperature Is Blowing Up (NASA data, March 2016)

Temperatures Blowing Up, As Expected: THE SINGULARITY HAS ARRIVED

(Doomed) Presidential Candidate Sanders insists, correctly, that the USA needs a revolution. So does the world. Plutocracy, its “money changers” (president Roosevelt), carbonizers and political servants have taken over not just the honor of the human spirit and civilization, but also the biosphere itself. Meanwhile the planet is reacting:

Some smart donkeys will point out that this is the year of the strongest El Nino ever. The much smarter ones will retort that, when the planetary warming is fast and furious, El Nino will arrive every year. That’s not a joke, it’s paleontology of the climate.

People such as the present author have long pointed out that nonlinear effects could come in gear any day, launched by the anthropic poisoning of the atmosphere by man-made greenhouse gases. It is basically what happens in a criminal forest fire: somebody comes with a match. Given dry weather, high temperatures, and a wind, a vast conflagration results. As I said the three great Antarctic Glacial Basins could disappear in decades, not millennia. And soon.

This general mess is part of the famed “singularity”. It is fundamentally caused by the nonlinear rise of scientifically driven uncontrolled industry.

What Matters Most Is What Is Happening At the Poles, Where the Heating Is Maximal

At some point this Winter temperatures went above freezing… at the north pole itself. The ice pack is accordingly at the lowest extent, ever. Proverbially, frogs are supposed not to jump, if one rises the temperature slowly. Meanwhile, the porous limestone on which Florida lies will not allow to save Miami with the simple expedient of building dams.

When Obama became president, he fixed the… Bush presidency. An admirer of Reagan, Obama lowered the taxes on the richest, by 20%, because followers of Reagan believe in “trickle down economics”. Then Obama gave a trillion to the banks (“TARP”), which reimbursed the Treasury, as the lying Clinton disingenuously, but correctly points out… Tanks to many trillion of dollars given to banks by the Federal Reserve (another branch of the government).

While Obama was busy saving the class he had been told he joined (and here is your Nobel Prize, boy!), he let the planet burn.

The Obama’s doctrine fundamental principle is: “Don’t do stupid shit!” However, when facing a singularity with a mind of its own, there is no difference between “doing stupid shit” and not doing anything.  Because the most stupid thing we can do is, nothing at all. Even Trump supporters have understood this. Obama thought that, by doubling up on Reagan policies, he would improve matters. Now he has to face these graphs. Like the butchery in Syria, they are his babies. There were holocaust before, a few hundred thousands Syrian dead, is nothing special, in the land of the “religion of eternal peace”, agreed.

However, the cooking of the biosphere will long live as the greatest infamy, ever. And those who wanted power so bad, and chose the worst as advisers, will be forever accused by history. Where is your suggestion to put a carbon tax, Mister President? Too busy asking your plutocrats for money? Cooking the biosphere is Obama’s gift, the change we can believe, because that’s the one we can see.

Patrice Ayme’

NASA’s Antarctic Interpretational Error

NASA observed a gain of altitude of much of Antarctica. From there NASA scientists deduced that Antarctica was gaining ice and snow. Unfortunately, as they admit, this leads them to predict that there is an unknown, massive cause of Sea Level Rise (SLR). The advantage is that this hypothesis makes nice with NASA’s sponsors (fossil fuels loving Republicans controlling Congress and the Supreme Court of the US). The disadvantage is that all SLR contributing factors have been accounted for, but one. And that one, NASA just denied, that it could possibly exist.

However, there is another interpretation differing vastly from the one NASA scientists made: Antarctica is gaining ice, snow, and… WATER. NASA did not see the water. How could it? Back to preschool: the water is below, the ice on top. See? The water is below, thus sight unseen. The ice is actually floating up. But that does not mean it’s not there. Actually the NASA map itself shows where the water is coming in. It’s not because one does not see something that one should not consider it. Progress in thinking is always achieved ONLY by considering what one has not considered before. So it’s always an exercise in atonement.

Water Sneaking Below The Ice: This Is The One Factor That Will Dominate Sea Level Rise, If It Does Not Already Do So

Of course such an explanation is valid only when there is water laying below the ice. But this is actually much of Antarctica, already. In some places, water goes below ice shelves, by 800 kilometers (500 miles). Much of the solid continent has lakes below the ice.

NASA’s Altitude Accumulation Map Shows Where Water Penetration Already Occurs

When NASA looks at this map, it claims that Antarctica is gathering snow. Indeed, globally, it is: warmer air carries more water, so, the warmer the air, the more it snows… until all turns to rain! This is why there are tropical downpours. This was fully expected by those, who, like me, believe in catastrophic temperature, and sea level, rise.

So NASA blares gigantic titles, to make its sponsors feel good about themselves, and thus expecting their gratitude: NASA Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses. In truth, all what NASA saw was:  NASA study: ALTITUDE Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses. Altitude is not mass. Oops!

However, the NASA map clearly shows something OMINOUS is going on. Antarctica is quite a bit like the space shuttle Columbia warmed by the hot fluid during its final re-entry in the Earth atmosphere. All the area in grey, green and a fortiori blue are losing altitude. They are not anymore north, or warmer: it is that water is sneaking in below, melting the ice which then contracts. Hence the loss of altitude, because ice occupies (roughly) ten percent more volume than water of the same mass.

So NASA’s map shows, at a glance, that around 10% of Antarctica is undermined by water (or then is in a zone of thinning due to accelerated flow, caused by underlining water, or proximity of underlying water accelerating and thining glacial flow).

