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Albedo 0.39
Mar. 3rd, 2023 11:33 pmThe month of Mars has begun, and I've attacked it like an angry bear (or maybe a bear on cocaine, to reference the contemporary weird movie). Every waking moment is spent plowing through work, finishing my psychology degree, and starting the climate science degree, as I knew would be the case. I have completed all the essential readings for the final unit of my psychology degree, even though it is only the first week, and have made a solid start on the first assignment (due next month), which is on the social construction of individual identity. Also like an angry bear I'm engaging in a strict dietary and exercise regimen (with control days of course), which acts as a bit of a mood stabiliser as well as having obvious physical health benefits. It is, of course, all symptoms of a type of situational driven dysthymia, functional and despairing I fight the ills of the world without and within, in recognition and acceptance that this is just part of my innate temperament rather than developed character, even if "anxiety and depression are inevitable symptoms of awareness and care", as my friend Robert Baker wrote to me last year.
The new climate change science and policy master's degree at Wellington University is looking fine, with the first trimester covering climatology, political economy, economics, and environmental law. Reviewing the material there doesn't seem to be any enormous surprises in content or assessment, and the quality of the lectures and reading material is excellent. By now everyone who is remotely capable of evaluating the science must know that global temperatures are increasing, that it is overwhelmingly caused by human activity, and the rate of change is dangerous. It is worth reconsidering Mark Lynas' summary from fifteen years ago on our degree-by-degree march to climatic disaster. An overlooked snapshot of this is the Earth's albedo, the proportion of the solar radiation that is reflected back to space. In 1976 the composer Vangelis released an album called Albedo 0.39 - which was the value for Earth at the time. It is now down to 0.3, primarily because there is less ice and snow covering the surface. As once quipped, climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our time - literally nothing else is more important. Sadly all too few realise how bad the situation is, and how divorced the world's ruling class is from this reality. As Herodotus observed: "This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power."
The new climate change science and policy master's degree at Wellington University is looking fine, with the first trimester covering climatology, political economy, economics, and environmental law. Reviewing the material there doesn't seem to be any enormous surprises in content or assessment, and the quality of the lectures and reading material is excellent. By now everyone who is remotely capable of evaluating the science must know that global temperatures are increasing, that it is overwhelmingly caused by human activity, and the rate of change is dangerous. It is worth reconsidering Mark Lynas' summary from fifteen years ago on our degree-by-degree march to climatic disaster. An overlooked snapshot of this is the Earth's albedo, the proportion of the solar radiation that is reflected back to space. In 1976 the composer Vangelis released an album called Albedo 0.39 - which was the value for Earth at the time. It is now down to 0.3, primarily because there is less ice and snow covering the surface. As once quipped, climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our time - literally nothing else is more important. Sadly all too few realise how bad the situation is, and how divorced the world's ruling class is from this reality. As Herodotus observed: "This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power."
