BIOSPHERIC HEALTH AND INTEGRITY:

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• BIOSPHERIC HEALTH AND INTEGRITY
• THE TOP PRIORITY FOR HUMANKIND
•  
•  
•  
• John Cairns, Jr.
•  
• University Distinguished Professor of
  Environmental Biology Emeritus
• Department of Biological Sciences
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
  University
• Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, U.S.A.
•  
•  
• November 2009
•  

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• Global climate change is proceeding much more
  rapidly than expected.
• Intentions have been voiced about limiting global
  heating to 2C above pre-industrial levels, but
  no agreement has been reached among the worlds
  nations to prevent this increase from happening.
  
• Even worse, scientists indicate that the global
  average temperature could rise by 4C as early as
  2060.1
• A temperature of even less than 2C is currently
  melting glaciers and having deleterious effects
  upon agricultural productivity and the biosphere.
  
• The biosphere2 (living organisms together with
  their environment), which serves as Earths life
  support system and is the source of resources for
  the human economy, has lost biodiversity and
  habitat.

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• The present biosphere is not like the ones that
  preceded it since the biota and climate are
  different.
• The present biosphere has supported the genus
  Homo for at least 3 million years and the species
  Homo sapiens, to which humans belong, for
  160,000-200,000 years.
• Each of the five great extinctions was followed
  by a different biota that evolved from the
  survivors of the extinctions.
• Humans probably could not have survived in the
  environment produced by the preceding biospheres,
  nor is human civilization likely to survive the
  next biosphere if business as usual continues.
  
• Humankind should be nurturing the present
  biosphere, not only because humankind is a part
  of the biosphere but also because the human
  species evolved under the conditions the
  biosphere produced.

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• The biosphere is an envelope surrounding Earth,
  an envelope so thin that its edge cannot be seen
  from outer space.
• The biosphere is a mosaic of ecosystems that
  cover the entire Earth. The oceanic component
  covers about 70 of Earths surface and has
  already been affected adversely by acidification
  from carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
• The oceanic ecosystem may have already passed a
  major ecological/global tipping point however,
  because the oceans are on evolutionary time
  rather than human time, a few more years may be
  needed to produce evidence that a major tipping
  point has been passed.
• The global financial tipping point of 2008 was a
  big surprise, although 20/20 hindsight has
  revealed a few warning signals.
• Since tipping points are essentially
  irreversible,3 humankind can either take
  precautionary steps to avoid tipping points or
  try to adapt when they occur.

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• All life on Earth, including humankind, depends
  upon the biospheric life support system that
  provides both natural capital (resources) and
  ecosystem services.
• Hawken et al.4 list four types of capital that
  the human economy needs for functioning properly.
  
• (1) human capital labor, intelligence,
  culture, and organization,
• (2) financial capital cash, investments, and
  monetary instruments,
• (3) manufactured capital infrastructure,
  machines, tools, and factories,
• (4) natural capital resources, living
  organisms, and ecosystem services.
• Since both humans and natural capital are part of
  the biosphere, the human artifacts (i.e.,
  financial capital and manufactured capital) are
  derived from the biosphere.

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• Why then is the human economy, which is clearly a
  subset of the biosphere (i.e., the environment),
  given the highest priority by both politicians
  and the general public?
• The present biosphere has been around for all of
  human history and has never given the human
  species any trouble until recently when
  anthropogenic stresses have had deleterious
  effects.
• Scientists have been giving increasingly urgent
  warnings for decades to no avail.
• If the present biosphere suffers collapse, the
  new biosphere probably will not maintain
  conditions as habitable for humans as the present
  one.

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• A tipping point is the critical point in an
  evolving situation that leads to a new and
  irreversible development.
• When an ecological tipping point is passed, the
  system goes into disequilibrium and may not
  recover for thousands, even millions, of years at
  the ecological level of the biosphere.
• Conditions during the transition period will
  probably be erratic, even chaotic, but a new
  complex biosphere should eventually be reached if
  the five past biotic extinctions are a guide.
• Monitoring the health and integrity of the
  biosphere would probably, but not certainly,
  provide an early warning that a tipping point was
  near.
• This undertaking is daunting but not impossible.
  Cairns5 provides an outline of the steps for
  monitoring the health and integrity of natural
  capital and ecosystem services.
• The biosphere probably has multiple tipping
  points, as is the case for most complex,
  multivariate systems.
• A major tipping point was reached when emissions
  of carbon dioxide exceeded Earths assimilative
  capacity and the gas began to accumulate in the
  atmosphere, causing climate change.
• When a tipping point has been passed, change may
  come gradually in human time, but not in
  ecological/evolutionary time.

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• Suddenly the world is different.
• Humankind cannot return to the world it once
  knew.
• The change is irreversible and humans must adapt
  to the new world.
• Sea level rise is one of the consequences of
  climate change.
• The worlds rice harvest is particularly
  vulnerable to rising sea level. A World Bank map
  of Bangladesh shows that even a 3-foot rise in
  sea level would cover half of the rice land in
  this country of 160 million people.
• A 3-foot sea level rise would also inundate
  one-third or more of the Mekong delta, which
  produces half of the rice in Vietnam, the worlds
  number two rice exporter.

