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DOOMED GLOBE       Introduction Page

PREAMBLE:

What’s the major crisis looming in the horizon, threatening our globe?

 Most people –I am sure- would answer in unison, Global Warming!  In many ways, that is correct.  Yet…. I would disagree!

Global warming not only will speedup the current sea-level rise that would soon cause a catastrophic flooding of lowlands, but will also cause the disappearance of our mountain’s snowcaps and of glaciers that feed our rivers and lakes. All melting away and together with Earth's North Pole icecap.  The ecologic outcome to survival of species is scary. An awful thought, no question!

Furthermore, by increasing the temperature of the planet (and that includes the oceans and large bodies of water on it, like lakes and rivers) the solubility of carbon dioxide in water will decrease as temperature rises.  That will –irremediably- cause tremendous amounts or carbon dioxide to be released to –rather than absorbed from- our atmosphere.  At present, the waters of the planet hold 50 times as much CO₂ as the atmosphere has ability to accumulate.  Please, before you continue reading this page, give a quick though to the deep meaning of this paragraph. Thanks.

Most Scientist are oblivious the CO₂ intoxication threat. Probably, in their subconscious mind, its effect should pale when compared to other “bigger” threats to our geo-environment.  Humbly speaking ... THEY ARE WRONG!.  In my opinion that is a major mistake, because the CO₂ intoxication of the air we breathe is –by far- the major catastrophe looming in the horizon.  Unfortunately -to my knowledge- I am the only individual making strongly that assertion.  Please, I challenge you to find me wrong!  I would love to be wrong in such a catastrophic prediction.

SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS

FLOODING:

Not to distract you from the major topics to be presented in this introduction, graphs will be provided on related pages of this website (buttons above).

On those pages you will find scientific data supporting the conclusions presented. You will learn that the current sea level rise is about 3mm per year, not linear but curvilinear, and with an ever increasing slope (will be 4mm/y and even 5mm/y soon).  Yet, as the thawing of Antarctica, of Greenland, and of the Canadian and Siberian permafrost accelerates we could predict that (if we look ahead to 100 years) the sea-level rise during this century will average close to 5mm/year. Which multiplied by 100 years gives us 500mm or 0.5m in total sea level rise during that period of a century.

Moreover, for every meter the water goes up, on the average goes -about- 20 meters inland, so we can estimate that we will lose about 10 meters (30 feet) of shoreline in the next 100 years.  Quite bad, indeed!  Yet, that is not enough to submerge us.  Flooding would be more inescapable in some oceanic islands, but it will not be such a huge catastrophic disaster in continental lands.  At least, not yet!

It would take another 1000 years -or so- for the continental flooding to reach such level that would be -needless to say- real catastrophic.

CO₂ INTOXICATION:

On the other hand, data extracted from cylindrical ice cores -bored from the Antarctica ice sheet- by teams of European scientists (as it is be documented in another page of this website) show that CO₂ content has never been at the level that it is today.  At least not so for the past 500,000 years.

Furthermore, samples of air -taken yearly in Hawaii- have been showing a permanent gradual increase of CO₂ content, and that increase is speeding up.  It was 315 ppm (parts per million) in 1959 when the US government started taking those measurements, and it passed 400 ppm in 2014.  The first measurement were taken just 50 years ago, please notice that it was not in the era of the dinosaurs.  The current slope in the increase of CO₂ in the air is 3 ppm per year currently, but this rate bending upwards.

Curiously, we can draw a similar parallelism with the sea-level rise analysis we did before, and –mostly due to global warming- that CO₂ Content of the Air slope is bound to increase non-linearly as well.  Not only due to reduced levels of solubility of this gas in the oceans as indicated (as the ocean warms up), but also caused by an ever increasing amount of fossil fuels being burned and at higher and higher rates (so as to accommodate the modern development needs of an ever increasing world population).

Consequently, if we were to extrapolate current trends which are not linear and look quasi-exponential, we could predict that during the next 100 years the CO₂ slope is going to be rather close to 5 ppm (and not 3 ppm).

WHICH ONE IS –THEN- WORSE?

 (5 mm sea-level rise or 5 ppm slope in CO₂)

To answer this question, the research done presents you data from OSHA (and other health organizations responsible for keeping the air -our workers breath- healthy).  However, it should be noted that the noxious air that workers have to breath sometimes (when working in deep mines,  near smelters, in any kind of metallurgy foundry, etc) is the quality of air that we all will have to breath in a -not too far- distant future.

