A clarification on global warming

A clarification on global warming

The issue of climate change (and global warming) is both controversial and a source of disagreement even among world-renowned researchers and scientists.
However the global warming controversy is a dispute concerning the causes, nature and consequences of the current global warming. However, these controversies appear much more vigorous at the media level than within the scientific community itself, which agrees that this is in fact caused by human activity thanks to the studies conducted primarily by the IPCC, which is the Intergovernmental Panel on Change formed in 1988 by two United Nations bodies:
– the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program for the purpose of studying global warming.
However even among some scientists there is not full agreement, just think of the observations of positions by A. Zichichi who declared some time ago that “Global warming is quite another thing, as it depends on the meteorological engine dominated by the power of the Sun. Human activities affect at the level of 5%: 95% instead depend on natural phenomena linked to the Sun. Attributing global warming to human activities is without scientific foundation. There is no mathematics that allows you to make such a prediction”.
With all due respect to the scientist from Erice (TP), who is not an ecologist (and therefore everyone should do his job), the question is much more complex as global warming can be determined even if human activities only affect for 0.1%.
And this is where the work of the Russian I. Prigogine, Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1977, comes into play. The Nobel Prize was awarded to him for his innovative research in the thermodynamics of irreversible processes and complex systems, such as Dissipative Systems.
It was I. Prigogine and other scholars (including Francisco Varela, Harold Morowitz and Enzo Tiezzi) who built a bridge between physics, chemistry, ecology and social sciences, to study these sectors not separately, but as systems between their interacting. For this reason I. Prigogine, together with others, is considered among the pioneers of the so-called science of complexity and of the theory of dissipative systems.
We recall that the ecosystem is the Dissipative System par excellence and that its balance, with its dynamics, is also determined by very slight variations (as mentioned, much smaller than the 5% threshold).
But what exactly is a dissipative system?
We can define it as the solution adopted by nature to accumulate solar energy (which, as mentioned, is 95% of all the energy available on our planet) and to dissipate it over a very long time, thus avoiding cooking the Earth.
In a dissipative system every smallest organism, as well as single-celled beings, captures an amount of energy and through countless exchanges and sharing with other organisms transforms and dissipates it over a very long time.
This mechanism is certainly allowed by the chlorophyll synthesis but not alone. This is flanked and interacted with by heterotrophic organisms, such as mammals, birds, insects, fish, etc. Indeed it is precisely these which, with their mobility, almost absent in autotrophs, allow otherwise impossible exchanges of information and energy. So in very biodiverse systems the dissipative system works best by optimally cooling the planet (and allowing life in a longer period of time).
Well, without wanting to argue with the good A. Zichichi, the decrease in biodiversity is one of the main factors of global warming, so much so that, according to research done by various Research Institutes, including one recently published in the journal Nature, within In 2100, climate change could cause sudden and catastrophic losses of biodiversity, driving at least 15% of plant and animal communities to extinction. And in the next decade we could already see the first wave: it is not a single final collapse, but a series of ecological tsunamis.
We remind you that Nature is one of the oldest and most important scientific journals in existence, perhaps by far the one considered to have the most prestige within the international scientific community and, therefore, not the latest to arrive since it has been published since November 4, 1869.
The question is therefore not so much the level of direct impact of human activities on global warming but how these, among which agriculture also plays a decisive role with its pesticides, herbicides, etc. which by interfering with the life of the organisms present in the dissipative system (biodiversity), are causing its thermodynamic collapse.
This clarification is necessary to dispel once and for all this sterile controversy which benefits no one and, above all, does not in any way address the correct political decisions, artfully disoriented by those who want to maintain the status quo (see multinationals of chemicals and systems productive and consumerist).
Returning to the possible ecological tsunamis, it must immediately be emphasized that most living species are now at risk of extinction or significant decrease in population.
Just think of insects, birds and reptiles, the main offspring of a lesser god who, due to the huge use of pesticides and herbicides or the decrease in their habitats (due to soil consumption and the removal of suitable ecological areas), are always most threatened by decreasing their contribution of information and energy necessary to make the Dissipative System work optimally.
The result is that the macroscopic consequences of climate change are already there for all to see: extreme weather events, drought, increase in global average temperature, acidification and deoxygenation of the oceans. All of this inevitably leads to negative effects on ecosystems and all living species.

