Heat

One of the major concerns in reducing ecological impact has been its potential to increase the vulnerability of people to the consequences of the ongoing threat. Access to diminishing needs like air, water and food has traditionally required increases in the consumption of energy and materials for discovery, extraction, processing, and distribution, as well as survival while performing those activities (including use of the result). The global strategy relies heavily on a “live off the land” approach to limit the corresponding impact, choosing to focus high-impact technologies on making that approach easier by removing obstacles to safe living such as pollution, habitat fragmentation, disease vectors, and extreme temperatures.

How to deal with the temperature problem, on land and in the oceans, was one of the big TBDs I found in the strategy draft reconstructed in March after WICO’s servers crashed. As Al has reminded me, temperature is a measure of the average energy of moving particles in a system of particles such as a room of air, a body of water, or a creature made of gases, liquids, and solids. Changing the temperature of a system therefore involves changing its energy, which often means moving energy from or to another system, isolating the system from other systems that supply or remove energy, or both. 

The biosphere assessment included temperature management information about natural systems, much of which was lost in the server crash, so some of those TBDs have been filled with plans to collect new data. The data is being collected and shared by both citizens and organizations that are developing artificial systems and energy transfer technologies that can be deployed at a variety of scales where natural systems are unable to handle the load. Citizens - people trained by WICO’s Extinction Strategy Support team and former test community members - are also learning to change temperatures (with minimal ecological impact) of the natural systems and artificial systems they already have experience with, and adding that knowledge to WICO’s new database managed by Sally the AI.

Reality Check

Limiting temperature extremes around the world is one of the biggest problems facing humanity as result of global climate change. I expect that having everyone know the basics of what’s involved would be a key requirement for any effort to do so.