This 600 ppm level would be very unhealthy not only to children, but also to seniors, or any person with respiratory difficulties (like emphysema or asthma, bronchitis or any allergy that would cause breathing difficulties).  Yet,  it would be malign to any individual exposed to it constantly.  Even worse, there is no escape from it, since it would be the air we breath in the open (regardless of you being at the beach or in a mountain). Inside homes it would be even more foul.

Have not finished this dramatic exposé as yet, because at …

You can find more information on CO2 toxicity in this page (information there has been extracted from http://www.inspect-ny.com/hazmat/CO2gashaz.htm#bannertop)

So the question is,

How long it would take for the atmosphere to reach that poor quality at our current rates of CO₂ intoxication of the global air?

Just a little of Pre-Algebra will tell you that: if the CO₂ slope during the next 100 years is going to average 5 ppm/year then in 2110 is going to be the current 400, plus 100 years multiplied by the expected average slope of 5 ppm.  That adds up to: 900 ppm CO₂ level in 2110.

More precise calculations that I have done using three possible scenarios (conservative, optimistic, and pessimistic can be seen in this graph I am presenting.

So going back to the original question: WHICH ONE IS WORSE (5 mm sea-level rise or 5 ppm CO2 intoxication)?

The answer –I believe- is quite clear and dramatic.  If you have followed this presentation, no more wording is needed!

IF THAT IS SO,

WHY THERE HAS NOT BEEN MORE COVERAGE ON THIS CRITICAL ISSUE?

Honestly, I do not have an answer to that question.  I do have answers –of course- but it would be too insulting to our legislators, no need to offend them we will need support from them to palliate this terrible threat.   So I will avoid answering directly that question, and instead will direct you to some other non-profit websites ("science beacons" I call them) that I have published throughout the years as a public service not only to America, but to the world.  Websites like www.ZUET.com (Zeroing in Underground Energy Technologies) for you to ponder on how is it possible that we are not yet producing more clean energy, like solar, or from "massive" geothermal venues (as I suggest we should do in ZUÉT , which rhymes with sweat).

My motto used to be "With ingenuity, ZUÉT is no sweat".

 In 2008, I was invited by MIT and Harvard to do an "alternative energies presentation" to their student clubs. You could also ponder why in 1979 –when Mr. Carter was our President- nobody echoed these ecologic concerns. At that time, I was a young immigrant engineer with an early vision of the “looming crisis of fossil fuels” .  You can read the details at www.OilDepletion.com or at www.PetrolSOS.com ).  There you will also find evidence of the infringement to my ARTICLE TO THE US CONGRESS, done with impunity by the prestigious magazine Business Week (in 1979).  That illegal action committed by –at the time- their Energy Editor (Mrs. Carol Curtis) sent me to oblivion.  I still hope that –someday- there will be vindication to this unlawful action committed to a free-lance Science Writer.

Recently I found out, that an American Geologist had warned about a peak in oil (in the Texas fields) back in the 1950's (Dr. Hubbert), but there was little interest on his observation as more and more fields were being discovered all over the US and abroad.  Soon his warnings were ridiculed as too pessimistic.

In my article of 1979 I included these three graphs (Fig 1 , 2, and 3 above). That article was submitted to the White House and to the US Congress.  Those three graphs combined (that is, less fields being discovered while current fields are drying out) would produce a similar graph to Hubbert's.  I had no knowledge of the work done by that gentleman. Back then we did not have the Internet search tools that we enjoyed today.

( more on this at www.OilDepletion.com and at www.PetrolSOS.com )

It was not until 20 years later from my article (of 1979) when other people and organizations become aware (of fossils' depletion, and its warning flag which is called "peak oil"). Eventually a few Engineers/Scientists became genuinely active on presenting that problem of fossil-fuel's imminent-depletion and to the largest possible audience.  Yet, a lot of lead time was lost.  The "newcomers" further explained the ecological disaster that it would cause to our planet if we continue to depend on these carbon fuels to generate all our energy needs.  It was also a this time (late 1990's) when our former vice-president and Nobel Price winner Al Gore came into the picture, and so did the ASPO Organization and its scientific founders. More about this can be read if you click on this link ("The End of Cheap Oil" by Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère, Scientific American, March 1998). You could also visit the page above titled "Background".

