Glossary

This is a list of commonly used terms, acronyms and expressions on this blog. Though the definitions are mostly drawn from authoritative sources, in a few cases I’ve given my own where the “official” ones were too unclear or inconsistent; a few of these, like ARCS, I’ve invented myself. I mostly focus on Arctic, climate change, futurist, energy & economic definitions here. Very much under construction…

Glossary

Acidification of oceans: Through absorbing around 25% of annual human CO2 emissions, the oceans are steadily acidifying. The possible results are A) a collapse of the planktons (e.g. coccolithophorids, foraminifera, pteropods) that form the base of marine food chains – though phytoplankton may thrive, B) widespread dieoff of already declining corals and fish stocks and C) a reduction in the ability of the ocean to absorb further CO2 emissions. See The 800 lb. Gorilla in the Ocean.

Adaptation: As the world becomes warmer, individuals and peoples are going to adapt in different ways. Standard themes include new the bioengineering of drought-resistant crop varieties, better water management, weather control, and even Geoengineering. Infrastructure will creep north, as world civilization becomes centered around the Arctic circle (e.g. see polar cities). Others foresee that adaption will occur in more brutal and non-voluntary ways, such as forced migrations and Malthusian dieoff.  See Adaptation to global warming; the free book How the World will Change – with Global Warming by Trausti Valsson.

Age of abundance industrialism: The c.1950-2010 period characterized by globalization, industrial growth, improving living standards, international peace, and cheap resources. (Michael Greer)

Age of exuberance: The centuries of growth and progress that followed the sudden enlargement of habitat available to Europeans as a result of voyages of discovery; a period of expansion when a species takes exuberant advantage of the abundant opportunities in an eminently suitable but previously inaccessible habitat. (William Catton)

Age of salvage societies: The c.2050/2100-2250 period that is the transition between the age of scarcity industrialism and the ecotechnic society, characterized by human societies scavenging the high-emergy detritus left over from the industrial age. (Michael Greer)

Age of scarcity industrialism: The c.2000-2050/2100 period characterized by deteriorating living standards,resource wars, rising coercion, deindustrialization, and the reappearance of feudal forms. (Michael Greer)

The Anaconda Strategy: Originating from interwar German geostrategists, this refers to the containment strategyemployed by the Atlanticist powers towards any emerging Eurasian hegemon. (Aleksandr Dugin)

Anoxic events: The Shutdown of thermohaline circulation and ocean warming may lead to Ocean deoxygenation, the extinction of oxygen-dependent marine life and the buildup of lethal hydrogen sulphide in the ocean depths. Starting from partly enclosed basins like the Mediterranean or the Gulf of Mexico – or the already anoxic Black Sea – it too will be released into the atmosphere. Lethal in minute concentrations, the only warming will be the smell of rotten eggs before the human olfactory nerve becomes paralyzed. It will be a silent killer, making its way from the coasts to the continental interior. Furthermore, it will break down what remains of the ozone layer – exposing any remaining survivors to carcinogenic UV rays. See Review: Under a Green Sky.

Antibiotic resistance: Pathogens tend to develop resistance to commonly used antibiotics, requiring newer generations of ever costlier medicines; one major problem that has already burgeoned is the appearance of multi-drug resistance TB, which now finishes off many AIDS sufferers. (Wiki)

Anthropogenic global warming: Human emissions of greenhouses gases, such as CO2, is causing more of the Sun’s heat to remain trapped, leading to higher levels of heat and flux across the entire climate system. (see Top 10 AGW Denial Myths, Climate Change & Pollution reference post by Anatoly Karlin)

ARCS: The grouping of Arctic regions including Alaska, Russia, Canada and Scandinavia invented by Anatoly Karlin, who believes that the opening of the Arctic will turbo-charge their economies.

Arctic Council: TBD

Arctic melting: The Arctic is already in a death spiral and the latest projections indicate it could be ice free during summer as early as 2020. Once it goes, a triple feedback Ice-albedo effect kicks in – earlier snowmelts cause the Earth to absorb more heat, dark-hued shrubs and boreal forests encroach on the white tundra and disappearing Arctic sea ice is replaced by dark ocean water. The reformation of sea ice is hindered, since local temperatures soar over the dark ocean waters due to the reduced albedo. Global ocean and air currents are interrupted as the temperature differential between the Arctic and the tropics shrinks.

