Hi, my name's Pale Blue Dot. People call me Bluey.
If you're game, come join me as I visit my Doc (and his friends) as I explore my so-called mid-life crisis.
Just calling in briefly to bring everyone's attention to this article about how humanity won't survive another 1,000 years. Apparently the warning comes from one of the 'smartest' humans on my surface:
I was excited to see Venus, especially to talk with her about her own greenhouse effect and provide her with an update on my health. I was pleased then when she suggested we watch 'The World Set Free' episode of the human series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey together.
'The World Set Free'—presumably named after human H.G. Wells' novel—outlines in concise and scientific terms, some of the differences between mine and Venus's atmosphere.
Watching the full episode really brought Venus's predicament home to me. Without an ocean to absorb the CO2 emitted from Venus's volcanoes and store it in mineral form, Venus's atmospheric pressure is approximately 92 times mine, with an atmospheric density of CO2 around 96.5% and a surface temperature "hot enough to melt lead". Whilst Venus can't remember all the way back billions of years, some humans think Venus may once have had oceans, mainly by reference to the granitic terrain seemingly evident in her highlands and her apparent consistency with the principle of isostasy. Remarkably, humans managed to collect this data in spite of the pervasive clouds of sulphuric acid that engulf her.
With her oceans certainly gone today, one can only speculate whether Venus ever succumbed to a 'runaway' greenhouse effect. Venus assured me not to worry, but all this of course got me thinking.
What would it take to cause me to enter a runaway greenhouse effect? With all these 'positive feedback loops' I've learnt about recently, I'd be wise to be careful, only I'm not really in control these days, as I'm finding out via these specialists...
Remembering back to my meeting with Dr IPCC, just moving from an average of around 280ppm to 400ppm of CO2 over 200 years has made me considerably warmer. At the very least, movie night with Venus made me even more cognisant of how delicate our planet's atmospheres are, particularly when it comes to their CO2 counts.
I visited specialist Dr Barnosky et alagain yesterday but thankfully, this time a different assistant was present, Nurse Ellis et al. My spray tan and dyed blonde hair (Land-system change) were the primary discussion points, separate but seemingly related to my previous visit, regarding my low-white-blood-count (Biodiversity loss). I was curious to visit Dr Barnosky again, especially in wake of Dr Brook's revelation that terrestrial biosphere 'tipping points' were not as likely as Dr Barnosky had originally made out.
Nurse Ellis dusted off my records, and explained how the last three centuries had witnessed dramatic change (equivalent to the land change from my last glacial to interglacial transition when 30% of my terrestrial surface changed composition). This is further confirmed in my results below.
Barnosky's 'Quantifying Land Use' (Source: Nature)
Nurse Ellis went on to explain the concept of 'anthromes' to me. It came as no surprise—'anthro' was now well and truly part of my vocab. I gleaned three further themes from my conversation with Nurse Ellis:
I've rapidly transitioned from a wild, 'seminatural' state to a 'used state', due to transformation of previously wild terrain (~50%) & from land-use intensification in seminatural anthromes (~50%).
Humans have proliferated everywhere; only certain parts e.g. northern Eurasia, eastern U.S.A and small pockets of sub-Saharan Africa have shown resilience to humans.
Approximately 85% of my 'wilderness' is now situated in cold/dry biomes, thus human attention should predicate on managing and restoring biodiversity within "complex multifunctional anthropogenic landscape mosaics that will be the predominant form of terrestrial ecosystems today and into the future."
No major surprises there. Now for Dr Barnosky's results:
Medical Report Card 4 - Land-system change
While I agree mostly with Dr Barnosky, especially with his worries around human population and their 'commandeering' of much of my global NPP, I believe he overstates the 'radical shift' problem slightly, as confirmed by Dr Brook. Although he acknowledges "considerable uncertainty remains about whether it is inevitable", I side more with Dr Brooks 'regional emphasis' on this point, in large due to a lack of teleconnection between my continents and as he says, the "spatial heterogeneity in drivers and responses".
I also think Dr Barnosky doesn't concentrate enough on my most important biomes. I'm coming to really appreciate GP Steffen's control variable of forest cover, rather than that used by my previous GP, Dr Rockstrom, of cropland. The Land-use change I'm now most worried about—from my planetary perspective—is the deforesting of vast swathes of my forest biomes, particularly its tropical elements. This has far-ranging implications for my climate, which I'm now thinking could be my biggest planetary problem.
Despite my concerns with Dr Barnosky regarding the veracity of his speculations, he has reinforced for me that, while humans are present, my body must adjust to having up to 70% of my terrestrial biosphere used directly by them. That fact itself could nigh on be a 'tipping point' for me due to how unpredictable their management of these 'novel anthromes' will undoubtedly be.
After author, Elizabeth Kolbert, reminded me of my long-extinct Silurian graptolites and the possible stratigraphically significant remnants of Human civilization—structures such as the London Underground—she introduced me to palaeontologist Jan Zalasiewicz's 'giant rats'.
It turns out that Zalasiewicz gives rats pretty impressive odds to succeed Humans, should humans ever decide to destroy themselves:
“Some number will probably stay rat-size and rat-shaped... But others may well shrink or expand. Particularly if there’s been epidemic extinction and ecospace opens up, rats may be best placed to take advantage of that. And we know that change in size can take place fairly quickly.”
