Robotics and AI: more jobs and a more human world?

Much of the western world has operated in a way to saddle itself with large numbers of unemployed people with no prospect of job security or of doing anything that seems really worthwhile. Making money and making sure you enjoy yourself, if possible not at other people's expense, seems to be the ethos of a spiritually arid age.

Whatever our spiritual beliefs or indifference to the spiritual aspect of reality it cannot be denied that meaningful work is essential to the well being and balance of most people. It is an important role of a government to steer the country it governs towards an economic structure which generates meaningful jobs and careers. This means encouraging industries and enterprises, state or private, which create value-added products and services i.e. products and services which bring in the money needed to finance social services and investment for the future, and above all, to provide people with lifelong, meaningful employment, either with one organization or a variety of employers, ensuring that adequate training is available.

Here are some schemes which could employ a huge number of people, paying them good wages to do useful work. All are compatible with or driven by the growth in robotics or artificial intelligence.

   

• Robot ships to clear up the oceans (briefly described in my novel 2077:Knights of Peace).This could provide a great opportunity to generate both IT and heavy engineering work, bringing back to life many a derelict shipyard (e.g. like those on the UK’s northern coast – Tyneside etc.) and creating entirely new ones. It could not only provide worthwhile employment and stimulate local economies but solve the burgeoning problem of microscopic, non-digestible plastic particles entering the marine food chain, including sea birds.

  

• Roads and pavements, millions of miles of them world-wide, need ripping up and replacing with smooth, high quality surfaces. Consider the market for a robotic machine that stops over a crumbling section of motorway or clearway, say, pulverises the existing material and replaces it with a smooth, tough, durable surface within an hour. The market would be mind boggling and  a boost to the engineering industry, employing humans to design, develop, test, manufacture and market the machines as well as operate and transport them.

• Laying of new roads and railways. Again, a robotic machine that could lay down strips of finished road by the mile would have a vast market worldwide. Imagine the sales potential of China and India alone as well as  the investment and employment opportunities for western economies.

• Footpaths and small roads over mountains, rough terrain and marshland are especially useful in rural and tourist areas. Teams of skilled individuals equipped with robot-based systems could lay these down more efficiently than at present. The market would be enormous in the developing world, allowing small remote communities to share in the growing prosperity of the wider world as well as allowing medical aid to reach them more quickly. Hopefully, food aid would be less in demand as the communities prospered.

• High tension overhead power cables need repairing rapidly so any robotic help could reduce the down-time. As completely new national grids are installed there will also be a big market for technological assistance in doing this rapidly. Again there would be a boost to employment as new infrastructure is manufactured, installed and maintained. As with all infrastructure the more functional and efficient it is the more smoothly the economy runs and the higher will be the quality of life of the people.

• Robotic repair systems for use on sewage pipes, drains, water supply lines, gas pipes and buried cable conduits, especially in metropolitan areas, are already being used but there is no doubt plenty of scope for innovation. The demand for such technology in the developed and developing worlds should be enormous, with more employment opportunities in both.  Local people would be needed to operate, supervise and complement the robot repair technology and there would be many jobs in design, manufacture, commissioning and installation.

• Caring for our fellow humans when their physical or mental faculties require this is primarily a personal task, requiring great kindness, skill and dedication by gifted individuals. If robotic devices could be developed to help the carers at a practical level (e.g. fastening buttons or handling soiled clothing) this would allow them to spend more time on personal interaction and transform the nature of care work.                                                                                                                                                                                
  
  
• Drivers displaced by driverless vehicle technology could be trained to help, both practically and at an interpersonal level, infirm or disabled passengers at the start, during and after their journey. Taxi drivers, for instance, often have good interpersonal skills which could be put to good use providing they are not burdened with excessive demands for political correctness or following of petty rules and regulations.                                                                                                                                    
• Automated telephone menu systems are widely resented when they are inhuman (made more so by pretending to be otherwise), complicated and inflexible. There is a place for these but they need to be kept behind the scenes as well as improved. There will be a need to employ a new version of the switchboard operator able to interpret the customer's needs and match it to the right department and support them if they get disconnected. The operator would in turn need plenty of training and an up-to-date knowledge of the organisation's structure, which in practice changes continually faster than the IT (including telephone menu systems) designed to service it. In large companies or departments the operator would need support staff. Artificial intelligence could possibly be used behind the human front, to assist the operator                                                                                                                             
• Surgeons could be greatly assisted by automated image recognition of X-rays, tomographs, f-NMR scans etc. to identify or eliminate disorders and diseases. If this approach proved very effective it would increase the turnover and complexity of work by medical secretaries and other ancilliary staff while at the same time dealing more effectively with many more patients. 

