CHAPTER 17
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (Don't make a Big Deal out of it)
- William of Occam (died 1347)
And so, at the end of a long and perhaps tortuous journey, we look back down on the landscape travelled through, and try and view it as a whole. This may be difficult; the ground we have covered has been very diverse.
A possible criticism of this book is that it is too discursive, too rambling, covering too many unconnected topics. I would have to accept, with Propositions ranging everywhere from control of weeds to changes in the constants of the Universe, that the matters dealt with have been exceptionally varied. But that is the nature of the beast.
This book is a work of synthesis. At the head of Chapter 7, I quoted Sharr's call for us to move from an Age of Analysis to an Age of Synthesis. I have heeded this call, and this book is the result.
The essence of synthesis is that it draws from a number of disparate areas. In doing this, I have not hesitated to use written and other sources of every nature, whether learned periodicals, popular encyclopedias, newspaper articles, phone calls to local companies, television programmes, or science fiction magazines. Everything is grist to the mill, and that includes one thing especially - personal observation of what is going on in the world.
It may be appropriate for a work of analysis to be erected purely on carefully verified results published in refereed professional journals, but synthesis requires a wider range. Most important of all, it must not just put facts and opinions from different areas together, it must question the underlying, unquestioned, and even unrealized assumptions propping up those analytical edifices.
In this final chapter I will summarize what has gone before, in three parts. The first will deal with the physical nature of the Earth, and the second with its biological nature. These are the two great branches of the 'hard sciences', and cover the bulk of the material in this book.
The third part covers the interaction of Man and other intelligences with the first two parts, falling into the branch of 'soft' or social sciences. Some of the Propositions I have put forward may cause a degree of upheaval in the hard sciences, and it is a purpose of this book to do so. Not for the sake of upheaval in itself, but because we should always examine new propositions in the hard sciences, with a critical but unbiased approach, and let them stand or fall on their merits.
If the technique of synthesis works in the hard sciences, one may ask whether it will work also in the soft ones. I believe it could. While there are many fallacies and false assumptions rife in the hard sciences, there are probably far more in the soft ones. In the third part I will put a toe into the shark-packed sea of economics, politics, law, and psychology, but no more than a toe - any more would need a book of its own.
In what follows, to save repeating cautions at every stage, it will be assumed that the Propositions referred to at any given point are 'true'. All are, in fact, only working hypotheses to be picked apart, and it would be astonishing if all were accepted. But this is a case where the reader can decide.
Many scientific theories need a specialist knowledge of the field in order for them to be judged; the ones presented here do not. This book does not contain a single equation or complex formula; any intelligent reader can decide for themselves whether the Propositions I have put forward make sense or not. The synthesis has been built on a broad foundation of the sort of information available in any public library, and is not hard to check. Here goes.
We have seen that the Earth has been in a state of continual flux ever since it first existed. Formed from a mass of material at the same time as the rest of the planets of the Solar System, that material separated into three parts - solid, liquid, and gas.
The solid Earth has remained uniform and unchanged in composition except at its surface, but has been subject to regular expansion, which has caused at least a doubling in its radius. This expansion has been a basic factor in the changes which have occurred on the Earth's surface and above and below this surface.
The atmosphere has been subjected to complete reworking during the Earth's history. Most of its original hydrogen was lost into space, only that combined with other elements being retained. The early atmosphere included no free oxygen, but did include large amounts of the carbon-containing gases methane and carbon dioxide. Almost all of these have since been withdrawn from the atmosphere to make organic-based fossil fuel rocks or carbonate rocks, mostly in two great sequences of deposition.
The early atmosphere was much denser than the modern one, resulting in much more humid and more uniform conditions over the whole Earth. The surface may have been shielded from space by a thick permanent cloud cover until around the beginning of the Cenozoic.
Oceans have existed since the early history of the Earth, but their nature and extent has altered considerably. Most of their water has been derived from the rocks under the surface, and has been continually released by domainographic processes. This water has more than replaced the water lost to space.
