The Resilient Earth: Science, Global Warming and the Fate of Humanity

by Simmons, Allen

  One problem with current cap-and-trade systems is that they only targeted the electricity industry, which accounts for less than 40% of emissions. There are proposals to expand this, which have gained support from General Electric, DuPont, Alcoa, and major energy companies. When socialist leaning politicians and big business are on the same side of a proposal, the public should be highly suspicious. Turning emissions reduction into a commodity trading opportunity for speculators is not the most effective way to limit CO2. This creates opportunities for Enron-style market manipulation and abuse.

  A more equitable proposition is the carbon tax, proposed by a number of policymakers and advocates. A carbon tax simply imposes a tax for polluting based on the amount emitted, thus encouraging polluters to clean up and entrepreneurs to come up with alternatives. Estimates of how high such a tax should be, based on calculated future damage caused by global warming, range from $2 to $14 dollars per ton of CO2.570 For consumers, this would mean an increase of 2¢ to 14¢ per gallon of gasoline, and a maximum of 0.72¢ per kWh of electricity.

  It is important that energy costs are increased to consumers in such a way that they can take individual action to avoid added expense. By increasing energy costs, the consumer is encouraged to buy more efficient household appliances, upgrade their heating and air conditioning, and buy more efficient automobiles. In America, politicians from both the right and the left have voiced support for the tax. According to former Bush advisor, N. Gregory Mankiw: “Basic economics tells us that when you tax something, you normally get less of it. So if we want to reduce global emissions of carbon, we need a global carbon tax. Q.E.D.”571

  Phasing in a carbon tax, starting at a reasonable initial rate, say $5 per ton, and then increasing the tax by $1 per ton per year, avoids a disruptive initial shock while removing uncertainty regarding the future price of energy. The thing markets hate the most is uncertainty—the carbon tax is predictable. It doesn’t require the creation of a new carbon credit trading market, and it can be collected by existing state and federal agencies. It is straightforward and much harder to manipulate by special interests than the politicized process of allocating carbon credits. While the added costs under cap-and-trade go to companies, utilities and traders, the added costs under a carbon tax would go to the government. The added tax revenue could be used to promote reforestation, wetlands recovery, and flood protection, and to fund alternate energy research. But there are dangers—there have been warnings from economists that raising such a tax too high, above $30 per ton, would be wasteful and could damage the world economy.572

  Former US president Bill Clinton has stated: “If Wal-Mart really does sell 100 million compact fluorescent bulbs and people buy them, and screw them in, and use them, it will have the CO2 impact of taking 700,000 cars off the road.”573 Unfortunately, Wal-Mart is one of the firms that can do no right in the eyes of ecological/social activists. Mr. Clinton's own labor secretary, Robert Reich, criticized him for praising firms that find ways of making money from being green. Evidently saving Earth, while making a profit, is evil. This kind of politically correct nonsense hurts humanity and the planet.

  We suggest that the best way forward is to invent new “cool green” technologies that are not only less polluting than current technology, but more cost effective as well. When the benefits of new technologies are clear, the world will readily embrace the products derived from them. This is the case with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner that is back-ordered beyond 2015. When everyone in Europe, America and Japan is zipping around in clean, efficient, high performance hybrids, consumers in developing nations will want them too. Current gas guzzlers will be as obsolete as muscle cars from the 1960s. The key to getting the developing world to shift from old, dirty technologies lies not in agreements like Kyoto, but in producing attractive new technologies that people in developing countries will want.

  Enlightened self-interest is the most powerful motivational force on Earth. If for no other reason than our personal health and well-being, we should cut down on CO2 and other pollutants, recycle our garbage, and build more nuclear power plants with a long-range goal of cleaner energy and more efficient transportation. Compared with coal and oil, nuclear power plants and hybrid electric cars are a cleaner and much healthier option. Fourth generation reactors are being developed that safely operate at temperatures of 700-900°C. These reactors can split hydrogen from water thermochemically, as well as generate electricity, providing hydrogen to power fuel cells in cars and homes. There is a bright future ahead, if we have the courage to make it happen. The US DOE estimates that America will need to build a new nuclear power plant every other day to satisfy our growing energy appetite. We need to get started—or we will all be left wondering what happened to our once beautiful world.

