Comments by "" (@I_M_S-o4y) on "Gravitas: 5 Chinese companies to leave wall street" video.

  1. If “the race” against GW-CC is to be “won”, industrialization needs to be urgently and drastically scaled down and stopped. It is not about doing away with industry, but stopping industrialization. The economic-growth global model must be scrapped and less consumptive, locally-relevant, socio-economic models adopted. Without doing this, it amounts to trying to save the sinking ship of industrialized civilization, by merely wearing life-jackets of adaptation and mitigation, without attending to the cause of sinking.
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  2. Starting with the industrial revolution which enabled production of goods – and later services – on an unprecedented scale and rate, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) have been at the core of discoveries and inventions. These goods have provided economic or commercial advantage to the developer and producer, and often been used for military or political advantage. Over the decades, the focus of STEM has shifted from being human-benefit-centric to becoming the driver of industry primarily for economic growth and financial profit through trade and commerce.
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  3. As touched upon earlier, it’s one thing to be inconvenienced by a lack of romaine lettuce for a couple of weeks or higher coffee bean prices, but reports warn how climate change will continue to threaten global food security, to the point of triggering a worldwide food crisis if temperatures surpass two degrees Celsius.
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  4. Historically, Earth's climate has regularly shifted between temperatures like those we see today and temperatures cold enough to cover much of North America and Europe with ice. The difference between average global temperatures today and during those ice ages is only about 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius), and the swings have tended to happen slowly, over hundreds of thousands of years.
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  5. The measures needed to be taken for adaptation to forthcoming GW-CC situations and conditions, and for mitigating GW-CC effects are well argued. Societies and nations ignore them at unacceptable cost to future generations.
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  6. Speaking of larger-scale issues, global water scarcity is already happening more frequently. The Caribbean is facing water shortages due to rising temperatures and decreased rainfall; Australia’s dams may run dry by 2022 as severe wildfires increase and Cape Town, South Africa has already faced running out of water.
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  7. Undeniably, scaling down industrialization will cause economic distress to large numbers of people, due to denial of products and services, and job losses. But statistics show that even larger numbers of people – reportedly around 70% of 7.9-billions – have been doing without these same goods, products and services, and remain in endemic distress. While the distress issue is relevant and immediate, the species-survival issue is no less relevant, but it is arguably more important. Further, as the effects of GW-CC discussed above begin to impact entire nations and populations, social distress and conflicts will intensify and amplify across all social and economic classes, and drive societies to implosion and self-annihilation.
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  8. As researchers develop more powerful algorithms, ‘Sentient’ or other similar AI entities can develop more independence and along with it, a sense of volition. Such an AI entity will purposively strive to satisfy its needs, wants and desires, and develop aspirations. It will transcend from simple decision-making to develop a sense of determination and initiative. It will possess a psyche and consciousness, like a member of the Sapiens species.
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  9. Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, cloud forests are dying, and wildlife is scrambling to keep pace. It has become clear that humans have caused most of the past century's warming by releasing heat-trapping gases as we power our modern lives. Called greenhouse gases, their levels are higher now than at any time in the last 800,000 years.
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  10. While it is important to physically be present to impart such information, another front in the war on reversing climate degradation are the posters, signs and stickers that can be found across the city reminding everyone of what looms in our collective future should such warnings fail to exact real and significant action on everyone’s part to save our world as we know it.
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  11. With the advent of digital information technology, the volume of knowledge is growing at an exponential rate. In 2019 it was assessed that the body of human knowledge was doubling every 12-months. The growth of knowledge is linked closely with the volumes of data acquired or accessed, stored and processed, and in turn is connected to improved, and still improving, low-energy hardware and software. It is anticipated that the body of human knowledge will double perhaps every 12-hours in the not-distant future. [Ref.7].
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  12. The climate crisis threatens to undo the last fifty years of progress in development, global health, and poverty reduction, and to further widen existing health inequalities between and within populations. It severely jeopardizes the realization of universal health coverage (UHC) in various ways – including by compounding the existing burden of disease and by exacerbating existing barriers to accessing health services, often at the times when they are most needed. Over 930 million people - around 12% of the world’s population - spend at least 10% of their household budget to pay for health care. With the poorest people largely uninsured, health shocks and stresses already currently push around 100 million people into poverty every year, with the impacts of climate change worsening this trend.
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  13. We are a species which has promoted itself to the top of the evolutionary ladder of life, among the myriad life-forms on Earth, and claim uniqueness and primacy of intelligence. In an amazing act of self-certification, we have named ourselves as Homo Sapiens (Latin for ”wise man”). In most cultures, Man is believed to be at the apex of creation in the universe. The question today is whether humans are too ‘smart’ for their own good.
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  14. To pass the bill, every Senate Democrat must vote for it before it can be returned to the House for final approval. Without belaboring the subject, it is important to know that besides the usual backroom negotiations, there is a grassroots effort on the part of many independent individuals and activist groups urging senators to vote for passage.
