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, we recommend Richard Clarke’s “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 making navigation of those areas difficult for large vehicles needed for construction of oil wells and pipelines, 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, which seem self-destructive, yet bring 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 have long believed that the Gaia theory has many good points, whether or not 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.
The biggest weakness is the above argument 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 20-40 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 (almost impossible), the methane gas release from those areas would guarantee that the Earth still continued its course toward warming and further global climate destabilization.
A climate tipping point means that it is already out of our hands. Al Gore’s book “An Inconvenient Truth” is optimistic by comparison with “With Speed and Violence,” which can be found above.
But does that mean that we stop trying? Are we already helpless? Do we rearrange the lounge chairs on the Titanic or pour ourselves a strong one and wait for the inevitable? What do you think? Please leave your comments about this question at the link below.
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Tags: Gaia Theory, James Lovelock, melting permafrost, methane gas release, siberian oil, taiga gas, tipping point, with speed and violence
Gaia Theory, James Lovelock, melting permafrost, methane gas release, siberian oil, taiga gas, tipping point, with speed and violence | Guru
3 Comments to “Tipping Points and Gaia’s Defence Tactics”
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By mgpc, July 8, 2009 @ 2:38 am
Gaia acts like a cogniscent organism and defends herself.
An animal, plant or fungus is a symbiotic system of single-celled organisms.
Why can't we see the Earth as the same? A system of various single and multi-celled organisms.
Can Gaia die? Take a look Mars. Scientists are searching for signs of life in the water already discovered on Mars. It has been proposed that Mars once contained more water and maybe even an atmosphere.
What could make Earth's water and atmosphere vanish? Run-away global warming as we pass tipping points, for one thing.
Luckily, many of Earth's climate regulating feedback loops are stable, self-dampening. However, it is feared that once certain tipping points are passed, Earth's ability to return to balance will be destroyed and we might enter a self-reinforcing feedback loop, with ever amplifying effects throwing more heat into the atmosphere.
It is suspected that Venus's water and atmosphere "boiled-off" into space.
By Real Science, September 23, 2009 @ 9:09 pm
Global warming [sic] has been disproved this year by real scientists who are not tied to politics like the U.N. scientists are. Total conflict of interest. The U.N. is using this fake science to control nations. Wake up before the USA loses whats left of its sovereignty.
Just look at how cool this summer was.
By Dennis, October 21, 2009 @ 8:57 am
George Carlin provides the best conclusion to the thoughts above:
“The Earth is not going anywhere, but we are.”