But this is not all: the areas undermined and sinking, thus invaded by water below, are the gateways of the West Antarctic Ice Shield (WAIS), the Wilkes Basin, and the Aurora Basin.

WAIS is 1.97 x 10^6 square kilometers in area (a fifth of the area of the USA, Canada, or China). The ice sheet is more than 2,000 meters thick in many parts, and its icy belly rests 2555 meters below sea level, directly on the rock at its lowest (more than a mile and a half). If warm water got there, the WAIS, or portions thereof, would quickly disintegrate.

Remember the wing on Space Shuttle Columbia? Hot gases penetrated in one gap in the front of the wing, and then went all over inside, disintegrating the innards. Antarctica has at least a dozen similar holes, through which HOT WATER is sneaking in. Under the Totten glacier, the narrow gateway to the giant Aurora Ice Basin, hot water has already penetrated hundreds of kilometers.

More generally, this error of NASA, brings the question of what the scientific method is. One make a theory, and then one finds out whether the theory fits the fact better. If it does, it’s viewed as true (meaning more true). Depending how the new theory fits better and differs more, the difference between the new and the old theory can be viewed as the difference between “truth” and “error”.

That water is coming up below the ice explains SLR. NASA’s theory does not. This makes my theory experimentally superior to NASA. This is traditional evaluation of the correctness of one scientific theory relative to another.

However, there is more. I claim that when comparing scientific theories, one cannot just judge if one theory fits the known facts better.

An example is the theory of glaciations. It was started by a Frenchman in the early Nineteenth Century. The key observation was that huge continents are bunched around the North Pole, so their insolation is sensitive to Earth’s orbital elements.

The theory was launched by Joseph Alphonse Adhémar (1797–1862), a French mathematician. He published this fundamental idea in 1842, in his book Revolutions of the Sea.[1] It took 160 years, and sophisticated computers to check that the theory was right.

So what was the difference? The idea. A new complexity. Adhémar introduced the completely new idea, that astronomical forces changed earth’s climate. It was a new dimension of complexity (at the time scientists, including Goethe, had just uncovered the existence of past extensive glaciations).

The difference between an erroneous, obsolete theory and a better one is often an addition of logical dimension(s). Thus Einstein’s “General Relativity” predicted a faster precession of the perihelion of Mercury, because time slows down closer to the massive sun. This was the introduction of a new element of complexity: classical mechanics, but with VARIABLE time.

Similarly, my theory on Antarctica introduces a new element: water. That element not considered by NASA adds a logical dimension. That makes my theory more sophisticated. When comparing theories, one has to compare not just their experimental predictions, but their logical sophistication.

Patrice Ayme’

Geoengineering: Unsafe & Ineffective Folly

The climate crisis is accelerating (as anticipated): weird fluctuations of temperatures all over. It was colder than at the North Pole in many areas, 6,000 kilometers to the south. Some scientists contribute to the crisis by claiming that the Earth could be fixed by “geoengineering”. The idea is to make the atmosphere reflective above its lowest, and warmest layers. The prospect of salvational geoengineering  gives a dangerous sense of hope, and enable cowards to change the conversation. The one and only conversation ought to be: how to reduce Greenhouse gases emissions before self-feeding natural processes take over, and the warming becomes not just non-linear, but self-amplifying.

Above freezing, at the North Pole, in the last few days of 2015: enormous warm masses of air or water moving powerfully is how ice gets destroyed.

Gregory Benford, astrophysicist and sci fi author is one of the advocates of the man-made volcano idea. See Climate controls, Reason Magazine, November 1997. In brief, one would spray a lot of micron-sized dust into the atmosphere above the Arctic Sea during the summer. Benford suggested diatomaceous earth as an option, because it’s chemically inert: just silica.

Then, thinking again, Benford suggested poisonous gases: SO2 and H2S. What could go wrong? Apprentice sorcerers would sprinkle those poisons to diminish sunlight in summer (they say). Simulations by the naive, for the naive, show it may mitigate sea ice retreat.

In reality, Polar hurricanes can shatter huge amounts of ice, while stuffing the Arctic for weeks with warm air, resulting in record sea ice loss. The spectacular shrinkage of the sea ice in August 2012 was caused by an extremely violent warm, hurricane like storm which physically broke thick ice with enormous waves.

There is evidence that ice melting is not just due to a warm sunshine, but to the secondary paroxysms of massive dynamic and potential (pressure) events. Sprinkling a hurricane with SO2 won’t do a thing, one may as well throw sugar at a tempest to pacify it.

When the Larsen B iceshelf in the Antarctica peninsula collapsed, something similar happened: four days of force one hurricane winds and a record high temperature of nearly 15 degrees centigrade (60 F).

Benford was quoted approvingly even recently on his general train of ideas: “Many fear if we lose the sea ice in summer ocean currents may alter; nobody really knows”. May alter? Well, that’s obsolete: currents are changing and they are warmer.

The naive idea that we have possible, feasible, potential geoengineering means to fight the melting of the polar ice. Delusion, illusion, obfuscation, prevarication, not to say fornication (with big oil).

Trying to put up a veil over polar areas (through various debris or SO2 suspended) will not work. But don’t volcanoes work? The enormous eruptions of Pinatubo, and the one, much worse of Indonesia’s Tambora in 1815, cooled the atmosphere dramatically (Tambora’s atmospheric veil caused freezing the following summer in Europe, and partial failure of crops).