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  15. As SciTech advances, it would be relatively easy to biologically and socially transform Sapiens, along with – perhaps unintentionally – creating a parallel society populated by AI-actuated machine robots, sentient humanoid (android and gynoid) robots, with autonomous AI-entities in control. Mayet Ligad Yuhico [Ref.2] has coined the term Homo Roboticus for such entities possessing phenomenal learning and cognitive capabilities [Note 2].
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  16. Even today, the most intelligent members of Sapiens – like say, members of Mensa International – cannot even peruse the enormous volume of knowledge being developed within and between multiple disciplines, leave alone study, understand and remember it for intelligent application.
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  17. Earth’s climate and ecology may shift to a different level of dynamic stability, but that will take millennia. The rate of change of this shift is small when viewed on a geophysical time-scale. However, if viewed from the time-scale of Life on Earth it is rapid, and viewed from a Homo Sapiens time-scale, it is disastrous. GW-CC is not in the future. It is already happening, and we are in the midst of the transition.
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  18. AI combines cutting-edge, cross-disciplinary SciTech, and will be some combination of STEMM and HASS; that is, a convergence of the hard and soft sciences. With intensive capital investment, AI will possess broad-spectrum applicability, enabling deep socio-political penetration.
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  19. These situations and conditions will inevitably overlap and reinforce each other. As inevitably, this will trigger social-economic-political crises, and intensify conflicts centered upon human survival essentials, namely, food-water-habitat, within and between societies and nations. Today, humanity is in the midst of “climate emergency”, which transcends national borders. It is the defining crisis of our times.
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  20. Use and consumption of the products of industrialization create further demand, which boosts the activity of these industrial subsystems, in cyclically increasing “loops” of consuming primary natural resources and generating waste.
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  21. Extremely rapid developments in AI are leading to fundamental changes in the way in which a large proportion of Sapiens live. Algorithms which are the core of AI, can already detect Parkinson’s disease and cancer, although this is expensive and therefore available only to a socio-economically privileged minority, when seen in the context of 7.8-billion Sapiens on the planet. Therefore increased longevity and improved physical and mental functionality for Sapiens individuals will be available only to the superior Sapiens.
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  22. Climate change is the long-term alteration of temperature and typical weather patterns in a place. Climate change could refer to a particular location or the planet as a whole. Climate change may cause weather patterns to be less predictable. These unexpected weather patterns can make it difficult to maintain and grow crops in regions that rely on farming because expected temperature and rainfall levels can no longer be relied on. Climate change has also been connected with other damaging weather events such as more frequent and more intense hurricanes, floods, downpours, and winter storms.
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  23. The so-called educated among Sapiens believes that the species is at the apex of the “evolutionary ladder”, having evolved from “lesser” species into becoming the best of God’s marvellous creations, with the divine right to use and control its environment for its own benefit. This belief fails to understand that Sapiens has co-evolved with other species, with inter-dependence.
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  24. 3D printing is a manufacturing technique of building a solid object by computer-controlled process of depositing/ joining material according to a 3D computer model. At present it pertains to inert objects. As techniques and processes improve, and AI gets integrated into systems and processes, mass manufacture of parts, components and sub-assemblies required for assembling any end product, will be possible without human intervention. Already, robots are independently assembling automobiles, etc., upto the roll-out of the end product. [Note 1].
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  25. Questioning authority becomes defiance of authority, so people take the easier path of acquiescence or supine acceptance of authoritarian coercion or fiat. They easily and unquestioningly submit to technological biological/genetic manipulation, and would even possibly further the policies and purposes of the controllers, by enforcing it on others who may not be so pliable. Even presently available science & technology (SciTech) makes eugenics technologically possible by differentially enabling or disabling different sections of people selectively, to create subaltern Sapiens societies.
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  26. The term global warming entered the lexicon in the 1950s, but didn’t become a common buzzword until a few decades later when more people started taking notice of a warming climate. Except climate change encompasses a greater realm than just rising temperatures. Trapped gases also affect sea-level rise, animal habitats, biodiversity and weather patterns. For example, Texas’ severe winter storms in February 2021 demonstrate how the climate isn’t merely warming.
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  27. For most of the Second Millennium CE onwards, humans in most societies have viewed the world around them as human-centric. This assumed “superiority” of humans over other forms of life and over all inert matter, puts Sapiens on a self-created pedestal as the acme of evolved life on the planet.
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  28. The cause of current climate change is largely human activity, like burning fossil fuels, like natural gas, oil, and coal. Burning these materials releases what are called greenhouse gases into Earth’s atmosphere. There, these gases trap heat from the sun’s rays inside the atmosphere causing Earth’s average temperature to rise. This rise in the planet's temperature is called global warming. The warming of the planet impacts local and regional climates. Throughout Earth's history, climate has continually changed. When occuring naturally, this is a slow process that has taken place over hundreds and thousands of years. The human influenced climate change that is happening now is occuring at a much faster rate.
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  29. The relatively new subject of Data Science is an IT-based inter-disciplinary convergence of theories, techniques and methods to model real-life phenomena, for knowledge-creation using data bases or large data sets. Data Science is about acquiring, storing, handling and processing “big data”. Recognition of its fundamental value may have prompted the quip, “Data is the new oil”. Data Science may be used for strategic decision-making in fields as diverse as military, intelligence, politics, business, commerce, communications, science, etc.
