A fantastic last week of June is to our advantage.  We will start today with our roadmap outline update. A concise and precise article is unfolded below.

Please download the slides by clicking here:

What is climate change? Let´s start today by asking ourselves questions. The most basic one: What is climate change? We will provide four definitions. The most popular one, which we have pulled out from the Encyclopedia Britannica. The second one is from a solid academic book. The third one is from the United Nations and the fourth one is from Eleonora Escalante Strategy.

1. Climate change defined by Britannica.com: It is a periodic modification of Earth’s climate brought about as a result of changes in the atmosphere as well as interactions between the atmosphere and various other geologic, chemical, biological, and geographic factors within the Earth system. This source also explains the fundamental notions of what is behind this definition. In addition, the author of this meaning exposes that “climate is often defined loosely as the average weather at a particular place, incorporating such features as temperature, precipitation, humidity, and windiness”(1). 
2. Climate Change explained in the book “Sustainable Energy, Choosing among options”. If the climate is defined as the average of 10 or 20 years ’ worth of weather, then climate change is not the year-to-year variability. Climate change is long-term global warming or cooling. It could be high temperatures as much as low temperatures. Scientists have determined several major causes of this. The major one that is named stands for “radiative forcing” or an imbalance between the energy the earth receives from the sun (largely as visible light) and energy the earth transmits back into space as Infrared Radiation (loosely, heat or light of longer wavelengths that is invisible to the human eye). “Greenhouse warming ” of the earth occurs when gases (mainly CO2 and water vapor) and clouds in the atmosphere absorb some Infrared Radiation (IR) and then send it back to the earth. These atmospheric concentrations of CO 2 and other greenhouse gases have risen appreciably in the last 100 years, with the human activity known to be a major source (2). Nevertheless, still in our days, there is considerable uncertainty as to how climate responds to changes in radiative forcing, in part because crucial geophysical processes that can exacerbate or attenuate warming are poorly understood. For example, daytime clouds cool the earth by reflecting solar radiation away from the planet. At night, blanketing cloud cover or high humidity can warm the earth by reflecting Infrared Radiation back to the earth’s surface. Oceans have a huge mass and high heat capacity and take a lot of energy to heat up or cool down. Oceans thus shield or buffer climate change, but we still know little about how rapidly they can store or release heat from their inner depths.
3. Climate change described by United Nations: Refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. These shifts may be natural, such as through variations in the solar cycle. But since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas. Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures. Examples of greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change include carbon dioxide and methane. These come from using gasoline for driving a car or coal for heating a building, for example. Clearing land and forests can also release carbon dioxide. Landfills for garbage are a major source of methane emissions. Energy, industry, transport, buildings, agriculture, and land use are among the main emitters (3).
4. Climate Change portrayed by Eleonora Escalante Strategy: Climate change is a natural phenomenon of temperature and weather shifts in the planet that is linked to transitions, evolutions, and transformations in 6 interrelated biogeochemical cycles: The first four are the hydrological water cycle, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and the oxygen cycle. These cycles might be altered, exacerbated, or attenuated by the type of energy activities that human beings release into the atmosphere. The subsequent 2 cycles are cycles related to the upper earth crust sedimentary cycles of iron, sulfur, phosphorus, etc; and the deep geologic earth cycles associated with the plate tectonic/rock movement cycles, earthquakes,  and volcanos activities. Earth’s internal heat also has a cycle that shapes global landforms and environments through processes in the geosphere. We conceive climate change as a consequence of the last 6 interrelated cycles. Some cycles are affected by humans with pollution and depletion. Meanwhile, others do not. We also consider a seventh external cycle outward to our magnetosphere, which in the past has caused cataclysms. In summary, we believe that climate change is defined by any of these 6 or 7 cycles (6), interrelated or not in between, causing a steady pattern of temperature-weather shift over several years of verified observation.

What is not climate change? Many people are using the term climate change in anomalous ways. For example, climate change is not the repetition (in terms of absolute numbers) of extreme weather events (from cold to warm and vice versa). Climate change is not only climate warming, but it may be also climate cooling. Climate change is not a storm of radioactivity coming from the sun either. Climate change is not an isolated cause of warming, but it is the consequence of multiple causes, that we are still trying to figure out how to connect. Climate Change is not a demographic-triggered situation, but it is perceived as boosted by the lack of long-term vision in the distribution of urban population growth all over the planet. Climate change is beyond our denial to care for the environment when inventing products and services. Climate change is not a comedy or farce invented by the United Nations.

