Post by Fusioner on Oct 1, 2005 18:21:12 GMT -5
There is a dramatic global shift in progress. This shift encompasses a great deal of changes in a great number of different, yet interelated areas. If each area could be described as a mathematical function, and if you were to graph that function out on an overlay transparency graph (graphs drawn on clear plastic for like an overhead projector) and you displayed these graphs, or functions, one on top of another... You would (you will) see a matching set of "curves" all heading upwards, steeper and steeper. Some of these curves are mathematical "bell curves", some are Parabolas. The raw data that makes up these "curves" are clearly fractal, like the stock market; but when you average the data and plot a simple graph, you get these steep curves. And these curves line up one atop the other. And many of these curves are documenting increased rates... The rates of change which are accelerating.
You have seen some of the tops of the "bell" curves already... Oil energy for example has just peaked. And you will see the effects of all these curves in your lifetime if you are young. I do believe they will dramatically impact your life... Because they will affect everyones life, and you will know all about it before hand.
These systems I am talking about, or if you will, the functions/graphs that are derived from observing these systems; represent large amounts of energy (as in high energy physics)... For instance...
The Earth is changing shape.
The Asian Tsunami was a "sign". I was "behind the curve" (as opposed to being ahead of things), and was not looking forward really until the earthquake and resulting tsunami commanded my attention and really demanded an explanation of the physics behind the catastrophe. Shortly afterwards I developed a working theory as to the "trigger" that caused that specific earthquake and the resulting tsunami. What I saw, quite clearly, is that a lot of melting ice from the poles
of the Earth, causes subsequent shifts in the Earth's crust. I could not prove a lot of melting ice, but I highly suspected it was the root cause.
A few days ago, I saw a press release in association with NASA, a polar ice study conducted by satellite confirmed that 2005 was a record year for polar ice cap loss... The loss of ice started nearly 3 weeks early in the arctic this year, and the shift of weight from water ice on the Earth's poles into liquid water subjected to ocean tides was incredibly massive... Many billions of tons of frozen water has moved off of the poles and into the world's oceans. Enough weight was added to the equator to produce a major shift in the earth's crust = Indian Ocean earthquake and resulting tsunami.
This rate of change is increasing... The geometrical functions of melting polar ice have created feedback systems... In this case, the increased rate of melting polar ice now means an increasingly accelerated melt rate in the future... Ice reflects sunlight (energy) back into space, and now where the ice has melted away there remains dark material (dark water, soil, rocks) which are now absorbing solar radiation and causing an increase in the warming effect. These functions are not straight lines, the rates of change are increasing, and they are increasing very, very rapidly in just the past few years.
You will see... In the not too far off future... A dramatic rise in both the number, and the intensity of major earthquakes. Unlike the weather "curves" where storms of increasing violence are occuring, (they will continue to occur and increase in violence as time goes by) earthquakes do not give any significant warning before they strike. The pressure buildup occurs deep in the earth, and many earthquake locations will be under the sea floor, a difficult place to study and obtain data from. It is impossible with our current technology to pinpoint time and locations of earthquakes prior to these events occuring... Yet I will stick my neck out and say that periods of high polar snowmelt will tend to be the times when quakes are more likely to trigger.
The Asian Tsunami released the equivilent energy of about 10 large hydrogen bomb type weapons in the matter of a few seconds.
The oceans are rising... They are rising for more than one reason at the same time. First they are rising because of the increased polar ice cap and glacier melting... But they are also rising because warm water expands, and water that melts from the poles, gathers in the tropics where it happens to be warm (the Earth bulges due to it's spin and the water moves to the equator)... The expanded warm water takes up more room (it is less dense) than cold water... The end result is that the oceans are going to rise several feet, minimum, in your lifetime (if you are young). Think Noah for some major cities, like New York.
Scientists have missed a major side effect (another function or curve) of Global Warming and that is concurrent land subsidence... Not only are the ocean sea levels going to rise several feet... The land is going to sink. In some locations the land will sink as much as, or more than, the sea level rises... We are talking several feet of land subsidence along many millions of miles of coastline across the entire globe. Rising water puts pressure on the Earth's crust, and in order to balance the crust sinks. Coastal drilling of oil and gas causes an increase in the rates of subsidence locally, because the Earth settles as oil and gas are pumped out from under the ground. A lot of subsidence can occur gradually over time... But the acceleration rates in the other curves (like the ice melt curve, the oil production curve), do not provide geologic time for gradual changes to take place... Geologic changes will occur thru a series of sudden steps... Accompanied by large and powerful earthquakes, both land and sea based, with the sea based quakes having high tsunami potentials.
