50 years on: The Keeling Curve legacy

I am probably correct in assuming that my fears of global warming go a lot farther than others. Here's why...

I had a coworker that set up a really great salt water reef tank in his office - about 50 gallons. He followed all the steps and his tank thrived! The fish, the starfish, the giant-clam, all were happy. He even had live coral and a calcium drip to make sure that they were happy. Then, one day something happened.

A very slight imbalance in the bacteria in the bottom of the tank occurred. This by itself wasn't significant, but this imbalance changed enough in the tank to kill another bacteria, which off-set the balance with several other bacteria... Suddenly, a cascade effect occurred, which killed everything in the tank except for that one bacteria.

OK, so the World isn't as frail as that tank, but what haunts me is that now I know that a single change can snowball into an ecological disaster as powerful as any asteroid or comet hitting the Earth. If we engineer the Earth to be incapable of supporting human life (and believe me, we are very dependent on little bacteria), the Earth is quite capable of saying "OK, I can't support humans now. That's fine with me."

There is no God-like destiny that will keep us alive, we'll simply disappear like the dinosaurs. I wonder how many rich dinosaurs are hiding out in very expensive bunkers waiting for the day that the Earth is suitable to sustain their type?

Hi Vermin.

I agree that your fears are well founded, and that the example that you describe is significant. There are danger signals that should be the center of everyone's attention, for example the melting of the permafrost, the release of previously frozen methane from the Siberian tundra which will have a far greater influence on global warming than CO2. Fortunately the world seems to be gradually waking up, I hope that we've got the time to sort it out.