  The Fate of Planet Earth

  “Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.”

  — Jean Jacques Rousseau

  Illustration 161: A visit to an alien planet. Original art by D. L. Hoffman.

  Imagine an interstellar spaceship, seeking out new habitable worlds among the stars, moving silently through the void. Approaching a Sun-like star system from the emptiness of deep space, an Earth-sized planet is spotted within the habitable zone, the band of orbits where planetary temperatures are favorable to life. Though this star is about 4% dimmer than our Sun, the planet in question has livable surface temperatures. On closer examination a possible explanation for the unexpectedly warm temperatures is found—the atmospheric carbon dioxide level is 15 times that of Earth. The planet's day lasts about twenty-two and a half hours and its year 389 days. Across the surface of the planet, unfamiliar continents are scattered; one large and several smaller ones, mostly in the southern hemisphere. The land is devoid of complex life, inhabited only by patches of fungi and bacterial mats—there is no soil, only rock. But the shallow seas teem with life; marine worms, mollusks, and arthropods. The hard-shelled arthropods appear in a bewildering number of forms; some graze the bottom ooze, feeding on fungi and bacteria, while others swim free, predators sporting shells with spikes and horns. A habitable, world but not a welcoming one for our kind—the ship moves on.

  Another world is found circling a similar star. Again, the continents are unfamiliar, with the major land mass straddling the south polar region. Temperatures are warm, averaging 14°F (8°C) higher than modern-day Earth. The mix of atmospheric gases is different as well, with 10 times as much CO2 as back home. On land, alien plants reach toward the yellow sunlight. Forests of 30 ft trees cover the continents, but these are like no trees we would recognize. The tall stalks are ribbed like giant pieces of celery and at the top, in the place of branches with leaves or needles, are bifurcating limbs that look like bottle brushes. The forest floor is littered with limbs that have been shed as the plants grow higher. Among the debris, scuttle wingless hexapods, partly aquatic scorpions, and spider-like arachnids. The seas are filled with large armored fish and other lobe finned creatures that use stubby legs to venture onto the land. A strange, alien world—again the ship moves on.

  The next world brings the usual unrecognizable continents and something new, there is ice at the poles of this planet. In fact, a third of the plant's landmass is buried under thick glacial ice and the average global temperature is several degrees lower than our home world. Even so, the equatorial zone contains a number of warm shallow seas and expansive tropical swampland. The atmosphere contains carbon dioxide at levels comparable to modern-day Earth but the oxygen level is 35%, nearly twice what we are used to breathing. Throughout the peat swamps insects rule. Flying insects with unfolding wings flit about, resembling dragonflies with three foot wingspans. On the ground, spider-like creatures 30 inches across and 6 foot long millipedes hunt for prey. We move on, looking for a planet not in the grip of an ice age and without a bug problem.

  Another world circling a slightly brighter star is found. This world also has most of its dry land concentrated in a single, gigantic continen
t. But this continent sprawls from the planet's south pole most of the way to the north polar region. There is no visible ice at either pole and the average global temperature is about 9°F (5°C) warmer than Earth. As usual, the higher temperature comes with higher CO2 levels, but oxygen levels are close to what we consider normal. The land is warm and arid with signs of extensive volcanism. Reptilian life-forms dominate both the oceans and the land. In the air, pterosaurs glide on leathery wings. This is a dinosaur planet. Not wishing to contest ownership of the planet with the “terrible lizards,” we look further ahead.