These events alone are sufficient to wreck havoc on modern civilization. Yet these are just the underlaying functions of the coming problems humanity faces on the globe.
This is now the ending phase of the petroleum age. The world reserves and production of benchmark "light sweet crude" no longer meet current demand. There is oil for some years, but the production curves are clearly showing a decline of the highest grades of oil... The oil that will maintain civilization in coming years is increasingly heavy and "sour" ... Full of sulfur and unwanted aromatic compounds, this oil is toxic, dangerous, and more difficult to process. While refineries have been and will be constructed and/or modified to "crack" these heavier sour grades, this oil is much less efficient... It requires more energy to process than light sweet oil, and it produces a lower yield of products such as gasoline, diesel, or aviation fuel.
It is estimated, accurately I think, that at current production rates even the sour grades of oil will be depleted sufficiently in 40 years that oil and natural gas will no longer be a sustainable energy source. Before the world runs out, it will run short, and oil prices will rise and shortages can be expected. Interruptions in the production and transportation of oil and oil products can be expected... Oil infrastructure is fragile... It gets knocked out first thing in a natural disaster or during periods of war.
The increases in production and use of fossil fuel only makes the Global Warming problem worse. Several countries, China and India specifically, are going thru a modernization phase presently and have seen fuel demands increase dramatically. As these countries develop, they will greatly add to the amount of atmospheric pollution... I feel that the burning of large amounts of coal in China in the last few years for the purpose of generating electricity have greatly increased the Warming pressure on the atmosphere, as well as increased mercury levels in ocean fish. Mercury is released into the environment from burning coal.
Speaking of fish... There is already extreme pressure on the oceans... There are no more cod on the Grand Banks... Sea Lions have starved in California due to lack of fish, and fish consuming birds are showing increased levels of mercury and pesticides when mass bird kills are discovered (both coasts). The oceans are the "sump" and eventually everything ends up in the water, which is growing more polluted, and warmer, very rapidly. But you will see increased pressure on the food chain, both in the ocean and on land as a result of droughts, severe storms, and warmer tempertures. Land areas such as the great plains in the US could begin to changing into desert in just 20 years.
Energy demands on our existing electric power grid do not look encourging... I see more blackouts coming. First from large storms, then earthquakes... But also from just plain old energy shortages. The most recent power plants constructed to meet peak demand periods are natural gas fired turbines... Natural gas has suddenly become scarcer and more expensive. It's not going to ever get much cheaper, and certainly no more available... Premium natural gas production has already peaked. Cheaper "sour" gas is available, but the gas must be processed to remove sulfur, which drives up the cost, and requires more energy, making the sour gas less efficient... There are not many plants in existence to desulfurize natural gas.
There are new strains of infectious disease developing in the wild... This new avian flu, H5N1, represents a real and present danger to civilization. The last two flu pandemics were comparitively mild strains of the disease... H5N1 has a 50% mortality rate in the healthiest portion of the population. I feel, and experts agree, that this flu will eventually evolve to become transmitable in humans. If (when) this happens, we can expect an incredible health care crisis, the likes of which have not been seen since the pandemic of World War I.
Speaking of war... I see the politics of war across the globe... As I watch the chips fall, the breakpoint seems to be the United States against the world... The Third World to be specific, and I find it scary to see the natural name for the Third World War... Nobody likes Bush or the US really, the Iraq war (a modern Christian crusade if you ask me) has turned a great number of countries against the US politically. It is a given that proceeding on our present course, increased levels of global violence will result... I don't know if there is anything anybody can do to put a stop to the trend... Countries like China, Iran, North Korea, Syria... Even Iraq, have been arming up... Who will they want to fight? Who are they arming up against? The United States of course.
Now... All these are very bad things... And it's a long list... I would say that if I just saw one or two problems on this list happening at the same time, things would look survivable for modern civilization... But as I look at the number of different problems, all happening along the same time lines, with many accelerating functions... I just do not see how civilization is going to weather all this, at the very least these events will highly stress the global economy and standard of living.
