To Late Today

Today there is little debate that climate change is occurring, all over the world there are tell tale signs that the Earth is getting warmer. In a matter of years all of the mountain glaciers will be gone, and there will be no polar ice during the summer in the Arctic. Populations of humans and animals alike are being displaced due to drought, and in some cases simply because the land is being consumed by the sea. As of right now most of these effects are only being felt in the most desolate and poverty ridden parts of the world. Naturally people who live on the brink of subsistence will feel the effects first and most severely, but it’s only a matter of time before climate change will drastically effect us all. There is no doubt that humans will adapt, and our existence is probably not in peril, but what the future will hold for humanity is being decided today not tomorrow. The first global meeting on climate change was in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, a meeting that President H.W. Bush threatened to boycott, which was prompted by the 1990 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stating that human behavior was effecting the climate. In fact, in 1898 Swedish scientist Svante Ahrrenius warned that carbon dioxide emissions could lead to global warming, and scientists had been gathering data to support that theory since the 1970’s. However, the Rio convention did not yield any commitments to combat climate change, with many developed and developing nations claiming that drastic changes in their behavior were not economically viable. Five years later in Kyoto, Japan a second climate change summit was held, in which actual emission reduction goals were set. Al Gore signed the Kyoto Protocol, agreeing to a 7% reduction of US emission levels in 1990 by 2010, but it was never sent to the Senate to be ratified. 187 other countries signed and ratified the treaty, but only the United Kingdom and Sweden will meet their targets by 2010, the other 36 EU countries may be able to reach their targets by 2012. During this period US emissions have increased by 20%, and emerging powers India and China have both increased their emissions by over 100%, overall world emissions have increased by 38%. In the last two years there have been successive climate change talks all over the world, and under the previous administration the biggest obstacle in any new binding agreement has been the US. The Bush administration and republicans have always pointed to the developing countries, saying that they needed to be included in emission reductions, but in Bali, Indonesia in 2007 the developing world agreed to participate, and the US were finally forced, clearly against their will, to join the agreement, and this was only a non-binding “roadmap” for a future agreement. The targets set by the Kyoto Protocol were modest at best, and further more drastic cuts need to be made in order to reverse the rapid warming trend. A worldwide reduction of carbon dioxide and other related greenhouse gases in the range of 80% by 2050 are needed in order to curb global warming, if these cuts are not made the results will be dire. Next monday in Copenhagen the world will once again come together to discuss climate change, the US, India and China have pledged to make significant commitments to help combat global warming, but such statements have been made before without any serious results. Even if a binding agreement is made, it will require huge changes from its signatories, and that will be much harder than putting a signature on a piece of paper, which Al Gore did more than a decade ago. Most scientist agree that if emissions continue to climb in the next ten years, many effects of global warming will be unavoidable, and the climate will changed drastically for years and years to come. There problem is so huge, many people can’t really wrap their minds around it, but the problem isn’t as hard to grasp as the solution, and that’s why little to nothing has been done. The most abundant fuel in the US is coal, half of all the electricity is generated by coal, here in Ohio almost all of our electricity is generated by AEP coal plants. AEP and other energy companies have been pushing “clean” coal which will sequester carbon dioxide underground, however, no tests of this technology have been done, and furthermore carbon dioxide is a deadly gas. Even if it can be found to work and work safely its cost will be absurdly high. Natural Gas burns much cleaner than coal, but there isn’t enough to replace the baseline energy load that coal provides. The same goes for nuclear power, which has no carbon emissions, there isn’t enough fissile material on the planet to support human consumption for more than a few years. Bio-fuels are essentially a joke, more energy goes into producing fuel out of grain and corn than comes out, sugar based fuels have had success in Brazil, but sugar for fuel is probably only practical for use in vehicles, and only at a severely reduced rate of consumption. Solar power is much more feasible than wind, but again it will be expensive, and the amount of energy you can generate would require drastic cuts in the amount of electricity we consume. The silver bullet may be hydrogen fuel cells, a technology that uses hydrogen and oxygen to produces electricity with water as the only byproduct, oxygen is in the air and easily available, but hydrogen despite being the universe’s most abundant element, is not readily available as an independent element on earth since it easily bonds with everything. However, energy companies, despite the huge advertising campaigns the contrary, are only spending a tiny fraction of their profits in alternative energy technology, while they are spending billions of dollars to find new oil and natural gas resources. Shell, Exxon and BP plan to burn every ounce of fossil fuels that exist on this planet, and invest in technologies that may be able to artificially create fossil fuels using algae and bacteria. Thus the only feasible way to reduce emissions is to reduce consumption of everything that creates greenhouse gas emissions. The catch is that essentially everything you do has direct impact on carbon emissions. Greenhouse gases are not only emitted from power plants, and cars, it will take more than energy efficient light bulbs and appliances, and more than hybrid cars and electric lawnmowers, it will take a change in our attitude toward plundering the planet. The process of making concrete and steel both create large amounts of carbon dioxide, and those are the basic components of construction, new ways of building must be developed. Wood which was the fuel of choice for thousands of years is also used in construction, but deforestation is a huge problem. Trees are nature’s carbon scrubbers, they inhale and store carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen, but when trees are cut down they release the carbon they have stored inside them. Trees need to be traded as a commodity just like oil and natural gas, only then will developing countries begin to protect the forests that developed countries have already demolished. Consumption of food will need to change as well, raising animals for slaughter is both energy and water intensive and animal farming creates greenhouse gases. Furthermore, any waste of resources ends up costing energy, using disposable products, bag, bottles, paper, etc, require energy to make more of a product that will simply end up in a landfill. Consumers must change their energy intensive style of consumption. The changes in the everyday life of an American and operation of American corporations are so drastic that they can not be implemented voluntarily, the stakes are to high for there to be non compliance, tax policies must be changed to foster change. Rationing of resources is going to be a part of the future of ever country in the world, not only energy, but also water and other commodities. The sooner that the United States begins a program of conservation the less severe the rationing will be, but there is substantial resistance to any such program. All the industries that will be affected have powerful lobbies that finance most if not all of our elected officials, and they are all getting incredibly rich off of the system as it is, the fact that people’s lives are as stake has never slowed the greedy machine of capitalism. There isn’t enough political will in Washington to overcome the will of the CEO’s, who in essence dictate the terms of policy in this country, and their interest is always their stockholders, not the public welfare. Today as the polar ice cap melts due to global warming, oil companies are lining up to drill for oil on the sea floor that they now have access to, profiting off of the destruction they have inflicted on the environment. Last year an energy bill, introduced by Joe Lieberman and John Warner, that featured cap and trade was stalled by Mitch McConnell, and died without a vote. If reasonable measures are not taken at the Copenhagen Conference, then we start to face dire responses to rising temperatures. As life dwindles in the ocean, we may be forced to dump huge amounts of algae in an attempt to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The sky may need to been darkened by pumping particulates into the air in order to reflect sunlight to keep temperatures down. However, drastic steps like these would effect everyday life on this planet far more than the simple steps of conservation. The livelihood of some communities is being destroyed by climate change, and they are not the ones who are the cause, for them its already to late. The people who have the power to change the world’s consumption will be the last to be effected, and so we can’t wait for them to react because by then it will be to late for all of us.

