| Climate-, Groundwater-, Oil- and Sealevel Rise- Modelling. Where is Science?? | |
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21 May 2012 @ 00:44, by Heiner Benking
I am working very late and hear in the news: Climate scientists solve riddle of rising sea - Channel NewsAsia [link] Source: AFP: massive extraction of groundwater can resolve a puzzle over a rise in sea levels in past decades, scientists in Japan said on Sunday. Global sea levels rose by an average of 1.8 millimetres (0.07 inches) per year from 1961-2003, according to data from tide gauges.
I get very alerted in the middle of the night: IPCCC or one scientist in Japan has solved the riddle !? I wonder who checked the headlines and allowed this to enter the public radio.
Is this "Whistling in the Dark" ? that finally we know what causes and closes the gap between modeled and real Sealevel Rise ? If you see the hundreds of scenarios and all the work being done, they forgot groundwater extraction !? By just adding the water pumped out from the aquifers we can solve the riddle?
This looks to me not like science but another estimate about our climate system. I remember when Professor Grassel told us 10 years ago that they thought and modeled that the icecap in the arctic and antarctic were solid and so they thought they could model sea-level rise, but unfortunately Glaciers are like Swiss Cheese, but with very long tunnels, so that they can melt and slide much faster ! to bad, it was necessary to make a "quick-fix" to bring together the model outcomes with measured "reality".
What a Hoax ! .... see (MORE below)
What a Hoax ! Unfortunately people gauge data and scenarios and not the human prospectus - which was the request of Noel Brown I cited 1994 in Melbourne with a look at the challenges after the Rio 1992 Earth Summit.
I feel sometimes like dreaming, what are all these modelers doing when they are not aware of the key parameters of Earth Science Modeling. AND I wonder how they account for the water-cycles in Soil, Vegetation, Atmosphere ? Are they about to agree on another "Riddle Solved" when they realize that there is H2O also Plants and Living Things? What I see in this early incomplete texts, not the full reports, that the idea that dams must be a great idea to store the water, that it can not run into the Seas and Oceans.
I know that they have a newly established Internationals Panel on Biodiversity ****** - and I hope that they talk t these guys - but I also wonder how many more Panels are needed to include socio-cultural dynamic systems.
I am so agitated as I just covered in this Blog the 2052 new Report of the Club of Rome. See below.
Maybe these "scientist" should stop for one year to fiddle with their favorite toys: Models and Scenarios and check the bigger picture they are operating in. Maybe they should revisit the outcomes of the Commission on Dams, it is so obvious that water runs to the Sea, and that groundwater only can be repleted very slowly - in some case not in the timelines of the Anthropscene.
What I observe is the communication of the obvious, something we do need models for - but at least should include in our models the last 40 years. So where is the breakthrough? Instead I observe oversimplifications and overclaims with "overprecision" on the wrong spot. This seems to be typical for and part of the problem, not the solution seems to be out of sight.
I always say: How do we expand the Solution Space, given the Problem Space we are confronted with!
We have made proposals the GYC 2010 and 2011 (above) where concrete options are discussed, and the UIA produced 3 Volumes: World problems, Human potential and the last on ACTIONS, OPTIONS, STRATEGIES. This was triggered by Jantsch, Özbekhan, Siu, .... and managed by Anthony Judge. Who in the scene has evaluated "driver" alternatives to grapple with the Problems since Jantsch and Özbekahn wrked on Continuous Critical Problems and how to unreavel them ! Pls. see these 2 Interviews with Christakis in Europe'sWorld [link] and go don to the 2052, as there are many events this year "celebrating" the report "Limits to Growth" - again as I wrote earlier, fully agreed, but not enough ! - another case of everybody in the street can grasp and grapple with.
