Humans As 'Dead Clades Walking' - Part I

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 Humans as ‘Dead Clades Walking’

Part I

“The critical aspect of ‘Global Warming’ isn’t how hot Earth with warm up, but rather how long it would remain so.”

Some people dislike the recently sprung group ‘Just Stop Oil’ for the disruptive nature of their protests. I however disagree with them on the fundamental point itself; we need to ‘Stop All Carbon Based Fuels’ yesterday. My concern is that it’s already too late and the dye has been cast, with humanity’s ‘Extinction Debt’ already becoming due and payable. Can the associated fate then be stopped? Perhaps it can, but not utilizing the tools that we are currently developing, and most certainly pandering as panacea to all ills of fossil fuels, for example electric cars. The attack now needs to be three pronged; minimizing carbon emissions immediately to below net-zero, developing efficient alternate fuels (like Hydrogen Cell technology), and above all, developing tech to remove carbon and other pollutants from the environment that are already causing various ills including ‘Global Warming’.

A few years ago I wrote either in a blog, or one of my social media posts, as to how the Scientific modelling of future Earth weather might be inaccurate, and how ‘Global Warming’ might end up in a catastrophic environmental disaster much like water crystallizing into ice. Now I am not going to waste my time and dig out the old write-up, but let me explain why I said that, before I get to what is currently happening, and why I think it is already too late.

So the thing about icing is that when water reaches freezing point, random crystallization happens inside the water mass, and those crystals trigger the rest of the water converting to ice in quick time. The same model might be applicable to the global weather scenario. It is hard to predict our weather precisely beyond 24-48 hour window, and even that too with caveats. Now if we consider the impact that ‘Global Warming’ will have at planetary level, my fears become more rooted in common sense. Water evaporation and cloud formation might be localized into sea pockets in a way today, but as warmer air currents would become more consistent across the globe, things would change. Not only will there be more storms arising out of the seas, but it is not hard to imagine them coalescing into one major global storm making land fall across continents, and wrecking havoc simultaneously beyond borders like never before. Right now we can come together to help those in immediate need. What would happen when everybody would be in immediate need?

Now I agree, that might be the worst case scenario, and there may be factors that I am not considering that might stop such a scenario from becoming a reality, but then let us look at what is happening right now.

This year, the notorious 2023, we have already seen heat waves break records across continents, with both June and July toppling temperature records at global scale. Many places have already seen floods. This is not going to stop next year. In fact, in all likelihood, all our coming years are going to be hot like this from now on, and progressively get hotter. The clouds will become denser, rainfalls heavier, rainy seasons longer, and overcast conditions more widespread and longer lasting per year. There are going to be floods everywhere every year, and all of those river fed fertile plains of the world will see crops wiped out year after year. Soil erosion will result, while changes to daylight exposure would impact current crop varieties’ life-cycle and produce. When and where it won’t be raining, it would become hot enough to dry out most of the landscape. Add to this the fact that the ‘Green House Gas Emissions’ will still continue to rise until every nation on our planet hits ‘Net-Zero’ emissions target, and then those gases will linger on for decades to centuries. So the picture that we just witnessed this year is going to play on repeat for a long time to come. What will all this then lead to?

Many plant and animal species are already going to become extinct due to changing weather patterns. The increasing ferocity of weather and weather events will intensify in destruction capabilities year after year. Hotter weather would also breed more pathogens, bringing in disease alongside famine and repeated floods. We already have a grain shortage, and human population is increasing rather than dwindling. Our food resources are thus going to become more constrained, and that includes wild meat too, thanks to the mercilessness of flood wrath. The social and psychological problems that will emerge from the mess would create other unhealthy law and order issues. If not towards extinction, we are still headed towards extremely troubled times on an ever more hostile Earth. Our energy needs will sky-rocket to just keep our homes and offices at a bearable temperature. Worst part is; all this is going to happen even if we ‘Stop All Carbon Based Fuel’ from today itself. The dye has already been cast, and this warmer Earth that we find ourselves on today, is going to linger on for decades, and probably some centuries now, unless we manage to help ourselves.

