LOS ANGELES WILDFIRES 2025 , MORE THAN CLIMATE CHANGE

 

LOS ANGELES 2025, MOTHER OF ALL WILD FIRES

A fire prone region, a drought, La Nina winter weather,, a cold air outbreak, a teenager’s New Years Eve “pot party” in the woods, illegal fireworks, a small fire erupts, duly snuffed out by the LA FD, and a week later, fierce 90 mph Sant’Anna winds reignite the undetected cinders. These events all horribly compounded and extended by WOKE DEI ideology, misplaced priorities, one party rule, local political hubris, human frailty, poor planning, incompetent and missing bureaucrats and human stupidity. 

The Los Angeles Pacific Palisades fire, has become the penultimate (we hope) disaster of the Biden, disaster-plagued administration. This terrible ecologic and human tragedy  is a result of governmental failure resulting from misplaced priorities, one party rule, self righteousness, and stupidity coupled with predictable natural weather, geography and native floristic phenomena which culminated in  a cataclysmic firestorm without historic precedent. 

The apocalyptic conflagrations in Los Angeles appears to have started in the Pacific Palisades section of that city on January 7, 2025.  An extensive investigation by the WAPO newspaper appears to indite the activities of a New Year’s Eve teenage “pot party” in the bone dry woods of the Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles, where fireworks may have ignited La Nina weather dry forest litter. That fire was reported and duly responded to by the LA FD. They reported an area of about 3-8acres in flames. They effectively contained and extinguished that small fire on Jan 1, 2025. 

A week later, as a result of winter La Nina weather patterns, i.e. a cold dry outbreak of air which settled into the Great Basin and generated an unseasonably powerful Sant’Anna wind.  The high winds impacted the region on January 7, 2025 causing the week-earlier Palisades New Year’s Eve fire-site to reignite.  

Reigniting is a serious problem in very windy locations. (Fires can smolder under soil litter, dead leaves, or in soil  humus layer ;organic top layer of soil), and in dry punky wood for weeks). The LA FD does not maintain patrols on past fire sites.  But a week later the winds were so severe (60-90 mph) smoldering cinders appear to have come to life, flames sprouted and  fire spread so rapidly that containment with the available man power and mechanical assets was fruitless and the Pacific Palisades fire spread rapidly. 

The result: Los Angeles’ strikingly intense, very hot fires burned 40,000 acres to cinders, 12,000 frame structures were totally consumed by extremely hot fires leaving only twisted metal and seared and collapsed concrete and brick as indicators where structures formerly stood,, 150,000 people had to be evacuated, and sadly 25 people lost their lives in the conflagration.   

Wells Fargo estimated damages and economic loss at about or as much as$130 billion or as little as $60 billion.

Three fires have plagued the City since January 7, 2025. The first and largest is the Pacific Palisades fire on the west end of the LA County. Fifteen miles to the NE is the Eaton Fire. Then to northwest near Pasadena is the smaller Hurst Fire north of San Fernando which has consumed 14000 acres and burned 7,000 structures.

But what makes the naturally  wooded region of southern California, so “fire prone”.  

The climate of LA and Southern California is classed  as “Mediterranean” characterized by hot dry summers and mild wet winters.  (Though during La Nina weather, winters are colder and dry.)  The vegetation adapted to this climate is described as  “chaparral” a  biome which supports plants adapted to dry hot conditions and low-moisture soils. “Chaparral vegetation is defined as being comprised of low growing shrubs with leathery, drought resistant waxy leaves that often form near-impenetrable thickets.” 

The common plants of California chaparral are manzanita, acacia, juniper, and shrub-live-oaks.  Juniper and oaks are well known and occur widely, but manzanita and acacia are pllants found more commonly in the west and Mexico. Manzanita is an evergreen bush-or low tree of the Heath Family with small red edible fruit with twisted red-barked branches. The bark readily peels away to form loose red strips and burns easily.  “Manzanita” in Spanish means “little apple”.  Acacia is a low growing shrub or small tree with compound leaves and is a member of the pea (Fabacea) family. It has  bean-like fruits which are edible and it branches are well supplied with thorns. 

