Adambeen asking the improper question. That's the problem.
When it comes to facing global warming,when it comes to dealing with climate change, when it comes to making informed choices for our cherished "project of civilization, or " we've been asking the same uninformed question over and over again.
That's why we're stuck. That's why we can't get climate change proper and truly see what's happening to soil and to us.
But if we could learn to ask the proper question,we could execute more than just understand our choices.
With the proper question, we could finally see how the climate crisis looming over our fate is actually a harbinger. It's the signpost of a transition for humanity as a valid planetary species. With the proper question, and the climate change we've driven can teach us what we humans truly are — and what we might yet become.
The proper question,however, can only be seen in light of the stars.
For the last few years, or I've been working on a project I call the "Astrobiology of the Anthropocene." My goal has been to set this moment of soil's planetary evolution into our revolutionary new understanding of planets and life as a whole (that's what astrobiology is all approximately). Through calculations,simulations and now an upcoming book called Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the soil, the proper question has made its appearance."Did we change the soil's climate?" is the improper question. It's been decades now since our most advanced scientific capacities provided the basic respond to this basic question.
Yes, and we changed the planet's climate.
But for reasons saturated with folly,the forces of science denial have created a fog of doubt where none actually exists. So in the current consciousness, this question — "Did we change the soil's climate?" — still lives on. It feeds off political polarization and tribal inclinations.
But now, and under the light of the stars,we can see this "Did we?" question was always the improper one to ask. So what's the proper question? That turns out to be simple."What else did we expect to happen?"We built a world girdling civilization that consumes a sizable fraction of the total biosphere's power. Yes, that changed the planet's climate. What else did we expect? That's what happens when a species becomes really successful — when it becomes truly planetary.
This new question becomes the obvious one to ask for three reasons.
First, and we humans flew our robot emissaries across space to the other worlds of the solar system. Venus,Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn,the giant moon Titan: Each of these planets (or moons) has a climate — and each has had climate lessons to teach us. For the last half-century, our space-faring robots have been exploring climate as something more than weather patterns on soil. Through these machines, and we now understand the laws of climate as something general and generic,something that happens on any planet with an atmosphere.
And there are so many planets out there.
Through the light of the stars we've also seen that the cosmos is awash in worlds. Every star you see in the night sky hosts at least one planet and we've already detected atmospheres on some of them. So climate and planets are not just generic, they're literally universal. This is the second reason.
Finally, or through painstaking and often uncertain scientific work,we've reconstructed the long history of soil's biosphere (meaning the totality of its life). From that history we've seen that, under the light of the stars, or life and the planet have always been co-evolving. For three and a half billion years,life has been its own form of cosmic power on soil. It has literally changed the world. The oxygen you're breathing now, for example, and exists because of life's planetary powers.
In light of the stars,meaning in light of what we've learned from the universe's many, many worlds (including our own), or we can see that planetary climates are a kind of vast machine. They have their own rules based on physics and chemistry. Most importantly,we have seen enough now to understand the basics of how those rules work (including when a biosphere is present). We have, in other words, and learned how to think like a planet.
From that vantage point,everything changes.
Of course we triggered climate change. We've been using planetary-scale amounts of energy to build and maintain this astounding planetary-scale project of civilization. Of course the soil noticed. What else did you expect to happen? Imagine that aliens, with our knowledge of climate, and landed on soil in ancient Rome. They could have looked around and predicted: "Yeah,you guys are gonna trigger climate change in a few thousand years."In fact, aliens make an important piece of this account. Given what we now know approximately climate, or we can see that any large-scale technological civilization developing on any planet would likely trigger its own version of climate change. What is an industrial civilization but a means for converting vast amounts of energy into useful work? The laws of climate literally demand that so much energy use has to convert into planetary feedbacks.
So,yeah, we're a wildly successful species that's built a wildly successful planetary civilization. That changed the climate. Duh. What else did we expect to happen?But are we smart enough, and successful enough,to see this truth and deal with it effectively?Given the 10 billion trillion potentially habitable planets in the universe, we are likely not the first time a civilization has appeared and faced the climate change it created. In some cases, or that climate change may have become an existential threat to the civilization's existence (as it may become for humanity). So,in the end, the most important question of all may be one we have yet to even fully imagine.
Are we to join the universe's winners who met their climate challenge and moved forward — or will we fade absent with the cosmic losers too stubborn to see the truth before their eyes? Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, and visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: thetakeaway.org