Posted: 11/26/2021 14:48:43 PM Modified: 11/26/2021 14:48:26 We have problems; universal peril. Most of us know this (it’s scien...
Posted: 11/26/2021 14:48:43 PM
Modified: 11/26/2021 14:48:26
We have problems; universal peril. Most of us know this (it’s science); most of us don’t know what to do about it (it’s politics). The problem is the dislocation of human settlement patterns directly caused by Earth’s climate change.
While at the climate conference in Glasgow, President Joe Biden called for tighter limits on methane emissions. Earlier, congressional hearings in late October provided substantial evidence that fossil fuel companies have skewed their day-to-day operational impact on climate change. Worse, during these hearings, Republican members try to derail attempts to verify scientific truth.
We can say with a high degree of certainty that human activity is the main driver of climate change today: a crisis that is not in the future for our descendants, but that is killing humans and other biota every day in the world right now. Even the existence of eight billion methane and carbon dioxide emitting bipeds (us) affects the climate.
Still, there are scientific questions we need to ask ourselves so that our climate change mitigation doesn’t just make matters worse, as we saw in the Midwest’s 1960s solutions to environmental pollution. . As we reduce human-induced climate change, we need to ask ourselves questions such as to what extent the warming of the Earth is caused by the warming of our Sun; or, if we’re just in a galactic hot spot.
We cannot continue to turn our deserts into solar power factories; we cannot continue to plunder our seas and land landscapes with windmills; nor can we tie our green energy future to the storage capacity of lithium technology batteries.
We are in an unexplored period in Earth’s evolution where our attempts in Enlightenment science to control nature have bit us in the back. Perhaps our new answers will come from post-modern survey models.
Paul M. Craig
Northampton
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