All of these chaparral species are drought resistant, often with leathery, waxy leaves ( to conserve moisture). These species are associated with associated  chaparral species with similar adaptations to drought and low soil moisture which typically form low, dense thickets. This pattern of growth in  low growing closely spaced thickets are also a natural adaptation which aids in  the conservation of plant and soil moisture. 

These drought adaptations, however, also make this biome highly susceptible to  wild fires. In fact archeological studies and historic accounts indicate that wild fires were during the distant past common in this area. 

In addition their growth pattern, close to the ground in dense thickets, and their waxy leaves and often dry peeling bark which typically have a lower ignition temperature increase susceptibility to wild fires. Such chaparral thickets flare up in towering flames in seconds as a hot wind with flying embers descends on them.  

When chaparral achieves ignition temperature—their finely divided character (leaves, thin branches and fine twigs) with  increased surface area in contact with air in the thicket can ignite, instantly  combining the finely divided fuel with the surrounding oxygen in the air to oxidize the mass of wood and leaves into heat and gases to generate an almost explosive flaming inferno. See examples of “dust explosions”.  These near dust explosions are intensely hot. They then can ignite other surfaces anx materials near by, automobiles, which then add to the exponentially increasing conflagration.

 In the chaparral biome unlike a mid-latitude forests there are no large masses of solid wood fuel, which require higher temperatures and longer periods of heating to ignite. The species of trees and understory vegetation in California at high elevations (and mid latitude forests) typically have 2 to 3 foot diameter tree trunks and large branches which take long periods of high temperature to heat to ignition levels. 

Chaparral on the other hand is a finely divided, dry wax-leaved fuel,  surrounded by oxygen laden air, forming  an almost explosive mixture of low ignition temperature fuel and hot air.  (Viz “dust explosions”).  

For this reason, so called “controlled burns” to reduce fuel levels may not be practical solutions in Chaparral biome dominated areas.  Though in more typical forests at higher elevations where controlled ground fires can safely burn downed tree limbs and understory vegetation, such policies can help reduce incidence of very hot fires. 

What about the strong winds? The dry air? The Sant’Anna Winds?

These wild fire-generating meteorological phenomena are related to weather, climate and geography.

Los Angeles is located on the west coast,  parts of  which are at or near sea level. But as one travels east, the topography becomes mountainous  rising over a series of roughly north south mountain ranges such as  the Coast Ranges, Panamint Range and a southern extension of the Sierra Nevada. (While the San Gabriel Mts are part of the “transverse range” which trend east west). 

Continuing east over these coastal ranges and the higher Sierra Nevada one enters into a physigraphic province known as the Great Basin (GB), the base of which has an average elevation of about 4000 feet above sea level. The GB is surrounded by other high mountain ranges (it is an actual enclosed “basin”). 

The only outlet for cold air trapped in the GB is in the southwest, where air can descend from its 4000 foot base level, flow through and over the Costal Ranges and into the Los Angeles physiographic basin. 

Since the flowing air is forced to channel through narrow valleys surrounding Los Angeles where, (based on the Bernoulli  principle,) aid flow compressed into a narrow channel speeds up and can reach hurricane force levels (74 mph) and higher (some have been reported at 90 mph)

In January* winter weather patterns often carry very cold masses of dry air into the Great Basin. Typical January average low temperatures hover around 15F, with daily highs at about 39F. These cold air masses are also low in Relative Humidity which is a measure of how close air is to saturation of water vapor.  RH in January varies but thpical cold dry air has RH values often at around 66% . 

*It is notable that weather of January2025 was affected by la Nina “weather” which tends to bring colder drier weather outbreaks to the Great Basin in Nevada. 

