by R E Kearney
The melting fresh water from glaciers alters the ocean, not only by directly contributing to the global sea level rise, but also because it pushes down the heavier salt water, thereby changing what scientists call the THC, or Thermo (heat) Haline (salt) Circulation, meaning currents in the ocean. Changing the oceans’ currents has an immediate effect on the near region, such as the north Atlantic off the coast of Greenland. But that is just the beginning, changing the oceans’ currents ultimately will impact far beyond the immediate area and climate.
High dry and empty. Ocean currents regulate the Earth’s climate, by acting much like conveyer belts, transporting warm water and precipitation from the equator toward the poles and cold water from the poles back to the tropics. Without currents, regional temperatures will be more extreme. It would become super hot at the equator and frigid toward the poles making much less of Earth’s land would be habitable.
When glaciers disappear, rivers of life die. Seventy percent of Earth’s freshwater is frozen in glaciers, the Earth’s largest freshwater reservoir, collectively covering an area the size of South America. Only a minority of Earth’s glaciers are melting directly into the ocean. The majority of glaciers melt in mountains far from oceans creating the rivers and lakes necessary to support life. Thus, widespread melting of glaciers during the coming century will lead to floods and water shortages for billions of people.
The Hindu Kush-Himalaya mountain region contains 60,000 square km of glaciers and is the source of ten major Asian river systems, which supply 1.3 billion people with water. The Himalaya glaciers are not going to vanish in the near future, but they are shrinking at an annually increasing and alarming rate. All the scenarios predicted for climate change indicate glacier shrinkage will cause major changes in vegetation and wetlands, and that species of plants and animals will become extinct.
Brook Larmer described the impact of melting glaciers in the Himalayas on two families in two nations in an article entitled The Big Melt for National Geographic. In Tibet: “The nomads' tent is a pinprick of white against a canvas of green and brown. There is no other sign of human existence on the 14,000-foot-high prairie that seems to extend to the end of the world. As a vehicle rattles toward the tent, two young men emerge, their long black hair horizontal in the wind. Ba O and his brother Tsering are part of an unbroken line of Tibetan nomads who for at least a thousand years have led their herds to summer grazing grounds near the headwaters of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers.
Inside the tent, Ba O's wife tosses patties of dried yak dung onto the fire while her four-year-old son plays with a spool of sheep's wool. The family matriarch, Lu Ji, churns yak milk into cheese, rocking back and forth in a hypnotic rhythm. Behind her are two weathered Tibetan chests topped with a small Buddhist shrine: a red prayer wheel, a couple of smudged Tibetan texts, and several yak butter candles whose flames are never allowed to go out. "This is the way we've always done things," Ba O says. "And we don't want that to change."
But it may be too late. The grasslands are dying out, as decades of warming temperatures—exacerbated by overgrazing—turn prairie into desert. Watering holes are drying up, and now, instead of traveling a short distance to find summer grazing for their herds, Ba O and his family must trek more than 30 miles across the high plateau. Even there the grass is meager. "It used to grow so high you could lose a sheep in it," Ba O says. "Now it doesn't reach above their hooves." The family's herd has dwindled from 500 animals to 120. The next step seems inevitable: selling their remaining livestock and moving into a government resettlement camp.”
In India: “It is not yet noon in Delhi, just 180 miles south of the Himalayan glaciers. But in the narrow corridors of Nehru Camp, a slum in this city of 16 million, the blast furnace of the north Indian summer has already sent temperatures soaring past 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Chaya, the 25-year-old wife of a fortune-teller, has spent seven hours joining the mad scramble for water that, even today, defines life in this heaving metropolis—and offers a taste of what the depletion of Tibet's water and ice portends.
Chaya's day began long before sunrise, when she and her five children fanned out in the darkness, armed with plastic jugs of every size. After daybreak, the rumor of a tap with running water sent her stumbling in a panic through the slum's narrow corridors. Now, with her containers still empty and the sun blazing overhead, she has returned home for a moment's rest. Asked if she's eaten anything today, she laughs: "We haven't even had any tea yet."
Suddenly cries erupt—a water truck has been spotted. Chaya leaps up and joins the human torrent in the street. A dozen boys swarm onto a blue tanker, jamming hoses in and siphoning the water out. Below, shouting women jostle for position with their containers. In six minutes the tanker is empty. Chaya arrived too late and must move on to chase the next rumor of water.
Delhi's water demand already exceeds supply by more than 300 million gallons a day, a shortfall worsened by inequitable distribution and a leaky infrastructure that loses an estimated 40 percent of the water. More than two-thirds of the city's water is pulled from the Yamuna and the Ganges, rivers fed by Himalayan ice. If that ice disappears, the future will almost certainly be worse. "We are facing an unsustainable situation," says Diwan Singh, a Delhi environmental activist. "Soon—not in thirty years but in five to ten—there will be an exodus because of the lack of water."
