The Total Eclipse of the Earth

I know you don’t like me telling you that everything you learned about how to live is totally wrong. I get it. Also, you know I don’t care. So there, we’re even. But I’m going to keep doing it anyway. You have let “the experts” convince you that we can all have hope, that everything will turn out OK, that we haven’t yet used up our “carbon budget,” that “Normal” can go on for just about ever, that we can keep having Olympics, that we can carry on with Space travel and thousands of low-Earth-orbit communications satellites, that we can convert all vehicles to electric, that we can upgrade all our houses to LEED gold-standard, that human “Progress” can continue unabated; and some morons still think that we can yet build a “perfect” city! But this is all balderdash. They want to keep you in “consumer” mode, keep your head down, don’t look to see what is really happening, right up to the final collapse of all planetary systems.

Look at this quote:

“A rapid temperature rise of >10 °C, acidification, and marine O₂ decline drove a massive loss in biodiversity and a major shift in marine ecosystem structure.”

Doesn’t that sound like the present? First, you will say that no, we don’t have 10 °C. temperature rise, only about 2 degrees. Wrong - we are at the CO₂ level that would give 10 °C. temperature rise, except that we are mitigating that with all our civilization’s air pollution (aerosols) that have a cooling effect that brings us to about 2 degrees presently. But like the superficial cooling provided by proposed “geoengineering,” such solar-blocking cooling effects do nothing to ameliorate the damage to the ocean by the high CO₂ level. The acidification of the ocean is getting worse by the day, and it correlates to the development of anoxic zones. The effects of just these three attributes - increasing sea water temperature, acidification and anoxia - are leading to massive die-offs of marine creatures, including coral reefs, as per ongoing reports.

The quote above is from: Isson, T.T., Zhang, S., Lau, K.V. et al. Marine siliceous ecosystem decline led to sustained anomalous Early Triassic warmth. Nat Commun 13, 3509 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31128-3

What they are talking about is the Permian/Early Triassic boundary, the end-Permian extinction - the worst extinction ever in this planet’s history. The authors state: “This is the only known climate perturbation where carbon release rates and the initial pace of warming may have been comparable to modern rates.”

In the Permian age, continents had pulled together into one, called Pangaea. Yes, the planet looked quite different in the Permian. Read more about Pangaea in the above article Isson et al. or a better map of Pangaea here on Atlas Obscura. This single continent extended from the North to South poles, so perhaps less land above water and certainly less shoreline and not much precipitation in mid-continent, so possibly less mineral weathering than we have now.

But the real climate-killer was, according to the Isson et al. study, the loss of siliceous-excreting organisms in the ocean, disrupting the carbon/silicon cycle, which is shown to be the main carbon-sequestering system on the planet, rather than some Fruit proposing to plant a million or a trillion trees. The ocean organisms that were lost were the plankton and phytoplankton (oxygen-producing) which make glassy shells from the dissolved silicon (silicic acid).in the oceans, which derives from weathering of rocks and from cosmogenic silica, which is produced in the upper atmosphere by cosmic ray spallation of ⁴⁰Ar (argon-40). I’ll try to avoid a long discussion of ocean chemistry and the vital roles of microscopic marine organisms and our disruption of just about every mineral cycle and gas cycle, especially of nitrogen, otherwise this article will turn into a 26-volume encyclopedia very quickly.

The most significant climate regulation system is the interaction of the global carbon and silicon cycles. Too often Silicon (Si) is referred to as silica while we usually think of silica as being sand (SiO₂), but the science people call that “chert.” Normally, the neutralization of CO₂ (in the dissolved form in sea water as H₂CO₃, carbonic acid) by the weathering of silicate minerals results in the precipitation of calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) and chert (SiO2), removing carbon from the ocean-atmosphere system. This reaction, like most other chemical reactions, speeds up with higher temperatures and higher rainfall, so would normally help to stabilize the climate. But that assumes proper functioning of the siliceous-secreting ocean microbes. However, a large increase in marine dissolved silicon occurred, a collapse of the marine silicon factory from ocean anoxia, warming and increased weathering. The ecological success of marine siliceous organisms (to produce their glassy shells from dissolved silicon) strongly influences earth’s climate system. This problem results in authigenic (formed in place) clay formation in the oceans. This clay formation releases bicarbonate (HCO₃^-) back into the ocean to form carbon dioxide. So the CO₂ that was supposed to be sequestered as calcium carbonate goes back into the ocean-atmosphere system, prolonging the warming period.

