I have an uncommon perspective on global warming. It is motivated by a consideration of long-term planetary processes—both geological and biological. I hope it is consistent with current scientific understanding. But I have never examined it scientifically.

Consider the solar system. A collection of astronomical bodies coalesced from interstellar gas, itself the remains of one or more supernovae caused by the collapse of an older generation of very large, short-lived stars. These old stars burned up their hydrogen and helium, in the process of stellar nuclear fusion, creating heavier elements. Then, following a well-known process (see Wikipedia), the stars exploded.

Out of those exploding stars came many different elements, including carbon. The dispersed remmants of those stars mixed with other clouds of interstellar dust. Gravity brought them back together again. They formed our solar system. Earth had a signficant proportion of denser elements, and lot of carbon. The carbon was mostly bound up in various molecules.

Carbon is fundamental to in organic chemistry, and biology. But it predate life. All the carbon currently bound up in living things, and in “fossil carbon”, is older than Earth. As Earth has changed over time, so has the role of carbon. These changes are driven both by Earth’s own internal structure and by the influence of the Sun. Even before life arose, the combined effects of the Sun’s radiation and active geology—mantle convection and vulcanism—stimulated changes on the surface and in the atmosphere. Atmospheric weather creates erosion of surface rocks. Volcanoes release gases from the interior.

The atmosphere of the early Earth was mostly methane and carbon dioxide. The carbon-rich environment, along with surface water—itself formed from primordial hydrogen and oxygen—and other common elements, provided the starting point for organic life. But the carbon came first.

Life on Earth exists due to a combination of the necessary building blocks and a suitable flow of energy, mostly from the Sun. (Though there are many places on Earth where life exists, hidden from the Sun’s rays, thanks only to the slow escape of energy from the Earth, through vents in the crust.)

Life is an expression of the natural movement of energy in the solar system. The sun produces a wide spectrum of radiation from its fusion process. Unimpeded, that energy would travel outwards, forever. Most of it does so. But some of it runs into obstacles, whether dense lumps like planets and moons, or dispersed matter in dust clouds.

When light hits something, it changes that thing. Perhaps only for a moment, causing a brief flash, before the thing returns to its previous unexcited state, emitting the light slightly changed. When the Sun’s light hits Earth, such excitation causes movement in the gases and liquids on the surface, warming them up. This energy stirs them up, stimulating chemical changes. It also creates erosion, freeing up more material from the rocks. Rocky molecules break apart, and their atoms diffuse into the atmosphere and oceans, providing even more opportunities for interesting chemical interactions.

The most significant geological action of life is to transform inorganic matter into organic matter: mixing up the molecules. This process requires energy, as stated. Where does that energy go? It is stored as potential chemical energy in the new organic molecules.

The Earth is a chemical battery. This energy storage is a side effect of organic life. Acting over billions of years, vast quantities of low-energy inorganic, carbon-containing matter has been converted into high-energy organic compounds.

First, these compounds are part of living organisms. Later, they become various kinds of sediment, either on the surface as soil, or at the bottom of lakes and oceans. Most organic matter eventually finds it way, thanks to the endless hydrological cycle—also produced by energy from the Sun—washed from the surface, carried by rivers to the bottom of the sea.

Thanks to both weather and geology, what was once underwater becomes exposed to air. What was once on the surface gets buried under new layers of sediment. And what was once buried gets exposed to air again. The surface of the Earth moves and changes, like dunes in the desert, but over millions of years. All this time, the energy of the sun is mostly flowing through the system, entering and exiting again, converted from one form to another. But some is trapped. And the quantity of trapped energy steadily grows.

Earth is a bit of grit in the oyster of the solar system. The light of they sun collects around this pebble, slowly building up. How long can it continue to do so, before some reaching a tipping point? What if humanity is that tipping point?

The tipping point to which I refer is that in which the total stored energy makes it increasingly likely, to the point of certainty, that this vast battery will overcharge and short circuit, releasing its energy rapidly and catastrophically. In geological timescales, a millenium is an instant. Was such a tipping point inevitable? Need it have been expressed in the form of a sentient organism, a civilization, tapping that energy for its own short-sighted and selfish needs? Or could a simpler organism, through the happenstance of evolution, have stumbled upon a means of exploiting it?

Humans are reliable in their arrogance and self-importance. Whether we see ourselves as agents of good or evil, we tend always to see ourselves as the protagonist, the primary agent, or the central victim, depending upon the nature of the story. But it is just as likely, in this as in many other stories, that were are merely dumb witnesses, or at best hapless puppets. We may be victims, but more bystander than target. We are caught up in processes we only vaguely recognize, cannot really understand, and have no power to control.

Certainly it is ironic if we turn out to be the unwitting agents of our own demise. But we are little more than tools of natural forces. Some might see us as possessed by demons. But there is no malevolence. It is only the fascination and terrible processes of change. These processes have brought us into existence. They will surely remove us in time.

Perhaps it would be good if we could realize the truth of our predicament. Maybe then we could navigate a path through and out, without being destroyed. Maybe we can even preserve some of the magic and wonder of the rest of the biosphere as we know and love it. If not, a new one will certainly coalesce, without our participation, in a few million years.

For now, we are witnesses to a great and terrible transformation. But surely it is predictable.