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Global Warming and the Gaia Theory -
a Systems Approach
Dennis Sherwood
The Silver Bullet Machine
Manufacturing Company Limited
Summary
A recent report written for the US Department of Defence, authored by
Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, two of the world’s leading experts in
scenario planning, declares that the greatest military danger to the world
as a whole - and not just the western democracies - is not terrorism, nor is
it the possible use of weapons of mass destruction by rogue states. Rather,
widespread, vicious and highly destructive military conflict is an inevitable
consequence of the certainty of global warming.
Global warming has been discussed for many years, but there are still many
people who are denial: they continue to claim that the current
measurements of temperature increase are normal fluctuations, or simply
manifestations of, for example, the long-term Milankovitch cycles
associated with changes in the earth’s orbit. And of those not in denial,
many think that all we have to do (or better, all someone else has to do) is
to cut back on a few car journies, so reducing the amount of carbon
dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere.
The general level of knowledge of what global warming actually is, what its
consequences are likely to be, and therefore about what can realistically
be done to avert its most harmful effects, is woefully low. The report by
Schwartz and Randall, and the associated publicity it is receiving, will
surely help to shake people out of complacency. The purpose of this paper
is to offer a small contribution to this worthy endeavour, and to incite the
systems community to do likewise. For surely global warming is the
example, par excellence, of why taking a systemic view of the whole,
rather than a parochial view of the parts, is so important. A particular
feature of my analysis is the incorporation of Gaia theory, James
Lovelock’s revolutionary concept of the entire globe as a system.
Population growth
My starting point is population growth. From a systems perspective, the
population of the globe is determined by the dynamics of a reinforcing
loop, driven by the birth rate, arrested by a balancing loop, driven by the
death rate:
Death rate
Ss
Deaths
s
oO
Population.
Ss
Ss
Births
Ss
Birth rate
The population, motivated by a desire for wealth, drives economic activity
and consequently resource consumption, which in turn leads to
competition for scarce resources, from land to water, from gold to oil. At
the same time, resource consumption gives rise to all sorts of waste
products and harmful effects, which we can collectively refer to as
pollution. Pollution, in its widest sense, is an important cause of disease,
and competition for scarce resources leads to famine and war; and
disease, famine and war all drive up the death rate.
This leads to a more complex systems structure, with the single reinforcing
loop of population growth limited by three balancing loops, all driven by
man’s desire for wealth and constrained by the overall resource capacity. .
Resource
Ss
—_— Pollution
en al
Resource s
capacity
\e Disease
_—_—_——_>> «
: Competition for 5" Famine
scarce resources
Sy s
Desire for sy ee
eath rate
Economic ¢—~ a Wealth War ____—
S
activity
5
Deaths
Ss
Population.
Ss
Births
5
Birth rate
The natural constraints on population growth - disease and famine -
combined with the unnatural constraint of war, each of which cause death,
have been known for centuries. And no one captured the Four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse more hauntingly than Albrecht Diirer:
For thousands of years, the Four Horsemen collectively kept the human
population quite small. But around 1700 - 1800, something important
changed: the cumulative surplus generated by economic activity provided
the funds, the knowledge and the incentive to improve health care, both in
terms of new public health programmes, such as the provision of safe
water supplies and the treatment of sewage, as well as in terms of better
medical care and the development of drugs and antibiotics. This had two
effects: firstly, the death rate reduced, and secondly the birth rate
increased, since women of child-bearing age became more healthy.
Ss
—_— Pollution
Resource
eae
Resource s
capacity
\e Disease
—_ i
Competition for s” Famine
scarce re 5 s
Desire for sy
Economic ¢——~ a Wealth
activity
a 7
o Population.
a _
Birth ae
_ Sy» ri rate
s Health
care
The simultaneous stimulation of the reinforcing loop and reduction in the
braking effect of the main balancing loop caused a huge increase in
population:
7
6
5
n
¢
2
= 4
a
¢
2
ic
s 3
a
fo]
a
3
6 (2
(C)
1
fe)
1000 1200 1400 1600 1800
Year
Source: The United Nations Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs
How can the explosive growth of the global population be arrested?
Current thinking is that the most powerful means of reducing the birth rate
is by the education of women - but this can take a considerable time.
Ss
ae Pollution
Resource
esa
Resource 5
capacity
\p Disease
a i
F Competition for s" Famine
scarce resources
s s
Desire for s
a Wealth S _ Death rate
Economic ¢——~ ‘War —____
activity -
Deaths
Ss
oO
Population,
delay Ss
‘ Ss
Education
of women Births
Q s
Birth rate
Health
care
Gaia
During the 1960s, the young British scientist James Lovelock was working
on the US space programme. His specific job was to think about how life on
another planet might be detected either from earth or from a space probe.