There are both positive and negative economic consequences: 1) permafrost melting destabilizes infrastructure such as railways, structures and pipelines, 2) new shipping routes, hydrocarbon sources and agricultural lands are opened up that attract settlers, enterprises, and military forces. With several more degrees of warming, the Arctic becomes permanently ice free. Lakes drain and rivers bloat as the thawing ground and increased rainfall release far more fresh water into the Arctic Ocean. Eventually, the Arctic Circle may become a humid temperate zone, as it was during the PETM, when lush redwood forests grew along the shores of the High North and releasing water vapor that insulated them during the long polar darkness.

Arctic Oscillation: See here.

Arctic Powers: TBD – ((IMO, they are 1) Russia, 2) Canada, 3) USA, 4) Norway, 5) Denmark, 6) China, 7) UK, 8) EU / European coalitions. Iceland & Greenland don’t really figure.

Arctic shipping: TBD

Asabiya: TBD

Barents Sea: TBD

Biomass: The amount of living material in a specified context. (William Catton)

Biosphere: TBD

Black swan event: TBD

BRICs: The group of nations including Brazil, Russia, India and China that many investors believe will be at the forefront of global growth in the next decades. It is a symbiotic grouping, with the resource wealth of BR complementing the vast labor armies of China and India. See Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050 (Jim O’Neill, 2003)

Carbon tax: TBD

Cargoism: Faith that technological progress will stave off major institutional change, even in a post-exuberant world; the equivalent among people of industrial nations to the cargo cults of the Melanesian islanders. (William Catton)

Carrying capacity: The maximum population of a given species which a particular habitat can support indefinitely (under specified technology and organization, in the case of the human species). (William Catton)

Carrying capacity deficit (surplus): The condition wherein the permanent ability of a given habitat to support a given form of life falls short of (exceeds) the quantity of that form already in existence. (William Catton)

Catabolic collapse: TBD

Civiliki: TBD

Clathrate collapse: TBD

Crop yields effects: At 2-3C of warming, agriculture in the arid sub-tropics becomes increasingly untenable – in central America, south India, Indonesia and (rain-fed) southern and northern Africa. In the tropics, crop yields begin to slide, as the effects of increased CO2 fertilization are canceled out by higher heat stress (beyond a critical threshold yields begin to plummet). In North America, agriculture moves north to the Mid-West and east Canada, even as the West and South-West is afflicted by drought, heavy rainstorms and new pests. There will be a net global food deficit after a 2.5C rise, as even the mid-latitudes suffer due to extreme floods and droughts, while structural famine grips the subtropics and creates hundreds of millions of climate refugees.

At 4-5C of warming, agriculture will be crashing throughout the world’s mid-latitudinal breadbaskets, as the subtropics get too dry and the tropics too hot. The Great Plains, the western US, the Pacific coast of S. America, southern Africa, the western Indian subcontinent and Australia all see major declines. Droughts will prevail in SW North America, Central America, the Mediterranean, S. Africa and Australia – SE Asia during the winter, and the Amazon, Siberia and West Africa during the summer. Although(marginal) sub-polar lands will be opened up in Russia and Canada, and yields may rise due to new bio-engineered drought-resistant crops and the fertilization effects of increased CO2 levels, this will not close the gap – the situation will become ever more precaurious, for “with major global breadbaskets dusty and abandoned, rising demand will be chasing rapidly diminishing supply”. At more than 5C of warming, most of the tropics become too hot for crops and the subtropics dry up. The belts of habitality contract towards the poles, both on land and on sea. See Climate change and agriculture.

Chimerica: A symbiotic relationship between China and the US, in which the former buys US Treasury bonds, bolstering American consumer demand and creating jobs and mass industrialization in China. (Niall Ferguson)

Climate refugees: The hordes of refugees that will be displaced in the following decades of accelerating AGW: scorching heatwaves, rising sea levels, and general climate chaos.

