Analysis in the magazine <ΖΕΝΊΘ> ΔΕΚΕΜΒΡΗΣ 2006 - about the ecological future of the planet

Dear Zenith

Congratulations on your magazine. It is an oasis in the spiritual desert that plagues Greece - and the whole world - with a real voice.

In the December 2006 issue, I recently read an excellent article by Mr. Alamatidis about the ecological disaster that is taking place in our days and the contribution of the airplane to it. I completely agree and will not expand further. However, I would like to add a few more things: I am afraid that things are a little worse than they seem. The problems of the planet are first the well-known greenhouse effect = basically the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the changes that this causes, basically the increase in the temperature of the earth. CO2 is increasing steadily every year, starting from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, while since 1958, when official measurements were made, there has been a steady increase of 1-3 ppmv units per year. As is known, various conditions try to control CO2 emissions, but they encounter a furious reaction from organized interests at various levels in many ways, resulting in CO2 emissions increasing steadily, contributing to the gradual increase in global temperature. At this point, I will focus on the second problem that is not immediately visible: The fate of the world has been indelibly sealed by the second thermodynamic axiom. According to this totality of energy, the primary energy of fuels (i.e. the total and not only the used, useful and marketable part of it) that our technical civilization uses ultimately escapes as useless heat into the environment. In other words, our technical civilization is a complex mechanism that constantly converts the primary energy of fuels into heat that escapes - now useless - into the environment, thus causing its thermal pollution.

This thermal pollution adds to the energy of the solar radiation entering the planet, increasing it, thereby increasing the average temperature of the planet. This increase is independent of the increase in temperature created by the greenhouse effect.

The growth of human civilization has an exponential nature (i.e. like the increase in an amount that is compounded). There is a limit to this growth, which must be moved to an accounting curve, a saturation curve. I will give an example of what exponential growth means to understand why we are talking: Let's assume that someone put one euro at the time of the birth of Christ on interest with compound interest and an annual increase of 5%. In 50 years it would have become 11.5 euros, in 100 years 131 euros, in 200 years 17,292.58 euros, but in 1000 years it would be 1.5 six times million and today about 2 thirteen times million 100 billion times the weight of the earth in gold.! The sizes and rates are unimaginable.

This is how our civilization develops: we run faster and faster and produce more and more energy, useful and useless, which in the end is dissipated into the environment, increasing the entropy and temperature of the planet. Regarding the energy produced by our technical civilization since 1970, when calculations began, the numbers are as follows: in 1970, primary energy was 0.005 of solar energy and it will take approximately 142 years to reach 1% (of solar energy) over the entire surface of the earth - 100 years for land alone - and to increase the temperature of the earth by 1 degree C, 166 years for 2 degrees and 179 years for 3 degrees.

Therefore, from thermal pollution alone, the land temperature will increase by 1C in about 2070 and by 2090 by 2C. The consequences are incalculable. This is assuming that the global ecosystem has not been destroyed by the greenhouse effect by then.

Simply put, it is impossible to continue the increase at the current rate and at the same time maintain the viability of the planet.

I will not dwell on the consequences of reckless growth nor on the psychological and social causes that lead to it. They are more or less well known and much discussed. Only cancer cells and bacteria have growth rates like in the current triumphant capitalism in nature. The end result is death. Another example: The fetus, for example. inside the womb while it starts with exponential growth rates, from the first month onwards the growth takes on a logical form. If, for example, a fetus grew inside the womb with today's unreasonable exponential growth rates, it would have to be born 13 kilometers away!

Nature puts a brake on something that the greedy -sick- man does not do..

Some hunched, servile <scientists> working for specific interests will tell all these fairy tales or will oppose various scientific theories. The future is close, a few more decades. Capitalism won the battle with the other systems for many and various reasons, among which there is that it was more flexible and the least inhumane system than the other 2 (communism-fascism)

There were 2 world wars and rivers of blood. Now is the beginning of the end. It will be destroyed by itself. The choices are the following two: capitalism will be destroyed along with the planet or it will add water to its wine. And because the second is impossible because capitalism = continuous accumulation and expansion, the future is bleak. The future is ecology. I don't know if capitalism will succeed with ecology and there will be the so-called eco-capitalism, history shows that people are not so crazy when there is a real danger. Unfortunately, however, now the future is only seen by enlightened minds while many people are stupidized by the media and the dominant ideology of consumerism - and do not believe or blind themselves to the fact that there is a real danger. I only hope that when we reach the amen and wake up from the lethargy whether they want to or not, it will not be too late.

Congratulations again for your magazine

P.S. For more information, someone can refer to the book by Yannis Kalopisis <Where are we going> Papazisis publications