As I was racking my bike outside the pool where I mostly get a daily swim, a fellow member congratulated me on my green commute. By not driving a car, he pointed out that I was keeping that much greenhouse gas out of the environment.
While I appreciated the encomium, geek that I am, I had to point out my riding kept me from burning two miles worth of gasoline. but I was about to head into a pool containing 100,980 gallons of water, heated to 82 degrees, and kept at that temperature day and night, winter and summer, for the comfort and convenience of a relatively small percentage of our small New England town.
Oh, and the water heater uses coal.
At that point my neighbor looked about to cry at the realization, so I didn't continue with the calculation of about 2 tons per year of CO₂ emissions.
My recent posts were about the complexity of identity. In these upcoming posts, I'll explore the complexity of decision making and how it's amplified with group decision making. Identity will work its way in again, but not right away. You may see it in the wings waiting for a proper cue to center back.
For a start, I'm going to explore three coincidences. Three things have shown up at the same time. Are they related? If they are, so what?
To start, I'm much more interested in how our cognition processes these coincidences than I am in what the coincidences mean. At some point, I have children, a grandchild, nieces and nephews, and their cohorts, who may or may not have better or worse lives as a consequence of how we respond to these questions.
Please push back at me hard and passionately if you judge me wrong. All each of us has is our best judgment. I encourage you to be forthright and therefore, transparent with your identity. And be anonymous you if that's what calls you. It will all be useful information for the exploration. We can model the global discourse here.
Incidence one: Carbon dioxide absorbs and transmits heat at a greater rate than other atmospheric gasses. Eunice Newton Foote 1850 https://www.climate.gov/news-features/features/happy-200th-birthday-eunice-foote-hidden-climate-science-pioneer
Using glass cylinders, each encasing a mercury thermometer, Foote found that the heating effect of the Sun was greater in moist air than dry air, and that it was highest of all in a cylinder containing carbon dioxide. She wrote, “The receiver containing this gas became itself much heated—very sensibly more so than the other—and on being removed [from the Sun], it was many times as long in cooling.”
https://www.pbs.org/video/but-how-does-carbon-dioxide-trap-heat-behfhz/
Incidence two: Atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by more than 45% since 1750.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/264699/worldwide-co2-emissions/
Incidence three: Global surface temperatures have risen by 1⁰ Celcius
These are highly specific pieces of information that have shown up together. Next post. How to look at information from the perspective of our Associative and Sequential processors.
As noted, my goal here isn't to solve the problem or even to convince you of a point of view. I'm aiming at a systematic cognitive approach to examining: What is it? What do I do?
Warm regards,
Francis Sopper