The main problem is that the melting of the Arctic and even worse, the melting of the Antarctic, is going to happen from BELOW. Sneaky. It is oceanic water, densest at four degrees centigrades (nearly 40 degrees F) which is seeping below, and causing the melting.

An article just published in Science (December 2015) explains that one particular, giant glacier has retreated by tens of kilometers, after being exposed to oceanic currents which are just ONE degree centigrade higher than the old normal, along the north-east tip of Greenland. Those currents are the return currents from the Gulf Stream extension which hit Spitzberg.

To quote from the abstract: “After 8 years of decay of its ice shelf, Zachariæ Isstrøm, a major glacier of northeast Greenland that holds a 0.5-meter sea-level rise equivalent, entered a phase of accelerated retreat in fall 2012. The acceleration rate of its ice velocity tripled, melting of its residual ice shelf and thinning of its grounded portion doubled, and calving is now occurring at its grounding line. Warmer air and ocean temperatures have caused the glacier to detach from a stabilizing sill and retreat rapidly along a downward-sloping, marine-based bed. Its equal-ice-volume neighbor, Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden, is also melting rapidly but retreating slowly along an upward-sloping bed. The destabilization of this marine-based sector will increase sea-level rise from the Greenland Ice Sheet for decades to come.”

So the real problem is not to throw a veil above the Arctic, when the sun shines. The real problem is how to cool the Gulf Stream, (a portion of) the world’s master current. (Note to would-be geoengineers: putting a big refrigerator between Florida and the Bahamas, will not work, for a number of reasons.)

Measurements and a back of the envelope computation shows that the anomalous heat content so far stored in the upper 750 meters of the world ocean is about twenty times that stored in the atmosphere… And the ocean is playing catch up (the temperature of this layer is up only half that of the atmosphere; deeper parts are also warming up).

We are coming close to a tipping point on three giant basins in Antarctica (the WAIS, Aurora, and Wilke basins): oceanic water is boring through the sills there. After the sill, the basin slope down (under the weight of the ice), deeper than the Grand Canyon. The melting of each of these basins will rise sea level by seven meters.

Conclusion: only the outlawing, ASAP, of the burning of fossil fuels will mitigate the catastrophe. Anything else, like Elementary School engineering suggestions, is a distraction from the task at hand: decarbonification.

Engineering can work: modern nuclear energy, ever improving solar photovoltaic energy, and various storages, from dams, to molten salt tanks, to, of course hydrogen.

A hydrogen electric car equipped with existing fuel cells, an 40 kilograms of compressed hydrogen, safely stored in tanks resisting to 700 Bars, thus, to any collision), could cross the entire USA, without refueling.

This is exactly why the Obama administration yanked the research and deployment of those cars: otherwise pure electric vehicles and their abysmal small little range, would not have had a chance… Politics is a much twisted thing, but its Arianne thread is money… Such as the big money subtle corruption brings.

Solar PhotoVoltaics could split water, and make hydrogen to store energy, of course.

Patrice Ayme’

Save Earth? 1) Cut Fossil Subsidies! 2) Research

COP 21, Conference Of Plutocrats 21?

The latest official scientific projections are more alarming than ever: a probability of at least a 4 Degrees Centigrades global rise  in temperature by 2100 is greater than 55% (it’s in Science Magazine, November 27, 2015).  And this dramatic prediction does not EVEN take into account the massive melting of the icecaps. I fully expect the dramatic melting of the icecaps, imminently, irreversibly, dramatically, and stupendously. Intuitively, just look at what is happening to Alpine, American, Andean glaciers: they are melting fast. That’s enabled by their smaller size… That means those with a larger size will melt just as well, it just takes more time to become obvious, that’s called inertia (I may write my details in an accompanying essay).

What is the “COP 21″? The Conference Of Plutocrats 21? What is a plutocrat? Someone with satanic powers, who believe full satanic powers in the few is the way to go. (Indeed, it’s the best way to go to hell. COP 21 in Paris is a circus to distract from the reality that (most) governments in the West which could do something do nothing, deliberately. Because of the entrenched powers that be, led by the USA (the Americans will tell you they don’t want to cut “growth”: pollute and get richer!)

The CO2 Emission EQUIVALENT Were 57 BILLION TONS Of Added CO2 In 2014

[The image can be blown up, and read, with a suitable screen, it has more than 2 million pixels.]

The most striking feature is that we are adding 57 billion tons of Green House Gases at this point in CO2 EQUIVALENTS. So this does not just include CO2 emissions, but also NO, NO2 and CH4, plus chlorofluorocarbons. Some of these gases are 200 times, and sometimes thousands of times, more capable of the greenhouse effect than Carbon Dioxide.

Propagandists who are keen, or paid, to underestimate the Green House Gas crisis, are keen to quote only CO2 emissions, and even then not those C)2 emissions due to fires, deforestation, cement making. This way they can quote “CO2 emissions” as low as 9 Gigatons per year, instead of the REAL number, which is nearly SIX times greater.

The “infographics” above, agree with many of the points I made before. Some are well known scientific facts: CO2 will stay at high concentration for centuries (except if we find a way to extract it massively; we don’t have it now).  Some are more philosophical: MUCH MORE FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH IS NEEDED.

There are two types of fundamental research: the applied type, say making (much) better batteries, or making controlled thermonuclear fusion viable as a new massive energy source. Then there is the really foundational fundamental type: that means supporting all and any fundamental science, from botany to astronomy: it is entangled with giving birth to new modes of thinking.

