Attempts at Survival

Original (pre-geocycling) developments

Change in context

The global climate is going to change and, at least as far as the long term forecast is concerned, there doesn't seem to be much that we can do about it. The temperature of our planet is due to rise. Its a generally accepted fact. The sun is commonly interpreted to be slowly and relentlessly heating up and there's nothing that we can do about it.

Life on earth can be interpreted to face long term challenges but, as far as our species is conserned, issues relating to the extreme long term may not matter. They will only prove to have relevance if we can survive the short term.

Heat wave

It can easily be interpreted that a tsunami of climate change is heading our way and it is equally easy to interpret that current human practises will speed its abrupt arrival. Not only this but our activities will also serve to to increase its devastating height.

There is one major factor that currently holds back the rising temperatures - ice. The ice caps are exactly that. Frozen water covers vast areas of sea and land with the fortunate effect of encasing an enormous quantity of methane and peat. And, even at the most superficial level, the ice may be noted to have the beneficial effect of reflecting a high proportion of solar energy into space.

The loss of the ice caps will result in the exposure the dark energy absorbing surface underneath, the release of substantial quantities of methane and the gradual oxidisation of all the carbon held in the peat.

Carbon dioxide

Plants are amazing. They absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide with double helpings of water and, through the empowerment of light, they then take the carbon, half the hydrogen and quarter of the oxygen and churn out hydrocarbons. The excess hydrogen and some of the remaining oxygen goes off in the form of water while the remainder of the oxygen atoms will tend to go off in nice and seemingly well paired couples together.

At this point it should be noted that the oxygen atoms never seem to seem to be too settled in their monogamous relationships with one another. On the contrary, they can easily be interpreted to be incestuous little beasts. They can act as high energy freelancers that will offer their share of a generous energy payout to any form of physical or biological process that is able to unite them with such atoms as, for instance, carbon. Hydrocarbons don't tend to stand a chance.

Carbon dioxide consuming organisms produce oxygen and oxygen consuming organisms produce carbon dioxide. Everything balances out. Things only get out of balance when people start extracting the carbon that has been stored below the surface of the earth and then allow this carbon to be let loose into the circulation of the biosphere.

This release of subterranean carbon occurs in a number of ways. Peat deposits can be dug out or exposed; coal and oil deposits can be disturbed in ways in which subterranean deposits of carbon dioxide may be directly released into the atmosphere; coal and oil may be burned in ways that may allow the carbon (at some point in time) to be released and the plastics that are formed from crude oils may be burned or left to rot in the vicinity of the surface.

The plastics issue isn't often discussed and this is something that I intend to rectify. We can note that the combustion or decomposition of a single unit of styrene (the stuff of polystyrene and ABS) will result in the release of 8 carbon atoms (along with 8 atoms of hydrogen) and the combustion or decomposition of a unit of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) will result in the release of 2 carbon atoms (along with three atoms of hydrogen and one of chlorine).

The global truth is that plastic is not cheap. Disposable and unnecessary plastics still have an undeniable ability to cheapen the individual and yet they may well prove of have a cost that is too great to bear. The cheapness of plastic has a definitely nasty side and this brings us on to considerations of the law of disposability. Anyone who thinks that we live in a disposable society must also think that we live in a disposable society.

Methane

There seems to be one simple answer to the carbon crisis. As a general rule we need to stop pulling it out of the ground. The only obvious exception to this rule may involve the extraction of methane.

There are a number or things that we need to know about methane. The issue that is of most relevance to our current discussion is that it is a potent greenhouse gas. It has many times the ability of carbon dioxide to absorb infrared radiation - not a good situation when we consider that that there seem to be vast reservoirs of methane on our planet. The methane is currently infused within permafrost regions of land and throughout wide regions of oceanic sediments and it will tend to be released as temperatures rise. Its a chemical time bomb. When the bomb eventually goes off then an, as yet, unknown quantity of methane will enter the atmosphere, global temperatures will rocket. Large numbers of species will be swept away.

The good thing about methane (and there is one) is that it has an extremely simple CH4 hydrocarbon form and, as such, it becomes oxygen's primary hydrocarbon target. The result is that methane in the atmosphere has a half life of just seven years. This means that, when the Earth eventually heats up to a level at which methane deposits would begin to be released it seems likely that there will then be a runaway form of global warming. Any deposit of methane that may be capable of escape will do just that. Atmospheric levels of methane would rocket but, once a peak level had been reached, the amount of atmospheric methane would halve every seven years.