Originally, in the early days of limited expansion and a smaller Earth, the waters covered most of the Earth and substantial land did not emerge until the Paleozoic. Sea areas were relatively shallow and modern deep ocean beds did not begin to be formed until the Mesozoic. The early seas contained fresher water than modern ones. While water has been released from the rocks exposed as expansion has proceeded, this release has not quite been enough to keep pace with filling the new low areas formed, and hence both the total area and the proportional area of land to sea on the planet have increased with time.
Domainographic processes have continually raised and lowered individual areas of the surface, and current sea-land boundaries have no relationship with those in the past. All the modern deep ocean beds are new surface, while most current land and continental-shelf areas consist of much older surface.
The Earth's current land surfaces are all remnant 'mesas' of older surface. As the Earth has expanded, creating first the continental shelves and then the modern deep ocean beds, these mesas have become separated in the expansion.
The whole of the upper 700km or so of the Earth's surface, the Domainosphere, consists of a complex aggregate of lumps of rock of every size, from close to subcontinental size downwards. These 'domains' exist with varying thicknesses and at varying levels from the surface down, similar to a drystone wall.
Continuing expansion has resulted in continual movement and fracture of these domains. The heat generated by these movements is the principal source of the Earth's heat. This heat is responsible for the local formation of igneous rocks, for volcanoes, and for all 'geothermal' processes.
Domains are also subject to movement away from the equator in an effort to conserve momentum on an expanding Earth. This domain flight is most marked with smaller domains, but it is modified by blocking with other domains and by the gravitational attraction of nearby large domain aggregates.
Domain movements and adjustments, recognized as earthquakes, are responsible for the formation of mountains of two main types. 'Fat' mountains are formed by impact between domains. 'Long' mountains are formed by rubbing domains, which slide against each other's edges.
The energy released by domain movements is distributed throughout the Earth by earthquake waves, and eventually ends up as heat. Temperatures inside the Earth do not increase continuously as the core is approached, but only up to the 'maximum activity band' in the Domainosphere, the level where domainographic processes are most active. The Earth is also subject to gravitational massage by the Moon and other parts of the Universe, which also releases energy which ends up as heat.
The original composition of the rocks at the Earth's surface was the same as that throughout the Earth. Forces of erosion and chemical and biological change have redistributed and sorted this surface material to create differentiated rocks and mineral ores, some of which include material withdrawn from the atmosphere.
These differentiating forces have 'leached' certain of the heavier metals from the original upper-level rocks, and some of these rocks have been reworked by domainographic processes to give Sial-type igneous rocks. Domain movements have also been responsible for the creation of precious-metal and gemstone ores through natural 'zone-refining' processes.
As with the physical Earth, the complex of living creatures and their interactions with the Earth which we call the Biosphere has been in a state of continual flux ever since life first evolved. Life itself has been responsible for major changes in the physical conditions on our planet. It has been responsible for the development of the free-oxygen atmosphere upon which all higher life depends. It has withdrawn much of the carbon from the atmosphere, and deposited quite a lot of it in the rocks as fossil fuels and shell beds.
The pace of change as regards individual species has been enormously faster than generally recognized, with a continual turnover and change such that species half-lives are only of the order of one million years. The 'isocon envelopes' or ecological-condition niche boundaries within which individual species live are being continually shifted as a result of domainographic processes. These shifts have promoted the rapid changes in species.
On the other hand, the rates of natural spread of species have been far slower than usually assumed, averaging not more than one metre per year. In most cases, natural extension of the isocons has been limited by physical boundaries such as the change from land to sea.
Isocon boundaries frequently coincide with domain edges, as the physical changes associated with the edges are often the strongest factors in setting the limits to the associated ecological-conditions niche. Movement of domains has therefore often caused movement of isocon envelopes, and hence an apparent 'spread' of a species. Usually the apparent spread caused by domain movement has far exceeded the 'natural' spread caused by seed dispersion processes.
This feature has been particularly the case in more recent geological history, during the Cenozoic, when the increasing proportion of sea on the surface of the Earth has meant that land domains have become increasingly isolated. It has also become more important as the Earth has expanded and increased its surface, allowing more scope for greater domain flight as blocking factors decrease.