Instead: Why not check what Soil Scientists and Limnologist / Ecologist write since long: We have to store Water in the Nexus of Soil, Vegetation, Atmosphere. just as ancient cultures have done since eons. Here an example highlighted at the GYC's: Professor Wilhelm Ripl proposing "Leaky Dams", cultivating as naturally and not in monocultures, celebrate ans support diversity and Local, bottom-up approaches. There is much to it, maybe check this article: Evapotranspiration – A Driving Force in Landscape Sustainability, Intechopen, Eiseltova et al. Evapotranspiration – A Driving Force in Landscape Sustainability, Intechopen, Eiseltova [link] and his institute Aquaterra: [link]
A regional Sheik in Arabia told me in the late 70ies: "When the Oil came, the water went"
He was damn right and he observed carefully and has seen that the desert was green, that there was rich soil under large stones, and that his ancestors had build hundred of dams in the region to have the water immediately go through the agricultural areas in the Wadis upstream of the dams directly into the aquifers - ready for their wells - in times when the groundwater has not plummeted like experience in many countries.
So I believe the SOLUTION OF THE RIDDDLE offered is a first take of one important factor. But if you would have lived in the desert you would have experience the the mist in the morning, enough to water the plants and even catch water - one of the survival tricks, why I went to Arabia in 1976.....
In a nutshell I feel these scientist should not "solve" one riddle after the next, but check the frames of references, the sectors, scales, proportions, consequences involved before they go to the Press next time !
I have presented in 2010 c-g-i.info/GYC-2010-Benking.pdf and 2011 [link] the GYC conferences in Geneva recommendations done in Toronto in the days before the Climate Summit in Copenhagen or before the COPs and the forthcoming Earth Summit Rio 20. I wonder who is reading these days and shouldn't there be people reading and not only modeling? with their narrow disciplinary approach !?
We had 20 years ago, in 1991 an exhibitions at the Geotechnica Fair n Cologne managed by the ALFRED WEGENER FOUNDATION. Maybe 20 posters explaining the scope and the possibilities and challenges as well, and a GLOBAL AND LOCAL CHANGE exhibition in an extra hall, featuring all the International Organizations involved. Klaus Töpfer stayed on for quite some time, checking and realizing that there is environmental research and management not only in germany - and maybe that his next career step should be getting involved globally, maybe at UNEP !?
I write these details from a generation ago, as it looks like our scientist on know how to model and optimize their "turf" - neglecting the complexity around us. and getting more perplexed every day.
Maybe citing *** Lichtenberg helps to understand what I mean. He wrote: who only understands Chemistry can not understand Chemistry properly. I feel this applies also and not only to Climate Research and any kind of bio-geo-socio-cultural endeavors.
maybe check the 2052 report below and our ENCYLOPEDIA OF SYSTEMS and CYBERNETICS - as there a re more insights and tools as you can imagine to study effects and patterns across scales....
check: International Encyclopedia and these footnote/categories:1) general information 2) methodology or model 3) epistemology, ontology and semantics 4) human sciences 5) discipline oriented.
Maybe start here: benking.de/systems/encyclopedia/newterms/
many of the links to be added above can be found here: [link] (needs update) and more on the GYC 2011 and the Climate Summit side-event with the SURVIVAL ACADEMY: best check my public slideshare presentations: [link]
In a nutshell: I feel it is good to solve one "riddle" but how about checking the frames of references and ingredients first. My Sheik about did not believe that the water replaced the oil..... These people close to nature were too observant and included much wider scopes that we Westerners often think !!
In a nutshell: We know even wthout models that water and evapotranspiration are critical factors. We know that many researchers work towards this end: The production of rich soil, the sequestation of CO2, the criticality of clmate events for erosion,.... all is clear since th early 70ies when I stdied geoecology and geomorphology.
The question is, when we know Humidity, tanspiration and the storage of water in Soil, Vegetation, organisms, and the Atmosphere,... , why are we not tackling the root causes instead of all these single issues "quick-fixes". In my view it is the lack of a common frame of reference and pragmatic approaches. Instead we research the productivity agricultural systems and again. We proposed to Plant trees at the UN Climate Summit in Berlin in 1995, why not look what cultures did right and survived or how they contributed to desertification. Losts is to be learned there. I hope the New Panel on BioDiv can make a difference and help policy makers to step and look for commons and shared frames, ways, and means.
PS:
besides - now a week later... I have ot heard this "NEWS" again - so there is hope that at least some people hear the news and wonder what is new and up and relevant....
To find old and new "news" there was a project long ago for an open - transparent - co-laborative WORLD PRESS CENTER ... I have mentioned it before:
Maybe we can learn from such news as they put attenton on issues we tend to ignore or are not fitting into the schema of things.....
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