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  30. Social media is increasingly being used by interest groups to influence opinions and even mindsets. Misinformation, disinformation and false information, formerly psywar tools of intelligence agencies, are now being used for political purposes by shadowy actors. The world has moved into times in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal beliefs. Information, generalized as ‘data’, is being used to manipulate minds for commercial or political purposes, noting that the distinction between ‘commercial’ and ‘political’ is becoming increasingly blurred.
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  31. climate change, periodic modification of Earth’s climate brought about as a result of changes in the atmosphere as well as interactions between the atmosphere and various other geologic, chemical, biological, and geographic factors within the Earth system.
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  32. Since then, the amount of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases) in the atmosphere have steadily increased, taking a sharp jump in the late 1980s when the summer of 1988 became the warmest on record. (There have been many records broken since then.) But climate change is not a synonym for global warming.
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  33. AI capability is developing very rapidly, and a recent study shows that “AI can learn to identify vulnerabilities in human habits and behaviours and use them to influence human decision-making”. [Ref.5] Put another way, AI can influence and modify human behaviour. This idea when extended implies that as AI’s capability develops, an AI entity (Roboticus) can insidiously influence, even train, Sapiens on how and what to think.
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  34. Development of SciTech and applying it to industrial production processes calls for application of scientific methods for management of STEM. Thus, adding the ‘M’ of management to coin ‘STEMM’ may be appropriate.
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  35. Climate is often defined loosely as the average weather at a particular place, incorporating such features as temperature, precipitation, humidity, and windiness. A more specific definition would state that climate is the mean state and variability of these features over some extended time period. Both definitions acknowledge that the weather is always changing, owing to instabilities in the atmosphere. And as weather varies from day to day, so too does climate vary, from daily day-and-night cycles up to periods of geologic time hundreds of millions of years long. In a very real sense, climate variation is a redundant expression—climate is always varying. No two years are exactly alike, nor are any two decades, any two centuries, or any two millennia.
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  36. Some changes (such as droughts, wildfires, and extreme rainfall) are happening faster than scientists previously assessed. In fact, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the United Nations body established to assess the science related to climate change — modern humans have never before seen the observed changes in our global climate, and some of these changes are irreversible over the next hundreds to thousands of years.
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  37. Some of the present capabilities of cutting-edge or emerging technologies are demonstrated as pilots, but not yet scaled up or fully implementable. Others are available at a cost, but most are secret (e.g., military-use technologies developed by USA’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)) or protected by patents or IPR for commercial or business purposes.
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  38. Sunlight shines onto the Earth's surface, where the energy is absorbed and then radiate back into the atmosphere as heat. In the atmosphere, greenhouse gas molecules trap some of the heat, and the rest escapes into space. The more greenhouse gases concentrate in the atmosphere, the more heat gets locked up in the molecules.
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  39. One such individual was seen outside the entrance to the Dirksen Senate Building holding several homemade climate crisis signs that he changed periodically. His objective in being there was to intercept staff members on their way to work with his informative signs hoping they in turn would relate the messages to their respective senators. One poignant sign among the many on offer called upon the “Young Senate Staffers” reminding them of the generation climate crisis they face and for them to consider it as a meaningful if not imperative personal challenge.
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  40. However, UN Secretary-General António Guterres holds out hope, that “… the climate emergency is a race we are losing, but it is a race we can win”. Therefore, societies and nations across the globe, will need to organize and adapt for individual, social-civilizational and species survival.
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  41. Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity, and health professionals worldwide are already responding to the health harms caused by this unfolding crisis.
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  42. Industrialization is organized large-scale manufacture/production of goods and services. Societies manufacture/produce or exchange goods within and between themselves. Societies also produce facilities/conveniences for themselves and other societies, in the form of services such as health-care, education, civic services, transportation, etc.
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  43. Information overload is a problem for Sapiens. However, that may not be a serious problem to AI entities (like an upgraded ‘Sentient’), which would be a part of Roboticus. It is not difficult to conceive of a future when AI entities of Roboticus could compete with its progenitor Sapiens, and even pose an existential challenge to Sapiens.
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  44. On the other hand, an AI entity who is a member of Roboticus, suffers no biological death. If sub-systems malfunction or require upgrading, they can be replaced. In effect, the AI entity lives on “forever”, or at any rate, much longer than any individual member of Sapiens, or even several generations of Sapiens. More importantly, such an AI entity would continue to accumulate experience without the interruption with which Sapiens would have to contend.
