Sea Ice or Ice Shelves?

There is an community of people who are ardently opposed to the whole idea of Greenhouse Warming.  Like a modern version of the Athenian sophists, they continually trumpet only those bits of information that they believe undermine the idea of global warming 

The most recent blast from the anti global warming crowd involves crowing over what they claim are record extents of sea ice.  Given that Arctic Ocean sea ice is shrinking, how is it possible that the world is reaching record levels of sea ice?  And why is this happening during the Antarctic summer?

The answer lies in the Antarctic glaciers themselves.   Weather dats shows thst global warming is producing ever warmerAntarctic  summers.   Glaciers in Antarctica turn into a special form of sea ice known as ice shelves as they flow into sea, and the size of the ice shelves is controlled by the VELOCITY at which  the eAntarctic  glaciers when they reach the sea.   Warmer temperatures duringAntarctic  summers produces faster ice flow which transfers more glacier mass into the ice shelves.  

Yes the Antarctic ice shelves are covering more area then they did in the past.  But this is happening during Antarctic SUMMERS and is actually caused by global warming. 

The ECONOMIST endorses Planetary Geoengineering

The venerable Economist magazine began publication in 1843, and is one of the most respected news magazines on the planet.   It is noted for its independent reporting and rational and economically analysis of global issues.   In its December 13, 2014 issue, the Economist endorsed the use of planetary geoengineering.

The main point of the article in the "Science and Technology" section of the magazine, is that "scientific studies of techniques for deliberately modifying the climate are getting ready to move out of the laboratory" and for the most part thats a good thing if proper care and caution is taken.  The Economist notes that the risks from a warming climate are real and substantial, and political efforts to craft treaties to stop global warming are producing lots of nice sounding promises but little to nothing that actually requires reductions of emissions of CO2.  Geoengineering may offer a way to delay or mitigate some of the worst aspects of global warming.

The Economist also notes the existence of a group of academics who oppose even discussing geoengineering out of fear that the promise of a geoengineering "solution" to global warming may influence politicians and the public not to take difficult measures to reduce CO2 emissions in the belief that geoengineering may "save" them from a warming planet.   But the idea that not  discussing or preparing to deal with problems somehow averts the problems is clearly wrong-headed.

                Geoengineering?  Nope uh uh no way nope nope nope nope don't want to know 

Sea Level Rise and Surfing

Surf's up!  So is sea level.  So how is that going to work out?

We know sea level is currently rising at 3.5 mm per year.  That means sea level will rise by about 3.5 cm in 10 years and about 35 cm (about a foot) in a century. 

But what if the RATE  of sea level rise is increasing?  What if sea level was rising by about 1mm each year 50 years ago and the RATE of sea rise progressively increased to the 3.5 mm per year we see now. 

Well, then an intelligent person might be concerned that the RATE of sea level rise would continue to increase.   If the RATE triples again over the next 50 years then the RATE will be 10 mm per year or about 4 inches each decade.  

But what if the rate of increase in the rate of sea level change is also increasing?  What if global warming is accelerating?  

We'll be in deep water, that's what....

Deeper water means changes in surf.  Waves break and form surf when the wave forms come into contact with the sea floor.  Higher sea levels will produce changes in the location and size of surf breaks

Surf will still be up....just not so much

Prearcheology of San Francisco

Sea level is likely to rise by about 5 m (16 feet) in the next 85-200 years.  In San Francisco this will flood the Market Street area, the lower Mission district and parts of the Marina district.  

Lower Market Street was an area of tidal mud flats when the 49ers began to pour into San Francisco during the 1849 gold rush. The crews of the ships that ferried the gold miners to SanFrancisco would abandon their ships and follow the gold miners heading off to the gold fields in the Sierra Nevada.   Hundreds of ships were abandoned 

Eventually the mud flats were covered over as the city of San Francisco began growing rapidly.  The abandoned ships were covered over as well.  It's not unusual for fragments of gold rush ships to be found when excavations are made to set the foundations for modern buildings being constructed in downtown San Francisco today

A hundred years from now the waters of San Francisco Bay will be rising rapidly.  The ground level floors of buildings along Market Street will be flooded.  Market Street will mostly be underwater. These buildings will have to be abandoned just as hundreds of sailing ships were abandoned in 1849, and eventually they'll collapse into their own foundations and settle into the same mud.

