Climate Change-An Unprecedented Challenge for Humankind Survival; Energy Exploitation from the Atmospheric Electrical Circuit

A more detailed summary is given in the last part (1/4th) of the Introduction. An anomalous period is in progress, characterized by a very intense release of endogenous energy from the Earth. The cause is an ongoing heartbeat of the Earth’s electrocardiogram. Humankind’s history spans a much shorter duration. Hence, at present the humans are going to face an unprecedented challenge, maybe even concerning survival. The duration of the climate anomaly of an Earth’s heartbeat is a few Ma. The challenge is to avoid that humankind is going toward extinction. The paper attempts to give a general-and largely original and substantially advanced-perspective of Earth’s phenomena. As far as possible, the approach is top-down, i.e., start from known laws and infer expected observations-unlike the more usual bottom-up viewpoint, i.e., start from observations and seek regularities. The present text is devoted to applied scientists. The overall scenario is much more focused and precise than standard treatments. The target of the paper is concerned with the possible actions that can-and must-be implemented in order to face this unprecedented challenge-rather than being concerned with a critical discussion and comparison with the present “generally agreed” geophysical models reported in the literature. In particular, the exploitation is considered of a huge reservoir of natural and clean energy. The central focus of the present paper is the exploitation of the electrostatic energy of the atmospheric electrical circuit, which is a clean and almost inexhaustible free source. It should be stressed that-as it has been proven by quantitative and precise observations-the CO₂ pollution of anthropic origin provides an irrelevant-or maybe even a negligible-contribution to climate change. Climate change is, rather, caused by the natural, violent, ongoing exhalation of endogenous energy. This anomaly is going to be manifested, perhaps, by an eventual ever-increasing intensity of phenomena-including seismic and volcanic activity, energy and dynamics on the oceans and atmosphere, greater excursions with respect to the mild climate and a (presently unmonitored) change of endemic microorganism generation on the ocean floors (maybe even affecting pandemics). This study is an attempt to synthesize a wide multidisciplinary scenario, as far as possible by a limited number of pages. The purpose is only to start a much more extensive and profound discussion, that-as far as the geophysical items are concerned-is the object of more extensive studies (in preparation).