“The human experiment on the Planet’s climate of turning up the heat with billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases, whilst at the same time wiping out most natural ecosystems that help to regulate the climate will have the same predictable effect on the Earth as the Soviet technicians had on Chernobyl’s reactor core when they tried the same experiment. It will lead to meltdown.” Mark Lynas, summarizing James Lovelock’s views in Six Degrees, p176

Do you know how our Planet works? Most people don't and because of that we don't understand the effect we're having on it. Nature is an incredibly dangerous force that has no mercy.

We need Nature but it doesn't need us. The debate about protecting the environment is misguided because it appeals to our goodwill when it should appeal to our fear. We've lost our traditional fear of Nature because we've managed to dominate it but our domination has been an illusion. It is impossible to dominate something on which we depend for survival. If we have no food and no water, we die. It is inevitable. Because we can't do without Nature, we have to understand it, respect it and protect it. By doing this, we insure our own survival.

Our domination has caused the elimination of major regulating mechanisms that kept us alive for thousands of years. We've entered the age of consequences. Nature has a knife under the throat of every newborn human because we've broken its balance and now it's shifting into a different state. A state that may not have any room for us.

In every major part of the world there is a time bomb with destructive powers beyond our imagination that will hasten the speed of global heating once triggered. All these time bombs are wired together so that if one goes, the others follow. The first of these bombs, the Arctic Ice Sea Cover has been triggered. It is melting a breakneck speed.

WARNING: reading the interaction of the Earth's Ecosystems is emotionally damaging. For this reason, we advise you not to read it. Knowledge is no prerequisite for action. You can act without it, sign some petitions here instead . There are easier ways to acquire the knowledge you need to act. Instead of reading this text, we recommmend that you watch the two videos below:

 

 

 

 

THE INTERACTION OF THE EARTH’S ECOSYSTEMS

 

THE GULF STREAM

The Gulf Stream is the Ocean’s conveyer belt. It’s a current moving in a circle through the world’s oceans moving hot water North and cold water South. Thanks to the Gulf Stream, we have a temperate climate as the UK is 4-6 degree Celsius warmer than it would be without it.
 
Warm currents sink at the bottom of the ocean as they are met by the cold winds coming off the Arctic over Greenland that evaporate the heat out of the Gulf Stream. The steam is carried over to Western Europe by the prevailing winds and the Earth’s rotation. Once the heat has been removed from the current, you get colder and saltier water that is denser and heavier so it sinks at the bottom of the Ocean at the rate of 5 billion gallons per second.

The Gulf Stream brings to the UK the equivalent heat of a million power stations. If it were to shut down, the weather in the UK would be the same as in Alaska affecting our homes, infrastructure, transport system and creating economic chaos.

The Arctic Sea Ice coverage has shrunk by 40% since the late 70s thereby diluting fresh water into salty water, the discharge of fresh water from Siberian rivers has increased by 20% due to a warmer atmosphere generating more precipitation, the level of salinity at the level where the Gulf Stream is supposed to sink has fallen dramatically since the late 90s as deep as 2000 meters. The flow of water from the return leg of the conveyer belt has fallen by a massive 30% from 1992 to 2005. The process that could cut off the conveyer has already begun.

Balancing the effect of global warming and the shut down of the Gulf Stream, the effect of the shut down of the Gulf Stream depends on whether it happens in the next 20 years or in the next 50 years. Either way it will be sudden and without warning: that will be the tipping point for us.

We would have regular winters at -20 degrees, 8 meters of snow, failure of electricity supply nationwide as the power lines fall under the weight of frozen snow, crop failures, several miles of sea ice offshore shutting down our ports and our food import supplies. We would have the worst winters we have experienced in one hundred years and we would be stuck with them for a hundred years. The British way of life as we know it would end.

Elsewhere in the world, the tropics would suffer a massive cut in rainfall. Central America could lose up to 40% of its’ rainfall. The rainforest would die, replaced by grassland and then deserts. 10% of the world’s oxygen supply would disappear with it. In Asia, the monsoon would fail affecting hundreds of millions of people. It happened before, it will happen again, the question is how soon?

 

THE OCEANS

“Records from the deep sea suggest that temperatures are now within a degree of their highest levels for no less than a million years.” Mark Lynas, Six Degrees, p24

Oceans cover 70% of the Planet’s surface and harbor the bulk of the Planet’s wildlife. Every year, they store 2.4 billion tonnes of carbon. We use them mainly for fishing, sailing and to dump waste. Aside from their intrinsic beauty, what good do they do us?