Lovelock’s research soon focused on one particular aspect of any planet
that might be studied from afar: the composition of the planet’s
atmosphere. This led him to study in detail some atmospheres about which
quite a lot was already known: the atmospheres of Earth, and Earth’s
nearest neighbours, Venus and Mars. And when he did this, he noticed
something odd: the atmospheres of Venus and Mars are rich in carbon
dioxide, very low in nitrogen, and have no oxygen; in contrast, the
atmosphere of the Earth has very little carbon dioxide, almost 80%
nitrogen, and about 20% oxygen.
The composition of planetary atmospheres
100%
90%
80%
70%
60% BB oxygen %
i Carbon dioxide %
50%
BB Nitrogen %
40%
Di Argon etc %
30%
20%
10%
0%
Venus Earth Mars
Lovelock also realised that the Earth’s atmosphere, as we experience it
today, is very far from chemical equilibrium, and geological evidence
showed that this non-equilibrium state has been maintained for billions of
years. Furthermore, his calculations showed that if the Earth’s atmosphere
were at chemical equilibrium, it would be very much like that of Venus and
Mars.
Why is the Earth’s atmosphere not in chemical equilibrium, even though
literally billions of years have elapsed during which an equilibrium state
might have been achieved?
Lovelock’s answer is elegant and beautiful, and explained in detail in his
books, notably Gaia - The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine. My one
line summary is “The Earth’s atmosphere is held in a dynamic, stable non-
equilibrium state because the entire globe - its geology, its chemistry, its
weather and its life - form one, unified, adaptive self-organising system; a
system which both maintains, and is maintained by, life.”
One key aspect of this global self-organising system - for which Lovelock
coined the name Gaia, after the Greek Earth-mother goddess - is the
maintenance of a relatively stable mean global temperature of about 14°C
over, once again, millions if not billions of years - even despite occasional
ice ages.
Over these billions of years, the sun has been getter hotter, and the Earth
should have heated up. But it hasn’t. What has happened, though, is that,
as the sun has been getting hotter, there has been progressively less
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now carbon dioxide is a ‘greenhouse
gas’, and hinders the re-radiation of the Earth’s heat back into space.
Carbon dioxide therefore acts as a ‘one-way blanket’, letting the sun’s
heat in, but preventing the Earth’s heat from getting out. So, the more the
amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the ‘thicker the blanket’, and
the warmer the Earth; conversely, the lesser the amount of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere, the ‘thinner the blanket’ and the cooler the Earth.
What Lovelock determined, once again from geological evidence, is that,
as the sun has been getting hotter, and so pumping more heat into the
Earth, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been steadily
decreasing, so allowing more heat out. And the rate of reduction of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere has been just what has been required to keep
the temperature of the Earth constant. Constant over many millions of
years. Just as if there is a balancing loop at work, controlling to a “natural
Earth temperature”, with the controlling mechanism being the amount of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
8
But the “natural Earth temperature” isn’t just any-old temperature - it is
the temperature at which live thrives. And life itself is the primary
mechanism by which carbon dioxide has been steadily removed from the
Earth’s atmosphere, by a mechanism known as the ‘living pump’.
Very briefly, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed in water
droplets to fall as carbonic acid in rain. This carbonic acid reacts with
calcium silicate in rocks to form soluble calcium bicarbonate, which washes
out in rivers into the sea. In the oceans, marine micro-organisms known as
coccolithophores absorb the dissolved calcium bicarbonate to make
insoluble calcium carbonate, the main structural component of their shells.
And when these organisms die, their shells fall to the bottom of the sea,
and become the rocks we call limestone and chalk. Yes, the origin of all
the limestone and chalk in the Earth is atmospheric carbon dioxide,
transformed into rock by a living process. A living process that has
continued for millions of years, and that has served to keep the
temperature of the Earth constant - so that the living pump could continue
to work.
In systems terms, this is a balancing loop, mediated by life:
‘Natural’ Earth
temperature fo)
Temperature
Actual Earth Activity of the
temperature living pump
\ 4
Level of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere
And for millions of years, Gaia’s balancing loop operated largely
independently of man’s constrained reinforcing loop:
‘Natural’ Earth
temperature fo)
Temperature
gap t P
Actual Earth Activity of the
temperature living pump
\ J
Level of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere
s
—_— Pollution
Resource
a ea
Resource s
capacity
\e Disease
—_ i
P Competition for s” Famine
scarce resources 5 s
Desire for s Sy
a Wealth s _ Death rate
Economic 4 —~ War —___ —
activity
5
Deaths
Ss
Population.
delay s
Education
of women Births
Ss
Birth rate
10
But as that reinforcing loop spins, the level of pollution increases, and one
aspect of that pollution is the release of man-made carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere. Sooner or later, man’s activity is going to impact on Gaia:
‘Natural’ Earth
temperature fo)
Temperature
gap t P
Actual Earth Activity of the
temperature living pump
\ J
Level of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere
=
s
—_— Pollution
Resource
a ea
Resource s
capacity
\e Disease
—_ i
P Competition for s” Famine
scarce resources 5 s
Desire for s Sy
a Wealth s _ Death rate
Economic 4 —~ War —___ —
activity
5
Deaths
Ss
Population.
delay s
Education
of women Births
Ss
Birth rate
11
Gaia can withstand this for a while, but when the rate at which man-made
carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere reaches a certain level, the
living pump can no longer cope. And if Gaia is to maintain the ‘natural’
Earth temperature, it must invoke another control mechanism. What might
this be? How might Gaia dissipate unwanted energy? By storms, that’s how.
