Planet Earth

Our Desiccating Planet

Traditional Academics treat the Atmosphere as a closed system.  The writer sees this as a gross assumption, which has fatal flaws when it comes to sustainability and stability of the Atmospheric Bubble.  During the Carboniferous Period, atmospheric carbon was mined from the atmosphere and fixed into plant bodies, and from there into plant based fossil fuels.  Evidently, the atmosphere has at some point been devastatingly reduced in volume and depth, resulting in a corresponding reduction in gas pressure at the crust and  a mass extinction of large-bodied creatures who would asphyxiate in today's Atmosphere.   Since the Industrial Revolution began burning the fossil fuels, this fixed carbon has begun a release back into this  now much shallower atmosphere which now has a greatly reduced capacity to re-absorb this carbon simply due to it's gross reduction of mass and volume.  Carbon concentrations must therefore at some point meet and then exceed that during the Carboniferous.  We suppose this will bring about another mass extinction due to another massive loss of atmospheric gasses due to the erosion of the Ozone Layer, which presently provides an upper limit on the altitude to which certain atmospheric gases may rise.

Carbon is a highly reactive element, commonly used as a scrubber to remove chemical nasties in all sorts of industrial processes.  Oxygen - especially Ozone (O3), is also highly reactive, which we see as "burning".  Ozone is so unstable, it doesn't really exist in quantity except under very specific circumstances such as those found at height in our atmosphere in the well known, but rather mysterious Ozone Layer.  Ozone is of course even more reactive than Oxygen.  Put fossil carbon and Ozone together, and "POOF", no more Ozone Layer.  Gone also is the reversal of Lapse Rate which keeps our Atmosphere from floating out into Space.

There are too numerous to mention examples of monstrous GIGANTISM of familiar species in the fossil record, such as the Meganeuropsis Dragonfly.  Every one of these creatures would suffocate in our present atmosphere due to the inadequate gas pressure in it’s lungs to support it’s mass of body tissue.  What really stuck in my mind was the gigantic bugs, who have no lungs, and are utterly dependent on gas pressures to supply oxygen to their body tissues through membranes on their sides.  We’ve got Fossil Dragonflies like Meganeuropsis well over a foot long, thicker than your thumb, and thirty something inches in wingspan in museums.  Centipedes three feet long, and as thick as your arm.  These point to a monstrously higher gas pressure which points to a monstrously deeper Atmosphere, which strangely enough is entirely feasible when you look at the Lapse Rate Diagrams.  These show the locations of TWO layers of atmospheric water: one above the ozone layer, and one below.  These are called the Mesosphere and the Troposphere.  (Some Diagrams show even a third hook in the Lapse Rate curve, indicating a third layer of atmospheric water.}

Quite apart from the asphyxiation of the Giants, is the structural stability of gigantic Fossil Ferns.  At fifty feet in height, Ferns simply do not have the structural strength to withstand the Wind Speeds ofour present Atmosphere would present them.  However if one considers an Atmosphere of much greater depth, one realizes that the vertical temperature gradients are reduced with atmospheric depth.  With a great reduction in temperature gradient due to greater depth, there is a proportionally great reduction in convective forces (which precipitate atmospheric movement) and with these a much lower maximum wind speeds created by convective forces.  Fossil Ferns would not need to be toppled by wind if the atmospheric depth were great enough to create a relatively uniform temperatures in the vicinity of these fossil ferns.