Oceans are useful to us in at least three major ways:

1. They play a crucial role in moderating our climate, if it wasn’t for the gulf stream for instance, the UK and much of Europe would resemble Alaska and Greenland.
2. 50% of our oxygen comes from the Oceans through photosynthesis of the algae.
3. 50% of our CO2 emissions are absorbed by the Oceans
4. Economically, Oceans represent 12% of the World’s food supply, offer employment for 38 million people and generate $124 billion a year in revenue.

Could we lose all of these benefits? Are the Oceans in danger? Could the Oceans constitute a threat to mankind?

1. Runaway from pesticides and insecticides used in Non-organic agriculture deplete the Oceans from oxygen. These pesticides when they enter the Oceans create algae. To grow, this algae sucks out the oxygen in the ocean killing off all the fish and creating areas of “Ocean desert”. Over 450,000 square kilometers of Oceans in coastal areas are already depleted from oxygen.
2. Acidification: due to greenhouse gas emissions, the acidity levels of the oceans are increasing. This has some serious implications for the ocean food chain. Higher acidity means that all organisms with shells will die and that will have repercussions on the entire Ocean wildlife and flora.   
3. In total, 70% of the world’s coral reefs are either dead or dying due to the increases in temperatures. Coral reefs worldwide shelter and feed a third of all life in the Oceans, including 4000 types of fish. As the World warms, all the reefs in the World will die and the fish will go with them.
4. The number of fish species has declined by 50 percent in the last 50 years.
5. In a warming world, diatoms might prevail over the algae absorbing carbon stalling the ocean’s ability to absorb CO2. This would completely imbalance the climate as Oceans absorb 50% of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions and are THE essential climate regulator.
6. The warming of the oceans is going to create hurricanes in areas where there were previously none (such as Europe and Latin America) and strengthen them with the result that they will advance further inland and create more destruction. Katrina was just the beginning, hurricanes like it will be more frequent, more destructive, more unpredictable and occur worldwide.
7. The final nail in the coffin is that 10,000 billion tonnes of methane are trapped at the bottom of the Oceans. If we exceed 2 degrees of global warming, this will trap us into an unstoppable cycle that will lead on to 6 degrees of warming. At 6 degrees, the methane will escape. An explosion of that methane potentially has a destructive power equivalent to 10,000 times the World’s stockpile of Nuclear weapons. That’s probably enough to destroy all life on Earth. At least it will be quick.

The abundance of life in the Oceans is disappearing. This is due to over fishing, the introduction of foreign chemicals and organisms that destabilize the Ocean Ecosystem and the emissions of greenhouse gases that are modifying the Ocean’s temperature and affecting the Ocean vegetation and currents. Oceans are a lifeline for us. Ocean wildlife and vegetation works in our favor as Oceans are a net carbon sink and produce oxygen. However, if the wildlife dies, this favorable relationship will end and Oceans will emit more carbon than they absorb and could even stop producing oxygen outright. Mankind is having a severe impact on the Oceans at its own risks and perils.

What can I do to reduce my impact on the Oceans? Eat organic. Stop eating fish, eat a lot less of it or eat farmed fish only. Avoid buying imported goods as most are shipped by sea, buy local instead. Buy less stuff. Reduce your carbon emissions as a large proportion is sucked in by the Oceans.

 

THE SOUTH AND NORTH POLES

The most striking and visible evidence of global warming is in the melting of the ice poles. As long as the arctic summer ice exists, its albedo reflects 80% of the sun’s light back into space whilst the darker open ocean can absorb 95% of incoming solar radiation.

If the whole of Greenland were to melt, sea levels would rise by 7 meters. The entire Antarctic ice sheet holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 62 meters. Scientists expect the Eastern ice sheet to remain as it is based on land. Expectations are that it is possible that three quarters of Greenland’s ice cap could melt away raising sea levels by 5 meters and that the West Antarctic ice sheet might collapse raising sea levels by a further 5-6 meters.

More than 70 percent of the world's population lives on coastal plains and 11 of the world's 15 largest cities are on the coast or estuaries. A rise of sea levels by only one meter (a possibility as soon as 2050) would threaten one tenth of the current human population. A 10 meter sea level rise would put some of the World’s largest cities such as Bombay, Cairo, Sao Paulo, New York, Beijing, Miami, San Francisco, Shanghai, London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Seoul, Lagos and Buenos Aires under water.

Where are we now?

