The reason is the ability of the liquid, water, to convert a force in one direction into a movement in another. The vertical force of gravity – from the masses of the earth, moon and sun, acting on the oceans, is easily converted into a horizontal movement, and then back into a vertical one, by the shapes of the ocean basins. The water in mid-ocean only moves a few centimetres upward due to the forces causing tides. This is then translated into a movement of many kilometres of horizontal movement for the water near the land, and back to an average of one to two metres of vertical movement on the shore. This is because water flows, unlike a solid. Unlike the landmasses, in particular.

The tectonic plates that are supposedly, under currently accepted theories of Plate Tectonics, moved by a variety of forces must be moved by a largely horizontal component of some of them. The candidate forces (coriolis, distortion of the spheroid, heat convection within the Mantle etc) have a very small, if any, effect on the oceans. If they were to have any real effect on the solid continental and oceanic plates, then we would also see them have a large affect on the much more easily displaced liquid oceans. But we don’t. Therefore the candidate for the main force driving the earths crust round and round must act primarily on the Oceans. (Heat Convection, in particular, would cause upwellings to occur in the highest parts of the crust, i.e. the land , not under the oceans!)

By far the most noticeable effect on the oceans is the simple force of gravity. Ocean water, as I have said, converts vertical forces and movements to horizontal movements and back again. It also just as efficiently converts, of course, east-west horizontal movement to north-south where the shape of the land decrees. I say efficiently, because the small amount of friction that diverts these forces over the vast areas of the continental shelves, acts directly on the Continental Plates. Every diversion of water due to tidal differences of direction in any of the three planes, vertical, east-west or north-south, acts to push the plates around. Therefore, one would expect the movement of plates to be in almost any direction, with just a slight preponderance for movement from east to west. That does not mean that these other forces which are candidates in for the drivers of Continental Drift have no effect, just that the main effect they might have is one of steering the already moving waters in one direction or another. The major driving force for the movement of the plates can only be the simplest, most obvious one of the gravity that also drives the tides.

Therefore, the tidal surge of the oceans around the globe, pushes the lighter continental Plates around in a higgledy piggledy manner, depending on the shapes of the plates, what they are being pushed up against, the other smaller forces of coriolis, etc. the Oceanic plates are simply the crust being stretched and pulled between the Continental plates, held down by the weight of water on top of them.

So this is a good example of how an answer to a simple question can lead to answers for much bigger ones.

I was truly shocked during my last visit to San Francisco earlier this year, to witness the number of homeless and desperate people I came across. Even those with jobs were terrified of losing them, because that means they will lose their house, car and family medical cover. Each poor creature I saw on the sidewalk, I thought “Who were you, what happened to dump you here in rags. You used to have a family, most likely, and somewhere to live, with neighbours, friends and money in your pocket. And look what the G W Bush era has done to you.” I am very familiar with the city, and have often though in the past that it would be a nice place to live. Not any more.

The USA does not seem to realise what really deep trouble it is in, and its polarised politics are just the tip of a very divided society which is simply not capable of recovering from its current problems.

However, I also do not believe that China will ever become the world’s largest economy, as some are saying. At present it is only third, after the EU and the USA. It has too many structural problems, and at some point it will hit a wall – social, environmental and/or political, which it will not overcome. All the easy gains have been made, and China’s leadership is incapable of the really hard decisions: it always has been (for the last several thousand years, at least). At the moment, China is enjoying a truly enormous benefit from borrowing western ideas, and selling them back to the West. The current financial crises will harm their customers, and this will stop Chinese growth. Internal growth is not enough to keep the chinese ecopnomy growing at 10% or so. And the current boom is underwritten with huge borrowings by the regional governments, which cannot be paid back if the economy solows, which it will soon.