Climax community: TBD

Cliodynamics: A new multidisciplinary area of research focused at mathematical modeling of historical dynamics, especially exponential millennial trends, secular “Malthusian” cycles, and their intersection.(Mathematizing History by Anatoly Karlin)

Coal gas: TBD

Collapse: A human society’s descent to a significantly lower level of socio-political complexity over a relatively short period of time. (Joseph Tainter)

The Complexity Curve: The theory that there exist diminishing returns to increasing socio-political complexity. Beyond some point these returns turn negative. When a society hits the downslope of the complexity curve, some realize that they can have the same benefits but at a lower level of complexity and cost. As a society tips below that threshold, the hypertrophied state has to be held together through intensified legitimization and coercion as the probability of collapse begins to converge to 100%. (Joseph Tainter)

Comprehensive National Power (CNP): TBD

Cornucopian paradigm: A view of past and future human progress that disregards the carrying capacity concept, pays no attention to the finiteness of the world or to differences between takeover and drawdown, and accepts uncritically the myth of limitlessness. (William Catton)

Crash: See Dieoff.

Creeping normalcy: Refers to the way a major change can be accepted as normality if it happens slowly, in unnoticed increments, when it would be regarded as objectionable if it took place in a single step or short period. On the topic of environmental degradation on Easter Island, “Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important. By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm.” (Jared Diamond, Wiki).

Crop yield: TBD

The Cull: A pessimistic future scenario: “I think it’s wrong to assume we’ll survive 2 deg. C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 deg. C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90%.”  (James Lovelock)

Cyberspace: The global commons of electromagnetics as accessed and exploited through electronic technology and the modulation of electromagnetic energy to achieve a wide range of communication and control system capabilities, which can generate a virtual interactive experience regardless of a geographic location from which it is accessed. (Wiki)

Dark Ages: Historical periods on which our knowledge grows thin, usually connotating periods of cultural and economic decline such as Europe between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance.

The Decoupling: The awning post-2008 divergence between economic growth rates in the stagnant “First World”, led by an increasingly insolvent United States; and in “The Rest” / the BRIC’s, a dynamic grouping of developing nations led by China. (Decoupling from the Unwinding by Anatoly Karlin)

Deliberative dictatorship: Social experiment in Chongqing where public consultations, expert meetings, and opinion polls are becoming a central part of Chinese decision-making”. This principle could form a basis for the future course of the Chinese political system. (Mark Leonard)

Derzhavnost’: A quasi-mystical vision of the Russian state as a strong, paternalist, and expansionist entity that ought to pursue hegemony over its Near Abroad.

Desertification: TBD

Diachronic competition: A relationship between generations in which livng organisms satisfy their wants at the expense of their descendants. (William Catton)

Diasporic mentality: TBD

Dieoff: The more or less precipitate decline in numbers that follows when a population has exceeded the carrying capacity of its habitat; otherwise called a crash. (William Catton)

Digital Dark Age: A term used to describe a possible future situation where it will be difficult or impossible to read historical documents, because they have been stored in an obsolete digital format. (AK: Ironically, this means that if industrial civilization were to collapse in 2050, our distant descendants may well have a better idea of what life was like in 1950, say, than in 2040, by which time perhaps almost all data will be stored digitally). (Wiki)

Diminishing returns: TBD

Directed energy weapon (DEW): A type of weapon that emits energy in an aimed direction without the means of a projectile, including in the form of electromagnetic radiation and particle beams. (Wiki, Military Laser Hits Battlefield Strength by Noah Shachtman, Navy Takes Next Step Towards Laser ‘Holy Grail’ by Nathan Hodge)

Drawdown: Method of extending carrying capacity, an inherently temporary expedient by which life opportunities for a species are temporarily increased by extracting from the environment for use by that species a significant fraction of an accumulated resource that is not being replaced as fast as it its drawn down. (William Catton)

Drone: See UAV.

East Antarctic melting: The Totten glacier drains an area with more ice than in the entire West Antarctic. Since the early 1990’s, catchment is losing enough ice to lower its height by more than 10m annually (despite raising ice levels in the flatter interior). Cook glacier is doing the same. Furthermore, like Pine Island and Thwaites, the grounding lines (farthest point downstream where ice makes contact with solid rock) of Totten and Cook is below sea level – by more than 300m in Totten’s case and “warmer waters appear to be loosing that contact”. Furthermore, “should the grounding line begin to retreat, we can expect the glacier to begin the familiar process of thinning and accelerating”. With around 5C of global warming, the entire East Antarctic will be doomed, raising sea levels by an eventual 70m.

