Care for the Earth
By Charles Rush
October 13, 2013
Genesis 41: 15-24 and Genesis 41: 27-36
[ Audio
(mp3, 7.5Mb) ]
was in the middle of doing some chores the other day and things weren't going well, so I was grumpy. I get in the truck, start backing up, can't see out of the rear windows, start with a speech to God about my damn family that leave my truck a mess. I hop out, fling open the back doors to see what the problem was. My rear windows were covered in little yogurt hand prints, little works of art really, if you sort of stood back and let the light filter through. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the criminals… Yes, my commitment to disciplined deportment begins to break down and frankly, I think both of them know that there is precious little that I wouldn't do for these two partly because and I know that because of the way that they both rest their heads on my shoulder so confident that I will take care of them, so confident that they can simply…. Rest. I'll come back to these two in a bit.
Professor Harvey
Weiss has been excavating Tell Leilan in Southern
Syria for over a decade now. It was a city that was on the edge of the Akkadian empire from 5000 BC until 2200 BC. It was a city with 3,000 years of history that
you've never heard about. This was the cradle of civilization, the area of the
world where we first cultivated wheat and other grains that made possible
domestication of animals that led to the development of other technology that
eventually produced our first city states.
We have many
archeological examples like Tell Leilan. Professor
Weiss excavated it, found that it was a small farming village that grew over
the next millennia and by 2,200 had walls, a developed commercial life, and
probably supported 30,000 people. [That made it the Manhattan of the ancient
world- huge] Then suddenly, it is abandoned. After 3000 years of occupation, it
is abandoned. Why? There is no evidence of war. Was it disease? What was it?
In the past
decade, we have developed the ability to analyze soil samples better and in
some cases, like that of Tell Leilan, we have
determined that the cause was sustained famine. Professor Weiss determined that
Tell Leilan had such a sustained drought that all the
earthworms died right around 2200. It turns out in the ancient world, the
operative number was 5. If you had 5 years of drought, everyone fled and
civilization as you knew it there came to an end.
You may know
that similar speculation has attended the sudden end of the Maya civilization
in South America, and there are half a dozen other examples around the world,
several of which I've visited.
I suspect that
this explains the symbolism of Joseph's interpretation of Pharaoh's dream in
Exodus. Pharaoh dreams that there will be 7 years of feast followed by 7 years
of famine. He is greatly perturbed. I would assume that, based on bitter
history, 7 years of famine means that God (or Nature) is going to wipe
everything completely out.
I have to tell
you that it is very sobering to stand on these sites, to see all of the
intricate stone carvings and the fine temples that adorned these cities. You
see how big they are, and it is pretty easy to re-imagine the marketplace open
for business and people socializing, children playing in the alley ways. Day
turns to week turns to century 3000 years and then they flame out completely.
We don't have a
very good record of seeing catastrophe coming ahead of time and doing something
about it in advance to mitigate the social impact. No, we have dozens of
examples of civilizations that just disappeared because for a variety of social
reasons that died with them, they just weren't able to change in time.
Vladimir Romanovsky in Fairbanks, Alaska
where the permafrost line is in alteration. Romanovsky
worked for the Russians when they were building the Gulag on the permafrost and
he has been studying it ever since. [1] Permafrost,
just so you know, is ground that has been permanently frozen for two years or
more. There are places in Russia where it runs a mile deep near the Artic circle and even in Alaska it ranges from a couple
hundred feet to a couple thousand. What is happening in Fairbanks is that
sections of the permafrost are thawing and when that happens gashes open up in
the earth, sometimes rending homes and creating impassable crevasse in
neighborhoods.
Romanovsky illustrates his latest findings by comparing
measurements of the ground temperature from the lower regions of the permafrost
line to the surface. Usually what you find is that the bottom of the permafrost
line is the warmest. There is a natural geothermal heat that radiates from the
center core of the earth, and the temperatures get steadily colder as you get
to the surface. However in the past few decades, he has been getting warmer
temperatures on the surface which strongly suggests that the atmosphere is
actually generating increasing heat.
Romanovsky explained that this melting may actually contain
within it a multiplying effect as the thaw continues, particularly in the
active layer, that region of the permafrost that has melted and refrozen
annually for millennia. The active layer supports rudimentary vegetation such
as shrubs, lichen, and some spruce trees. But because the temperatures are so
low, when the seasons end, the detritus doesn't
actually decompose but is frozen, and it slowly gets pushed down into the
permafrost. If this layer were to permanently thaw, it contains a deep sediment of material that would rot and release
methane into the air in large quantities.
