"This Century" and "Global Dimming"

Fig. 1 NASA S.Florida & Jason-3

I. Start Here

What does "this century" mean, other than being vague enough to be used by Oil-Qaeda funded corporate media as a cover up of the fact that the effects of global warming are happening today?

"This century" ends in 83 years on December 31, 2099.

If 83 years sounds like a science fiction time frame way off in the future, note that 83 years ago ("the past century?") was 1933.

That was not way back into the age of the dinosaurs, no, it was just over a decade after WW I, and it was just short of a decade prior to WW II.

It is the same propaganda technique when the corporate media uses "your grandchildren will be impacted by global warming if we don't do something in the coming years."

There are millions of people alive today who were born back then or some few years after, just as some people born "today" or near today, will have a lifespan that reaches out 83 years from now.

By this 83 years scale the ice sheet of Greenland has been melting for several centuries (Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 54, Proof of Concept - 3, 5).

Regular readers of the Dredd Blog System know that this type of event has been happening for a long time, (The Extinction of Chesapeake Bay Islands).

And, it will continue to happen for a science-fiction sounding amount of time into the future.

Remember, the industrial revolution, which was enhanced by burning fossil fuels, began circa 1750.

That would calculate to "3.2 centuries ago" by this 83 year scale [(2016−1750)÷83 = 3.2].

II. Take Sea Level Change As An Example

The photo at the top of the post is a photo of what is already happening in Florida "nowadays."

Consider also the weather forecast for today, further north on the East Coast:

COASTAL FLOOD ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 7 PM THIS EVENING TO 1 AM EDT SUNDAY...

Fig. 2

* LOCATION ... COASTAL AREAS OF NEW JERSEY AND DELAWARE AND AREAS ALONG DELAWARE BAY.

* COASTAL FLOODING ... MINOR FLOODING IS ANTICIPATED AROUND THE TIME OF THIS EVENING'S HIGH TIDE.

* TIMING  ...  HIGH TIDE ON THE NEW JERSEY AND DELAWARE OCEAN FRONT OCCURS BETWEEN 830 PM AND 930 PM THIS EVENING. HIGH TIDE ON THE BACK BAYS, ALONG DELAWARE BAY AND ALONG RARITAN BAY OCCURS LATER THAN THE HIGH TIDE ON THE OCEAN FRONT.

* SURGE ... 0.5 TO 1.0 FOOT ABOVE THE ASTRONOMICAL TIDE.

* WAVES...WAVE HEIGHTS ON THE OCEAN WATERS OFF THE COAST WILL BE 3 TO 4 FEET THIS EVENING. WAVE HEIGHTS ON DELAWARE BAY WILL BE 1 TO 2 FEET.

* IMPACTS ... LOCALIZED ROADWAY FLOODING IS POSSIBLE. SOME ROADS MAY BE CLOSED DUE TO HIGH WATER.

PRECAUTIONARY / PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS ...

Fig. 3

A COASTAL FLOOD ADVISORY MEANS THAT MINOR TIDAL FLOODING IS EXPECTED. MINOR TIDAL FLOODING OFTEN RESULTS IN SOME ROAD CLOSURES. USUALLY, THE MOST VULNERABLE ROADWAYS WILL FLOOD.

DO NOT LEAVE YOUR VEHICLE AT A LOCATION THAT IS PRONE TO TIDAL FLOODING. DO NOT DRIVE YOUR VEHICLE THROUGH FLOOD WATERS. THE WATER MAY BE DEEPER THAN YOU THINK IT IS. YOU WILL BE PUTTING YOURSELF IN DANGER AND YOUR VEHICLE MAY BE DAMAGED, LEADING TO COSTLY REPAIRS.

FOR A LIST OF THE IMPACT OF DIFFERENT TIDE HEIGHTS IN YOUR COUNTY PLEASE GO TO WWW.WEATHER.GOV/PHI/TIDES.

(AccuWeather, CAPS in original). Builds built above the high tide mark in "this century" are now flooding at high tide.

This is happening right now in "this century" at the time we call "today."

"Last month" (April 2016) type impacts are more rarely talked about:

Last month in Greenland, more than a tenth of the ice sheet’s surface was melting in the unseasonably warm spring sun, smashing 2010’s record for a thaw so early in the year. In the Antarctic, warm water licking at the base of the continent’s western ice sheet is, in effect, dissolving the cork that holds back the flow of glaciers into the sea; ice is now seeping like wine from a toppled bottle.

(Yale, Abrupt Sea Level Change). That also is happening in "this century", and in several before it.

It is also difficult to see some of the western versions of "this century" SLR in the U.S.A. according to "this century" watchers:

Sea level signals in turbulent coastal regions, such as the U.S. West Coast, are notoriously difficult to measure from space-based radar, due to the presence of land in the radar returns, sudden changes in the atmospheric water content due to storms, and rapidly changing tidal heights over shallow continental shelves. These and other atmospheric variations combine to throw off satellite readings.

(NASA, Sea Level). That sea level change is a tricky bugger to watch, especially when one doesn't want to see it (Honolulu, Louisiana).

III. Global Mental Dimming In "This Century"

The scary movie people talk about the "methane monster" like it was "Big-Foot" because of cultural populism:

"People are placing too much emphasis on methane,” says Raymond Pierrehumbert, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford and one of the paper’s authors. “And really, people should prove that we can actually get the CO2 emissions down first, before worrying about whether we are doing enough to get methane emissions down.”

(Why we’re still so incredibly confused about methane’s role). Waiting for something to happen that has been happening is a sign of being unaware.
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Right or wrong, the viewpoint that "global dimming" is a major player in global warming dynamics is fading in one sense (the wrong sense):

The latest updates on solar radiation changes observed since the new millennium show no globally coherent trends anymore (see above and Fig. 2).

While brightening persists to some extent in Europe and the United States, there are indications for a renewed dimming in China associated with the tremendous emission increases there after 2000, as well as unabated dimming in India (Streets et al. 2009; Wild et al. 2009).

We cannot exclude the possibility that we are currently again in a transition phase and may return to a renewed overall dimming for some years to come. On the one hand, air pollution mitigation potential is approaching saturation in many of the industrialized nations (Ruckstuhl et al. 2008; Streets et al. 2009), thus confining further human-induced brightening in these areas, while on the other hand air pollution increase and associated dimming may continue for a while in developing and emerging nations. The recent renewed increase in global sulfur emissions (particularly originating from Asia) (Streets et al. 2009), the evidence for renewed declines in visibility (Wang et al. 2009) and in satellite-derived SSR (Hinkelman et al. 2009; Hatzianastassiou et al. 2011), and the lack of warming in the early 2000s may be interpreted as additional indicators for such a development. However, such renewed dimming and associated impacts would likely have a limited persistence, since emerging nations will be forced to implement air quality measures in face of increasingly pressing health problems.

Thus, with the foreseeable inevitability and undisputable necessity for clean air regulations and aerosol reductions also in emerging nations, potential dampening of global warming by a renewed dimming could only be temporary, and greenhouse gases will ultimately become the sole major anthropogenic forcing factor of climate change.

(Enlightening Global Dimming and Brightening, 2012, p. 34, by Martin Wild, PDF; accord NASA: dimming has diminished). It is difficult to keep up with things in a literary world of "worse than previously thought."

IV. Conclusion

Continue to become more aware, then stay aware.

“Enlightenment [on this planet] is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.” - Adyashanti