Global Collapse Update

Japan’s collapse rate is accelerating

Based on their models, FIRE-EARTH Moderators have posted the following forecast:

FIRE-EARTH FORECAST:  The rate of Japan’s collapse to intensify.

• Current: 0.067
• Forecast: 0.083
• EHC: 0.117

Related Links

• The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
• Disaster Calendar – 29 May 2012
• The Fate of Energy Dinosaurs
• Mass Die-offs

Collapsing Cities – JULY 2010 UPDATE

When Will the Collapse Occur?

In The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities posted Nov 30, 2007, the Moderators forecast the first phase of collapse could occur as early as 2012.

The Moderators confirm that the timeline and speed of collapse are consistent with their earlier forecast.

Related Links:

• The 6th Great Extinction: Sooner Than Expected
• The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
• 2010: Year One of Human-Enhanced Disasters

The 6th Great Extinction: Sooner Than Expected

Planetary collapse driven by man-made cataclysms

This blog has now been dedicated to the ‘survivors’ of the planetary collapse forced by man-made cataclysms

Based on their research, EDRO Moderators Have concluded that a series of man-made cataclysms will drive the earth’s population to near extinction.

[This section was removed to ensure NO association WHATEVER could be made with "Rapture apocalypse prediction."]

Most of the ‘survivors’ would be highly evolved, ethical and altruistic humans with the ability to overcome the immense difficulties they will have inherited . . .

Nevertheless, the Moderators believe by identifying the major man-made obstacles that stand in the way, they could, for their part, help to keep the flow of life on this planet uninterrupted.

EDRO Moderators

For background to the planetary collapse, search blog contents. Future information will be provided at this site OR at one of the following cites:

http://feww.wordpress.com/

http://msrb.wordpress.com/

http://rtsf.wordpress.com/

Could Sydney, Australia Be Buried by Dust Storms

How Large Is Your Dust Storm?

On September 23, 2009 our colleagues at FEWW posted the following on their blog:

• And dust to dust …

FEWW entry summarized a phenomenal dust storm which had started a day earlier ( September 22),  sweeping across Australia’s eastern states of New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland (Qld), reaching Sydney, the country’s largest city, and Brisbane.

The dust plume measured about 500 kilometres wide and at least 1,000 km long, covering dozens of communities, towns and cities in both states.

Recently, they posted details of another dust storm

• Could Dust Storms Bury Sydney, Australia?

They have now asked EDRO Moderators the following questions:

‘How much dust would it take, and under what circumstances could it make Sydney uninhabitable?’

Desertification of farmlands, villages and small communities have been commonly occurring throughout history. In recent times, countries like China have experienced accelerated rates of desertification. Up to 3 million km² of land in China have already desertified.  The country’s annual desertification rates have  more than doubled to 3,400 km²  since the 1970s (1,560 km²) and have increased by 62 percent compared with the 1980s (2,100 km²). Thousands of villages have been lost to encroaching deserts.

According to a report by the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), “some 24,000 villages, 1,400 kilometres of railway lines, 30,000 kilometres of highways, and 50,000 kilometres of canals and waterways are subject to constant threats of desertification.”

“Dust-laden blasts have buried villages before blowing into cities and suffocating urban residents.”

Historic examples are abound about large cities in Africa, Asia, Near and middle East that were lost to desert.

Chilean town of Chaitén is one of the latest examples of a town lost to [human-enhanced] natural phenomena, namely lahar caused by volcanic ash deposits, and other pyroclastic materials.

Well, Could it Happen to Sydney, Australia?

The short answer is yes!

Given  copious supplies of dust [or sand,] sufficiently strong winds,  as well as extremes of climatic and atmospheric conditions conducive to precipitating large amounts of airborne dust on the ground, dust storms could bury any village, town or city in their path and make them partially or completely uninhabitable.

Under the said conditions, one or more dust storms blowing within a critical period of time, with wind forces lasting long enough to deposit significantly large amounts of dust over a critically large portion of the city could trigger a partial or total collapse of Sydney [or other cities in eastern Australia.]

How Much Dust?

Australia’s CSIRO estimated that the September 22-24 storm carried a record-breaking 16 million tons of dust from the deserts in the heart of Australia [The Lake Eyre Basin was reportedly the main region, where the dust came from.] Interestingly enough, the media boasted how the benevolent storms had dumped a million tons of iron-rich topsoil from Australia’s outback into the Tasman Sea and Pacific Ocean.

Most of the dust spread over a vast area precipitating on the continental Australia, Indian ocean to the west,  and Tasman Sea to the east, reaching as far as the North Island, New Zealand.

