Skip to main content

New study: Sea level rise accelerating

EarthSky

Update: Welp, I've already made changes to the spreadsheet I've been working with (and also edited the spacing in the posting). Take my numbers, and think of them as worse than I initially expected. I forgot to account for inertia. Of course, I was only doing this as an exercise for the brain. The numbers grow more and more dismaying, though. And these are just estimates, based on nothing more than news articles. I can't imagine the actual numbers, and what scientists and statisticians are finding. It's just awful.

Well, this was to be expected, right? If global warming is rising exponentially, then all that follows should match. Such should include climate change. We should be expecting stranger weather at an increased rate until normalization occurs, which should be decades after maximum warming.

The Earth has enough carbon to produce six degrees of warming in total, but we wish to keep it to two and a half degrees. However, we've already hit two degrees. There should be a formula for divining what population reduction of worldwide population will be for every degree passed four degrees.

Four degrees would probably see 30% reduction. Five degrees 45%. Six degrees 60%. These would be per decade estimates. For every decade at which global warming above four degrees occurs, then the worldwide population will decline, and continue to decline at that rate.

The likelihood is we'll hit four degrees by 2050, which means the decade following, the Earth's human population will decline by 2.1 billion. The decade following it would be 1.47. So on and so forth.

Climate will normalize four decades after hitting four degrees, unless six degrees is 'baked in', in which case the formula changes exponentially (again). Four decades at four degrees becomes six decades at five degrees, and nine decades at six degrees.

Of course, these are excessively rough numbers, but four degrees would still leave human population in the billions: 1,680,700,000. Five degrees: 193,764,484. Six degrees: 1,835,008. Four degrees, and we humans can manage. Five degrees would see a massive decline in living standards. Six degrees is iffy.

This doesn't take into account externalities. Stuff that isn't predicted or accounted for. This doesn't take into account actual numbers. These numbers are generated at the top of my head based on recollection.

I honestly expect my numbers are off, but on the conservative side rather than the liberal side. The actual numbers are probably far worse.

Four degrees at 45% population decline is manageable. However, five degrees at 60% loss is iffy. Six degrees at 75% loss is catastrophic.

On the high end, 90% loss at six degrees would probably see the human race near extinct, as soon as six decades at six degrees.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Death of B.C. aboriginal teen Paige blamed on 'brutal and cruel' support services

CBC News Ugh. Reading this sort of story just gets me. Deep in the heart, it hurts me. This girl. Hell. She looks just like any other girl on my reserve. Like any girl I've met in my community. She was allowed to die. She was passed around, passed off, and then simply passed away. All while in the hands of a ministry that doesn't know what to do with this girl, and the hundreds of kids just like her. Damn it! The best way of dealing with these kids is to work with the families, the communities these kids are being taken from. Instead the BC government plucks them out of the parents' care, sometimes for frivolous reasons, and sends then into this machine-like bureaucracy, and sets it on the spin cycle. Where the kid ends up, and how they end up, is of no concern to the province! Just so long as they can punt these kids further away. Work with the kids' families! Work with the kids' communities! That's the best way.

The Earth is Alive

It is not a being in a manner we can absolutely comprehend. It's deeper mysteries are probably too much for our abnormally large monkey brains. We can make good guesses as to its nuances and behaviors, but how do we prove anything above the level of the idea we believe there to be a molten core at its heart? We believe it breathes and maintains its temperature through the trees, the air, and the ocean. We can make good guesses at all this, modeling to best of our knowledge what it all may look like, and predict its future behavior, but we don't actually know, for certain. Which may seem like a weakness to some. We're nothing more than animals, really. We follow the strong, and the strong are certain. Uncertainty seems alike to fear to some. The Earth is alive, and it is ancient. We are mere insects to it, really. Its age is unfathomable, honestly. We can only imagine a time before humans. We wish for a sense of superiority, as though we're somehow important in the gra...

Athabasca Glacier melting at 'astonishing' rate of 5 metres a year

CTV News I can't imagine how much that is, in all honesty. 220 square kilometres, and 300 metres deep? That size is.... I actually can imagine that, now. That's a whole lot of ice. The loss is probably being understated, too. It's probably compounding rather then just being a straight five metres every year. Things are changing, and we're unprepared. The importance of climate change cannot be understated. If the governments of the world do nothing, then as individuals, we all need to ready our hearts and minds for what's going to happen. Try to imagine a worst case scenario. Mass drought. Entire nations starving. Mass migrations of populations moving to countries that aren't in drought. There's going to be conflict, unless it is organized. Things fall apart when people are brung low.