diebackandcollapse.com

18 October 2008

Introduction: Waking from Humanity’s Sleepwalk, p. 11-12

Posted by Carleton Schade under: Epistemology; Future .

 Excerpt from Chapter 1, Dieback: The Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse, p.11-12

And then there’s the problem of complexity. The earth’s interior, atmosphere, oceans and life interact with one another and with the sun’s energy and with a host of cosmic influences in a probabilistic stew that is far beyond our mathematical reckonings. So complex is the world we inhabit that we cannot predict with certainty even the behavior of one single human being; or the exact movements of one single electron in orbit about its atom. Never mind trying to predict matters comprising as many variables as global warming, Middle East relations or the fate of food resources. Science has quantitatively confirmed the adage that the whole is combinatorially greater than the sum of its parts.

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Cause and effect, we find, is rarely related in a simple, linear way. A little more input doesn’t always translate into a little more output. The laws of the universe are not simple linear equations written by some simplistic God. They are complex formulas with innumerable variables working in many dimensions, simultaneously influencing and influenced by innumerable other variables, and continually feeding back upon each other. Properties emerge from these interactions that are far beyond our predictive powers. Nothing that we know about the explosive properties of hydrogen or the flammable characteristics of oxygen would allow us to predict that, when put together, these two elements produce the miracle molecule called water. How less percipient are we about the ways in which the earth’s geochemical processes interact with the millions of living species and the other emergent property we call consciousness. What a mix that is.

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To make matters more difficult for us, these nonlinear laws of nature have what are referred to as tipping points or thresholds. Reach these points in the calculus of our behavior and suddenly the universe seems to run by a whole new set of equations. Natural gas may leak from a kitchen stove and nothing happens when you light a match. Strike it again thirty minutes later and the whole house explodes. A threshold was reached with the variables of methane, oxygen, a flame, space and time. Or take the much-maligned postal worker who for years tolerates the injustices, stresses and humility of his job until one day he can’t bear them any longer and, with seemingly little provocation, he shoots several coworkers. Or, similarly but at another level, population pressures, drought, economic crisis and a hundred years of colonial history between Tutsis, Hutus, Germans and Belgians in Rwanda suddenly exploded in 1994 into a mass homicide where eight hundred-thousand people were slaughtered within the space of a few months . Or tensions fester between Iraq and Kuwait over oil fields along their common border until a threshold is reached in 1990 and Iraq invades Kuwait, which then releases an invasion from other interested players. Or the Soviet Union endures the contradictions of its system and the adversities of the 20th century for seventy plus years, and then, in relatively easy times, suddenly implodes. Or stars like our sun enjoy long lives of relative stability until the moment that the hydrogen fusion process drops below some threshold value and the star collapses, marking the start of its death cycle and the likely end of any remaining life on earth.

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Today, the most consistent scientific warnings about a threshold concerns global warming. Three hypothetical tipping points related to earth’s continued warming this century include the sudden collapse of the Gulf Stream, a runaway collapse of the Amazon rain forest, and a mega-release of methane from the sea floor . Involving the whole planet, living and nonliving, the incremental increases of trapped solar energy in our atmosphere and oceans includes so many variables feeding back upon each other that it makes Poincare’s insolvable three body problem look like simple algebra . Simply put, it is too complex. However, we have witnessed the tipping point effects of our behavior on a smaller scale: (1) The re-emergence of diseases such as cholera and the expansion of malaria due to weather and climate changes, (2) Cultural eutrophication of fresh water lakes and the rising frequency, number and size of dead zones in coastal ecosystems, (3) Sudden fishery collapses due to over-fishing, (4) Loss of local species due to the introduction of alien species, and (5) Localized climate changes caught in a positive feedback cycle, where decreasing rainfall reduces forest plant mass, which decreases the evapotranspiration into the atmosphere, which decreases the water available for clouds and rain, leading to further deforestation .

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Could it be that the many breakdowns of local ecosystems is a symptom of a larger-scale unraveling of earth’s biospheric ecosystem? Is humanity nearing some planetary tipping point? Or, is the earth actually far more resilient and our species far less potent than we imagine?

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