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  45. The occurrence of multiple epochs in recent Earth history during which continental glaciers, developed at high latitudes, penetrated into northern Europe and eastern North America was recognized by scientists by the late 19th century. Scottish geologist James Croll proposed that recurring variations in orbital eccentricity (the deviation of Earth’s orbit from a perfectly circular path) were responsible for alternating glacial and interglacial periods. Croll’s controversial idea was taken up by Serbian mathematician and astronomer Milutin Milankovitch in the early 20th century. Milankovitch proposed that the mechanism that brought about periods of glaciation was driven by cyclic changes in eccentricity as well as two other orbital parameters: precession (a change in the directional focus of Earth’s axis of rotation) and axial tilt (a change in the inclination of Earth’s axis with respect to the plane of its orbit around the Sun). Orbital variation is now recognized as an important driver of climatic variation throughout Earth’s history (see below Orbital [Milankovitch] variations).
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  46. There is no guarantee that the biological child of a Sapiens couple will inherit the (superior) physical and mental capabilities of either parent. Furthermore, when a parent dies, the information, knowledge and experience dies with him/her. Although all that can be stored in a computer system, Sapiens progeny needs to learn, understand and internalize it and gain experience with passage of time. The possibility of surgically embedding in the child’s brain, a low-energy micro-miniaturized system containing the knowledge cannot be ruled out. But even so, experience cannot be gained by this means. Biological death of any Sapiens individual will raise the identical problem.
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  47. Now, humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than a third since the Industrial Revolution. Changes that have historically taken thousands of years are now happening over the course of decades.
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  48. Sapiens stand near the end of the first quarter of the 21st Century with amazing scientific and technological capabilites, but without matching social skills. The effect of this sapient (Meaning: wise, or attempting to appear wise) species on the global environment and ecology – of which it is a part, not the master – increases with every new discovery, invention or development.
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  49. It doesn’t take too much awareness in today’s world with 24-hour news and internet access to realize that “once in a 1,000-year storms” are now occurring on a sometimes monthly basis. The increase of droughts, the rapidly melting of glaciers and the polar ice caps and heatwaves along with massive fires across the world are now occurring more frequently and with greater intensity to fully appreciate just what a dilemma we are all now facing.
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  50. Then there’s biodiversity loss, another fallout of climate change that’s threatening rainforests and coral reefs and accelerating species extinction. Take rainforests, which act as natural carbon sinks by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But as rampant deforestation is occurring everywhere from Brazil’s Amazon to Borneo, fewer trees mean that rainforests are becoming carbon sources, emitting more carbon than they’re absorbing. Meanwhile, coral reefs are dying as warming ocean temperatures trigger bleaching events, which cause corals to reject algae, their main food and life source. Fewer trees, coral reefs and other habitats also equate to fewer species. Known as the sixth mass extinction, a 2019 UN report revealed that up to a million plant and animal species could become extinct within decades.
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  51. A full understanding of the Earth system requires knowledge of how the system and its components have changed through time. The pursuit of this understanding has led to development of Earth system history, an interdisciplinary science that includes not only the contributions of Earth system scientists but also paleontologists (who study the life of past geologic periods), paleoclimatologists (who study past climates), paleoecologists (who study past environments and ecosystems), paleoceanographers (who study the history of the oceans), and other scientists concerned with Earth history. Because different components of the Earth system change at different rates and are relevant at different timescales, Earth system history is a diverse and complex science. Students of Earth system history are not just concerned with documenting what has happened; they also view the past as a series of experiments in which solar radiation, ocean currents, continental configurations, atmospheric chemistry, and other important features have varied. These experiments provide opportunities to learn the relative influences of and interactions between various components of the Earth system. Studies of Earth system history also specify the full array of states the system has experienced in the past and those the system is capable of experiencing in the future.
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  52. Global climate change is not a future problem. Changes to Earth’s climate driven by increased human emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are already having widespread effects on the environment: glaciers and ice sheets are shrinking, river and lake ice is breaking up earlier, plant and animal geographic ranges are shifting, and plants and trees are blooming sooner.
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  53. The increasing scale and growth-rate of industrialization, are both linked with the global mindset of “economic growth”, which is a pernicious economic ideology spanning across different political ideologies. This is re-inforced by the corporate-led World Economic Forum at Davos, which provides the annual booster-dose of this ideology to the world’s political-economic leaders.
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  54. Information Technology (IT) has grown exponentially in terms of hardware, software and systems capabilities, and provides enormous computational and data handling capability. The fields of biotechnology (BT) and nanotechnology and many fields of natural science have expanded mostly based on IT capability.
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  55. Zach Tratar [Ref.1] writes; “A mass hijacking of our minds is currently underway. Perhaps you’ve felt it for a while now. Underlying facts seem increasingly rare, “the truth” is debated back and forth without progress, and people’s behaviors continuously bend towards the irrational“.
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  56. In 1895, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius discovered that humans could enhance the greenhouse effect by making carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. He kicked off 100 years of climate research that has given us a sophisticated understanding of global warming.
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  57. The world’s economies are all subsystems of Earth’s ecosystem, individually and collectively devastating Earth’s environment and ecology, and are the primary cause for global warming and climate change (GW-CC).
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  58. Levels of greenhouse gases have gone up and down over the Earth's history, but they had been fairly constant for the past few thousand years. Global average temperatures had also stayed fairly constant over that time—until the past 150 years. Through the burning of fossil fuels and other activities that have emitted large amounts of greenhouse gases, particularly over the past few decades, humans are now enhancing the greenhouse effect and warming Earth significantly, and in ways that promise many effects, scientists warn.
