New Orleans 2, Katrina 1, this round...?

[unixronin]

As jilara so correctly pointed out, "Any one you walk away from is a good one."  The Big Easy is battered, bruised and bleeding ... but it's still there, by the grace of whatever disrupted Katrina's eyewall during the night, causing it to veer east and dramatically weaken.

However ... if global warming is proceeding as many of the indications are it is, they're only going to get bigger and nastier from here.  We'd better all get our asses in gear and start getting prepared -- because right now, we aren't, and gambling that the warming is not as bad as it appears could turn out to be a very expensive bluff if it's the wrong call.  The recent thaw of a vast expanse of the western Siberian permafrost is a very bad sign in this regard, as it is estimated it could result in the release of as much as several billion tons of methane into the atmosphere.  Right now, there's a lot of fuss about carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, but methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.  We don't know have enough data on such large-scale releases yet to know how that would affect sea-surface temperatures, but it's likely to be significant.

The critical temperature for hurricane formation is about 80°F; right now that encompasses, in this hemisphere, a belt along the equator, the Caribbean, the Sea of Cortez, and a chunk of the north Atlantic extending about as far north as the Carolinas and about two thirds of the way across to Africa.  A 3-4 degree rise in sea surface temperature, maintaining the current distribution, would extend that band as far north as New York and eastward almost to the coast of Europe.

Looking at the sea surface temperature map for today, sea-surface temperatures in the lower 90s throughout the Caribbean and out into the Atlantic would make the Gulf's hurricane patterns a lot nastier.  On the West Coast, the hurricane-forming area would expand by, from the look of this map, probably on the order of two thousand miles in the direction of California.  Hawai'i, instead of being on the edge of the region, would be deep inside it.  It'd take more than that to inundate California, but Hawai'i could be in for a world of hurt, and Mexico could become as bad a hurricane playground as the Gulf Coast is now.

If we don't start taking all of this shit seriously, instead of pooh-poohing it because we can find a handful of scientists willing to disagree with the majority in their field in return for the President's favor, we're in for a world of hurt.  Literally.

Comments

[smandal.livejournal.com]

The minority of scientists have a point -- a lower standard of scientific certainty is being applied to anthropogenic global warming than other discoveries.

Most everyone agrees that the world is indeed warming.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The minority of scientists have a point -- a lower standard of scientific certainty is being applied to anthropogenic global warming than other discoveries.

True, but it's understandable in this case. It's one of those cases where you can't repeat the experiment, if you wait until you're certain it's too late to do anything about it, and the consequences of preparing for it then finding out you were wrong are considerably less serious than those of not preparing until you're certain, then finding out you were right.

Most everyone agrees that the world is indeed warming.

Indeed. Really, the major area of dispute is how much of the warming is anthropogenic -- but from the point of view of preparing for the effects, it really makes very little difference how much of it is our fault. Nature won't give us a Get Out Of Hell Free pass to skip flooding of low-lying areas because the sea-level rise wasn't our fault.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

So what are you trying to say? That we should panic about the sky falling and attempt to completely mitigate anthropgenic global warming, no matter the cost, even if the causes of global warming may be completely non-anthropogenic, and we may only destroy our industrial culture to have the seas rise anyway?

-Ogre

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

No, I'm saying we should start figuring out what we can do to prepare for the effects (including rising sea levels and climatic changes), and worry later about arguing over whether it's nature's fault or ours. If it's our fault, it's probably got too much momentum going by now to be stopped by anything we can do about it anyway. A lot of climatologists are of the belief that the thawing of the permafrost is an indication that it's now kicked over into a runaway that is beyond our power to reverse -- that even if we totally stopped burning fossil fuels, tomorrow, it still wouldn't be enough,and the warming would still continue.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Of course, one wonders if it will run away in one direction, or whether it will buffer out (more warm == more moisture == more clouds == cold)....

I'm with you, we really should quit blaming and start figuring out what to do about whatever it is that's happening... whatever that is... and what to do about it.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Thought I detected a little surfeit of excessive redundancy there in that there sentence there. :)

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

*snicker* Ah, well.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Ok, that makes more sense for you to be saying.

Obviously, the answer is "buy land above 50 feet elevation". ;)

-Ogre

[jilara.livejournal.com]

The thawing of the permafrost may be the one thing that keeps them from pumping out the arctic oil reserves. Because not only will it make everything nearly impossible to get to, except in the dead of winter, that kind of freeze/thaw wreaks havoc on pipelines, drilling rigs, etc.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

* Preparation costs could be devastating -- the world is still entirely a carbon economy.

* How anthropogenic the warming will determine what solutions might work.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, that's true too. That's why we need to start thinking about it now, instead of sticking our heads in the sand and saying, "Nope, nope, can't be happening, doesn't fit my political backers -- er, I mean, platform."

[smandal.livejournal.com]

There will be real suffering in implementing changes -- even if alternative energy sources can be developed, the costs of rolling them out could be crippling for developing economies.

I just think more research is needed before pushing through austere measures which might end up being useless.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I think the research should be towards making sustainability economically viable.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Ok, what does that entail? And how will it not be punishing in expense and inconvenience?