Democracy, even Direct Democracy, the real thing, has to capped by government (in real direct democracy, the legislative framework is from the People). Even Bill Gates recently recognized the importance of government. Government is always the ultimate actor, “private” efforts are just a kindergarten.

(The big high tech companies of Silicon Valley were always at the teat of government, ever since the 1930s, when Hitler gave the monopoly of computation to IBM in the Reich up to today’s Federal laxism towards the tech giants.)

One of the astounding fights at COP 21 in Paris has been that the rich countries want to allow GLOBAL warming up to two degrees. That’s obviously insane, as I explained more than six years ago. It looks more insane than ever. The reason? The warming in polar areas is several times this. Right now, we are around ONE degree Centigrade of global warming relative to level 280 of ppm CO2.  BUT, in the polar areas, it’s more like plus FIVE degrees Centigrades. So a global rise of TWO degrees C means plus TEN degrees C at the poles. So far, so good, but more than the area of Europe is ice grounded below sea level in the Arctic and Antarctica. It’s all going to melt, extremely soon, and suddenly. Consider this:

94% Of Heat Content Increase In Earth’s Biosphere, Goes To The Ocean. And What Will Melt Antarctica? Ocean Sneaking Below

Water, including the ocean, is denser at FOUR degrees Centigrades (roughly 39 Fahrenheit, well above the melting point of ice of 32F!) So it will sneak below ANTARCTICA’s ice shelves, icecaps and glaciers. In some places, it ALREADY sneaks 800 kilometers below (500 miles, to use Roman units).

When a few men and women rule over the fate of the biosphere, the astounding jewel of 5 billion years of evolution, they are automatically satanic.

Helping the Earth is simple: switch off all fossil fuels subsidies, 6,000 billion dollars of them, per year. Converting that into research would solve ALL problems within 30 years. Doing otherwise is just dust bowls in the eyes.

Instead, the COP 21 talks have been mostly about poor countries blackmailing the rich ones about 100 billion dollars (is that meant to be the price of the biosphere? Ten zeroes are missing…) That will solve nothing, quite the opposite, as it will reassure without a road to a real solution. Real solution can come only from radically new technology. We have a crisis way worse than Nazism onto us, and we are paying lip service to it.

Just as the Nazis were financed by plutocrats (many, if not most, early on, not German!) the International Monetary Fund has revealed the immense  of the global yearly total of fossil fuel subsidies — $5.3 trillion. This cludes the costs of the effects of energy use on people’s health (7 million dead a year from fossil fuel pollution!), the environment and climate change. That’s 7 percent of the global gross domestic product. The OCDE counted more than 800 tricks the rich countries use to support the fossil fuel industry.

Our great leaders pay lip service to “climate change” to look good, or, at least, less bad (yet leaders of the “V20”, the 20 Vulnerable nations presently disappearing under “climate change”, are sincere). Because our great leaders love themselves, and death, more than they love us, and life. And it cannot be otherwise, because of the way they got where they are, lying their way up, while having the greatest opinions of themselves, while anxious to please layers of plutocrats above them.

(Notice the analogy with the Jihadists’ systems of motivations, thus explaining in part, why it took so long to discover that there was a problem with the State of Islamism, and its Islamist state).

To end on a positive note: switching to cutting fossil fuel subsidies and making much more fundamental research could be started anytime, and by one, or a few countries, unilaterally. One could imagine President Donald Trump, suddenly feeling the heat, making an accord with Franco-Germania, and China, overnight. There is much more that can be done in the way of research and development.

An example is Whistler’s Hydrogen Fuel Cells bus fleet, twenty vehicles, each with 200,000 kilometers. They produce no pollution, just water. The program was scrapped, just because it’s a bit more expensive than (subsidized) diesel buses, and because the extremely satanic Harper ruled over Canada . Instead, such a program should be made mandatory all over the West, and diesel buses scrapped, all over the West. Just do it.

Patrice Ayme’

 

 

Wilson A Racist; Exploding Seas

A quickie today, I have to go dive with the Manta Rays:

The Architect of USA Policy In The Twentieth Century Was A Frantic Racist Disguised As An Apostle Of Peace:

A scandal is surfacing at Princeton University, as the president and founder, Wilson, is found by the student body to be a racist. The official view on Wilson is that he was a saint, an apostle of peace, and the gentleman who, to his regret, had to intervene in World War One.

My vision is the exact opposite. I  have explained that Wilson, after he became president of the USA, and because he was a racist, encouraged the Kaiser and his top generals to attack the French Republic. So doing, Wilson invented the American policy of using fascist Germany to destroy the world, and, in particular the world order imposed by democratic European power.

During World War One, American trade, with the active collaboration of the Netherlands enabled Germany to keep on fighting (otherwise the Franco-British blockade would have forced it into surrender within 18 months).

It is good to see the student body, and even some of the administration of Princeton University, is rising a piece of the veil covering up American racism, and its far-fetching consequences…

***

How the USA explodes seas:

One far-fetched consequence has been that, as the USA was made by oil, the fossil fuel industry has had a tight grip on American policy. Just a few weeks ago the American Secretary of State was claiming the Paris Climate Conference would not be bidding. He was rebuffed by the French president (they are friends, and speak in French together as Kerry is bilingual). If COP 21 is not binding, seas will explode beyond the comfort level…

Vast mounts have just been found in shallow seas off Siberia, some 1,000 meters across. They are probably caused by global warming, which is much more pronounced up north.