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  59. Many countries including India, have prepared an action plan on climate change (APCC), for adaptation and mitigation measures. These are essentially reactive to on-going and forthcoming situations and conditions, and do not address the fundamental causes of GW-CC. If fundamental causes are dealt with urgently and diligently, the rate at which GW-CC impacts societies and nations, can be reduced, and make biological and social adaptation and mitigation measures effective and meaningful.
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  60. ‘Sentient’ is cognitive since it can perceive what it possesses and what it does not. It has the capability to feel a need for something which it does not possess – that is, it has ‘desires’. In a sense, ‘Sentient’ may be said to be both cognitive and conscious – a living, sentient, perhaps even self-aware being. The given name ‘Sentient’ is surely not arbitrary, and its development for military use is ominous when we consider a Roboticus population of AI entities with Sapiens qualities.
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  61. Scientists have known about the greenhouse effect since 1824, when Joseph Fourier calculated that the Earth would be much colder if it had no atmosphere. This natural greenhouse effect is what keeps the Earth's climate livable. Without it, the Earth's surface would be an average of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees Celsius) cooler.
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  62. However, tribal societies on all continents (Adivasis in India) do not share this view. They live with bare feet planted firmly on earth, understand the inter-dependence of all forms of life, and know the true meaning of “enough” as they draw from nature even while giving back to nature. Today, tribal societies are depleting and vanishing, and with them, their knowledge systems and cultural heritage. Their natural wisdom has fallen victim to expansion of the know-all ‘civilized’ societies.
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  63. While no one is safe from these risks, the people whose health is being harmed first and worst by the climate crisis are the people who contribute least to its causes, and who are least able to protect themselves and their families against it - people in low-income and disadvantaged countries and communities.
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  64. Unless more immediate, drastic action is taken to combat climate change, future generations will have to contend with worst-case scenario projections by the end of the 21st century, not limited to coastal cities going underwater, including Miami; lethal heat levels from South Asia to Central Africa; and more frequent extreme weather events involving hurricanes, wildfires, tsunamis, droughts, floods, blizzards and more.
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  65. Despite efforts from forward thinkers such as SpaceX Founder Elon Musk to colonize Mars, Earth remains our home for the foreseeable future, and the more human activity negatively impacts the climate, the less habitable it will become. It’s estimated that Earth has already warmed about one degree Celsius, or two degrees Fahrenheit, since the start of the Industrial Revolution around the 1750s, although climate change tracking didn’t start until the late 1800s. That warming number may not sound like much, but this increase has already resulted in more frequent and severe wildfires, hurricanes, floods, droughts and winter storms, to name some examples.
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  66. Climate change is actually not a new phenomenon. Scientists have been studying the connection between human activity and the effect on the climate since the 1800s, although it took until the 1950s to find evidence suggesting a link.
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  67. Geologists and paleontologists in the 19th and early 20th centuries uncovered evidence of massive climatic changes taking place before the Pleistocene—that is, before some 2.6 million years ago. For example, red beds indicated aridity in regions that are now humid (e.g., England and New England), whereas fossils of coal-swamp plants and reef corals indicated that tropical climates once occurred at present-day high latitudes in both Europe and North America. Since the late 20th century the development of advanced technologies for dating rocks, together with geochemical techniques and other analytical tools, have revolutionized the understanding of early Earth system history.
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  68. Like any well-made sausage, the bill includes a myriad of bits and pieces of other components. If passed as presently reformed, it would be the largest appropriation for climate funding in our history. But unless it gets the required number of sponsors to vote for it, it won’t pass. The new Build Back Better reconciliation bill is now retitled the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
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  69. It can be easy to overlook climate change in day-to-day life, or even realize that climate change is behind it. Notice there’s yet another romaine lettuce recall due to E. Coli? Research suggests that E. Coli bacteria are becoming more common in our food sources as it adapts to climate change. Can’t find your favorite brand of coffee beans anymore? Or that the price has doubled? Climate change is affecting that too. Climate change is also worsening air quality and seasonal allergies, along with polluting tap water. Not least, many preliminary studies have also drawn a line between climate change and the deadly COVID-19 pandemic that is still gripping much of the world. Future pandemics are likely to happen more frequently until the root causes, such as deforestation, are addressed.
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  70. Climate is sometimes mistaken for weather. But climate is different from weather because it is measured over a long period of time, whereas weather can change from day to day, or from year to year. The climate of an area includes seasonal temperature and rainfall averages, and wind patterns. Different places have different climates. A desert, for example, is referred to as an arid climate because little water falls, as rain or snow, during the year. Other types of climate include tropical climates, which are hot and humid, and temperate climates, which have warm summers and cooler winters.
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  71. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that to avert catastrophic health impacts and prevent millions of climate change-related deaths, the world must limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. Past emissions have already made a certain level of global temperature rise and other changes to the climate inevitable. Global heating of even 1.5°C is not considered safe, however; every additional tenth of a degree of warming will take a serious toll on people’s lives and health.
