How does climate relate to astronomy?
You might be wondering what I am doing talking about things like this on my astronomy blog. Well the reason for that is because we live on a planet. The planet we live on is the only one we know of in this entire universe capable of sustaining life. And because of that unique circumstance, it is evermore important now to take care of it than ever.
Our neighbor Venus has all the proof we need to learn about the effects of CO2 buildup to a planet. CO2 buildup is happening for one reason on our planet and that is the burning of fossil fuels. It is very important that we get off the fossil fuel economy soon.
In the last 100 or so years, industrialization has had a profound impact on our way of life. We are accustomed to having a means to travel and creature comforts like heat and electricity, but that has all come at a cost to the environment. It is not going to be as simple as turning off the lights and going back to the old ways.
We are going to have to harvest the suns rays and the motions of things on the Earth itself (tidal, wind, geothermal) to generate electricity that we can convert into heat and light, and we are going to have to do it on a massive scale.
The question is not whether or not we can do it, we have no choice except to do it. The question is how do we do it quick enough?
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