Climate Change Factoid – Buffers in Natural Systems (#3 of a series)
Author: Rich Albertson
Author: Rich Albertson
Buffers are found in all ecosystems. Why should you care enough about that to invest time reading this? I think the exercise will explain a lot about how and why climate change will affect your life as it continues to increase in its intensity. It is not particularly complicated.
The dictionary defines the word buffer as: A person or thing that lessens shock or protects from damaging impact, circumstances, etc The buffering capacity of an ecosystem (and all ecosystems have this, including our atmosphere), is much like the bumper on a car. On a car, the bumper is there to absorb the minor impacts experienced in everyday driving but, no one believes it will provide much protection in a full on accident. The size or capacity of any physical feature of a natural system, buffers included, is determined by two rules of the natural world: the Use it or lose it rule and the other, the What you need is what you get rule. A buffer that is either seldom or, infrequently tested, will see its buffering capacity shrink over time while on the other hand, a system constantly attacked by forces equal or greater than the size of existing buffers, will see its buffering capacity increase. The Vostok Ice Core studies established that our atmosphere has been remarkably stable for several million years. That being the case we should expect the use it or lose it rule to have reduced the atmosphere's buffering capacity to a minimum.
To be considered destabilized, an ecosystem must have experienced a sufficient amount of unintended change or, disruption in its operation, that it can no longer return to its original stable form. If the change or disruption had been within the capacity of the ecosystem's buffers, it would be able to reestablish its equilibrium just by doing what it had always done and you probably wouldn't even notice that there had been a problem. However, once an ecosystem becomes destabilized, its elements begin to thrash about as they seek out new relationships that could lead to establishing a brand new ecosystem. That struggle would be readily apparent to an observer since it would be characterized by a severe increase in the extremes of behavior of its various members. Bottom line: Once you exceed an ecosystems buffering capacity and destabilize its operation, it is no longer possible to return it to its original form by simply removing or reducing the source of the instability.
Applying all of that to climate change; has the 40% increase in atmospheric CO2, exceeded the buffering capacity of our atmospheric ecosystem? If the answer is no, then we should still be able to reestablish equilibrium by eliminating our greenhouse gas emissions. That would allow the atmosphere to continue doing what it has always done (as mentioned above) and the currently high levels of CO2 would naturally decline and things would return to normal. If the buffers have been exceeded, destabilizing the atmosphere then reducing our carbon footprint will not solve the problem even though it might be an important component of a strategy for long term survival on earth.
Given the evidence, all solid, believable stuff, there shouldn't be the slightest lingering doubt that the atmospheric ecosystem has exceeded its buffering capacity and is now fully destabilized. One of many the signs should explain. For the past 17 years earth's temperature has been steadily increasing. Over the same time frame the total quantity of ice (polar caps, glaciers, etc) has been in decline as melting exceeds new snowfall most years. Add to those to events the fact that CO2 levels will remain at their current, unstable level for thousands of years and you have the no going back scenario described above. More heat less ice no relief in sight before the ice is all gone. You don't needto figure out the rest of it, do you? (Peer reviewed research, supporting the claims made in this Factoid, can be found at the website)About the Author:
Rich Albertson is a retired lawyer, author, builder, building designer, carpenter and long time amateur naturalist. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Albertson's most recent book (2009), The Sky is the Limit A Brief and Easy Explanation of Climate Change for Present and Future Voters (134pp), is an explanation of the science, economics, politics and a discussion of the future of climate change written for people of average experience. Climate Change Factoids are drawn from the book. His first book (1978), The Bio-Conversion of Waste to Resource (4 Vols, 2624pp), was a treatise on methods for the sustainable management of solid and liquid waste in urban society. More about the Sky is the Limit book can be found at
http://www.thecircleworks.org As a Naturalist, Albertson's primary interest is to understand and then explain the conflicts that result from modern human practices that interfere with the operation of the natural world on a planetary scale.
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