Arctic Ice is normally up to 3 meters thick, but when Russian and US submarines compared their data, they found that it had lost 40% of its depth since 1970. In 2000, a scientific cruise ship found open water in the North Pole: the last time this happened may have been 50 million years ago. The flow of melting ice from Glaciers in Greenland has doubled in ten years.

In the summer of 2007 and 2008, an area of ice equivalent to roughly twice the size of the United States melted. According to UK scientist James Lovelock, in between 5-15 years the Arctic will be ice free in summer. The impact of that on the heating of the Planet is about equal to all the greenhouse gases we've added to the atmosphere so far. It is a measure of just how much the Earth itself is joining in on global heating. (1)

THE PERMAFROST

“We are unplugging the refrigerator in the far north. Everything that is preserved there is going to start to rot.” Phil Camill, US based ecologist

Temperatures in the Arctic are rising at twice the global rate and have already increased by 2-3 degrees in the last fifty years.

Permafrost is the soil at or below freezing point. It is to be found mostly at high latitudes. Permafrost degradation is already advancing across the Arctic. Major melting in Siberia could produce a staggering 700% increase in carbon release.

One estimate is that 1700 Gigatonnes of carbon are stored within the permafrost worldwide. We don’t yet know how much carbon could be released in the atmosphere under extensive thawing but what we do know is that the reserves of accumulated carbon from ancient vegetation in the form of peat are huge, large enough to pump up global temperatures significantly. On this topic, Phil Camill says that if just one percent of this potential carbon reservoir were decomposed each year in a warmer world, it would be as if we doubled our current rate of emissions.

 

THE AIR

”Life on Earth laboured for millions of years to remove dangerously high levels of carbon dioxide from the ancient atmosphere and so keep global temperatures within tolerable limits. Much of this is the same carbon that humans are now labouring to return to the atmosphere through the burning of coal, oil and gas for energy. (they are not called fossil fuels for nothing.)” Mark Lynas, Six Degrees, p222

There is a “hole” in the Ozone layer in the stratosphere over Antarctica and the hole is getting bigger since it reached a record size just recently in 2006. The hole has been observed since the 70s and we note that its’ presence coincides with the melting of the Arctic sea ice although we were not able to find any reports of a correlation in our research.

The atmosphere only contains 21% of oxygen; it too is a finite resource. Oxygen is produced by terrestrial and oceanic vegetation through photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is a natural process that uses the energy contained in sunlight and carbon dioxide to produce vegetation essential to life on earth. Oxygen-producing organisms are in danger due to deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and the pollution of the Oceans.

There are several layers with different concentrations of gases constituting the atmosphere. It is the Earth’s gravitational pull that retains all these gases and facilitates life. In particular, the presence of greenhouse gases, that is methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere are an essential part of life. For millions of years, the concentrations of these gases have stayed within restrained parameters and so have temperatures. A state of balance existed.

Over the course of the past 70 years, concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have broken through their historical highs to reach levels that have not existed on Earth for probably 20 million years. This is directly related to the human overuse of fossil fuels for transport and energy. There is no longer a state of balance facilitating life and we are now entering a state of adjustment destroying life. We are currently going through the sixth largest mass extinction in the Planet's history. The best information that science can provide suggests that species are disappearing at a rate between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than they would naturally, with the prospect that 50% of all current life forms may ultimately be lost.

As the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere increase, so do temperatures and as the temperatures increase, the climate changes, as the climate changes, the ecosystems either adapt or die. A tipping point exists beyond which temperature increases lead on to more temperature increases without humans having anything to do with it. This is due to the geological make up of our Planet. To regulate the climate, the Earth has stored vast reserves of greenhouse gases under the ice, the Ocean, in the soil and in the forests. If we exceed two degrees of global warming, these reserves will be freed. They are already beginning to be freed. As the reserves are freed, greenhouse gas concentration will increase rapidly and beyond our control. Temperatures will follow and we do not know where the warming could stop. We know that beyond six degrees it is very unlikely that the human species will survive. It will only take a matter of decades for temperatures to move from 2 to 6 degrees.
 
If we want to avoid the runaway greenhouse effect, we have to restrain carbon dioxide levels from increasing beyond 400 parts per million (ppm) and then we have to restore them below 350 ppm. We are currently at 387 ppm, increasing by 2ppm a year. We have less than 5 years to avoid the tipping point beyond which there is no return, we may have already passed it.

What can I do to reduce my impact on the pollution of the atmosphere?
Switch to a green electricity provider (this link helps us). Insulate your home. Share your car, get rid of it or buy a vehicle that does 60 or more miles per gallon. Better still, use public transport. Become a vegetarian. Buy less stuff.

