Joined: Jun 13, 2007 Posts: 3631 Location: Minniesotuh
Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 9:08 am Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
"Corn boom could expand ‘dead zone’ in Gulf
Farmers say crop too profitable to stop, despite problems downstream
JEFFERSON, Iowa - Because of rising demand for ethanol, American farmers are growing more corn than at any time since World War II. And sea life in the Gulf of Mexico is paying the price.
The nation's corn crop is fertilized with millions of pounds of nitrogen-based fertilizer. And when that nitrogen runs off fields in Corn Belt states, it makes its way to the Mississippi River and eventually pours into the Gulf, where it contributes to a growing "dead zone" — a 7,900-square-mile patch so depleted of oxygen that fish, crabs and shrimp suffocate. ... "
getting worse _________________ "RRrrruuuunnnn!!!" ~Apocalypto
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3647 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 6:07 pm Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
The new Solar Sunspot cycle is beginning now acording to reports availible HERE and will keep building from now until 2011 or 2012. Increased solar activity has been associated with global warming by scientists and this may lead to a seven year warming trend starting now. _________________ Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov
Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 5:25 am Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
I usually don't read that long threads, but this one is quite interesting!
If there won't be a big crash like PO or economic which will collapse our society and our lifestyle, humanity will extinct within few years.
I am quite pessimistic about an organized power down, but we can try something, like building community gardens or guerilla gardening or we get otherwise organized.
The story about the sunspot activity, I've read elsewhere, but in a kind of esoterical article.
Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 12:18 pm Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
All these converging catastrophes point to one base factor, a rising population that increasingly requires more of everything. This results in more energy usage spewing more hydrocarbons that trap heat in the atmosphere. More water usage for more crops to feed more people depleting future sources of potable water. More grazing livestock to feed more people reduces foliage causing the spread of desertification. The spread of affluence to previously underdeveloped countries adds to demand for all forms of consumption.
In a nutshell, it's like Agent Smith stated in the first Matrix movie to Morpheus, "You are not a mammal. You see, mammals find a natural equilibrium with their surroundings. Your specie is more like a Virus. You use the resources in one area and then spread to another." That's probably not a word for word quote, but you get the point. As much as I like being a human, I see all too clearly the downside of our manifestations. And as much as we may have been offended by Agent Smith's comments about our specie, we must be willing to admit it's accuracy, especially if one were to view the Earth from space. We have in fact become the plague upon a previously pristine environment.
One could also view this idea from a different perspective. One in which we view previous naturally occuring disasters as just percursers to the one we are now inflicting on the planet. For example, one could say we are the longer term equivalent of the meteor that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, or the parallel to the volcanic eruptions in Siberia that preceeded the Permian extinction. The one thing that makes this extinction different, is that this one is being perpetrated by a specie on the planet. And the kicker is; We have now come face to face with the fact that we know we are doing it!
Maybe if we had been more conscious along the way, we could have anticipated the convergence of these catastrophes and made a concerted effort to develop renewable energy earlier, or maybe found the intestinal fortitude to control population to lower levels. However, the interesting part is to a great extent we cannot help ourselves from taking what's available. A perfect example of this is open space in the middle of a developed area. Other than Central Park in NY, almost in all instances, any open area eventually falls to the greed of the local regents for development. We are much like an organism from the standpoint that we cannot control our desire for greed. Greed is the ultimate ego-gratification-aphrodesiac. People have a form of orgasm when greed is gratified, yet that attitude is culminating in the converging of all these catastrophes.
Here's an example explaining the difference between intellect and animal instincts. If you take the Soarin' ride at Epcot, you intellectually know you are watching a film of a moving envronment, yet instinct forces one to pull one's feet upward to avoid hitting them on a mountaintop, and various other illusions. So, as much as our intellect may tell us not to overpopulate, burn all those hydrocarbons, fill in that last remaining open space, etc., our animal instincts gear us to simply take more and more.
Hopefully those that survive the coming apocolypse (for lack of a better word) will come through with a more solid intellectual footing and the mistakes of this era will not be repeated. Let's think well of our future incarnations, that they may learn from this debacle.
Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 11:55 am Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
Nicely put. May I add that even before the full effects of global warming have really kicked in, we are already the cause of the sixth great extinction. Global warming, once it gets going, will be a mass extinction on top of an already ongoing mass extinction. And with the dramatic collapse of the Arctic Ice this summer, we can see that the models that predicted, for example, that this wouldn't happen for another century or more, have been shown to be wildly optimistic. Feed back loops are about to kick in, if they haven't already, and we are off to the races of run away GW.
The main job is now (and really always has been) for humans to face what we are. Given this double wammy on the living world, we are both the Siberian volcanic eruptions AND the asteroid, hitting at the time, and with full consciousness (for some at least) of what we are doing.
There is a possibility that we will be the cause of the permanent loss of complex life on earth beyond a very rudimentary level. After the great dying of the Permian Triassic extinction 251 million years ago, it took some 50 million years for life to re-evolve anything like the complexity that existed before the extinction. This is just one order of magnitude from the 500 million years left before the sun expands to the extent that no life will be possible on earth. Given the multiple assaults we have been and continue to impose on the living world, can we be certain that what is left will be able to re-evolve. The earth is no longer a young robust thing, but an aging, fragile lady.
