A "must-win" game for humanity
focusing on a crucial, not-so-well-known, phenomenon
SOS #123 J. Morris Hicks (9-14-21)
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Please read this SOS Memo carefully. Finally, there is a simple vehicle for helping people everywhere grasp the "big picture" of the trouble in which we find ourselves.
I'm talking about an educational "game" that can be played by all adults in the world -- from 18 to over 100.
The "game" that I will introduce below -- is a long-shot effort to get hundreds of millions of people actively talking about the most important topic in history of humanity.
That topic is regarding the climate change paradox that almost no one is talking about now. This simple, "must-win" game for humanity is one that can help millions of people quickly understand what's at stake.
When enough people understand what's at stake...
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Maybe then we can launch a loud global
"conversation"
about the most important topic EVER!
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We've got an arduous road ahead.
There are 195 countries in the world and I doubt that this crucially important global conversation is happening in any of them.
Plus, I seriously doubt that no more than two or three of those countries -- if any -- are governed by leaders who are aware of the climate change paradox, defined here:
- The air above us is constantly filled with industrial pollution -- tiny particulates that impede global warming and actually serve to cool the planet -- by reflecting the sun's rays back into space.
- If we stop burning fossil fuels too quickly, the Earth will heat up even faster. But how much and how fast? You see the problem, right?
We're damned if we do,
and we're damned if we don't!
Estimates vary, but If all those particulates were to disappear quickly, the Earth would warm about 1/2 degree Celsius (almost one degree Fahrenheit) within a few weeks.
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Now, one-degree Fahrenheit doesn't sound like much, but it is a really big deal since climate scientists at the IPCC are predicting that such an increase will take about thirty years if we continue with business as usual.
If that happens, it will assuredly lead us past certain tipping points that will render our planet unlivable well before the end of this century.
We constantly hear about the need to reduce our carbon emissions but we never hear about that crucial paradox from any of the world's leaders or from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
These days, almost everyone is talking about climate change but only a tiny few are talking about these two crucially important topics that are related to it:
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The #1 driver of climate change -- one that could be completely eliminated in less than five years: the HUGE, worldwide animal agriculture industry.
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The paradox above. The disturbing fact that as we cut back on our carbon emissions, we reduce those tiny particulates in the air which will quickly result in a temperature rise of around one-half degree Celsius.
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So how do we start that all-important conversation?
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We start with a simple, yet powerful, game that will help millions of people understand the primary drivers of climate change that are covered in detail in this
scientific paper by Dr. Sailesh Rao that I co-authored.
In that paper, we go into great detail describing a viable pathway out of the climate dilemma in which we find ourselves.
Our journey won't be easy, but we engineers believe that it is possible to head off the worst effects of climate change.
Back to the climate change "must-win" game
We start by raising public awareness -- and we do that with a brilliant logic game that Sailesh invented -- a problem-solving exercise aimed at optimizing the process of urgently addressing the primary driver of climate change while simultaneously, but gradually and carefully, reducing our carbon emissions.
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Dr. Rao is challenging high schools and colleges all over the world to participate in this challenge. |
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And I am challenging all of my readers to do the same. Take the challenge yourself and encourage all of your friends and family to do the same.
Rewards are being offered to those who accurately determine the optimal solution. If enough schools, environmental groups, scientists, engineering societies and individuals participate, the entire world may soon be talking about a genuine, near-term solution to our climate change dilemma.
The image below appears at the beginning of the game that involves solving the Climate Bathtub Problem Challenge. I will provide you a link to that climate challenge page later in this memo, but first, a little more background.
Here's the introductory image for the game:
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- Note: If there is no image of the Bathtub Problem above this line, it is due to a system glitch at ConstantContact, who distributes these memos. Until that glitch is fixed, try viewing this message on an iPad, tablet or cell-phone.
All players in this game are winners. The above game (or problem solving exercise) consists of figuring out the optimal solution to our climate change dilemma. Few people will reach the absolute optimal solution on their first try.
I was one of those who made a sincere effort but did not arrive at the optimal solution.
But, even though I didn't solve the problem, I suddenly realized that everyone who plays the game will learn a lot more about the treacherous situation in which we find ourselves -- and the delicate process of addressing it. There are five interacting variables in this game:
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Burning Machine. Killing Machine. Cooling Aerosols. Reforestation Potential. All-important Climate Bathtub |
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Let's begin with the Burning Machine!
Coal-fired power plants, cars, trucks, planes, factories, to name just a few. Everyone knows that this "machine" is a primary driver of climate change but, as mentioned earlier, few know about the crucial need that it be reduced carefully and gradually.
But soon, if Dr. Rao's Climate Challenge is taken by a few hundred million people, the entire world will be talking about a marvelous window of opportunity to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
This image is the Burning Machine
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The next variable is the Killing Machine!