Underwater Archeology of the Future

The bronze statue now known as "Victorious Youth" was dredged up out of the Adriatic Sea.  It likely was created to commemorate the original Olympic Games held in Greece about 2300 years ago. Underwater archeology at shipwreck sites and at ancient cities that have sunk beneath the waves, like ancient Alexandria in Egypt, has been incredibly successful

Soon underwater archeology will have entirely new cities to study. With sealevel   projected  to rise by 5 m in the next 85-200 years, low lying parts of cities like New York, Los Angeles, Dublin, Lisbon, London, and Barcelona will slowly and inevitably eventually be under water

What will future archeologists find when they study the drowned cities of the 22nd century?   Will they find immortal art treasures like Victorious Youth?  Or will they find rusted hulks of millions of sbsndoned cars clustered around thousands of submerged McDonalds and drowned WalMarts

CO2 Antarctic Pumpdown at AGU

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is the premier scientific organization dealing with Earth Science in the USA.  About 25000 geophysicists are in San Francisco this week for the annual AGU meeting.  Every possible thing having to do with the earth is discussed somewhere at AGU including geo engineering. Also including my geo engineering concept as of Monday December 15.

Like most presentations at AGU I wrote a short abstract on CAP and submitted it for review about three months ago.   My paper was assigned to a session on the Cryosphere.  I created a "poster" that Summarized the CAP concept, pinned it up to a display board and spent two hours talking with geophysicists, glaciologists, climatologists and anyone else who was interested about the CAP concept.  

At least three different people told me they also had geoengineering ideas but were reluctant to present them publicly out of concern that they might be thought to be out of the mainstream.  

Luckily or unluckily I don't share that particular concern

Turn Humans into Morlocks to Mitigate Global Warming?

Morlocks for planetary geoengineering  

Since the idea of geoengineering and modifying earth's climate to reduce the effect of global warming, is so controversial perhaps it was inevitable that someone would suggest that the best way to cope with global warming is to leave the Earth alone and instead modify the human species.

Prof. Liao of New York University has suggested that the best way to accommodate future climate change is to embrace human genetic engineering instead of planetary geoengineering.    For instance, Prof. Liao proposes genetic engineeringing be applied to the human species to make us shorter and smaller because a population of  three-foot-tall humans would consume less food and need fewer natural resources than modern humans do.  Another of his ideas is to genetically reengineer humans to improve night vision, so humans could get along better in dimly lit rooms, thus reducing energy consumption.    Add more body hair to reduce the need for clothes and central heating, and you've got a dystopian vision of a future populated by shambolic sub-human creature living in the dark.

Prof. Liao's vision of humanity in the future is surprisingly similar to H.G. Well's creation of the Morlocks in his 1898 science fiction novel The Time Machine.  H.G. Wells also described a future in which part of humanity had intentionally been turned into shorter, hairier light-sensitive creatures, the  sub-human Morlocks, in order to better adjust to their terrible work conditions.    But unlike Prof. Liao, H.G. Wells also had the common sense  to realize there was something horrifying about the idea of genetically modifying humans to fit the conditions rather than modifying the conditions to better suit humans.  H.G. Wells wrote in the Time Machine:   "there was an altogether new element in the sickening quality of the Morlocks—a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I loathed them. "

I feel much the same way about Prof. Liao's proposal to genetically modify humans to make them more adaptable to climate change.  I loathe Prof. Liao's idea.  Probably most people would loathe Prof. Liao's idea.    I think even the Morlocks would loathe the idea.  In fact, if they had a choice, I bet Morlocks would be some of the biggest supporters of planetary geoengineering over genetic reengineering.