We talk a lot about thinking, but rarely think about what thinking really is. René Descartes, a 17th century French philosopher, thought he had brought the subject to a close with his conclusion that, “I think, therefore I am.” But his position was countered by the 18th century French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who contended that,“I feel, therefore I am.” But all this speculation was centuries ago, without either having access to the wealth of neurological and cognitive evidence available in the 21st century.
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The Quadra Project – Warming Oceans
The close connection that exists between the atmosphere and the ocean is not surprising considering that 70% of the planet is covered by water—about 360 million km2—and the few dozen km of air is extremely thin compared to the 12,750 km diameter of Earth. This means that about 90% of the atmospheric heating caused by rising concentrations of CO2 is transferred to the oceans.
In approximate terms, about one-third of the carbon dioxide we add to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels stays there for centuries, about one-third is captured and sequestered in various land forms such as forests, soils and vegetation, although one recent United Nations study suggests the terrestrial sequestration may only be about 25%, possibly because forest and plant cover is being diminished by agriculture and fires, and because a higher global temperature is reducing the photosynthesis process by which plants process carbon dioxide into carbon, sugars and oxygen. Much of the remaining one-third of our CO2 emissions that is not absorbed by marine algae dissolves in the oceans to form carbonic acid.
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Biological Wonders – The Quadra Project
Below are six biological wonders that should help to confirm the sophisticated intelligence of nature. They are a mere sample of what we are discovering about the animals and plants that share this planet with us, a reminder that is particularly appropriate since our behaviour has initiated the sixth major extinction event in Earth’s history.
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The Dynamics of Denial
If global climate change is posing an existential threat to humanity, then why don’t we do something to prevent it from happening? Parts of our planet are already experiencing temperatures that are too hot to sustain normal human activity, and thousands are dying. We are now being plagued with massive forest fires that are decimating critically important carbon sinks, and burning up homes, settlements and even whole towns. Widespread species extinction is endemic. Exotic tropical diseases are migrating northward to unprepared countries. Our oceans are heating, acidifying and rising. Glacier melt will be impossible to stop—just one, the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica, is destabilizing from its underside, threatening a 65 cm rise in the world’s oceans. The collapse of Thwaites would unleash an inevitable collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet and an eventual 3.3 metre ocean rise, likely by the end of the 23rd century, if we’re lucky. Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emission have been consistently going up rather than down. What explains this incongruity?
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The Quadra Project: Globalization – Part 2
The wide-ranging application of tariffs by the United States, imposed unilaterally by President Donald Trump, will radically restructure 80 years of international trade that was engineered by the Bretton Woods Agreement following the end of World War II. Trump’s actions will have a plethora of consequences, but the economic strategy is “madness”, a term used by Justin Wolfers, a Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Michigan (The Cost of Living, CBC Radio, April 6, 2025).
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