In this process of air flowing from higher regions to lower levels air is compressed by the increase in overlying layers. Compression causes air to heat up according to standard gas laws (PV=nRT).  (Recall how a bicycle pump heats up as one pumps (compresses) air into a bicycle tire.) As a result, for each 1000 foot descent, air heats up by about 3.5deg F.  Significantly, as air heats up its RH (humidity) decreases. Thus, GB air which starts out as a cold low humidity air mass to begin with, dries out significantly as it passes over interceding mountain ranges then descends into the LA basin. 

A mass of cold GB air descending into the Los Angeles Basin would have passed over several mountain ranges, losing moisture and heating as it descended. Air at a 39F day-time GB temperature, descending from 4000 feet to sea level, would heat up by (3.5x4= 14F) 14 F degrees, arriving at the LA Basin 14 degrees warmer or  (39F+14F =53F) at 53 F but its RH of 66% would have been drastically reduced . 

On its passage this now warmer dry air is forced to flow through narrow steep sided east west valleys and canyons where wind speeds increase (Bernoulli Effect) at times to hurricane force levels.  

All that is needed under these circumstances is a spark from a toppled power-line, a careless smoker tossing a lit cigarette butt, or a still smoldering  week old fire, the result of inebriated teenagers “year-end” celebrations coaxed back to life by powerful winds!

 

ON 2024 IS IT THE HOTTEST YEAR?— COPERNICUS, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND WHAT WE KNOW WE KNOW

The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) is hyperventilating about its claim that 2024 is the first full year to exceed the1.5C above pre-industrial (1855) temperature level. 

The C3S adds that 2024 is confirmed to be the warmest year on record globally, and 2024 is the first calendar year that the average global temperatures exceeded 1.5C above the 1850 pre-industrial level. (See Copernicus Service Climate change Service, Jan 10, 2024 downloaded 1/1024).

Both of those statements proved to be incorrect (typical climate hyperbole) but the chattering, climate addicted media did no checking and only added to the hyperbole. 

The Guardian’s Oliver Millman added: “2024 Was The Hottest Year On Record …US Scientists Confirm” by Oliver Millman, 1/10/24. “Climate crisis is pushing humanity into temperatures we have never previously experienced.”

My first complaint is the hypocrisy of using poor Nicholas Copernicus, (1473-1543) one of the early fathers of modern science as the “sponsor” of the less than scientific “climate service”. 

Copernicus a 15^thcentury Polish polymath and astronomer most likely would have objected to the use of his name to give credence to an organization which tends toward religion rather than objective unbiased science. It was Copernicus who proposed the revolutionary heliocentric model for the solar system—a theory anathema to religious dogma and ideologues of that time, who — insisted that only an Earth centric system —which God created—could be considered. All other theories could not be considered, evaluated or even discussed. 

Much like modern day climate-change dogmatists, adherents of the geocentric system of the 15th century preferred authors and reports which used observations to support their theories, and ignored those that did not. They preferred to posit a theory and garner facts to support their theory, rather than make observations using inductive reasoning to gather observations from which to develop a working hypothesis …like Copernicus.

Copernicus was a free thinker first…and famously stated (in a here a shortened form). “True knowledge is the result of an evaluation of what we know we know, and what we know we don’t know.” If only the EU, C3S would actually incorporate Copernicus’ directive on knowledge into their calculations..what they think they know may more closely approximate Copernicus’ ideas of true knowledge.  

Copernicus, a true scientist who put his own carefully recorded observations before commonly accepted theories and religious dogma, suffered in silence and kept his major life’s work unpublished, rather than face opprobrium and personal attack, well aware that his observations, analysis and valid conclusions were not “acceptable” to the dogmatists of his day. 

His major opus (De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, or “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies”) published in 1543 would make Copernicus immediately famous. De Revolutionibus was long completed, though Copernicus fearful of the outcry and personal attacks, only permitted it to be published from his deathbed. A great scientist and thinker, he was not a battling heroic figure of science…perhaps unlike Darwin who stoically faced his detractors. 