An important indicator of the artificial nature of China’s growth spurt is that it is based almost entirely on Other People’s Ideas. Almost all the fabulous machines which churn out these goods so cheaply are either imported from Europe or the USA, or are copies of such machines. There is virtually no generation of truly new technology. Under these circumstances, it is no surprise that a ready-made Industrial Revolution has been so successful. But Industrial Revolutions, like any Revolution, will not continue if there is no entrepreneurial inventiveness. Copying will only get you so far. One aspect of this that I find so sad is that most of the really high-flying computer brains in China are pushed into a huge initiative aimed at stealing secrets, both commercial and governmental, from the USA and other western countries. But, just like the thief who steal the latest gadget but does not find the instruction book, and cannot claim the warranty, their joy will be short-lived. The companies and governments they copy will move on, invent new things, and will always be better at using their own ideas than the thief. To continue the analogy, the victim can go out and buy an even newer item, which will be better, because of the experience of the shortcoming of the old. The thief never has this opportunity. Examples abound in the software sphere – Chinese copies of Google, Facebook and other truly revolutionary technologies are always going to be second-rate, and will never be better than the originals, which were forged by inventive craftsmen with sweaty brows, not stolen by nimble fingers when no-one was looking.

Europe will seem to muddle through, then surprise everyone by coming out of its current crisis much stronger. The old adage, What does not kill me, makes me stronger, applies here. Because EU leaders, despite appearances, have some common sense and know what they are doing. The Markets think that the super-short term will make them money, and damn the consequences. But the longer term drivers of events in Europe are ALL pushing in one direction, closer integration. What George Soros says is true (and he knows a thing or two) – the crisis will drive the EU to create a single central economic structure, and political union will follow. There is actually NO other choice, and A. Merkel et al. will realise this quite soon.

Then it will just happen.

Mark my words.

Despite the occasional reference to “Clean Coal” in the US Presidential election, and the industry’s attempts to clean up their image, it is obvious to all that we cannot go on like this. I am sure even most executives in Coal companies realise this by now.

There is no such thing, yet, as Clean Coal. Technology for economic Carbon Capture and Storage at Coal-fired Power Stations is still a long way off.

Therefore, we must close as many coal-fired power plants as possible, and preferably all of them, within the next couple of decades.

But all is not lost. The Coal will still be there. If, in 20 (or even 200) years, there emerges a viable method of capturing emissions from Coal-fired power plants, we can take advantage of it then. What we don’t use now will not disappear. Future uses other than power generation may even appear.

Short-term profits for existing coal-based enterprises should not hinder the longer term benefits we will all achieve from closing all coal power stations as soon as possible.

]]> http://snnsx.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/leave-the-black-stuff-in-the-ground/feed/ 3 snnsx http://snnsx.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/the-predictions-from-the-ipcc-are-wrong/ http://snnsx.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/the-predictions-from-the-ipcc-are-wrong/#comments Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:56:26 +0000 snnsx http://snnsx.wordpress.com/?p=17 ]]> Even the highest predictions of the IPCC has made have now been equalled or exceeded by actual events. The Arctic Ice in will now disappear during high summer in a couple of years, not 30 or more. 2008 was even worse than 2007 for loss of ice, if ice thickness is taken into account. Glaciers, Ice Shelves, Ice Sheets, Ocean currents and many other things do not behave in quite the tame way that was used in the mathematical models.

It is painfully obvious that, in an effort to reach a consensus, the IPCC erred quite dramatically on the low side. This would normally be the “safe” side, as in safe from Peer criticism. But it is fatally flawed.

There are many problems with the IPCC numbers, some of which are:

1. The predictions have already been overtaken by events. Just look at the loss of summer ice in the Arctic, and the recently discovered increase in atmospheric methane.

2. The IPCC deliberately left out those factors influencing climate that are the least understood, but they are the very ones that look the most dangerous. These are factors such as the Albedo effect in the Arctic, an increase in Glacier speeds in Greenland, a release of Methane from the ocean or Ice Sheet collapse in the Antarctic. We are starting to see some of these things already happening.

3. Virtually all the least understood factors that have been left out of the IPC forecasts are non-linear, and most would also would make the situation worse, sometimes through positive feedback loops. This is because scientists prefer to deal with predictable certainties, and the unpredictable uncertainties have tended to be engineered out of the IPCC conclusions through politically-influenced compromise and a desire not to be seen as too daring. The extent of the compromise can be seen by the fact that individuals involved in the IPCC seem to be privately more extreme in their concerns than the Report is.

The curve of predicted temperature should therefore not be a symmetrical Normal Distribution curve, but should be a curve skewed to the high, or unpredictable side, and truncated to the low, or business-as-usual side.