From university of Tromso:

….these newly discovered subsea pingos may be quite recent. This lends support to another hypotheses, the one that states that mechanisms that form pingos on land and mechanisms that form mounds on the ocean floor are completely different.

“The subsea-pingo like formations are significantly larger than the ones on land. Gas leakage from one of the ocean floor pingos offshore Siberia shows a specific chemical signature that indicates modern generation of methane. We suggest that the mound formed more recently, moving material physically upwards.”

Dissociation of methane ice

On land pingos are mainly formed when the water freezes into an ice core under soil, because of the chilling temperatures of permafrost. However, subsea pingos, may be formed because of the thawing of relict subsea permafrost and dissociation of methane rich gas hydrates.

Gas hydrates are ice-like solids composed of among other things methane and water. They form and remain stable under a combination of low temperature and high pressure. In permafrost the temperatures are very low and gas hydrates are stable even under the low pressure, such as on shallow Arctic seas. Thawing of permafrost leads to temperature increases, which in turn leads to melting of gas hydrates, therefore, releasing the formerly trapped gas.

“ The methane creates the necessary force that pushes the remaining frozen sediment layers upward, forming mounds.” says Serov.

Quiet explosions beneath the Arctic shallow seas

Subsea pingos can potentially blow out, without massive attention, as was the case with the highly visible Yamal craters, but with massive expulsions of methane into the ocean. For petroleum companies these areas may pose a geohazard. Drilling a hole into one of these subsea pingos, can be not only expensive but also catastrophic. During a geotechnical drilling in the close by Pechora Sea, an industry vessel unknowingly drilled a hole into one of these mounds. It triggered a massive release of gas that almost sunk the vessel.

“We don´t know if the methane expelled from the subsea pingos reaches the atmosphere, but it is crucial that we observe and understand these processes better, especially in shallow areas, where the distance between the ocean floor and the atmosphere is short.” says Serov.

Reference: “Methane release from pingo-like features across the South Kara Sea shelf, an area of thawing offshore permafrost”,  Journal of Geophysical Research.

Yes, the situation is serious. Even more serious than when American racist were supporting, enabling, instigating German racists, a century ago. Let no one say it was not clear. The racists failed, in their attempt to impose their order worldwide. However, the destruction of the biosphere, once it has gone too far, will be self-feeding. That’s what the tipping points are all about.

Patrice Ayme’

Glacial Warm-Up Not Cool

Nietzsche, following others, notably Hinduism, believed in the “Eternal Return of the Same”. Nothing could be further from the truth: wherever we look, we see change. Even our sun is a second (or more) generation star. This means the Sun is (partly) metallic, and metals are crucial for life as we know it (or can imagine it). And even for creating a magnetically shielded Earth.

Meanwhile in Israel, nearly 10% of Israeli Jews (more than 550,000) live in the so-called “Occupied Territories” which basically no nation, not even the Israel’s official poodle, USA, recognizes as belonging to Israel. Palestinian society is crisscrossed by Israel security services, to the point all what Palestinians can do is grab a knife… The colossal rage therein has not found a bridge to the “Islamist State”.  All hell will break loose if it does.

Meanwhile, climate change is accelerating. Clearly, the same is not returning. In California, the glaciers are condemned. This below is Lyell glacier on the 4,000 meters high mountain of the same name, highest point of Yosemite National Park:

Similar Change At The Poles Is Baked In: Only Inertia Slows It Down

[Image National Park Service; Lyell, a breakthrough geologist, learned his science at the university of Edinburgh. With Charles Darwin. In Scotland, Lamarck’s discovery of the great age of the Earth, and his theory of evolution, was taught, and astounded the youngsters. As Lamarck’s studies of mollusk fossils’ gravely contradicted the Holy Book, they were not taught in England.]

It is likely that glaciers will be gone from the Sierra Nevada within five years (except for the Palisade glacier, which may hold out a couple of years more).

Evil is often born in the eye of the beholder. The Nazis found this out, the Israelis seem determined to find out. Yet, who can blame them? Greater forces are at work.

And what is the empire of goodness to do? Well, stay in shape. In military shape. In 1914, and again in 1940, the forces of goodness were taken by surprise, and the catastrophe of a really full holocaust of civilization was barely avoided: don’t forget that, in the end, the Nazis wanted to kill everybody… Including the Germans. After all, this is the method Stalin used with the Soviets, chuckling all the way (at least, according to Winston Churchill who was there… and according to a little of interpolation of historical facts). The most troubling aspect of Stalin’s mass murdering, human rights exterminating ways, is that it was the only method which could defeat the Nazis. Having to choose between certain death and ignobility at the hand of Stalin’s “blocking sections”, and taking their chances fighting Nazis, Soviet soldiers naturally opted for the latter.

Russian armed forces have been modernized, including very long-range cruise missiles (and Russian TV claims they can go all over Europe…)

The combination of climate warming and galloping demography is at work in Africa and the Levant.  It’s a microcosmos  of what will ambush all of humanity soon. One more reason to learn how to dominate it.

It will require mental force, and then physical force to dominate the situation. Mental force will have to be considerable. Because we erred so long the wrong way, deliberately confusing civilization and abomination. So now we have abomination (Islamist state, Saudi Arabia, Putinistan, etc.) parroting civilization.

As I see it, the largest scale historical evolution of the West went this way. In the last century, or so:

My basic, order zero explanation of the Africa-Levant mess is simple, I proffered it many times:

1) The USA, or rather, the powers that were, in the USA, used Islamism/”Anti-colonialism”, first incarnated by the Great Bitter Lake accord, as a weapon of de-Europeanization of the immediate neighborhood of Europe. (All the four present crisis zones are within four hours subsonic flight from Brussels.)

