Who would have thought
that the speed at which technology progressed would cause weather problems?
From the time the nerdy Mesopotamian realised that he needed
a wheel to move on, technology has been racing ahead. With the wheel came the
idea of a vehicle. But it was bad weather that inspired a cycle.
The year was 1815. Volcanic eruptions and a snowy summer
could well have been the first signs of global warming, but people had no idea
- the phrase hadn't been coined yet. (That would happen almost 160 years later,
when Wallace Broecker would use it for the first time.) Those were the worst of
times and the fact that such tragedy could inspire an invention called a Laufmaschine
could be attributed more to the German language than to irony.
Laufmaschine - meaning running machine in German – was a
cycle with no pedals and had to be propelled with one's feet. (Picture the
image of postmen on these cycles, pushing along with both feet and delivering
letters, and you would realise where the phrase 'push mail' came from, in
modern technology.) However, what was historic about the incident was that it
was the first time that extreme weather conditions were being linked to a
‘cycle’.
Technology’s evolution was fuelled by the arrival of cars
and bikes that belched smoke, causing pollution and contributing to global
warming – bad enough to sink an island nation like Kiribati. Not surprisingly,
the blazing speed with which the future arrived caused a lot of heat –
something had to be done to cool off. A German engineer named Sadi Carnot had
already propounded the concept of the heat engine based on his principle, the
Carnot cycle. In a dramatic reversal of technology, the reverse Carnot cycle
came into play – simply put, the Carnot cycle had to be back-pedalled to
produce cool air. But then, with air-conditioners, opinion leaders and
corporate honchos working overtime, a lot of hot air had to be let out for the
world to be cooled. And that made the global warming debacle a whole lot worse.
Yet again, a cycle had influenced the weather adversely.
In Hollywood terminology, global warming could freeze the
world like The Day After Tomorrow, melt it like 2012 or flood it like
Waterworld. James Bond's next chase could be across frozen oceans, only it
would have to be on foot because there would be no fuel to power his Aston
Martin.
From nano membranes to fusion power and algae biofuel, various
technologies were debated over, but the argument just got hotter. And while
scientists continued to search for a solution, Google came up with a driverless
car. But there was a roadblock - in the case of an accident, even Google
wouldn’t be able to facilitate a search for a driver to pin the blame on. Thus,
what started with a primitive cycle led scientists to the reverse Carnot cycle,
the carbon cycle, the solar cycle, the energy cycle and ultimately a denial
cycle that led everyone to blame everyone else.
The wise men went into a huddle and figured that they had to
stop this vicious cycle. Since all their new ideas were biting the dust in the
ozone layer, they decided that the only way out was to recycle an old idea. “It
all began with Carnot. Now, let’s end it with an Atlas,” one of them famously
declared and wheeled out an old cycle. “Let’s ride into the sunset - while it’s
still there,” he said with a shrug and pedalled away.
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