4. The likelihood of a particular event, such as, for example, sea levels rising by the maximum predicted is rated by the IPCC as very low, the same as the likelihood that it will rise by the minimum amount. That is how the Normal Distribution (Bell) curve works, the most likely result being in the middle. Using the Bell curve, one can effectively discount the extremes, or certainly give very little effort towards mitigating them. However, while the Bell curve is a good way at looking at known, existing datasets, it is a very poor way to predict the unknown future, where the data has not yet been collected, and the influencing factors are so poorly understood. Unfortunately, the little we do know gives us no comfort. The Earth is not a friendly, mothering being, it is a result of the forces of Nature, and they are not designed to keep us in the comfort we would like to be accustomed to. Survival has always been a struggle, and even we, the most comfortable generation, will need to struggle, as our forefathers did.

5. The temperature rise and associated changes will be a long-term problem, even if we were suddenly to stop further emissions today. This is because of the momentum of changes that have been made, and that it may take decades or longer for the full effect of a single change to be felt, even without considering the consequential effects in other areas. The IPCC report only extends to the year 2100, which makes it easy to assume that the climate would stop changing then, or the “problem” might be “solved”. However, the effects of what we do today will be felt for hundreds, and probably thousands of years. I suppose it may be assumed that other factors will by then be influencing climate, that mankind would have adapted, or found ways to reverse the unwanted effects. But none of these things are certain, and certain effects will be irreversible.

Large-scale species extinction, loss of arable land, political and social disruption (and their consequence, war) are not the sort of legacy we would have wanted from our ancestors, so why should we bestow them onto our descendants?

6. The skewed curve of possible temperatures, as I described above, still takes no account of the effects of reaching each temperature level. Even if a particular scenario is relatively unlikely, it may command our attention if its effect would be very severe. This is certainly the case with Climate Change. A temperature rise of 4 degrees C may be much less likely than a 2 degrees rise, but its effect on the liveability of the world for Mankind is vastly more. To get a sense of this, see the excellent book “Six Degrees”, by Mark Lynas.

The standard method of assessing risk is to factor the likelihood and the effect together. Just looking at a curve showing possible future temperatures or sea levels encourages people to aim for the “most likely” scenario, forgetting the much more severe effects of higher temperatures or sea levels.

Aiming to counteract or mitigating for the “most likely” eventuality is therefore not the most sensible action. Any actions must be aimed at the high side of the curve because of the disproportionate amount of risk (likelihood x effect) found there.

In the IPCC, Science and politically-inspired Compromise have turned out to be very poor bedfellows. The result is something even a Mother could not love.

Dear Nigel, as much as I admire your daughter, I now call on you to be a man, recognise the facts are not as you thought and change your mind. Admit you were wrong, apologise and get behind the wheel of progress, rather than stand in its path. And bring all the others with you. You have delayed mankind for too long.

There is no more to be said. I won’t be waste any more virtual ink on Deniers in this Blog

The long list of fascinating books Tim has written are justification enough for regarding him as a worthy winner of Australian of the Year. These come largely from his own experience. He is a genuine explorer, as close to the old school of 19th century Explorers as it is possible to get nowadays.

And he, like so many others of us, can see the overwhelming evidence of Man’s considerable influence on the basic workings of the world in which we live.

I have just completed “the Explorers”, which is a collection of wonderful extracts from the writings of people who explored Australia. The two themes which struck me most (although there are many sources of inspiration in this book) are:

-    The amazing ability of the Aborigines to survive for 50 millennia, during ice ages, rising sea levels and a changing, and very challenging climate. We can learn much today from them still. Modern Australia positively needs their help and inspiration in order to cope with the very difficult times ahead.

-  The idea that a view of history is just the collection of stories that happen to be fashionable at the time. Our perception of what happened during a particular era changes constantly, and not just because of new information. Existing information is re-evaluated, goes out of fashion, or is simply forgotten.

Forceful personalities like Charles Lyell (1797-1878) can skew the perception of past events so strongly that, in his case, it took a century or more to overcome his condemnation of Catastophism, and for people to realise that the most likely cause of the Dinosaur extinctions at the end of the Permian was extraterrestrial, in fact an object crashing into the Caribbean.

