The Earth is Out of Balance

Scientists Confirm Earth's Energy is Out of Balance

"Scientists have concluded more energy is being absorbed from the sun than is emitted back to space, throwing the Earth's energy "out of balance" and warming the globe." NASA

"Scientists from NASA, Columbia University, New York, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif. used satellites, data from buoys and computer models to study the Earth's oceans. They confirmed the energy imbalance by using precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 years." (ibid)

""The energy imbalance is an expected consequence of increasing atmospheric pollution, especially carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, and black carbon particles. These pollutants block the Earth's heat radiation from escaping to space, and they increase absorption of sunlight," said Jim Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York. He is the lead author of the new study, which is in this week's Science Magazine Science Express." (ibid)

"As the Earth warms it emits more heat. Eventually the Earth will be back in balance, if the greenhouse gas emissions are kept at the same level of today. Scientists know it takes the ocean longer to warm than the land. The lag in the ocean's response has practical consequences. It means there is an additional global warming of about one degree Fahrenheit that is already in the pipeline. Even if there were no further increase of human-made gases in the air, climate would continue to warm that much over the next century." (ibid)

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 TERATON (1000 gigatons) 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.

The Earth Has a Fever

We have too many people on the planet. 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).

"Warmer world-wide water temperatures also affect other things. "Warmer waters increase the likelihood of accelerated ice sheet disintegration and sea level rise during this century," Hansen said. Since 1993, sea levels have been measured by satellite altimeters. Data has shown they have risen by approximately 3.1 centimeters or 1.26 inches per decade." (ibid)

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. But, I (and others) think it is already too late.

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. It is a stretch, but perhaps we can buy some time and technology can provide some hope. 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 big problem of extinction AND life more complex than bacteria will not survive.

Beginning Again

"How life originated on earth is a question that people have pondered for ages. Theories abound, from those based on religious doctrine, to the purely scientific, to others that border on science fiction. One possibility that hovers on this border is the panspermia theory, which suggests that life on Earth did not originate on our planet, but was transported here from somewhere else in the universe. While this idea may seem straight out of a science fiction novel, some evidence suggests that an extraterrestrial origin of life may not be such a far out idea." Panspermia

"One argument that supports the panspermia theory is the emergence of life soon after the heavy bombardment period of earth, between 4 and 3.8 billion years ago. During this period, researchers believe the Earth endured an extended and very powerful series of meteor showers. However, the earliest evidence for life on Earth suggests it was present some 3.83 billion years ago, overlapping with this bombardment phase. These observations suggest that living things during this period would have faced extinction, contributing to the idea that life did not originate on Earth." (ibid)

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?

"An important thing to note about the panspermia hypothesis is that it gives no explanation for how life that arrived on Earth came to be. Even if we are able to show that life on Earth was a result of panspermia, the question of where and how life originated will be a lot harder to answer. So far our knowledge of the solar system suggests that life is unique to Earth, but, as science and technology advance, we will have to modify ideas that we currently regard as facts. It remains to be seen if the questions regarding the origin of life on Earth and the origin of life in the universe have the same answer." (ibid)

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Hank Roth