So how long did it take Life to recover from the end-Permian extinction? A few human generations? A few hundred years? A few thousand years? 20,000 years? No, it didn’t take very long, compared to the life of this planet. It took only five million years. FIVE MILLION years! That’s about 200,000 human generations. Get the picture yet? Are you still a big booster of human Progress? Of trying to extend “Normal” as long as possible?

But there’s more! Add to the above mentioned items causing the end-Permian extinction - temperature increase, the ocean acidification, the falling ocean oxygen levels - add to that all our micro-plastic trash being added to the oceans PLUS massive industrial-scale damage to the ocean’s nitrogen cycles by hauling out thousands of tonnes of nitrogen (the protein content of fishes, sharks, whales, dolphins etc.) every year, and you get to see a very sad story about human damage to the oceans, the basis of all life. But there is even more damage being done to the oceans. Our aerosol particulate matter eventually ends up in the oceans, generally as an acidic addition. Countless industrial chemicals, pesticides, herbicides and tire dust end up in the oceans. Plus the ongoing disruption of sodium, potassium, phosphorus, iron and other mineral cycles. Then on top of all that, someone runs around the oceans chopping up the water with a blender. You know, the whirling blades, to make it into one big smoothie. You know how a kitchen blender works, whirling blades chop everything up. Stupid people run a blender through the ocean! Is this a stupid experiment or just plain stupidity? Yes, every day and all night, they run a blender, actually thousands of them, around through all the oceans, chopping things up. The willow-leaf stage in the growth of the endangered eel can be shredded like this (see The Book of Eels). That special layer of the ocean, the thin film between water and air, the sea-surface microlayer (SML) so vital to the ocean system, is torn asunder. So what does this blender look like? It is the propellers on ships, hauling your toys from around the world. This has to stop! Oh, yes, then there is all the offshore drilling for gas and oil, with dumping of drilling mud, leaks, underwater pipelines and tankers travelling all around the world carrying oil and LNG. Or not, sometimes just riding the waves waiting for the next best spot price, then they head in that direction. None of this human stupidity was going on during the Permian. The conditions in the Permian pale compared to our present and ongoing assault on the oceans. Humans have used the oceans as a big trash can - for untreated sewage, nuclear waste and brine from water desalination plants.

An article in the Journal of Virology has this line: "Science is humanity’s best insurance against threats from nature, but it is a fragile enterprise that must be nourished and protected."

Aye, there’s the rub! Science “protects” humanity from Nature! The other side of that coin is that humanity has built a Space colony, a separate world, on this planet, isolated from Nature but yet we steal whatever suits us from Nature, taking what we value and using the remainder as a waste disposal system. We dig out millions or hundreds of millions of years’ worth of properly sequestered carbon and send it into the atmosphere in a couple hundred years, and not give a thought to the consequences. We dig up millions of years of iron deposits left over from the Great Oxidation Event, in which wave after wave of living things sacrificed themselves to bring down the iron levels in the oceans, just to spread iron and steel all over the planet in abandoned toys, drill pipe jammed into the country like a pin cushion and rusting hulks of ships and Space junk on the sea floor. And that is only TWO of Earth’s mineral cycles that we have flagrantly abused.

Science is the part of “Progress” in most need of constraint. Science sees a new thing (plant, mineral, animal, planet, whatever) and first assesses it for any military use, then for any pharmaceutical use, then for any commercial use (that’s in order of most-likely funding prospects) then if there’s no such use, the item is left for the naturalists or general population to consider. I am not “anti-science,” but those people need to be on a leash or keep their “restraining bolt” in place. This entire world order has been a massive mistake, trying to build this Space colony of industrial-scale urban life, on this amazing and unique blue planet. It must be wound down, drastically.

