Greenhouse Catastrophe
as
Revolutionary Imperative

To distinguish the greenhouse catastrophe from the greenhouse crisis: the greenhouse crisis is the vague concern that there are too many substances in the Earthly atmosphere which are opaque to long-wave infrared, causing the air to absorb the radiated warmth of the Earth's surface at night rather than allow it to escape into black space. The greenhouse crisis is characterized by incremental worry, that each anthropogenic release of greenhouse gases will add to the now established and documented trend of global climate warming.

In contrast, the greenhouse catastrophe is a mathematical demonstration that the chemical and physical mechanisms which are involved in people making the planet hotter, are all characterized by nonlinear mathematical operations, many of which are not functions but exhibit the discontinuities known to mathematicians as catastrophes. In them the behavior of the dependent variable collapses at a specific value of the independent variable, to resume at a value which is discontinuous with its former behavior. The presence of catastrophe nonlinearities within a system means its behavior cannot be described as a reversible function, but requires the application of chaos theory for its understanding.

To pull it out of the clouds, applying chaos theory means that concern with the surface temperature of the world is not going to be a background worry in human affairs, gradually increasing over the next few centuries, as temperatures gradually climb. It means that the surface temperature of this planet will more likely be characterized by a jump, at least one, but probably a series of steps. The implication is that industrially-caused global climate warming cannot be kept in the background as a pesky annoyance. It must be a foreground concern, to be addressed as a threat to the short-term survivability of the biosphere.

The reason that discontinuities occur in the curves which represent the physical phenomona relevant to the prediction of global surface temperature is that threshold effects are found in some of the physical mechanisms. The temperature of Earth is biomediated. The biosphere regulates the surface temperature of our planet, a relatively recent awareness in scientific circles. Human industry, the final expression of our control of fire, is an external factor which has swamped Nature's capacity to absorb the effects of fire. There are too many humans on Earth, and each of those humans (in effect) is far too busy burning too many fires.

Natural biospheric regulation of the climate is characterized by integration, a smoothing of short-term variability leading to adjustments in longer-term trends. From the aspect of natural cycles, we are living in a short-term interlude in the Ice Ages. Our pulse input of excessive burning, however, may have already disrupted the natural cycle, to the extent that our planet may never see another continental glaciation. We might have already broken the machinery of climate.

Human industry in the big picture of the biosphere is indistinguishable from burning fires, in terms of the resulting products. A simple mass relation will show that the main production of humanity is smoke. (This term is here applied loosely to denote all the volatile products of production, not in its strict sense denoting aerosol particulates. The simplification is for conceptual emphasis, in accord with the word's common-language usage including steam, carbon oxides and ash microparticles.) Repeating, the main human production by mass is smoke. That's one reason we get a little nervous when we consider how Nature must view us. (The other main reason we tremble in this examination is our compulsive overpredation; we kill and waste and kill again.)

We burn fires and make smoke. In terms of the biosphere, that makes us an entropic factor. Nature, personifying the biosphere, likes to put available carbon into living organisms, but humans kill and burn, at odds with the interests of the natural world. Lately we have got access to planetary reserves of carbon, yet have acted to deny this carbon to the biosphere. We have burned it or made carbon products which are indigestable to organisms. Mostly we burned it, which brings us around to the greenhouse effect. We take underground carbon and put it in the air. Other living creatures don't get to use it until we're finished with it, as a rule. This is a large amount of carbon even by the standards of the biosphere.

The first quantitative threshold which relates to the thermal equilibrium of our planet, we crossed without knowing it, around the middle of the twentieth century. That was when we started putting more carbon into the atmosphere of our planet every year, than the biosphere was able to take out. Since then, carbon has been accumulating in the atmosphere, and of course the rate of its accumulation has steadily increased. At that time the die was cast, making certain future developments inevitable, though no human at the time had the information to understand it.

Humanity made irrevocable commitment to the economy of fossil fuel, though really this had been a foregone conclusion for a couple centuries before 1950. Indirectly, this wholehearted investment made revolution mandatory. The simple mathematical truth that humanity can not continually increase the burning of fossil fuels can have no effect on the social, political and economic structures now in place. They are established on the commitment to do so. In that these institutions are golems, automatons beyond the reach of real-time human control, the existence of humanity and of life itself depends on their timely destruction. Humanity cannot stop burning fires as long as government and the money economy exist. Humanity must stop burning fires for the continued existence of the biosphere. Therefore the revolution is inevitable, for life to continue. This enlightenment formed the core of the hippie illumination in the late 1960's, which notably occurred before science had yet formulated the precise mechanism of the portending eco-catastrophe.

Again, the phrase burning fires is my shortcut terminology for the processes of industrial production fueled by petroleum and coal. References to the destruction of government and economy should be taken literally, for these institutions are dedicated to the protection of the present industrial system. Reform and restructuring compromises are strictly impossible. The problem lies with the principles of foundation of the present institutions; they exist for the wrong reasons. They were established to prevent the very type of change which is now imperative. Humanity must now function in emergency mode, to assure the continuance of life. To retain any form or shell of the heritage system would divert energy which cannot be spared. Any nominal residuum of old forms would work against the required high-efficiency patterns of production and organization. Enucleation templates which might serve to re-establish anti-life institutions of the human-only or human-first viewpoints must be avoided, to encourage the development of organizational units which embody the life-first perspective. Our species has got to change its habits.

The carbon budget of our planet was challenged by our artificial injection right into the atmosphere of large amounts of carbon which had been interned in subsurface reserves of coal and petroleum. The ultimate threat to life on this planet is the largest planetary reserve of carbon, the abyssal carbonate sediments. The end-game scenario we must avoid is the gasification of this carbon. Were it to be treated with warm acid, it would become gas. There is five times as much carbon on the bottom of the oceans as all the other carbon in other categories on our planet. A small fraction of this carbon, released into the air, would raise the surface temperature above the boiling point of water, making biology history. The rest would be sheer thermodynamics, ending with all available carbon and water in the atmosphere, of a very hot planet. That is what we want to avoid.

That carbon stays on the sea floor because it is covered with a layer of water that is very cold and not too acid. Distressingly, a carbonate going into solution in carbonic acid liberates heat. Not much, just a little. But that heat can encourage the solution of neighboring carbonate, giving a possibility of a positive feedback characteristic to the reaction, should the acidity be renewed. Worse, heat rises, as does water which has had its density decreased by dissolving carbon dioxide. That very cold, dense water on the sea floor is very still. Any perturbation given by a plume of water rising through it will increase its circulation, and since all the other water is warmer, circulation must raise its temperature. In short, any disturbance at all to the quietness of the black abyss can result in carbon pumped through the sea into the air.

This carbon has no contact with the biosphere, so its hypothetical movement can not be biologically restrained. It follows the simple, merciless laws of chemistry. There is enough carbon down there to provide fifteen atmospheres partial pressure of carbon dioxide on the surface. Carbon dioxide is the thermodynamic low-energy form of carbon. If our planet were not ruled by life, all available carbon would become carbon dioxide in the air. That is the death we face, for our error of moving dead carbon from underground into the air. If we fail to repair our damage, the carbon of our bodies will also go into the air.

The predominant feature of deep-sea circulation is the five cold-water sinks where polar water descends to drive the deep-sea circulation. The obviously crucial consideration is the pH of this chilly water, that it must not become too acid. It is conceivable that biological factors determine the acidity of this water. Water containing dead microorganisms, such as plankton, is more acid than other water. These five locations must be frequently monitored, that we may receive warning of possible acidulation of waters bound for the depths.

Whithertowards?

rev 980303