2) In the guise of “freeing” the people (that is, put them at the mercy of Wall Street/London supported dictators, from Morocco to Pakistan), European pseudo-intellectuals (Sartre, De Beauvoir and other collaborators, etc.) betrayed Europe and supported the USA plutocrats’ basic scheme (hiding their true purpose, taking their orders from Wall Street, below Marxist-Leninism mumbo-jumbo: who could have suspected anything?).

3) This has been, ultimately very bad not just for the Levant/Africa, but even for the USA, as it favored the rise of EVIL RULE (Pluto Cracy) there. As plutocracy rose, everything else went down, from the Middle Class, to freedom, economic and social opportunity, and the rate of scientific and technological progress.

4) Europeans are directly responsible, because, aside from yours truly, I have seen nobody bring forth this thesis. Instead collaborators such as De Beauvoir and Sartre were lionized, let alone comrade Stalin, and the now much reviled Kamerad Adolf.

One cannot fight what one does not understand what it is, whatsoever. Western populations and intellectuals have understood nothing to the plutocratic phenomenon. (Marx, Proudhon and other pro-socialist thinkers condemned capital, throwing the baby with the bath; Sade, Nietzsche focused on power so well, they were not taken seriously, except by their very pale, half-intelligent imitators…)

I agree many countries in Eastern Europe are racist, and that this is a moment of education for them. We should not hesitate to use force, starting with verbal force to make them understand that it’s high time to cut the racist crap. If they want to persist, help to the offenders (may Orban’s Hungary) ought to be suspended.

There is probably at least ten million people in France, or the French diaspora, of recent total, or part African/Levant origin. Most, including yours truly, are perfectly integrated in Western civilization (having seen the alternative), and often more French than even an old racist like the Catholic chauvinistic fanatic, De Gaulle (tolerance is French, contemplate those who elected Julian in 358 CE, or Clovis, a century later Charles De Gaulle’s racism and bigotry was not French, it had to do with the “white race” and lack of esthetic taste such as detesting minarets).

There is no return of the same. Yet, the progress accomplished is often less than imagined. It has definitively been established that Neolithic (“Prehistoric”) humans in Europe could perform limb amputation and trepanations. The prehistoric ones apparently mastered anti-septic, antibiotic and pain killing conditions enough to do so.

We have progressed much. But not as much as we need. We need to progress much more, right away. Lest, of course, we prefer to live Israeli style, killing our fellow youth, just because it looks… Semite. The irony is impressive.

Patrice Ayme’

 

Non-Linear Cold Blob Rising Over North Atlantic

The reason life survived on Earth for so long, and blossomed into animals, and now mind, is that the planet is equipped with homeostatic mechanisms (homeo means similar in Greek, and stasis, standing still). However, those mechanisms tend to be geological.

Human civilization is now having an impact on the biosphere of a violence probably never seen before. The changes are faster than what geology, or even life, can accommodate.

Some will brandish the impact of the Yucatan asteroid, and claim that was worse; however that’s just a theory: the biosphere was clearly under stress at the time from the Deccan Traps eruptions, and had been under that stress for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions. At its worst, the Asteroid was just the straw which broke the Camel’s back.

2015 will be the warmest year since the end of the Eemian, 115,000 years ago. So why are record low temperatures appearing just south of Iceland? Yes, record lows, lower than ever recorded.

While The Rest Of Planet Is At Record Warmth, Off Iceland, Record Colds Are Achieved!

That was fully expected, and a demonstration of Non-Linearity of the incipient global warming. A phenomenon is linear when it looks like a line. Global warming is not going up like a line, as some places are warming at a rate ten times higher than the average, and some regions are cooling (and some are cooling spectacularly, off Iceland and some seas around Antarctica, for reasons related to warming).

The Dryas events were extremely fast and pronounced cooling events which happened several times during the period 10,000 years to 15,000 Before Present. Some lasted around a millennium, others, just a century. They vanished as fast as they came. They are named after a tundra flower, the Dryas. In Scandinavia forests were replaced by tundra graced with Dryas (hence the name). In Britain, average temperature collapsed to minus 5 degree Celsius, and glaciers formed at elevation.

These spastic events of drastic cooling, while, overall, de-glaciation was going on, long remained a mystery. Overall, the great glaciation which had brought glaciers down to New York, was on its way out, the planet was globally, irresistibly warming. So why would temperatures collapse in some places around Greenland by 15 degrees Celsius? The solution to the Dryas events’ spastic glaciation riddle? The same as always! Warming is non-linear.

What’s the theory? The details are uncertain, but we know that the Gulf Stream (aka the North Atlantic “Conveyor”) shorted, literally: analyses of deep sea sediments have shown this. The conveyor sends an enormous current of warm tropical waters northward.

When the warm tropical waters become very cold between Iceland and Spitzbergen, they sink to the bottom of the sea, and head south. This sinking, plus the pushing by trade winds in the tropics, is what provides the energy of the Gulf Stream.

However, if the warm tropical waters are capped by a very cold, but light sweet(er) water lid, they will get cold early, and sink before Iceland. This is what happened in the Dryas events.