EDRO Team designed a basic model and, using the available data, ran  a few dozen simulations. The  simulations showed that the amount of dust needed to ‘bury’ central Sydney [an area about 100 km²,] so as to make the entire city mostly uninhabitable, would be about 10-12 times the dust blown off in the Septemeber 22-24 dust storm.

Notes:

1. The simulations were based on optimally extreme climatic and atmospheric conditions conducive to precipitating large amounts of airborne dust in a relatively small area.
2. Dust diameters of (i) less than 60 micrometer, and (ii) 62 – 65 micrometer, were used in the simulations.
3. The maximum air particle concentration levels reached over 45,000 micrograms/m³ of air.
4. As the air particle concentration levels rose above about 25,000 micrograms/m³ of air, the number of casualties dramatically increased.

Related Links:

• And dust to dust …
• Could Dust Storms Bury Sydney, Australia?
• Dust, Dust and More Dust

Human activity is sinking river deltas

Hundreds of millions of people face flooding

Most of the world’s major river deltas are sinking from human activity, increasing the risk of flooding which would affect hundreds of millions of people.

According to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder, “24 out of the world’s 33 major deltas are sinking and that 85 percent experienced severe flooding in recent years, resulting in the temporary submergence of roughly 100,000 square miles of land.”

About 14 percent of the world’s population, more than half a billion people who live on river deltas, will be affected.

Researchers calculated that 85% of major deltas have experienced severe flooding in the last decade, concluding that the area of flood prone zones will increase by about 50% in the next few decades as sea levels rise and more of the river deltas sink.

Media Report is included in full:

World’s River Deltas Sinking Due to Human Activity, Says New Study Led by CU-Boulder

A new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder indicates most of the world’s low-lying river deltas are sinking from human activity, making them increasingly vulnerable to flooding from rivers and ocean storms and putting tens of millions of people at risk.

While the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report concluded many river deltas are at risk from sea level rise, the new study indicates other human factors are causing deltas to sink significantly. The researchers concluded the sinking of deltas from Asia and India to the Americas is exacerbated by the upstream trapping of sediments by reservoirs and dams, man-made channels and levees that whisk sediment into the oceans beyond coastal floodplains, and the accelerated compacting of floodplain sediment caused by the extraction of groundwater and natural gas.

Figure below: An image of the Pearl River Delta in China taken by NASA’s space shuttle Endeavour during the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission in 2000. The areas below sea level are shown in purple. Image courtesy NASA, CSDMS, University of Colorado.

The study concluded that 24 out of the world’s 33 major deltas are sinking and that 85 percent experienced severe flooding in recent years, resulting in the temporary submergence of roughly 100,000 square miles of land. About 500 million people in the world live on river deltas.

Published in the Sept. 20 issue of Nature Geoscience, the study was led by CU-Boulder Professor James Syvitski, who is directing a $4.2 million effort funded by the National Science Foundation to model large-scale global processes on Earth like erosion and flooding. Known as the Community Surface Dynamic Modeling System, or CSDMS, the effort involves hundreds of scientists from dozens of federal labs and universities around the nation.

The Nature Geoscience authors predict that global delta flooding could increase by 50 percent under current projections of about 18 inches in sea level rise by the end of the century as forecast by the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. The flooding will increase even more if the capture of sediments upstream from deltas by reservoirs and other water diversion projects persists and prevents the growth and buffering of the deltas, according to the study.

“We argue that the world’s low-lying deltas are increasingly vulnerable to flooding, either from their feeding rivers or from ocean storms,” said CU-Boulder Research Associate Albert Kettner, a co-author on the study at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and member of the CSDMS team. “This study shows there are a host of human-induced factors that already cause deltas to sink much more rapidly than could be explained by sea level alone.”

Other study co-authors include CU-Boulder’s Irina Overeem, Eric Hutton and Mark Hannon, G. Robert Brakenridge of Dartmouth College, John Day of Louisiana State University, Charles Vorosmarty of City College of New York, Yoshiki Saito of the Geological Survey of Japan, Liviu Giosan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and Robert Nichols of the University of Southampton in England.

The team used satellite data from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, which carried a bevy of radar instruments that swept more than 80 percent of Earth’s surface during a 12-day mission of the space shuttle Endeavour in 2000. The researchers compared the SRTM data with historical maps published between 1760 and 1922.

“Every year, about 10 million people are being affected by storm surges,” said CU-Boulder’s Overeem, also an INSTAAR researcher and CSDMS scientist. “Hurricane Katrina may be the best example that stands out in the United States, but flooding in the Asian deltas of Irrawaddy in Myanmar and the Ganges-Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh have recently claimed thousands of lives as well.”

