Jagged Environment
Consequences
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Jagged EnvironmentConsequences |
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Mass extinctions |
Processes are kept in isolation until some key point, where their mutual interface is opened-up and they are introduced to each other. But the essential life ingredients are generated continually within the Earth. Maintaining a boundary requires fairly well controlled conditions of temperature and composition. The structure of the atmosphere shows this perfectly. Clouds and ices act as switches, changing temperature and composition until a boundary is breached. Stratospheric cooling will relieve Global-Warming by lifting the lid of the troposphere, and enabling the steady flow of greenhouse gases and heat into the upper atmosphere - away from the boundary layer which supports life. This surface region will then cool. The polar regions will freeze. The ocean levels will fall. The new ice-age will have begun. However, more U.V. will reach the surface because the ozone is depleted, but only temporarily, because the ozone levels must eventually be restored. Heating of the stratosphere by increasing radiation levels from the Earth’s surface, and by hot gases as they escape from the boundary layer, will reduce the extent of cloud formation, so aiding the restoration of the ozone layer. Thus global-warming and ozone loss are part of an interdependent, cyclical process, and since global-warming is independent of human activities, these events are out of our hands, and merely part of the ebb and flow of the natural environment. Ozone-loss, therefore, is part of the self-regulating mechanism of Nature - ozone not only protects at ground level against UV, but keeps an essential concentration of CO2 in this boundary in which life is sustained - but the two are in balance; too much of one, and the other is depleted. Should the CO2 level fall too much, the ozone lid would become thicker, to keep what remains in. Increased freezing in the polar regions not only causes the sea-levels to fall, but concentrates the amount of salt dissolved in the surface layers: the gradient of concentration (and that of temperature) urges the Atlantic Conveyor, where vast volumes of water are transported from the regions of high concentration, where the water is more dense, to deeper regions of the ocean. So the conveyor is ultimately switched-on once more. The complexity of three interdependent phenomena is immense: global-warming or cooling; ozone-loss; oceanic gradients of temperature and chemical composition. Global-cooling - ice-age - is the event to be most feared by humans who wish their species to continue to thrive, since more of us will die (freeze or starve) in a cold and inhospitable climate, though the proliferation of viruses and bacteria, in further development of their own stages of evolution, brings us to risk through disease. We appear to be poised upon the fulcrum of these events. The processes of the Earth, and its fate, were written into its plan, and cast at the moment of its creation - including the origins of ourselves, who remain an integral part of this plan, for a specified duration, and we cannot change this or influence it unduly. Thus our fears for the Environment are groundless, and reflect our focus upon ourselves, and our exaggerated belief in our importance. Like the dinosaurs, we may disappear, but if we do, it is merely in the natural, pre-ordained chain of order. In understanding this, we can accept the nature of the Earth, in symbiosis with ourselves, and with each other; this makes us free. In using Science, for all its imperfections, I do not see how this acts against the idea of Creation, but surely reinforces it, once we accept the unity of the different aspects which it reveals - though piecemeal; a fault of reductionism. But however achieved, recognising the centrality and continuity of the evolving, creating, Earth, is surely a form of worship. The prompt for this worship is our desire to know, to feel a sense of significance; this may be a symptom of our collective and common ancestry - a universal mind; a collective consciousness. By understanding the structure of the Earth, we may find its destiny, and our own. In the unevenness of its construction - in its jaggedness, lie the gradients which determine the future. Pursuing these lines, there seems little room for Humanity in any central role. The main problem is the brevity of our time-scale so far - against the enormous backdrop of geology. And could all its prior activity have a major intention in originating us, perhaps as agents of evolution, or to provide guardianship - a responsibility which we place on ourselves? If we have no such importance, then neither of these roles exist for us, but if we are agents of evolution - by engaging in activities which stress the planet - then we are acting-out our natural part, and should continue it. But we are the highest forms of intelligent life, and it is part of our nature to inquire, to try to make sense of our world and the wider Universe as it touches us. However, human