6. The Carbon Cycle - revolutionary industry

The picture so far....
describes the biological aspects of the carbon cycle. To recap, on the right hand side of the cycle, respiration in living cells releases the energy locked up in the carbon based molecules in a regulated and measured way. One byproduct is generally CO2, in turn produced in modest, measured quantities. There is a corresponding powerful chemical process which uses carbon and generates heat and carbon dioxide. In nature it generally takes place in an uncontrolled and fairly destructive fashion in the form of forest and heathland fires. If their scale is large enough they do have a short term impact on the atmosphere both from the smoke they cause and also the CO2 they generate. The counterbalancing forces do allow balance to return eventually. However, it is Man's continuing use of fire on a massive scale which is having a lasting and worrying effect on the biosphere. This takes two main forms: deliberate deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels. Both are important but it is the latter which is of greatest relevance to this stage in our investigation of the delicate biosphere which relies on a well-balanced carbon cycle.

The Industrial Economy
The quite extraordinary arising of the industrial economy over the last two centuries in the West and its spread to the East represents the biggest threat to the balance. In very general terms it would be true to say that the nineteenth century played host to the coal-fired industrial revolution and the twentieth supplemented coal with oil and natural gas. The inconceivably large amounts of CO2this produces, in comparison to the small regulated quantities needed to sustain biological life is pushing the carbon cycle out of balance - hence the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is not only rising but accelerating - this indicates that natural counterbalancing mechanisms are not working. The challenge for the 21st century is to bring control to the increasing CO2 levels and deal with the consequences of this increase in CO2 from our past and current actions and lifestyles.

Returning to the diagram, the additional arrow on the right hand side represents these new man-made chemical combustion processes which use fossil fuels to generate the goods, services and energy we demand. It also can include the energy required to fire the conversion of limestone to quicklime to make cement for the construction industry and its by product, carbon dioxide. The key point about the diagram is that there is no complementary arrow on the left hand side.

All the biosphere has to counteract these increased emissions are two factors of limited effectiveness.

1. The first of these is increased activity on the left hand side of the cycle. It has been shown in the USA (Duke Forest Experiment) that plants can grow more quickly in the presence of higher concentrations of CO2 and thereby 'fix' more carbon. However this does not remain fixed for all that long and is likely to end up being decomposed or digested by other organisms in the biosphere. For example a conifer tree in a remote forest may grow for fifty years locking much of the carbon it fixes. However it will die and fall to the ground where it will be digested as food by insects, fungi and microorganisms which will expel the carbon as CO2 and methane.
2. The second is natural sequestration enabled by organisms using carbon to produce skeletons containing calcium carbonate. Most typically this will be marine organisms with exoskeletons or shells. For example a mollusc builds a large shell over its lifespan and despite eventually dying or getting eaten the shell will remain chemically intact and will sink to the sea bed with its load of carbon. The carbon therein effectively has been removed from the biosphere - this is sequestration.

The next post looks more closely at the implications of digging up fossil fuels from the subterranean layer.

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5. The Carbon Cycle - the three spheres

Three spheres....
This diagram is split into three sections: the subterranean, the biosphere and the atmosphere. At this stage in the explanation, we can ignore the subterranean but we will return to it. The atmosphere extends 50 miles above the earth's surface - travellers beyond that limit are described by NASA as officially astronauts! The biosphere is minute in comparison and extends about 100 metres into the atmosphere and a few metres down into the subterranean. It is like a thin film spread across the surface of the earth and is immensely complex and extremely delicate. It is in constant movement supporting life from the scale of a single celled organism to a complex creature with 30 trillion cells, immeasurable numbers of which colonise this thin space. A curious 'world order' has kept this inconceivably complex layer of life reasonably harmonious.

The role of carbon....
Absolutely intrinsic to life is the element carbon - it provides the structure and energy for virtually every living thing. For life to exist in this particular place in the universe it is the only element in the periodic table capable of doing the job.