Fragmentation of the land in this way, plus a decrease in the uniformity of climatic conditions because of atmospheric changes, has led to a great increase in the number and range of available isocon envelopes. This is turn has resulted in a large increase in the number of extant species at any given time during the Cenozoic, especially on land.
While the positions of isocon envelopes are strongly dependent on physical conditions, they are also dependent on biological ones, on other forms of life. This is demonstrated most clearly in the animal kingdom. Animals are dependent on plant-controlled aspects of their environment to a much greater extent than plants are dependent on animals.
The two major control aspects are food and habitat. The majority of animals eat plants as their major food source. Those that do not, the carnivores, are only one or possibly two steps away - their prey is usually a herbivore. Obviously a herbivore isocon must be contained within the isocons of plant species providing suitable food for the herbivore species.
Like plants, animal species have become adapted to the physical conditions of their isocons, but often these physical conditions are themselves strongly modified by plants. Many jungle animals could not survive in the open plains without trees, while a plains-adapted animal such as the bison could not survive in the jungle.
There is also a reverse dependence, but a less obvious one. It is not usually one of nutrition - although some plant species are dependent on animal droppings for this - but more often one of reproduction and of species continuance.
In particular, many plant species are dependent on insects or other animal vectors for pollination, and of course without pollination, there are no more seeds and the species may die out. Some flowers are utterly dependent for pollination on a single animal species, for example a moth with an especially long tongue, or a bird with a very long, thin beak. The incredible variety and complexity of plant-animal interactions in pollination is well covered in Bristow [1978].
The development of pollination mechanisms is a fascinating and complex study which can yield inferences about the general history of the Earth. The flower-insect mechanism with which we are most familiar is of middle age, and developed largely during the earlier part of the Cenozoic.
Earlier plants, especially the more lowly ones, were usually dependent on pollen transportation by localised, non-animal means, such as in drops of water falling from leaves and splashing. Later plants developed the use of wind for pollination, and this mechanism is mostly restricted to the more recently-evolved species. It does suggest that winds of the type we now regard as normal were not common in the earlier days of the Earth.
Generally speaking, domains with a preponderance of insect-pollinated flowering plants among their flora became separated during the Cenozoic. This is true of Australia, which has the largest flowering plants of the world in its eucalypts, and which possesses an exceptionally rich flora of this type.
On the other hand, the great grasslands of the world, and their cereal derivatives such as wheat and rice, are more typical of the great Laurasian continents of the Northern Hemisphere. The same is true of the great pine forests of the world. Both these 'mega-isocon envelopes' are representative of wind-pollinated species.
Animals are also very important in the dispersal of the seeds of plants, especially plants which we regard as fruit or nut producers. In fact, the most common reason why plants have evolved to yield attractive edible fruits or nuts is so that they can take advantage of seed dispersal by animals.
As with pollination, each fruit species distributed by animals has a target group which it relies on for this purpose, and the nature of the target group determines the nature of the fruit. Small fruits, especially berries, 'expect' to be distributed by birds. They have evolved to be small enough for birds to handle, and usually have tiny seeds which 'expect' to pass through the bird unharmed and be deposited in the fertilizer-pack bird droppings.
Larger fruits and nuts depend on larger animals. Sapucaia nuts, from South America, are produced in huge ready-made pots with lids ; they are distributed by monkeys, who grab handfuls of nuts from the pots, and invariably lose some as they move back to base. Oak forests are partly regenerated from the acorn caches of squirrels, buried or hidden near the ground and then forgotten.
Fruits with large seeds depend on large animals for their distribution, especially if the seed is likely to be passed whole through the animal's digestive tract. Elephants are noted fruit lovers, devouring the sweet marula fruits of southern Africa, and voiding the large edible nuts. Gorillas are also noted fruit eaters. In Australia, the attractive red quandong fruits have round stones which pass easily through the emu - that is one recommended germination method! And the huge Davidson plum of the Queensland rainforests (Davidsonia pruriens) is believed distributed by cassowaries.