The Big Bang As God

Almost every culture has a creation myth of some sort. Most of these myths have either died out or have been dismissed. It’s intriguing how someone can be thorough convinced that their god created the universe in some bizarre way, but be completely dismissive of someone else’s equally absurd beliefs about creation. The most accepted scientific explanation of creation is the big bang theory. The big bang theory has been slowly evolving over several decades, and more and more evidence has been collected to support the big bang. However, there are still many unanswered questions, and as theory it’s a long way from being consistent with what we know about the current state of the universe. There are elements of the big bang theory that almost have a religious context to them. The fact that the universe even needs to have a beginning speaks more to a human need for things to start and end more than it being an essential attribute of the universe. Instead of thinking of the big bang theory as a scientific endeavor, consider it as a creation myth. At the beginning of the universe there wasn’t anything, not even space, all the matter, energy and consciousness in the universe was consolidated in a single entity, God. We currently have no known laws of physics to explain the universe in this state which appropriates some level of divinity to it. From this divine singularity the universe spontaneously began to create the universe out of itself. On the first day Gravity was created, only then can we begin to understand what the universe was like. On the second day the strong nuclear force was created. On the third it created the electromagnetic force and the weak interaction, completing the four forces that shape the universe. On the fourth day the universe inflated itself, so it could cool. On the fifth day light is created, and the universe becomes visible. On the sixth day matter as we know it is created. The Seventh day is essentially the epoch we are living in now, plus it’s impossible to know if the universe is actually doing anything, so it doesn’t need to rest. In reality the first four days happened in less than a second, and then next two days took 300,000 years, and the last days is when the properties of matter allowed stars to start forming, which shaped the visible universe we experience today. The science behind the theory may be fact, but that doesn’t mean that a creation theory doesn’t hold religious weight. In fact, humanities long standing relationship with religious creation stories may have shaped the direction of the science behind the big bang theory. Furthermore, science may end up providing more evidence for deity than religious scholars ever could.