• Medical research and frontier surgery could be greatly assisted by block chain technology. This could, e.g., give simultaneous access to research and pioneering treatments world-wide, before they had been published in academic journals. When a patient's life is at stake he or she may wish to sanction the use of experimental treatment where the risks are higher. Medical technology could advance more rapidly as geographically scattered workers are connected to the same block chain system.

                                                                                     

• Lawyers could be released to make better use of their talents by employing artificial intelligence to scan routine legal documents. This could lead to more secretaries and other posts requiring interpersonal skills.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
• Business services could be aided by artificial intelligence, leading to a simpler, faster, less burdensome process of setting up a small company. This could result in a growth in self employment and make possible enterprises driven by creative individuals less hampered by paperwork.                                                                                                                                               
• High street banks are closing local branches and customer counter positions at an alarming rate as automated menu driven customer stations are brought in. It could be that if small businesses (see above) multiply there will be a greater demand for bank staff able to advise them and connect them to the appropriate sources of finance and expertise.
  

 Blockchain technology, briefly mentioned above in a medical context, enables people or devices in different departments or areas of work, interrelated in some way (so that each is affected by what is happening elsewhere in the organisation or project or operation, even when spread over different parts of the world) to instantly monitor real-time data anywhere in the system. This  will no doubt lead to new areas of human work not even envisaged today.

If I, a layman, can think up a list like this imagine what a dedicated think tank could come up with. So my hope is that readers may pressurise their MPs, senators, congressmen, local government officials, aid agencies and church leaders to move in this direction. Or plant ideas in the minds of existing and potential entrepreneurs, or, even better, start up their own companies to develop and launch such technology or use existing technology more imaginatively.

Robotics, machine learning and neural networks could be a way to help the developing nations while saving the developed ones from their past sins and improving the quality of life  of their own citizens.

John Sears

author

2077 AD

reach me at
cosmik.jo@gmail.com

Blogging for Peace on Earth: Solar powered green communities for refugees

Blogging for Peace on Earth: Solar powered green communities for refugees: Since last updating this post in 2017 the global refugee and migration problem has worsened. Most recently there has been the war between Ru...

Lessons from Marx and Lenin

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, edited by Friedrich Engels, was published in English in 1888. The original document appeared in 1848 and went through a number of editions and translations. It inspired the Russian Revolution and attacked the rampant free-trade world economy which had already emerged, while the ruling class which grew wealthy through it was labelled the bourgeoisie.

Marx, a Jewish intellectual, was writing at a time of rapid de-Christianization of Germany by German Idealism, the Hegelian Dialectic and Friedrich Nietzsche, a nihilistic philosopher who denied and was hostile to the very values emanating from Jesus Christ and led many Germans to conclude that strength of will was all that mattered. The forces at work in the 19^th century set the scene for both Nazi and Communistic totalitarianism and probably set off the tragic events leading to World Wars I and II.

To quote, Marx considered that

 the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles...freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, in a word the oppressor and the oppressed.

 Each time the fight ended either in a re-constitution of society or in the common ruin of the warring classes. During the late nineteenth century, largely as a result of industrialization and global free trade, the opposing sections of society were the bourgeoisie (the oppressor) and the proletariat (the oppressed), and he maintained that the time was ripe for a new struggle that would lead to a new social order: communism. The proletariat would be victorious, religion would be exterminated and all would live in peace and harmony, a brotherhood of man.

 The Manifesto’s attack on the bourgeoisie reads like that of many a modern columnist on the global capitalist system of today, which again is based largely on free international trade, with little regard for the social costs of production moving according to market forces, be these of labour or goods or raw materials, and in which everything in life is reduced to a commodity or assigned a monetary value. Even debt itself has been made a commodity in the form of collateralised debt obligations and futures.