And It Is Happening Again, Albeit On A Smaller Scale

Was it in response to a sudden influx of fresh water from Lake Agassiz and deglaciation in North America, and Greenland? Sudden freezing there would have removed the freshwater lid, hence the brutal switchback to warming after the brutal cooling. By the way, the sea level rising speed responded quickly, by a factor of three. After the typical Dryas cooling, oceanic rise rebounded to 18 millimeter per year right away (this shows that those who expect a slow rise of sea level rise are deluding themselves, or, more to the point, are trying to delude us!)

Nowadays a Dryas-like mechanism would have to rest on the melting of Greenland alone (that’s the only place with significant ice). This is, of course, insufficient, but summer 2015, cool and rainy over the northern North Atlantic is evidence that the effect is on. Scientific analysis confirms it. See: “Exceptional Twentieth Century Slow Down of Atlantic Ocean Overturning Circulation” (Nature, 23 March, 2015).

The exact nature of what is going on at this point is a matter of debate among experts. What is sure is that something is going on.

The Atlantic Conveyor Is A Subtle Thing, Yet Dominates Glaciation In The Arctic

A similar situation beckons in Antarctica, where ice shield melting creates a freshwater lid all around which in turn freeze, extending the ice cap in the Austral winter.

When considering nonlinearity, subtlety and surprises are of the essence. This is true in physics, as it is in psychology, history, or politics.

And the morality in all this? The USA has played god. The European Union made a honest to goodness effort to reduce CO2 emission, while the USA, paying lip service to the opposite of what it was doing went right ahead, with its factory, the Plutocratic Republic of China, to use and abuse fossil fuels as never before.

So now what? Is god still American, as usual? At first it seems so: the USA started to frack massively and massive amounts of fossil fuels were extracted from the USA’s generous soil. When American companies tried the same in Poland, it failed: the underground god (Pluto?) did not cooperate: Polish soil is adverse to fracking.

Here comes the punchline: sea level has been rising fast along the Eastern seashore of the USA.  Actually, three to four times faster than the world average. That’s more than one centimeter per year.

Why? Imagine a traffic jam. Or rather a crash ahead: things come to a halt, cars, water piles up behind. Maybe the Washington politicians will soon have to learn to swim, and not just against the tide of world public opinion.

The USA is going to be punished with its own instruments. Meanwhile 20 countries formed the V20, a group of twenty countries whose existence is immediately threatened by global warming, although they caused it not.

A Two Degree Celsius rise of temperature is indeed way too much: nonlinearity is upon us. Evil is always nonlinear.

Patrice Ayme’

Glacial Pace, Cool Lies, Melting Leadership

Obama went to Alaska and named Denali (the tall one in the local language) Denali. Denali, the tallest mountain that far north on Earth, is endowed with the tallest glaciated face anywhere on Earth, its north face being around 5,000 meters high (it had been named for a USA president who was killed by an anarchist, in those times when hatred for the mighty ran rampant).

Naming Denali by its name needed to be done, and, in Obama was up to the task. Obama is best at demolishing open doors, when not pursuing the world terror assassination campaign by drones which does not just dishonor the West, but saps its foundations. (I am not saying I am hysterically against assassinations, torture, and that every assassination ordered by Obama is unwise. But the question of due process, excellent information, and perfect targeting is crucial; moreover, having a plan beyond imposing terror is paramount; not the case here).

Obama Approaching A Glacier Which May Be Gone In 5 Years Thanks To His Affirmative Inaction

I personally have seen enormous glaciers which are now gone, both in Alaska, and in the Alps.

Obama uttered many truths in Alaska. We know this method: drowning reality under a torrent of little truths, and common place truisms. Obama seems to have realized that he was the did-nothing prez. This is better than Clinton, who, having deregulated the banks, was the did-terrible prez, or Bush II, viewed by a sizable part of the world as a war criminal, for his invasion and destabilization of Mesopotamia. Yet, even Bush did something good, and durable: Medicare Part D. One can forget a bad man who did a big, good thing. Obama just put a band aid on the gangrene of USA health care, and did preciously nothing about anthropogenic climate change.

At the Exit glacier, the president walked past signs that mark the year the glacier reached at that point. The glacier has receded two kilometers (1.25 mile) in the past 200 years. It is now the only glacier accessible by car and foot in the Kenai peninsula (which contains the largest icecap in the USA).

Pointing to the signs, the president considered the speed at which glacier retreats is accelerating. “It is spectacular, though,” glancing back at the view. “We want to make sure our grandkids can see it.”

This is slick disinformation. Grandkids? Are you kidding me? In truth, it’s absolutely certain that the grandkids will NOT see that glacier, except if the Obama daughters rush through the reproductive process. As I related in a preceding essay, a few years ago, I went back to Alaska, to show to my own toddler a giant glacier I remembered to be easily accessible by car and a little flat walk. I could not recognize the landscape: the glacier was completely gone, and had been replaced by tall trees. It was astounding. I was contemplating the same transformation of ice into trees this summer in the Alps. Going through a forest I had known as a formidable glacier.

Obama is a Harvard lawyer. People around him are politicians (often also with a legal background), financial types, more lawyers, banksters (real or potential), conspiracy consultants, managers, celebrities, etc. So it is with most politicians around the world. Those people have little education in physics. One does not even know if they understand the basics involved in pushing a car. Apparently, they don’t. Push hard on a car without the hand brake, and it will not move much, if at all.

