Stop the World! I Want to Get Off!

Well summer is definitely here after being somewhat delayed in October with cool rainy weather.  The cicadas have their evening session of about half an hour of amazing noise, then abruptly turn off.  I have been in places where they go all day and have to admit it is worse than living in the city.  Over -stimulation causes the brain to shut down when receiving constant noise, and deadens the senses.  Apart from the cicadas, and sometimes the frogs or birds, I live in a very quiet place and my awareness of sounds expands. I can hear the crunch of gravel from guests cars when they are 200m away.  I can hear a distant sound of a bird and think it is the telephone and dash inside in some Pavlovian reaction.  It’s not all good.  When the wind is light and from the inland, I can occasionally hear traffic noise when a truck uses its exhaust brake down the hill to the tee junction, but the most intrusive noise of a few decibels is from a certain type of motorbike I shall describe as HD, whose riders glory in inflicting an insane amount of rumble on the rest of us, even those 4km away.  Japanese bikes purr like kittens and go like rockets.  It isn’t hard to make a superbike that doesn’t create a sonic boom.

This morning I heard what I thought was a catastrophic malfunction of the washing machine.  I rushed into the laundry to find a cicada underwater in the sink hole fighting for its life as the spin cycle started pumping water.  Perhaps you have never heard a cicada underwater.  Quite alarming.  I rescued the poor greengrocer and sent it on its way.

Which neatly leads me into my topic of world financial collapse.  Yes, it’s very likely to happen as more and bigger countries join Greece in the basket case category, and I’d give it about 4 years.  Having dealt with that, on to global climate change.

It’s happening, it’s accelerating and Australia is in the front line and likely to suffer some of the most severe effects.  Methane is about 20 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse agent.  New Zealand has introduced a ‘fart tax’ on livestock to address this issue.  Well done.  Australia under the leadership of Tony Abbot has been in reverse gear about any issue concerning climate change, and had been furiously issuing licenses to dig up coal before it isn’t worth anything.  Australia’s case on methane is more complex as termite farts, not livestock, emit more methane.  I look to Turnbull for creative ways to tax termites.

But the really, really bad news is that a mind-boggling amount of methane is stored geologically as hydrates in a sort of methane slush.  Semi-frozen in deep cold ocean waters and in the vast tundras of permafrost.  And what has activated recent releases of methane, on land by violent explosions producing craters in Siberia, and in the frigid seas of the Arctic by gushing areas of bubbles?   Increasing temps in arctic regions.  Oh oh, I think that is the definition of a positive feedback effect.  I hope I am wrong, but methane releases could overwhelm the effects of CO2 emissions with catastrophic results.  The only lever we have to pull is on CO2  emissions because we may not be able to have any effect on methane.

Another big worry is the state of the oceans.  Increasingly polluted with garbage, steadily warming, species fished to extinction, exotic species invading new territory via the pumping of ship ballast and other means, and increasing acidity.   There is also the possibility that ice melt from Greenland and Antarctica could dump enough fresh water into the oceans to change the prevailing currents.

On land there is every chance of the southern half of Australia becoming a desert to rival or surpass the sahara and southern Europe might go the same way.  As mountain glaciers disappear, the summer water supply to many regions dries up.  The Ganges, the rivers from Tibet that water south-east Asia, California and whole countries like Peru will be devastated.  Peru’s capital Lima ‘enjoys’ 41mm of rain a year.  Just about enough for the residents to brush their teeth once a week.  That is hundreds of millions of people.

So I am thinking of leaving Earth and have been looking a real estate options elsewhere.  Mercury is a bit close to the sun and a lot of 30+ sunscreen may be required.  Tidal forces have locked the planet so that one side is always to the sun, and the other always in darkness.  But there might be a possible inhabitable region on the terminator.  No, not a robot, the line between light and darkness.  There may even be craters with permanent shade to contain water as ice.  Venus is Earth’s sister planet alike in size and orbit.  The ugly sister.  Surface temps enough to melt lead, Co2 atmosphere dense enough to crush you, and it rains sulfuric acid.  The searing temps due to the greenhouse effect.  On the plus side, land is cheap.  Then comes Earth, but I’m looking for the quite life.  Mars has always been touted as a tourist destination, and plenty of water has been found, I just don’t think I could handle a pink sky.  Jupiter is a write-off as it doesn’t even has a surface, and the gravity would turn my sagging features into pendulous embarrassments.  But perhaps its moon Europa has an ocean.  But leave the beach towels at home, it is under many kilometers of ice.  Saturn is the poster boy of the whole system with magnificent rings and the view is a great seller in real estate.  But it has no surface either and with wind speeds reaching a thousand kilometers an hour, home insurance would be hard to come by.  The best bet would be the moon Enceladus which might have a bit of water under the ice, but it’s getting so cold out there, I don’t think I would be game to stick my toe in.  Uranus and Neptune… forget it.

Bugger!  The options out here are so much worse than I have got here.  We’re just going to have to make the best of with what we have got here.  And really look after it for our kids and grandkids.