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 Other Candidates for

"Crucial Global Warming Facts"

 

     

 

          The goal, focus, and thrust of the "Facts" section in this website is to assert that we need to agree upon, and then focus upon and spread the word about, only a small and deliberately limited number of huge, crucial, critical facts. Why? Because those who do NOT want to have to listen to long lectures and preachy sermons will simply tune out the entire set, if the set threatens to become larger, heavier, and more complicated than reluctant readers and listeners are wiling to carry around with them, in their heads. The analogy is, it's like a marketing campaign, or an effort to introduce a new product.

 

          However, any legitimate expert (or even serious student) can and should also be at least aware of half a dozen "second tier"
facts, and should be able to discuss them intelligently – not in ways that will allow malevolent and destructive "paid disrupters" to hijack, clutter, and confuse public discussions, but in ways that can assure other people of good will that there is indeed a solid structure below the surface, which supports and strengthens the surface that can be seen, and shows that it is not merely some sort of artificial facade, like on a movie set, which is designed to trick and deceive, rather than inform and endure.

 

          And so, here is a brief listing of both: (i) several additional candidates, for discussion and debate among any groups of people who are seriously trying to whittle down the number of "crucial macro-facts" to a workable number; and, (ii) a comment on why certain facts were chosen for the prior pages, while other facts were lumped together as "additional candidates".

Why are all of the crucial "macro-facts" limited to the Northern hemisphere? Shouldn't Antarctica, the Amazon jungle, and the Great Barrier Reef, also be addressed, and included?

          There are three main reasons for the decision to focus ony on the northern hemisphere, in this website:

          FIRST: about 87% of the world population lives in the Northern hemisphere, and only about 13% lives in the Southern hemisphere. That is a direct result of land mass; about 85% of the land area, on this planet, is in the northern hemisphere.

          SECOND: this website is targeted more at readers (and voters, and political leaders and candidates) in the US, than anywhere else, mainly because there are far greater numbers of "climate deniers" in the US (and especially in Congress, on a percentage basis), than in any other country, anywhere in the world. And, for better or worse, to most voters in the United States, Antarctica seems VERY remote, and VERY far away (and, it is still VERY cold there, as well).

          THIRD: Most of the warnings and predictions about things like the Thwaites glacier, in Antarctica (also called "the doomsday glacier", for good reason) have not yet really begun to happen, to the same levels that have already occurred in the northern arctic, where undeniable photographs prove that the snow and ice cover, over an area 125 times the size of the entire state of New Jersey, has already been lost, and destroyed; and, that fact can be described factually, and accurately, without having to wait for anything more, or anything else, to happen. The gradual melting and dismantling of Antarctica must be described, mainly in terms of what MIGHT happen, someday, if the world continues to grow warmer. To try to convey the urgency of the problems that are already occurring, the best and most compelling facts are the ones that describe what has already happened, rather than trying to use futuristic (and arguably speculative) warnings about what might happen, some day, in the future.

With that as a preface, here are several facts that any environmental advocate should be at least aware of:

1. The "Doomsday Glacier" in Antarctica is "hanging on by its fingernails" (as are multiple additional "ice shelves").

          The crucial warming problems in Antarctica are being caused by warming ocean waters, melting the undersides of the gigantic ice sheets and glaciers in Antarctica. Much of the current attention is focusing on the Thwaites Glacier, which has been nicknamed "the Doomsday Glacier", because if it collapses, and slides into the southern seas, the levels of the oceans all around the world will rise by several feet, due to just that one glacier. But, that focused attention is drawing attention away from other massive chunks of ice that have been breaking off of Antarctica for roughly the past 40 years, often in blocks that are the size of entire cities, and with thicknesses usually measured in hundreds of feet.

2. Coral reefs form crucial support for the entire marine food chain, and they are dying off, around the world, at alarming rates.

          All around the world, coral reefs are dying off, because the species of coral polyps which built a reef, in any particular region, cannot survive in the rapidly and severely disruptive warming levels they are being subjected to. As just one example, The Great Barrier Reef, off the Pacific coast of Australia, is dying, rapidly. VERY rapidly. Over just the past 10 years, it has become about 70% dead, because the water surrounding it has become too hot for the types of coral that used to thrive there. It took millions of years for corals to build it, and until recently, it was called the largest living thing that has ever existed on the face of this planet, and the only living thing that can be seen readily from space. But, warming ocean temperatures have pretty much killed it, to a 70% level, in only about 10 years. If anyone would like to watch it happen, there are videos showing it, at places like youtube.com/watch?v=gW789yyt7q0, and youtube.com/watch?v=i8CnA2fKpvI.

