A sea change

A message and story not at all like what it first appears to be.

During times of climate stability, we can get used to the environment working a certain way. Winter is cold, summer is hot, and there are infinite variations in between — we know these and rely on them to set our annual clocks. But if some of that balance is thrown off — sometimes natural forces like volcanic activity or manmade forces like burning of fuel for energy, these things we know get less reliable, and they can get more varied. Areas that typically would have been cold all winter get 60º days in December, January, or February and then dive headfirst into a Polar Vortex. What can also happen is that ocean currents that we rely on, for example, to keep Europe warm and temperate, can stop circulating, leading to a wildly different climate for an entire continent.

In the grand scheme of the cosmos, this is not “good” or “bad.” Weather changes on planets all the time, and according to the last estimate, there are 700 quintillion planets in the observable universe. Written differently, that is 700,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets. That means there are estimated to be more planets than all the grains of sand on every beach on planet Earth. Imagine holding a handful of sand and really taking in how many thousands of grains of sand are just in your hand. Now imagine just a hole you could dig and how many grains. Now imagine one…