Eco-socialism: TBD

Ecosystem: TBD (William Catton)

Ecotechnic dictatorship: The coercive transition, or sustainable retreat, from the late capitalist-industrial Systemto the ecotechnic society. (Anatoly Karlin)

Ecotechnic society: Drawing on the ecological science of how seral stagesslowly evolve into a climax community, it is posited that in the far future, after several iterations of increasingly refined technic societies, humanity will finally evolve a global sustainable society, one that ”relies on renewable energy resources, and maximizes the efficiency of its energy and resource use at the cost of far more restricted access to goods and services” – the ecotechnic society. (Michael Greer)

Ecotechnology: TBD

Effects of global warming: Some core references: From Wikipedia – Effects of global warming; Glossary of climate change; Index of climate change topics; Abrupt climate change. From S/O –Notes on “Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet” (M. Lynas); Notes on “The Last Generation” (F. Pearce).

Efficiency: TBD – (note different kinds: normal energy efficiency; economic; and efficiency of conversion of exergy into useful work).

El Niño:

Emerging technologies: TBD – (cite the S/O article)

Emergy: Аn accounting methodology which aims to find the sum total of the energy necessary for an entire product lifecycle, including raw material extraction, transport, manufacture, assembly, installation, disassembly, deconstruction and/or decomposition. (Wiki)

Enclave extremism: The tendency of people to harden their political positions when they interact mainly with others of like mind, which is especially relevant in our age of atomization and the Internet. (Cass Sunstein)

The End of History: A Hegelian eschatology which claims that the end of the Cold War marks “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”. (Francis Fukuyama)

Energy slaves: TBD (William Catton)

Energy subsidy: Energy from sources other than sunlight applied to the growing of crops; e.g., fossil energy (in excess of the human energy displaced by its use) used in operating farm equipment, energy used to move water for artificial irrigation, the energy content of synthetic fertilizers applied to the soil, etc. A view of past and future human progress that disregards the carrying capacity concept, pays no attention to the finiteness of the world or to differences between takeover and drawdown, and accepts uncritically the myth of limitlessness.(William Catton)

Equilibrium: TBD

EROEI: The ratio of the amount of usable energy acquired from a particular energy resource to the amount of energy expended to obtain that energy resource. When the EROEI of a resource is equal to or lower than 1, that energy source becomes an “energy sink”, and can no longer be used as a primary source of energy. (A Net Energy Parable: Why is ERoEI Important? & Why EROI Matters (Part 1 of 6) by Nate Hagens).

Eurabia: The (flawed) theory that differential birth rates and immigration will produce a Muslim majority in Europe as soon as 2050. (Mark Steyn)

Eurasianism: TBD

Extreme weather: TBD

Exponential growth: Occurs when the growth rate of a mathematical function is proportional to the function’s current value, e.g. x(t) = exp(t). When you have both exponential growth and limits to growth, the eventual result isovershoot and collapse. (Wiki fables)

Export Land Model: Net global oil exports are predicted to decline faster than oil production after peak oil, because internal demand within the vastly-enriched oil-exporting nations will go up, thus squeezing the global oil supply from both below and above. (Jeffrey Brown)

Failed state: A collapsed state that has mostly or completely lost its traditional monopolies on violence, tax collection, and the issuing of tender. (Anatoly Karlin)

Faustian bargain: TBD

Fish acreage: TBD (William Catton)

Fossil aquifers: TBD

Fossil fuels: TBD (William Catton)

Gaia Theory: The hypothesis or theory that the Earth’s geosphere and biosphere are closely integrated to form a complex interacting system that maintains the climatic and biogeochemical conditions on Earth in a preferred homeostasis. (James Lovelock, Wiki)

Geopolitical Loop: TBD – (Oil Drum)

Geopolitics: TBD

Geosphere: TBD

Ghost acreage: The additional farmland a given nation would need in order to supply that net portion of the food or fuel it uses but does not obtain from contemporary growth of organisms within its borders—e.g. from net imports of agricultural products, from oceanic fisheries, from fossil fuels. (William Catton)

GIUK Gap: TBD

Glacier melting: TBD

Global commons: TBD

Global dimming: TBD – (See The Dilemmas of Global Dimming)

Greenland melting: TBD

The GNR Revolution: TBD

Gosudarstvenost’: TBD

Gulags: TBD

Heat stress: Global warming is going to cause plummeting crop yields throughout the tropics and mid-latitudes after just 2-3C of warming. The world will face agricultural collapse and mass starvation with 5-6C of warming. Once global temperatures start to exceed 7C, there appear spreading “zones of uninhabitability” in which human life becomes metabolically impossible. See Simmered to the Edge of the World.

