Monday, June 11, 2007

Perpetual Drastic Change

It's time to re-frame the debate, so it begins to ring the bell.

Just posted this on RealClimate. You will be able to see it in a flesh here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/g8-summit-declaration/

Just curious.
Broad consensus appear to support:
Oceans will rise for millennia, due to heat expansion, even if all the ice to melt is gone. But suppose, by some yet unspecified MIRACLE we stop earlier. At what level ocean rise can be stabilised AFTER an expectedly epochal time-period is over.

Has anybody EVER taken into effect what the best scenario would mean in terms of increased pressure on fault and rift lines under the sea? What kinds of super-vulcanoes - if any - are brewing there?

Gigantic underwater chambers are sucked dry form oil and gas reserves means suddenly there is no inside pressure to stabilize them, so the pressure on the rifts that are around them that before acted against gigantic tectonic weights is decreased dramatically. Before, oil pressure was huge and acted in all directions. Now it is gone at it can engender collapse of large rifts. Meanwhile gigantic heaps of hydraulic pressure are piling upon them from the outside -- this coming from increased columns of oceanic water.

Earth down there has the habit to break without sending SMS to you and me as to the exact time it intends to schedule such a momentous event.

Atmospheric system change is no less unpredictable. Does that make that less mortally dangerous? Do we as scientists have the luxury of time to learn and educate AT THE SAME TIME about yet new signs of stresses in the most complex systems on Earth - Climate?

It appears, some trees are already so overstressed, they are net CO2 emitters. The stratosphere has begun retaining water vapour. Methane from under permafrost gone is beginning to equal industrial outputs. We may have foreseen these events happening now individually as we could measure them individually. But who knows what their coupled effects are.

We all experience a new planetary weather system in the making. Problem is that though we apparently want to change things back, we don't don't know what we are about to really change.

Do we really expect elected officials otherwise well trained in adversarial logic to act on such a premise?

Perhaps we should stop arguing that the temperature is not rising and look for UNEXPECTED anomalies. And there are plenty.

Here is one:

If YOU SEE the temperature not rising for decades DESPITE the mega-tonnes of output, ask yourself and the apparent Solar Warming. Isn't that an anomaly? Isn't that the proverbial horse that has 4 white legs?

And finally, I have a major problem with how we frame the debate. If we found a name for the sum of events that is already apparent, we would be much closer to communicating apparent dangers.

What is not familiar, doesn't ring the bell.

None of us actually knows from experience what climate change or global warming is. Though warming is a familiar notion, we just cannot contemplate PERPETUAL warming on a planetary scale.

In a room closed, it would mean something obviously horrendous -- burning alive. Suddenly, the spine shivers, because that is a familiar scale. Now, mention "perpetual drastic and unexpected anomalies in the climate system", which PERPETUAL climate change really is, and most stock analysts turn a death ear.

But mention the SAME HAPPENING on the STOCK MARKET and suddenly they WILL KNOW, and be busy piling up gold the very next day.

We haven't yet found a comprehensible word for either Perpetual Warming or Perpetual Change let alone the combination of BOTH. Yet gut feeling tells that most of us are experiencing the sum effect of both.

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