Modern Historians are now tut-tutting into their beards at the ideas of Gavin Menzies, that a Muslim Chinese eunuch’s voyages may have pre-dated many of the so-called “firsts” of European navigation, and that Da Vinci may have copied many of his designs from an existing Chinese manuscript which can be shown had reached in Europe just before his time.

If there is one thing historians should have discovered by now, it is than our knowledge is always incomplete, and our interpretation of it can always be improved upon. Therefore to say that something which has been so diligently researched, with so much evidence, so many unanswered questions and so much food for discussion and thought is “not possible” sounds far more implausible than anything Mr Menzies has said.

To quote Arthur C Clarke:

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.”

Further reading –

all of Tim Flannery, (you won’t be sorry)

John D Barrow “Impossibility”, one of a marvellous series

Michael J Benton’s wonderful “When Life Nearly Died”

Gavin Menzies “1421″ and “1434″, plus his very informative websites

]]> http://snnsx.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/homage-to-tim-flannery-and-the-continuing-romance-of-history/feed/ 0 snnsx http://snnsx.wordpress.com/2008/08/31/gold-coast-is-the-future-new-orleans/ http://snnsx.wordpress.com/2008/08/31/gold-coast-is-the-future-new-orleans/#comments Sun, 31 Aug 2008 10:35:12 +0000 snnsx http://snnsx.wordpress.com/2008/08/31/gold-coast-is-the-future-new-orleans/ ]]> The rise in future sea levels caused by Climate Change, that now seem increasingly likely, will hit coastal Australia very hard.

Here is an Interactive Map which shows the extent of flooding, for various sea levels. This only takes into account height above sea level, not increased erosion, effect of storm surge or the ability  to build flood defenses.
The list of places in danger reads like a who’s who of Australian coastal place names. All the major coastal cities, and virtually all the towns near the coast will be affected.
The presentations from the recent Coast To Coast Conference in Darwin contains some very sobering reading for those interested in the survival of coastal towns.

In particular, the entire Gold Coast of Queensland is just another New Orleans waiting to happen. The combination of a rise in sea level and storm surges will make the maintenance of the low-lying and marina developments more and more difficult as time goes by.

What is Anna Bligh and the Queensland Government thinking of, to contemplate investing yet more money for the Commonwealth Games in a place which has a good chance of being underwater by 2018? It is nothing short of idiotic.

By all means, bid for the Games, but do not waste them on the Gold Coast.

Invest in infrastructure in a place that can be used by the desperate climate refugees from Broadbeach, whose expensive waterside pads will be worth nothing by then.

Tags: ClimateChange, Sea level rise, Gold Coast, Broadbeach, Queensland, Anna Bligh, IPCC, Commonwealth Games, 2018, Coast to Coast

What coastal communities are not prepared for is a substantial rise in sea levels caused by Climate Change. At the recent Coast to Coast conference in Darwin, Professor Will Steffen (ANU) said: “In the 21st century a sea level rise of at least 0.5 metres is a certainty, a rise of 1 to 1.5 metres is more likely while a rise of up to four metres this century is possible,”.

The usual Move Back & Rebuild just will not work anymore, unless the plucky citizens of Mackay intend to rebuild every year, in which case they will end up in stilt houses over the water. Maybe that would be a great tourist attraction, until they were all drowned by the next cyclone.

The problem is not just the individual towns, which can, and do, recover from the occasional battering on a one-off basis. The problem is that, with rising sea levels, all the towns and cities next to the sea will be affected, and continuously year on year, until they disappear beneath the waves.
And no matter how much we restrain carbon emissions, or even extract carbon from the atmosphere, sea levels will not stabilise again for the next few hundred years at least. There is already enough momentum in the system to ensure that sea level rise will continue for a very long time to come.

It is time that Councils in places like Mackay started thinking that, instead of rebuilding, they should be moving to higher ground. If this is done every time a building close to sea level is damaged, the eventual cost will be minimised. Councils must be firmly encouraged to plan for this. Any new or re-building on floodplains, or within 10 metres of high water level should be made completely ILLEGAL.
In fact, low-lying coastal ground often has good soil, so it could be swapped with less good land for building, further inland, on the understanding that it will only have a finite life under the onslaught of the sea. Much could then be allowed to revert to mangrove, or even future bays, beaches and harbours.

