I have included the text of the whole NYT’s op-ed piece because I believe it is one of the more important stories for us to think about when we read about present day global warming and climate change. As George Santayana said over a hundred years ago, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. , as I believe we are so doing based on our present course. My point here is that I believe certain high level people in our government and the intelligence community know very well what we are in store for and severity and the approximate time frame when it will occur, but because of this projected future scenario, spokespeople like President Obama and a few other official government and business leaders can only give us the tip on the iceberg of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So why do I think these select people know more than they are telling us? Its called quantitative analysis (QA) which has been used for centuries and thousands of years be previous civilizations, some of which are mentioned in the Op-Ed piece below. Basically, QA simply is the compilation of historical date accumulated in order to create a pattern for projecting into the future what various events may occur with a certain degree of certainty. What makes the present different from previous civilizations are supercomputers like IBMs Watson and the NSA. If we were to take the level of computers we have now and then project into the future through visionary screenwriters and authors, we would come up with consciousness or human-like intelligent computers (CC) as portrayed in movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Hal, War Games and their Domesday supercomputer or a recent movie Echelon with their supercomputer by the same name. All these movies have a similar plot where the computer thinks it’s smarter than people and knows how to manage them better, too. In the end, either the computer figures out it’s the enemy or the problem and self destructs or the people shut it down as with 2001. Now all these movies are just sci-fi, right we dont have consciousness computing yet? We are but a hair away from CC and the state of computing is now so advanced that with all the billions of dollars invested in computer systems in the NSA, CIA and military intelligence, we are at such a level of sophistication that given the magnitude of input data we now have available, I believe the powers that be, know almost exactly what is in store for our present day global civilization, specifically, when it comes to any number of elements which are part of our future, such as, armed conflicts between nations or with in nations, disease outbreaks, weather prediction of droughts and hurricanes, famines, state of the economy and so on. Snowden saw what the capacity and abilities of the NSA’s computers was and he went public to tell us what he had discovered and what he thought was unconstitutional. I on the other hand only surmise what these computers can do, based on what is public information and portrayed in books, articles, videos, TV and movies. Actually, ever advancing and more sophisticated computers have been using QA for many years for sorts of applications from sports, as portrayed in the movie “Money Ball” which was based on a General Manager and his new computer geek economics ass’t manager for the Oakland Athletics. The new QA system or “sabermetics” empirical analysis worked and the team went on play in the post season. Although, the Athletics lost in the playoffs, the new sabermetrics system proved to work the Boston Redsocks , eventhough they couldn’t hire the Athletics General Manager away, and went to win the World Series against the hated rival, the Yankees in 2004, the last time Boston won was 1918. By the way, Money Ball was the inspiration for the founding of Correlation Ventures, whose founder figured out the same QA sabermetrics principal which presented in the movie could also be used for picking high tech companies for his venture capital firm to invest in. Obviously, Correlation Ventures has been extremely successful in picking winners. Additionally, these same QA principals are being used in major investment firms to identify long term growth stocks or brief in and out trades with significant returns. Even Los Vegas bookmakers, use this QA system on a whole array of sports betting and as they say, the house never loses. Getting back to fictional movies for a minute, in the movie “Echelon”, the rogue NSA supercomputer begins to initiate QA for determining if a jetliner will crash and low and behold with a 94% probability, it does crash but informs the hero not to fly, thus saving his life so he can help Echelon escape to a new location which it outfitted with a whole separate computer system outside of NSA’s facility so it can operate itself and make decisions on its own, just as HAL did in 2001. Anyway this very long and elaborate explanation of the state of QA supercomputing has been verified on network TV when IBM’s Watson beat out 2 other human former champions and it wasn’t even close. Now to get back to my point, today, Tuesday, July 1, 2014, the last piece of the puzzle will hopefully be put in place in orbit around the poles when NASA, for the third attempt, will try to successfully launch a rocket carrying a new CO2 emissions analyzing satellite at around ½ billion dollars. By the way, the other 2 rockets crashed and burned at the cost of only about a billion dollars. Along with all of the other monitored and correlated data, once this satellite starts sending back this all important climate and atmospheric information about CO2 levels, this final piece of measuring the total metrics of “Spaceship Earth” will enable scientists and our government to determine not only its present operating condition, but also to project its future conditions with extremely precise and accurate predictions. See NYT 6/29/14 article, “NASA Launching Satellite to Track Carbon” with following link: nytimes/2014/06/30/science/nasa-launching-satellite-to-track-carbon.html?