‘Natural’ Earth
temperature me
area. eves
gap t a oS
a4
Actual Earth Activity of the
temperature living pump
Storms A
el
s :
ra
Level of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere
my
Ss
—_— Pollution
Resource
ee
Resource 5
capacity
\e Disease
—_ j
; Competition for s” Famine
scarce resources Ss s
Desire for es , rate
a Wealth War —_____-»
Economic ¢—~
activity 5
Deaths
s
oO
Population.
delay Ss
r Ss
Education
of women Births
s
Birth rate
Health
care
12
But storms are not the only consequence of a rise in the actual Earth
temperature. The ice cap melts, and even more importantly, the sea level
rises as a result of the thermal expansion of water. This causes flooding, as
do the storms:
‘Natural’ Earth
temperature fo)
Temperature
gap
an
Actual Earth Activity of the
s temperature living pump
Be gee
ee - :
re)
Level of carbon dioxide in
a atmosphere
Flooding 5
le cS
Resource
ee
Resource s
capacity
\e Disease
_—_——_——_>> .
; Competition for 5” Famine
scarce resources Sy
s Ss
Desire'for, sy S _ Death rat
eath rate
Economic ¢-—~ a Wealth War ____—
activity 5
oO
Population.
delay s
s
Education
of women Births
g S
Birth rate
Health
care
13
Flooding and storms cause an increase in resource consumption, as man
seeks to prevent, and then fix, the damage. Furthermore, flooding will
drastically reduce resource capacity, especially of resources such as
agricultural land, cities and clean water:
‘Natural’ Earth
temperature fo)
Temperature
gap =
aan
Actual Earth Activity of the
s temperature living pump
i ed
: :
rr)
Level of carbon dioxide in
Ss atmosphere
Flooding lig
¢ Tn a
Resource
con
scarce resources
= s
Desire for sy 5 Peathe rik
eath rate
Economic @—~ a Wealth War ____—-
activity
Resource s
capacity
\e Disease
_—_—_—————+> .
F Competition for 5" Famine
Population.
delay s
Education
of women Births
(e)
Health at
care
Ss
Birth rate
14
The overall impact of this is to increase war, famine, disease and death,
and the Four Horseman become whipped into a frenzy of destructive
activity.
And the example of carbon dioxide is only one instance of man’s activity
interfering substantially with the Gaia’s delicately balanced ecosystems -
let’s not forget methane, ozone and all the others that have a simiolar
systemic effect.
And talking of systems, what’s happening from a systems perspective?
Simple. A no-longer-strongly constrained reinforcing loop, that of
population growth, is beginning to disturb the Gaia-driven balancing loop of
global temperature control. And, as systems theory predicts, the balancing
loop will seek to exert control, and will kick back at the disturbance. And if
that disturbance happens to be man, so much the worse for man. Gaia,
after all, has been sustaining life on Earth for around 3.6 billion years,
whereas man has been around for only the last 350,000 years or so.
Gaia doesn’t need man, but man surely needs Gaia.
And if man’s reinforcing loop is pushing against Gaia’s balancing loop, who
is going to win?
My vote goes for Gaia.
And in that case, there is one, and only one, policy: we have to slow the
reinforcing loop ourselves, voluntarily. Before Gaia slows it down for us.
How?
My suggestions are shown on the next page: what ideas do you have?
And how can the systems community take the message out so that
everyone understands, and commits their politicians to act?
15
‘Natural’ Earth
temperature fo)
Temperature.........
oan s “0,5
A
Actual Earth Activity of the
s temperature living pump
ey ee
MS eer ra een
ro
Level of carbon dioxide in
wv atmosphere
“es 3
¢ oo a
Resource
consumption
ae Resource
resources capacity
af \e Disease
Q —_
Famine
S
Competition for
scarce resources 5 s
P peas i us s _ Death rate
Economic <— wealt War
activity
S
Deaths
5. Sue?
Even more Population.
education
delay Ss
5 ‘ Ss
Education
5
of women Births
Ss
Birth rate
16
References
An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United
States National Security, by Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, 2004
See http://www.tompaine.com/feature 2.cfm/ID/9882 and
http://www. fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,58258
4-2,00.html.
Gaia: The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine, by James Lovelock,
published by Gaia Books Limited, London 1991.
Seeing the Forest for the Trees - A manager’s guide to applying systems
thinking, by Dennis Sherwood, published by Nicholas Brealey
Publishing, London 2002.
17
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