H2O

Water is essential to life ... far more important than just keeping animals and plants hydrated. There are at least three other more fundamental reasons that, without water, life would not exist:

- The most obvious reason is that, during photosynthesis, water provides the hydrogen which combines with the carbon and oxygen from carbon dioxide to form hydrocarbons ... the basis of all life on Earth.

- A less obvious reason is the fact that, when water freezes, it is lighter than water and therefore floats. If this were not the case, most water on Earth would end up as ice at the bottom of the oceans ... and not be available to sustain life.

- And the least obvious reason is that water rises through plants and animals utilizing capillary action ... defying gravity. If this were not the case, we would have no plants more than a few inches tall ... no trees, no grains, etc. ... and all our blood would be in our feet.

So, dear readers, perhaps primitive man should have been worshiping water as well as the sun.

Photosynthesis

A bit ago I discussed the process here on Earth which captures and stores the sun’s energy ... photosynthesis ... see: Living Life. I called this process “magical” because I have never read a convincing explanation of how it really happens (try: Photosynthesis Process). We know it involves sunlight, chlorophyll, water and the very small amount of CO2 in our atmosphere (0.04%) ... and produces a hydrocarbon (glucose) and oxygen.

OK, I’m going out on a scientific limb here ... and conclude that, for this chemical process to take place, something like electrolysis needs to occur to separate water into its components, hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen then combines with the CO2 (chlorophyll acting as a catalyst?) to form glucose (C6H12O6 atoms ... an endothermic chemical reaction) which effectively then stores the energy of the sun.

But what process like hydrolysis separates water into the atoms hydrogen and oxygen? This is where I surmise nature’s magic. As it turns out electrons cannot really travel through space from the sun and break the bond between these two elements of water (an exothermic reaction). But, photons and neutrinos can combine under certain conditions to form electrons (look it up) ... and our sun produces these two subatomic particles, photons and neutrinos, in almost infinite numbers. My loopy surmise is that this is what happens and the electrons produced then break water into its two component atoms.

Crazy? I could be ... but to me this explanation makes more sense than the above photosynthesis  explanation.

24CO2 + 6H2O — 2C12H6O + 26O2

Living Life

The Earth is unique among all the planets we know in that it has evolved a way of capturing and storing the energy from the sun through a magical process called photosynthesis ... the basis of all life. And photosynthesis totally depends on one extremely scarce ingredient to start everything off ... CO2. And now, our most highly evolved life form, man, has decreed CO2 to be a pollutant ... and is trying to eliminate it from our atmosphere.  Are we f**king crazy?!

Hogwash!

At one of my regular blog stops, Watts Up With That, its most recent entry explores the surprising role that diatoms play in regulating the temperature of our planet. This was discovered at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Germany. This gist of the article is in the first paragraph:

Diatoms play an important role in water quality and in the global climate. They generate about one fourth of the oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere and perform around one-quarter of the global CO² assimilation, i.e. they convert carbon dioxide into organic substances. Their light receptors are a crucial factor in this process. Researchers at the Leipzig University and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research have now discovered that blue and red light sensing photoreceptors control the carbon flow in these algae. These results have been recently published by the scientists in the well-known online trade journal, PLOS ONE

For the scientifically inclined, to explore the details of this new discovery further see: Watts Up With That.

Moreover, there is one comment on this post that I found particularly interesting and it was written by Willis Eschenbach. He stated on October 20, 2014 at 3:59 pm:

A most excellent post, Anthony. I’ve long held that the ocean conditions don’t determine life, it works the other way around—life determines the ocean conditions.

In addition to making lots of oxygen, phytoplankton (microscopic floating ocean plants) have some hidden effects. 

First, where there is no phytoplankton, the water is clear, and all of the absorbed solar energy is converted into heat. But when there is a lot of phytoplankton, much of the absorbed solar energy is not converted into heat. Instead, it is used in the making and breaking of chemical bonds, and in growing plant mass. 

Now, to be sure, this energy is eventually reconverted into heat, it’s the nature of entropy … but that may not happen at the surface of the ocean. It may happen, for example, in the abyss. In the abyss, there is a constant rain of organic stuff, bits and pieces of everything from phytoplankton to zooplankton to small fish to whales. When this organic detritus decomposes, it releases the energy it contained, energy it absorbed near the surface … but it releases it at the bottom of the ocean. In addition, some of the energy is used to create gases (including both oxygen and CO2) that leave the ocean entirely. So when that oxygen rusts a bit of iron at a later date, the energy is released on land rather than in the ocean. 

Next, phytoplankton significantly change the vertical thermal structure of the ocean. Phytoplankton are plants, so as one might expect, they are all in competition for the light. As a result, they are thickest right at the surface. This means that instead of the solar energy warming the lower part of the mixed layer, it is absorbed right at the surface. So plankton make the surface warmer and the subsurface cooler. 

Next, he ability of ocean diatoms to utilize both red and blue light, while surprising, is logical. Every diver knows that the blue light penetrates deeply, but the red light is absorbed nearer the surface … so much so that if you cut yourself at depth, you bleed green. Since the competition is at the surface, we’d expect to find the diatoms using the abundant red light. But of course they need to be able to survive the times when they are deeper and get only blue light. The article says that in blue light they photosynthesize but they don’t grow … so they are “hibernating” when they are down deeper. Another unknown aspect of this marvelous world. 

Finally, an oddity. Plankton emit dimethylsulfide (DMS). This, in turn, forms cloud condensation nuclei, which favors the formation of clouds … how curious, that the smallest plants in the ocean should be able to affect the rate of cloud formation. And of course, the more light striking the surface, the warmer it is, the more DMS is produced … another lovely example of thermal regulation by emergent phenomena, in this case the emergent phenomenon we call “life”. There’s a good discussion of DMS and plankton here. To me, this is the best part of the extremely young and unsettled science of climate. There is something new to be learned every day. 

My best to all, w.

And for those climate prelates among us who are constantly proselytizing and who usually start their sermons by saying that climate change is “settled science,” I have but one word.

Hogwash!