Which brings us back to the topic of geoengineering, in which certain “smart” people wishfully think they can keep the planet habitable by blocking some sunlight. Watch this TED Talks program on YouTube, The Tipping Points in Climate Change - and Where we Stand | Johan Rockström. He thinks we still have 200 GT CO₂ that can still be emitted. That is utter crap. He says at least a couple times that “we” don’t know what has caused the record temperatures of 2023 and 2024. That is more crap. If you did some actual reading, you would know that the elimination of sulphur in marine fuels has caused this warming. To say “we don’t now” is terribly misleading; it compromises our right to informed consent before any stupid geoengineering tricks are attempted. Anyone who make such statements obviously cannot be trusted. Yes, he acknowledges “overshoot,” meaning we go knowingly too high with emissions, but can ameliorate the problem later on with coming technologies, such as carbon capture and geoengineering of the planet. He says the health of the planet must be kept intact and we must govern the entire planet to have solutions for a stable future for humanity. This will be yet another lead-in to geoengineering: “We” don’t know, ergo we must tamper with the Earth systems, we must inject sulphur compounds into the stratosphere. This is all more male-brain problem-solving faulty logic - it all sounds so reasonable yet like nuclear weapons, which derived from this same system of “logic,” the result is a catastrophe.

Notice to all geoengineering proponents: This is not your planet, leave it be. It is MY planet and I don’t allow that crap. Keep your so-called logic to yourself. There is air circulation in the stratosphere. Air enters that system around the equator, moves toward the poles and descends in the polar regions. We want sulfurous (acidic) compounds descending in the polar regions, that already have too many problems? If you want to be a hero and do something for the planet, start here: Wind down this Space colony. Those five words take care of all your problems and predicaments. CO₂ emissions, toxic chemicals, air pollution, yadda, yadda, all gone or greatly reduced. Global warming is not a result of the Earth’s energy imbalance. Those issues are both symptoms of our imposition of this Space colony on this small blue planet. The Space colony is the problem, it and all that goes with it - cars, cities, planes, vacations, etc. That all don’t belong here. Geoengineering is not a cure. People will say Florida is going to be gone if we don’t do something. Well, you DID something, you created this Space colony on this planet, and you RUINED it! It is not possible that geoengineering stops the melting of Greenland and West Antarctica; that process began in the 1940s and once started, can’t be stopped, unless you totally block sunlight and freeze the whole planet. Glacier formation is a (cold) dry process, melting them is a wet process that like toothpaste, can’t be put back in the tube. Blocking the sunlight does more than reduce the heat, duh, it blocks light! The conditions that we have already set in motion in severely damaging the oceans will continue, blocked sunlight or not, and blocking the light further impairs marine photosynthesis which has been damaged by all the above mentioned human intrusions. A recent article titled: “UN Chief Guterres Issues ‘Global SOS’ to World Leaders to ‘Save Our Seas’” calls on world leaders to save the oceans. As Captain Paul Watson says: “If the oceans die, we die!”

Perhaps you wonder about whether oceanic organisms are really suffering yet, or is this some problem for next generations after 2100?

An article in The Sunday Post reports on the Global Oceanic Environmental Survey, but you may find that the sciencey people dismiss these reporters as naturalistas, not true scientists. In a February 2024 post they state: “Our research and citizen science was slammed by the academic establishment and misrepresented.  A recent report published in Nature is now beginning to ask the same questions, published by one of the laboratories that criticised our research.” The article printed in The Sunday Post, from Glasgow, Scotland, part of DC Thompson Media, is titled “Our empty oceans: Scots team’s research reveals loss of plankton in equatorial Atlantic provoking fears of potentially catastrophic loss of life” (July 2022) in it they write that

“An Edinburgh-based research team fears plankton, the tiny organisms that sustain life in our seas, has all but been wiped out after spending two years collecting water samples from the Atlantic.

The landmark research blames chemical pollution from plastics, farm fertilisers and pharmaceuticals in the water. Previously, it was thought the amount of plankton had halved since the 1940s, but the evidence gathered by the Scots suggest 90% has now vanished. The sea water samples examined by the team were taken from the equatorial Atlantic and have yet to be confirmed by other maritime scientists or research teams.”

Oceans MUST be slightly alkaline for shells to form, and they are becoming more acidic. Fortunately some wannabe geoengineer planning on dumping 30,000 lb. of sodium hydroxide in the waters off Boston was stopped. This is not how to correct ocean ph! Note to other wannabe geoengineers: just stand down. And crawl back under your rock.