It is the less visible consequences (and which often do not make the news in public opinion) that, as mentioned, dictate the greatest concern. In fact, there are some organisms that are more than others immediately affected by these consequences, to the point that they can be considered not only the indicators of climate change but, above all, the causes of further and more harmful changes in the near future.
Among these we remember the extraordinary stories of migratory animals, such as birds.
For example, in our hemisphere, to combat rising temperatures, many species are expanding and moving their range northward or towards higher altitudes: plants and animals are climbing mountains. And the same thing happens in the seas and oceans where, in search of colder waters, many species take refuge in deep waters or move towards the poles. From this point of view, it is clear that species living in high altitudes or in glacial climates are certainly those most at risk on an increasingly warmer Earth. In fact, we are witnessing a very rapid loss of biodiversity: the so-called “sixth mass extinction”.
Furthermore, the increase in temperatures also influences the phenology of the species, therefore their behavior in the various seasons: it can interfere with the times and methods of hibernation or diapause (the phase of spontaneous arrest of the development of some animals) of some species. In others it can affect reproductive success. In still others, it modifies the timing of migrations, unchanged for thousands of years. For other species, the main problem could be dealing with environmental transformations: ever more frequent and vast fires, droughts, or floods and rains, extreme weather events, lack of food. Not to mention that the increase in temperatures also favors the spread of pathogens, their vectors, and therefore of diseases. We could talk about it for days. In summary, the biodiversity crisis is the cause and effect of the climate crisis that we have activated.
This complex mechanism is therefore affecting not only the qualitative aspect of ecosystems but their functioning; as mentioned, the extinction of a single species determines due to the domino effect the extinction or the difficulty of reproduction of another (such as, for example, the case of plants in which, by extinction of their only pollinator, they are destined to disappear).
In this way, the lack of energy and information exchange between the two species causes a decrease in the efficiency of the dissipative system and an increase in the entropy of the system, which is equivalent to an increase in the heat introduced into the system. Physics teacher.
One of the most striking examples is that of migratory birds.
These, every year, have to keep a promise: to return to nest in the place where they were born. Getting to the right place and at the right time is vital for them. The species that nest in Europe spend the winter mainly in Africa and every spring they return here after a journey of thousands of kilometers, crossing three great ecological barriers: the Sahara desert, the Mediterranean and the Alps. They must arrive in time to enjoy a full spring, a period in which there are more hours of light to carry out all the necessary activities (conquering a territory, a partner, building the nest, raising one or more broods) and in which there is maximum food availability (mostly more insects or their larvae) to raise offspring. Over thousands of years, a perfect synchrony has evolved between the arrival of migratory birds, the hatching of their broods, and the peak of food availability. Some birds, due to their precision in the dates of arrival in Europe, are called “calendar birds”. But today climate change is breaking this synchronicity, which is no longer perfect.
It is estimated that in Europe the peak of food availability in spring is anticipated by between 9 and 20 days: consequently migratory birds are trying to get to their destination in advance. Many species are reducing the duration of stops during the journey by about 20%, stops which however are used to rest and refresh themselves, to replenish their energy reserves before continuing their journey. So they risk more to buy time and arrive earlier, but the advance they manage to earn is about a week: too little. They would have to reduce the duration of stops by 50% to anticipate 9 days, and by 100% to gain 20. In short, something impossible for small passerines that weigh between 10 and 20 grams and travel 15,000 km in spring and as many in autumn.
Even in autumn, when they should migrate south, they often still linger in Europe, delaying their departure.
This complex mechanism is leading to the decrease of populations, often exhausted by the additional stress or even to their imminent extinction and, as mentioned, all this is causing the collapse of the Dissipative Systems (ecosystems) which dissipate badly and cause solar radiation you no longer find the adequate Ecological Structures to be transformed into accumulated energy (biomass, ecosystem services, natural information systems, etc.).
Unfortunately, in recent times there has been a media reaction to the veracity of global warming as if this were wanted by vaunted conspiracies of interested groups to be able to better manage this “phantom” emergency.
It is necessary to understand that as we exist we owe it to the perfect “randomness” of some universal constants whose variation of only 0.000001% would have denied the conditions for the universe to exist as we know it; in the same way, an infinitesimal variation of anthropic dynamics on ecological systems can determine a domino effect on nature, causing more than 5% of that factor affecting global warming, determining what scientists now call Ecological Tsunamis.
Unfortunately, meteorological and ecological matter is a complex matter and all those who trivialize or simplify it, giving superficial judgments, are not making a good game for Politics to make the most correct decisions. Time is not our ally, common sense is.

Guido Bissanti