The Planet Has Fever
Fever
How long does it take when the Earth gets too hot for life to return to "normal" meaning conditions conducive for life as we know it? About 55 million years ago a geological situation released more than a TERRATON of gaseous carbon and there was a warming where temperatures in the arctic and temperate regions were elevated 8 degrees C. In the tropical regions the rise was only around 5 degrees C. To return to suitable; that is conducive temperatures took over a hundred thousand years. Another-words, it doesn't take much to push the Earth into a temperature zone where (most) life can no longer sustain itself.
That same crisis state is again predictable with much certainty due to global warming. Over half as much carbon as that which caused those conditions 55 million years ago has been put into the atmosphere.
Earth has also been changed and unable to HEAL as it once could due to the extensive land taken for agriculture to feed and shelter the billions of people which are now inhabiting the planet and the sun has become hotter so conditions are even less fit for life. As the planet warms MOST life will die.
My contention is we have too many people; we have used up too much of the land altering the natural cycle of oxygen and carbon dioxide production and all the other chemicals it takes to keep the planet in balance. We have unbalanced the Earth. The Earth has a fever.
The Earth must be balanced for life in order to regulate itself and maintain conditions necessary for life. We have already depleted 40% the Earth - reducing the Earth's capability to self-heal (to regulate itself).
What I say now will confound some of you. It is contrary to what you have read and heard and probably believe. By reducing pollution; that is, smoke and aerosols and other particulates we are making the fever worse and causing fast global warming. My point is these particulates are actually helpful in reducing global warming - but not so good for respiration, alergies, etc.
How is that possible? Because dust, smoke and some other pollution actually reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back into space. This is called `global dimming' but it is transient and if there is a less particulate pollution there is faster global warming. Volcanic eruptions actually produce the kind of pollution which increases global dimming and reduces global warming.
Our overuse of fossil fuels is leading to a quicker heating and the many mechanisms for this has already been discussed and written about. Many who doubted it are coming around to the world community's position and there is a recognition that something must be done quickly.
I don't think that will help. Even if we now reduce fossil fuels, it won't do anything about the population problem. It won't do anything about changing our life styles. That doesn't mean we must not try, but until we address the carrying capacity of the Earth and do something about reducing the strain on the Earth's ability to self-regulate by reducing the population of the Earth, we cannot fix the problem of extinction AND life more complex than bacteria will not survive.
Beginning Again
The theory of Panspermia was first proposed by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe in 1974 that life was seeded from space. The suggestion was not well received but that is not unusual and has happened often with a hypothesis that begins on the fringe of ideas which eventually does become mainstream. The theory of Panspermia is becoming more acceptable since evidence that some life on earth could stand the extreme rigors of outer space and may very well have arrived on earth on meteorites, comets or asteroids.
The Martian discovery of microbes was exciting enough for scientists to look at this proposal by professor Wickramsinghe again that primitive life can travel through space and still be fertile.
Analogy: After-all, plant seeds are often carried in the wind or by birds or in the feces of other animals. They are dropped in the soil and they become volunteers. We have plants or vegetables where we didn't have them before and nobody had to plant them.
There is also another not so desirable analogy: - Seeds carried from place to place and just like the birds on Earth can even cause genetically modified plants to invade an established farm of organic vegetables where these GM seeds overrun other fields and organic vegetables become GM vegetables - no longer what they were intended to be - and the effects are undesirable.
It is possible; I think very probable, that proeukaryote life; bacteria and archaia originated somewhere in the cosmos and they were carried here to seed planet Earth which eventually, due to the melding of archaia and bacteria resulted in mitochrondria, the fuel cell of complex life, which gave rise to eukaryotic multicellular organisms with a nucleus and the capability of becoming us.
And for whatever the reason or no reason at all except our greed and selfishness to spoil the planet - it is all going to come to an end. It is just a matter of time. The Earth is changing back to a previous state where most living things will die - except the extremophiles, like the seeds which became us. Maybe that is a message to us that Gaia and Homo sapiens, those of us who are the stewards for the planet have not had a suitable marriage and it is time for the seeds to re-fertilize the planet and begin again.
It is impossible to tell how many times this has happened before. If it (life-reproduction-death) keeps on going and life really is a repetition of what came before, perhaps purposeless evolution with random mutations and reproduction will be something more than an end in itself and life will eventually get it right - whatever that is?
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Hank Roth
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