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  72. The principal characteristic of this concept of economic growth is that it is designed to be perpetual, unending, and consumptive. Such economic growth consumes its own environmental/ecological resource base, like a cancer.
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  73. For thousands of years now, emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere have been balanced out by greenhouse gases that are naturally absorbed. As a result, greenhouse gas concentrations and temperatures have been fairly stable, which has allowed human civilization to flourish within a consistent climate.
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  74. The time for action has already passed us and we have a great deal of catching up to do but it’s never too late to being trying to make a difference, individually and collectively to save our world for ourselves and future generations.
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  75. We often call the result global warming, but it is causing a set of changes to the Earth's climate, or long-term weather patterns, that varies from place to place. While many people think of global warming and climate change as synonyms, scientists use “climate change” when describing the complex shifts now affecting our planet’s weather and climate systems—in part because some areas actually get cooler in the short term.
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  76. Climate change encompasses not only rising average temperatures but also extreme weather events, shifting wildlife populations and habitats, rising seas, and a range of other impacts. All of those changes are emerging as humans continue to add heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, changing the rhythms of climate that all living things have come to rely on.
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  77. Thus, in the physical-psychological-social sense, this effectively re-engineered Sapiens a few generations in the future may be as different from the present Sapiens, as the present Sapiens is from its pre-historic Sapiens ancestors.
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  78. As an example, consider an outcome of USA’s Freedom of Information Act. It revealed that the US National Office of Military Space Intelligence has developed a powerful artificial brain named ‘Sentient’, primarily for military use. [Ref.6]. Vladislav Tchakarov writes: “Unlike any other AIs in existence, it differs in the degree of independence. Usually the algorithm works with the loaded information, but Sentient can even direct satellites to get images of the objects it needs. In fact, it can be called an artificial brain”.
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  79. In geologically very recent times, among all living beings, Man has learned to influence, modify and change his environment through agriculture and industry, and his capability to harness energy sources and materials, and create new materials. As a species, 7.9-billion humans are the most influential and dominant form of life on Earth.
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  80. Humans, being a part of and dependent upon Earth’s environment and ecology, are biologically and sociologically subject to changes caused by GW-CC. Geo-physical situations and conditions that GW-CC are reliably expected to cause, are:
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  81. An entity mastering Data Science for strategic purposes would gain strategic advantage over another entity with lesser mastery. As discussed earlier, an autonomous AI entity could out-manoevre a human who uses AI as a tool, howsoever intelligent the human is. Thus, Roboticus could likely out-STEMM and out-strategize the superior, ruling-class Sapiens. And therein lies a challenge.
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  82. However, SciTech is not essential to create a subaltern class. Although Constitutionally barred, a subaltern class of the “lowest” caste and even a caste-less population beneath this “lowest” caste, exists in the ages-old multi-tiered caste hierarchy.
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  83. This article addresses the concept of climatic variation and change within the set of integrated natural features and processes known as the Earth system. The nature of the evidence for climate change is explained, as are the principal mechanisms that have caused climate change throughout the history of Earth. Finally, a detailed description is given of climate change over many different timescales, ranging from a typical human life span to all of geologic time. For a detailed description of the development of Earth’s atmosphere, see the article atmosphere, evolution of. For full treatment of the most critical issue of climate change in the contemporary world, see global warming.
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  84. The short timescale of this recent warming is singular as well. Volcanic eruptions, for example, emit particles that temporarily cool the Earth's surface. But their effect lasts just a few years. Events like El Niño also work on fairly short and predictable cycles. On the other hand, the types of global temperature fluctuations that have contributed to ice ages occur on a cycle of hundreds of thousands of years.
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  85. With its new title, the bill now, besides climate change legislation, includes other provisions such as healthcare, a new 15% minimum corporate tax, more funding for the IRS and a deficit reduction provision. In its latest iteration, even Joe Manchin (D-WV) agreed to sign on after he received some climate unfriendly provisions that he negotiated for in exchange for his support. One last holdout however is Krysten Sinema (D-AZ) who has yet to be convinced to sign on based on her interest in seeing changes more to her liking.
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  86. The rapid rise in greenhouse gases is a problem because it’s changing the climate faster than some living things can adapt to. Also, a new and more unpredictable climate poses unique challenges to all life.
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  87. The severity of effects caused by climate change will depend on the path of future human activities. More greenhouse gas emissions will lead to more climate extremes and widespread damaging effects across our planet. However, those future effects depend on the total amount of carbon dioxide we emit. So, if we can reduce emissions, we may avoid some of the worst effects.
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  88. In the short- to medium-term, the health impacts of climate change will be determined mainly by the vulnerability of populations, their resilience to the current rate of climate change and the extent and pace of adaptation. In the longer-term, the effects will increasingly depend on the extent to which transformational action is taken now to reduce emissions and avoid the breaching of dangerous temperature thresholds and potential irreversible tipping points.