  The last planet we visit looks vaguely familiar, with scattered continents whose shapes are almost, but not quite recognizable. The temperatures are warm, 5-7°F (3-4°C) warmer than home—it is a temperate world with no ice caps. There are forests covering the continent at the south pole and surrounding the shores of the northern sea. Elsewhere, there are broad savannas and grasslands. Life on land is dominated by animals that are recognizably mammalian, but unlike the animals we are used to. Giant ground sloths, the size of modern day elephants, and other animals that have no modern-day equivalent roam the plains. Predators stalk their prey with saber-like upper canines, large front limbs and strong clawed feet. Gigantic herbivores with body weights of up to five tons, six-horned rhinoceros and creatures that could be considered giant horned bunnies are but a few of the strange beasts that inhabit this menagerie. Humans could live comfortably on this world, but it is not our own.

  Finishing its voyage, our ship returns to present day Earth, our familiar and comfortable home. Any of the strange and wondrous worlds we visited would make a good setting for a science fiction novel or a Star Wars movie. But perhaps you have guessed the truth: Our starship was voyaging in time, not space. Each of these alien worlds—the world of the arthropods, the world of bottle-brush tree forests, the worlds ruled by insects, dinosaurs and giant mammals—is Earth. These strange planets correspond to Earth 500, 400, 300, 200, and 50 million years in the past.

  We embarked on this imaginary voyage to illustrate a point—that there is no single, right climate or ecology for our planet. If you go back to Earth's youngest days, over 4.5 billion years ago, and skip forward through time in 100 million year jumps, each jump would reveal a different, alien world. For the first two billion years, only worlds with toxic atmospheres would be found. For the next two billion years, though oxygen would be present, the air would still be unbreathable. Only since the advent of complex life, around 545 million years ago, would the world be livable. Even then, as we have just described, Earth's past was startlingly different from today's familiar world.

  Science has revealed an ancient and ever-changing Earth, a world shaped and molded by the life it nurtured. We believe we know the ultimate fate of our planet and perhaps our species, Homo sapiens sapiens. But the more fascinating thought is what happens between now and a billion years in the future. How long will man—an infant species in the sweep of geologic time—continue to walk this planet?

  We know that nature is a tireless sculptor, and that Earth is its unfinished masterpiece. As long as life exists on Earth, nature will continue to change our planet, shaping it to better fit life's needs. But what nature builds, nature can destroy. Continents move, ecosystems disappear, and species go extinct. Humans, like all life, are but transitory occupants of this blue planet. If we stay on this planet, nature will decide the fate of our species. It could be extinction by fire or ice, or a plague or something still unimagined.

  The single cell microscopic organisms, that were the most complicated life on Earth for a billion years, ultimately led to a species that included Archimedes, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Bohr and other great scientists. There was a time, not so long ago, when people lived constantly on the edge of impending disaster. Plague, pestilence and famine lurked around every corner. Technology has freed most of humanity from those fears and can do so for the rest of us if given a chance. Science has taught us not to fear the unknown, not to live in dread of the future. We like to think that nature has more secrets to reveal.

  Almost a half century ago, we built a machine and visited our nearest neighbor, the Moon, a quarter million miles away. We discovered our Moon is a lifeless, barren rock covered in craters and dust. We made a few trips there and then lost interest. How could that be, our nearest neighbor is lifeless, while our planet teams with life? Can life really be so rare, so fragile, human ignorance can destroy it?

  Hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis provide frequent evidence of nature's might. Other forms of destruction have not been observed within human memory and remain more hypothetical. The threat of a massive release of methane from seabed deposits has never been experienced by people, but something similar, though on a smaller scale, has taken place.

  In the African nation of Cameroon, there are two lakes with a deadly secret. Lake Monoun and Lake Nyos both harbor large volumes of CO2 in their deepest layers. On occasion, disturbances of unknown origin have upset these lakes, triggering a subsequent release of carbon dioxide. One outburst from Lake Nyos claimed victims as far away as 17 miles. Two million people live along the shores of Lake Kivu, in Rwanda, which contains similar gas deposits—the potential for a larger disaster is quite real. Given these examples of sudden gas release, it is possible to imagine the devastation that a deep-sea eruption could cause. Clearly, more research is needed to assess the stability of oceanic clathrate deposits before we disturb them.

