Tipping Points and Gaia's Defence Tactics

April 15th, 2008 - Oil just broke another record at $ 113 a barrel! Prior to this, oil only flirted with these levels after a disaster like Hurricane Katrina. Just imagine what would happen to oil if another major hurricane hit the oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, or if terrorists interrupted Middle East oil supplies? (For an interesting analysis of a similar possible scenario, read Richard Clarke's The Scorpion's Gate".)

On the contrary, economists will tell you that these high oil prices are caused by the weak dollar and investors looking for a shelter in commodities. We hear less commentary about Peak Oil than we do about oil speculators.

However, the Wall Street Journal carried a piece about Siberian oil supplies slowing down due to "age." In other words, Russia's oil wells are drying up, and they have poor infrastructure in place to tap the promising regions of Eastern Siberia.

Add to that the melting permafrost(global warming?) making it difficult for large vehicles to navigate those areas, and we should not be seeing Eastern Siberian oil flooding the market any time soon. To me, this effect has an eery resemblance to the Gaia theory of Earth protecting itself in ironic ways and bringing about its own equilibrium. In other words, carbon dioxide emissions from burning petroleum fuels are knocking Earth's climate out of balance, so Earth takes measures to counteract that effect. I'm not agreeing with the Gaia theory in saying that the Earth is consciously acting this way, but, thankfully, it is that very tendency towards equilibrium which makes Earth hospitable to life in the first place.

Until we hit the climate's tipping points...

For some frightening reading about tipping points, Google the following:

Methane Gas release from permafrost;
Arctic Ice Albedo;
Antarctic Ice Carbon Sink Weakening.

I'll give you a hint about why I'm wrong in the above paragraph where I posit that Earth is defending herself my melting the permafrost and thus slowing down oil extraction: This would be a poison pill defense. Melting permafrost releases huge amounts of methane gas from the wet, rotting swamps which are created. Methane is 20 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. It has been estimated that the greenhouse effect caused by the methane gas release from Alaska, Siberia, Greenland, Norway and Canada is so powerful that it exceeds the warming that the United States causes from its total carbon dioxide output. In other words, now that we have reached this tipping point, even if the United States became carbon neutral (slim chance!), the methane gas release from those areas would guarantee that the Earth still continued its course toward global climate destabilization.

A climate tipping point means that it is already out of our hands. For a further look at that idea, I highly recommend reading the gripping scenarios described in With Speed and Violence, which makes Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth look like child's play.

But does that mean that we stop trying? What do you think? Please leave your comments about this question at the link below.