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  89. Climate change is already impacting health in a myriad of ways, including by leading to death and illness from increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms and floods, the disruption of food systems, increases in zoonoses and food-, water- and vector-borne diseases, and mental health issues. Furthermore, climate change is undermining many of the social determinants for good health, such as livelihoods, equality and access to health care and social support structures. These climate-sensitive health risks are disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, including women, children, ethnic minorities, poor communities, migrants or displaced persons, older populations, and those with underlying health conditions.
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  90. It is not difficult to envisage a situation when Roboticus uses the AI resources and their own capabilities of asexual, large-scale self-replication to over-ride, even usurp, the power and authority of the minuscule numbers of superior Sapiens who control them, both in terms of numbers – with the sperm count among the ruling Sapiens males declining [Ref.3] – and physical-mental-intellectual capability. The subaltern Sapiens populations would become the “prize” for the Roboticus take-over. But even before this contest, a conflict of controlling interests between Sapiens and Roboticus could arise.
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  91. Industrialization is based upon developing, advancing and employing science and technology to promote the ideology of economic growth. It is driven by and also drives the complex system of the oil/energy industry, the banking-finance sector, the extractive mining/quarrying industry, the manufacturing/production industry, the agriculture industry, etc. These are the socio-economic systems of every national economy.
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  92. Sapiens have grown into the dominant species on the planet, with global influence. Starting perhaps with fire and the wheel in pre-historic times, Sapiens has creatively envisioned and constructed devices and machines which have multiplied individual and group power exponentially. For example, in just one Century (the 20th Century), humans invented the airplane and landed a human on the moon, even while transiting from logarithmic tables for rapid calculation to parallel-processing super computers in the same period, these and many other inventions and discoveries going together.
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  93. Over a few generations, using AI and SciTech-enabled genetic modification (GM), these humans could self-engineer their own DNA so as to acquire physical and mental capabilities far superior to the vast majority of Sapiens populations. This superior class of Sapiens would be able to exercise hegemonic power over the vast majority of the subaltern population.
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  94. Unless world leaders remove their economic-growth WEF-Davos blinkers and awaken to reality, UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ hope concerning the climate emergency will amount to nothing. It will be curtains for human civilization, perhaps even for humanity.
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  95. The pending massive climate legislation to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions 40 percent by 2030 as outlined by President Biden is still being held hostage in the Senate. The $369 billion package that is thicker than a New York phonebook contains 725 pages of text.
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  96. We humans live on a planet which we have named Earth which, along with several other planets each of which we have named, revolves around a star which we have named Sun – all with different names in different cultures. More recently, we have recognized life on Earth ranging from micro-organisms to elephants and whales, and understand that in physical size, we are somewhere in between.
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  97. From a sociological viewpoint, this will result in some changes in Sapiens societies. One, it will reduce direct and indirect human-to-human interactions, which is already happening with mobile phones, social media, banking, travel, hotels, tele-marketing, merchandise-delivery by drones, etc). Sapiens, supposedly a social animal, will lose inter-personal skills, and alter the psychological make-up of successive generations. This may be mostly among the economic upper-crust of Sapiens societies. Two, it will create a section of society which is physically helpless for certain routine but essential jobs/functions, even if they have the desire to perform them. There will be resultant change in the physique of successive generations of Sapiens. This also may be mostly among the economic upper-crust of Sapiens societies. Three, AI-enabled untargeted, intrusive surveillance over entire populations will introduce an element of pervasive fear and a sense of subordination to a remote, unquestionable authority. This will destroy individual creativity from an early age, affecting every individual psychologically, to become obedient and supine under any or all circumstances. A society comprised of such Sapiens would be grist to the mill of authoritarian social-political leaders in nexus with corporate owners of surveillance systems.
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  98. Thus, the robot population can grow enormously in numbers, and take over several functions which are done by Sapiens. While jobs like sewerage cleaning and garbage handling should most certainly be done only by robots – dangerous/toxic materials-handling is already being done by robots – the exponential growth of robot populations will create machine-dependency of Sapiens, albeit among the economically better-off sections in society.
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  99. Human activity isn't the only factor that affects Earth's climate. Volcanic eruptions and variations in solar radiation from sunspots, solar wind, and the Earth's position relative to the sun also play a role. So do large-scale weather patterns such as El Niño.
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  100. What will we do—what can we do—to slow this human-caused warming? How will we cope with the changes we've already set into motion? While we struggle to figure it all out, the fate of the Earth as we know it—coasts, forests, farms, and snow-capped mountains—hangs in the balance.
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  101. Earth scientists and atmospheric scientists are still seeking a full understanding of the complex feedbacks and interactions among the various components of the Earth system. This effort is being facilitated by the development of an interdisciplinary science called Earth system science. Earth system science is composed of a wide range of disciplines, including climatology (the study of the atmosphere), geology (the study of Earth’s surface and underground processes), ecology (the study of how Earth’s organisms relate to one another and their environment), oceanography (the study of Earth’s oceans), glaciology (the study of Earth’s ice masses), and even the social sciences (the study of human behaviour in its social and cultural aspects).