Once I was in the Sierra Nevada, on a small road at 10,000 feet. California route 108, to be specific. Said road can get extremely windy and steep as it reaches Sonora Pass. It’s a trap: in the lower reaches route 108 is wide enough to accommodate the largest imaginable trucks. A truck driver armed with GPS had got his truck, a tractor-trailer, high enough to be unable to go back. Still hoping for the best, he forged ahead, until its giant vehicle was unable to take a hairpin, and, still hoping that brute force would solve everything, the driver succeeded to get completely across the road in two places, with many of its enormous wheels secured among very large boulders, both for the cab and the trailer. A large traffic jam ensued. As the closest imaginable rescue laid dozens of miles away, and going around, supposing one could back up, would require a detour of 200 kilometers (in the mountains!), it was time  to think creatively.

While dozens of people were milling around, I noticed an imaginable path, by displacing boulders, and filling some gaps with stones. It helped that we were close to timberline, and trees were few. Getting to work with my spouse, we soon cleared and engineered enough of the land to pass through. Other vehicles followed.

This little incident has nagged me for years: why did not the other drivers think about it? OK, my spouse and I have a maximal background in physics, but still, one is talking about basic common sense here. Why did no one else think of making a different road?

Obama’s road, and that of the other politicians, from Cameron to Hollande, let alone Putin, or Xi, is to say what sounds good (Merkel may be an exception; but then she is a physics PhD too). It sounds good to speak about the “grandkids”: Commandant Cousteau started that one: save the planet for the grandkids.

The ideas there are that the world ecology decays slowly under our assaults, and that it may be in our selfish interest to let it be, but nefarious within two generations. In other words: the future is slow.

Our great leaders, the supremacists of self-endowed selfishness, just don’t have enough of a feeling for physics to understand climate change (once again with the possible exception of physicist Merkel, who has engaged Germany on a one-way trip to renewable energy… in a cloud of coal dust).

INERTIA and MOMENTUM were discovered by Buridan a Fourteenth Century Parisian mathematician-physicist-philosopher-politician-academic (although the discovery is erroneously attributed to Newton, who blossomed 350 years later). Buridan had a gigantic following of students, including Albert of Saxony, Oresme, the Oxford Calculators. Those students used graphs (a world’s first), and demonstrated non-trivial theorems of calculus.

Somehow, Aristotelian physics was as wrong as possible about dynamics. Aristotle and his clownish parrots believed that one needed a force to persist with motion, completely ignoring air resistance. Aristotle should have ridden a horse at a full gallop, and discover air resistance. If one believes in Aristotelian physics, there is no problem with the climate: just reduce the CO2, and the climate changes comes to a halt. Apparently our great leaders are at this level of education.

Buridan gave the formula for momentum (which he called impetus): (MASS) X (VELOCITY). Given a constant force, impetus would augment proportionally to speed. This is what came to be called “Newton’s Second Law”.

At this point human modification of the atmosphere, from stuffing it with CO2 and other gases, has made the lower atmosphere into a thicker blanket, imprisoning heat close to the ground. This is applying a constant heating force (aka thermal forcing) to the ground and the ocean, both of which are heating at increasing depth.

The climate is the largest object, so far, on which humanity has applied force. The force applied is immense, the greatest force which humanity has ever exerted. Yet, because the climate is so massive, it takes much time to accelerate: the variation of climate change is low.

Pushing the climate hard is similar, but much worse, than pushing an enormous object, say a truck: initially, it does not move. But when it does, it’s suicidal to try to stop it by standing in front.

Can we stop applying the force? No. Not within existing technology. We cannot extract the excess CO2 in the atmosphere. Making plants grow to absorb the CO2 cannot work. First, recent studies on the Amazon show that present vegetation is not adapted to the present density of CO2. It grows faster, but then dies faster. Second, and most importantly, the mathematics don’t work.

1ppm ~ 2 Gt. 3 ppm: 6 Gt. Total CO2 atmosphere: 750 Gt. So CO2 augments by roughly 1% a year. Yet, total anthropogenic emissions are at least 35 Gt, and perhaps as much as 50Gt (a number I consider correct). So most of the CO2 from burning fossils disappears (probably in the ocean, where the reserves are of the order of 40,000 Gt; thus we are augmenting total carbon storage there by 1% in ten years; not dramatic, but the CO2 converts in carbonic acid, and the acidity is going up).

In any case the excess carbon we send in the atmosphere is of the order of 7% of the total carbon in the atmosphere. We cannot neutralize this by growing plants: that would require to grow the biomass by 50Gt a year, 50 billion tons a year, year after year. A grotesque proposal.

Do the math, ignorant leaders! Shoot, I forgot you had no math at school, beyond the basics, except for Merkel; the total annual primary production of biomass is just over 100 billion tonnes Carbon per year. However, because the biosphere was balanced until the massive extraction and burning of fossils, in the last 150 years, as much was being destroyed (through burial). Now we are talking about creating 50 billion tons of biomass a year. Where are we going to put them? On brand new, specially built mountains sized skyscrapers? (Don’t laugh, it’s the future.)

Even then, supposing we could miraculously stop the augmentation of concentration of CO2, under the present anthropogenic gazes concentration (around 450 ppm), we are well above the stage where all ice melts from the Arctic. So that is going to happen. In turn it will release further presently still frozen carbon storage, making it a increasingly non-linear augmentation (of the catastrophe).

There is exactly one method that will stop the greenhouse madness, and it’s the simplest. Talking to no end about complicated schemes is diabolical, as even the Pope pointed out.

Our present leaders will be judged severely by history. Not only they are dinosaurs, but they make sure that we are going back to the Jurassic all too soon.

Patrice Ayme’