Christianity is attacked by Marx because it has allegedly colluded with the ruling classes in subjugating and exploiting the lower classes for monetary gain, while at the same time he implicitly recognises the reality of the sacred and holy – e.g. in talking about money and the way everything in life has been given a price he says 

...all that is solid melts away, all that is holy is profaned


Yet the means he proposes for providing what he must have  regarded as a more just state of affairs  happens in a material world with no spiritual dimension and God either does not exist or is irrelevant, being replaced by man. Morality itself becomes meaningless other than as a set of man-made rules. It is impossible to declare anything morally wrong by any absolute standard if there is no holy source of morality.  Yet deep down he obviously believed in the notion  of holiness without wondering where it came from or how it was to be sustained when its source was ignored. 'Without God anything is permissible' (Dostoevsky). Those who killed 100+ million  people for the sake of  Mao Zedong, Marx and Lenin were breaking sacred laws  laid down  for the benefit and flourishing of human beings. They also led to mass starvation in Stalinist Russia. It was all done for the good of humanity. Similarly with cruel and lethal medical experiments on pregnant mothers and disabled inmates of Nazi concentration camps, or even medical experiments in the UK, for example, in the wake of World War II. It was all done in the name of human flourishing.

  In attempting to sweep away all the church institutions, which undoubtedly did sometimes depart radically from the teachings of Jesus Christ, Marx ignores the provenance of Christian values, i.e. what happened during the life of Jesus and within a decade or so of His Crucifixion: over 200 prophecies of the coming of Christ centuries in advance, the parables and commands of Jesus Christ recorded by His contemporaries, the empty tomb, the widely reported Resurrection appearances, the supernatural nature of Christ's image embedded in the recently re-dated Shroud of Turin image, the vision of Saul, the first conversions of gentiles, the Pentecost, His miracles and those of the apostles and the persecution by the authorities. The Romanized institutionalized  church and its ramifications, which Marx despised,  did not begin until almost three centuries later. Even then, with all its faults, you only have to take a look at the non-Christian world of the time to see the difference. There is also much archeological evidence and historical accounts by
Josephus, a Jewish historian at the time of Christ, and other non-Christian contemporaries.

After the failure of communism, which caused mass starvation under Stalin in the Ukrain (part of Russia) in the 1930s, a new kind of Marxism developed in Germany after the end of World War 2. It began in the Frankfurt Institute and attracted left wing intellectuals from around the world, and became known as the Frankfurt School, embodying such ideologies as critical race theory, queer theory and gender ideology. The Best 30-Minute Explanation of Marxism I Have Ever Heard - YouTube 

 Marx seems to be correct in seeing that every economic order goes to a state of maximum efficiency while simultaneously sowing the seeds of its own downfall. This probably applies to any system of organizing human affairs, since nothing in life is static: circumstances change. Even the societies which claimed to be working towards the communist ideal collapsed from within. But he failed to realize that although a society may wish to redistribute bread more fairly, it cannot live by bread alone. Reality is not a machine., an economy and society with no soul. Well over 100 million died in the last century (more than in all previous history) because of this mistake, this departure from basic divine wisdom, as human beings were systematically killed in the name of atheist values or the human gods which always fill the spiritual vacuum left behind when the real holy source of reality is ignored by society. 

What Marx and his disciples failed to realise is that no human being or group of humans  can decide what is good by reason alone apart from God: there must be humility, justice, love and truth, and these do not come from genetically expressed protein molecules, which themselves ultimately originate from God,  but from submission to our Creator made incarnate in humanity through the Christ.  See also 1984 revisited: collective postmodernism

 Today, like Marx, we decry the folly and greed of bankers and borrowers. To the extent that a new system is needed perhaps it should lie somewhere between the unfettered market-based one of today and a Christian socialism, more internationalised in some respects, more localised in others. Or maybe something we cannot even envisage. Whatever system emerges let’s not forget the lesson of history: every man, woman and child should treat each other in accord with this command from our Saviour: ‘...love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love each other.’ John 13:34. A command that must be held sacred in all the institutions of humankind as well as individuals. 

In western society we are subconsciously aware of this command largely through habit. However, this awareness needs to be refreshed and kept alive  by a nucleus of genuine, radical Christian believers. The Spirit needs to be consciously cultivated and encouraged throughout society in order to make it more like heaven on earth.

