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 Quadra Project: Uninhabitable – Part 1
A global temperature review of 2024 confirms the trend that has been so concerning to climatologists. The last 10 years have been the warmest on record, and 2024 has been the warmest yet. The European Copernicus calculation measured 2024 as 1.6°C above the pre-industrial temperature, with most days being above the 1.5°C aspirational target set by the Paris Agreement (COP21) in 2015. Other organizations measured a slightly different temperature for 2024: NASA at 1.47°C, NOAA at 1.46°C, and Berkley Earth at 1.62°C. The differences are technical but the trend is the same. Global temperatures are rising in concert with our greenhouse gas emissions.
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The Quadra Project: Welcome to 2024
Unless you’re brave enough to consider the reality of our global environmental situation, don’t read this. Confronting it is not a matter of being pessimistic or optimistic, but of being realistic—of assessing what we’re doing on our planet, what we want to avoid, what we want to accomplish, and what we can do both collectively and individually to have a more promising future. In one more year we will have reached a quarter of the way to 2100, and we are well on our way to creating conditions that we will either applaud or bemoan.
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The Quadra Project: Sounds of the Earth
On August 20, 1977, Voyager 2 was launched from NASA’s facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida. And exactly 15 days later, on September 5, 1977, Voyager 1 was launched from the same facility. The timing was crucial because astronomical calculations had placed Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in a lineal alignment that would only occur once every 176 years. With this alignment, each planet could accelerate the two spacecrafts to their next destination, reducing the travel time from 30 years to 12 years.
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The Quadra Project: Environmental Guilt
More and more sobering news on the environmental condition of our planet keeps coming from scientists, from the United Nations’ COP meetings, and from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We are not doing enough to avert catastrophe, and we are not doing what must be done fast enough. Indeed, we never did enough fast enough, a conclusion that comes with the burden of guilt. And now we may be reaching the point where we will never be able to do enough fast enough.
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