New Meaning Given to Deepwater Horizon

Harvard at about 120 ft.

Harvard at about 12 ft.

Here are some projected views of several locations in the U.S.

Their purpose is to illustrate what those locations would look like with both a twelve foot as well as about a hundred and twenty foot sea level rise.

The Dredd Blog has had some posts about sea level rise as a result of ice caps melting in different locations of the Earth's polar regions --regions that can be distinguished from one another, in terms of quantity of ice.

The posts include a table of locations with sea level rise projections, in feet, should that distinct area or ice cap melt (Will This Float Your Boat - 4).

The maximum sea level rise shown in that table is over twice the 120 feet sea level rise shown here, which is 263.5 feet if all ice caps and glaciers around the world melt (ibid).

Boston Harbor Hotel - 120 ft.

Boston Harbor Hotel - 12 ft.

The name Deepwater Horizon has a nuanced meaning in the sense that using fossil fuels will eventually bring deep water into cities along coasts, and change their horizons.

Ocean Drive - 120 ft.

Ocean Drive - 12 ft.

Along with that is species depletion and human health problems (Gulf of Mexico Still Suffering).

Jefferson Monument - 120 ft.

Jefferson Monument - 12 ft.

None of this adds up to be something anyone wants (Terrifying Global Warming Math).


(Click on the caption at the bottom of any of the 12 ft. sea level rise photos for a link to a larger view and for other information about these photo depictions.

The 120 feet sea level rise depictions are for emphasis and are estimates.)

Another thing that should be remembered is that even the 12 ft. projections will be exacerbated by storm surges, regular floods, and winds.

Venice Beach - 120 ft.

Venice Beach - 12 ft.

Also water will go further inland in porous soils, and will damage flora miles further inland in some cases.

That is already happening in the Carolinas: "We’ve got the highest rate of sea level rise on the East Coast,” said Skip Stiles, executive director, Wetlands Watch, who will be making a presentation on the historic, current and future sea level changes and potential impact on the Eastern Shore.

Stiles said some of the evidence of sea level rise visible to people who spend time around the water include seeing wetlands disappear, ditches going tidal, backyard vegetation changes, and “ghost forests” — full grown trees that are dead along the shore because the water is “moving in underneath them.”
...
Stiles said all of the Virginia tide gage measurements are showing about the same rise of a foot and a half over the last 100 years." (Social Dementia Causes Heated Misunderestimations - 2, emphasis in original).

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Senator Inhofe gives new power to denialism:

Not Da Momma

The Sixth Mass Extinction is Underway

It is a priori knowledge that living organisms (such as humans) that build a civilization which destroys, or is destroying, the environment (that is the foundation upon which that civilization depends for its survival and its ability to live) is alien to that environment.

It is clear that the Earth with its natural environment is a host to carbon-based life forms, including human civilization, thus, if human civilization maintains a symbiotic relationship, i.e., a mutualistic relationship, with the Earth along with its natural environment, both survive and both live.

If, on the other hand, human civilization destroys the environment of the Earth, then human civilization is alien to that environment, but more than that, it is a pathogenic alien that destroys the host as well as itself (Confusing "Civilization" With "Species").

Since that civilization will have destroyed what it must have to survive and live, it will have committed suicide by committing ultimate ecocide, the final catastrophe (On The Origin of Catastrophe).

That a priori knowledge is difficult to deny, so denialists choose to deny the body of a posteriori knowledge, i.e., that human civilization is in the process of destroying its host (The U.S. Government Report & The IPCC Fifth Report Are In Agreement).

There are deep-seated dynamics "down under the ground" in our subconscious cognition which come from one source of one type of that denial.

One reason for such denial can be considered "innocent," in the sense of it not being criminal psychotic behavior, but another one cannot be considered "innocent" (compare: Agnotology: The Surge - 8, MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact - 5).

Many examples can illustrate the point further - here is one:

I remember the beginning of an important Fabian myth in April, 1942. We were in the kitchen and my mother was crying. We asked why and she simply said, "Grandma Gilbertson died today of cancer." No details. Perhaps she didn't have the strength, or see the need, to decide how to embellish the lie. A true statement would have been, "Today Grandma Gilbertson committed suicide." Yet my

mother's one sentence was repeated every time anyone talked about my father's mother.

It was thirty years later when I told my mother that I had learned the truth from an aunt. When I asked her why she had given a false explanation for Grandma's death, my mother answered simply. "Your father was afraid he might have inherited his mother's mental illness." My parents undoubtedly believed they were wise in choosing to deny the reality of how she died. Also, of course, this was during a time when suicide was seldom mentioned. So denial was a desirable alternative to the continual scrutiny and evaluation my father imagined he would face if we children, and others, knew the truth.

(What is Your Family Myth?). These types of myth-denial behaviors find a way into our minds, and sink deep down "where the sun does not shine."