Homeostasis: TBD (William Catton)

Hubbert peak: TBD

Hydraulic despotism: TBD

Hydrogen economy: TBD – (i.e. massive scam)

Hydroponics: TBD

Hydroxyl collapse: TBD

Hyperbolic growth: When a quantity grows towards a mathematical singularity, e.g. x(t) = 1/[t(0)-t], where x(t) approaches infinity as t approaches a certain time t(o). Some cliodynamicians showed that until the early 1970′s, the world population underwent hyperbolic growth and the world GDP underwent quadratic-hyperbolic growth. (Wiki, Mathematizing History)

Hypercane: If a patch of ocean were to warm to 45-50C – either through very severe global warming, or an undersea super-volcano eruption or asteroid strike – a hypothetical class of tropical cyclone called a hypercane may form above it. Spanning continents (the eye itself being up to 300km across) and punching a hole through the stratosphere, these storms have 800kph+ winds that will flatten almost anything in their path. They may have had enough fuel to last for weeks and circumnavigate the globe several times over.

IADS: The Integrated Air Defense System. (Surviving the Modern IADS by Carlo Kopp)

Ice-albedo feedback: When highly-reflective ice melts, it leaves behind darker-hued earth, flora or sea that absorb much more heat. Local air temperatures soar and inhibit the reformation of the ice in future cold seasons. Though this effect keeps polar regions stable up to a point, beyond a critical threshold – already reached in the Arctic – ice melt acquires its own runaway dynamic.

Icebreaker: TBD

Imperial overstretch: TBD

Jevons Paradox: TBD

Kremlin clans: TBD – siloviki, civiliki…  (reference the S/O article)

Landscape amnesia: TBD

Laptev Sea: TBD

Law of Accelerating Returns: TBD

Legitimization & Coercion: TBD

Lena River: TBD

Liebig’s Law of the Minimum: principle stating that growth is controlled not by the total of resources available, but by the scarcest resource – the “limiting factor”. (William Catton)

Limiting factor: TBD

Limits to Growth: TBD

The Long Descent: TBD

The Long Emergency: TBD

Malthusian dynamics: TBD

Metapolitics: TBD

Methane releases: TBD

Mitigation of global warming: New technologies; taxes on carbon; contraction and convergence. See also Adaptation & Geoengineering.

Monsoon effects:

Moore’s Law: TBD

Murmansk: TBD

The Muscovite system: TBD – (The traditional Russian patrimonialism based on Tsarist bestowal of transitional rent-gathering rights unto his boyars, conditional on their political loyalty and provision of tribute. Today, it can be argued that..)

Myth of limitlessness: The belief (more implicit than explicit, perhaps) that the world’s resources are sufficient to support any conceivable human population engaged in any conceivable way of life for any conceivable duration; derivatively, the belief that a given resource is inexhaustible or that substitutes can always be found. (William Catton)

Nanotechnology: TBD

The Near Abroad: TBD

Neocomms: TBD – (and why it matters! China in the Arctic..)

Network-centric warfare: TBD

The New Caesars: Are resource-constrained nations in the age of scarcity industrialism going to slide into illiberal democracy? ”The last century was the winter of the West, the victory of materialism and scepticism, of socialism, parliamentarianism, and money. But in this century blood and instinct will regain their rights against the power of money and intellect. The era of individualism, liberalism and democracy, of humanitarianism and freedom, is nearing its end. The masses will accept with resignation the victory of the Caesars, the strong men, and will obey them.” (Oswald Spengler)

Norilsk: TBD

North Sea Route: TBD

Northeast Passage: See North Sea Route.

Northwest Passage: TBD.