I'd completely forgotten that over 99.9% of my white-blood-cell species have already gone extinct. Specialist Dr Barnosky et al referenced my records, citing five periods of low white-blood-cell-counts (or 'mass-extinctions') on my surface. That's when over 75% of my estimated species were lost forever. My:
Ordovician: ~443 Mya
Late Devonian: ~359 Mya
Permian: ~251 Mya (when my white blood cell count was lowest)
Triassic: ~200 Mya
Cretaceous: ~65 Mya (when my Tyrannosaurus and Diplodocus white blood cells disappeared).
I vaguely remembered the ‘Cretaceous golf ball incident' as I couldn’t believe something so small had managed to have such wide-ranging consequences, but the other four were hazy.
Whilst Dr Barnosky processed my results, I struck up a conversation with his assistant Nurse Hooper et al regarding the effects of plant species loss on 'ecosystem services'. Despite coming from a distinctly human perspective, he brought the relevance of species loss on other vital processes like primary production to the fore.
I also learnt from Nurse Hooper that species loss would have to be in excess of 75% before rivalling other environmental changes like nutrient pollution and drought. I was optimistic. But not for long.
My Results:
Medical Report Card 3 - Biodiversity Loss
For your information:
E/MSY: Extinctions per million species-years
BII: Biodiversity Intactness Index (more details with Dr Scholes)
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Looks like I'll be relying on humans again... Protecting those species—not just my 'charismatic invertebrates'—currently threatened (see below) is of the utmost priority, otherwise I may see my SIXTH great extinction event in my equivalent of just a few days!
Dr Barnosky and his assistant's meta-analyses were unequivocal, but I couldn't help but notice all the 'limitations' on the medical report. Consequently, I thought it prudent to collate a selection of 'second' opinions. I organised a conference call with Dr Thomas, Dr Vellend, Dr Brook and Dr Seddon.
Light on data, heavy on opinion, Dr Thomas explained how humans could be boosting my biodiversity by encouraging the hybridisation of species and 'indirectly' increasing temperatures, stressing that 'new'—as opposed to traditional—species shouldn't be stigmatised. In my humble opinion, Dr Thomas raised important points, especially that empirical data must lead the way, not irrationality, however I believe he failed his own test here.
On the other hand, Dr Vellend came equipped with a data-rich rebuttal of Nurse Hooper—around the importance of biodiversity as an 'ecosystem service'. From Dr Vellend's perspective, previous studies had rested on "untested assumptions". There was in fact, no significant empirical change in net local-scale plant biodiversity over time. But because of his local focus, I chose to ignore him. That was until I heard Dr Brook's opinion.
Dr Brook presented me with the best news of the day. Despite the potential loss of global species biodiversity, my functioning and resilience would likely remain strong. He described the functioning of my biosphere 'health' as the "aggregate contribution of the many component ecosystems operating on local and regional scales". So local does matter! I even learnt at a regional scale, there's sometimes a net increase in species diversity, such as on oceanic islands, in spite of species richness becoming more "globally homogenised" generally. Promising.
Dr Seddon offered neutral but informative thoughts around human conservation efforts. The translocation of species, assisted colonisation, ecological replacements and 'rewilding' all come with the best of human intentions, but with mixed results in practice. I think insisting that restoring species in a changing world requires "resetting public aspirations of biodiversity" was on point but should certainly not be used as another convenient excuse by humans.
There's cause for worry and cause for hope. Humans must recognise the importance of biodiversity for their own sake. From where I'm standing, my white-blood-cell-count may be decreasing but I'm likely going to be just fine.
Mars sent me an email yesterday about a WaitButWhy article, written by a human. Mars marked it URGENT—he's seemingly worried (or ecstatic) that my ailments will be passed to him via humans.
I completed some preliminary research. Below is my reply:
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Dear Mars,
Insightful article. This Musk character sure wants to shake things up. Personally, I think they'd be wise to back up the 'human hard drive' but I wouldn't worry too much mate, at least not yet.
From the information gathered, a small infection of humans is likely in the near future due to high human levels of curiosity and exponential advances in technology. But, I'm sceptical about outright infection:
They have enough problems of their own trying to build a sustainable species on me.
It's breaking unchartered territory. I'd be surprised if they tried the full infection ('Terraforming') on you before they tried it on me (although they kind of are now).
Human ethical concerns but a human recently investigated the ethical dimensions, saying it was "potentially moral if based on the motivation of preserving 'Life', which is of the highest intrinsic value because of its unparalleled rarity in the known universe." Interesting logic.
You'd be more hospitable to plant, rather than human life due to your reservoirs of CO2 and H2O, according to other human literature. Humans demand O2 rich atmospheres.
Also, not proud to say it mate, but you have several unappealing characteristics (from the perspective of humans of course): your atmosphere is "hopelessly tenuous" at 0.8% the thickness of mine; you only receive 43% of the sunlight I do (being further away); and your average temperature is -60°C. Even if they sorted all the above out, to get plants growing and producing O2, they'd need to:
Increase your heat absorption efficiency using potent GHGs called CFCs (though these are damaged by ultraviolet radiation making this difficult)
Encourage the process of CO2 release from your soil (after about -20°C) in order to propel you over 0°C, allowing water vapour (another GHG) to self-generate.
How long would this take? It depends on where the CO2-saturated soil is in your regolith. A century at best but probably closer to thousands of years if deeply distributed.
Basically it all comes down to how rich your elemental components are, how accessibly these can be freed up, and what technology they can harness to accelerate it. This is if they can even get to you!