For this reason I believe that prayers and Christian symbols need to become part of public life. The values of the Sermon on the Mount are not likely to be adhered to rigorously but awareness of these through church going and the occasional media event can only be a good thing in re-establishing the trust and mutual respect needed for society to be viable at all. Recent problems with social media illustrate this.

Returning to the Soviet experiment I recently came across a quotation from V.I.Lenin made when he was close to death, in 1924. He recognizes too late that scientific atheism is unable to bring about net social progress:

I have deluded myself. Without doubt, it was necessary to free the oppressed masses. However, our methods resulted in other oppressions and gruesome massacres. You know I am deathly ill; I feel lost in an ocean of blood formed by countless victims. This was necessary to save our Russia, but it is too late to turn back. We would need ten Francis of Assisi.

As communism began to fail in Russia (e.g. millions of Ukrainians starved to death under Stalin in the 1930s) a ne form of co'munism was spawned by intellectuals in the west, starting with the Frankfurt School in Germany. This took various forms but they all involved creating  victim classes exploited by oppressors. Terms such as 'woke', 'critical race theory', 'white oppression', 'gender ideology' and 'politically correct' began to invade the language in the western world. The idea was to break down western societies by creating divisions and categories divided into exploiters and vicitms. Ultimately, a new elite would take control.

Today it looks as though Christianity is returning to its true foundation of infinite redeeming love generated by the Resurrection and flowing through the whole of creation, bringing about justice by restorative love rather then retribution. Franciscans are definitely in the ascendant and Christianity as a whole is spreading fast in the world as a whole and even beginning to revive among intellectuals in western countries corrupted by  promiscuity, obsession with pride, desanctification of Holy Matrimony,  identity politics, mass killing of unborn babies and a return to a loss of faith in truth itself. Hopefully it won't be too late to avert upheaval and collapse (End Times?) Perhaps a New Heaven and a New Earth will come sooner than most have expected, preceded by a Revival.

 John Sears

 updated July 2023

 Seven Themes of 2077 AD

1.      A fanatic attempts to sabotage the Global Federation’s mission  to blow up an approaching asteroid on course to destroy the Earth, having decided the human race deserves to die.

2.      Terror attacks on civilians are prevented by the Knights of Peace employing non-violent marshall arts and deception technology.

3.      £xplosives and weaponry world wide are targeted for non-violent destruction using novel methods (e.g. explosives eating bacteria).

4.      A popular musician renounces atheism after an epiphany and starts a new Christian monasticism which spreads over Earth and then to Mars.

5.      ‘Dominophiles’ seeking to persuade others to commit violence are ‘impounded’  and spiritually reformed over 6 months, then released whatever the outcome.

6.      A love quadrangle develops  between the 4 main characters and new social structures based on biblical principles.

7.      Removal of orbital debris using scoopships and plastic waste in the ocean systematically removed using roboship.

Gotham Books

November 2022

Actions by Individuals to reduce global warming, water use & waste

 

 Project AIRGLOW

  Actions by Individuals to Reduce GLObal Warming, water use and waste

Don’t overdo it or make life tedious. If we all do a good proportion of these things the global problems of waste disposal , carbon emissions and water shortage would diminish without the necessity of drastic state enforced measures, which could do more harm than good.

MMT = mining, manufacturing and transport, all of which consume energy and emit pollutants such as CO2. Most new products entail all three.

NB: The less water you use the less pumping power is expended getting it to your home

Showers: shorter, less frequent, cooler, manual not power >>> Saves on water & load on national grid. Buy & fit more efficient shower? NB this would mean disposal of old one & MMT for the new one

Showers: fewer installations in the home  >>>  Less MMT

Baths: fewer, cooler, shallower. Use dirty water for garden  >>> Saves on water & load on national grid

Washing machine: avoid buying a new one >>>  No MMT

Washing machine:  lower temperature, less rinsing >>> Less electricity & water. Longer lifetime of machine means lower MMT

Avoid having a spin drier at all  >>> No  MMT. No waste. No electricity.

Avoid using spin drier so frequently >>> Less electricity needed.

Central heating: set lower and to manual >>> Less electricity or gas

Cooking: lower temperature, shorter cooking time >>>  Less electricity or gas

Lighting only when needed >>> Less electricity

Avoid using dish washer so much >>>Less electricity, less water, longer lifetime, lower MMT

 Avoid buying dish washer >>> No MMT

Cook at lower temperature, for shorter periods, less often >>> Less gas & electricity. Cooker lasts longer, less MMT

Lawn mower: avoid buying new one >>> No MMT

Avoid buying a new vehicle where possible >>> Less waste disposal , less MMT

Buy smallest, lightest vehicle practicable >>> Less MMT, less waste disposal at end of life.

