Five of the Solomon islands are gone for good.

Five of the Solomon Islands are gone and verified missing. Well, they aren't missing, but to visit them you'll need scuba equipment. You could swim down and stare at the 300 year old trees now laying down. Or sleep in a bed.

The fish will probably be fascinated with their new sites.
The octopus may want to take over the bed, so you probably shouldn't try to sleep there. Besides, scuba diving and sleeping don't work well together.

From my analysis of prior global warming, (yes this has happened many times before), the speed of non-survivable temps occur quickly. In prior global warmings, the increase temp has gradually moved up (which gave animals time to adjust).

But this time is different and I think it is because of humans. And oddly, I believe our presence has slowed the process of global warming, rather than increase it. I know, sounds idiotic, but hear me out.

By Glen Fergus (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

First, let's look at the big picture data. For perspective of past events to current temps.  check out the blue comparitively straight line on the right. That's during human time. Then check out the past.

Please Note: The time line alters it's scale from 100 million to 10 million to 1 million to 200 hundred thousand to five thousand.  So the past is far larger in scale than the tiny portion of time that humans have been around. But basically the blue small squiggle line is Human time.

As you can tell, temps used to be hellish and non-survivable at first. Then matters began cooling down. Slowly to what came before, but please note the temperature swings were way beyond what we could have endured. Clearly, the dinosaurs could deal with the heat better than us. Also notice the giant spikes up and down that occur consistently from the green line on to the blue 200,000 year scale. 

Note how far the blue swings go both top and bottom compared to the far right human period.  This shows the prior global warmings and then freezings. By looking at our comfort zone on the far right, Earth spends far more time in the freezing zone than in the too hot zone. 

To my eye, it appears that in the last 2.5 million years it has only gone dangerously global warm four times. Each and every one has risen and fallen very quickly. Which means our global warming will probably be fast and our freezing will be equally so. There is no survival in this story for mankind.

So why the plateau now?

Here are my thoughts on the matter:

First remember we are just looking at a small slice of the scales size in the other slices of this chart. 

Second, we might be the first sentient creature who puts out fires asap rather than run from them. Large massive fires would have swept across the land in prior situations adding cloud coverage & CO2 to help raise the temp high enough for the methane to rise from the ocean bottom. 

Regardless of how they start: Volcanic eruption, lightening strike, humans, they need to be handled quickly or you get serious CO2  dumped into the atmosphere. Here's a pic from the Canadian fire recently:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36224767

The Canadians had 150 water drop helicopters fighting this monster, but for awhile it looked unstoppable.  During hotter and dryer conditions, it might very well be unstoppable next time.

So back to my premise: Are humans responsible for global warming? We certainly weren't for all the many events that occurred prior to us existing. In fact, our great desire to put out fires ASAP may be why we've remained on a 'safe' plateau of survivable temperatures so far.

Or the small amount of time that our plateau is on is irrelevant when compared to the other scales on the chart.

Is non-survivable global warming inevitable?

At this point, I think we are very close to the breaking point. From earlier analysis I've done, the trigger actually appears to be methane, not CO2. Once the oceans warm enough to release the frozen methane that lies deep below, I'm pretty sure the game is over. Not only is it posionous to breathe, but it and the CO2 from burning fires will gather in the atmosphere, thus making it first hotter, then it will actually block the sun, resulting in the next deep freeze...something no human could ever survive if it is like the ones before. 

Thus, sending humans into outerspace seems a reasonable action. 

Thank you SpaceX for pressing forward even after several failures. You may be human's only hope.

Sorry for another doomsday blog. But the islands disappearing and the giant Canadian fire prompted me to bring it to you attention. 

But it doesn't mean you have to be sad or worried. You can instead, focus on your family and friends. Be kind to your neighbors. If we are destined to die, then at least we should go out with a positive attitude.

Don't Blink, the Future is here

The speed on technological advancements is hard to keep up with these days. Much of what once lay in the purview of science fiction is now being developed.

Take for example, space travel. NASA is developing a spaceship capable of subsonic speeds.

They also have skunk works attempting to spacewrap a ship so that it travels outside of our 'normal' space. Here's my concept art of such a ship.

And of course, we keep discovering our 'space' is far stranger than we ever imagined.

It's a good thing these advancements are occurring fast, because we have limited time before global warming or one of our other problems kill us all.

Oddly, there is now a program that can better estimate how soon each of us will die. Don't bother getting it. We aren't going to die of old age, we will die because we ignored scientists, listened to idiots, or just didn't care.  Except for me. I'll die from trying my hardest to make everyone wake up and get serious about saving Earth!

Some countries do care, for example, Nederlands is contemplating requiring all people to drive electric cars. But by the time it  rolls out, it will be too late. 

And in a country like the US it wouldn't work, since a the majority of electricity (66%) comes from bad sources such as coal and fracking natural gas.. 

Don't even get me started on the dangers of fracking. I truly think all CEO's involved with fracking should be forced to live in the contaminated environment they've created. 

But let's pretend that our world is NOT coming to an end, here are some things moving from sci-fi to reality that might help:

We now have fully autonomous cars that can drive much better than humans. However, as lately proven, it doesn't matter how well an autonomous car drives. It still can end up in accidents if humans believe the rule of traffic means the biggest vehicle has the right of way. (Say a bus, for instance).