Nuclear war: TBD

Oligarchy: TBD

Overfishing: TBD

Overpopulation: TBD

Overshoot: The condition of having exceeded for the time being the permanent carrying capacity of the habitat. (Catton) | Humanity has been in a state of global overshoot since around 1980. (PNAS)

Overton window: TBD

Ozone depletion: TBD

Pax Americana: TBD

Pax Russica: TBD

Pax Sinica: TBD

Peak coal: TBD

Peak gas: TBD

Peak uranium: TBD

Pearl River capitalism: TBD

Permaculture: TBD

Permafrost melting: TBD

Phantom carrying capacity: Illusory or extremely precarious capacity of an environment to support a life form or a way of life; that portion of a population that cannot be permanently supported when temporarily available resources become unavailable. (William Catton)

Physical throughput: The continuous flows of energy and materials needed to keep people, cars, houses, and factories functioning. (LTG)

Planetary sinks: TBD

Planetary sources: TBD

Post-industrialism: TBD

Prometheism: TBD

Propaganda model: TBD

The psychology of previous investments: TBD

Radiative forcing: TBD

Railgun: TBD

Rainforest collapse: TBD

Renewable resources: TBD

Reprimitivization: TBD

Resource depletion: TBD

Resource nationalism: TBD

Resource war: TBD

Responses to climate change: see Mitigation of global warming, Adaptation to global warming, Geoengineering.

The Rest: TBD

Revolution in Military Affairs: TBD

Revolution in Naval Warfare: TBD (see S/O article)

Runaway greenhouse effect: TBD

Russian Far East: TBD – ((one of eight..

Russian liberal opposition: TBD (- unpopular, ineffective, etc: basically, not actually worth paying attention to)

Scope expansion: TBD

Scope reduction: The opposite of scope expansion, this refers to the secular reversak of globalization after 2008 which increasingly limited the maximum possible level of global economic output. (William Catton)

Scramjet: TBD

Sea level rise: See effects. Global Warming: A Sea Change (Mandia).

Silovarch: A silovik oligarch.

Siloviki: TBD

Singularitarian: A believer in the technological singularity. (Ray Kurzweil)

Singularitarianism: TBD

Shale gas: TBD

Sovereign democracy: TBD

Soviet policy in the Arctic: TBD – (served as deep space & had big MIC component; e.g. a reason why one city, Murmansk, has 3x more people than entire Canadian Arctic)

Sovkomflot: TBD

Space-based solar power (SBSP): A system for the collection of solar power in space that is beamed down through microwave radiation for use on Earth. (Wiki, Darel Preble)

Space elevator: TBD

Species extinction: TBD

Structural militarization: TBD – ((Characteristic of a political economy dominated by the concerns of the General Staff and military-industrial complex, such as the late Soviet Union. (Steven Rosefielde) – note this is part of reason Russian Arctic is more populated than others’

Sublime Oblivion: TBD

Superintelligence: TBD

Surveillance society: TBD

Sustainable development: TBD

Sustainable retreat: The whole idea of sustainable development is wrongheaded… it’s time to start talking about changing where we live and how we get our food; about making plans for the migration of millions of people from low-lying regions like Bangladesh into Europe; about admitting that New Orleans is a goner and moving the people to cities better positioned for the future… it’s about everybody “absolutely doing their utmost to sustain civilization, so that it doesn’t degenerate into Dark Ages, with warlords running things, which is a real danger. We could lose everything that way.” (James Lovelock)

Sustainable society: A society that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. It is characterized by equitable social relations, advanced ecotechnology, and minimized physical throughput optimized for maximal human welfare. (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987)

Sustainability: 1) Renewable resources such as fish, soil, and groundwater must be used no faster than the rate at which they regenerate; 2) Nonrenewable resources such as minerals and fossil fuels must be used no faster than renewable substitutes for them can be put into place; 3) Pollution and wastes must be emitted no faster than natural systems can absorb them, recycle them, or render them harmless. (Herman Daly)

Sustained yield: TBD

Takeover: Method of extended carrying capacity which increases opportunities for one species by reducing opportunities for competing species. (Catton)

Technic society: TBD

Techno-industrial base: TBD – ((why having both is important

Technological Singularity: TBD

Temporary carrying capacity: The combination of actual and phantom carrying capacity; the population that a habitat can support for a short time only (until the supply of some exhaustible resource runs out which the species depends on). (Catton)