Human Selection

The concept of evolution was first postulated by Anaximander a full 500 years before the birth of Christ.  He was a Greek from the Milesian school of thinkers, and was a student of Thales, one of the first scientists in history.  Anaximander believed that humans had evolved from a more primitive vertebrate, fish.  Many scientists could observe the effects of evolution over generations of plants and animals with short life-spans.  By the 18th century Carolus Linnaeus and others believed that humans were closely related to apes.  However, it wasn’t until Charles Darwin published On The Origin of Species in 1859, in which he first described the process of natural selection.  He then published The Decent of Man from which we began the process of linking our evolution from apes all the way back to single celled organisms.  In fact all creatures that reproduce sexually start life as a single cell before we grow into the various multi-cellular organisms that inhabit the earth.  The process of Natural Selection states that species with genetic traits that make them more able to successfully reproduce will become more common, weening out members of the species that are genetically inferior.  Random mutations of individual genes drive the evolution of a species.  Species are pressured by their environment to continually adapt, and the species that respond to the changes survive and prosper.  For 3.8 billion years the only force dictating evolution was the engine of natural selection.  Species unwittingly vied for genetic dominance based entirely on random mutations that they neither understood nor could control.  Natural Selection explained that world perfectly, but today humans make the decisions that used  be left up to nature, both intentionally and accidentally.  10,000 years ago there was a mass extinction, party because of climate change, but also because humans had developed the tools to become the worlds most effective hunters.  It could be argued that sloths and mastodons where simply unable to evolve to the new environment, not getting the random genetic mutations to survive.  Not long after that humans started domesticating crops for agriculture, and a long process of homogenization of commercial plants began.  The effect of our subsistence on agriculture had a massive effect on the natural world.  Large areas of the world have been cleared, and planted with genetically modified species for our consumption.  Thousands of species have been eliminated through this process.  The domestication of animals some for work and some for food changed animals evolutionary future.  Dogs needed to evolve to do jobs that made it easier for us to survive, not just for their own prosperity.  Cows needed to evolve to feed us easier, so we could be prosper.  Our subsistence became less taxing, and as our numbers grew, civilizations began to develop.  Humans spread out rapidly converting the environment as they went.  Edible plants were grown en masse, and edible animals were often hunted to extinction.  The number of habitats that did not have a human imprint began to dwindle, slowly but surely we were effecting the evolution of every living things on earth.  Civilizations produced lots waste, and parasitic animals evolved to take advantage of this new environment.  Excessive waste and industrialization gave way to outright pollution of the environment that caused provoked mutations in species causing them to evolve out of control.  Today, humans selection dictates how the biosphere evolves.  Virus’s have evolve to defeat our vaccines,  we design bacteria to carry out specific jobs,  toxins we have created permeate most everything including our own bodies,  the oceans have almost been fished to the brink of mass extinction, and the same genetically modified potatoes and bell peppers can be found in grocery stores around the world.  Human selection is interfering if not entirely overriding natural selection all the time.  Even the act of preserving the environment  is tampering with the natural order.  Humans select what spaces and species are protected, dictate what population certain species can reach, and in some cases remove species determined to be invasive.  Our own evolution has changed away from natural selection, and relies on our ability to adapt to societal pressures, as apposed to the pressures of nature.  Being fat, ugly and unhealthy isn’t slowing many humans from reproducing.  The Human Genome Project provided the genetic blueprint for a human being, and as more is discovered about genes and genetic manipulation, the temptation to directly select our own genetics is growing.  Scientists are manipulate the dna of other creatures with intentional mutations, and  we have already been able successfully clone many species.  Furthermore, there have been experiments attempting to spontaneously create life by imitating the conditions that primordial life may have evolved out of.  In the future there maybe human assembled life created entirely outside the normal parameters of natural selection.  Human beings can’t really do anything to avoid or mitigate this influence, because that in and of it self would be a decision of human selection.  The actions that alter the world we live in are made with little to no regard to the ultimate consequences.  It should be apparent in the age of global warming that our actions could easily hurt our own ability to evolve and survive.  We can’t avoiding effecting the environment, but we should be more aware that every decision we make from the food we eat, to way we travel or even what we watch on television is going to change the earth and life that inhabits it.  If we can’t be more responsible then we flare out like a virus killed by our own success having consumed our host until it is no longer habitable for us, but fear not once the human element is removed natural selection will take over again, and we know that system works pretty well.