Take for example, the nation-as-family myth:

... a common metaphor, shared by conservatives and liberals alike -- the Nation-as-Family metaphor, in which the nation is seen as a family, the government as a parent and the citizens as children ... It’s no accident that our political beliefs are structured by our idealizations of the family. Our earliest experience with being governed is in our families. Our parents “govern” us: They protect us, tell us what we can and cannot do, make sure we have enough money and supplies, educate us, and have us do our part in running the house. So it is not at all surprising that many nations are metaphorically seen in terms of families: Mother Russia, Mother India, the Fatherland. In America, we have founding fathers, Daughters of the American Revolution, Uncle Sam, and we send our collective sons and daughters to war. In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, the voice of the totalitarian state was called Big Brother. As George Lakoff discussed at length in his 1996 book, Moral Politics, this metaphorical understanding of the nation-as-family directly informs our political worldview. Directly, but not consciously. As with other aspects of framing, the use of this metaphor lies below the level of consciousness.

(Security: Familyland, Fatherland, or Homeland?). That "our exceptional Mom and Dad nation" would never do anything to harm its children citizens to the point of mass-murder is the myth which flies in the face of the a posteriori knowledge shouting out loud to us.

That myth eventually develops in the deep-down-under subconscious world of the machinations of the human amygdala as modified by our cultural amygdala.

An Epigovernment currently struggles to remove or hamper our ability to directly change our government's direction, following our enlightenment.

Following our waking up to the realities involved and necessary to our struggle against the Oil-Qaeda Suicide-Ecocide Squad.

On The Origin of Catastrophe

The Sixth Mass Extinction is Underway.

The insatiable and pugnacious need to pervert meaning and reality tends to show up in psychotic denialist's rhetoric near the dates of the releases of IPCC official reports of climate change.

Especially when those reports evince the strong consensus among scientists.

A consensus in the scientific community concerning the reality that Oil-Qaeda has led us to create the Damaged Global Climate System.

Those denialist perverted propaganda mills, borne of infected minds know of two aspects of our cultural amygdala which recoils at the notion of something fearful, such as impending death.

One of those aspects they use in their propaganda is that it must happen to us or our extended self to qualify as a "catastrophe," or on the other hand, that it must happen to an enemy for it not to be considered to be a catastrophe.

Let's begin to dissect their demented propaganda infested minds by first taking a look at the meaning of the word:

ca·tas·tro·phe [kuh-tas-truh-fee] noun

1. a sudden and widespread disaster: the catastrophe of war.

2. any misfortune, mishap, or failure; fiasco: The play was so poor our whole evening was a catastrophe.

3. a final event or conclusion, usually an unfortunate one; a disastrous end: the great catastrophe of the Old South at Appomattox.

4. (in a drama) the point at which the circumstances overcome the central motive, introducing the close or conclusion ...

5. Geology. a sudden, violent disturbance, especially of a part of the surface of the earth; cataclysm.

(Dictionary, "catastrophe", emphasis added). We can readily conclude that the definition of the word "catastrophe" qualifies to describe some events ongoing now (Air Pollution Kills 7 Million Annually).

The word "catastrophe" also describes many oft-repeated human events of history:

A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.

Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."

The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharri of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.

It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:

"The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent."

By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.

(Exploded Planet Hypothesis - 2). The way the word "catastrophe" has been used in literature and even in common conversation also illustrates that in our world we have already had climate change catastrophes, and will continue to do so.

That is because the definition of the word "catastrophe" does not require being the worst of anything to qualify as a "catastrophe":

"Jimmy Fallon and I play regularly at the Bayonne Golf Club in Jersey. He's eighteen holes of fun. Any time we play he has moments of brilliance, but also moments of utter catastrophe." - Mario Batali

"Certainly I'm still mining my experiences as a journalist. I think it's no coincidence that all three of my novels basically are about how people act in a time of catastrophe. Do they go to their best self or their worst self?" - Geraldine Brooks

"There was a time when the community that was on the Net was homogenous and civilized. Now it's not. We're in the middle of chaos. It may calm down. But the alternative is that there's a total meltdown of the system and that it becomes unusable. That would be a catastrophe." - Robert Cailliau

(Brainy Quotes). Nevertheless, on a somewhat more serious side of the meaning of the word, the "the great catastrophe of the Old South at Appomattox" is remembered in the minds of some as a catastrophe because it happened "to us or our extended self", but that same event is celebrated by others because it "happened to an enemy" (see definition #3).

Those definitions of "catastrophe" do not work in a global context, because it happens to "us" and to "them", so the denialist mind perverts the meaning of the word to hide the global aspects even where the word "catastrophe" might aptly apply.

A global catastrophe under the definition of the word certainly would be "any misfortune, mishap, or failure" that affects the global population or our entire civilization (see definition #2).

A rogue global climate caused by global pollution can fit the bill.

Today and now is a new epoch, the sixth mass extinction epoch, and it applies to all members of the human family around the globe (On The Memorial Daze - 2).

Catastrophe has not been a rare event in the past, and the sixth mass extinction catastrophe now taking place isn't a loner either, in terms of "that meaning" of the word "catastrophe."

It is, however, so rare as to be the first and only time that the leadership of the human species has utterly lost its mind to utterly reject the warnings of over a hundred years, but to instead head into a mass extinction event because it is afraid of a mass extinction (The Exceptional American Denial).