Walk instead of drive where practicable >>> Less emissions, longer life of vehicle means less MMT

Travel by taxi or public transport rather than private car >>> Avoids need to buy a vehicle or reduces environmental cost of ownership

Computers & mobile phones: keep as long as possible >>> Less waste disposal . Less MMT

Clothes: wear longer, repair rather than dispose of >>> Less waste disposal. Less environmental cost of manufacturing new ones

Gardening: use power tools less, water garden sparingly >>> Less electricity & water used

House alterations: restrict to essential >>>  Less MMT, less electricity (e.g. for power tools)

John Sears

cosmic.jo@gmail.com

Waste from the Western World

We are all aware of the huge amount of waste generated in the West but in our daily lives it is easy to forget this. In 2011 I came across some startling data in the seminal book Natural Capitalism: the New Industrial Revolution by Hawken, Lovins and Lovins (Rocky Mountain Institute, 1999), which I can thoroughly recommend.

The information below is for the USA but other developed countries need not feel sanctimonious!

The data will be an understatement because the world-wide industrial-cum-consumer engine will have grown a lot in the intervening 20 years, although some efficiency and recycling measures will have been taken.

On average the US citizen (1990s) generates 1 million pounds of waste per year. In the nation as a whole the annual wastage includes:

• 3.5 billion (3,500,000,000) pounds of landfilled carpet

• 3.3 trillion (3,300,000,000,000) pounds of carbon dioxide

• 19 billion pounds of polystyrene peanuts (I’ve no idea what these are but this is not a joke)

• 28 billion pounds of food discarded at home

• 710 billion pounds of hazardous industrial waste

• 3.7 trillion pounds of construction debris

Add to this the waste generated abroad on behalf of US citizens and subtract the 2% of waste which is recycled (mainly paper, glass, plastic, aluminium and steel) and we get 250 trillion pounds of US resources transformed into nonproductive matter each year.

One can only quake at the thought of these being scaled up globally. A third world country typically produces less than 10% of these amounts per person, yet they all aspire to develop western-type economies, including China and India with a combined population of over 2.5 billion, which is 8x the US population. Since the above data was compiled China's GDP has grown to be roughly equal to that of the USA. India has also greatly increased its output of waste.

Can anything be done about it? Yes, but it needs a change of mindset to make a real impact and with it the whole economic system and infrastructure would need to be transformed. International trade, agriculture, manufacturing, service industry, energy production, transport and education will have to change, since these all generate waste either directly or indirectly. It i. s also linked to the global warming problem.

The current coronavirus  pandemic has demonstrated the wastefulness of our way of life, especially in the West. Just a few months of reduced consumption and  transport have made visible impacts on the environment, which is encouraging. New methods of recycling plastics are being talked about and put into practice. There is also a growing awareness that nature itself is able to heal some of the injury we have inflicted. We need a few leading nations to cooperate to make a big difference.

see also Story of a canned drink

John

cosmik.jo@googlemail.com

Climate change checklist

My belief is that climate change is likely over the coming decades, as it always has been, and that we should prepare for it by taking measures to protect us from floods, droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes and prolonged heavy snow, in largely unpredictable locations. This is doubly important as the population grows and becomes concentrated in cities, which are more often than not either next to the sea or a lake or a river or an avalanche-prone mountain. International action in my view should take the form of a globally resourced service using the latest technology to rescue victims of extreme events, providing them with new, attractive habitation, schools, colleges, leisure facilities, cultural resources and places of worship. Agriculture using the latest technology (e.g.AI driven bots to assist in planting an eco-friendly variety of crops) could be linked to the new community. There are endless possibilities.

However, we need to retain humility and recognize that effects known only to the Creator could occur. Two major climate change periods since the beginning of civilisation (i.e. over the last 10,000 years) have occurred in the last 1,000 years (The Medieval Warm Period, 950-1250 AD and the Little Ice Age, 1300-1800), long before fossil fuel power stations. The biosphere, like the brain-body system, is orders of magnitude more complex and subtle than anything we can simulate or even imagine, so there is always room for the unexpected. The types of solution exemplified above should be given priority over 
too many wind turbines and solar panels, which  have their own ecological costs and carbon footprints as well as causing socio-economic disruption. They have their place in particular locations (e.g. rooftops and remote areas) but the priority should be to keep the national grids secure and able to meet growing demand.

