From: Spike (spike66@comcast.net)
Date: Sun Jul 13 2003 - 14:06:48 MDT
Robert Bradbury wrote: "Research has uncovered more complexity than was
previously appreciated. Researchers are unable to balance all the fluxes
of the global carbon cycle over the period 1800 to the present, and
different mathematical models give results that are difficult to
reconcile."... Robert
Thanks Robert. When I read this, I marvel
at the drama in the timing of the rise of
technology-capable humans. Imagine an Earth
with no humans but all the other species
the same as now. (It isn't hard to do.) There
is a definite carbon sink in the form of forests
dying and being buried by some means, silt from
a flood, ash from a nearby volcano, blowing dust,
etc, resulting in vast coal seams and (by some
mysterious means) oil fields.
If one looks at the amount of carbon in the earth's
atmosphere as a function of time, it is straight
downhill, is it not? When the earth had a reducing
atmosphere, there was all that methane and carbon
dioxide. Plants came, generated oxygen, which broke
down the methane, steadily depleted the CO2, converting
it into coal and oil, carbon forms which are out of
reach of the lifeforms that evolved here. Well, all
of the lifeforms except humans.
Without some means of restoring that carbon to the
biosphere, it would have been curtains for all life
on this planet. It would have gradually suffocated
for lack of raw material, perhaps in the next billion
years, steadily fading away with robust memories,
like the Civil War soldier's reunion.
Then at a critical moment in the history of life on
earth, technologically capable humans came charging
to the rescue, freeing that carbon and restoring the
planet to habitability.
Perhaps this is the fate of life on most habitable
planets: a carbon sink eventually places the carbon
out of reach of lifeforms before a technological
species can evolve and dig it up, restoring the carbon
and all other life on the planet. Perhaps only one
planet in a million enjoys such a dramatic rescue.
Would this not explain the great cosmological radio
silence?
spike
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