Month: June 2014

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Do You Really Matter?

It occurred to me the other day that much of the discourse in this Vivaldi blog revolves around the idea that dramatic worldwide, near-term, social change will be required to deal with potentially lethal issues that confront us in the 21st Century. Now, one of the main advantages of getting old is that you have a vast vista of personal time from which you can data-mine your experiences. You obtain a perspective that is available in no other way. So, being ‘experienced’, I’ve been hurtling invective and making rude observations from my high moral ground, and I suspect some of my readers think I’m an American elitist. Frequently, it is a valid observation, although I do my best not to spend much time looking in the mirror. Managing one’s ego is a full-time job, and I’m very lucky to have been born in this country.

Be that as it may, I wonder if this blog is worth the effort. Even if many of my premises prove to be valid, can anything I say or do truly motivate change? Does my vote count? Do I really matter? Now, there is the fundamental issue: If I don’t matter, how can anything external to my mind/body matter? This leads to a sort of ugly hubris, a psoriasis of the brain, and impedes any effort to take action on issues of ‘importance’. Worse, it leads to morbid speculation about the nature of the personality.

Well, I’m here to tell you that it is a scientific fact that you are a unique individual in the universe of humans. Since the beginning of time, through all the generations, there has been no one exactly like you. Your gifts, talents, quirks and interests are uniquely yours. How can I say this so confidently? Because Carl Sagan put the issue to rest in his book ‘The Dragons of Eden’. In it, Sagan made some simple calculations that showed that the sum total of possible neural wiring schemes in the human brain exceeded by orders of magnitude, the sum total of sub-atomic particles in the known universe. Now, that’s a big number. In the 1,000 or so generations of Homo Sapiens, we have tapped far less than 1% of the possible variations as individuals.

So, if you’re unique, then your existence has significance. No one will ever again have your thoughts and ideas, or feel your emotions. Sure, you’re still an electro-chemical event, but its characteristics are uniquely yours. As much as any other electro-chemical event in the universe matters, so do you.

If you find the forgoing logic appealing, then you must admit that individual action and behavior aggregates into social movement and can therefore cause change. You do make a difference, and what you do, or refuse to do, matters. If you can convince yourself that your personal, individual existence is worthwhile, then you have the power to effect change, or reinforce the status quo. Do nothing or do something. Either way, you’ve made a choice.

For me, I chose to buy a new car this week, and I plan to break it in by driving down to my favorite place to regain much needed humility and get away from civilization for a few days:

 Southern Utah’s Colorado Plateau

 

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Climate change and collective insanity

The news today about President Obama using the Clean Air Act to force polluting power plants to reduce Carbon Dioxide emissions made me laugh. This is because governments and automakers are frantically converting their vehicle fleets and building HVAC systems to burn natural gas as a ‘cleaner’ fuel source. But, natural gas is methane (CH4), and “burning” is a reaction with the dioxygen O2 in the air when the mixture of air and methane is heated (with an electrical spark typically or with the flame of a match). The equation of this reaction is CH4 + 2 O2 -> CO2 + 2 H2O; in other words, the exhaust product is Carbon Dioxide and water vapor.  Now, Carbon Dioxide is the main villain in human-induced global warming; the very problem they are trying to deal with! And the ‘science’ of climate change is largely collective insanity. 

Why? 

Because most studies do not take into account any variance in solar luminosity, sun spot activity, changes in the orbital mechanics of the Earth, the Van Allen belts, the rapidly diminishing (and migrating) electromagnetic field that surrounds the Earth, or the prospect for a massive release of Methane Hydrates from the sea floor and the Arctic Tundra. Such studies are useful only in the context for which they were created, in this case, political.

  The actual magnitude of the climate shift could be much larger and faster than anticipated, with many small local effects aggregating into massive regional shifts following the mathematics of chaos theory. It has been demonstrated that abrupt climate change from benign and stable to extreme swings of temperature, rainfall, and so forth has occurred many times in our planet’s history. Small catalysts for dramatic events such as the ‘Snowball Earth’ episode about ½ billion years ago (apparently caused by cyanobacteria overpopulation in the oceans) complicate the picture. 

 The fact is, the potential exists right now for a near-term complete stoppage or reorganization of the oceanic circulation system, and the chain-reaction release of CO2 and Methane Hydrates from both terrestrial and oceanic sources. It should be noted that because Methane Hydrates are about 100 times as effective, greenhouse –wise, than carbon dioxide, their effects will be most apparent. This type of release only needs about a two degree C. increase in the annual global temperature (from today’s value) to get things going. The last time this occurred on a massive scale, over 90% of the planet’s biota went extinct. 

 Another interesting effect now happening is the beginning of the next cycle of ice ages. The average ‘warm’ interval of approximately 15,000 years is now over. We are in the ‘autumn’ of this 30,000 to 100,000 year cycle. There is a lot of argument as to the mechanism for this, ranging from orbital mechanics and solar physics to obscuring inter-galactic dust clouds. Regardless, the cycles occur relentlessly. Is this cyclic event taken into account in climate models that deal with global warming? I doubt it, as it would be extremely difficult to quantify over a given timeline. So what are we to do?

 I am not sure that any organization exists at present to act as a vehicle for change. We only have a few years to get our act together, get it funded, and start planning our future. The scientific and academic communities should fund some focus groups quickly to explore the issues I am raising. Getting boggled down in dubious computer models that can’t handle fractal geometry and chaos, and the typical cross-discipline squabbling between the specialists is not going to get it anymore. Depending on governments and ‘environmental’ organizations for solutions is a hopeless enterprise.

The fix requires the involvement of the social sciences as well as the physical sciences and technologists. It also needs people schooled in General Semantics to clarify everyone’s thinking. Science isn’t necessarily sane (to make a bad joke).  Right now, the only clean renewable power sources are wind, waves, solar, and geothermal. Thermonuclear may soon be added to the list.

It seems to me that the ultimate solution may involve regulating the proportion of solar output that reaches Earth’s surface. Like turning the thermostat up & down in our house. Suddenly, we don’t care about computer models or ice ages; what matters is keeping a static thermal balance. This can be accomplished in a number of ways: Deploying in deep space, swarms of self-assembling, self-congregating nanobots whose sole function is to act as a shutter for incoming sunlight, thereby warming and chilling as required. They could be set to turn on and off at a flicker rate exceeding 30 frames/sec, thereby becoming ‘invisible’. Or, perhaps unfurling flexible and inexpensive Fresnel lenses in synchronous orbits that warms specific regions of the surface (if an Ice Age starts) and maybe reshaping the Van Allen belts to control the charged particle environment outside of the atmospheric envelope.

The point is we need a permanent fix for the Earth’s HVAC system. And we need to do it before we run out of the resources that support our existing technical civilization.