The role of the carbon cycle....
The diagram is describing the equilibrium between atmospheric carbon dioxide and 'fixed carbon' in the biosphere - these two forms of carbon are in constant exchange. The cycle turns anticlockwise. As living beings, and occupiers of the biosphere we, along with virtually every other form of life, emit CO2 every time we breathe - this is depicted on the right handside of the diagram. CO2 remains in the atmosphere until plant life ensnares it during the process of photosynthesis, which with the aid of sunlight, chlorophyll and water, turns it into energy-rich carbohydrate and pure oxygen. The oxygen is returned to the atmosphere and the carbohydrate enters the food chain to support virtually all living beings. This is depicted by the left hand side of the diagram. As stated in an earlier post, the carbon cycle is life's provider. Not only does it provide us all with nutriment it also restore the oxygen consumed in respiration to the atmosphere - within certain limits it maintains an equilibrium. In other words if one side of the cycle produces more CO2, then the other side will be induced to work harder to restore the balance. There are also large 'sinks' by which any ups and downs on either side of the cycle will be smoothed out - in much the same way a set of shock absorbers dampen the springiness of a car's springs.

The physical effect of CO2 in the atmosphere....
Unlike nitrogen and oxygen there is relatively little CO2 in the atmosphere - only every 2500th particle in the air is a CO2 molecule, and yet it has a major effect on our existence. Without it the planet would be uninhabitably cold, and in overdose it would be impossibly hot, like Venus. It has greenhouse gas properties which allow light radiation through from the sun but absorbs and retains the 'warm' infrared radiation from the earth's surface.
When I was born in the 1950's there were even fewer CO2 molecules - about one in every 3300 particles. In the last 50 years the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by 30% and this is having many different types of impact on the biosphere. Unlike the carbon cycle most of these impacts do not have compensating counterbalances, and so the situation is tending to run out of control. The delicate biosphere is getting disrupted and could soon be beyond any possibility of self repair.

The next post will examine what is causing this rise in CO2.

(The chemists will have spotted a deliberate mistake on the slide - CxHy is not the generic formula for a carbohydrate. but bear with me, you'll see why I used it on the next post) Read more!

4. First view of my climate change framework

Going to the answer....
I was intending to get to this much later on in the series of posts. After reflecting on the initial comments where I keep promising more posts but not giving much away, I think I'm in danger of frustrating you patient readers. So here it is.

Future Posts....
I'm intending to take this down to one more level of detail over the next few weeks.

Intended way of working....
If you subscribe you will be automatically notified of each post. By the time you read the notification the original post may well have been adapted in response to early comments so do go to the site itself. By clicking on the title of each post (or its link in the table of contents on the right hand side of the home page) it will appear on a separate page with any comments flowing from underneath the main body of the post.

Your comments....
are invaluable to me at this stage - I'm simply testing out something, which I have introduced to others in private and public meetings, and may be helpful to Mankind. What I do know for certain is that it will be wrong, but with your help it may improve sufficiently to be of use. It would be most helpful to the writer and other contributors if you placed your comments under the most relevant post.

The Framework Diagram....

