NOW IS THE TIME!
BLOG #15 Gaia Awakening!!!
Advanced Release Feb 9, 2023.
This Blog is presented as one quotation from the book: The Vanishing Face of Gaia A Final Warning, James Lovelock Copyright 2009
Gaia Awakening!!!
“Keep in mind the fact that before the climate can return to its pre-industrial state all the melted ice has to be frozen again, and that means repaying the latent-heat debt of the ice…..
Most of all I am pessimistic because business and governments both appear to be accepting uncritically a belief that climate change is easily and profitably reversible…..
I hope that a sufficient number of us are now aware that the lush and comfortable world that once we knew is departing forever. But I fear that we still dream on and rather than waking we weave the sound
of the alarm clock into our dreams ….
Sea level rise is the best available measure of the heat absorbed by the Earth because it comes from only two main causes; the melting of glaciers on land and expansion of the ocean as it warms—in other words, sea level is a thermometer which indicates the true global warming…..
To put it in perspective, the extra heat which will be absorbed when the floating ice has gone is nearly 70 per cent of the heating caused by all the carbon dioxide pollutant now present….
The assumption that the climate can be stabilized by a reduction in emissions at a carbon dioxide abundance of 550 ppm and a global temperature 2 degrees C higher than normal has no secure foundation in science. Instead the Earth could already be committed to irreversible change .….
I have mentioned several times before that breathing is a potent source of carbon dioxide, but did you know that the exhalations of breath and other gaseous emissions by nearly 7 billion people on Earth, their pets and their livestock are responsible for 23 percent of all green house gas emissions? If you add on the fossil fuel burnt in the total activity of growing, gathering, selling, and serving food, all of this adds up to about half of all carbon dioxide emissions .….
Through geoengineering we may ameliorate some of the early consequences of heating but I greatly doubt that we have the wisdom or intelligence to reverse it. Like the skier who accidentally starts an avalanche, there is little we can do to stop its destructive course…..
The disease that effects the Earth is not just climate change —manifest by drought, heat and ever-rising sea. Added to this there is the changing chemistry of the air and the oceans, and the way the sea grows acidic. Then there is the shortage of food for all consumers of the animal kingdom……
We are a wandering species and since our origin in Africa a million or so years ago we have spread across the Earth and even to the Moon. In addition to a natural wanderlust we have been driven to move by seven devastating climate change events as the Earth passed through glacial and interglacial episodes during the past million years. During the last of these, a mere 14,000 years ago, the sea rose 100 metres, enough to inundate a land area as large as the continent of Africa, and the global mean temperature rose about 5 degrees C…..
My reason for persisting in calling the Earth Gaia and saying that it is alive is not a personal foible; it is because I see this as an essential step in the process of public, as well as scientific, understanding.
Until we all feel intuitively that the Earth is a living system, and know that we are a part of it we will fail to act automatically for its and ultimately our own protection ….Unless we accept the Earth as alive with us as a part of it we may not know what to do or where to go as the ocean rises on a hot dry world…..
In ancient Greece, Gaia was the goddess of the Earth. To many Greeks she was the most revered goddess of all, and interestingly the only god or goddess that was never the subject of scandal…..
The only near certain conclusion we can draw from the changing climate and people’s response to it is that there is little time left in which to act. Therefore my plea is that adaptation is made at least equal in importance to policy-driven attempts to reduce emissions.
Gaia Theory
A view of the Earth introduced in the 1980s that sees it as a self-regulating system made up from the totality of organisms, the surface rocks, the ocean and the atmosphere tightly coupled as an evolving system. The theory sees this system as having a goal– the regulation of surface conditions so as to always be as favourable for contemporary life as possible. It is based on observations and theoretical models; it is fruitful and has made eight successful predictions.”
Fred Irwin
NOW IS THE TIME!
www.fredirwinauthor.com
I rest my case for aggressive adaptive Climate Change Actions that build both personal and community resilience everywhere on Earth.