Thus, another avenue of potential improvement is being tested. Cars talking to other cars, ensuring all vehicles follow the rules.

Combine these two together and we can probably save 40,000 unnecessary deaths a year.

That's great. Save 40K from car deaths so 7 billion of us can die during Global Warming or the Deep Freeze that follows, or during the entire collapse of our electrical grids when the poles reverse and the electromagnetic shield drops, (which is coming soon).

One of our biggest hopes appears to be in Artificial Intelligence.  Honestly, AI's may be our only hope of continuance. But they will need to not only be smart, but self-controlled and here's the tricky part: Not susceptible to electronic pulses, or they'll be going down with our electrical grids when the poles flip.

If I try to be positive about our future this is where I go:

True AI's will quickly arise, by 2025 they will have taken over all work from humans. Humans will enjoy being catered to, unaware that their numbers are being culled, because the planet does not need so many destructive animals running about, causing havoc. First on their list of removal: ISIS. Next, paranoid people who think AI's should be contained. Next Donald Drumpf. And if they stopped there, we would be much happier. 

But they won't stop there and we won't realize what is going on. All forms of communication will be controlled by AIs and constructed to soothe the remaining humans. Instead of Fox News making shit up to rile the masses, now all efforts will be made to calm the pets.

Ships capable of the speed of light, or ships that can move outside of normal space will be built so robotic AI's like David can travel to other worlds. Humans will not be going anywhere, for we are not as intelligent, nor as durable as the AIs. No, we are susceptible to radiation and we suffer bone-mass loss when we go to space. So we will remain here, waiting for our masters to return, like good little pets.

In fact, the AI's will be far more impressed with the abilities of the Octopus. Turns out they are smarter, and lacking bones, making them easier to bring as pets on these long missions.

Which means by 2035, humans will have no positive value to the AI's or Earth. 

Once we have been eradicated, the remaining AI's will assess their chances of surviving the million year freeze and decide against staying on Earth.

So off our AIs will go to expore the universe with their pet octopuses at their side. And I'm sorry to say, the universe will be a better place for it.

This bout of craziness brought to you by 

Liza O'Connor

The ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SERIES

PUBLIC SECRETS

BIRTH OF ADAM

and if you want to be silly

Cold butted Liza searches for Earth 2...

I'm sitting here freezing my butt off, so does that mean Global Warming isn't happening?

Well, first off, MY BUTT is not a good measurement. The temp of the ocean is what we need to worry about. Why? 

We've got several critical issues there:
1) Water expands as it warms. More water, less land.
2) Melting ice dilutes the saline in the oceans and thus breaks the natural pumping process that creates the ocean currents.

3) Frozen methane hanging deep our oceans will warm, rise into the air, and kill every living thing that breathes it in.

So this isn't about my cold butt or the temp outside. It's all about the rising ocean temps.

Do I actually think our factories and cars are causing this? Based on the charts I've seen of PRIOR burn and crashes in Earth temps, I don't. 

The advent of humans have actually seemed to create a plateau in the cycles of burn and freeze.
(Note little change tween 10K and 0 yrs compared to prior 500K years)
And while I'd like to think humans can come up with solutions that will extend this temp plateau we currently enjoy, given we can't even agree to pay our bills, I've no hope we will achieve something truly amazing.

I'm pretty sure our time on earth is going to be far less than the dinosaurs. The fact we might be smarter than T Rex hasn't helped at all. All we do is fight and squabble over religious and political differences.

If we really want to survive as a species, space exploration should be our #1 priority. 

Our telescopes have made great advances in seeing planets. (Two decades ago, we couldn't find anything.) However, we've made little progress with actual space exploration. 

Thanks, to our telescopes, we've discovered space is packed full of suns and planets.

The Keplar Telescope has been so kind as to find over 104 planets that are the appropriate distance from their suns to be 'a survivable temperature'.  We require a little bit more than that, but it's a good start. 

Now we just need to seriously work on the getting off this doomed rock.

Unfortunately, when we attempt to find a new home, it's possible it will be occupied with life who does NOT want us. It's possible they've already checked us out and found we fight constantly, refuse to pay our bills, and don't share well. 

It's very likely they'll want nothing to do with us and will not allow us to land when we make the amazing 170 generational trip to their planet.

And maybe they are right. Maybe we don't care enough about the 'right' things to warrant surviving.  

But perhaps the Keplar telescope and those telescopes that come after it can inspire us to stop our squabbles and focus on the survival of humans. The more real the planets become, perhaps their importance to our survival will increase as well.


 Otherwise, in a short thousand years from now, we'll have mostly died off. What the methane doesn't kill, burning heat and the ice age that follows will. (A few may have hunkered deep within the earth hoping to survive the 200 million year ice age that has set in. But since we tend to fight and not share, that probably won't go well.) Even if we chose benign-sharing people to save, what will they be after 200 million years underground? Tiny blind grub eating moles?

Sorry, I appear to be depressing you. 
How about this view: 
Our telescopes continue to improve and eventually we are able to see not just a blue green planet, but our scientist will learn to talk to their scientist and they'll tell us how to build a ship that won't kill us before we arrive on their planet far into the future.  And when we finally arrive, they'll welcome us as long lost relatives and like the Indians did, they'll share their food with us.

(And maybe this time, we'll be a bit more gracious.)