A Balance Of Cycles
Everything in nature is part of a cycle. Without cycles, nothing would endure, for
rejuvenation would never occur. Without rain, all the water on Earth would dry up. Without the
water cycle, H2O wouldn’t exist. This is just one example of the sensitive balance of all living
things. The environment that surrounds us is all as it should be, but things are changing. What if
our biosphere, including the atmosphere, continues in the direction it is headed? Then the Earth
would cease to exist as we currently know it.
Take the fourth rock from the sun as an example of a planet lacking cycles. Mars is
currently cold and barren with harsh winds and incredible dust storms, but was it always this
way? Scientist Victor Baker does not think so. He believes that Mars was once covered with
water, warm temperatures, an atmosphere of carbon dioxide, and life forms. So, what
catastrophic event might have occurred to rid the Red Planet of all it once possessed? Not an
event, but lack of cycles. On Earth, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere dissolves into the water
of the oceans, becomes carbonate sediment, and is taken deep into the Earth’s core where
tectonic subduction occurs. There, it melts to become carbon dioxide again. Three hundred
million tons of carbon dioxide is lost to the oceans every year, but because of a cycle we have
here on this little planet, it soon is spewed out of underwater volcanoes and travels up to the
water’s surface by way of bubbles, and reenters the Earth’s atmosphere. This balances out the
yearly loss of carbon dioxide. Without this balance, the world would either be too hot (too much
CO2) or too cold (not enough CO2).
View Full Essay