Clearly something happened to dramatically reduce the depth and volume of our Atmospheric bubble and asphyxiate these Giants.   In a System, shifts from one point of stability to another point of stability are commonly dramatic as the trip towards minimum system energy is felt out.  It seems pretty clear that the extinction of these Giants had something to do with the loss of a major fraction of our Atmospheric gas.  Perhaps the it was blown off into space by the same event that  created the Iridium layer (a global layer of iridium dust, above which no dinosaurs are found), be it the Chicxulub meteorite, or something like it.  A monster meteorite of that scale could very conceivably create mechanical and thermodynamic upheavals that would destabilize the upper atmospheric layer.  The destabilized upper gases, having become weightless in it’s purtebated location, would simply strip off into Space.  The gas pressures at the earth’s crust would drop proportionately.  With the weight of the Upper Atmosphere and the resultant incremental gas pressure at the crust (which kept the Giants oxygenated) stripped out, the giants would simply loose breath & suffocate.  The dramatic shift  to the present shallow, chaotic weather systems means that warm-blooded creatures then had the upper hand.  Quite apart from their ability to heat themselves, Mammals have a gene which tells their bodies to STOP GROWING.  Reptiles do not.

Now for another element in the process:  What happens when you drop the pressure above a mixture of solids and compressible fluids?  This is what would be happening at the Earth’s crust when the atmospheric pressure is dropping rapidly, by maybe 40%.  Popping the cap off a pop bottle provides an illustration.  There would be a kind of effervescence happening with the loss of pressure, of course.   The now relatively large pressures below the surface in the primordial gas & water entrained there would drive these fluids to the surface, creating fountains and geysers of water and gas as the global system tries to stabilize after the dramatic loss of atmospheric pressure.  Any marginal volcanic and tectonic activity would be triggered.  These would be erupting generally all about the Globe creating geomorphic and hydrodynamic Chaos at a global scale.

It appears to be painfully obvious that re-release of plant fossil carbon into the now shallower, and far less massive atmosphere will scavenge out of existence the Ozone Layer  and with it the reflective and absorptive properties of our atmosphere which protects us from being incinerated by the Sun's power.  The outer layers of our atmosphere are probably even now routinely being boiled off into Space any time a packet of gas finds itself weightless and moving beyond the reach of the earth's gravitational field.

At depth, warming of the Atmosphere creates expansion of the atmosphere according to it's Coefficient of Expansion, precipitating a further erosion of the Atmosphere into Space at great height.  In the absence of some mitigating factor, these processes likely feed on themselves and precipitate an increasing  RATE of warming, expansion, and atmospheric erosion.  We are inclined to believe our Atmosphere is naturally desiccating at some unknown rate, and has been for a very long time.  There have probably been very long periods of stability, interspersed with periods of instability and adjustment.  Without some restorative factor to heal the atmosphere, this process is irreversible, and will grow exponentially.  Does such a restorative process exist to thwart the rather ominous erosion of our Atmosphere, and the  subsequent cycling between incineration and freezing on an atmosphere-free earth? 

There seems to be such a thwarting factor in Hydrothermal Vents which release water and gas from beneath the earth's crust.  The elements fueling this replenishment have been trapped beneath the earth's Crust since before the crust was formed.  The Crust is in a sense like a pneumatic tire which is gradually going flat.  What gaseous resources remain below the Crust to replenish the eroding atmospheric gasses?  If atmospheric pressures a the surface are reduced, the release rate of these restorative gasses can to some degree make a compensating increase in release rate, but what can be said about this quantitatively?  How can we say the rate of planetary desiccation  is so flat, we can ignore it?

The gasses trapped beneath the Crust must be finite and be - like the aquifers of the world being mined.  (Mining of an aquifer is the removal of water at a rate greater than the annual replenishment rate.  This results in an dropping of the water table year over year.)  Is the supply of subcutaneous gases still adequate to make Atmospheric loss inconsequential?  There is an ebb and flow to these rates in Geologic Time.  Where are we now in the grand scale of things as our Planet desiccates?  The grand changes in Weather we are experiencing is not comforting.   The loss of atmosphere increases the rate of warming, and increases in temperature increase Chaotic Motion in our Weather Systems.  The growth of Chaotic Weather with Temperature is exponential.    We think Meganeuropsis and the loss of the other Prehistoric Giants indicate that Atmospheric Erosion is highly significant in at least Geological time, and that recent changes in the stability of our Atmosphere suggest that another mass extinction may be on the horizon..