[Coral-List] Climate Change

Mon Jun 22 19:39:08 EDT 2015

Ulf,
    So I guess climate change now is saving us from another ice age, it's a
blessing, huh?  How fast was that ice age coming, if it weren't for global
warming?  Would it get here Friday?  July?  Next year?  Next decade?  Next
century?  Next millenium?  Next 10,000 years?
    So climate has always changed in the past and sea levels have gone up
and down.  As far as I know, that's correct, broadly speaking.  As fast as
they are now?  And so climatic zones are just moving.  Obviously coral
reefs can just up and move with the zones.  I guess the paper that showed
that acidification will hit first at high latitudes and stop reefs from
moving to high latitudes was wrong.  And the new paper that says that light
levels are too low at high latitudes for coral reefs is wrong too.  I live
in American Samoa 14 degrees south of the equator.  There is one tiny
island (Niue) between American Samoa and Antarctica.  So maybe coral reefs
can try growing in water 3 miles deep for a change?  Sea level has indeed
gone up and down in the geological past, I think it was about 125 m lower
just 22,000 years ago or so, a veritable blink of the eye geologically.
There are a few cities around the world that have been foolishly (it
appears) built along seashores.  An example in the US is Miami, another
Honolulu.  Miami is an interesting one, since the Dutch solution won't work
there.  Dikes won't protect the city, because it's sitting on very porous
carbonates.  As sea level rises, water will come up through the holes
everywhere behind any dikes.  Its just a few feet above sea level.  High
tides may already be a small problem for parts of the city.  Are you
suggesting it is easy or cheap to pick the city up and move it to higher
ground?  Where would that be?  Nearly the entire state of Florida is quite
close to sea level.  Or maybe we could put Miami on stilts, or maybe build
a hull underneath the city so it floats like a ship.
     Are you saying that the effects of sea level now are no worse than in
the past, because the last time sea level rose there were mega-cities all
around the globe at sea level and they were drown by rising water?  I
thought cities were relatively new, geologically speaking.
     Perhaps you could outline some practical and inexpensive ways of
dealing with climate change, like how to mitigate the death of 16% of the
world's corals from mass coral bleaching in 1998?  Or moving the world's
coastal cities inland to higher ground.  Or paying for the increasing
forest fires in the western USA, or the drought in the US that is hitting
California so hard.  California is now the world's 8th largest economy, I
read.  Then there were those heat waves in Europe and Russia that killed
thousands of people.  I presume they didn't have air conditioners.  Should
we move Moscow several hundred miles north, or do we need to move it
thousands of miles north?  Or just provide free air conditioners to
everyone who doesn't have them?  Can the electricity system provide enough
electricity to run them all at once in a heat wave?  If not, should we
build lots of new coal fired electric plants?  Or would that shoot us in
the foot in the long run?  Or should we just say to those people:  tough
luck!
     Doesn't global warming have some impacts that are fairly expensive and
hard to mitigate?  Or should we just shrug our shoulders and say "oh well,
climates change and sea levels change, and climate zones move up and down
the globe.  So what?"  and forget it?  Are you saying it's trivial?

Cheers, Doug

On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 3:33 AM, Ulf Erlingsson <ceo at lindorm.com> wrote:

> Ya'll are fighting over the Pope's beard.
>
> The debate is over whether the climate is changing due to human impact, or
> not. This has two aspects: Is it true?, and, Is it relevant?
>
> Svante Arrhenius welcomed the greenhouse effect as a possible savior of
> civilization from the Ice Age that was about to start back then, it seemed.
>
> Climate has always changed through natural reasons, and it has changed
> rapidly at times. So has sea level. The predicted changes now are not any
> more "catastrophic" than what has happened in the past, and basically all
> it does is to move around the climate zones over the planet. And still we
> don't know why the next Ice Age will come, but we do know that huge
> agricultural areas will become useless. The carrying capacity of the planet
> will probably drop a lot, since the soils exposed through sea level drop
> cannot replace those lost in the Midwest and the black soils in Ukraine,
> when the climate gets too cold. Fortunately it's a slow process.
>
> Those who are worried about biodiversity maybe should look more at the
> Nicaragua Canal, the largest earth work project in history with a 1.5 year
> EIA study that still carries a "SECRET" stamp.
>
> Ulf Erlingsson
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>

-- 
Douglas Fenner
Contractor with Ocean Associates, Inc.
PO Box 7390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA

phone 1 684 622-7084

"belief in climate change is optional, participation is not."

Much-touted global warming pause never happened.

http://news.sciencemag.org/climate/2015/06/much-touted-global-warming-pause-never-happened

Has global warming taken a rest?  Not so fast, study suggests.  (check out
the graph)

http://www.livescience.com/51094-no-global-warming-hiatus-found.html

Climate change deniers love to talk about a recent "pause" in global
warming.  A new study says it didn't happen.

http://theweek.com/speedreads/558971/climate-change-deniers-love-talk-about-recent-pause-global-warming-new-study-says-didnt-happen

website:  http://independent.academia.edu/DouglasFenner

blog: http://ocean.si.edu/blog/reefs-american-samoa-story-hope