Methane is a
greenhouse gas that is actually more powerful than CO2. This principle appears
to be important in understanding climate change in our world. Because of the
complex multiple factors that interact with one another, slight changes here
can set in motion a chain of other resident reactions that can accelerate a
trend that is already happening.
She also paid a
visit to researchers on the Artic that are being
sponsored by the National Science foundation. In 1979, Satellite imaging done
by NASA estimated that the size of the Arctic ice mass was roughly the size of
the United States. At present, the perennial sea ice has shrunk approximately
250 million acres or an area the size of New York, Georgia, and Texas.
She interviewed
one of the main researchers on the project, Donald Perovich
who works for the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory of CCREL
whose are of interest is in solar radiation and sea ice. Professor Perovich uses a device called a spectroradiometer
(you don't need to know that I just like saying the name). It reminds me of the
movie "Back to the Future" where the eccentric scientist invents a
flux capacitor… the spectroradiometer measures
incident light (directly coming from the Sun) and reflected light (bouncing
back). Dividing the later by the former he factors the albedo
(literally the whiteness from Latin).
Hard pack ice is
intensely white. As such, the color itself tends to reflect back light keeping
temperatures on the surface cooler. Conversely, ocean water is blue, a color
that absorbs sunlight and thus heat. The two are nearly opposite of one
another. So as the ice melts into water, you are replacing one of the best
reflectors of heat with the worst.
Again, there is
a compound effect to the system. As ice spreads, it reflects more and the
temperatures on the surface drop adding more ice to the system. Conversely, as
ice melts more heat is absorbed by the water which raises the ocean temperature
and melts even more ice.
You probably
know that the overall temperature of the earth has varied quite a lot in our
long history. I was surprised to learn that the majority of the earth's history
has had no ice on either pole. However, there has been continuous ice through 4
glaciations that have lasted just over 120,000 years. We do not understand all
of the factors as to why we have seen these dramatic shifts in climate, but the
principal single factor is thought to be small orbital shifts in the Earths rotation around the Sun.
It was in 1859
that the concept of Global Warming was first conceptualized by John Tyndall,
the British physicist. He noted that oxygen and nitrogen were transparent to
radiation but that carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor were not. These
gases act like an insulating band trapping and storing heat. He, in fact,
coined a term we are now quite used to hearing the "Natural Greenhouse Effect".
As you know, the principal Greenhouse gas it Carbon Dioxide and Carbon Dioxide
is a by-product of burning Coal and Oil, which we have increasingly done since
the middle of the 18th century. Carbon Dioxide itself is a "persistent
gas. It lasts for about a century."[2]
That means that as it accumulates, it has effects for the future that we will
not see for decades to come. The concern about the planet is that forces could
be set into motion that will activate resident forces and accelerate a pattern,
such that by the time we will actually see the first consequences of these change it will already be too late to do anything
about it.
As you probably
know, we can do some rough measurement of greenhouse gases by studying the ice
cores in the poles that have small air pockets trapped that can be analyzed.
When you look back over the past 5000 years you see a remarkable consistency in
the concentration of greenhouse gases from the beginning of civilization to
Ancient Greece to the Hapsburg empire. Then greenhouse gases begin to rise
towards the end of the 18th century with the Industrial Revolution.
In 1780 CO2
was approximately 280 parts per million
By 1930 CO2was
approximately 315 parts per million
By 1970's CO2was
up to 330 parts per million
By 1990's CO2was up to 360 parts per million.
The rise is
steeper with more advanced burning of fossil fuels.
It is precisely
this steep rise in carbon dioxide and our responsibility for it that led Paul Crutzen, the Dutch Chemist and Nobel Prize winner, to write
an article in Nature a few years ago suggesting a change in the name of the
present era. At present, scientists refer to our era since the last glacier as
the Holocene era. Crutzen says we should give a new
name to the era since 1780 or so as the Anthropocene
era, the Human period, because, he argued, humans became the single dominant
force that shaped and influenced the total climate of the planet from then on.
As you know,
there is no consensus about what happens in the future. We are simply entering
unchartered territory and it is far from clear what implications actually
follow. In her discussions with climatologists, Elizabeth Kolbert
summarizes a couple areas of concern that they have identified[3].