The list below is a reminder of the complexity of the problem of predicting climate change. Please contact me (John Sears) via

cosmik.jo@gmail.com

if you think it needs modifying in any way.

Human activity. Carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning and methane from livestock farming are playing a role  in tipping the global balance towards warming rather than the cooling we would expect according to the Milankovitch cycle (see below). However, the extent to which carbon dioxide is a major cause is obscured by the observation (my understanding as a layman) that the records over geological time show that CO2 levels lag behind rather than precede mean temperature trends upward. It could be that as temperature rises due  to other factors the CO2 held in sea water solution will be released, thus reinforcing the the upward trend in temperature. There is also a growing body of opinion among scientists that some of the IPCC reports are unrealistic owing to some climate change research following from a paper which, several decades ago,
unintentionally cited incomplete tree ring data. It is also true that the grid of meteorological stations covers only a small proportion of the earth's surface.

Radiant energy output of sun. This has increased by around 25% since earth was formed, i.e. over more than 4 billion years. (See Improbable Planet by Hugh Ross.) Remarkably, life was able to start, evolve and yield civilisation despite increases in luminosity. Very small variations occur over decades and centuries and bear some relationship to the number of sunspots (which is related to solar activity). The Little Ice Age  included  a period of low sunspot activity, with no sunspots observed over 1650-1700, when the mean temperature was lowest.

Milankovitch cycle. The amount of sunlight reaching the earth varies according to the changing shape of the earth’s orbit (eccentricity), the tilt of the N-S axis and the precession of this axis. The crucial factor appears to be the amount of sunlight falling on the northern hemisphere in any one year as a result of these factors.  Milankovitch (1970s, Serbia)  showed that the coming and going of ice ages over the last 600,000 years was due to these factors.  If there were no other factors we would expect to be entering another ice age now, instead of a warm period.

Heat from below the crust. The biosphere has more heat going into it than can be accounted for by the sun. The difference is believed to be due to  radioactive decay in the earth’s core. (See also Ocean Heat Sink below.) If this suddenly changed it could cause global warming or cooling.

Gravitational and astronomical effects. There are  gravitational influences on climate which could become large in certain situations (chaos theory shows that very small events, like the fluttering of a butterfly, can potentially have dramatic effects, such as a storm on the other side of the world). The gravity exerted at the earth's surface varies very slightly with time and position due to inhomogeneities in the crust, mantle and core. Even small changes in these factors could potentially set off major changes not allowed for by present climate models. Miniscule changes in the orbit of the moon and planets would have huge effects (E.g. If a large asteroid caused a perturbation in the sun-moon system. Jupiter's motion is also crucial to the stability of Earth's orbit). There is also some evidence of effects at solar system and galactic level - this is being researched.

Atmospheric composition. The importance of this arises from the way it affects the absorption and reflection of radiation coming in from the sun or being reflected back upwards from the earth’s surface. Carbon dioxide is  responsible for the greenhouse effect – it acts like the glass in a greenhouse to trap in heat. Methane is also a greenhouse gas, much more powerful than CO2 but also much less prevalent and much shorter lived. The man cause of global heating is water vapour and clouds also play a major, but uncertain role.

Plants.  While alive these take in carbon dioxide from the air, thereby cooling it through the reduced greenhouse effect. But as they decay they give it out again,  but over a longer period. Large areas of trees affect the climate not only in this way but also by their moistening effect on the air. The Amazon rain forest appears to have a pivatol role in determining the global climate.

Silicates, which are the main constituent of the earth's land mass, absorb CO2 when made wet by precipitation. This has been a major factor during the history of life oin earth.

Animals . The main effect of these is due to the methane from  their defecated waste and rotting carcasses. Methane produced in this way is more of a problem than automobile greenhouse emissions as livestock herds grow in response to the westernization of diets in China, India etc.