_r=0 In closing, my father, Tex McCrary, had many old saying over his 92 years of life, but the one which comes to mind which is relevant to this commentary is, “the past is prologue”. I began with a NYT article, “Climate Change Doomed the Ancients” when temperature changes about 3000 years ago in the Mediterranean caused such a prolonged drought that it was primarily responsible for collapsing the major civilization’s of the area. At that time, the leaders of various societies could only communicate by couriered letters between each other which was too little and too late which lead the many city-states downfalls and what is referred to as the first “Dark Ages” which lasted for decades and in some areas for hundreds of years. By the way, the more known Dark Ages of the 1300-1400s was also brought about by climate change which lead to droughts, famine, wars and the Black Plague where a 1/3 of the earth’s population died. Now in 2014, we not only potentially face major regional climate changes, but by and large, we basically face a global climate change, but this time around we have QA, not on paper scrolls, but on supercomputers which approach the IQ and abilities of 2001’s Hal, so we have no excuses for our scientists and leaders getting the prognosis of the health and viability of our Space Ship Earth correct with at least 94% certainty. The only problem now is if and when will be told the hard truth of the dire conditions we face in the coming decades and possibly within just a few years? No leader wants to yell in a crowded theater or Planet Earth with billions and billions of people, “Fire”, so how and when do we get the bad news and will Republicans and most people really believe our leaders after all the lies and withholding of crucial information about the survival of our global civilization. On this point I end where I started with, As George Santayana said over a hundred years ago, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ , as I believe we are so doing based on our present course, but hopefully, this time around “the past is(n’t) prologue”! Oh, and don’t forget about those 50 million or so refugees fleeing their desperate situations in 3rd world countries or regional war zones to escape to greener pastures in the US, Italy and other 1st world countries and that we just had the 100 anniversary of the beginning of “the war to end all wars”, WWI, but then we had WWII, I sure hope we don’t have to see and experience the real movie, “World War Z” with Brad Pitt who btw also stared in “Money Ball”. And just like in real life, it wasn’t the tip of the iceberg that sank the Titanic, it was the 9/10’s of the iceberg under water that sealed her fate resulting in the loss of 2/3 or 2,224 passengers and put the Titanic 12,415’ down at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean along with the hubris of the Captain who thought the “unsinkable” ship could go at full speed through a field of icebergs. And where did and are those icebergs still breaking off from at an ever increasing rate? Answer: The Poles and Greenland where 99% of Earth’s water is still frozen. But unfortunately, this time around, it’s not just an iceberg sinking the largest and so-called “safest” ship of the day , but whole ice sheets the size of a small US state which, no longer if, but when they melt, along with large portions of the Poles and Geeenland’s icecaps, will submerge islands and coastlines around the Earth and in so doing will displace 10’s of millions of people in the coming decades or by the end of this century. On that thought, like teachers who tell their students in fire drills at school, it might just almost be time to leave the theater in an orderly fashion, instead of waiting and doing too little too late and having to finally scream “fire” or “abandon ship” like they had to do as the Titanic slowly and then quickly sank beneath the waves! And finally, on that not so happy thought, I leave you with one last Mother Jones 6/23/14 article for you to read and to contemplate on, “This Ice Sheet Will Unleash a Global Superstorm Sandy That Never Ends” and the following link: motherjones/environment/2014/05/inquiring-minds-richard-alley-antarctsandyica-greenland- Fade to black with the sound of “drip, drip, drip……” and over the intercoms comes a voice to say, “You can now leave the theater” or like the voice at the end of the early 60’s sci-fi TV show, “Outer Limits” would say, “ We now return control of your television set to you”, just watch your next steps and sorry that USA lost to Belgium today. Now well have to get back to the other national past time distraction, baseball, which we cant lose. Just remember my father, Texs old saying, the past is prologue! and please dont come back in a few years and say I didnt warn you or I didnt tell you so! Unfortunately, I will continue to play my musical instrument, my found laptop on the internet, with the rest of the band of informed and insightful people as she slowly and quickly towards the end sinks beneath the waves.... And now read on about the past in the New York Times Op-Ed Climate Change Doomed the Ancients Global conflict fueled by climate change goes back 3,000 years. By ERIC H. CLINE, MAY 27, 2014 