Pursuing praxis

Fortuitously (given yesterday’s rant on rhinos), and hilariously, the following anecdote came up in a seminar today:

The speaker, (micropaleontologist and world expert on shelly protists, foraminifera, a deep thinker on deep time, and funny as hell to boot), recounted how he was attending a conservation biology seminar, where the speaker was talking about endangered birds requiring marsh habitat in the bay area if they are to survive. Something about only 12,000 breeding pairs of X species locally.

Back up a sec, and let’s talk about the "recent" history of the SF Bay area. Recent in geological terms means the last 125,000 years. Or even 8000 years, since that’s when the first humans (probably…) arrived, and started leaving giant mounds of clam shells around the bay area. Around 125K years ago, the earth was doing it’s glacial cycling, where you have a little ice age followed by warming, and it does this like 5 times or something, over 10s of thousands of years. And in fact the ocean levels were a bit lower than they are today, when this was happening. Then about 40,000 years ago (or was it 11000? nuts…) we had a glacial maximum, and everything was #@*$ing cold. Like, the line practically bored through the bottom of the graph. That cold. (haha).

Now, to step this out for the kiddies, that means there was a lot of ice. And ice is made of water. And that’s a lot of water. And that water has to come from somewhere. That water comes mostly from the oceans, since most of the water on earth is in the oceans. And when you freeze up a bunch of water at the poles, that means there’s less left for everywhere else. This means that ocean levels fall - quite a lot, actually. In the SF Bay area, they were about 360 FEET lower than they are now. That is, if you stood on the easy bay mountains and looked out where the Golden Gate Bridge is across the bay - you just MIGHT be able to see the water on a clear day. And this was normal, for a long time.

But, the good news is (well, not good - it’s just news, cuz it’s just the facts) since that glacial maximum is in the past - everything’s been warming up since then. And the interesting facts are these: Unlike the previous lukewarm-cool cycles that were happening 125K years ago, it’s been an almost continuous increase in ocean levels since that maximum cold. None of that up-down cycling bit, although there have been greater and lesser plateaus. And, some 8000 years ago, there was really just this piddly little body of water that was where the bay is now. Just pathetic. And it’s been slowly increasing ever since. By about 2000 years ago, we crossed the previous high water mark (of 100K years ago, give or take). In comparison to the last 125K years, sea levels are the highest they’ve ever been - but just a little bit (probably within 10 meters). This is also at the tail end of a very long upswing in sea levels. (I should probably point out the obvious and say that sea levels and global temperatures are positively correlated). And it is true that the slope of the graph is a bit steeper over the last little bit (500 years? 1000 years? Bit hard to tell on a graph covering that amount of time), than say 5-10,000 years ago.

Now, this raises a few very practical points, the insanity about global warming not withstanding. Because earth temperatures have been warming (period) over the long haul, and because the rate of increase is slightly steeper more recently, we might reasonably expect temperatures to increase slightly over the next 50 years. And, reasonable projections indicate a rise in bay water levels of maybe 3 feet. 50 years and 3 feet are chump change for paleontologists, but even paleontologists are land-owners and (usually) law-abiding, tax-paying citizens, and have some investment in the 100 years of their existence on this hunk o’ rock. So, applying our knowledge of historical patterns, and looking at a detailed topographic map of the bay area water levels, present areas of settlement, industrialization, and major economic import (including the marshes - I haven’t forgetten about the story), the following is indicated:

Some of the most important companies of Silicon Valley, which evidently have arrayed themselves along the western shoreline of the bay, including Sun Microsystems and others I recognized by can’t now recall (BIG names), fall within this 3 foot span. Yessiree, it’s true. 3 feet of water - for any reason, and "NASA, we have a problem." Gone, guys. Unless these companies pick up shop and move, they’re toast. Of course, they won’t go without a fight, but even dikes (or is it dykes? I can’t remember) and levees and seawalls are short-term fixes for a major problem - a gagillion cubic tons of water pressing in from the bay, non-stop. Better to re-locate uphill than fight such a brainless behemoth. Hopefully that’s what they will do - becuase unless it’s a tsunami or something, 3 feet doesn’t happen overnight. Still, this is a major, major economic drain for a very, very important sector of the global economy. I expect stocks to rise in the dredging industry, however. 

But wait, it gets better. Our valiant speaker informed us that, without a doubt, 3 feet of water will wipe Stanford off the map. Simultaneously, the island of SF will be cut in half with a straight of water running NW-SE through Colma. Next goes UC Davis, which sits well upstream on the Sacramento (I think) River, but will nonetheless be subject to the effects of higher water levels, and will get swamped. The hikes uphill on the Berkeley campus do indeed have a long-term benefit beyond my heart, quads and ass: Berkeley will remain untouched. In fact, there’s this nice little restaurant about five blocks down from the western-most border of campus that, with a slight shift in its business strategy, is exellently located to exploit the "fresh fish n’ chips" corner of the market. New student hangout?? We’ll see…

More later… must run. The fate of the marshes and the character of a prominent conservationist remain to be seen….