theory: CO2 and Roshar's atmosphere and ecology

[ecohansen]

Sorry for my long silence.  Real life came after me with a whole conga line's worth of crotch-kneeings.

 

So, first my two major "derps"

 

Skaa: I didn't slightly misunderstand your thread: I somehow completely distorted it in my mind from any semblance of what you wrote.  I am very very about that.  That'll teach me to cite something without re-reading it first.

 

Labrat: dagnabbit!  As soon as you brought up those lines, I remembered having read them and been shocked, but apparently I was so attached to my headcanon that I forced myself into amnesia.  If Shallan can do it, so can I.  And we do have WoB that Roshar is "higher oxygen", and this was said in relation to the chasmfiends.

 

For both of those major oversights, please accept my Picardian double-facepalm and embarrassed nerdsnort.

 

ccstat: I love your reasoning on thevalue of emeralds.  Wow!

Your argument on the value of soulcasting in providing an incremental but important value in freeing people from agricultural work was the argument I was attempting to make with regard to the horneaters.  I said the horneaters were "starving", but intended it as shorthand.  If eating an arthropod shell-and-all provides 10% more calories than only eating the choice parts does, then your culture should have been ale to free up 10% of its arthropod-farmers for other pursuits.  But, despite this efficiency, the horneaters are still entirely devoted to food production.  Can any of you think of alternative reasons (other than mine) why agriculture on the horneater peaks is so inefficient?

 

ccstat and InstantWalrus:

edit: I did give this its own thread, but left it here as well for context with the earlier discussion

Aquatic and terrestrial forms for cremlings might relate to skyeels and chasmfiends.  Shallans illustration of the chasmfiend notes that they have the same spren as skyeels.  Could skyeels and chasmfiends be different lifestages or generations of the same organism?  For that matter, could the same be the case for greatshell and larkin?  This might have already been asked, and if not it might need its own thread.

 

But I can see a few ways this could work:

1.skyeels and larkin are early lifestages of chasmfiends and greatshells, respectively.

2. There's alternation of generations, like with moss.  There's a haploid generation and a diploid generation, each having a completely different life strategy.  Imagine that egg cells and sperm cells had long and fullfilling independent lives before uniting to become humans.  Skyeels are thus haploid chasmfiend sperm.

3. For cremlings, (2) could be extended into a lifecycle lsimilar to rust fungi.  Cremlings on land reproduce clonally, like the uredinial stage in the magnificent lifecycle of rusts.  If they happen to come near water, they switch to a telial stage, and produce offspring completely unlike themselves. 

4.Any of these could be a nod to Orson Scott Card's Lusitanian ecosystem, where all organisms have a vegetative lifestage and an animal lifestage.  Since Card has blurbed Sanderson, I'd assume Brandon has read Card.  And of course, there's the similarity in their biographies.  I can't imagine Sanderson having a system as biologically-challenged as Card's, but I can definitely see it as providing an initial idea.

 

Thanks all!

Edited June 11, 2015 by ecohansen

[CabbageHead]

Great post Ecohansen. If you don't mind, I would like to pick a few possible holes in it (not saying I'm right and you're wrong, or vice-versa, just possibilities)

 

On the subject of global Rosharian O2 production, we don't really have any idea of the size of Roshar. More importantly, we don't know the ratio of landmass to ocean, and the percentage of deep ocean. Most O2 production occurs via photosynthesis in microscopic aquatic flora.

 

With regard to algae blooms, on Earth these are largely things that happen in an ecosystem that is being disrupted by human activity. On Roshar, the nutrient dump into water systems is much more regular than on Earth, happening almost like clockwork with each storm, and has been happening for a long, long time. There could very well be blooms, but also other lifeforms that have evolved to sit there waiting for the opportunity to feast on them. The higher O2 concentration in the atmosphere that you suggest would also exist in the seas, which would negate many of the algae deadzone issues we have on Earth.

 

The "arthropods" with lungs possibility has already been mentioned above.

 

I do life your idea about a much sharper atmospheric pressure gradient than we are accustomed to, but there could be a very simple explanation for that. While we know that Roshar has less sea-level gravity than Earth, we don't know why that is. A simple possible explanation is that Roshar is bigger than Earth, but with a lower density. Roshar could in fact be more massive than Earth, but if it was less dense it would have a much larger radius & surface area, along with lower gravity. I suspect (although it is a long time since I did anything more than napkin math) that that would lead to a faster pressure gradient with altitude.

 

Anyway, very nice post, well thought out, and please prove some of my rambling above to be wrong. I love when I am proved wrong, because it makes me better

[ecohansen]

Cabbage: great thoughts. Your comment aout the algae is definitely warranted.  There definitely could be a higher rate of consumption by marine animals.  But then, where are those animals?  The stormward Rosharan seas seem to be less productive than the ;Purelake: after all, the people of the Purelake are mostly fishermen, while the Thaylens are mostly merchants.

 

And as for the atmospheric gradient, I definitely don't know enough planetary or atmospheric science to have intelligent thoughts on how planetary density would affect the steepness of change in atmospheric pressure.  But my earlier point wasn't that the atmosphere gets thicker faster on Roshar, it was that Honor changes the proportion of different gasses in the atmosphere at sea level.  By attracting both carbon dioxide and oxygen, but not nitrogen, towards sea level, Honor makes sealevel air unnaturally rich in O2 and CO2, and unnaturally poor in nitrogen.  Again, an easier solution is just to say that Roshar had a more O2- and CO2- rich atmosphere to begin with, but then how do we explain the discrepancies related to the horneater peaks?  Does anyone have any alternative ideas on why the Unkalaki culture is so centered on food?

[Guest]

Cabbage: great thoughts. Your comment aout the algae is definitely warranted. There definitely could be a higher rate of consumption by marine animals. But then, where are those animals? The stormward Rosharan seas seem to be less productive than the ;Purelake: after all, the people of the Purelake are mostly fishermen, while the Thaylens are mostly merchants.

You could actually have your cause/effect backwards there. Because the Purelake is so unproductive a higher percentage of people have to be devoted to fishing to feed everyone, while the Theylen waters are so productive that an entire sector of their population is free to NOT fish.

I think that's just as wrong though, and the difference is cultural rather than productivity based. The Purelake people fish individually, looking for the BEST fish, while the Theylen likely use large boats and nets for fishing.

[InstantWalrus]

Ok so i did a quick and superficial google of the nutritional value of chitin (my days of researching for essays are in my past and for now i wanna keep it that way so im just going to look up easy sources) and first think i read (obviously) was wikipedia

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitin#Agriculture

 

and interestingly it turns out chitin can be used as fertiliser. Which i think is interesting if you think of the whole crem -> decomposed/larval cremlings idea.

 

But on the topic of horneeater eating habits, im pretty sure their diet is a cultural thing rather than trying not to waste food. Possibly it has something to do with their shared ancestry with the parshendi.

 

As we know the parshendi grow carapace like bone spurs (in warform) so perhaps horneater shell eating habits come from a long forgotten belief that eating shells will make them grow their own or make them more like their parshendi ancestors? We dont know much about how they percieve voidbringers... could be they used to worship them or at least didnt have the same prejudices as other lowlanders... presumably their peaks arn't as affected by highstorms (cant imagine a worse place to be in a highstorm than on top of a mountain) and since their ancestors interbred with parshendi i cant imagine them hating them for being voidbringers so they were probably mostly unaffected by desolations.