Microscopic life. Bacteria and spores living in  land, sea and air sometimes affect rainfall. E.g. spores in the ocean can be whisked up into the atmosphere by strong winds and dispersed. Here they act as condensation nuclei for the formation of the water drops and thence clouds. Insects can reduce the balance of combustible debris in a forest and this in turn means fewer and smaller forest fires emitting CO2.

Clouds. The type of cloud, its thickness and its coverage affect the amount of sunlight striking the earth’s surface and the % of radiation reflected back to its surface instead of radiated away into space. These factors have been and still are a problem in creating climate models.

Aerosol pollution. Particles in the atmosphere from both natural and artificial sources can have a marked effect on the cooling or warming of the atmosphere. This can either be direct, by absorbing or reflecting incoming solar energy, or indirect by altering the type and distribution of clouds. The size, shape and colour of the particles affect the way they reflect, scatter or absorb radiant energy, Major sources of aerosols include volcanoes, forest fires, aircraft and large cities. Black and brown soot from the recent forest fires, especially in the arctic regions,  can cause large mainly reflective areas (e.g. snow) to absorb instead of reflect solar heat.  See this NASA source and a video of forest fires in the northern hemisphere (2019).

Atmospheric convection.  Heat from the ground boils up the air and the convection currents (i.e. wind) produced distribute warm air over the planet and also affect the cloud type, amount and global distribution. This in turn affects temperature, rain and snow.  Hurricanes, tornadoes, gales and the jet stream are all driven by atmospheric convection.

Ocean currents. The bulk of the heat in the biosphere which we inhabit is stored in the ocean and it is the global currents in the sea (e.g. the Gulf  Stream) which determine the global patterns of temperature in the air over the sea. Changes in these could dramatically affect the climate in some regions. E.g. Europe and the UK would be dramatically cooled if the Gulf Stream is stopped by sea salinity changes due to melt water from the arctic. The recent discovery of methane emissions in the Russian arctic could have a big effect on the global thermohaline  circulation (Scientists Discover Record Methane Emission in the Russian Arctic - The Moscow Times). 

Ocean heat sink. As the net amount of heat input to the planet from the sun and from the earth's core (the latter being due to the decay of radioactive isotopes, e.g. U and Th) changes some is absorbed by the atmosphere and some by the oceans and the relative magnitude of each type of absorption is not clear, making it difficult to predict the nature of the resultant climate change.

Methane and water vapour.  As the climate warms it releases large bubbles of methane trapped in frozen deposits under the ocean or in tundra.  This causes further warming. It is 21x as powerful as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and is produced by a certain kind of bacteria. It is much shorter lived than CO2, i.e. just over 10 years as opposed to over 200. Water vapour from aircraft would have a major warming influence if it accumulated in the troposphere due to increased air traffic.


Polar ice caps. Both Arctic and Antarctic  ice sheets reflect large amounts of radiant heat from the sun back into space. Small reductions in area cause significant increases in the amount of heat absorbed from the solar heat reaching the earth’s surface. Similarly, the greater the ice coverage  the more incident radiant heat will be reflected.

Snow cover. As with snow in the polar regions the snow settled on large mountain ranges like the Himalayas and the Alps affects the percentage of solar radiation reflected or absorbed by the earth’s surface.  The recent melting of arctic ocean ice sheets is causing large volumes of moisture to accumulate in the atmosphere which could potentially come down as snow, forming thick long lasting coverings over N America and Russia in the winter. If these don't melt in the summer we could even be on track for the next Ice Age. The time scale is, as usual, uncertain but could be much shorter than previously thought - a hundred years or less, rather than thousands.

Melting glaciers.  When a glacier melts it not only leads to possible flooding but reduces the area of the planet which reflects incident sunlight away from the surface, i.e. the ground retains incident solar energy instead of reflecting it  back into space. When melt water flows into the sea it dilutes the concentration of salt in the seawater and this has a major effect on ocean currents which in turn affects the climate. (The more salt the denser the water.) Warm ocean currents melting Antarctic glaciers from underneath could cause serious changes to sea level globally.

Sea ice. As with glaciers and snow, melting of sea ice (icebergs) reduces the % of sunlight reflected back into space. It also reduces the salinity and hence density of seawater, which affects ocean currents which themselves affect the distribution of heat in the oceans.  However, melting icebergs make no difference to sea levels.