Back then (1975) I was totally aware that the intoxication of the air with CO₂ would become a major global problem and made a few hints to that regard in my article (as well as in a book that I tried unsuccessfully to publish a decade later [1991] ( “US ENERGY POLICY, S.O.S [Scared Ostrich Syndrome]” , currently displayed in its entirety -and free- at www.PetrolSOS.com ).

Today it is quite clear to all educated individuals that we will have both: an unavoidable "fossil fuels" crisis, and a “global warming” crisis.  Both caused in major part for the burning of those fossil fuels.

At the time (1979) I thought it would be even more difficult to bring –what I call “CO₂ Intoxication” issue- to the forefront.  It would have brought me more scorn and an image as “just another doomsday pessimistic pseudo-gurú” as “concerned Scientists” used to be -often- labeled and referred to (back then in the American media).

Consequently, about ten years ago I rested my case on “fossil issues” (which are now common-knowledge to scientifically-literate folk). Then I opted to focus instead my energy and stamina on...

[1] How to produce abundant and safe energy (called PECCU energy on www.ZUET.com , website that I created with that informative purpose in mind) and -most importantly-

[2] How to make the public aware of CO₂ intoxication, which is –by far- a bigger problem to humanity than sea-level rise. That is the subject matter of this website, Doomed Globe.

Alternative means to decrease Global Warming (and not just Sea Level Rise, but also CO₂ contamination).

By alternative means, is meant those three technologies mentioned in ZUET, or -even- other "outer space" options, such as … building a humongous “Remote-controllable Solar Umbrella” in outer space, between the Sun and Earth, at a stable/stationary point that rotates synchronously with the Earth (actually there are five such points, call Lagrange points, L-points, or Libration points).

The ideas presented in ZUET are of my creation, however the idea of a solar umbrella for the Earth is not original.  I first heard of it by a NASA Scientist who came to make a presentation at the University of Puerto Rico (Mayagüez Campus -from where I graduated) back in 1973.  Unfortunately, do not remember his name.

So, that idea of a humongous solar umbrella has been “floating around for a while", but -to my knowledge- has never been given much serious thought by reputable agencies or research centers, despite that was very feasible (no gravity forces means no infrastructure is needed, basically unrolling solar panels would do, as if a gigantic scotch-tape dispenser).  The major problem though, as that scientist explained to us -almost 4 decades ago- was that ... despite the immense amounts of solar energy that was possible to generate in such outer space umbrella it was impossible –very dangerous back then- to build some kind of microwave or laser link to be able to transfer that humongous quantity of energy safely to Earth .  But, please, remember than back in 1973 nobody was seriously thinking of global warming.  The whole purpose of this umbrella was for solar energy generation.  Today though, generating that energy and transferring that energy to beam-receivers on Earth would be nice, but still dangerous and challenging, however just using that umbrella as a shadow-maker and as a diffraction grid as well would be great.  Gradual "lensing" of solar radiation into cold areas of the planet, and moderating solar intensity in tropical regions could save millions of terawatts in A/C and heaters.

Today we could dissipate/reflect that energy back to space, or focus it, making Earth colder in some spots, and warmer in others.  It would be feasible to make the planet colder overall (the poles become slowly thicker with ice, and the sea-level gradually going to 30 feet lower than what it is today).  Would you imagine a planet with a sea-level at a point so low that most of the continental shelf would be again be exposed, creating huge sand plateaus.  The new size of some countries would be increased dramatically (such would be the case of Canada, Argentina, Northern Europe, the Alaska-Russia primitive land-bridge, and Australia will be almost touching a huge "new" Indochinese Continent).  It would also be –of course- a dangerous fidgeting with mother nature.  The overall outcome would probably be very desirable, however the local conditions in some countries would benefit, but in other countries would not be welcome.  International agreements would have to be agreed upon.

Not doing anything though, would be –long term and by far- at much worse alternative.

With this introduction, I am confident you will be able to make good sense of the data presented, and hopefully you will help me bring this topic out into the open, if nothing else by word of mouth.  Lacking leadership from our governments, this Internet venue will have to be enhanced by you all, coming from the bottom up, at least in its first stage.  Eventually I am sure the nations of the world would join efforts, and then multinational corporations would be the drivers.

Please, browse the data presented in other pages of this website.  If you have ideas, suggestions, or recommendations, please write to me.

If you can help me make more people aware of these important issues -in the name of humanity- please do so!

This web was last updated on 05/07/15 as to make it more readable.