There are some deductions to be made here. Most of the large fruit-loving animals are of Gondwanan origin. This is probably because most of the tropics are also Gondwanan, and it is these areas which provide the dense tree cover which is optimum to support communities of large animals. Hence large fruits evolved mostly in Gondwanaland, where they could find distributing animals. This appears to be the reason why the Asimina is the largest native fruit in North America (Chapter 7); it is a Gondwanan migrant.
Of course, as well as plants being dependent on animals, and animals on plants, species in each of these groups are also dependent on other species within the group. The more complicated the ecology, the greater the number of species interacting - we are only at the earliest stages of beginning to understand all the interconnecting factors, all the overlapping isocons.
Another deduction concerns the establishment or introduction of a 'new' crop - one which is not native to the area of cultivation. All too often, the crop is considered in isolation, without regard to the complex of other-species isocons which it needs for good growth and ability to survive in the presence of pests. Elsewhere [Noel, 1988] I have dealt with this area in more detail. In the present context, it will be apparent that the need to move other, 'symbiotic' isocons at the same time is a basic reason for the slow natural spread of plants (Proposition 2A).
So far we have looked at the effect on the isocons of physical factors, such as domain movement, and of biological factors, such food cycles and pollination and seed dispersal mechanisms. Now we move on to the last and most complicated group of factors - those based on intelligence.
We have seen that the physical changes in the Earth represented by domainographic processes have had a very strong influence on the isocons, the ecological-niche boundaries of living creatures. We have also seen that these isocons are also very much interrelated, with one species dependent upon many others. So the biological influence is also large.
We have also seen that these physical and biological influences have been hugely overshadowed, negated, or made irrelevant by the third great factor - the actions of man. These actions have changed the face of the Earth beyond recognition, in many cases wreaking great devastation. In the final analysis, the physical and biological factors have stood by helpless, or been swept aside, in the face of the intelligence factor.
Using his power of thought, Man has become master of the planet. But it cannot be said that this mastery has been a very benevolent one, as each day passes the planet moves closer to self-destruction; with increasing power has come the ability to inflict greater and greater harm. But there is increasing hope, hope that the species Homo sapiens is maturing. This is not a physical or a biological maturing, but one of the mind. And so we stand today in the Age of Decision, within which the race will stand or fall, and with it the Earth.
Evidence already given in this book has shown how Man has caused huge changes in the environment ever since he evolved as an intelligent being. We are accustomed to the idea that modern technological civilization has caused such changes, but the idea that these changes began perhaps 100,000 years ago may be something of a jolt.
Of course these early changes were not intended - most of the harmful changes in the environment made by Man have been quite unintentional - but they have been nonetheless profound. It seems that our huge deserts and vast savannahs and grasslands were actually caused by Man's actions. It is lucky that that the great mutability of species has allowed plants and animals to rapidly evolve and partially adapt to and compensate for these changes.
Degradation or elimination of habitat is the most obvious sign of environmental decline - the forests are changed into fields, the forest-based isocons vanish, and with them their associated species. Other changes are less obvious, but no less destructive in the long term. Quandongs still grow throughout Western Australia, but their distribution agent, the emu, is banished to the back blocks. Will the quandong survive? Will the Davidson Plum survive in Queensland, even in its preserved rainforest environment, once tourist pressures restrict the movement of cassowaries, or cause their numbers to tail off altogether?
Ironically enough, this degradation of the land had as its basic cause the urge to make the land fruitful, through the development of agriculture. Of the three great branches of agriculture, two of them, stock raising and field crops, are very often destructive of the environment. They need not be, but they both require careful monitoring and holding back if the damage is to be avoided. And even when farmers are aware of this, economic competition and the realities of the marketplace - and, ultimately, land degradation itself - often force their hand or force them, or their children, off the land.
Only the third great branch of agriculture, that of tree cropping, is essentially beneficial to the environment. As I have described elsewhere [Noö«l, 1985b], this can be explained logically and reasonably in terms of the efficiencies of the different approaches in the use of light, land, water, and people. There are also some philosophical grounds.
