Over ten years ago WindowView posted information in anticipation of global changes. During 2006, we will be updating this web site’s content concerning change. Global changes are now widely recognized in the news. Climate change is getting more attention, but this only the tip of an iceberg.
There is a complex matrix of changes that brings about the visible climate change. Numerous sources of change are interwoven. You can’t say we’ll just fix this or that. Nothing is so simple and we’re backed into a corner! Want an example? Glaciers are gone or going quickly, the North Pole is slated to be – in a few decades, Greenland’s ice and the South Pole are all headed the same direction. Sea levels will change, it’s slow, but happening … now!
READ: Change Matrix
In the final analysis, in that matrix, a lot of this concerns how humans live. Humanity’s material and social lifestyles are a cause. Years ago we might have said cycles in nature are to be expected. But humans have caused the Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide level to rise way above any known (geological record) historical level. We are in uncharted waters and still sailing on. Even our Window Area on change includes a warning posted by scientists about all this. (READ historic scientists’ warning). They knew it was coming over a decade ago. Who really listed? Economy and politics sail on.
If you look at the right side of this page, you see a link to our feature area on change. What’s not there yet are descriptions of some really historic events yet to come (like what we’ve said here about glaciers and the polar ice caps but on other different topics).
Major Global Ocean Currents To Stop Moving In Next 10 to 15 Years?
At the annual meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in 2005, we heard oceanographers describe global change in terms of increased rainfall over the northern Atlantic Ocean. Here is how matrix relations get revealed. More rain brings more fresh water to the surface of a salty ocean. The fresh water is lighter than the salt water below. The lighter water does not push down with the weight of heavier salt water. Without this push, the currents that move northward to the upper Atlantic Ocean, cannot then bear downward to the bottom of the ocean to make the ocean current head back south along the ocean floor. Typically this action moved the global current from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and back again. Yes, right now there is a global current that links all the oceans. Global change, through the increased rainfall in one location, threatens to turn off the global current.
READ: Global Ocean Currents Cease
So Is This ‘Doom Saying’ Or What?
Frankly, the talk about all this is going to get more intense. Eventually you’ll hear someone say: “What can be done?” or in light of incredible consequences they may ask “Who will save us?” What will happen to the oceans? Indeed, will the now over-fished and decimated oceanic populations decline to nil? Again, we never stripped the oceans of fish like we see today. The ecology of a well mixed ocean will enter a new phase. We’ve never been here before. What about food supply? And the pressure for answers on all issues will get more intense. From all of our information sources that look to the future, global change is actually helping to accentuate a particular set of human circumstances.
A Window To A Choice, Not A Crisis
No one is going to say the challenges will go away. The effects are yet to be fully realized. But within the window are still other perspectives. If matters look ever darker and slow to realize an improvement, then is all this about a crisis? In fact, our material life is temporal. The window’s horizon looks beyond the current events and beyond what is simply this experience alone. Global change helps to get us thinking. This is something to consider on a personal level. Think about how society and humanity as a whole is responding. Think about how this is a reflection on what is key to understanding the value to our lives. Think. Change. Make a choice!
Director, WindowView.org