Perhaps the stilt houses will then attract some tourist dollars, as long as no-one is expected to actually live in them.

Tags: Mackay, cyclone, Queensland, sea level, Coast to Coast, Will Steffen, floodplain, stilt houses, land swap

The countries who potentially stand to gain the most are Canada and Russia. Their huge landmasses combined with the arctic thaw, will see them more able to feed their populations, tap natural resources from the ground, keep industry going, and earn foreign exchange. Canada, of course, as part of Team USA, will prosper. Together with the entrepreneurial culture of the USA, Canada has a (relatively) golden future.

But Russia has the most potential, and this will inevitably lead to its once again becoming a superpower, perhaps the dominant one. And the Russians know it. They are already starting to flex their muscles on the back of wealth from natural resources. The Bear has returned to the Campsite, and this time will be trying not to repeat the mistakes of the second half of the 20th Century.
Russia will have problems, of course. Its institutions are inefficient, and corruption endemic. Russia also lacks manpower with the right motivation and skills, strange as it seems. It will be very difficult and dangerous work in the north. There will be an increasing number of starving, desperate people from the south who will work for next to nothing, just as they do currently in the Gulf. But Russia has a very poor history with regard to guest workers. Vast areas of northern China may become drought-stricken and polluted, and the obvious route for mass migrations is to the north.
Despite all this, Russia will prosper, regardless of the problems of the rest of the world. Eventually it, too, will fall into the same trap that China has set itself. There is always a limit to the unfettered exploitation of natural resources. Russia will end up with massive environmental problems and become the major contributor to Climate Change, unless a Bear can change his fur.

Russia has a hundred years, give or take, to lay waste to the Arctic. And then, a more efficient, less carbon-based (by then) and more environmentally sensitive Canada/USA complex will come back into its own.

Tags: Russia, USA, China, Canada, Climate Change, natural resources, Bear, Campsite, arctic, Siberia, Mongolia

When I was young, I believed, like most other people, that mankind as a whole could never unbalance the entire ecosystem of the earth.
But I was wrong, and we have.

I am among those who believe that a Tipping Point has already been reached, and that we now have to mitigate the effects. I can see that properly informed people and most Governments around the world already know this.
That does not mean we should not all be reducing our carbon footprint and frantically searching for alternative sources of energy.
Necessity is the Mother of Invention, so I am sure we will cope, but the cost will be terrible. Mankind survived the Black Death, the last Ice Age and various natural disasters. The difference this time is that the entire world is affected at once.

It is too late to stop greenhouse gases going above the equivalent of 500ppm of CO2 (currently 385). There is just too much inertia in the world economic system. In fact, it is already much closer to that than we think. If we add the recent rise in methane (20+ times more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2) and the likelihood that we are soon to see large releases of it from the tundra and Arctic continental shelves, reaching the equivalent of 500 ppm of CO2 will go by in a flash. I estimate 3 to 5 years.
It is also too late to stop a sea level rise of at least 5 metres, which has catastrophic implications for many coastal people in the world.
The spectre of long-term drought in some parts of the world, particularly the Indian sub-continent, will soon be a major threat to more than half of humanity.
My own country of Australia has the potential to be more negatively affected by sea level rise and drought than almost any other developed country, but also possesses the resources to plan for and deal with many of the effects, at least in the short to medium term.

This Blog will concentrate on Mankind’s efforts to cope with all this. That is, on ways of directing, mitigating against, or just making the most of climate changes. It will be hard, much harder than most people realise.

Mankind has ALWAYS changed the Environment. Even the seemingly most low-impact societies have done so, such as the indigenous people of Australia. The Aborigines terraformed the landscape through burning, transferred species from one place to another (such as the dingo) and killed off all animals larger than humans (the so-called megafauna extinction). But they survived, just as the rest of us must learn to do, in a world partly fashioned by us and for us, but not necessarily to our advantage.

We have no choice but to continue to change the earth in order to survive. But we must plan more carefully for the future impacts of how we behave. History shows we are not good at this, but we must try as best we can, and this is my attempt.

Thanks for reading my first blog.

Tags: climatechange, tipping point, Australia, aborigine, megafauna, terraform, methane, arctic, sea level, water, drought