1. A delicate and isolated ecosystem....
   Before looking at the square, please consider the first picture on this blog, of the earth, viewed from space on the last ever Apollo Mission. It shows that in cosmological terms our earth is minute. Most life takes place on the surface of this minute orb and extends a few 100s of metres above and below its surface. This biosphere is no more than a film on a tiny planet and extremely delicate. It is in constant movement and supports various cyclical processes which are highly balanced and interrelated.
2. The carbon cycle is life's provider....
   The framework is centred on a renewed understanding of the carbon cycle, which many met at GCSE or O-level sciences. Organisms on the photosynthesis side of the carbon cycle consume CO2 and in so doing provide the living world with most of its nutriment. The living world, in turn, consumes that nutriment, during respiration, and returns the CO2 into the atmosphere. As I will demonstrate in my next, more detailed post, mankind, in its recent proliferation of the earth's surface has found carbon-bearing fuel outside the biosphere to meet its energy needs. In burning these fuels the carbon cycle is no longer in balance. This is leading to the biosphere increasing in overall temperature due to the greenhouse effect.
3. Man needs energy to survive....
   The framework acknowledges that mankind needs sources of energy to exist, but recognises that Mankind might well be profligate in their use. Using carbon bearing fossil fuels is already disrupting the balance in the biosphere upon which life depends.
4. The ownership of energy production bestows enormous power on the few....
   The framework recognises that energy production is part of very powerful economic and political system which is difficult to influence. This enormous power however is recognised by many potentially our saviour.
5. What do we really want and what is the wise thing to do...?
   The framework recognises finally that all this energy fuelled activity is dedicated to what we really want - our desires and aspirations. What those are? Whether they are sustainable? Whether they should be sustainable? are all fundamental philosophical questions for us all. These large questions can appear daunting and too big to handle, but can be made highly practical. It is only then that members of Mankind - that's you and me, can make a difference.

The next post therefore will be on the carbon cycle, the very centre of ther framework....

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3. Should we do something about Climate Change?

I'm indebted to.....
the author of http://www.wonderingmind42.com/ for this analysis which he demonstrated on white boards in his lab with a video camera running. 'CD' is climate destabilisation - he uses this term and I also tend to use it rather than 'CC' as it conveys a future picture of unpredictable results, rather than everywhere just getting a degree or two warmer but otherwise everything carrying on as normal.

The slide, when it isn't a picture on a blog, is animated and the smiley faces come in afterwards. I will therefore have to fill in the few words you can't read.

The basic argument....
goes as follows. Is mankind confronted with a looming climatic disaster of its own making or not?
The orthodox approach is to ascertain scientifically whether we are the authors of our own climate change problem or whether it is caused by Nature. Having done that we can then decide whether there is any point in changing how we are conducting ourselves right now. He says that there will always be debate about that, because science can never be 100% sure about anything and therefore we will never decide whether to act or not.

He therefore suggests looking at it from the other end of the telescope, as it were. Let's look at the possible outcomes based upon the best advice available around at the moment and perhaps that will help us decide what the best way to act would be. Hence the use of the matrix on the slide - the choices down the left hand side represent the two possible answers to the first question is CD man-made or not? The two choices across the top represent the two ways to act - do something, or do nothing.

1. Top left: We act, only to find that CD is not man-made. We've therefore wasted a lot of money and caused a lot of economic upheaval achieving nothing more than nature would have resolved - bad news.



2. Bottom left: We act, and it turns out to be a good job we did, as the problem was caused by human beings. So we did what we had to do and bequeathed a sustainable planet to our children, which is great news although it did cause a lot of economic hardship along the way.



3. Top right: Now, we decide not to act and because CD is not do with our effect on the planet we save a lot of money and the problem goes away - the perfect scenario - everyone happy, the planet safe.



4. Bottom right: We ignore the doom mongers, decide not to act and find out we're wrong. CD kicks in and we have continual climatic disasters, inundation by the sea, potable water supplies polluted causing epidemics, mass deprivation, economic turmoil etc etc.

Now imagine you were running the world....
and needed to make a decision about what to do. How would you decide? Wondering Mind42's argument follows basic risk management. How can we avoid the 'red risk' in the bottom right hand corner? There are two ways: one is a bet against unknown odds, and the other is a near certainty.

• the former is to put your faith in the judgement of some of the scientists and do nothing.



• the latter is to decide to take action and thereby keep out of the right hand column. Yes it will be painful but avoids the ultimate pain. of the bottom right corner.