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Suddenly textbooks seem to be describing some
other world than the one humans live in.6
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• Where might humankind be going?
• Rockstrom et al.7 list nine planetary boundaries
  and propose quantification for seven of them.
• Climate change
• Ocean acidification
• Biogeochemical nitrogen cycle
• Phosphorus cycle
• Global freshwater use
• Land system change
• Loss of biological diversity
• Chemical pollution (yet to be quantified)
• Atmospheric aerosol loading (yet to be
  quantified)
• The authors estimate that humanity has already
  transgressed three planetary boundaries climate
  change, biodiversity loss, and changes to the
  global nitrogen cycle.
• Three out of seven planetary boundary conditions
  have been transgressed, and climate negotiations
  lack urgency.

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• How can these changes be ignored when the global
  system is highly interactive?
• Mark Lynas book Six Degrees8 is based on the
  landmark 1.4 degrees to 5.8 degrees Celsius
  increases in global average temperature (GAT) of
  the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
  (IPCC). The increase may be much more in some
  regions. . . . less in others.
• Cynics might say that sub-Saharan Africans are
  well accustomed to drought. But the evidence
  suggests that the extent of drying in the
  three-degree world is going to be far off any
  scale that would permit human adaptation.8, p.
  125
• On the other hand, if emissions (of carbon
  dioxide) go on rising as they currently are,
  global temperatures could shoot past three
  degrees as early as 2050. 8, p. 134
• 2050 is a date frequently mentioned as a target
  date for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
  This date is too far into the future.

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• The sleeping climate giant positive feedback
  loops.
• In addition to the vast amounts of carbon stored
  in the remaining fossil fuels, much more carbon
  is stored in frozen, hydrated methane on the
  ocean floor and in permafrost soils, wetlands,
  forests, soils, and so on.
• When frozen methane thaws or when permafrost
  thaws, carbon is released into the atmosphere and
  accelerates global heating.
• Such positive feedback is already occurring and
  results in increased atmospheric methane and
  carbon dioxide.
• Another greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, is emitted
  during agricultural and industrial activities, as
  well as during the combustion of fossil fuels and
  solid waste.
• Any increase in emissions would act as positive
  feedback and increase global heating.
• The same result is true of potent fluorinated
  gases.
• Such things as increased thawing of frozen
  methane or permafrost will accelerate global
  climate change, which would probably destabilize
  the present biosphere.
• The positive feedback loops, if strongly
  activated, would probably result in
  uncontrollable climate changes to which humankind
  would have to adapt or suffer.
• Extinction is unthinkable, but possible.

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• Conclusions
• Humankind is rapidly approaching the creation of
  an alien planet because it refuses to reduce
  anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions to match
  Earths assimilative capacity for them. Only a
  short time is left to make an emissions/capacity
  match before the next biospheric tipping point or
  before the positive feedback loops become more
  active. The changes humankind needs to make in
  lifestyles and behaviors to sustain Earth as it
  is presently known are almost certainly less than
  those needed to adapt to a markedly changed
  Earth.
• Why arent we doing something?
• Can it be that we dont realize we are part of
  the biosphere we are destroying?

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Acknowledgments I am indebted to Darla Donald
for transcribing a portion of the handwritten
first draft and for editorial assistance, to
Karen Cairns for transcribing a portion of the
handwritten first draft and for assistance with
the format, and to Valerie Sutherland for
converting it to Power Point. References 1Shukman
, D. 2009. Four degrees of warming likely. BBC
News 28Sept http//news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8279654.stm
. 2definition of biosphere from
http//www.merriam-webster.com.dictionary.biospher
e 3Solomon, S. G-K Plattner, R. Knutti and P.
Friedlingstein. 2009. Irreversible climate change
due to carbon dioxide emissions. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, USA.
1061704-1709 4Hawken, P., A. Lovins, and H.
Lovins. 1999. Natural Capitalism Creating the
Next Industrial Revolution. Little, Brown and
Company, New York, NY, p. 4. 5Cairns, J., Jr.
2002. Monitoring the restoration of natural
capital water and land ecosystems. Chapter 1,
pp. 1-31 in Advances in Water Monitoring
Research, T. Younos, ed. Water Resources
Publications, LLC, Highlands Ranch, Colorado.
6Rubin, J. 2009. Why Your World is About to Get
a Whole Lot Smaller. Random House, NY, p.
17. 7Rockström J. and 28 additional authors. In
press. Planetary boundaries exploring the safe
operating space for humanity. Ecology and
Society, p. 8, online at http//www.stockholmresil
ience.org/download/18.1fe8f33123572b59ab800012568/
pb_longversion_170909.pdf. 8Lynas, M. 2008. Six
Degrees. National Geographic, Washington, D.C.