But what about the EU Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the statements of what they think they know? They think they know that the Earth temperature is static, that 1850 was somehow a stable temperature period from which they could evaluate our more recent temperatures. 

The idea of a static Earth is like the idea of an earth-centric solar system…the facts and observations do not match with the dogma that is preferred by the climate ideologues. 

The fact is that Earth is a living planet with a molten interior which generates massive amounts of heat and outpourings of molten magma, charged often with volcanic gases.  Earth’s surface has islands and continents of lighter rocks floating upon a surface of dense dark rocks which underlay the continents and comprise the surface of the ocean basins. The continents slide over the denser rock surface and collide, separate and recombine in a long period cyclic pattern. Thus the Earth’s atmosphere and its temperature is a result of the interaction of the rocky Earth, interior Earth and the organisms living on the surface—the biosphere. These forces are in constant flu and dynamic change—-the opposite of static or stable temperatures like the 1850-59 period which the C3S and others would like which to think as the point at which the Earth should be and remain. 

So it takes some mental un-Copernian mental contortions to claim that 1850 should be some basis point from which we must decide how warm or cool our planet should be. But that is what the C3S think what they know.

Sadly, when an hypothesis begins to have the acceptance level of religious doctrine, as has the climate change “religion”, enormous peer and economic pressures are placed on researchers to confirm the doctrine (theory or hypothesis) with supporting data and submerge or ignore data that does not support the accepted theory. The economic social and academic advancement pressures too often result in heightened levels of what is often euphemistically termed “confirmation bias”.  

But what about past Earth temperatures on our constantly changing, colliding continents, mountain building, belching out of gas, with growth and demise of forests and other organism which altered the mixture atmospheric gases of the physical Earth?  

As a result, Earth temperatures have varied enormously over the planet’s long history, largely due to the levels of vulcanism and related amounts of CO2  in the atmosphere.  (Vulcanic out gassing generates mostly CO2 and H2O with minor amounts of other gases such as sulfides)  Outgassing has generated gases which have interacted with the oceans, lithosphere and atmosphere over Earth’s long history.  

The glacial epochs are an example.  Where I sit and write this today, in a home on the top of an 150 foot high Pleistocene glacial moraine which was, 17,000 years ago, covered by more than 1,000 feet of glacial ice.  That massive ice sheet which left behind automobile-sized boulders on the property has since melted back to Greenland, due to the Earth’s generalized warming trend of the last 20 millennia.  

So rather than being static, Earth’s temperature's have always flucuated. Earth’s warmest and more recent periods occurred during the Cretaceous (Age of Dinosaurs) 145-66MYA when a great deal of vulcanism, and sea floor spreading generated large amounts of CO2, a greenhouse gas. This caused extensive global warming.  As a result, Earth temperatures rose in Cretaceous times to its  highest level during the entire Phanerozoic Era (an era which spanned @ 500My).  

During the Cretaceous Period average surface land temperatures in the tropics were about 35C (95F). During this period  the tropical Atlantic Ocean surface water temperatures reached about 29C (84F). No glacial ice sheets existed in the Arctic or Antarctic, and sea level was much higher than today. 

Temperature change, a direct result of the Earth’s dynamic nature is the natural state of the Earth. It has been warmer and cooler many times…..but never has remained static or stable over any considerable length of time. 

Relatively recent studies of long ice cores (@ 2 miles long) taken in the glacial ice of central Greenland called temperature “proxies” have permitted scientists to reconstruct changes in temperatures using ratios of Oxygen isotopes ( O2 gas occurs in a light form O16, and a heavy form O18). Meteorologists have established that the lighter isotope  (O16) occurs at a higher level in cold air. Making controlled tests and relating this back to laboratory experiments can generate actual temperature estimates taken from the ratio of oxygen in measured sections of the ice cores. These data can be relatable as proxies for global temperatures for the last 10 thousand years. (See Jason Box et.al, Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Air Temperature Variability 1840-2007, J.Climate, 22, pp 4029-4049. And Carbon Brief, carbonbrief.org, author, Zeke Hausfather, 3/5/2019,)

