Time marches on

NATURAL PERSPECTIVES

We had a great afternoon Downtown recently, shopping with the

grandkids at Jack’s Surfboards and drinking coffee at Starbucks with

our son, Bob, and his wife, Kirsten, who were visiting from Seattle.

After they left for the airport, we strolled down the pier. The

air was warm, the sky was blue, and the waves were beautiful. It was

another perfect day here in paradise. We could even see the mountains

peeking above the smog layer.

In this column, we try to put our locals lives into perspective,

both in space and time, by relating life in Huntington Beach to the

big picture. Lately, we’ve been thinking about the really big

picture, the history of our solar system and the fate of the

universe.

Humans lead lives of a mere 80 years, more or less, so it’s hard

to see changes in the big picture. But think about this: Our solar

system is about 4.5 billion years old. Our sun has enough fuel in its

core to burn for about 9 billion years. That means the sun’s life is

half over. Five billion years from now, the sun will be a red giant

that is 2,000 times brighter and 10 times bigger than it is now. But

life on this planet will have ended long before that.

Scientists disagree on the ultimate fate of our solar system. Some

say that as the sun ages, it will burn hotter and hotter. Scientists

estimate that the current phase in the sun’s life cycle will last

another 500 million years. Eventually it will become too hot for

humans and other higher life forms to survive.

One theory says that desertification of the planet will cause

carbon dioxide levels to drop so low that photosynthesis by plants

will become impossible. When plants die off, the animals that depend

upon them for survival also die. Life forms will become simpler and

simpler as more complex life forms are eliminated by the drastic

change in climate that is coming. The oceans will ultimately

vaporize, and our lovely earth will become a dust-dry dead planet

where even bacteria will be unable to survive.

The other scenario for the end of our solar system is that,

instead of getting hotter and hotter, the sun will collapse in on

itself and the planet will get colder and colder. The end result will

be the same. First the higher life forms will be unable to survive.

Eventually lower life forms will be gone as well. Either way, life on

planet earth will be possible for “only” another 500 million years.

It’s really hard for us to get upset by this. A thousand years is

a long time in the history of the human race, and a million years is

inconceivable. The human race is only about 100,000 years old and

civilization is about 10,000 years old. Since this coming period of

intolerable heat is millions of years off in the future, it is

probable that we will have evolved into something else or gone

extinct by then. Although it is difficult to think of a time when

there will be no humans on this planet, that time will inevitably

come. There is nothing we can do about it.

In a shorter geologic time frame, the last great ice age ended

about 12,000 years ago. At that time, weather in this part of the

world was cool enough that pine trees grew in our local mountains

down to 3,000 feet. Rainfall was heavy, and our mountains and valleys

were filled with lakes and streams.

By the end of the Pleistocene, 10,000 years ago, the weather had

already begun to warm. Many large mammals became extinct during that

period as climate changed rapidly and humans expanded into the area.

Our local pine forests now grow at 5,000 feet and above because of

additional warming since the last Ice Age ended.

For the last 10,000 years, climate on planet Earth has been

relatively stable. Now we are at the beginning of another period of

dramatic warming. Part of it may be because of a natural warming

cycle, but much of the current warming trend is because of production

of greenhouse gases, i.e., the activities of modern, industrialized

humans.

We are poised on the brink of what will become a global die-off of

many species over the next hundred years as the climate warms. The

activities of man will contribute to this die-off in other ways as

humans replace natural habitat with human dwellings and change the

natural environment by farming, logging, mining and other activities.

Change is inevitable. The end of life on earth is inevitable.

Maybe even the current cycle of global warming is inevitable. But

that doesn’t mean that we can’t try to slow some of the disastrous

changes being wrought by mankind’s current practices. Drastic changes

will occur during the lifetimes of people now living. Each of us can

choose to contribute to increased global warming by wasting gas and

electricity or we can modify our lifestyles to conserve fossil fuels.

The choice is ours to make.

That’s what we talked about as we waited for a table at Ruby’s

Diner and enjoyed the ocean view.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].