          The main visible symptom, when coral dies, is called "bleaching", which involves a loss of color. However, after coral dies, it gets coated with the marine equivalents of mold, mildew, and fungus, which is like painting a rotting corpse with brown paint. Here's a photograph (from an article in Scientific American) showing all three of those stages, compiled from 3 different photographs of the same reef, taken on three different dates, over a span of less than a single year, which shows how rapidly it happens, once it gets started:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, here is a photograph, showing what is happening to the "aquatic nurseries" that once were the most important, crucial, and essential parts which formed the very base and foundation of a huge portion of all marine life:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          Quite a few scientists are working as fast as they can, try to "transplant" different, more heat-tolerant species of coral polyps, into near-coastal waters that are rapidly growing warmer. But, it will take hundreds or even thousands of years for those polyps to slowly and gradually build the types of reefs that can function as the "marine nurseries" that were provided by the reefs that are dying off rapidly, today. And, the marine food chain cannot simply enter some sort of dormant mode, where the animals that live in the oceans won't need food for the next few centuries. Instead, a massive worldwide "crash" in marine life (greatly accelerated by things like huge industrial fishing boats, which use nets that stretch out for literally miles) has already begun, and is rapidly growing worse.

 

3. Several massive global ocean currents (including the Gulf Stream, as just one example) are decaying and dwindling, in strength, speed, and volume, at alarming rates.

          Most people don't realize how far north the entire continent of Europe is located. If studied on a globe, London is located at the same far-northern latitude as the northernmost border of Ontario, Canada (up near the Hudson Bay, in Canada). That means that all of England would be even colder than the northernmost tip of Minnesota, if it were not for a huge globe-spanning factor called The Gulf Stream, which for at least the past 10,000 years or so has carried gigantic quantities of warm water, up out of the Gulf of Mexico, and across the entire Atlantic Ocean, where it runs directly into Ireland and England, and helps warm the entire continent of Europe. It has made the climate of the European continent livable, in ways that are impossible to explain in terms that most ordinary voters can understand.

          But, the Gulf Stream is going through massive, steep, and unprecedented decreases in volume and speed. Just in the past few decades, the strength and volume of warm water that is being moved across an entire ocean, by the Gulf Stream, has dropped by about 15%. And, for the same reasons that almost all of the other crisis-causing problems being created by global warming are caught up in accelerating "exponential curves" (a rough translation of that phrase: `The worse it gets, the more it's going to get even worse than that, even faster'), the strength of the Gulf Stream is going to begin dropping even faster, over the coming decades.

           And, it's not just The Gulf Stream which is changing, dramatically, dangerously, and rapidly. Because of factors that directly arise from global warming, pretty much all of the "deep ocean currents" (also called "abyssal currents" and/or the "thermohaline circulation"), all around the entire planet, are beginning to also decrease and diminish. 

          One of the main factors driving those losses arises from what happened to the upper ocean surfaces, when trillions of tons of "fresh water" (i.e., water with low salt content) melted off of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica (and when additional trillions of tons of fresh water were added to the top layers of the Arctic Ocean, as the snow and ice which formerly covered the arctic ocean and tundra regions began to rapidly melt). The simple fact is that all that "fresh water" was deposited – and, is now being added at even faster rates – on top of the salty ocean water.

          That leads to huge problems, because fresh water is substantially LESS dense, and LESS heavy, than salt water. Ocean water weighs 64 pounds per cubic foot; by contrast, fresh water weighs only 62.4 pounds per cubic foot. So, there is no reason why that new layer of fresh water – which is being layered on top of the oceans, as global warming melts, destroys, and dismantles the non-salty arctic and Antarctic ice sheets and snow cover – will voluntarily or automatically mix in with the heavier and denser salt water, down deeper, below those newly-arrived surface layers with low salinity.

          Instead, it appears that global warming is creating a low-salinity "insulating blanket" of fresh water, which will irrevocably alter (read: damage, and possibly destroy) the processes which created the "deep-layer" ocean currents, which – for at least the last 10,000 years or so, ever since the end of the last major "Ice Age" – kept this planet in an ideal combination of conditions, for supporting human life, and human population growth, and human happiness, civilization, society, and progress.