 

THE SOIL

We’re biological creatures. To feed, we need food which comes from the land and from the soil. We have a finite amount of soil available, if that soil is not managed appropriately, future generations will starve. The way we treat our soil and the way we price food indicates that we think the supplies are infinite. They’re not. 10 million hectares of perfectly good soil is lost each year due to intensive farming. That’s more than twice the amount of rainforest land deforested each year: logic dictates that if we preserved the land, there would be no need for deforestation.

Currently, 1.5 billion hectares, 19.6% of the land available, is used to grow food and for grazing. The UN believes 4 billion hectares could be used for farming. Approximately half of the farmable soils, ALMOST 2 BILLION HECTARES, have been classed as degraded whilst more than 30% have been classed as SERIOUSLY degraded. Serious degradation means the land has lost more than 50% of its’ ability to produce food resources.

Overall, worldwide, the current degradation indicates that we’ve lost about 20-25% of the land’s ability to produce food resources. This comes at a time when the world population is at an unprecedented high and still growing and is already far beyond what the Earth would normally be able to sustain.

Erosion is the main factor for soil degradation and is due to several mechanisms: water erosion, wind erosion, chemical degradation and physical degradation. All of these mechanisms are natural but they are severely aggravated by agricultural practices. Roads, a major part of urban development, increase impermeable sources and lead to streaming and ground loss.

Industrial agriculture in arid areas requires a lot of water and fossil groundwater supplies are used both in Australia and the US. The use of these supplies increase the salinity of the soil and once it’s there the land is good for nothing. Farmers are being paid $50,000 to abandon their land in Australia whilst water-intensive cotton is grown in the South of Australia where water is in such short supply that desalination plants are used to source it. In Normandy, France, excrement from pigs have made the soil acid so that little can be grown on it, it has polluted the underground water supply and the entire surrounding Ocean coastal area. Normandy is a prime example of unsustainable farming catering to the French’s insatiable appetite for “saucisson”. In the UK, 600 million household or portable batteries with their cocktails of toxic chemicals mercury, nickel and cadmium are thrown away each year and end up in landfill where they will eventually leak into the soil and into the water supply.

Soils are playing a major role in accelerating global warming as temperatures rise. Soils contain approximately 1600 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, more than double the entire carbon content of the atmosphere. As the soil warms, bacteria speed up their work to break down this stored carbon, releasing it back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. As such, in a warming world, soils constitute a major threat to the survival of mankind.

What can I do to reduce my impact on the ransacking of the Planet’s soils?
One of the best things you can do is to buy organic cotton clothes rather than normal cotton. Become a vegetarian or a vegan or reduce your meat consumption drastically. Support the organic market and buy as many organic products as you can, in particular, support organic box scheme deliveries of local organic vegetables. Finally, and this is not mentioned enough: we can sequester a very large amount of carbon in our farming soil simply by burying charcoal in it. If you know someone who owns a farm, get them to do that. (2)

 

RAINFORESTS

Rainforest once covered 14% of the land surface, they now cover only 6%. Around 80% of the forests that originally covered the Earth have been cleared, fragmented or degraded over the past 150 years. Scientists have calculated that the world's tropical forests collectively absorb about 4.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, almost a fifth of global fossil fuel emissions. Deforestation alone accounts for 20-25% of global emissions. Forests also release 50% of the world’s oxygen supply.

British scientists fear that by 2050, the world’s forest and terrestrial vegetation will cease being a carbon sink and become a carbon source. The estimate is that as it dies, vegetation will release the equivalent of 4-5 billion tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere. This will have a major effect in accelerating the progress of global warming. It is already happening.

In 2005, the Amazon rainforest suffered from a draught. Unnoticeably, the forest released the net equivalent of 5 billion tonnes of carbon, more than the annual production of Europe and Japan combined. This was due to reduced plant growth and dying trees.

Over half a million square kilometers, an area the size of France, has been deforested in the Amazon. The Amazon represents two fifths of the world’s remaining rainforest. Most of the deforestation is occurring because of the road that was built through it in the 80s, soya farming and cattle ranching. Scientists estimate that there are at least 100 billion tonnes of carbon stored in the trees of the Amazon rainforest. With only 2 degrees of global warming, the Amazon rainforest could be doomed. In fact it is quite possible that it is already doomed. If the Amazonian basin collapsed, it could trigger the addition of another 250 parts per million of CO2 into the atmosphere adding another 1.5 degrees of global warming.