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  102. The most talked-about “new” field based upon IT is Artificial Intelligence (AI). At present, AI mimics natural human intelligence especially in the areas of cognition, learning and problem-solving. Another path-breaking field is robotics, although this is not new or recent, combining computer science and engineering. Already robots which vacuum and mop floors, and AI-enabled robots which can remotely control other devices based on recognized voice commands, are available in the market.
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  103. Over millennia, as humans learned to acquire and harness energy sources, they grew exponentially in numbers. The current global human population is 7.8-billion (U.N estimates, February 2021), up from under 2-billion in 1900, and 0.3-billion in 1000. Especially since the industrial revolution, for most societies, matter and life which is not human is considered as a resource, with the implicit assumption of their being “meant” for human benefit, and are therefore to be used and disposed off. This is the anthropocentric world view, which is the current ruling paradigm.
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  104. But with concentrations of greenhouse gases rising, Earth's remaining ice sheets such as Greenland and Antarctica are starting to melt too. That extra water could raise sea levels significantly, and quickly. By 2050, sea levels are predicted to rise between one and 2.3 feet as glaciers melt.
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  105. The huge strides in science and technology over the last century, have caused galloping industrialization. The processes, products, services and facilities due to industrialization, which are available to human populations, have affected the lives and life-styles of almost all humans – although rather unequally – in both beneficial and harmful ways.
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  106. As the mercury rises, the climate can change in unexpected ways. In addition to sea levels rising, weather can become more extreme. This means more intense major storms, more rain followed by longer and drier droughts—a challenge for growing crops—changes in the ranges in which plants and animals can live, and loss of water supplies that have historically come from glaciers.
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  107. The day when AI can be an autonomous entity which independently makes its decisions and acts accordingly, and controls other AI entities and robots to perform specific tasks, may not be in the distant future. Such an AI entity would be able to independently acquire or access data, and use it to teach itself varied subjects, including comprehension of abstract ideas.
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  108. Humans are divided within and between societies on the bases of ethnicity, language, caste, religion and gender. Pre-historically, historically and even today, this has been cause for conflicts and wars, and mindless oppression, subjugation and slaughter, often based upon categorization of “superior” and “inferior”.
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  109. It is no exaggeration to say that Sapiens global dominance has brought itself to an existential crossroads particularly because of global warming and climate change. But as importantly, Sapiens’ increasing dependence upon the machine-world it has created with its amazing creativity and industry, threatens its future in an existential sense.
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  110. Undoubtedly, people have always been aware of climatic variation at the relatively short timescales of seasons, years, and decades. Biblical scripture and other early documents refer to droughts, floods, periods of severe cold, and other climatic events. Nevertheless, a full appreciation of the nature and magnitude of climatic change did not come about until the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a time when the widespread recognition of the deep antiquity of Earth occurred. Naturalists of this time, including Scottish geologist Charles Lyell, Swiss-born naturalist and geologist Louis Agassiz, English naturalist Charles Darwin, American botanist Asa Gray, and Welsh naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, came to recognize geologic and biogeographic evidence that made sense only in the light of past climates radically different from those prevailing today.
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  111. Evidences of GW-CC occurring and gaining momentum are reported in the international and national media almost on a daily basis, but appear to leave global and national leadership unmoved. Most world leaders, insulated and self-imprisoned behind security screens in comfortable working and living spaces, are mainly focussed on pelf and gaining or retaining power, out of contact with harsh realities affecting people. Their individual or collective intellectual uptake does not appear to include people’s welfare or species survival. Public protests concerning GW-CC are ignored and neglected, or brutally suppressed in medieval monarch style.
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  112. Although it is unequivocal that climate change affects human health, it remains challenging to accurately estimate the scale and impact of many climate-sensitive health risks. However, scientific advances progressively allow us to attribute an increase in morbidity and mortality to human-induced warming, and more accurately determine the risks and scale of these health threats.
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  113. Entire populations are dumbed-down and public opinion manipulated to carry out the designs of the controllers, who profess to know what is correct, desirable and good for Sapiens society. Regardless of the socio-economic level of such people, they form the beginnings of a subaltern class.
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  114. Rapid advancements in science and technology have increasingly intensified and magnified the effects of industrialization. Today, the large-scale negative effects of industrialization over many decades, are dwarfing the benefits.
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  115. If the end product is a robot, an AI entity using robots can manufacture parts/components and assemble robots. That is, robots will manufacture robots from 3D printing to final assembly and roll-out, with an AI entity in control. This will make robots for multifarious repetitive functions affordable, bringing ease and convenience into Sapiens’ lives, and large profits to the corporate manufacturer.
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  116. As with almost any technology, AI offers both positive (opportunities) and negative (threats) possibilities. The manner in which societies accept and implement AI, and changes within and between societies, will depend upon their inherent strengths and weaknesses.
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  117. In polar regions, the warming global temperatures associated with climate change have meant ice sheets and glaciers are melting at an accelerated rate from season to season. This contributes to sea levels rising in different regions of the planet. Together with expanding ocean waters due to rising temperatures, the resulting rise in sea level has begun to damage coastlines as a result of increased flooding and erosion.
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