That is Dr. Rao's name for the ever-expanding global industry that KILLS the world's forests to clear land for growing food for the trillions of sentient beings that we then KILL every year for our dinner tables.
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Now, let's take a look at how the above two problematic variables (Burning Machine & Killing Machine) interact with the other three variables that were mentioned earlier.
As Sailesh explains in the "challenge" guidelines, the primary objective of the game is to save the baby in the bathtub below from drowning.
The baby represents all of humanity!
In order to save the baby, we must first shut down the "killing machine" ASAP -- an action that will clear the clogged drain that will result in removing water from the bath tub at the rate of 30 liters per minute.
It gets a bit complicated after that. The challenge begins with this simple question:
AS A MEMBER OF THE COMPETENT PLUMBERS OF CLIMATE CHANGE (CPCC) CAN YOU SAVE THE BABY?
(The baby represents all of humanity)
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All of these fantastic illustrations on the Climate Challenge web page were created by Margrethe Stensholt.
Now it's time to play the game. First, take the challenge yourself and then introduce it to your current school or alma mater? Just click on the image below and Dr. Rao will tell you what to do.
When you finish, you will be prompted to e-mail your answers to ClimateHealers.
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The Bottom Line. In the title of this memo, I suggested that one powerful "game" could save humanity -- simply because it has the potential to get hundreds of millions of people talking about the most important topic in the history of humanity.
That topic is the relationship between
our food choices and the ever-escalating monster known as climate change.
Quite simply, if hundreds of millions of people -- and many powerful governments don't make that connection pretty soon, Mother Nature will continue to relentlessly remove "our kind" from her planet. What "kind" are we?
Are you part of this insanity? Tragically, in 2021, we "humans" are directly responsible for a horribly disgusting "system" wherein 70% of all the birds in the entire world world are living in cages, either laying eggs or just getting fat enough to be brutally killed so that we can eat them.
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That is not the kind of world that Mother Nature had in mind -- and she will not stand for it much longer. |
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In closing, I mentioned a new 90-minute film in last week's SOS Memo. It starts playing in some theaters in the USA and the UK on 9-16-21. Soon, it will be available on one or more streaming platforms like Netflix.
We will see it Thursday night in Mystic, CT -- and I will report on it in next week's SOS (Saving Our Species).
Click on this image to view the 2-minute trailer
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What can you do? Ask everyone you know to take the Climate Challenge described in this memo. By doing so, they will immediately be participating in the single most important process in the world -- taking crucial steps down the narrow road to saving our species.
Hopefully, the kind of crucially serious "conversations" expressed in this SOS Memo will soon replace the incessant trivial topics that dominate a ridiculously large percentage of all of the conversations in the world.
I volunteer to help you do that. For Free. Invite me to collaborate with you and your friends via Zoom. To help you jump-start that all-important conversation with your group, I will be happy to present and discuss this topic. Here's an advance link to my 62 slides.
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The image above is a clue regarding the essence of my "family game plan" that is revealed only in my talks. I do not put that in writing.
Finally, please do everything you can to help spark the global "conversation" about our need to urgently transform our way of living into one that has a much better chance of keeping us alive indefinitely.
The billions of innocent children
of the world deserve no less!
I am confident that if a few million people carefully read and digested OUTCRY, that there might at least be a more robust conversation taking place about our grossly unsustainable way of living in the developed world -- and what it will take to get us focused on maximizing our chances of survival as a species.
To be sure, we must do a lot more than change what we eat -- and OUTCRY helps explain the "why" and the "how" of that proposition.
To my knowledge, OUTCRY remains the only book ever published that features an envisioned, totally-green, ultra-sustainable, super-desirable, future way of living for humans -- along with ideas for how we might get there as quickly as possible.
J. Morris (Jim) Hicks
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PS: Regarding the free Zoom conferences with your group, Send me an email and let's get started.
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Our book, for a host of environmental reasons, is only available as an e-book on Amazon. As such, it contains hyperlinks to hundreds of references and videos, is less expensive, does not kill any trees and does not have to be manufactured and delivered.
The links below to earlier SOS Memos will help you understand how these ideas unfolded since 2018.
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As always, I am just trying to help spark the all-important "conversation" about what is needed. By sharing a vision of what I believe is possible, I hope to influence others to think bigger, faster, better and bolder.
You will find that there aren't many books that cover both the health of your body and the health of your planet. This is one of them -- a book that my son Jason assisted me in writing. It was published ten years ago this month.
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What else can you do to help? Two things:
1. Live as greenly as possible while doing all that you can to raise the awareness of "big picture" solutions that are crucially necessary for saving our civilization.
2. Share this BSB and my "Mama Ain't Happy" BSB with prominent journalists, thought leaders and/or elected officials whom you respect. They need to learn a lot more about the many reasons why Mama ain't happy.
Promoting health, hope and harmony on planet Earth
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