Most people....
I've spoken to would act - wouldn't you? Wondering Mind42 then goes on to cite recent opinion from eminent scientific bodies which is tending to the view that CD is man-made. So the odds of being caught out by taking the right hand column are increasing. If anything the political debate, thanks to Al Gore and others, is virtually won. Wondering Mind42 then expresses considerable optimism that Mankind's creativity will find a solution, but he does not give any. Herein lies the next problem area - deciding what to do. The framework, which I keep referring to has helped several of us come to an appreciation of some approaches that are likely to be most efficacious, and certainly some current practices which when scrutinised carefully seem worse than useless. I mean that seriously - to make people feel good, that they are making a real difference to the environment / CC by throwing and smashing perfectly good glass bottles into a bottlebank is worse than useless. There will be a post on the waste hierachy in due course. However there are a few steps I'd like to take with you before building up the framework.

Look out for the next post which describes the current big picture.........

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2. A brief history - through my eyes.

This is a sporadic history....
of the last two years which started considering 'global warming' at quite a challenging time. There seemed little consensus on whether there was even a problem.
On the one hand, those who believed there was looked like amateur doom mongers and many scientists were sceptical and dismissive. On the other hand, politicians at all levels of government were 'going green' but this was not in specific response to global warming which, at that stage, was a relatively new thing. It was more a result of a vociferous and longstanding general environmental lobby.

The initial step.....
was quite daunting. I could not answer simple questions like:

• what do we mean by a global climate?
• what do we mean by it changing?
• how could we measure any such change?

I needed help. I was very fortunate in having many acquaintances who could provide some pointers and we happened to be on a week long philosophical retreat together in May 2006. Most of what will follow in subsequent blogs will still be based upon those initial discussions and suggested lines of enquiry. The most compelling outcome of this was that Man had to stop digging up fossil fuels - not before they ran out - but before we seriously disturbed the small and delicate levels of CO2 and other more powerful greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Even my O-level understanding of the carbon cycle made this clear to us. This did not appear to be clearly enunciated in the world at the time. You will hear a lot more from me on the difference between 'emissions' and 'extraction' (also described as 'stop digging') in later posts. This is a most unpalatable message to the economic world and therefore probably impossible, which continued to niggle for me. Some recent ideas of ours have suggested a new angle on this, which I'll be posting up in due course.

And subsequently....
as time has gone by, the disciplines listed on the left hand side of the slide have needed to be employed.

First early conclusion....
well, if there is a man-made problem, then there sure is no effective global leadership on it. Everyone's opinion is as god(sic) as the next. In June 2006 I confronted a 'Friends of the Earth' rep on my doorstep on whether they had a consolidated view on what the truth of the matter was. In the end he resorted to saying that as long as we all do something, it's better than nothing - I was shocked. I immediately visited their web-site and then felt very sorry for the guy - there was no definition of the problem, let alone a coherent response. I also concluded that my early curiosity was not going to be easily satisfied and I had better carry on.

Second conclusion....
By August 2006, I had blagged my way into speaking on Climate Change to a group of amateur economists from across the globe on a similar retreat, to the one I was on in May. I hastily put together a presentation and laced it with pictures of polar bears, melting icebergs and ice retreat. Whilst some of the ideas were reasonable to the audience I got marmolised for using 'factoids' and having a very blinkered understanding of deforestation in Africa and Brazil. I concluded that I had to be far more careful to work from original thought and research each point as best I could. This was an important lesson to learn, for which I remain grateful, as I do to all the people I pepper questions at.

The more recent history....
Al Gore's film (and book, which I bought the day after), "An Inconvenient Truth", Sarah and I saw early, before most of our friends in Autumn of 2006. I was struck by the persuasiveness of his brilliant displays and oratory and thought that this was a powerful force for good.
On getting the book I was disappointed by the paucity of ideas about how to solve the problems so beautifully depicted. Less than 10% of the pages at the back of the book were devoted to a mish mash of ideas, very much like the aforementioned Friends of the Earth. Sorry, Mr Gore, but the other 90% has done a great job in waking up the world to the problem.

