...And We Will Have Snow

Chapter 5-3: Ruffling Feathers

Karen said, "What's up? You seemed to be on a roll."

Cheryl said, "Yeah, I liked that you mentioned the CO2."

"That's just it. There's so much detail available. I don't want to get off track."

"Why worry? We can always edit it later."

"Waste of time. I think I should talk to Tengri."

Karen and Cheryl agreed that was always a good idea.

So she did. The lounge was empty when the two of them settled in there. She brought him up to date on the progress they were making, and then told him her concerns.

"There's so much detail! Sometimes I think it's all important, sometimes not."

"Such as?"

"Well, we have three or four interacting energies to explain."

"And how would you want to explain them?"

"I could invoke Newton. He made history by showing that any two interacting energies are amenable to exact mathematical analysis. But he also showed that with three or more such interactions, there is no such easy tractability. Every action of one disturbs the others, which act back on the first, and it becomes impossible to assign a first cause to the sequence of mutual perturbations. And we don't just have interacting energies where the solar is clearly dominant. We are concerned with the interactions of these energies with the matter of Earth. Potentially every particle of that matter may be individually affected. Monumental complexity."

"And this is important why?"

"Because every particle of matter is an aspect of spirit. And we are trying to address spirit."

"If you want to address spirit, why discuss matter at all?"

"Because we are dealing with spirits who think they are matter, who have forgotten they are spirits. We need to get a foot in the door!"

"And your approach to this?"

"Returning to the three energies to establish a starting point. We have the constant influx and subsequent outflow of solar energy. We have the constant outflow of earth's own energy in the form of heat, which we know derived mostly from the original gravitational compression of its mass, and partially from nuclear radiation of some of that mass. We also have a small but constant outflow of earth's rotational energy, in the form of heat energy derived from convection currents in its fluid components. The molten core, the liquid oceans, the atmosphere."

"Isn't this all well known?"

"Not as well as we know it. We have been enhancing our model with data from the Q for as long as I've been here. There are things we can explain better than anybody. But that's exactly why I came to see you. There is so much new detail, it's hard to not get carried away with the story of it."

"For example?"

"Take the CO2 business. Cheryl is really proud of having solved that. But there's so much history of anger in that story. Then there is dark matter, which almost turned into another one like that. When I said those words I started to have second thoughts."

"Wise. In those years there was much arm-waving and finger-pointing with little real thought behind it. Plenty of responsibility as blame, responsibility as guilt, not enough responsibility as true ownership. Much of the emotion of that still lingers."

Sedna nodded a brisk acknowledgement of his agreement. "On the one hand, I think people ought to know, but on the other I fear many don't want to know, and will reject our whole message if we even mention that topic."

"Can you state it simply, truthfully, without blame?"

"Well, sure. No one was really wrong. They just didn't have the whole picture. The air was warming, the ocean was warming, the amount of CO2 in the air was increasing. People had been burning wood, coal and oil for a long time for energy, releasing CO2. Now there were more people, leading to more burning. These were just facts. No one really knew if those facts were connected, but it was not a bad guess to suggest that all the burning was adding to the warming. People pointed to the reduction in arctic ice as evidence of warming, but those were just facts too.

"Cheryl's study of the Q data finally showed that the cycle started with increased solar warming of the ocean's surface. Warmer water holds less gas, so CO2 was being released, along with oxygen and nitrogen. But CO2 is far more soluble in water than the other atmospheric gases, so proportionally far more was released.

"But as the cycle progressed, the warming reduced the amount of sea ice in the north. This left the cold water there open longer to absorb CO2 from the air. And the open water in the north also meant more evaporation, more snow, reflecting more sunlight, which began to offset the solar warming. In the end, Earth strikes a new balance. In the end, the human factor turns out to be small."

"You said it well. It's a good story. It deserves to be told. But you are right, it must be told in a way that doesn't ruffle anyone's feathers."

"Particularly, I suppose, those of the New Ravens."