Trees - and this word is used here to mean the whole class of perennial woody plants - are by their nature equalizers. They have evolved to live through all the seasons and through all the cycles of years, through years of high rainfall and drought, through hot years and cold. When the grass is gone, the cattleman may need to move his stock to other pastures, but the trees withstand. When the rains do not come, the wheat farmer will not plant, but the trees grow on. They smooth the benefits of land use out through the years, trimming off the peaks and using them to fill the troughs. They are essential for sustainable, long-term agriculture.
Such agriculture should not be based on trees alone, but on a thoughtfully integrated combination of tree crops, field crops, and stock raising, a sort of planned synthetic ecology. People whose traditions stem from Europe are accustomed to the idea that their food comes from the wheatfields and the cattle pastures, and need to look back before the two centuries of industrial development to realize how important tree crops were to their ancestors. In these two centuries, a huge hole developed in their tradition of land use, a hole which was largely filled by importation of goods from other 'less-developed' countries.
In some of these 'less-developed' countries, the traditional tree-based economies have disappeared under the influence of western ideas, in others they have hung on and may well prove to be the superior system in the end. When examined closely, an 'unsophisticated' swidden or slash-and-burn system such as that used in New Guinea is revealed to have astonishing complexity, subtlety, efficiency, and durability - no wonder it has been used with success for more than a thousand years.
Such systems are good 'natural' examples of integrated tree-field-animal ecologies in which man participates as a vital fourth factor. We are only just beginning to appreciate the interlocking of the isocons and microecologies involved. In another place [Noel, 1988], I have tried to show how biennial bearing in fruit trees can be explained by study of just such a system, involving the wild pigs, nut trees, and people of Borneo. It is vital that we attain not just a knowledge, but also an understanding, of the workings of such systems if life on our planet is to continue.
The Greenhouse effect is currently a matter of worldwide public concern. The fact that people everywhere are now vitally concerned with matters such as this is a very desirable thing. But I will attempt to show that our knowledge of this matter is limited, our understanding is very small, our proposals are timid and restrained, and our concern is misplaced. The current near-panic has all the hallmarks of a 'manufactured' crisis.
Proposition 17A
Concern over the 'Greenhouse Effect' is misplaced, and represents a 'manufactured' crisis
What are the facts behind the Greenhouse Effect? The main feature is that the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere has increased over the last two hundred years or so, almost certainly as a result of industrial and agricultural activities, and appears to be increasing still. In fact, it appears to be as high now as it has ever been in the last 100,000 years or so. More recently the concentrations of the natural gases methane and nitrous oxide, and of manufactured gases called chlorofluorocarbons, have also increased. That is pretty well the extent of the facts.
The carbon dioxide data is mostly derived from studies of the composition of air bubbles trapped in glaciers of different ages, and I would not argue with these results. It is the conclusions and deductions made from the data which should be questioned.
Some dire predictions have certainly been made about the effects of the Effect. Foremost among these is that the increasing level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will trap more of the Earth's heat (whether generated here or received from the Sun), causing world-wide increases in temperature. This will lead to partial melting of the polar icecaps, and hence increases in sealevels and flooding of coastal areas. Widespread changes in weather patterns have also been predicted, sometimes with increased frequency of storms.
Proposed actions to counteract these predicted bad effects have ranged from the sensible down to the trivial and ludicrous. Sensible ones have included the widespread planting of more trees, to tie up more of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - we have seen that that is a good idea anyway, from both environmental and economic viewpoints.
Trivial recommendations I have seen in print include such gems as "switch off lights when not in use". Perhaps the most ludicrous one, stemming from the W.A. Greenhouse '88 Conference supported by our State Government, was to "Identity and proscribe Greenhouse activities in light of existing laws". Such an action, if carried through literally, would mean the immediate end of all life on Earth.
The carbon dioxide position is at once far worse and far better than is generally appreciated. The main sources identified for the Earth's increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide content are the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of forests.