It is already too late to stop Global Warming in a sense. It took a lot of time, and a lot of input energy, to tip the earth into a warming cycle this rapidly and intensely... If the entire world stopped buring carbon based fuel tomorrow, it would still take years for the Global Warming to moderate itself... It will continue to increase for some time, as a result of the greenhouse gasses that have already been introduced.
There is also some evidence to suggest the solar system is warming. The polar ice caps on Mars have been shrinking too... But not at the dramatically increased rate like the Earth's. Data from Mars indicates that in addition to greenhouse gas effects on Earth, we may be passing thru a period of increased solar radiation received from the sun.
Now, we are feeling the effects of a lot of these problems presently. I do not see any viable solutions in the works, nothing that is going to migitate these processes. They are going to continue and increase their effects over time. At some point... Say 20 years down the road, things are going to start getting seriously bad, and even then... It will be downhill.
There will be many, many side effects from these events... As governments struggle to maintain control and shortages become more apparent, things like loss of freedom can be expected.
There is no plan to deal with it effectively, even the best scientists who are working on this are dealing with an incomplete picture; a less than accurate under standing of the root functions I would guess. Those who do see exactly as I do, are afraid of ridicule if they go public prematurely, without years of substantial data to support their reasoning... But they can't... These events are underway, and the changes are so rapid and new and the historical data so sparse... Their data is incomplete.
But I have seen plenty. It is no great leap to be able to project the forecast on this. If you doubt me... I would ask that you withold your contrary opinion until after you have been looking at these things long enough to see for yourself... I am predicting events years in the future in some cases here... I see rate increases that will be plausibly deniable for 5 years... For 5 years you could argue with me that I am wrong... After 10 years you will find it harder to deny the facts. In 20 years the world will start to panic... In 40 years the intensity starts to peak... And it does not get better for a long time... Fossil fuel will never come back once it runs out, and this model of civilization will never again exist in the future.
To someone looking back at our age from a point 200 years in the future, they would mark our point in history, the right here right now point, as the peak of the Petroleum Age, and it will be an ended and closed era 200 years in the future, and it will be studied much like todays historians study the dark ages, or even the ancient Greeks.
According to the functions I see... The Petroleum Age peaked right before Katrina.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Edited to add polar Ice Documentation:
nsidc.org/news/press/20050928_trendscontinue.html
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050928/wl_canada_nm/canada_environment_arctic_col_1
Warming causes record Arctic ice melt: U.S. report
nsidc.org/news/press/intensifies/SeaIceDeclineIntensifies.pdf
You have seen some of the tops of the "bell" curves already... Oil energy for example has just peaked. And you will see the effects of all these curves in your lifetime if you are young. I do believe they will dramatically impact your life... Because they will affect everyones life, and you will know all about it before hand.
These systems I am talking about, or if you will, the functions/graphs that are derived from observing these systems; represent large amounts of energy (as in high energy physics)... For instance...
The Earth is changing shape.
The Asian Tsunami was a "sign". I was "behind the curve" (as opposed to being ahead of things), and was not looking forward really until the earthquake and resulting tsunami commanded my attention and really demanded an explanation of the physics behind the catastrophe. Shortly afterwards I developed a working theory as to the "trigger" that caused that specific earthquake and the resulting tsunami. What I saw, quite clearly, is that a lot of melting ice from the poles
of the Earth, causes subsequent shifts in the Earth's crust. I could not prove a lot of melting ice, but I highly suspected it was the root cause.
A few days ago, I saw a press release in association with NASA, a polar ice study conducted by satellite confirmed that 2005 was a record year for polar ice cap loss... The loss of ice started nearly 3 weeks early in the arctic this year, and the shift of weight from water ice on the Earth's poles into liquid water subjected to ocean tides was incredibly massive... Many billions of tons of frozen water has moved off of the poles and into the world's oceans. Enough weight was added to the equator to produce a major shift in the earth's crust = Indian Ocean earthquake and resulting tsunami.
This rate of change is increasing... The geometrical functions of melting polar ice have created feedback systems... In this case, the increased rate of melting polar ice now means an increasingly accelerated melt rate in the future... Ice reflects sunlight (energy) back into space, and now where the ice has melted away there remains dark material (dark water, soil, rocks) which are now absorbing solar radiation and causing an increase in the warming effect. These functions are not straight lines, the rates of change are increasing, and they are increasing very, very rapidly in just the past few years.