So where do we start recovery from a mess of our own creation? The first step obviously is to hit ‘Net-Zero’ emissions by the end of 2023 itself by the latest, everywhere in the world, even if it means stunting ‘Annual National Growths’. Not a pleasing thought for the still developing or under-developed nations, but do we have a choice though, given that we have already doomed our current ship, and a likely rescue is still decades away? Every day we lose now is only making matters worse, and it is erroneous for anyone to believe that ‘Global Warming’ is still away from disruptive worst. What ‘Global Warming’ is still away from is what the scientists believe would be its’ most potent immediate effect; the melting of all polar and glacial ice. The fact however is, even if we stopped all carbon emissions today that effect is going to be achieved within the next couple of decades by all the warmth that the already accumulated green house gases would create over the next few decades. We don’t need the ‘Global Warming’ machine to run its’ entire course to achieve that full destruction. It is coming already!

Now let’s talk about the pseudo solutions being pandered to environmentally conscious and eager to do something crowd today. We are seeing an abundance of electric vehicles flooding our streets, being hailed as the first step towards a better future. I respectfully disagree! They are not even an acceptable stop-gap arrangement.

Now I know it wasn’t his intention, but by bringing out his line of electric vehicles, Mr Elon Musk has done a really big disfavour to the world. Now every Stella, Laura, and Ella under the sun wants to either make and sell one of those, or buy and drive one of those. Alas, they are the worst alternative going forward. If instead Mr Musk had put his resources into Hydrogen fuelled cars, it would have completely given a new, sustainable, and genuinely better option to the world. It’s a shame that the greed of Oil businessmen scuttled many a spirited and well positioned attempts at developing such Hydrogen based vehicles, otherwise those vehicles would have been the ones running down our streets today, instead of this pseudo science product called ‘Electric Car’. So let us make this a ‘Tale of Caution’ for the world, to approach all such new technologies marketed to us as a solution to our global problem, with a grain of distrust. Now for those who don’t understand my issue with the ‘Electric Vehicles’ as solution, let me break it down into simple pieces.

Imagine replacing all of the vehicles running on our road today with electric vehicle substitutes; leaving their far from satisfactory performance and recharging aside, how much electricity would we need to keep them on road every day, where would we source that electricity from, and how much lithium are we going to need for their batteries? With global warmth rising, our need to keep our homes and offices at bearable temperatures all through the year is going to sky-rocket even if we don’t factor in the increasing population. We already rely on fossil fuel powered plants in many places across the globe to fulfil our current energy needs. Can we really sustain a world run on electric vehicles? Now consider Lithium, that we need not only for our cars, but for the batteries that power all our gadgets that we use, gadgets whose number, type, and demand is going to increase at a much faster pace than our growing human presence on the planet. For a precious metal already in short supply, and whose mining and refinement is already an environmental nightmare, do you think any Lithium based solution is really a solution for the trouble that we are already in? Then consider the option of putting in nuclear plants to satisfy our resulting energy needs; radioactive fuels are for future space travel where we would have engines to power us beyond our Sun’s Goldie Locks zone, and not just material for bombs and power-plants. But will the greedy businessmen who make their moolah from such fuels really think, or for that matter care, about humanity’s future?

So the bottom line is; we need to invest in technologies truly designed for the future, and not some pseudo science stop-gap arrangements like electric cars. In fact, we need to stop promoting electric cars right away, and seek Hydrogen powered vehicles instead, for their tech is already at a commercial delivery point. These Hydrogen powered vehicles, and for that matter power-plants, will serve us for decades and centuries to come. Are we investing in them today? That is just one example. We need to develop better technology based on the very simple principles we all our taught in our ‘Primary Schools’; Renewable versus Non-Renewable energy sources. Is nuclear fuel renewable? Were Fossil fuels renewable? Simple questions that blow away all the mist generated to cover up the truths.

Lastly, we need to develop technologies that would actively suck out carbon dioxide, and other pollutants from the atmosphere, and convert them into inert, and where possible, re-usable products. This technology should be able to be deployed using weather balloons at various altitudes, and should be open-sourced so that every nation on the earth can deploy them simultaneously. This alone would ensure that we won’t have to suffer the harmful effects of ‘Global Warming’ for decades, leave alone centuries. If enough money and effort is put into these projects, we can have a solution inside next five years at top, and reap the solution’s benefits before the end of the decade. This is what needs to be done on priority two, just after the first priority of getting ‘Net-Zero’.

I believe I have given enough for everyone to think about today. In the next part of this series, I’ll discuss AI.

Take Care,

Fatal Urge Carefree Kiss

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