Recipes for destruction

When I learned about this my personal reaction was of a relatively extreme kind. I made plans for a celebratory trip to the local curry house. I was to order a large meaty meal in a rich creamy sauce accompanied a mountain of rice that could all be washed down with ample supply of a cool yogurt based drink.

I made these plans in the full understanding that my consumption of meat and milk would sponsor the continued use of livestock within the farming industry and my consumption of rice would sponsor the practise of flooding areas of farmland flooded for extended periods of time. I was also aware that farm animals and flooded areas of land are both able to produce substantial quantities of methane and that my meal would sponsor a significant release of CH4.

It was obvious to me that the catastrophic environmental impact of the methane time bomb would be easier to survive if the methane could be released at a time when there was less carbon dioxide within the biosphere. I was also aware that humanity is still in the habit of releasing carbon-dioxide into the biosphere and it occurred to me that it might be better for the methane to be released sooner rather than later.

The only thing that I was forgetting was that, at this point of time, humanity may not have accumulated the knowledge, abilities and facility necessary to survive the impact of the methane time bomb.

The other thing that I hadn't figured was that, if the methane can be gradually released over a time period that would preferably be greatly in excess of seven years, then the potential peak of a climate change heat wave would be reduced.

I stayed home and had baked potatoes.

Lesser vs. greater evils

There is one great thing about methane. It burns really well. In fact it burns to produce more energy per generated unit of carbon dioxide than any other hydrocarbon fuel. This means that we have every reason to make every effort to extract methane from shallow earth deposits, to make use of it for the generation of electrical energy and then to use some of the profits to pump the captured carbon dioxide deep into the various caverns that may have been emptied by the activities of the oil industry.

The same principal does not apply to coal. It has been suggested that we might still be able to extract coal from the ground, burn it and then gather all the carbon dioxide and put it back into the ground. The obvious issue with regard to this idea is that a substance such as carbon dioxide has a far more fluid mobility than a substance such as coal. Risk assessments would be required on a case by case basis but it occurs to me that carbon dioxide is less likely to be released from underground deposits of coal than by underground deposits of carbon dioxide.

Waters above

Water is a remarkable substance and yet, within the global warming context, it's deadly. Higher temperatures within the atmosphere would result in an increased potential for its accommodation of evaporated water. Even before things got hazy we would experience a phenomena approaching a deep blue sky. We would receive less light from a slightly less yellow sun and, even though things would be generally darker, things would still be a lot hotter. Water vapour is by far the most potent of all the greenhouse gasses.

There is, however, one significant difference between water vapour and the other greenhouse gasses. Up to a point at which temperatures reach a critical level, humidity levels can change like the weather. Higher global temperatures would mean that the atmosphere would need to achieve a higher level of water content before for the rains got going but, once this had been happened, the rains would gain the potential to fall with devastating effect. Any green that remained within a "greenhouse" world would have the potential of being washed away so as to resurface various areas of our "greenhouse" world with the various colours of mud and rock.

The rains, however torrential they may be, may still be regarded to be a blessing. When the temperatures rise too high the rains will be unable to fall, the oceans will boil away and, in effect, the earth will have taken the desolate road of Venus.

So what to do?

“… most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon--with a CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from employment to pollution. This is by far the most effective and simplest way to accelerate solutions to this crisis.”
Gore text (quoted from the Nobel prize winners speech, 10 Dec 2007)

At a governmental level there could certainly be an institution of a tiered tax relating to the source of the material that is used to produce the carbon dioxide and the relative security of its potential containment.

On a more personal level, we can change our consumption and travel habits in ways in which we will cause lower quantities of carbon-dioxide and methane to be injected into the atmosphere. Furthermore we can attempt to remove the proverbial 'carrot' that encourages energy producers to generate CO2. We can all make enquiries into the energy generation methods of our energy providers and then, in situations in which providers use environmentally hazardous methods of energy production, we may find that it is possible to reduce our energy consumption and/or to swap to greener providers. We might also make enquiries into the use of ecologically sound forms of design and, at a further extreme, we might even make personal investments in green forms of energy production.

At the end of the day we can note that all of our most notable sources of energy are generated via the heavens and the earth. The nuclear fusion of small atom allows energy to shine down on our planet, the nuclear fission of large atoms continues to allow heat to rise up from below while gravitational attraction between the moon and the Earth allows both objects to continue to spin around in their merry way. There's just one problem. Nuclear fuels are a finite resource and this begs the question as to what will happen when this fuel is gone. How might future generations regard our generation once we've completed not only the glazing of the atmosphere but also the stripping of the most valuable resources that our planet has to offer.

