The Atmosphere

As I experience the brown covering the mountains here in LA and hear perpetual dry coughing at school and on the bus I thought I'd write a bit about the atmosphere related to Regeneration.

__________________________________________________________

 The essential issue with the atmosphere is that it is one of the main reasons life in general can exist on Earth and all natural and industrial processes increase the burden on its’ ability to provide life to humans and nature as we know it.  The atmosphere acts as a storage facility for all of the positive life giving gases we as humans enjoy. Our actions on the ground ultimately affect the reactions in the atmosphere. The more energy and resources we consume the more byproducts of those processes float up into the air. Unless we find a way to curb consumption of those products or at least sequester those harmful byproducts we will quickly find that the atmosphere is not so positive for forms of life that require more oxygen and nitrogen rather than carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and methane. 

Considering Nature as Both the Model and the Context

To remediate the damage done to the atmosphere we need to consider how the atmosphere operates and our place within the natural processes. The atmosphere sequesters and takes in our natural byproducts like co2 from respiration and provides them to life forms that need it like plants and vice versa. 

From that example provided by nature we can extrapolate that it would be beneficial to treat industrial processes like the atmosphere treats nature and repurpose our byproducts that could be harmful to the atmosphere into something safe and even beneficial. One example, using co2 again, would be to pump waste co2 from coal burning facilities into algal bio-reactors, this is “robbing Peter to pay Paul” in a sense because co2 would be formed as an inevitable byproduct somewhere along the line, but at this point we need to explore all beneficial avenues. 

The atmosphere in cooperation with plants also fixates nitrogen into the ground for storage and use as a plant nutrient, in the same we can begin to fixate chemicals that are undesirable in the atmosphere into forms that are benign to the atmosphere, although expensive in the Peleotechnic context this would be an invaluable process in a Neotechnic future. 

Managing Storage as the Key to Sustainability

           In order to save mankind from its’ own destruction we need to come up with novel ways to store our harmful byproducts. For too long we have used the atmosphere as a means of sequestering and spreading out pollution in a way that is slightly harmful to all instead of very deadly to some. In order to continue forward with human progress we must come up with more novel ways of managing what we put into the atmosphere.

           As mentioned above the atmosphere is itself a storage facility of many beneficial and harmful gases, when a tipping point is reached, or before that point, we must find a way to sequester gases harmful to the atmosphere in novel ways. The oceans sequester co2 as well as the forests and plant life on Earth. 

           A current Paleotechnic solution is to begin pumping carbon back into oil wells as a way of increasing yields and reducing the levels of co2 in the air. This solution may take care of a part of the problem in the short term however there is no plan for preventing a calamity such as a rupture. Therefore what is necessary is a system of careful GHG storage combing all of the natural faculties on Earth. Co2 exists as a natural byproduct of natural processes on Earth it is necessary for life and can not be destroyed so the only solution is management.