The Jason Box Ice core data and Carbon Brief, data indicate temperature of Greenland ice core data which may be used as proxies to make the following estimates of global temperatures. These data are imperfect as an estimate of actual temperatures but can be used to indicate generalized trends. If Greenland was much warmer than today we can assume that North America was also warmer—by how much is less definite: 

 

8000 years ago global temperatures (as recorded in Greenland Ice cores) was 3.2C warmer than that of the 1850-59 preindustrial level climate activists have established as a base line.  Eight millennia ago there were no major anthropogenic additions of CO2, people were burning dried cow dung and sparse wood for fuel. At that time, 8000 BP the Neolithic Revolution was occurring in the Fertile Crescent in Mesopotamia in Middle East. The last of the megafauna of Ice Age die off. Glaciers melt, sea level rises.  Early humans began making more refined stone tools, which were specialized for one purpose than being multipurpose in the Paleolithic. They were also domesticating crops and animals. Small settlements began to develop into the first cities. 

5200 years ago global temperatures in Greenland were warmer than today and well higher than the 1850-59 “preindustrial level” The Stone Age ends when humans in Near East began making tools of bronze. In Egypt writing is developed and history is recorded. In North America indigenous peoples around Great Lakes discover native copper and use it to fashion jewelry, knives, and pendants. 

Skipping a good deal of time…

1900 CE global temperatures were just as they are today @1.5C warmer than the 1850 59 preindustrial level, coal and oil were in use as fuels but not as much as we use today yet global temperatures were at the same level. 

1940 CE. global temperatures were are @ 2.0 C warmer than the 1850 59 preindustrial level, yet the level of coal and oil consumption was at a small fraction of modern use. These results should be investigated further. 

So what do we know we know…First we know that the Earth’s temperature fluctuations are the natural state. WE know that for the last 20 thousand years we have been in an Earth warming period and the glaciers all around the world are retreating not because of human intervention—they were retreating long before humans trod the land.  We know that adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will increase global warming. We know we don't know whether the Earth temperature trends warmer or cooler…a new glacial era is very possible. We know we know that the year 2024 was probably not the hottest in human history. We know that the 1900s probably had similar temperatures as today.  The 1940s was decidedly hotter (but with much less hyperbole about climate change and fewer temp recordings).  And 8000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent the temperatures were more than twice the so called preindustrial level. So the hyperbole of the  c3s and the media is just that hyperbole…

Finally as the history of the Earth idncates the Earth will get cooler or warmer…we can not tell. We can be sure our feeble attempts at climate control will not change very much. We should not turn to rubbing dry sticks together to keep warm..we are best served by ending the precipitous acts of those who think that we are faced with an existential threat…yes the world is getting warmer, and our excesses have increased that warming trend—but we did not precipitate the warming trend that has been going on for the last 20 millennia—we only started burning coal and oil in excess only a century ago. 

However..there is no harm in moderating our own impact on the atmosphere…We can reduce greenhouse gas emission without crippling our economy. We can modulate temperatures and reduce fossil fuel consumption, we can protect all forests whch act as sinks for carbon, we can plant more trees, we can cut down less forests, we can be better wiser more humane conservators of our fabulous earth and its magnificent diverse lithosphere oceans and biosphere. We can protect all of our lonely blue planet in the black void or space —most likely the only one in our galaxy. it’s unique in the near universe—perhaps the entire universe-like you. 

PISCINE AQUA CULTURE—NO FREE FISH LUNCH—NOT WHAT WE EXPECTED?

 

In the 1990s I traveled to a small coastal village in Italy, for an extended vacation. Each morning I would arise and walk down to the village center, reaching my destination - a small cafe—by eight thirty or nine in the morning, where I would enjoy an espresso and purchase a fresh loaf of crusty bread. On the way back to our residence, I often passed by the village fish market. But the display window with its clean glass window displaying a well scrubbed, sloping wood display counter which was always clean and empty. 

