8/8/2019 The Role of Nucleation of Phase Change as a Dominant Rate Controlling Processes in Anthropogenically Induced Cli

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The Possible Role of Nucleation of Phase Changes as the Dominant Rate

Controlling Processes in Anthropogenically Induced Climate ChangeBy D. Grant Ph.D. New Deer-Turriff U.K.

There is a need for a new model of anthropogenic influence on climate change in order to design

more effective strategies for offsetting a possible major future planetary ecological disaster.

The formation of any new phase such as liquid or solid from gas or crystals of calcium carbonate in the

ocean, or in organisms like marine algae or humans, is subject to the effects of nucleation. Calcium

carbonate is a major store of carbon and the formation of this solid phase can influence oceanic

carbonate, bicarbonate and carbon dioxide (which equilibrates with the atmospheric carbon dioxide).

Human influences seem to potentially control the activities of the seed particles which occur in the

ocean. A similar seeding process also influences the composition of the atmosphere and hence its heat

trapping and heat reflecting capacity. This includes dominant actions of those seed particles which are

believed to be critically involved in the formation of water vapor clusters and ice particles in clouds

and the subsequent precipitation. Since climate can be argued to be a function of such nucleation

processes and these have recently been indicated to be anthropogenically controlled over most of the

Earth (1), it follows that this process could be the prime mechanism by which humans are currentlyempowered to cause climate change.The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is likely to be a secondary factor subsequent to the

global warming and altered weather patterns produced by human conurbations. The global warming

can be argued to be controlled more by oceanic chemistry rather than the rate of combustion of fossil

fuel.

It should be noted that while it was previously commonly acknowledged that water vapor is by far the

most potentially active greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, hitherto it has been argued that equilibrium

thermodynamics, and not kinetics, should dominate the formation of liquid water from supersaturated

air. This scenario, if true, must disallow water vapor from being a dominant force in anthropogenic

influence on climate change. This, however, ignores the ability of nucleating particles to actually

determine the precipitation rates and that the chemical nature of such particles is now thought to be

largely controlled by anthropogenic influences. A possible influence of human substance emissions

which seems not to have been researched is the poisoning of the seeding of cloud formation. This

process might be influenced similarly to how humans can influence the precipitation of calciumcarbonate from the ocean. It is well known that the latter seeding can to be greatly inhibited by man-

made inhibitors such as those which are employed for this purpose in oil industry bore-holes, as well as

by the presence in natural water of substances which resist biodegradation which have found wide use

as laundry detergents and herbicides. This possible scenario, it should be noted, has been fairly well

verified by numerous in vitro laboratory experiments.

The establishment of the probable current dominant role of humans in determining the seed particle

chemistry in both the ocean and the atmosphere seems to be a complex function of the global human

population density and the associated growth of cities (and the industrial scale agriculture which is part

of the globally extended city system) which creates the production of large volumes of waste matter

into water systems as well as the emission into the atmosphere of a range of gases as well as of solid

particle pollutants. The putative correlation between urban wet islands and urban heat islands (which

are much larger than the old style maps which show where the centers of cities are located) and climatechange could ultimately be dependent on the effect of human activities on the seeding processes which

(it is now suggested) determine climate. The production of thousands of types of chemical substances

in the environment in amounts which had not been possible before humans is part of the complex

equation. Examples of these are the chorinated aromatic substances which can e.g. be emitted insufficiently large amounts by malfunctioning incinerators to putatively contaminate food chains and

thereby e.g. to impact on animal embryo development. These chlorinated organic substances aresufficiently environmentally stable to persist in the atmosphere where they might conceivably attach

strongly to the natural seed particles in a similar manner to how they are known to bind strongly to

humic substances in the soil. It should be noted that this sort of pollution has now become a global and

not a local phenomenon.

Both oceanic and atmospheric phase change situations are especially influenced by the alteration of the

rate of formation and transport of decomposed natural and man-made organic matter followinganthropogenic influences. The decomposed organic matter of soil and natural water which has been

termed humic and fulvic acid can, e.g. become removed from soils by the need to feed large

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