Physicists have calculated that the impact of human activity on Earth could lead to irreversible, unpredictable chaos. Using a theory developed to model superconductivity, a team of physicists led by Alex Bernadini of the University of Porto in Portugal showed in a preprint paper this year that after a certain point we cannot stabilize Earth’s climate.
Research suggests that limited amounts of human activity could lead to an irreversible greenhouse Earth. They detailed their work in a paper published in April 2022 on the arXiv preprint server, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.
“The effects of climate change are well known (droughts, heat waves, extreme events, etc.),” physicist Orfeo Bertolami told Live Science last year. “If the world system enters the realm of chaotic behavior, we lose hope of somehow solving this problem.”
Extreme weather events appear to be occurring more frequently in the last few years. Wildfires are raging, storms are intensifying, temperatures are reaching new records. Climate scientists warn that this is a result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and increased agriculture.
This has led to the proposal of a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene, a period in which human activities have resulted in significant and visible impacts on the entire Earth system consisting of the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere.
The Anthropocene followed the Holocene, which began about 11,700 years ago, and scientists suggest it began in the mid-20th century, at the height of the nuclear age. Bernadini and his colleagues decided to model the transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene as a phase transition and calculate its future trajectory accordingly.
Phase transitions are very common. The term refers to how a material changes from one state to another. Solid matter melts into liquid, and liquid boils into gas. The metal transitions from the normal state to the superconducting state. Each has a tipping point where the equilibrium state undergoes a profound transition to another state.
The Earth system is immaterial, but studies show that phase transition simulations can be used to predict climate change with some success. Bernadini and colleagues used the Ginzburg-Landau theory developed to model superconductivity and applied it to the Anthropocene based on temperature, starting from the Holocene equilibrium point.
Human influence is now limited. Our world has a limited amount of habitable space, a limited amount of resources, and a limited rate at which we can use them. Given this peak capacity, researchers set out to map the possible consequences of the Anthropocene phase transition using a logistic map, a tool for exploring how complex outcomes and even chaos can evolve from a simple point.
Their results showed that we are not necessarily heading towards a specific climate catastrophe. We could follow a very orderly and predictable course, the end point of which would be the stabilization of the climate at a higher average temperature than we have now. That’s still not great, given the lethal effects we’re already seeing in humans and other animals.
But at the more extreme level, the Earth is in chaos. This means that the planetary system is evolving towards chaotic behavior (extreme seasonal fluctuations and weather events); This prevents the future behavior of the system from being predicted and makes its mitigation impossible. This means that it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for us to return to a stable climate.
“By dividing human activity into several components, we examined a situation in which only two of these components follow logistic maps and interact with each other,” the researchers wrote.
“Even in this simple case, we have observed chaotic behavior emerging at the equilibrium points of the Earth system. If at least some components of human activity follow logistic maps, this would lead to potentially significant consequences, which is perfectly plausible given the physical constraints of the planetary system in which we live.” is a hypothesis.”
This outcome is not inevitable and is somewhat comforting. But researchers say we should see this as a real opportunity to develop strategies to mitigate climate change and manage the Earth system in the future. Source
Source: Port Altele