Volcanoes. Eruptions from these inject huge amounts of sulphur dioxide into the air and, like carbon dioxide and methane, this produces a greenhouse effect. The ash and dust from eruptions also affects cloud formation and directly blots out sunlight.

Carbon dioxide absorption by weathering of rocks. About 1 billion tons per annum of atmospheric carbon dioxide is absorbed by weathering of silicate rocks. This compares to 30 billion tons emitted by civilisation. Such absorption is associated with the plate tectonic cycle which has been important in keeping air temperature constant over hundreds of millions of years.

Carbon dioxide historical perspective. The current CO2 concentration is 400 ppm, close to a historical low. It was about 760 ppm some 34 million years ago, when the Antarctic ice sheet started to take its present form (Eocene - Oligocene extinction event). It even appears to have reached 6,000 ppm around 500 million years ago. (NB If it fell much below about 150 ppm plant life could not be supported.)

Carbon dioxide absorption where ice has melted. Land and sea exposed by retreating ice is likely to be recolonized by plants and plankton which absorb carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. The surface areas involved are large and this could be a major factor in offsetting the heating effect of the reduced albedo. Conceivably it could even cause global warming to come to a halt or even reverse. 

Meteor  impacts. Hits by large meteors can have global repercussions including climate change. If a large enough object hit the earth it would of course cause a mass extinction event, like the one which wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

Cosmic rays.  These  can also affect cloud formation , since the particles which make up cosmic rays can cause nucleation of water drops.  There does seem to be some link between them and average temperature/rainfall.

There are already more than 65 million displaced persons worldwide and it is my belief that the only way to rescue, resettle and offer hope to these people is to set up an international rescue operation. With the technology available today and inspired leadership it should be possible to do this. This approach would, in my view, be much superior to the socio-economic disruption in both poor and rich nations throughout the world caused by seeking the kinds of carbon emission reductions being proposed by green extremists - measures not justified by the large uncertainty that carbon is the chief problem.

John Sears
author

 2077: Knights of Peace

Reach me at

cosmik.jo@gmail.com

Twitter account

World view changes: 1920 vs 2020

WORLD VIEW CHANGES  1920 vs 2020

Concept	1920	2020
Atoms & molecules	Growing awareness of granularity of matter	Quantitative models Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger
Elementary particles	Unknown	Discovery of protons, neutrons,  electrons, bosons, quarks etc.
Electromagnetic forces	Maxwell’s equations, radio waves, X rays, gamma rays soon	Radar. Attempts to unify with nuclear/gravitational force
Nuclear forces, strong and weak	Unknown	Structure of nucleus; fission & fusion; H bomb & atomic bomb
Gravitation	Newtonian model	Einsteins’ curved space-time model
Special & general relativity	Einstein formulates both by 1915	General awareness; public misinterprets, relativism.
Quantum theory	Unknown	Non-duality, superposition of quantum states, entanglement
Big Bang cosmology	Lemaitre suggested. Steady state theory was a rival.	Original idea confirmed by observations
Cosmic fine tuning for life in the universe	Unknown	Accepted & calculated to dozens of decimal places
Cosmic choreography for life on earth	Unknown	Progressively revealed & reluctantly accepted
Geophysical  choreography for   civilisation on earth	Unknown	Progressively revealed. .
Goedel’s theorem on limits of logic in determining truth	Unknown	Used by computer science
Viruses	Inferred but not seen	Visible as a living organism with structure & intelligence
Bacteria	Observed since 1676	ditto
Cells	Thought to be bobs of jelly	ditto
DNA	Discovered (1889) but role not known	Role in genetics/epigenetics still being revealed
Genetics and epigenetics	Simple hereditary rules emerging  (Mendel etc.)	Increasingly sophisticated. Epigenetics advancing rapidly
Intelligence & purpose in nature	None, wholly deterministic & random processes	Unimaginably complex with quantum effects globally
Living cell	A blob of jelly observed since 1676	Intelligently organised like a factory
Interconnected biosphere	Dismissed by most scientists as folk lore	Widely accepted
Emergence of Humanity	Unknown	Unknown
Out of body experiences & near death experiences (NDEs)	Rare, not believed by scientists	Widely reported  (c.5% of population)
Biblical archeology	Very little	Frequent new discoveries
Turin shroud’s supernatural properties	Unknown except for reverse image in 1898 photo	Confirmed by peer reviewed science; not certified by Pope