The researchers predict that similar disasters could potentially occur in the Pearl River delta in China and the Mekong River delta in Vietnam, where thousands of square miles are below sea level and the regions are hit by periodic typhoons.

“Although humans have largely mastered the everyday behaviour of lowland rivers, they seem less able to deal with the fury of storm surges that can temporarily raise sea level by three to 10 meters (10 to 33 feet),” wrote the study authors. “It remains alarming how often deltas flood, whether from land or from sea, and the trend seems to be worsening.”

“We are interested in how landscapes and seascapes change over time, and how materials like water, sediments and nutrients are transported from one place to another,” said Syvitski a geological sciences professor at CU-Boulder. “The CSDMS effort will give us a better understanding of Earth and allow us to make better predictions about areas at risk to phenomena like deforestation, forest fires, land-use changes and the impacts of climate change.”

For more information on INSTAAR visit instaar.colorado.edu/index.html. For more information on CSDMS visit csdms.colorado.edu/wiki/Main_Page.
© Regents of the University of Colorado

Related Links:

• Floods
• RC Matrix
• Drying Aquifers, Sinking Cities
• Collapsing Cities

• Land under 46 cities is sinking
• 14 pct of World Population Losing Habitat
• Good Bye, Tuvalu!
• Land Erosion Rates Accelarate
• Global Food Shortages

• Climate Change: For what you’re about to receive…
• Arctic Warmest in 2000 Years
• Another Ocean Record Broken
• US glaciers shrinking dramatically

Emerging dominant mechanisms of collapse

UPDATE: The First Wave of Collapsing Cities

Coming in May 2009

The moderators are debating the type of data, degree of detail as well as extent and depth of information that should be posted on this site.

For background see:

The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

Six of the Reasons Why California Faces a Major Crash

submitted by a CASF Member

California Accelerating To Major Crash!

1. Exponential Growth Economy. California, a subset of planet Earth [really!] is a finite entity with finite resources. The blind, brainless monster of exponential growth economy, a creature of the US political economy and Calif politics, demands infinite resources, especially energy, and services, especially carbon sinks, to continue its malignant growth. Whether Calif is governed by Arnold Schwarzenegger or a super-intelligent android back from the future, it makes very little difference in the ultimate outcome—a major crash.

2. Centralization. As the rate of increase in the complexity of Calif socioeconomic “model” [therefore its governance and decision-making processes] accelerates, the region becomes more vulnerable and susceptible to violent oscillations against even the slightest of changes in its “equilibrium state.” [Visualize the chaos that would occur on a crowded, fast-moving 8-lane highway, when a single vehicle goes out of control.]

3. Complexity. The disastrous impact of hurricane Ike on the power grid earlier this month,  which left up to 5 million people without power, was a stark remainder and yet another a wake-up call to how complex systems, the centralized power grid, could collapse “suddenly” and  with disastrous consequences. There will be many more instances of systems collapses, some more paralyzing than the others, in the country, especially in those states that are burdened with higher levels of socioeconomic complexity, in the coming weeks, months and years.

4. Information flow. To identify the exact nature of problems that beset a complex system, build an accurate picture of interconnectivity that exists between those issues, and create long term [syn: sustainable] applicable solutions, the decision-makers require:

• Accurate, detailed, up-to-date information – currently NOT supplied!
• Thorough knowledge of how each component of the system works – presently NOT available!
• Deep understanding of how those components operate [or don't operate] in interconnection [syn: unison] – NOT on the menu, right now!

5. Personal stake, 2nd-home mentality. The decision-makers must understand the consequences of a major crash [societal or ecological.] When a major crash occurs in any country, or large geopolitical region, there would absolutely be no guarantee of containment. The knock-on effect of any major crash [or multiple smaller crashes] would render futile most “survival insurance plans,” for example, 2nd homes, or hideaway cabins in less populated states, or in “safer” countries.

6. Radical Changes. Desperate problems require “radical” solutions. California suffers from socioeconomic gangrene. Cosmetic dressing only hides symptoms of the disease temporarily, but delaying the cure will kill the patient. Unfortunately, deep-seated fundamental changes to save the community of life are not allowed at the expense of GDP growth .

Original Entry:

• Calif : Heading Toward a Major Crash

Related News Links:

• Schwarzenegger: Any president better than Bush on global warming
• California invites countries to carbon cap meeting

Related Links:

• Blind scientists examining the economic elephant
• World Problems:The Root Cause Matrix
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

• How to Ensure National Security AND Create a Healthy Economy!
• The 13 things you should know about the world before you depart prematurely!
• Intelligent Communities: 286W
• Gore the revolutionary; Gore the exclusionary