You will see... In the not too far off future... A dramatic rise in both the number, and the intensity of major earthquakes. Unlike the weather "curves" where storms of increasing violence are occuring, (they will continue to occur and increase in violence as time goes by) earthquakes do not give any significant warning before they strike. The pressure buildup occurs deep in the earth, and many earthquake locations will be under the sea floor, a difficult place to study and obtain data from. It is impossible with our current technology to pinpoint time and locations of earthquakes prior to these events occuring... Yet I will stick my neck out and say that periods of high polar snowmelt will tend to be the times when quakes are more likely to trigger.
The Asian Tsunami released the equivilent energy of about 10 large hydrogen bomb type weapons in the matter of a few seconds.
The oceans are rising... They are rising for more than one reason at the same time. First they are rising because of the increased polar ice cap and glacier melting... But they are also rising because warm water expands, and water that melts from the poles, gathers in the tropics where it happens to be warm (the Earth bulges due to it's spin and the water moves to the equator)... The expanded warm water takes up more room (it is less dense) than cold water... The end result is that the oceans are going to rise several feet, minimum, in your lifetime (if you are young). Think Noah for some major cities, like New York.
Scientists have missed a major side effect (another function or curve) of Global Warming and that is concurrent land subsidence... Not only are the ocean sea levels going to rise several feet... The land is going to sink. In some locations the land will sink as much as, or more than, the sea level rises... We are talking several feet of land subsidence along many millions of miles of coastline across the entire globe. Rising water puts pressure on the Earth's crust, and in order to balance the crust sinks. Coastal drilling of oil and gas causes an increase in the rates of subsidence locally, because the Earth settles as oil and gas are pumped out from under the ground. A lot of subsidence can occur gradually over time... But the acceleration rates in the other curves (like the ice melt curve, the oil production curve), do not provide geologic time for gradual changes to take place... Geologic changes will occur thru a series of sudden steps... Accompanied by large and powerful earthquakes, both land and sea based, with the sea based quakes having high tsunami potentials.
These events alone are sufficient to wreck havoc on modern civilization. Yet these are just the underlaying functions of the coming problems humanity faces on the globe.
This is now the ending phase of the petroleum age. The world reserves and production of benchmark "light sweet crude" no longer meet current demand. There is oil for some years, but the production curves are clearly showing a decline of the highest grades of oil... The oil that will maintain civilization in coming years is increasingly heavy and "sour" ... Full of sulfur and unwanted aromatic compounds, this oil is toxic, dangerous, and more difficult to process. While refineries have been and will be constructed and/or modified to "crack" these heavier sour grades, this oil is much less efficient... It requires more energy to process than light sweet oil, and it produces a lower yield of products such as gasoline, diesel, or aviation fuel.
It is estimated, accurately I think, that at current production rates even the sour grades of oil will be depleted sufficiently in 40 years that oil and natural gas will no longer be a sustainable energy source. Before the world runs out, it will run short, and oil prices will rise and shortages can be expected. Interruptions in the production and transportation of oil and oil products can be expected... Oil infrastructure is fragile... It gets knocked out first thing in a natural disaster or during periods of war.
The increases in production and use of fossil fuel only makes the Global Warming problem worse. Several countries, China and India specifically, are going thru a modernization phase presently and have seen fuel demands increase dramatically. As these countries develop, they will greatly add to the amount of atmospheric pollution... I feel that the burning of large amounts of coal in China in the last few years for the purpose of generating electricity have greatly increased the Warming pressure on the atmosphere, as well as increased mercury levels in ocean fish. Mercury is released into the environment from burning coal.
Speaking of fish... There is already extreme pressure on the oceans... There are no more cod on the Grand Banks... Sea Lions have starved in California due to lack of fish, and fish consuming birds are showing increased levels of mercury and pesticides when mass bird kills are discovered (both coasts). The oceans are the "sump" and eventually everything ends up in the water, which is growing more polluted, and warmer, very rapidly. But you will see increased pressure on the food chain, both in the ocean and on land as a result of droughts, severe storms, and warmer tempertures. Land areas such as the great plains in the US could begin to changing into desert in just 20 years.
