What is the role of life in earths climate system

4 What is the role of life in the earth s climate system  

The non-living world tends to dissipate structures and therefore to increase entropy. However, because of its huge energy pools, the earth s internal geothermal heat and the Sun s radiation, both likely to remain over the entire expected lifetime of the earth, provide gradients to force geochemical cycling with the irreversible direction of oxidation and acidification (Fig. 2.30). 

Only the living world is able to reduce entropy by creating structures, or in other words, to move the system back from equilibrium. Indeed, the central role of life (more exactly, autotrophic organisms) is to maintain the cycle shown in Fig. 2.31, starting with light-induced electrolytic water splitting, and subsequent parallel -but, important to note, in separated organs - reduction of CO2 into hydrocarbons 

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