          It's hard to predict how severe the changes will be, which are being triggered and driven by the new and different patterns of ocean currents that are being altered by global warming, especially since the creation of a new layer of fresh water, on top of the well-established layers of salt water, is happening tens of thousands of times faster than it might have happened when any of the prior "ice ages" receded in a "merely geological" (rather than "human-driven") pace. However, we can reliably say that the ocean current conditions that existed, over the past 10,000 years, were pretty much ideal, for human population growth, and for human progress and civilization. Therefore, we can pretty well predict that whatever the new conditions turn out to be, they will NOT be anywhere near as ideal as the former conditions were (i.e., over the past 10,000 years), for enabling human population growth, and human happiness, and felicity. Instead, the only reliable prediction, in this particular area, seems to be, "If the ocean currents are shifting dramatically away from an `Ideal, for humans' pattern, into something very different, then humans, and probably nearly every other type of vertebrate life (including marine vertebrates), are destined for some rough, nasty, difficult, and unhappy conditions, over the next few thousand years, compared to what we were able to enjoy, over the past 10,000 years."

4. Large areas around the periphery of the Amazon forest appear to be approaching "tipping points" where they are losing the trait of 'resilency'.

          The Amazon forest (or jungle, or rainforest) has been called `the lungs of the earth', with good reason.

          However, it is being actively destroyed, usually by clear-cutting and fires  mainly by people who want to grow cattle on that land, even though that type of soil will not support cattle for more than just a year or two (which means, as soon as THOSE areas of land give out and lose their productivity, the cattle growers need to go deeper into the forest/jungle, and destroy even more of it, to gain any level of income over the next few years).

          In addition to that outright and direct destruction, scientists also have begun to realize that the `resiliency' of that rainforest/jungle (i.e., its ability to repair damage that it has suffered) also is being severely damaged, and impaired, to a point where scientists have begun to suggest, in complete seriousness, that within a few centuries, or possibly only within a few decades, huge portions of it may turn into the type of dry and even semi-arid grassland which, in Africa, is called `savannah'.

          And, if THAT happens, it likely would become a catastrophe for pretty much every type of vertebrate animal that is alive today. This planet has already firmly and irreversibly entered `The Sixth Great Extinction Event' in its history, which humans know about. If humans destroy the Amazon rainforest, and turn it into semi-arid grassland (instead of a rainforest which, today, holds on to unimaginably huge quantities of carbon), that might seriously lead to insects, jellyfish, and other NON-vertebrate animals becoming some of the most advanced and important forms of life that would remain alive, on a super-heated planet. That might sound like bombast or hyperbole; however, bear in mind that those types of animals are among the most efficient – and, most rapidly mutating, rapidly adapting, and rapidly evolving – invaders, hunters, and predators on land, and in the oceans. As a simple illustration, no vertebrate land animal that needs to lie down and sleep, for hours each day, can defend itself against – or survive – an attack by an entire swarm of twenty thousand or more army ants. If average air temperatures, around the entire planet, go up by, say, 15 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit, that might – in all seriousness – become the fate of life on this planet.

5. Droughts and wildfires in Europe (example: Greece, 2023) and the western US have grown worse than ever before, in any known history.

          Since droughts and wildfires have always been part of nature (at least, since the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago),  it is very, VERY hard to somehow convince Republicans – especially Republican members of Congress, and Republican candidates for office – that THESE fires, and THESE droughts, are somehow "different" from all the ones that have happened before.  So, all we can do, on that front, is offer up a few pictures, in the hope that they might create some sort of visual impression which will create a memory that might linger for more than two minutes.
         We've chosen these, because they are NOT located in the dry Southwest, in a state like Arizona or Utah. Instead, these pictures are of Lake Oroville, which is more than 100 miles north of San Francisco,  about halfway between San Francisco, and Oregon. Here is what Lake Oroville looked like, in happier, healthier days:

But, here is what it looked like, in the summer of 2022:

 

          How can ANYONE see pictures like these, and NOT realize that something is very, VERY seriously wrong? We certainly can't; so, all we can suggest is, go ask some Republicans, and see what they say. Especially some Republican members of Congress. Or, Republican candidates for Congress. THEY are the ones who are refusing to face up to the reality of what is actually happening, these days, because of global warming. If some debate moderators would show an audience some pictures like these, and then ask any Republican candidates for Congress, "Do you see any problems, here?", perhaps they might get at least some kind of answer. Or, maybe they will just get deflections, and sidesteps, and promises to maybe do something, some day, maybe. And, they might get to see and hear some really useful – and really helpful – suggestions about how it should be private enterprise, rather than any sort of government programs, that should be used to solve these kinds of problems. As though the people who own the docks, alongside a lake like this, really should be the ones who should be responsible for keeping the lake full of water.

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