James Lovelock and Gaia....
In January 2007 we heard James Lovelock being questioned by Claire Gilbert, and old acquaintance and leading thinker in the Church of England, in St Paul's Cathedral. My main memory of that occasion was his reluctant acceptance that nuclear power was a large part of the solution, being the lesser of two evils. I was both depressed and excited. A partial solution, at best, from a combination of a wise man and the Church - was this the best they could come up with?

More confusion....
Channel 4's programme in Spring 2007 which persuaded a large number of my associates that the crisis was not man-made and therefore was little effect from moderating our behaviour on the planet. Note to ed: I must watch my DVD of this.

Stern words....
for the world from Sir Nicholas Stern in his Stern Review in Summer 2007. He basically gave credence to the widening view that climate change (CC from now onwards) was inevitable and would have large scale consequences, but that if we acted now its cost to the global economy seemed quite palatable in comparison to the predictions of even quite optimistic models.

Next speaking occasion....
was lined up for August 2007 in London. I had to hedge my bets on whether Al Gore was right and C4 were wrong by ignoring the question and stating in my advertising that 'irrespective of whether it was a man-made phenomenon or not was there not an opportunity for mankind?' That, along with the 'Kyoto Protocol' being effectively dead meant there was merit in starting to look at what might both make mankind happier and make it less ignorant of the effect of its excesses. The 'stop digging' message also seemed to be quite a good wake up call for the audience.

A sagacious science teacher in the American mid-west....
in October 2007 solved the "is it; isn't it" debate for me and many others, as to whether climate change is the result of man-made action or not. He put a 'global risk management hat' on and quickly concluded that the only reasonable course was to stop debating whether the cause of CC was Man or not and to act decisively to mitigate its effects. This was the best use of a 'Boston Matrix' I had ever seen. You'll find his arguments beautifully explained at http://www.wonderingmind42.com/. I will be devoting a post on this shortly.

Still no real solutions though....
despite the Bali roadmap and Al Gore receiving his Nobel Prize in December 2007. Our work on the framework was developing it further and it is around Feb 2008 that some of the disciplines on the left hand side of the screen started to become important. That's about it for now on this post.

I do look forward to your comments.

Oh - and those curious icons across the top of the slide? - there is one of those for each big topic to follow in subsequent posts.

And so to my next post, which will be shorter, I promise...............................................

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1. If climate change is caused by human activity, then what?

The human race now needs to do something(s) significant – actions that will really make a difference on the global scale.

Watching the debate over the last two years move the general consensus from 'sceptical about ‘Global Warming’' being a manmade phenomenon to being 'fairly convinced' has been most interesting. You can see all the sources of influence, listed below, at play. However this was bipolar debate – yes or no. And in my and other peoples' opinions, if treated as a risk management issue it is a ‘no brainer’ – we have to act even though it is the lesser of two evils – to act and bear the cost of acting, or not to act and face the risk of human and global disaster.


The imperatives now are:

• to act quickly
  
• those actions have to be effective


• the global population has to execute them willingly


• we have to be right first time – we can only run this experiment once as we are in the test-tube.

The really big questions now are:

What actions and behaviour changes would make a significant difference and be achievable?

Human creativity can provide a virtually infinite number of ideas and opinions on this’ what?’. However which are the winners likely to be - the most efficacious, or the most popular? It requires wisdom to make the right choices, particularly if they are tough choices – I think of the Solomon story. My thesis is that mankind does not seem to have a framework by which to judge the options. I have investigated some of the most popular according to my framework and I'm left confounded as to their efficacy. The framework will start to be described in my next post.

How would the actions be executed willingly?
Anyone with major influence can achieve a lot by getting people to work in a concerted way. The question is who or what brings about that unity around a cause.

• Corporates directly control the conduct of their operations


• NGOs can influence and in some cases (the UN) mandate.


• Democratic governments can mandate changes in behaviour where it is vote winner – they have to gain political consensus where it might not be a vote winner


• Local government can encourage us to do things


• Individuals when united by a commonly held cause can achieve the most but that is difficult to attain. This likely to be the subject of a later post from me, but please say what you want to say now.

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