What does it mean to be human? We are very good at telling ourselves comforting stories (dare I say lies) about how wonderful humans are, and we spin philosophies that rationalize our depredations. But can we now start telling the truer stories about what our actual effect on the world is? Can people even have ears to hear such stories?
I would also point out that, though exploding human population is obviously a huge issue, it is only the top 20% that is responsible for 80% of the global damage. The world's 40% poorest generally live at levels far below "one earth" (see www.myfootprint.org ) and most of their destuction of ecosystems is local and self limiting, since it restricts their ability to expand their population (unless massive quantities of "food aid" is shipped in to permanently augment their dwindling resources). Of course most of the ecological degradation in the third world is a direct result of first world corporations extractive activities.
Speaking of corporations, it strikes me that these constructed pseudo-persons are very much like what was imagined by earlier as genies or Shakespeare's attendant spirits like Puck or Ariel. They exist to serve our needs, bringing us fantastically exotic goods from around the world. But these modern spirits have also shaped and augmented our desires, and they have taken over our decision making at almost all levels. We are by nature, voracious and rapacious enough without an enormous infrastructure encouraging our desire, urging us to consume ever more of the world ever faster; and even if our wimpy governments were to attempt to move us toward a more sustainable lifestyle, these powerful forces are ever ready to insure that they're rapacious activities are neither slowed nor impeded.
Putting these genies back in the bottle is a major moral imperative, whether or not there is at this point any hope of stopping runaway global warming and near total loss of life on earth.
Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 12:11 pm Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
The solar cycle does not affect the solar constant significantly. The total irradiance hitting the earth at the outer edges of the atmosphere is 1368 Watts/m^2 and it varies by 0.1% over the course of a solar cycle. Also, this variation is essentially in the UV and EUV end of the spectrum which happens to be attenuated in the middle and upper atmosphere. So the solar radiation that dominates the thermodynamic budget of the troposphere does not vary more than 0.02% over the course of the solar cycle.
Longer solar cycles involve variations in the visible end of the spectrum, the part that matters for the troposphere, of less than 0.1%.
It is really quite absurd how basic science can be ignored in the GW discussion (it is not really a debate given the inanity of the "skeptics").
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3647 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 3:29 pm Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
dissident wrote:
The solar cycle does not affect the solar constant significantly. The total irradiance hitting the earth at the outer edges of the atmosphere is 1368 Watts/m^2 and it varies by 0.1% over the course of a solar cycle. Also, this variation is essentially in the UV and EUV end of the spectrum which happens to be attenuated in the middle and upper atmosphere. So the solar radiation that dominates the thermodynamic budget of the troposphere does not vary more than 0.02% over the course of the solar cycle.
Longer solar cycles involve variations in the visible end of the spectrum, the part that matters for the troposphere, of less than 0.1%.
It is really quite absurd how basic science can be ignored in the GW discussion (it is not really a debate given the inanity of the "skeptics").
Basically what you are saying is 1.3 Watt /m^2 doesn't matter.
If you were talking about a satalite in orbit with a 1 m^2 solar panal you would surely be correct. The difference would be immaterial on that scale.
Earth however has a lot of square meters of cross section when viewed from space. Without solar energy the Earth surface would be somewhere around 20 degrees K. With the impact of 1368 W/m^2 it is around 280 K. That gives a temp difference of 260 K/1368=.19 degrees per watt. So your difference of 1.3 Watts gives you a varience of .247 or a quarter of a degree. Considering that all the global warming to date has amounted to .73 degrees I personally consider an eleven year cycle with a .25 degree effect quite significant. _________________ Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov
Joined: Apr 05, 2007 Posts: 155 Location: Great Britain
Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2008 6:16 pm Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
if you buy into the idea that the temperature is going to rise by 2.0 degrees plus then, the rise in temperature due to the solar cycle is only 10% as it is so on a statistical level yes it is "significant" but you are not, i hope, then about to say oh and therefore manmade climate change is not happening.
not only are they resistant, now some of them can live off the stuff. this crap is getting ridiculous.
Yes! virus didn't make it, but my hope is now on bacteria! wow, bacteria that eats antibiotics... this is so cool, now a natural die-off! now the tumor of the biosphere may finally start slowing its growth... I'm prepared to die... but I will like to live through 2012, but on the Great Scheme of Things my desires are irrelevant. _________________ anagami.net
Apparently, Mother Earth is tired of waiting for the human cancer to extreminate itsself, so she is taking steps... _________________ "RRrrruuuunnnn!!!" ~Apocalypto
One factor not taken into account by climate change modelers until quite recently, if at all, is the impact of increased UV radiation on global primary productivity. A modest UV induced reduction in photosynthesis worldwide, due to depleted stratospheric O3, diminishes the biospheres ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere as biomass. This is another + feedback that accelerates the pace of global warming. Failing to take it into account is one reason why warming is occuring at a pace greater than the "worst case" scenario in many climate models. Global warming & Peak Oil are interrelated issues that need to be considered in a unitary fashion.
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