The Self-organizing Biosphere / Самоорганизующаяся биосфера

I begin with a brief outline of my theory of how our biosphere has evolved since the origin of life some 4 billion years ago. This theory is a provocation: to think about the evolution of life and climate in a new way. Both the beginning and end of life on this planet are determined by purely nonbiological conditions, the beginning by the hydrothermal activity on the ocean floor, where the origin of life took place, the end by the rising radiant energy flux from the sun. But between these times, predetermined by the initial conditions of our solar system, the biosphere evolves in its overall patterns deterministically, going from a hothouse with surface temperatures near 100°C to an icehouse, with intermittent glacial periods, then in the future back into a hothouse regime before its destruction. A progressive increase in the diversity of habitats for life and a concomitant biotic evolutionary explosion has occurred in the past 4 billion years, only to be reversed in the future with a return to the hothouse. <...>