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Maxing Earth's Buffers to the Breaking Point

The Earth is extremely resilient, but there are limits to how much she can take, and when her buffering capacity is saturated, catastrophic ecosystem breakdown results.  We are beginning to see some more rapid changes now, indicating that we are on the edge of the buffer.

Author's Preface Note: I don't presume to be the first to articulate this concept.  The reason I wrote it is because in all the research I have done I do not recall coming across it before: namely applying the principle of titration curves associated with buffers, and large-scale patterns of planetary ecosystems.  The Earth is a living being as much as a tree or insect, and that implies buffer systems that can be maxed under bad circumstances, bringing death. (Dec. 18, 2005)

by Sterling D. Allan and Mary-Sue Haliburton
Pure Energy Systems News Exclusive
Copyright © 2005

The Earth can handle the input of a great deal of abuse with little change of its ecosystem, but when its limits are reached, drastic change results. The Day After Tomorrow Hollywood hit is based on an actual possible scenario.

The movie Day After Tomorrow paints a dramatic dooms-day picture of what would happen by way of sudden change in climate due to the Atlantic thermohaline ocean current grinding to a halt.  In the movie, this was caused by global warming introducing a large amount of fresh water into the ocean system from the melting of ice, changing the circulation dynamics.  What is unnerving is that this Hollywood scenario is based on actual scientific models and data (but not without debate); and this is one of a number of possible scenarios given the current global warming trends.

A scientific expedition placing data-collection buoys in various locations on the ocean have detected a thirty percent decline in the volume of the warm waters moving north across the Atlantic. Given the location of the change in flow, earliest effects will be not on New York but on Europe, which has come to count on the Gulf Stream’s warm waters. Scientists will continue to monitor changes transmitted by these data buoys, and to track any further decline. (Ref.)

In pondering these changes we face, considering the present course we are on, it is important to remember that at the extreme ends, the change doesn't progress on a gradual, linear decay.  Rather, after a certain point, it goes exponentially -- suddenly.

As the permafrost melts, for example, it releases methane, which then speeds up the cycle in a positive feedback loop.


Buffer Capacity

This phenomenon is best demonstrated by a simple chemistry titration curve.  Let's take, for example, a solution of water with a pH buffer in it.  As drops of acid are added to the solution, over a given range (depending on the buffer), such as from 8 down to 6, the pH of the solution changes very little with each drop of acid added.  But once the limits of the buffer are reached, e.g. below 6 in the case of adding acid, suddenly with each drop of acid added, the pH goes down by very large increments.  The buffer's capacity has been saturated.

Near the point of buffer saturation, there is a very tiny range in which the changes go from small to large for each drop of acid added.

Now think of the earth.  One person tossing a battery into the dirt is not going to throw the earth as a whole out of balance.  Even millions or billions of people discarding poisons into landfills and into the oceans and rivers is something the Earth can take -- to a point.  It has a buffering capacity -- many buffering systems.  Each organism has internal buffering systems.  Each ecosystem has buffering systems.

The earth is very robust.  But it has its limits.

Each buffer system has its point of saturation.  When one system becomes overloaded, it puts strain on the adjoining system, increasing that one’s load and shortening the time before it too passes its overload point.

In nature, these systems typically work harmoniously together to keep the whole within a safe range.


Warning Signs

Introducing technologically-advanced humans to the mix introduces driving factors that are not natural, which can therefore place strain on the buffers.

Therefore, the trend we now see on the planet toward increased rate of change of the various systems, is not good.  It means we are nearing the edge of the buffering capacity.  In just the past two decades, for example, damages done from weather extremes have increased 50-fold, according to Paul R. Epstein, Associate Director, Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School. (Ref)

Our time to wake up and turn things around is very short.  We must act with all diligence if we are to avert a cataclysmic maxing out of the Earth's buffering capacity.

The new steady state is not likely to be conducive to life on Earth as we have known it.


What can we do?

We must pursue clean energy technologies -- and there are a large number of feasible technologies worth pursuing. (Ref.)

While yet burning fossil fuels, we need to think of ways to conserve, such as reducing peak load by distributing usage to off-peak times, or converting non-peak energy production to hydrogen, to be used in the emerging hydrogen economy, rather than venting that energy into the environment, wasting it.

We need to increase our recycling, and support new technologies that can turn waste into energy.

Slowing down the trend is not enough.  The momentum will carry us over the edge.

We can pursue feasible methods for buying time, such as CO2 sequestration.

In addition to these avenues for slowing the stress we have been placing on the planet through our indulgence in fossil fuels, there are things we can do to turn around and move back in a direction that can bring healing to the planet.

We can re-vegetate the wastelands, clean up the landfills, un-dam the rivers, restore the nutrients to the farmlands, employ green roofing, stop building population centers on arable land, and use the land for ecologically-sound farming.


Purifying the Profit Motive

This will require a shift away from the profit motive as sole driver of human behavior. As the profit motive is currently defined and taught in business schools, environmental degradation and human health are dismissed as "externalities" that are irrelevant to business. Some economists even argue that corporate managers may sometimes have an obligation to bend or break anti-fraud laws if doing so increases profits to shareholders. It is extreme ideological beliefs such as these that are pushing all of us into danger.

A more humanitarian system of thought must regain precedence, restoring Adam Smith's original dictum that a business loses its right to exist if it ceases to benefit humanity.  Higher motives must intervene to restore the legitimacy of planetary healing measures into the business mindset alongside profit incentives. They must come from a higher realm in our collective conscience -- a desire to do good.

All of this assumes we do not destroy ourselves through some other means (mankind has contrived some hundred or so methods of annihilation), or that a comet doesn't come smashing into us, or that some super volcano doesn't blow its top.

I happen to believe that our planet's destiny is not slated to mere chance, but that the collective choices we make will drive the outcome, for better or for worse.  The comet scenario would not be undeserved, nor would the super volcano.


Individual Actions for Good

Whatever the collective destiny ends up being, it will not hurt any individual to seek to make a difference for good in the mean time.

And let's be kinder to each other, either way.  We might as well enjoy what we do.  The human soul is wired to find fulfillment in seeking a higher cause and pursuing the highest that is within.

We've got a problem. Let's do something about it, and invoke some mercy, which in this case means an earth brought back into balance. Justice calls for us to experience the consequences of our greed in the maxing of the buffers and the destruction of most all life on earth.

We don't want that.  Do we?

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Page composed by Sterling D. Allan Dec. 4, 2005
Last updated December 18, 2005