One of them is
our general findings from the ice cores on the polar caps. One of the things
that they make clear is that our present era has been exceptional rather than
normative for Earth's history. In the Holocene era, we have been blessed with
exceptionally regular weather and exceptionally predictable weather patterns.
Over the long term of the Earth's history, dramatic shifts in weather have been
the norm and stable weather patterns the exception. Why this has taken place is
a matter of speculation, but this paradigm may well be significant for our thinking
on the subject of the implications of global warming.
I come back to
the notion of complex interacting factors that reinforce and escalate a trend
in a direction. One of the scientists that she interviewed used the analogy of
a boat. It may be the case, that the total system of the
Earth's climate work like tipping a boat. You can tip it and it will
swing back, tip it harder and it will swing back harder, but if you tip it
beyond a certain point, it flips over. It may well be the case that in the aggregate,
when enough resident changes take place, that you have
a complete reconfiguration of the total weather system. The study
of the ice cores suggest that such a reconfiguration is not only
possible but probable.
How would this
happen? No one exactly knows. But the scientist Konrad
Steffen gives a simple explanation of how weather patterns presently work
around Greenland and how they might be altered. As you know our Gulf stream
pulls water up from the equator that eventually runs into Greenland and then
pushes it down and back south again. As you also know, the weather pattern over
the Eastern part of the United States is interdependent with the Gulf stream.
Professor Steffen
explains that there are actually two forces that create the sea lane that is
the Gulf stream. Part of it is what is happening on those major ice masses like
Greenland. In the process of salt water freezing, the salt is actually pushed
out of the ice towards the exterior of the ice mass. That salt is heavy and it
makes the water heavier as it dissolves and this saltier water sinks to the
bottom of the ocean. That is one force.
The second is
related to the general drift of the warm water to cooler regions. As warm water
drifts northward, it cools and evaporates, which means it becomes denser.
Again, as it gets towards its northern terminus at Greenland this water too is
sinking.
As it does, it
creates its own pull on the warmer lighter waters in the Caribbean, so that the
overall process resembles a delicate but very powerful conveyor belt of ocean
currents.
Now what happens
if you add heat to this system? In the first place, the oceans would warm in
the south, only slightly, but as they did, this water is lighter and slightly
less dense, so it sinks less.
Secondly, if the ice melts then again, only slightly, but you are
dumping a large quantity of fresh water into the oceans. They become
less salty. They are not as heavy and do not sink as much.
At some point,
if these trends continue, it could have the effect of turning down the pump at
both ends at once and the sea lanes slow. But as they do, the weather above
them also changes. Theoretically, if the
sea lanes actually came to a standstill, some people speculate that what would
happen is a complete reconfiguration of the weather patterns… That would be
something of a tipping of the boat over.
So our cute
little story from the Bible might actually speak fairly powerfully and directly
to our situation. We keep going along on the same path without actually seeing
the ‘signs of the times' before us and we are quite likely not to see them
until it is too late.
And this is one
of those rare times when it might not simply be the case that our civilization
comes to ill, but my very granddaughters might quiz me late in life, “Papa, why
didn't you do something about this before the seas started to rise and all
those poor people that live on the coast were forced to rebuild their lives
with precious few resources? Papa, why didn't your generation think about what
they were doing?” Literally, in their life time, the consequences of our
collective inaction today will have a material impact.
The earth is a
precious and delicate instrument. In former eras, it was understandable that
people could think our actions couldn't have material impact on the
environment. It is just too big.
But now that we are many and more… Now that we can measure
and compute forward complex models. We have more and more signs in our dreams,
with greater specificity than any era of human history. Which
makes us more responsible.
And it is
personal. We think of stewardship, we all think of providing our immediate
families with a better world than the one we had. We all want to take care of
these people and that is a large part of why we ‘give back', we are investing
in creating a world of care for them. It is the right thing to do, the loving
thing to do.
And I don't want
to answer to these kids, questions of incredulity, questions
of disappointment. Neither do you. We've put this off for too long and now we
are about to burden our grandchildren and great grandchildren with our own
inattention.
We can do much
better than that. The solutions reside inside of us, even as they did for
Joseph. Let us pray that we break the cycle of not responding until the end has
come. Then as now, it is not just about knowledge but about moral purpose too.
As Jesus would say, ‘those who have ears, let them hear.'