Both these sources are very significant. As we have seen from Chapter 13, the use of fossil fuels is putting back into the atmosphere carbon which has been 'frozen' for millions of years, many deposits dating back to Paleozoic times. The amount of carbon 'frozen' in standing forests is also very large, but while it can be treated as being transferred continously from one plant to the next in a 'steady-state' forest, it does not matter. It is only when standing forests are cleared that it becomes a factor.
Let us put some figures to this picture. A dense, tall forested area will contain around 500 tonnes of plant material per hectare above ground. Obviously this figure will vary according to the nature of the forest, and scrubby open forests will contain less, but this gives us some sort of handle to work from. A field crop will typically hold only a few tonnes of plant material above ground when fully grown, and nothing at all outside the growing season. A pasture cover will typically have less than a tonne per hectare.
Both the field and the pasture plants will have much more water and less carbon in them than the woody plants of the forests, so as a rough figure we can assume that replacing forests by field crops or pasture reduces the carbon held to under 1% of the original figure. At the accuracy we are working at, we can assume it has all gone.
Proposition 17B
Changing land use from forest to field crop or pasture reduces the amount of 'frozen' carbon to negligible levels
In Table 17, mostly taken from Beckmann [1988], there is a
figure for the carbon contained in the total estimated deposits of fossil fuel
on the Earth. If this figure is divided by the total land area of the Earth, it
gives a result which, coincidentally, is about the same as the forest - 500 tonnes
per hectare. This figure takes no account of such factors as the extensive
fossil fuel reserves under the sea, the many geological areas where fossil fuel
deposits are lacking, or the fact that forest plant material is not all carbon,
but it is another handle to use on the problem.
Table 17. Carbon on the Earth |
|
Position |
Mass* |
|
Atmosphere |
|
|
Pre-industrial (1860) |
1.0 |
|
Modern (1987) |
1.3 |
|
Biosphere |
|
|
Above ground |
0.9 |
|
Soil organic matter |
2.8 |
|
In seas |
|
|
Dissolved in seas |
65 |
|
Dead in seas |
1.8 |
|
In sedimentary rocks |
|
|
Carbonate rocks |
67 000 |
|
Fossil organic matter |
27 000 |
|
Potential 'fossil fuel' |
14 |
*In units of 575 billion tonnes carbon equivalent |
|
Proposition 17C
Fossil fuel deposits in the ground have the same magnitude of 'frozen' carbon per hectare as a dense forest, on an Earth-wide average
There are lessons to be learned from this comparison. First, it is much quicker, easier, and cheaper to clear forest than to extract fossil fuels from beneath the Earth, and so this forest clearance has had a much more immediate effect on the environment than burning fossil fuels. Most of our forests are already gone, but we are a still a long way from using up all our fossil fuels, in spite of widespread gloomy predictions to the contrary.
In the 1970's we had the Oil Crisis, and I was surprised at the antagonistic response from some quarters at that time when I went on public record with a contrary-to-usual view. I pointed out that similar gloomy predictions, of the Earth running out of fossil fuels or other mineral resources within 20, 10, or five years had been made many times before in the past, dating back to the mid 1800's. All such predictions had proved false.
In hindsight, we can see that the Oil Crisis was also a 'manufactured' crisis, and current worries relate to oil gluts instead of shortages. The paradoxic reality appears to be that mineral resources are not, in practice, finite; what happens when one 'standard' resource runs thin is that another is found to substitute for it, often one quite unappreciated at the time. For example, if there is X amount of fossil fuel deposits on Earth, there is some 2000X of other fossilized organic matter which is still untapped (Table 17).
The relevance of all this is that it is the forests, not the fossil fuels, which are both the danger and the potential salvation. Most of our forests are already gone. The position is seen to be even worse when it is remembered that Man has been clearing the world's forests, intentionally and accidentally, not for one or two centuries but for tens of thousands of years. Primitive man changed whole landscapes, whole climates. Even so, we can still restore the health of the Earth, with the use of ecologies and economies in which tree crops are no longer the forgotten Third Component of agricultural land use.