Smokey days and orange suns
I woke up yesterday to see that the sunlight is pale and orange as light streamed into my kitchen. I went for a drive to get some parts for a project I was working on and I saw the pall of smoke hanging over the horizon, dimming the sun. I replaced my sunglasses with my regular glasses and kept driving.
It looks cloudy, but that is all smoke. That stuff hanging there in the sky is plant food, and I'm breathing it. I have lived in Salt Lake City now for 10 years and I have never seen it this bad. The sun has been a sort of orange color all day for days. The shadows are blue. There are no kids playing out in the parks. I see people running here and there for exercise. And I flash on a weather report I saw that said that the long range forecast is above average temperatures until at least August 2019.
This smoke we're getting is a result of at least 17 fires burning in California, one of them being the biggest in the history of California. We also have a few fires here in Utah to round things out. I find it interesting that rain has been so reluctant to come to California, too. We all need rain out here in the west.
I look now on the "wealth" we've created and I wonder, "Is there any way to make money without destroying the earth?" Much of this damage is attributed to climate change caused by historically high levels of carbon dioxide in the air we breathe. This is due to the fuels we use to run industry, and in turn to the reluctance we have to change those fuels to something more efficient, something that won't kill us along the way.
I have just finished building out my basement. I see the things we put in our basement and all of the energy and effort that goes into each and every thing. I see the new houses being built in my neighborhood and all the new construction along my route to work. All of that requires energy to produce. Not just in the manufacturing process. That is really just the first order on the shop floor.
People commute to work in cars and trains and even some on motorcycles. Every day, we make this commute. Every day, we make this commute on roads. Many of those roads are paved with concrete. The buildings we live in and work in have foundations and floors of concrete. We make more concrete than just about anything else in humanity. Concrete alone contributes 5% of the carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere. Just changing that dynamic would help to reduce the carbon dioxide in the air.
There appears to be a human race to extinction. The earth is getting warmer, to be sure, but the smoke in the air is particulate matter, fertilizer, and those particles will attract water as condensation. The smoke from the fires may actually have a cooling effect that has been underestimated. That will eventually lead to rain. That rain will release energy and cool things down a bit more through evaporation. The smoke is white and will also bounce energy back into space. The clouds formed from the airborne particles will bounce light back into space, too.
I would not be surprised to see that all the other life on earth have something to say about current trends. There is also evidence that seaweed is an even bigger carbon sink than we had previously estimated. New estimates suggest that seaweed alone sequesters about 173 million tons of carbon every year, as the seaweed dies and floats down to the bottom of the ocean. That's equivalent to the CO2 production of the state of New York. It is estimated that 11% of all seaweed production is sequestered this way. It doesn't seem like much, but the oceans cover the majority of the planet, so that 11% is really 11% of a very large number.
Scientists have also seen a "greening effect" as a result of an increase in carbon dioxide in the air. According to this article at the NASA website:
An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries led the effort, which involved using satellite data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instruments to help determine the leaf area index, or amount of leaf cover, over the planet’s vegetated regions. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States.
So while it may be easy to feel a bit down about all this smoke, I tend to think deeply about these things and look through to all the possible ramifications of such events. I think that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I remind myself that all systems seek a state of equilibrium.
Yes, global warming is not so hot, as in appealing. Yes, fires not that great, but historically speaking, these fires are probably par for the course on a geological time scale. Yet, life exerts influence on a very large scale here on Earth. We're tiny compared to the tenacity of life.
This isn't to say that we shouldn't change our ways. This is to say that there is still time for us to do so.
Write on.
Slogan by @tecnosgirl
Plan B for Humanity
A basic guaranteed income in the context of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
A sort of political movie review: Star Wars: Rogue One
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A short but growing list of people I admire, who have helped me, and/or influenced me, my thinking and/or my posts:
- @taskmaster4450 - The Age of Abundance is here
- @scottsantens - The Age of Universal Basic Income is here
- @gric - A very cool artist with some interesting perspectives
- @gringalicious - great writing, cooking and photography
- @luzcypher - for teaching me about how gift economies work
Uncomplicated article. I learned a lot of new things. I signed up and voted. I will be glad to mutual subscription))))
Start writing some cool stuff and I might just follow you. Get on @theSteemEngine and show us what you got!
I heard about the fires in California as I have relatives there. The smoke reaching Utah has this happened before? Here in our country the worse that I could remember is ash fall from a volcano that erupted. The ash traveled with the typhoon that caused it to reached across the country.
This has happened before, but nothing like this since I moved here. And as I mentioned, fire was actually more common before the industrial age. So we're decreasing the incidence of fires, but now they're bigger and badder.
It's pretty sad that we don't do more to stop the destruction of our planet. If the majority of nations doesn't put any effort into fixing the dame that is done, we'd be looking at a very grim future I think.
Perhaps. But we're really lousy at predicting the consequences of our actions. In the 50s they were predicting another ice age. Look how wrong they were? What if all this smoke is a harbinger of another ice age as the clouds and smoke bounce more light into space and cool the planet?
When air is warm, it can hold more water. So as the atmosphere warms up, it takes up more water, and that becomes rain. The water cycle is a natural thermostat for the planet and with each cycle, it can cool the planet, too.
I don't think anybody really knows what will happen next. We're good at making educated guesses as long as we're educated.
Smoke can sure hang in the air for long periods of time . Here in Texas each spring we have about a week of similar days with smoke coming up from Mexico when the farmers down there are burning off the fields prior to planting their spring crops. Those day are definitely days for being inside.
I'm surprised that kind of pollution wasn't addressed in any of our treaties with Mexico.
It only happens once a year for a about 4 or 5 days, not really worth a treaty in the grand scheme of things when there are more important issues to be discussed I am pretty sure.
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Well, thank you. Very much appreciated.
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Thank you. Very much appreciated.
I keep thinking there should be some feasible way to channel floodwater from the sections of the country prone to that ... and put it in the reservoirs out west where the drought has become literally dangerous. If they can pipe oil from Alaska, it seems to me there should be a way. And a leak in that won't just ruin the environment.
I know. It's expensive ... and possibly an engineering nightmare. But we've put men on the moon. Surely we could do this.
It's not just expensive. It's very energy intensive. There are actually huge pumps that suck water from the Colorado River and huff it over the mountains surrounding the Los Angeles basin.
I'm thinking that if Elon Musk can bore holes for transport of people, he can do the same thing for water, only, for water, they can send it through the mountains, saving the cost of elevation.
There is one other point. The deep south is loaded with water. It is so loaded, that if you removed that water, the crust would rise by about 1200 feet. If we put that water on the Rocky Mountains, we could lower the mountains enough to let the big blue H go by. Then the rain and snow would actually hit more of the southwestern US.
I know, I'm a dreamer. But that is how big things are done. Musk is a dreamer, too.