Energy demands on our existing electric power grid do not look encourging... I see more blackouts coming. First from large storms, then earthquakes... But also from just plain old energy shortages. The most recent power plants constructed to meet peak demand periods are natural gas fired turbines... Natural gas has suddenly become scarcer and more expensive. It's not going to ever get much cheaper, and certainly no more available... Premium natural gas production has already peaked. Cheaper "sour" gas is available, but the gas must be processed to remove sulfur, which drives up the cost, and requires more energy, making the sour gas less efficient... There are not many plants in existence to desulfurize natural gas.
There are new strains of infectious disease developing in the wild... This new avian flu, H5N1, represents a real and present danger to civilization. The last two flu pandemics were comparitively mild strains of the disease... H5N1 has a 50% mortality rate in the healthiest portion of the population. I feel, and experts agree, that this flu will eventually evolve to become transmitable in humans. If (when) this happens, we can expect an incredible health care crisis, the likes of which have not been seen since the pandemic of World War I.
Speaking of war... I see the politics of war across the globe... As I watch the chips fall, the breakpoint seems to be the United States against the world... The Third World to be specific, and I find it scary to see the natural name for the Third World War... Nobody likes Bush or the US really, the Iraq war (a modern Christian crusade if you ask me) has turned a great number of countries against the US politically. It is a given that proceeding on our present course, increased levels of global violence will result... I don't know if there is anything anybody can do to put a stop to the trend... Countries like China, Iran, North Korea, Syria... Even Iraq, have been arming up... Who will they want to fight? Who are they arming up against? The United States of course.
Now... All these are very bad things... And it's a long list... I would say that if I just saw one or two problems on this list happening at the same time, things would look survivable for modern civilization... But as I look at the number of different problems, all happening along the same time lines, with many accelerating functions... I just do not see how civilization is going to weather all this, at the very least these events will highly stress the global economy and standard of living.
It is already too late to stop Global Warming in a sense. It took a lot of time, and a lot of input energy, to tip the earth into a warming cycle this rapidly and intensely... If the entire world stopped buring carbon based fuel tomorrow, it would still take years for the Global Warming to moderate itself... It will continue to increase for some time, as a result of the greenhouse gasses that have already been introduced.
There is also some evidence to suggest the solar system is warming. The polar ice caps on Mars have been shrinking too... But not at the dramatically increased rate like the Earth's. Data from Mars indicates that in addition to greenhouse gas effects on Earth, we may be passing thru a period of increased solar radiation received from the sun.
Now, we are feeling the effects of a lot of these problems presently. I do not see any viable solutions in the works, nothing that is going to migitate these processes. They are going to continue and increase their effects over time. At some point... Say 20 years down the road, things are going to start getting seriously bad, and even then... It will be downhill.
There will be many, many side effects from these events... As governments struggle to maintain control and shortages become more apparent, things like loss of freedom can be expected.
There is no plan to deal with it effectively, even the best scientists who are working on this are dealing with an incomplete picture; a less than accurate under standing of the root functions I would guess. Those who do see exactly as I do, are afraid of ridicule if they go public prematurely, without years of substantial data to support their reasoning... But they can't... These events are underway, and the changes are so rapid and new and the historical data so sparse... Their data is incomplete.
But I have seen plenty. It is no great leap to be able to project the forecast on this. If you doubt me... I would ask that you withold your contrary opinion until after you have been looking at these things long enough to see for yourself... I am predicting events years in the future in some cases here... I see rate increases that will be plausibly deniable for 5 years... For 5 years you could argue with me that I am wrong... After 10 years you will find it harder to deny the facts. In 20 years the world will start to panic... In 40 years the intensity starts to peak... And it does not get better for a long time... Fossil fuel will never come back once it runs out, and this model of civilization will never again exist in the future.
To someone looking back at our age from a point 200 years in the future, they would mark our point in history, the right here right now point, as the peak of the Petroleum Age, and it will be an ended and closed era 200 years in the future, and it will be studied much like todays historians study the dark ages, or even the ancient Greeks.
According to the functions I see... The Petroleum Age peaked right before Katrina.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Edited to add polar Ice Documentation:
nsidc.org/news/press/20050928_trendscontinue.html
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050928/wl_canada_nm/canada_environment_arctic_col_1
Warming causes record Arctic ice melt: U.S. report
nsidc.org/news/press/intensifies/SeaIceDeclineIntensifies.pdf