Thermoeconomics: TBD – ((e.g. Robert Ayers

Thermohaline circulation collapse: TBD

Threshold value: TBD

Tipping point: TBD

Tragedy of the commons: TBD

Transhumanism: TBD

Transparent society: TBD

Tsunamis: TBD

UAV: TBD

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea: TBD

Unrestricted Warfare: TBD

Useful work: TBD

Virtual politics: TBD

Virtual reality: full-immersion?… TBD

Visegrad: TBD

The Walled World: TBD

Water stress: TBD

Welfare state: TBD

The West: TBD

West Antarctic melting: Since much of the base of the West Antarctic ice sheet is grounded below sea level, warmer oceans stand to erode its edges and call its whole stability into question – especially as most of the center of the great ice mass is even deeper below sea level than the edges, penetrating sea water could lift the icecap off its seabed foundations. Although it is shielded by the massive Ross and Ronne ice shelves, if they were to disintegrate the West Antarctic would get uncorked – resulting in much faster glacial outflow and adding 5m to global sea levels within decades. (Already three shelves have disintegrated – the Wordie, Larsen A and Larsen B). Though the East Antarctic cap is shielded by the Transantarctic Mountains, is too is anchored beneath sea level so it could collapse via the back door – eventually raising sea levels by a further 50m. Destabilization of both Antarctic ice caps and Greenland will result in unmanageably rapid inundation of the world’s urban commercial centers and low-lying farmland.

Entire nations like Bangladesh, Holland and Egypt will be put at risk; cities will become besieged fortresses under constant risk of catastrophic breakdown before the rising seas and gathering storms. Agriculture will need to move onto higher, more marginal lands. As the world’s coastlines retreat, the resulting economic shocks will destabilize society and break the insurance and credit systems – leaving fewer resources to support the hundreds of millions of newly-displaced people, as the world is wracked by the Scylla of inland drought and the Charybdis of coastal inundation.

(The Shelf: Down South, Shattering Ice Uncorks the Antarctic. Disintegration of Larsen B in 2002 – at the height of summer, melting snow formed ponds that put pressure on crevasses, wedging them open (water is denser than ice) and instigating the catastrophic collapse of 500bn tons of ice, releasing thousands of large icebergs. Other ice shelves are also in increasing danger, including the Ross and Ronne ice shelves. Though they of themselves won’t raise sea levels, since they are already floating, they do buttress the glaciers that feed them – like uncorking a champagne bottle, the “glaciers that once discharged their ice onto the Larsen B shelf are now flowing into the sea 8 times faster than they did before the shelf collapsed”.The Mercer Legacy: An Achilles’ Heel at the Bottom of the World. West Antarctica is vulnerable since it is “perched precariously on an archipelago of largely submerged islands”. Though apparently safe since it is buttressed on two sides by mountains, and on the other two sides by the Ross and Ronne ice shelves. Yet if they were to give way, the entire shift could lift off and float away – once begin, disintegration may be catastrophically rapid.It has a “weak underbelly” in Pine Island Bay, a large inlet on the Amundsen Sea. It is an outlet for two of Antarctica’s top five glaciers: Pine Island and Thwaites, which drain 40% of W. Antarctic ice sheet and are already the greatest contributors to global sea level rise. The surrounding ice shelves melt faster due to warmer waters; in turn, the two glaciers drastically accelerated. As ice shelves thin, more water penetrated beneath glacier…the “grounding line” is retreating 2km a year. Furthermore, inland amongst its tributaries the PI glacier sits on great lakes of melt-water. If the area they drain all melts, sea levels will rise by 1 2m. Thwaites taps into vast reservoirs of ice in the middle of the ice sheet…may drag them along with it. If you pull the plug, ice goes faster and there is thinning…will the plug reform further back, or will the ocean deliver enough heat for it to just blowtorch its way to the center? If the latter, the W. Antarctic ice sheet could collapse within the century.)

Western chauvinism: TBD

Western media: TBD

Wrangel Islands: TBD

Yellow River capitalism: TBD

Yenisei River: TBD

Zones of uninhabitability: See Heat stress.

Maps of Climate Change