activity is insignificant against the overwhelming forces of geology - i.e. in regard to global-warming and flooding, and that much of these phenomena is written into the natural code of the Earth, in the boundaries and gradients with which it was created. Any impact of pollution is likely to be forced evolution; this applies to pollution by humans, but Mother Earth pollutes on a fantastic scale! Our concerns about pollution really only concern life, and especially current Human life. Mutation and extinction of species, more cancers and diseases of the overstressed immune system; viruses and bacteria (at surface level) are also forced to mutate, since they are stressed too. That we will get cancer (or other diseases of such forced evolution), that our children will die; that they and successive generations (sins-of-the-fathers) may be forced along a biological path of extinction. To the overall destiny of the Earth, this does not matter at all. If we die we stop polluting; and if pollution only affects pre-existing life, all will anyway be subsumed in the broader geochemical prognosis, and even if we survive, we will do so in the way life must respond to testing forces - by evolving; and so if a geologic lineage is preserved - if we avoid extinction - it must extrapolate to some form which is not us. We, and all our cancers, are ephemeral. The effect of chemical pollution by humans cannot be ignored, since it involves our placing toxic materials - in many cases not natural in the Earth - in equally unnatural regions which have no natural protection from them. This broad (global) scale is represented by the microcosm of living cells, which become poisoned - or diseased - when their natural boundaries and the compartments so defined, are breached. So our impact, directly, on life is serious. But are we intended to cause such activity, in the overall global evolution - was all of this pre-written into the code? Or do we have a self-destruct programme, intended to exist for a determined period, and we will simply wipe ourselves out? Or will we simply evolve rapidly to more enlightened states? In a human-centred view of human importance, as custodians of the planet, we should prefer to find a compromise and so save ourselves, our environment and our fellow creatures (this is morality). That our activities (our technology) are part of our learning curve. Our impact is not so great that we have sown entirely the seeds to destroy all life. But the environment being “jagged”, and subject to mutation and change, and all life being mutable, could become so modified that it can no longer sustain us; but, again, this may all be part of the whole pre-determined process. Life on Earth, has, nonetheless, succeeded despite overwhelming periods of pollution by the Earth itself: in the form of billions of tons of sulphur dioxide, released especially during periods of virulent volcanic activity. Super-volcanoes are thought to have exterminated up to 95% of all life on Earth, in a short period (including the dinosaurs). The remaining 5% were lucky: survival of the luckiest. If the geologic processes are, over great time, self-regulating, then stability will again reign - eventually; but as part of this process, intelligent beings may emerge again and again - among other species. We can try to sustain Environment as we now understand it, by curbing our activities, but population will ultimately be regulated by the sustainability of the resources upon which we depend. Our current existence is that of a bubble - our technology preserves this (against disease, against famine) - and the bubble must eventually burst. If there already are strains of bacteria whose evolution has outstripped our chemical defences, then there will be yet more, so we have already seen the incipiency of the bubble bursting. But life will emerge again - from the geologic seeds set within the Earth, and as such, it is indestructible, though its higher forms are coeval with viruses and bacteria whose own rapid evolution must outstrip them. Whatever we do, our demise is inevitable; it is only life overall which will survive, since it is part of the continual, geologic act of Creation to which we belong. So, life is eternal, traversing geologic time-scales; our own part in it is less clear, and is probably a temporary one (a bit-part). Sentient creatures will emerge then fall, and while they can, wonder their place within the scheme (the code) of things. This, surely, is comforting, but our interpretations, our concepts of Self, of God, of Soul belong only to our adapted form - that of the brain - they may have no existence beyond us; yet the fact of Creation is irrefutable. The notion, implicit to human thinking, that the great realm of the Universe, or even the immediate Solar System - even just the Earth - existing over millions of millennia, arose simply in the purpose of creating life - Human Life - us - is the ultimate standard of our arrogance; the utter nonsense of which is implicit to the obvious. Copyright © 2001 Chris James Last updated 12 March, 2005 |
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