One day my curiosity got the better of me, and I poked my head in to ask, “Excuse me, I see your sign, but tell me, how do you keep in business? I never see any fish here?”

“Sir, the fishermen arrive here at 5:30 AM, we put their catch out for sale at 6:00, and by 7:00 or 7:30 all of the fresh daily catch is sold. To buy fish here, you must come early.                 

Italians prefer only absolutely fresh fish. Fish was available, every day in the week, but was very expensive…and you had to arise early to get it. 

From the late 1960s on fish prices were constantly rising. Increased demand, larger and more efficient trawlers sent wild fish stocks into decline. Aquaculture seemed like a good solution. 

In the 1990s fish aquaculture became well established and we all welcomed the concept of fresh fish at lower prices and the support for the protection of wild fish stocks. By that time the earth’s human population had exceeded the 6 billion mark and ocean fishing had reached its maximum production limit.More factory ships could be built, but the world’s fish stocks could not sustainably produce any more fresh-fish tonnage.

Aquaculture seemed a reasonable solution. By growing fish on land in ponds or in cages off shore, it was thought that these fish could help satisfy the human demand for fish, slow the decline of wild fish stocks which for many species (such as the Atlantic Cod) which were approaching the critical point beyond which these species  could not recover and begin to recover populations.  

Fish farming was born!  Today more fish sold in fish markets are farmed fish than wild caught. But the problem aquaculture was touted to solve, did not materialize.  Aquaculture has exacerbated fish stock problems rather than offering  a solution.

 Aquaculture has put more strains of wild stocks of many species of fish since much of the food farmed-fish and shrimp are fed is derived from wild fish stocks. Then too, the massive tonnage of forage fish, such as anchovies, herring, and other small schooling fish which serve as major sources of food for predator fish and sea mammals has has exacerbated the food shortage plight of these other wild species—even those not sought for as food sources such as sea mammals. 

The reason?  The most popular farmed fish sold are Salmon and Tuna. These fish are predators or piscivorous, that is: they eat other fish. Piscivorous fish such as Tuna and Salmon  require about 5 pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of farmed fish.  A ten pound Salmon requires about fifty pounds (50lbs) of wild caught fish to reach market size.

As it functions today aquaculture of fish is not sound economics or effective natural resource management, and will only exacerbate the problems fish farming was meant to solve.

We should be cognizant of the impact of over-harvesting of the forage fish schools which are heavily impacted by over-harvesting as sources for fish farming.  These practices result  in population crashes of these primary food sources which in turn have a deleterious effect on the general ecology of the oceans and directly on the populations of other natural predators such as whales and porpoises.   

There is no free lunch. Humans can not continue to take fish resources from the oceans without impacting the well being of general marine ecology. 

 

ON THE ORIGIN OF SEX, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

In the dim past of Earth’s long, 4.5 billion year history, perhaps 2.5 billion years ago, single celled organisms reproduced, but had no sex.  Reproduction, and evolutionary change, the main function of sex, occurred only by simple cell division. In this process each cell when it reached “maturity” and with no further need for stimulation, simply divided into two equal parts…equally sharing the parent cell’s genetic material to create two almost physically identical offspring cells.

This reproduction process has been variously termed “budding”, “cell division”’ “sporulation”, etc. The end products of the process are two new growing daughter cells with little change in their physical properties (which are the expression of their genetic material). In simple cell division the only genetic change is that caused by random and probably rare DNA mutations…perhaps as a result of ionizing radiation, chemical exposure, or other random alterations to DNA during the physical division (mitosis)  of the parent cell.  Ionizing radiation was likely much more common on the surface of ancient Earth. 