S.V.P., I must go back to “overshoot” a minute. The was in an article in The Conversation, titled:  The overshoot myth: We can't keep burning fossil fuels and expect scientists of the future to get us back to 1.5°C. by James Dyke, Robert Watson and Wolfgang Knorr

“The way to understand this doublethink: that we can avoid dangerous climate change while continuing to burn fossil fuels—is that it relies on the concept of overshoot. The promise is that we can overshoot past any amount of warming, with the deployment of planetary-scale carbon dioxide removal dragging temperatures back down by the end of the century.

This not only cripples any attempt to limit warming to 1.5°C, but risks catastrophic levels of climate change as it locks us in to energy and material-intensive solutions which for the most part exist only on paper.”

But that is missing the main point: The geoengineers WANT you to enjoy life and keep flying to your vacations while pretending that Normal can go on forever. Remember “350.org”? 350 ppm was supposed to be the maximum CO₂ level, and where are we at now? This is “overshoot,” people! But one day, they will break the news - sorry, people, we don’t have 200 GT of remaining emissions space, we are hooped unless we start seriously messing with this planet. And meanwhile, they are seriously studying how to go about ruining the atmosphere. See Research criteria towards an interdisciplinary Stratospheric Aerosol Intervention assessment, Oxford Open Climate Change, Vol. 4(1), 2024:

“With surface temperatures already reaching unprecedented highs, resulting in significant adverse consequences for societies and ecosystems, there are increasing calls to expand research into climate interventions, including Stratospheric Aerosol Intervention (SAI). However, research and dissemination are currently fragmented and would benefit from a comprehensive international assessment of the current state of knowledge regarding impacts, risks, and recommendations for future SAI research directions.”

Just knock it off, OK? If you really want to do something for Life and Earth, stay out of my atmosphere - end all space launches except for Earth observation satellites (there is already enough Space junk up there to severely damage the atmosphere by re-entry at least twice over) and end air travel. Then begin to wind down this bat-shit crazy Space colony “civilization” so that we can get by with a much simpler life. Stop plastics production! Note that plastics production, the excess population and this Space colony imposed on this planet are all inter-twined like a giant cat’s cradle and cannot easily be undone. Then begin to heal the oceans from our perpetual damage. The oceans could take care of our horrendously stupid emissions issue if they were again fully functional. The geoengineering proposals simply carry the Space colony program to the extreme, when really, it needs to be wound down. The smart ones talk about “terraforming” Mars (perhaps by robots) and show an illustration of a new blue planet with life on it. Bullshit, Mars long ago lost its magnetic field so the solar wind whips any atmosphere away, constantly. But “terraforming” is the wrong word, it means making-like-Earth. You mean, the Earth as ruined by humans? Shouldn’t that be “anthroforming”? Any human expedition to another orb, such as the Moon or Mars, should be like camping: carry in, carry out. Really, that should apply to all of Earth as well, meaning no more “landfills,” no more throwing things “away,” no new sacrifice zones. But no, humans will leave there crap (literally, human excrement left on the Moon) everywhere they go. How many landing modules can be left as standing garbage on the Moon before it is wall-to-wall trash? (Like they’ve done to this planet).

Now, for a little experiment, let’s rewind and review each of these to-do items through the lens of geoengineering. Can geoengineering expunge Space junk, clear the sky of air planes, provide a simpler life without excess “Progress,” remove plastic pollution from the oceans and soils, heal the natural cycles essential to the health of the oceans? Of course not - therefore it is no help at all.

Thank you for reading!

For further reading:

Reviews and syntheses: The biogeochemical cycle of silicon in the modern ocean. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GB005746 https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/18/1269/2021/bg-18-1269-2021.pdf

The Missing Silica Sink: Revisiting the Marine Sedimentary Si Cycle Using Cosmogenic ³²Si, S. Rahman, R. C. Aller, J. K. Cochran, September 2017 https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GB005746

https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2023.1178327 The Silicon Cycle in the Ocean. Authors: Lucie Cassarino, Rebecca A. Pickering, Zhouling Zhang, Bianca Liguori

Knies, J., Schönenberger, J., Zwingmann, H. et al. Continental weathering and recovery from ocean nutrient stress during the Early Triassic Biotic Crisis. Commun Earth Environ 3, 161 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00480-z