My apologies ahead of this article I wrote today. Cold reality seems to have gripped my spirit this morning on a subject I consider quite important. So here goes...
Alaskans lighting the snow on fire... what gives?? We should remember that in addition to glacial melting, on the bottom of the ocean floor resides another vast quantity of methane gas slowly cycling upwards through the hydraulic salinity "cyclone streams" pouring out of the North Atlantic's sea beds. As it enters into the surfaces of the ocean it than transpires into the atmosphere to add to the CO2 load held in the air which, of course, then heats everything up.
Humanity has already reached the tipping point as the earth is heats up evidenced by major weather events across the globe. These events would include all the fire conflagrations which have followed the seasons this past year as they have moved from South America's fires into North America's devastated west lands. Without checking (I'll let the reader do this) I assume this is also occurring across the seas from India into Russia. Then there are major weather events caused by global warming like coastal flooding, wind storms, the dying off of animal and insect populations, the movement of warm latitude flora northwards into once colder areas, the rapid changing of the coastlines where most populations live, etc and etc.
The point being, we tend to be optimistic against the streams of negative reality, so we hope our current and future technologies might be able to capture these new sources of raw energy to utilize it in a way that is nurturing to the earth. How that occurs I have no idea because even though you can break gas down its residual gases still must be "recycled" in a way that isn't harmful to the environment.
My last observation: The earth has always gone through periods of warming - as we are witnessing now. Sometimes it is a prolonged period before it goes back into a "winter sleep" or ice age of some kind. What makes this warming event unusual is that the warming period mankind is experiencing is based upon anthropocene events (e.g., "Man Made events"). As such, a "warming earth" in response to mankind's industrial efforts to provide food, clothing, housing, and transportation makes it all-more-unusual-and-worrisome in its after effects. Usually biologic life dies off in the extreme cases, while at other times it morphs evolutionally into something else. Whatever the case is we won't know because we won't live long enough to see this environmental vs. biologic evolutionary life cycle. Those events take millions, tens of millions, and even hundreds of millions of years to produce.
Which is why religion becomes important to many, as we understand ourselves to be temporary life-events which come-and-go with whatever evolutionary opportunity presents itself. But for the spiritual person, we understand we are part of a much larger cycle of life occurring all around us. For now, the age of Homo Sapiens has been occurring well over the past several hundred thousand years (250,000 BC? earlier? 600,000 BC?). Eventually something else transpires and our race will change again. We know this as the "cycle of life" and relate to it through a faith that usually says, "Whatever the event, our God is present with us, even unto death itself."
But the unkindness of this thought is that the world's industrial revolution has been so successful that we have succeeded in displacing our biologic record sooner than later. Again, perhaps with a global embrace of "solving earth-warming events", mankind might outlast itself. But from what we've seen and read in the most mechanized civilization on the planet, America, this hope is a fiction and does not seem to reinforce that the effort required to solve massive global warming domestically, let alone internationally. Interestingly, lesser mechanized civilizations like China and India are attempting to make greater strides in environmental legislation - but out of necessity because of the high atmospheric smogs covering their large cities whose populations are choking down and ingesting atmospheric wastes. The health effects on both citizen and nature has been immense. America too, has these events going on in it - it just isn't being talked about in the press which has become victimized by a growing society of "fake news" or, "post-truth", adherents.
The point is, we've gone past the point of no-return in global population growth. Eight billion people is a lot. Within 30-50 years the earth will hold 12 billion and rising unless global events remove this growth pattern. What we know is that population grown is becoming unsustainable as it cannibalizes its resources leaving none for future generations ahead of itself. But no worries, what the earth doesn't kill off in weather events, plagues and pan virus epidemics well. It won't require massive wars to kill each other off for dwindling resources like drinking water and green spaces to grow food. Nope, we'll be helped along in our destruction by the events we have unknowingly set in place - and have kept in place - through ignorance or dismissal.
As such, I rest in the knowledge that the Lord is there to guide us into life-filled, physically and spiritually healthy directions. However, it is to our destruction when we ignore this divine guidance by marching to the beat of our own music. The bible does illustrate this life lesson in repeated cycles described as "sin" throughout its Old and New Testament journeys. As much, to those faithful to the God of Creation, we seek to listen and obey to His instruction to remember our caretake of this fragile earth from which so much blessing has been reaped and from which so much hope is derived.
Peace,
R.E. Slater
August 15, 2018
Related Topics - The Amazing Story of Oxygen
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