Darwinian Natural Selection depends on minor variations in the physical characteristics of each species.  For species to evolve, physical variations must exist in a species, these are exposed to a trial for adaptation in the existing environment.  Those that are adaptive or provide some advantage for survival are conserved while other manifestation of those variations are lost. The physical variations of species permit  the potential of selection to take place.  Few variations in a species tends to slow or retard speciation (formation of a new more adapted species) —and adaptation of these new species to a modified environment. If species have little physical (genetic) variation natural selection is limited. Those species best adapted to the environment survive and others perish. 

As a result, the slow rate of mutagenic change or alteration of the genetic material, as in asexually reproducing species—must have resulted in corresponding slow rates of evolutionary change. Speciation -the evolution of new species—slowed down. As the Earth evolved—its physical environment changed—those species formed in earlier times, were not variable enough to adapt and thus perished. Asexual reproduction simply did not produce enough variations in physical form for biological evolution to keep pace with the slow physical alteration of the planet upon which these organisms lived.  

Our planet Earth is in constant flux undergoing continual slow change in temperature, atmosphere and oceans, even the locations and positioning of the continents themselves on the Earth’s globe are in constant change.  These early sexless simple organisms were likely less competent to adapt to the new physical conditions of Earth as continents moved over its surface, rove into and under each other , produced mountain ranges and continents split apart to form ocean basins. Inability to adapt resulted in death and die off of these early “sex starved” species.  In this early sexless world organisms evolved only slowly as they struggled to adapt to a constantly altering planetary environment.  But competion was coming. 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SEX

About two billion years ago, during the Proterozoic Era, some single celled organisms which reproduced had reprduced asexually by simple “budding” or fission evolved a more costly and complex process known as sexual reproduction.   Sexual reproduction provided a survival benefit for these new cells.  

In sexual reproduction the cell nucleus undergoes a complex intracellular process called a“reduction division”. The nucleus of these cells divide in a special way (meiosis) to form offspring cells or “gamete” cells which have only one-half of the genetic material of the parent cell. To form a new individual (offspring cell) these (gamete) cells must combine with other gametes of the same species (each with only half of the genetic material of a parent cell) to form a new offspring.  

This sexual process is more costly to the individual, requires more time and more energy, but it provides an evolutionary advantage, by producing greater genetic variation in the gamete offspring cells (more variation ) as a result of the more complex, (more “accident prone”?) reduction division, and then the random recombination of the often free moving gametes, which often must combine in an alien environment (as in marine organisms). Sexual reproduction provides many more chances for gene alteration, intracellularly during the more complex formation of gametes, and then during the process of sexual combination of the gametes often in an alien chemically challenging extracellular environment. 

All of these circumstances results in greater genetic variations and higher levels of physical diversity of offspring. As the result of these developments of the process of sexual reproduction increased the rate at which evolution progressed. Such a process favors the evolutionary selection and adaptation to a rapidly changing environment like that of planet Earth. Perhaps without sex, Earth as a planet may have altered physically over time but, with only a very primitive level of biosphere and little or no advanced living organisms. Humans may have never evolved on such a planet.  The difficulty of this transmission from asexual to sexual reproduction may be one reason that our near-by known habitable planets remain radio silent and leave us seemingly very much alone in the near by universe. 

That is why all paramecia and pachyderms vary both genetically and in their physical manifestation (termed the phenotype). All humans too!  Diversity is a natural manifestation of almost every living organism. Its benefit lies in the necessity of evolution to operate by moulding each species to evolve into specimens better adapted to the environment in which it lives. 

Sexual reproduction provided offspring cells which had greater variation  than sexless cells. That greater ability to adapt to continuously changing environments gave “sexy cells” a great advantage for survival. 

Thus by nature and for over two billion years all life is by natural design, unequal, and diverse.  We can not change that.

So what is sex good for?  Evolution.  Sexual reproduction permitted evolutionary change which was rapid enough to keep pace with a rapidly changing Earth. It permitted the living earth (its biosphere) to continue to survive and to become more complex and better adapted to its changing surface.