The tension already seethes. In the clogged alleyway around one of Nehru Camp's last functioning taps, which run for one hour a day, a man punches a woman who cut in line, leaving a purple welt on her face. "We wake up every morning fighting over water," says Kamal Bhate, a local astrologer watching the melee. This one dissolves into shouting and finger-pointing, but the brawls can be deadly. In a nearby slum a teenage boy was recently beaten to death for cutting in line.”
“In the history of the world, all five mass extinctions have been accompanied by massive climate change, so we are facing an incredibly serious threat. In fact, we are technically in the sixth mass extinction right now, and it is the first mass extinction being attributed to humans.” Cameron Russell
So, Climate change will cause some regions of Earth to experience flooding while not far away drought rules. Islands are disappearing beneath the sea now and more will be submerged in the future. But, the most catastrophic impact of climate change will be the flooding of a number of Earth’s major cities.
When the seawaters rise, vast numbers of people will be forced to abandon their destroyed homes and flee for safety and shelter elsewhere. A new study projects as many as 13.1 million Americans could become climate refugees by the end of this century. More than 400 towns and cities in America will be lost to the sea. The flooding of coastal cities will force a flood of people inland. Inland cities, already grappling with population growth, urban development, traffic congestion and water management could be overwhelmed.
“We typically think about sea-level rise as a coastal issue, but if people are forced to move because their houses become inundated, the migration could affect many landlocked communities as well,” said Mathew Hauer, a demographer at the University of Georgia. “For many inland areas, incorporating climate change scenarios into their strategic long-range planning would be an appropriate strategy.”
Extreme coastal flooding will become the new normal in Europe. Sea levels around Britain could rise by more than three feet due to climate change, according to a new assessment of melting ice sheets and glaciers, causing floods in London and other coastal towns.
Less earth on Earth. Less livable land for billions more people is the future predicted for Earth. If scientists are correct by 2100, the world’s oceans will have swallowed up much of every continent forcing the world’s population to crowd together on land that is hot and drought plagued. To survive, mankind will need to invent and innovate methods for feeding and watering these billions of people. Scientists of all categories are working to develop concepts, systems and processes so mankind can survive. One of those concepts
, which is becoming reality today, is to develop seaworthy structures that will allow humans to live upon the expanding ocean - Seasteading. Why fight it? Adjust to it. Utilize it.
As we look to alternative methods of living and colonizing the planet, what are the advantages of Seasteading.
“We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.” John Archibald Wheeler
First, for the uninitiated, the term Seasteading is the combination of the words sea and homesteading and is the concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, called seasteads, outside the territory claimed by any government. The idea of Seasteading and the Seasteading Institute (https://www.seasteading.org/), was created in 2008 by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel and Google software engineer Patri Friedman (the grandson of economist Milton Friedman) with a goal of establishing a floating city that would serve as a permanent, politically autonomous settlement – a libertarian utopia.
"It is from the ocean that will be born the destiny of civilizations to come." Jacques Rougerie Marine Architect
Randolph Hencken, executive director of the Seasteading Institute, advocates seasteading because, "All the land is claimed, the ocean is our last place on Earth" where the seafaring pioneers would be free from the rules of established governments. Hencken continues, "Seasteading is for people who want to engage in the marketplace of ideas, the marketplace of commerce, and the marketplace of government." Basically, Seasteading allows you to be what you want to be and all you can be.
Seasteading is envisaged as a means of escape. Escape from onerous governments and their laws and regulations. Seasteading is also visualized as an escape from overcrowding and environmental problems in land nations. The creators of the Seasteading concept explained their rationale as follows:
“The Seasteading Institute has taken up the challenge to enable more businesses to be commercially viable on the open seas, either on ships, platforms, or other novel designs. We promote aqua farming, mariculture, floating hospitals, medical research, bluegreen energy technologies, political asylum, or any other peaceful enterprise. If these ventures succeed and create jobs and thriving communities, seasteads will provide prosperity to a new wave of immigrants.
If ocean pioneers develop superior models of governance, governments on land may take notice. The precedents of the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the African island of Mauritius demonstrate that small island nations can compel larger governments to alter their policies. If seasteads demonstrate superior governance practices, all governments may be compelled to experiment, iterate on basic functions, and innovate with new policies to keep up with seastead competition for land and talent.
Our supporters tend to view government as an industry, lacking competition due to high barriers to entry. In other words, it is exceedingly difficult to enter the government industry and offer a government startup.
Seasteads by their very nature, would provide citizens with the technology to move fluidly among governments. In the seasteading model, citizens would take on the role of customers, choosing their government according to their unique preferences. If modular ocean homes and offices are mobile and can be reassembled according to individual preferences, small groups of entrepreneurs and investors can feasibly build ‘startup’ societies on earth’s last unclaimed frontier. Thus seasteading attempts to transform a political problem in an engineering challenge. Whereas solutions in politics continue to elude even the most competent technocratic managers, relatively small groups of people have proven highly adept at solving complex engineering problems.”
