New Research Proves Earth Nearly Dead

A researcher and his team have presented data foretelling what is in store for humans, a sobering cause for more than concern. The research team have proven that planet Earth is nearly dead, a pending catastrophic event that will result in human extinction or at best, survivors returning to hunters and gatherers. Surprisingly, the research report abstract does not mention global warming or climate change.

“I’m not an ardent environmentalist; my training and my scientific work are rooted in thermodynamics,” stated John Schramski, an associate professor in UGA’s College of Engineering and lead author of the study. “These laws are absolute and incontrovertible; we have a limited amount of biomass energy available on the planet, and once it’s exhausted, there is absolutely nothing to replace it.”

Schramski’s research report, Human domination of the biosphere: Rapid discharge of the earth-space battery foretells the future of humankind, was published recently by University of Georgia researchers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“You can think of the Earth like a battery that has been charged very slowly over billions of years. The sun’s energy is stored in plants and fossil fuels, but humans are draining energy much faster than it can be replenished.”

Schramski explains that Earth was once a barren landscape devoid of life, and it was only after billions of years that simple organisms evolved the ability to transform the sun’s light into energy. This eventually led to an explosion of plant and animal life bathing the planet with lush forests and extraordinarily diverse ecosystems

The study’s calculations are grounded in the fundamental principles of thermodynamics, a branch of physics concerned with the relationship between heat and mechanical energy. Chemical energy is stored in plants, or biomass, used for food and fuel, but humans destroyed those plants to make space for agriculture and expanding cities.

NASA Earth Observatory biomass map of the U.S. by Robert Simmon, generated from the National Biomass and Carbon Dataset (NBCD) assembled by scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center

The Earth contained approximately 1,000 billion tons of carbon in living biomass 2,000 years ago, scientists estimate. Since then, humans reduced that amount by almost half. It is estimated, however, that human destroyed just over 10 percent of that biomass in just the last century.

“If we don’t reverse this trend, we’ll eventually reach a point where the biomass battery discharges to a level at which Earth can no longer sustain us,” Schramski said.

The research shows three major causes of the near-death planet: deforestation, large-scale farming, population growth.

Schramski and his research collaborators hope that public recognition of the importance of biomass, elimination of its destruction and increased reliance on renewable energy will slow the steady march toward an uncertain future, but measures required to stop that progression might need to be drastic.