  The last sizable meteor impact on Earth caused the 1908 Tunguska event in the Russian wilderness. An air-burst explosion of a large meteoroid or comet fragment, at an altitude of 3 to 6 miles above Earth's surface, leveled trees over an 800 sq. mile area. The energy of the blast was estimated to be between 10 and 20 megatons of TNT—1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. This powerful blast was produced by an object 200 feet in diameter.

  In 2029, the asteroid Apophis is scheduled to pass within 30,000 miles of Earth—close enough to be seen with the naked eye. Estimated to be 800 feet in diameter, Apophis is much larger than the Tunguska object. Just a slight perturbation of Apophis' orbit could cause it to collide with our planet, unleashing an explosive force of 850 megatons. Apophis is expected to miss Earth, but astronomers will tell you it is not a matter of if Earth will be hit again, it's a matter of when. The only way to save our species—and every other existing species on Earth—from such a collision is to develop the technology to travel far out into the solar system to deflect marauding space debris.

  There are those who say we are destroying nature and ourselves with technology, laying waste to the planet that gave birth to our species. Global warming is just the latest scare tactic of those who fear the future, who distrust the science and technology that has built our modern world. They claim to be saving Earth, saving nature, but in truth, they only want to hide in the past—taking the rest of us with them whether we wish to or not. They think that mindless, uncaring nature is good and people are evil. We don't think that is true.

  Life has one defining characteristic—it spreads to new habitats, filling every niche and cranny. Humans are the end product of nature and our technology is therefore also a product of nature. Technology offers the possibility that our kind will venture to the other planets of the solar system and, eventually, the stars. If we do, we will spread life to other far-off lands, fulfilling nature's design and our destiny.

  Some say that reaching for the stars is wrong, that we should instead look inward. We should only use “appropriate technology” and return to a simpler, more “natural” way of life. If we do, then we know how life will ultimately end—eventually our nurturing Sun will grow old and die. But not before swelling into a red giant, incinerating our blue-green oasis in space and whatever life remains on it. Billions of years into the future, if our species is lucky enough to survive that long, the last of our kind will look upon the red, swelling visage of the Sun and see life's final extinction. Even the resilient Earth and tenaciou
s life cannot escape the death throws of our star. After all, nature is what it is and it is only we who deceive ourselves.

  But there is another path. That path consists of embracing science and technology, of not being afraid of where they might take us. We should look upon the fossil fuels found in the earth much as the package of nutrients in a plant seed—there to give new life a jump-start. But the time has come to move on, to give up the use of fossil fuels, and embrace new energy sources that may eventually take us to the stars. To get there, our species must grow up and cast off the last vestiges of superstitious nature worship. In 100 million years, if a starship approaches Earth from the depths of space, what will it find? A world radically different from our world, that much is certain. But will the children of men still walk the planet? Will it be our progeny that pilot the ship on a visit to humanity's ancient home? Or will we have turned inward, awaiting the fate that nature decrees? Nature is what it is, but we have a choice.

  Afterward

  Since we finished writing The Resilient Earth in early December, 2007, a number of events have occurred here on planet Earth. First, a number of reports have come in from around the globe proclaiming the winter of 2007-2008 to be one of the coldest on record. While one cold year does not imply a new ice age any more than a really hot year proves global warming, consider the following headlines:

  South America Has Coldest Winter in a 90 Years—Residents in Argentina and Brazil are wondering if this winter will ever end. Buenos Aires recorded this Thursday (November 15th) the lowest November temperature in 90 years. Temperature in the Downtown weather station reached 2.5C. Since records began more than a century ago, only two days had colder lows in November. (The Telegraph, 17 November, 2007)