“Hope is the magic carpet that transports us from the present moment into the realm of infinite possibilities.” H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Seasteading is no longer a fantasy. Members of the Seasteading Institute are currently developing a seastead in the islands of French Polynesia. The Pacific Ocean is engulfing the islands of French Polynesia and the seastead is being proposed as a solution by Seasteading communications director Joe Quick.
“The Seasteading Institute and the new company Blue Frontiers endeavor to improve humanity and the environment. The first seasteads – floating islands – will integrate sustainable technologies that will eventually provide climate refugees with opportunities to be resilient to rising sea levels. On the sea, we will peacefully experiment with new societal structures.
This past January President Édouard Fritch and the French Polynesian government officially signed an historic agreement with us to cooperate on creating a legal framework to allow for the development of our Floating Island Project. The legislation will give the Floating Island Project its own “special governing framework” creating an “innovative special economic zone” in their protected waters.
The Floating Island Project will develop innovative and sustainable floating platforms. It will promote the development of new technologies in the terrestrial Anchor Zone and in the Floating Islands Zone. The Floating Island Project will respect the environmental standards defined by French Polynesia. It will use renewable energies. It will welcome the development of innovative technologies for the protection of the environment. It will not be interested in any land or ocean mineral resource. The platforms aim to attract direct and indirect investments in French Polynesia and host numerous businesses and research projects. The project will allow international experts to collaborate in French Polynesia to develop platforms capable of minimizing the effects of rising sea levels. It will have to have a favorable and significant impact on the local economy with the establishment of a special economic zone that will facilitate the creation and management of companies.”
In Endless Fire Future Furies the Society Preserving Endangered Agriculture or SPEA establishes a corporate-nation-state seastead on the submerging island of Kiritimati in the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. The SPEA seastead named Venus is developed as a sanctuary of Intellectual, Educational, Environmental and Economic freedom. Venus is established by the leaders of SPEA to escape the onerous, odious and offensive dictatorial control of the United States. Although reasons for SPEA to seastead are outlined in earlier chapters, Venus is introduced and described from Chapter 12.
Limited Time Left on Earth – Stephen Hawking’s Prediction for Humanity
Even though scientists have considered the possibility of humans being able to live on another planet, most of our space exploration to this point has been to satisfy our immense curiosity. Is it possible, however, that the survival of our species will rely on us finding a home outside of Earth? World renowned, and greatly respected, scientist Stephen Hawking has recently expressed this exact concern. He has publicly stated that humanity will be unable to continue living on this ‘fragile’ planet for more than another 1000 years.
Hawking, who made this announcement at the Oxford Union, said that his conclusion was based on several contributing factors. These include: overpopulation, a growing resistance to antibiotics which will possibly cause worldwide pandemics, habitat destruction and what seems to be our most unnecessary human compulsion – war. Nuclear and autonomous weapons are sources of widespread, uncontrollable destruction, and even the creators of many new weapons are unaware of the full extent of the damage that their designs may have on the Earth.
As an intelligent species we have also taken steps towards creating artificial lifeforms, in our own image. The consequence of this to humanity has been predicted in many science fiction films and books, and is now becoming a high possibility. This is the fact that our artificial intelligence is so advanced that they may turn on the humans that created them. If this ever happened, due to their combined intellect, strength and longevity, robots would be a force that humans would be unable to control after letting loose on the earth.
The reasons that the scientist based his beliefs on are not just those controlled by humanity, but also a factor outside of our planet. This would be a possible result of actually making contact w
ith extra-terrestrial beings. We have no idea whether they will be friend or foe, and how destructive they might be to our species and planet once we have approached them. Hawking’s scientific opinion is that they will be either the best thing, or the worst that has ever happened to us. Many other scientists also share the view that any alien species that is able to communicate with us may either surpass us in intellect, and therefore uninterested in us for more than experimental purposes, or may be violent and determined to attack Earth rather than befriend those on it.
Based on his certainty that our planet will soon be inhabitable, Hawking has taken steps towards finding humanity a future possible home. He advises ‘remember to look up at the stars, and not down at your feet,’ and is one of the major investors in the Breakthrough Starshot program currently exploring our nearest star system. Stephen also urges us to continue to enjoy our life on earth as ‘2016 is a great time to be alive.’ Even though there are many that disagree with his thoughts about the future of mankind on the planet, it would be hard not to agree with his belief that we are certainly living in an exciting era.
Proxima B – The Closest Earth-like Planet to our Solar System
The infinite nature of the Universe indicates that there are or should be other habitable planets. Our natural curiosity, as human beings, dictates that we will continue searching until we find them. After that we will make it a priority to explore these planets, and the life that we find there, in the most thorough way possible. A team of international scientists, based at the Queen Mary University in London and led by astronomer Guillem Anglada-Escude, have recently discovered a planet in the habitable zone of our neighboring star system. Temporarily called Proxima B, the team believes that this is the closest we have come to verifying the existence of life outside of our Solar System.