Territorial Accumulation Through Energy Expansion

NASA’s sea level projection tool, using data provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, makes data available to everyone with a stake in planning for the sea level changes to come.

The blue dots on the graphic represent the regions that will be impacted by sea level rise and the tool allows for global projections based on the process that produce the increase, the decade under consideration and the various Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios.

According to the paper, New elevation data triple estimates of global vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding, about 190 million people will be occupying land projected to be below the high tide line by 2100.  About 630 million will be living on land projected to be below annual flood levels. And about one billion will occupy land less than 10 meters  about the high tide line.

Scientific American has estimated, by 2100, nearly 9 million acres of American real estate valued at $109 billion, including 300,000 building will be underwater. And to put this into prospective, the Crimean Peninsula, annexed by Putin in 2014, has an area of only, 27,000 square kilometers or about 6.7 million acres.

Canada’s Environment Minister suggests people in communities threatened by natural disasters might have to consider moving, which is a capitulation to nature without ever trying the  manmade solution to sea level rise.  

The Royal Society says the minimum sea level may rise will be between 0.4 to 0.8 m by 2100. But future ice sheet melt could make these considerably higher. And notes, in the last interglacial period, about 125,000 years ago, sea levels peaked at probably 5 to 10 m above the present level.

Temperatures at that time were up to 1℃ higher than present. But by 2100 model simulations suggest the average temperature will be between 1.1 to 5.4°C warmer than today.

Sea level rise is primarily the result of two global warming factors: melt waters from ice sheets and glaciers, and the expansion of seawater as it warms.

The following graphic produced by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, tracks the change in global sea level since 1993, as observed by satellites.

The paper, Past and future ocean warming demonstrates how the top 2,000 meters of the global oceans significantly warmed between 1958 and 2019 at a rate that approximately doubled from about 5 to 10 zeta joules of heat per year. Which is about 317 terawatts or about 17 times the current primary energy consumption.

The paper Quantification of ocean heat uptake from changes in atmospheric O2 and CO2 composition estimated between 1991 and 2016 this warming was 12.9 ± 0.79 zeta joules or 409 terawatts. And per the following, in 2020 alone it was about 25 zeta joules, 793 terawatts, confirming the acceleration of this warming.

The following schematic representation from the “Past and future ocean warming” paper shows the linkage between ocean warming and multiple observed changes in the Earth system.

The orange upward arrows indicate a global increase in process’, and green downward arrows indicate global decreases. Of note are the increase in sea level and atmospheric CO₂ concentration. Which in the latter case is the inverse of ocean O₂ decrease because as the Resplandy paper shows both carbon dioxide and oxygen both off gas from the ocean as it warms.

Past and future ocean warming suggests, “historic ocean warming is irreversible this century.” And project by 2100, the warming of the top 2,000 meters of the ocean will be between 2–6 times greater than has been observed to date.

“Increased stratification and reduced uptake capacity and efficiency, warming decreases the efficiency of the oceanic carbon sink, further enhancing atmospheric CO₂ and ocean warming,” these researchers say. Confirming the positive warming feedback.

But ocean stratification is an open invitation to converting surface heat to work and to relocating the balance of the conversion to deeper water per the following example.

And the sea level implications of this kind of conversion are a reduction in thermal expansion per the following graphic because the thermal expansion coefficient of seawater is several times larger for tropical surface waters than at its minimum, which is universally at a depth of about 1,000 meters.

Surface heat relocated to a mean depth of 500 meters would therefore create about a quarter as much expansion and heat moved into the tropical depths is unavailable to melt ice sheets or glaciers.

The paper Quantifying Land and People Exposed to Sea-Level Rise with No Mitigation and 1.5°C and 2.0°C Rise in Global Temperatures to Year 2300 says, the 2000 flood plain was estimated at 540 × 10³ km², but by 2100, under the mitigation scenarios, it would range between 610 × 10³ and 640 ×10³ km². An average change of about 85 *10³ km², which is about 21 million acres or about the area of the state of South Carolina.

The loss of one of 50 states would be an American tragedy but for some nations sea level rise is an existential challenge.

The cost of fuel on island nations is exorbitant. For example, the cost of gas in Hawaii as of October 20 was $5.216, for Puerto Rico it was $4.308 and on the mainland it was $3.836.

But sea level rise, storm surge and fuel costs would all be mitigated by producing energy by de-stratifying the tropical surface. Which would reverse “historic ocean warming” because ocean heat converted to work undertaken on land is an extraction of heat from the ocean.

Instead of capitulating to nature and the fossil fuel industry, we can use the first principles of thermodynamics to get more, cheaper, energy that mitigates every consequence of climate change. And more territory without having to try to tear it away from someone else.