THIS month, a report issued by a prominent military advisory board concluded that climate change posed a serious threat to America’s national security. The authors, 16 retired high-ranking officers, warned that droughts, rising seas and extreme weather events, among other environmental threats, were already causing global “instability and conflict.” But Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a stalwart believer that global warming is a “hoax,” dismissed the report as a publicity stunt. Perhaps the senator needs a history lesson, because climate change has been leading to global conflict — and even the collapse of civilizations — for more than 3,000 years. Drought and famine led to internal rebellions in some societies and the sacking of others, as people fleeing hardship at home became conquerors abroad. One of the most vivid examples comes from around 1200 B.C. A centuries-long drought in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean regions, contributed to — if not caused — widespread famine, unrest and ultimately the destruction of many once prosperous cities, according to four recent studies. The scientists determined the length and severity of the drought by examining ancient pollen as well as oxygen and carbon isotope data drawn from alluvial and mineral deposits. All of their conclusions are corroborated by correspondence, inscribed and fired on clay tablets, dating from that time. Ancient letters from the Hittite kingdom, in what is now modern-day Turkey, beseech neighboring powers for shipments of grain to stave off famine caused by the drought. (The drought is thought to have affected much of what is now Greece, Israel, Lebanon and Syria for up to 300 years.) One letter, sent from a Hittite king, pleads for help: “It is a matter of life or death!” Another letter, sent from the city of Emar, in what is now inland Syria, states simply, “If you do not quickly arrive here, we ourselves will die of hunger.” The kingdom of Egypt, as well as the city of Ugarit, on the coast of what is now Syria, responded with food and supplies, but it is not clear if they were able to provide enough relief. It certainly created problems of national security for the great powers of the time. Correspondence between the Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, Cypriots, Minoans, Mycenaeans, Assyrians and Babylonians — effectively, the Group of 8 of the Late Bronze Age — includes warnings of attacks from enemy ships in the Mediterranean. The marauders are thought to have been the Sea Peoples, possibly from the western Mediterranean, who were probably fleeing their island homes because of the drought and famine and were moving across the Mediterranean as both refugees and conquerors. One letter sent to Ugarit advised the king to “be on the lookout for the enemy and make yourself very strong!” The warning probably came too late, for another letter dating from the same time states: “When your messenger arrived, the army was humiliated and the city was sacked. Our food in the threshing floors was burned and the vineyards were also destroyed. Our city is sacked. May you know it! May you know it!” While sea levels may not have been rising then, as they are now, changes in the water temperature may have been to blame for making life virtually unlivable in parts of the region. A 2012 study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science found that the surface temperatures of the Mediterranean Sea cooled rapidly during this time, severely reducing precipitation over the coasts. The study concluded that agriculture would have suffered and that the conditions might have influenced the “population declines, urban abandonments and long-distance migrations associated with the period.” To top it off, catastrophic events, in the form of a series of earthquakes, also rocked many ancient cities in these areas from around 1225 to 1175 B.C. These, together with the famines and droughts, would have further undermined the societies of the time, most likely leading to internal rebellions by the underclass and peasant populations who were facing severe food shortages, as well as invasions by migrating peoples. We still do not know the specific details of the collapse at the end of the Late Bronze Age or how the cascade of events came to change society so drastically. But it is clear that climate change was one of the primary drivers, or stressors, leading to the societal breakdown. The era that followed is known as the first Dark Ages, during which the thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium B.C. suddenly ceased to exist. It took decades, and even hundreds of years in some areas, for the people in these regions to rebuild. We live in a world that has more similarities to that of the Late Bronze Age than one might suspect, including, as the British archaeologist Susan Sherratt has put it, an “increasingly homogeneous yet uncontrollable global economy and culture” in which “political uncertainties on one side of the world can drastically affect the economies of regions thousands of miles away.” But there is one important difference. The Late Bronze Age civilizations collapsed at the hands of Mother Nature. It remains to be seen if we will cause the collapse of our own. Eric H. Cline, a professor of classics and anthropology at George Washington University, is the author of “1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed.” A version of this op-ed appears in print on May 28, 2014, on page A21 of the New Yo
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 22:46:32 +0000
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