A geophysiologist's thoughts on geoengineering - Philosophical Transactions A - 0 views
-
The Earth is now recognized as a self-regulating system that includes a reactive biosphere; the system maintains a long-term steady-state climate and surface chemical composition favourable for life. We are perturbing the steady state by changing the land surface from mainly forests to farm land and by adding greenhouse gases and aerosol pollutants to the air. We appear to have exceeded the natural capacity to counter our perturbation and consequently the system is changing to a new and as yet unknown but probably adverse state. I suggest here that we regard the Earth as a physiological system and consider amelioration techniques, geoengineering, as comparable to nineteenth century medicine.
-
Organisms change their world locally for purely personal selfish reasons; if the advantage conferred by the ‘engineering’ is sufficiently favourable, it allows them and their environment to expand until dominant on a planetary scale.
-
Our use of fires as a biocide to clear land of natural forests and replace them with farmland was our second act of geoengineering; together these acts have led the Earth to evolve to its current state. As a consequence, most of us are now urban and our environment is an artefact of engineering.
- ...7 more annotations...