Sony Diaries #989: on Climate-Change

When the business community gets involved in the business of combating climate change (primarily because it is in their best interest to do so), you know that things ail get moving in the right direction. Self-interest is a huge motivating factor. (from the Globe and Mail, December 12, 2015).

December 15th.

Sony Diaries #840: The Guelph Quarry, a short lesson in Geology, and how our existence on earth is but a a blink in eternity

the abandoned quarry  on the lands of the Old Reformatory in Guelph, mined by prisoners starting in 1820. The height of this exposed face is at least 200 ft high. the arrow points to a fossil (with water bottle for scale).

a marine fossil embedded in shale or sandstone.

The above fossil is an example of a marine specimen fossilized in stone created in an ancient tropical sea. Southern Ontario used to be close to the equator, and was covered by a warm tropical sea. Over the hundreds of millions of years, sediment was deposited on the sea floor, trapping and burying fossils such as this one.

The Silurian Guelph formation outcropping in the quarry face is primarily well-bedded dolostone containing many fossils including tabulate corrals, brachiopods, crinoids, and large cephalopods on the quarry floor. This rock is part of the Silurian reef barrier. ("Geology and Land Use Between Guelph and Hamilton: a Self-guided Tour", by W. Cheworth, P. Martini, et al. Revised Feb 1997).

The Silurian Period occurred from 443-416 million years ago, the third period in the Paleozoic Era. During this time, continental land masses were low and sea levels were rising. Most of western North America (e.g., Alberta's Tar Sands) and large parts of eastern North America were covered by a shallow sea. This meant rich shallow sea ecosystems with new ecological niches, extensive reef building,  and the first signs of life beginning to colonize the new estuary, fresh water, and terrestrial ecosystems. The latter part of theSsilurian Period saw the evolution of sea animals into land creatures.
Earth is said to be 4,500,000,000 years old. Early primates showed up 60,000,000 years ago, the great apes showed up (Family Hominidae) 20,000,000 years ago, human predecessors showed up 2,500,000 years ago, and anatomically modern humans came into existence 250,000 years ago.
AND, just 215 years ago, the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800's started changing the climate so that in another 200 years, this planet may be unlivable!!

gay rights equals human rights, and other no brainers

Here's another no-brainer: stricter gun-control measures, the more the better.

Here's another no-brainer: the concept of karma. You've got your water cycle, carbon cycle, ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust, etc. Different shades of karma.

And here's a biggie: climate change, or is this just universal karma working it's wonder. 200 years of industrialization and planet rape will do that to you.

Still waiting for karma to work its magic on the world's three monotheistic religions.
Karma's a bitch.

Cooling the earth, one shower, one dirty dish at a time.

The reality of climate change is grounded in science and the cause and effects are now firmly established. It's a daunting reality of a terrifying magnitude. The problem is the perception that there isn't much that individuals can do, and that this is a problem for governments and big corporations to resolve.

One doesn't have to be a Gates or a Buffett to make a difference in the lives of other people; one doesn't have to be an oil company to make a difference in the natural environment. A personal effort may just be a drop in a bucket but it's also true that an ocean is made up of many drops of water. 

The following are two observations on the minimal use of water, and the ramifications if such an attitude were adopted en masse.

In many parts of the Philippines, where adequate potable water is an issue, here is how one takes a shower, either with a shower head or scooped from a barrel using a tin can. 

You get just enough water on you to produce a lather from your soap. As water goes down, you vigorously rub as much body area as you can to get water to it. This could be a slow shower trickle but the tin can method is preferable since you can direct/splash the water to specific parts of your body.  To moisten the soap, you dip it in the tin can of water instead of wetting your body again. You use vigorous scrubbing to clean your skin, instead of water pressure. Finally, you rinse with the same slow shower/tin can pouring accompanied by scrubbing to wash away the soap. The key here is that cleaning is accomplished with scrubbing, and not water pressure. 

While you're at it, use this time to meditate by being mindful of your actions, being aware of every splash of water, every rub, every stroke. Try doing this in the dark as well, to heighten the awareness.
Contrast this method with our usual way of taking a shower as in this shower-head commercial.

I observed this as a member of the Mono Mills United Church, a typical country congregation whose members are mostly seniors or younger who grew up with parents traumatized by the Great Depression. Roast beef, spaghetti, and BBQ chicken suppers in our church basement to raise badly-needed funds are communal affairs that every one looks forward to.

This method of washing dishes may already be familiar to some people but here it is. Once again, the key is scouring off every visible trace of food, soaking the dishes in the first sink filled with hot water, very dilute bleach, and a trace amount of soap. Use a washcloth to wipe off the last trace of food particle, then rinsed in the next sink filled with hot water. Dishes are drained on a rack and air dried, if time and space permits it.

Note that there is no running water involved in the process. One session could easily do the dishes from a group of 50 people, glasses and utensils included. The more people are involved, the merrier.

The key to conserving our resources and saving our planet is doing what you need to do, not what you want to do. This idea of minimalism, if carried into other areas of our lives and pursued intuitively as second nature (an acquired behaviour or trait that is so long practiced as to seem innate), by as many people as possible, will be like billions of drops in the ocean.

Morbid Signs

Record high temperatures, delayed or absent monsoon rains, and wildfires in Australia,
Record high temperatures in the Philippines, where even the locals find the days very hot,
The colour brown running up the middle of the U.S. from Texas to North Dakota,
The Greenland icecap disappearing completely within a decade,
Wars for resources being the source of almost every conflict in the world from the Rwandan Genocide to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the Indo-Pakistanistani standoff in the Himalayas,
The Himalayan source of these major Asian rivers: The Yangtze,  Mekong,  Ganges, Yellow, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, and Salween projected to practically dry up by 2035...

What is one to do?
Read on up in the next blog entry.

why do we do this to ourselves?

In a heavy hitting article in The Globe and Mail, akin to a slap-in-the-face, ice-water-in-your-pants,  wake-up shake, NASA scientist James Hansen pins the last three years' freak weather pattern on climate change. He hasn't even  mentioned the two massive power blackouts in India, and from my personal experience, the rising temperatures in the Philippines that even the locals are complaining about, as well as the massive rains in the Philippines in the last few days.)

And yet, locally, here in Guelph, and repeated thousands of times across Canada, in the mornings, we line up our cars at the Tim's drive-through (also at McDonald's... surely deserves positive mention at the next shareholders' meeting), 10-plus cars in a row at a time.

I have watched (while waiting for my bus on Gordon and Kortright) an empty store inside with a car lineup outside. One could park their car, go inside to grab something, and go back to the car in less time than it takes to go through the drive through. And this happens in, arguably, one of the most environmentally-conscious cities in Canada.

Why do we keep on shitting in our own backyard. There is no Plan B for Planet Earth.

Last night, while lining up for entry into the  theatre, I overheard one woman, recently retired and keeping active, talk about the university courses she is taking in Santa Monica, Californa. She has taken 20 sessions so far, and she flies in from Guelph, Canada for every one of those sessions, obviously spaced months apart. What's the carbon footprint on this course?

We don't have to stop participating and  indulging in our preferred activities. But surely, we should be using our supposedly highly-evolved brains to find alternative ways of going about our business.

Please read my book review on "You are Here".