Quick Shots - 19/Jun/2016

Are We There Yet?

I guess if I don't read a little about the election I'd be amiss in keeping breast of what the pundits think. The call seems to be a narrow Coalition win, which is like a kiss of death. Mark Kenny is also a little down on Bill Shorten and the ALP in spite of what he thinks has been good campaigning. I wouldn't know whether Bill Shorten has been all that great but e seems to be turning around the loss of smarter people to the Greens, which was a serious issue as late as 1 year go, which I covered in the last post.

Peter Hartcher thinks that Shorten has a credibility problem every time he promises policies that will involve spending billions. In a vacuum, yes, but he is running against the Coalition who are infested with climate change denialists. It's not like the Coalition have any degree of credibility at all. Compared to that, Bill Shorten sounds like a measured, controlled, proper leader. Of course, we don't know if this turns into votes in country that is persuaded mightily to treat asylum seekers in the shabbiest of manners possible.

I'm not holding my breath - but if this electorate votes this Coalition back in, I think I'll go on a bender.

The Unpredictability Of Climate Change

Some time in the last decade, NSW was in the middle of a drought so bad it saw the Warragamba dam water level down in the 30% level. It was so bad, there were water restrictions and people were killing each other in suburban streets over the use of water. It led to NSW Premier of the late 2000s, Morris Iemma green lighting a desalination plant which now looks to be a white elephant of sorts - but you can't rule anything out in the future. I say that because this week it is at 98% and with more rain falling, it may well spill over.

Both the drought and this excessive rain came about because of climate change. This is what it means to live in volatile weather conditions.

This kind of leads me to the Pleiades mailbag today.

From The Pleiades Mailbag

Here's a scary article about the runway melting of the polar caps.

Wadhams: “A whole series of consequences, which are all unfortunately rather serious. Firstly, the retreat of the sea ice or the loss of the ice will mean that global warming will increase because you are changing a large area of white to dark, reducing the average albedo [reflection] of the planet… Secondly, there will be an acceleration of sea level rise because warm air that lies over the open water in the Arctic Ocean moves over to Greenland and gives you surface melt at the Greenland ice sheet [equals 23’ of sea level rise] to an extent that didn’t used to happen. We found in 2012, for instance, the entire surface of the Greenland ice sheet was starting to melt for a period in the summer, and this is completely new, and this means that sea level rise will be accelerated because that melt water runs off into the ocean… Possibly one of the most severe threats is the that the shallow waters off the Arctic coast, especially the Siberian coast, are very wide continental shelves, only about 50 to 100 meters of water. That water could warm up during the summer months because the area is ice-free now already, and this will give you positive temperatures on the seabed which will start to thaw out the seabed permafrost which has been sitting there frozen since the last Ice Age. This has never happened before because the sea ice never retreated very much in the summer and the water temperature could not rise above zero because of the ice cover… The permafrost is acting as a cap for a very large amount of methane (CH4), which is sitting in the sediments underneath in the form of methane hydrates. You release the pressure by removing that permafrost and methane comes out as huge bubble plumes. It’s already happening; it’s been detected by scientists all over the Russian Arctic and most recently by a Swedish expedition and by various U.S./Russian expeditions. Each time they go there’s more and more bubbles coming out, and the fear is that there’ll be a general release of methane trapped under those sediments, which could cause a very rapid rise in the rate of sea level. We calculated it could give you 0.6 C warming of the planet in five years. That’s a big boost because methane is such a powerful greenhouse gas.”

As for rapidity of climate change, Dr. Wadhams says that the situation is already getting very serious, and brand new feedback processes are coming into play. Accordingly, that’s what is most worrying, extra feedbacks from what global warming itself produces. It’s like AI with a “will of its own.”

If that doesn't sound apocalyptic enough, you should check out Peter. Wadhams' lectures on Youtube:


...and here's a scary article about what Hillary Clinton would like to do as President. The funny thing is the US policy think tanks seems be making up scenarios for 2050 when in fact climate change might make the world totally uninhabitable. There might not be a world worth dominating in 2050.