What can I do to reduce my impact on the degradation of the rainforest? Use less paper. Resue envelopes at work or use them as notepad paper. The average office employee uses 1584 pages of A4 paper a month. Buy recycled toilet paper, the more expensive kind. Use less gasoline and plastic. Buy Alpro soya organic milk instead of normal milk (sweetened if you don’t like soya taste). Eat less red meat. Don’t buy cheap beef and don’t buy any beef at all if you can. Do not snort cocaine (every gram of cocaine destroys 4 square meters of rainforest).

 

THE DEATH OF BIRTH:

"If you could for a moment stop and feel what is happening in your body there are six septillian things going on at the same time. That's a six with twenty four zeros after it going on this instant as you sit in your chair. Within ten seconds a hundred more things have happened in your body than in all the stars and Planets and asteroids in the known Universe. And that is called LIFE. " Paul Hawken, the 11th Hour

If we don’t act now, we’re accepting that our species along with all the other species in the world should die for today’s comforts, for us to continue to buy stuff cheaply, for us to continue to go abroad on holiday, for us to get richer in the short-term.

Global warming is the unnecessary mass extermination of mankind by itself.

There is a fragile balance enabling life on our Planet. James Lovelock called it Gaia. It hasn’t taken much to destabilize it. All we’ve had to do is burn fossil fuels for energy. Small actions can have dire unwanted consequences. The consequences of living in a warmer world are too atrocious for most people to even begin to imagine. Consider horror movies, living in a warmer world is worst than real life horror. Citizens in the developping world are already getting a taste of what's it's like to starve from hunger. There's worst to come and will affect all of us.

The ecosystems upon which we rely for our primary needs of food and shelter are all in danger. We’re in danger. At some point in our development we have somehow managed to omit how heavily we relied on the Planet’s ecosystems for survival. Our resources aren’t infinite. We have plunged in a form of collective madness assuming that the Planet could heal indefinitely and that its resources were infinite. As a result, the Planet has been stretched out to the limit and it is extremely dangerous to test these limits.

What will happen when we pass these limits? Nothing, life will continue as normal. The impact of what we do takes 30 years to manifest itself. 50 years from now, when the conditions have worsened dramatically, people will look back at this historical moment and ask: why did our parents and grand-parents not do something to stop this when they still could? Going past the limits is that: reaching the point of no return where the warming takes on a life of its own and becomes unstoppable, where the ecosystems shift into alternate states and we have to watch helplessly as they disintegrate.

Our environment is a fragile and fine tuned balancing act. None of that has been taken into account in the society we live in. It’s up to us to change that. A lot of our ecosystems cannot exist and will die if only minimal changes are made to the underlying temperatures or climate. We are creatures at the top of the food chain and depend on our ecosystems to survive. They go, we go.

Mankind has tremendous intelligence and potential but our hedonistic way of life of taking or using anything we like just because it's available is undermining us. Our habits of travelling by car or by plane, to buy cheap food and clothes, to eat lots of meat... All of these 'normal' things are ransaking our environment. A few decades from now when super cars are available, when use of pesticide and insecticide has been banned (nothing in sight allowing plane travel I’m afraid), we can start reverting back to our current ways. But right now, we need to tighten our belts a bit and give up some of the things making our lives comfortable. We can be creative about it, it’s not necessarily a process where we end up net losers.

We’ve all been given the gift of life. We are the custodians of life. For the first time in our history, our generation gets to decide if it wants to pass on that gift to future generations or not. It's up to us, not governments, not companies, not our neighbours, not other countries, it's up to us. Our responsibility.

References:
What lies ahead, an explanation of positive feedbacks, how quickly global warming will happen and what will happen as the temperature rises
Fabulous report with lots of images and explanations of the consequences of global warming
Shutdown of thermohaline circulation
Are we on the brink of a new little ice age?
Oceans in crisis
Mass extinction to turn global ocean into enormous rotten swamp
Sealife at risk from rapid acidification
Carbon emissions creating acidic oceans not seen since dinosaurs
Is there any truth in the skeptics counter arguments about climate change?
EPA info on ozone layer
The main cause of global warming
Soils retrogation and degradation
Carbon Dioxide
Gulf Stream Shut Down 8200 years ago
Where does carbon come from?
Selling off the rainforest
Revenge of the Rainforest
The link between cattle ranching and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest
A two degree rise and its effect on the Amazon rainforest
The Brazilian Government wants to destroy the Amazon rainforest
Rise in the annual growth of carbon emissions
The impact of the 2005 draught on the Amazon Rainforest
Impact of melting ice sheets
Denials of global warming
(1) James Lovelock in Too Little, too late
(2) More info on biochar