Is climate change caused by human pollution and depletion of water, air, and land?. Our answer is that climate change has a relationship with human mismanagement of our activities on earth, and we certainly can affirm that pollution and depletion of our natural resources are causing some disbalance in it. We still don´t know how to connect all the pieces of the puzzle, but certainly, climate change is being felt in our seasons which have been altered at a local and regional scale. In addition, or in parallel, there are macro fluctuations that are linked to the biogeochemical cycles which can last thousands of years and have produced the landscape of the current continents, the deserts, and the previous ice ages. The causes of climate change disasters are shifting from natural to human provoked. This is our hypothesis.

Is the temperature rising from the inside out of the planet? (Slide 5) Some people believe that something inside the nucleus (inner core) of the planet could be the reason why our temperature is rising. Others believe that the earth is distancing 1.5 cm/year far from the sun every year, and in consequence, to equilibrate this little distance, the inner core of the earth is releasing more energy or Earth’s inner heat (4). This inner heat is not being cushioned or absorbed by the ocean’s volume of water. That could be the reason why the arctic plates are self-melting dramatically, or trying to pour more water into the oceans in their quest to regulate global warming that could be provoked from the inside. As strategists, our answer is that it might be that the temperature (globally) is rising caused by inner heat, only if we start to observe frequent and greatest geological movements in the tectonic layers, provoking earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcano explosions. When the inner core of planet earth starts to be more active, that is a sign that layers inside our planet are releasing energy to the surface. In addition, we believe that the degree of salinity in the oceans is another sign that could confirm this new paradigm. If salinity in the oceans is changing because of our pollution and depletion, we also will find a cause. We certainly believe there are several assumptions that need to be explored, funded by the billionaires who have the capacity to finance these research studies in Universities or through United Nations academic/scientific projects from developed and non-developing countries. In consequence, these studies must be confirmed by international multidisciplinary teams of scientists using a Design-Based research approach (5). For the time being, let´s simply consider that global warming causes are linked to the 6 biogeochemical cycles and all might be interconnected, including the seventh one that is related to a solar cycle that we have not comprehended yet.

Why is water so crucial for keeping our earth´s thermostat “on point”?  More than 3/4 of the global water cycle consists of the annual rainfall and evaporation exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere. In a scenario of a warmer climate, the water cycle is expected to intensify with shifting large-scale rainfall and drought patterns (7). Are we starting to feel this? Since the ocean behaves like a rain gauge (a device for collecting and measuring the amount of rain that falls), then we ask ourselves, are the current water cycle (and the rest of the cycles) telling us that something weird is happening in our beloved ocean, our earth´s thermostat?. My hunch is that oceans are singing to us that something is occurring and we have not yet realized the complexity and real dimension of the problem.

Our next subject: Loving Water is caring for us.

Strategic Music Section:

Why did we choose Christopher Koncz, Daniel Stepner, and Anne Black? Our answer was introduced in our last publication. We certainly believe that Mozart´s instruments (in their original form) should be shown here. Mozart is one of the most incredible composers of all time. When Koncz, Stepner, and Black made Mozart´s violin and viola sound again, this is a sign of the ancient priorities of our musical forefathers.  The term excellent quality of the sound (by the player and the instrument) was considered a primary value.  There is something about Mozart´s music that brings historical reflections of harmony storytelling into the settings. We will explore, and show you surprising things about Mozart in our next publications. Stay tuned.

Songs of today belong to Isaac Stern. We have selected three videos about Stern. the first one is an extracted piece from the documentary “From Mao to Mozart”, in which Stern is teaching a master class in person. The second is about Isaac Stern with Brahms’s original partiture at The Library of Congress. And the third one is the song “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair (Arranged for Violin & Orchestra), with Milton Katims and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. Enjoy the amazing spirit of a virtuoso violin lecturer who loved to teach in person, even in China!.

See you next Friday, with the 17th episode of “What´s up with water: Pouring water in your corporate strategy: Loving water is caring for us”. Thank you for reading to me.

Sources of Reference utilized to prepare the slides and the material above:

(1) https://www.britannica.com/science/climate-change

(2) https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sustainable-energy-second-edition

(3) https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-climate-change

(4) https://ugc.berkeley.edu/background-content/earths-internal-heat/

(5) https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/planets-temperature-rising

(6) https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/sectors/biogeochemical-cycles

(7) https://tos.org/oceanography/article/the-ocean-and-the-global-water-cycle

Disclaimer: Illustrations in Watercolor are painted by Eleonora Escalante. Other types of illustrations or videos (which are not mine) are used for educational purposes ONLY. Nevertheless, most of the pictures, images, or videos shown on this blog are not mine. I do not own any of the lovely photos or images posted unless otherwise stated. 

Published by eleonoraescalantestrategy

Corporate Strategy Artist, San Salvador, El Salvador View all posts by eleonoraescalantestrategy