Solar energy can be directly harvested. Chemical energy stored in recently grown organic matter can be released through burning or decay processes. The wind cannot be over farmed.

On that last point it should be noted that wind turbines are beautiful things. Within their graceful structures they prove to be masterworks of form and function. Old fashioned windmills had their appeal. They creaked around in a charmingly inefficient way so as to facilitate the baking of our bread. Modern wind turbines whirl around with remarkable efficiency so as to prevent us from frying the planet. What's not to like?

It is possible that future generations will look back at our "modern" wind turbines and view them amongs the most beautiful things that man has ever produced. We look back on old styled windmills with nostalgia as we give respect to the great efforts that our ancestors made just to feed themselves. Future generations will look at our wind turbines with nostalgia knowing that the turbines were built to help secure their future.

There is, however, one major problem with wind turbines. They only work when the wind blows. The best thing to do would be to use them within the economic context of a tiered pricing structure for electricity with the resultant effect that electricity would be cheaper on windy days. These would be the days to stay in, to do the washing and to use the power tools.

There are also a number of other power sources that can be considered. Water turbines, for instance, are a lot smaller than wind turbines and yet they have the distinct disadvantage that they typically rely on the building of big wall that cut across various ecosystems.

Geothermal energy is a real winner and it can be harvested in a wide variety of locations. All we would need to do is drill deep enough, make the correct underground connections, let water pour into one end of the system and then make sure that no one gets hurt on the other side.

Geothermal energy is typically regarded to be generated in two ways. As the temperature of the Earth falls, the gradual solidification of the Earth's core releases heat. The only thing is that the temperature does not seem to be falling that quickly thanks to the gradual decay of large atoms like uranium. There's a lot of energy in nuclear materials.

Nuclear fusion may now have become a necessary evil. Radioactive materials are generated and yet this should be considered in the context that we already live on a radioactive planet. Radioactive materials might be easily dropped into big holes in granite hillsides and we would hardly know the difference.

Nuclear fission may be the real hope for the future. The basic plan is to harness the energy of the stars but on the surface of the Earth. The result, if it can be achieved, may be limitless energy - but I still might regard windmills to be a potentially safer option.

There may also be other sources of energy that we don't know about. The atom was utterly uncuttable until Albert Einstein came along. We just don't know what we are going to discover next. In the words of Einstein himself: If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

Problem solvers and makers

Our ultimate future is in the hands of mathemagitians who don't know what they are doing. That's life. We don't know if they will find new solutions for our current crisis and, this being the case, perhaps it is best if we work with what we know.

It is a worrying fact that there are people that place little value on the reduction the consumption of carbon based fossil fuels and there are even people that actively oppose various efforts to develop viable alternate sources of energy. I greatly tempted to politely propose that these people might get themselves sterilised. If they have such a blatant disregard for the future generations of our children then it might be considered that it might be fair if they prevented themselves from adding to their number.

There is only one problem with this proposal. Despite the obvious idiocy of these people some of them may potentially possess genetic materials that will benefit the future of mankind. There are at least some amongst their number that should not be sterilised.

Biodiversity:

Biodiversity, as its name may suggest, is a complex topic - but it can be summarised within one simple statement. We don't understand how it works.

There are a great many complex relationships between the creatures of our planet and there are great gaps in our knowledge of the intricate ways in which the human species depends on the others. Furthermore, we do not know which species may contain aspects of biology that we may need to access in the future.

Even should we only think of ourselves, the best course of action that we can take would be to preserve as many of the species as we can.

Far, far away:

As mentioned, the climate is going to change and nothing that we can do about it. It is thought that the over all temperature of the sun is gradually getting hotter and, as a result, the globe will warm. It is generally interpreted that humanity will not be able to remain on Earth for ever. We don't currently know how we may be able to secure to our happily ever after. There is only one thing that seems certain. If we do have a future, it will be out of this world.

The dark screen of this site has been used to reduce power consumption.
Other links can also be provided through the use of the following:

"Black lists" for our green planet:

"locally produced" - Bing Google Yahoo

"energy efficient transport" OR "energy efficient vehicles" OR "energy efficient cars" - Bing Google Yahoo

"rail travel" - Bing Google Yahoo

"public transport" - Bing Google Yahoo

"equal discounts to local" OR"local stores" OR "local shops" - Bing Google Yahoo

"employing local people" - Bing Google Yahoo

"holidays in *" - Bing Google Yahoo

renewable energy - Bing Google Yahoo

"solar power" OR "solar energy" OR "solar panels" - Bing Google Yahoo

"wind power" OR "wind energy" OR "wind turbines" - Bing Google Yahoo