Nuclear power is one idea -- the greens (not the Greens) are back on the wagon.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Nuke may be in short-term, but eventually we'll run out of that, too. The things we won't run out of anytime soon are wind, water, sunlight... and biofuels. Biodiesel and molecular reformation (the turkey guts plants) I think are the wave of the future. America will not give up its love of the car, and even if it did, we have to have something to power the train and the bus. We can make biodiesel of various plant oils, and something close enough to gasoline to be useful out of most any waste organic. We just have to produce enough fuel, and vehicles that are efficient enough, to make our energy budget balance.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Nuclear fission is short-term on a relative scale, yes. There's at least several hundred years of fissionables accessible to us right now. But fission is dirty.

Personally, I regard it as a stop-gap until we can develop fusion. Wind, water, sunlight are nicely renewable, but it hasn't been demonstrated that we can generate enough power that way to make ends meet. (In fact, indications are we probably can't, especially with global power consumption rising.) And biodiesel and thermal depolymerization don't solve the carbon problem.

If we could get a beanstalk up, solar power satellites in orbit would probably be able to do the job. But they'd need to be in the Clarke orbit, and it's getting cluttered -- there's only room for just so many of them up there.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

America eventually may not have a choice in giving up (or limiting) its cars. You can love them all you want, but if gas gets so pricey it's filling the tank or eating, the choices get hard. (I saw my first sign for gas at $3.07 a gallon, this morning.)

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Uranium will run out, but it will take a few centuries.

There are serious technical problems with renewable resources, stemming from low energy density. Even if we could exploit the sunlight hitting the earth with 100% efficiency, it would still take a 1km^2 array to produce 1 gigawatt. Neither wind nor biofuels are even close to that (energy density nor efficiency).

We need high density energy generation and storage, to match current carbon-based technology. IMHO, the most likely candidates are nuclear and fuel cells; hopefully we'll transition from fission to fusion in our lifetimes.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Well, that's the flip side of it. A lot of things that we do are not very energy-efficient. (Transportation is one of the big ones.) We need to work on making them that way.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

My point is that the commonly promoted renewables are inherently limited -- no amount of technology will fix it.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

*nod*
And that's going to be the REAL uphill struggle: teaching America not to squander energy as though it was inexhaustible.

Just for shits and grins, anyone have the numbers to calculate how much oil it would save (taking reduced congestion into account as well as direct fuel savings) if everyone who now commutes alone to work in an SUV rode a 600cc-class motorcycle instead?

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

You're thinking small, my friend. If we did that we could re-stripe inner-city freeways and make one or two GP lanes half-size (two or four scooter lanes)..... the savings in new pavement alone would be... substantial.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Who says I was thinking small? :) Paint is cheap. Doing that, though, basically wouldn't really actually save anything, since motorcycles are already allowed to share lanes in every state in the US. (As distinct from "lane splitting", sharing lanes with cars or trucks and riding between lanes, which is legal -- or rather, not illegal -- only in California.) All it would do is create an incentive to get people out of single-occupant cars and SUVs and onto motorcycles ... but we're hypothesizing a scenario in which this has already been accomplished.

(Actually accomplishing it is a separate problem altogether.)

Lane restriping in this fashion would also probably paralyze traffic when the weather's too foul for safe riding. (Yeah, I know, ideally we want to get people to use mass transit instead anyway .... but in the US, that requires re-engineering entire cities, not to mention changing the mindset of America. I grew up in the UK, and I don't see how a UK-style bus network could be made to work in the majority of US cities, except for the downtown areas -- to make it viable, you'd just need too many buses on too many routes, and it would take unusably long to get anywhere.)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I'm not talking about austerity. I think we've already demonstrated that the developed nations -- well, OK, that the US in particular is incapable of restraining itself in that regard. I'm talking about things like figuring out which coastal cities we can feasibly protect with seawalls and dikes, and which we can't. Which populations will need to be relocated if sea levels rise three meters, or ten, and where to.

And so on.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of underwater arcologies. :-)

Carbon nanotube tented cities

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

This is one isntance where the tenting of cities makes sense.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Research is good.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

Based on the news today, we may need to figure out how to relocate New Orlean NOW. (The most favorable estimates had it ceasing to be saveable within a century, anyway.)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I rather think New Orleans has already been relocated, to the bottom of the newly expanded Lake Pontchartrain.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

And the looters are taking everything else with them. Very frankly, I understand why the authorities are relatively unconcerned. Where are the looters going to GO? And if they're looting food and drinkables, I'd consider it disaster relief. It's like what's left is shipwreck stuff...

New Orleans may be our answer to Atlantis... (or Alexandria, more like).

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

It's like what's left is shipwreck stuff...

It's funny you should say that. I was reading a story earlier about a couple of guys in N'Awlins watching the water rise around their building as they considered going back out onto the levee to salvage a cache of beer, champagne and liquor that had washed up.

And as I'm sure you can imagine, what IMMEDIATELY went through my head was,

"So here's to all good salvagers, and also River Rock
And to Napoleon brandy, of which now we have much stock
We eat a lot of chickens, and sit on a couch of green
And we wait for River Rock to bring another Athens Queen
Oh, the lovely Athens Queen...."

[jilara.livejournal.com]

I think I was reading that same story and thinking the same thing!