There are so many problems in our environment developing I don't know where to start. Were I a doom and gloomer I'd not want to talk about Earth changes that we humans experience as problems. But, convinced of the basic Goodness of the Universe, I can enjoy thinking about (and find solutions to) problems that scare many too much for them to be openminded.
Let's try a cause and effect sequence to get a glimpse at what may be going on with the planet. Your guess is as good as mine; I'm just telling you what I think based on my research. I think we're in a moment of history of quantum change - the changes are changing the changes. You can't just say for instance that our burning things is making carbon dioxide. I mean, well, you CAN say that, but if you want to be really scientific you have to refer to the fact that everything - absolutely everything - is connected by cause and effect. Like a circle. If someone asks, "Where's the beginning of the circle?", what do you say? There is no beginning or end of it; it's connected to itself. Well, it's the same way with the Universe. That's why scientists refer to a "butterfly effect" in which two seemingly distant things can somehow affect each other - a butterfly flapping its wings and a rainstorm in some other part of the world, for instance. But let's try a cause and effect sequence where effects are obvious:
We burn stuff. That yields carbon dioxide. Some of the co2 gets in the ocean and makes carbonic acid. The carbonic acid makes the calcium carbonate shells of some sea life more water soluble. They stop reproducing. The price of clams and lobsters goes up because there's less of them. We get hungry because we like to eat sea animals with shells like clams and lobsters. We get cranky when we're hungry so we start fighting over food. Next thing you know we're dying of hunger and war.
Sound melodramatic? Well, there's always an alternative scenario for any cause-and-effect sequence because we can always make different decisions. But this type of thing is already happening - we're just so enmeshed in it we can't step back and see the big picture. Take Darfur, for instance. Those of us at all interested in the news have noticed there are brutal wars going on, in far off places like Africa for instance. Well, among other things, that hell on Earth going on in Darfur is about what we call global warming, as vegetation and water have been diminishing there. And there are literally millions of similar situations going on in the world right now, while we're too wrapped up in our own lives to take much notice. Pittsburgh is blessed with water, so we haven't had global warming affect water availability here. But our desire to use and make money from coal and natural gas is polluting our water.
But let's get back to ocean acidification. I use calcium carbonate in the form of dolomitic limestone in gardening. Now we can't very well lime the ocean to "sweeten" our co2-caused acidity, so what are we going to do?
I'll tell you what we're going to do, and this is something we're going to do whether we like it or not. We're going to vastly decrease the amount of combustion we humans engage in. And how can I say this with such confidence? Because a chain of causes and effects is going to stop us. Either we will transition to non-combustion processes - stop burning things for energy - or we will die off as a species and that will stop us. That simple. No drama, just fact.
Every school child should know the name and some of the accomplishments of Nikola Tesla, who worked here in Pittsburgh for a while. His work to develop non-combustion energy was quashed by some of the same people who made huge amounts of money from some of his other inventions. It IS possible to get energy without either burning fossil fuels or nuclear power, and if we as a species are to survive we need to develop our technology in this direction.
The problem at this stage of history - the end of an age and the beginning of a new age - is not a shortage of solutions. The problem is that we are afraid to change. But we HAVE to change. There are feedback loops in the cause-and-effect changes that are causing greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide to MUSHROOM in their rates of increase - independently of what we do. So we not only have to stop producing greenhouse gases, we have to re-stabilize the climate system by for instance vastly increasing the number of algae and larger plants we can get growing to offset these feedbacks. Usually people say that climate scientists are exaggerating the negative in their warnings. But in this case it's the opposite. They're soft-pedaling how bad it is. Nobody, myself included, wants the bad news. But the bad news is here. It's become even worse than most climate scientists expected, and is happening much faster. This is quantum
change, in which the changes are affecting each other. As those Pittsburghers who don't have their heads in the sand noticed, the Great Blizzard of 2010 was part of a pattern of weather changes that is going on NOW, not going to happen some time down the line to our children and grandchildren.
