Introduction
The upward trend of intensifying climate warming and future consequences of same are indeed startling! It’s a fight between humans and the physics of deadly climate change – which becomes irreversible unless CO2 (carbon dioxide)and CH4 (methane) emissions are drastically reduced globally. The resultant climate is efficiently melting the Arctic which contains huge quantities of CO2 and trillions of tons of CH4 below the permafrost. And CH4 is 72 times more toxic than CO2 in the first 20 years of its lifetime, thus creating a double heat-producing warfront. The process starts when CO2 and CH4 translate into heat-trapping gases; then into melting ice; then into rising fires, floods, and oceans; then into destruction of food supplies: then into inability of plant, animal and human life to survive.
CO2 is produced both naturally and by human activities. Naturally produced by forest fires. Droughts caused by a warming climate increase the frequency and intensity of wild fires, and extreme droughts have a significant effect on atmospheric CO2 levels because plants and animals need water as well as CO2 to grow (the respiration of plants and animals.)
A Layman and Scientific View of Uncontrollable CO2 Emissions
Human activities produce climate change by: the burning of fossil fuels for road and air transportation, power generation, heating and cooling of buildings; manufacturing and making cement; deforestation to support agriculture; forest clearing for housing; and by other land use changes or practices. Human activities and population growth are effectively moving carbon far more rapidly into the atmosphere than it is removed naturally. The result is that humans are adding ever growing amounts of extra CO2 into the atmosphere, in fact 51 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalents a year including the other greenhouse gasses - methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons.
In layman terms, the atmosphere acts like a blanket which inhibits heat loss. Similarly, the warm human body loses heat to the cold air. The blanket inhibits and slows this body heat loss. Thus, you can stay warmer under a blanket.
The Earth loses heat to the cold universe. But, as noted, the atmosphere acts like a blanket which inhibits this heat loss. Therefore, the Earth’s surface remains warmer than it would be without the atmosphere. The surface loses heat to the atmosphere – but less than it would otherwise lose directly to space. Just as you lose less heat with the blanket than you would to the air without the blanket.
In scientific terms, in both the blanket and atmospheric cases, the heat always flows from warm to cold. That’s consistent with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. But the processes of heat transfer are quite different. For the blanket effect, it is mainly heat conduction; for the atmospheric greenhouse effect it is radiation.
Sun energy arrives in the form of visible light and ultraviolet radiation. The Earth then emits some of this energy as infrared radiation. GHGs in the atmosphere “capture” some of this heat, then re-emit it in all directions – including back to the Earth’s surface. Through this process, CO2 and other GHGs (e.g., CH4) keep Earth’s energy cycle balance at a surface temperature of 33C (59.4 F) warmer than it otherwise would be without them.
However, more and more quantities of CO2 in the atmosphere from burning higher amounts of fossil fuels and the emergence of positive feedbacks increase the greenhouse “heat capture” warming effect – bringing the energy cycle balance way out of balance. More thermal energy is trapped by the atmosphere, making the planet become warmer than it would naturally. To repeat, GHGs absorb a wide range of energy – including infrared radiation energy (heat) emitted by the Earth – and then re-emit it. The net effect is that less total infrared radiation escapes out to space, thereby warming up the Earth’s air.
For one million years in preindustrial times up to 1750, CO2 atmospheric concentrations averaged 280 ppm annually. Since then, the concentration has increased to a HUGE 417 ppm today and is rising +2.2 ppm/year. An increase of 137 ppm (1750 vs. 2020), of which 109 ppm (80%) occurred in the Tiny, TINY geological timeframe of 60 years (1960- 2020). This CO2 explosion was intensified by a comparable explosion in world population from 2.4 billion in 1950 to 7.8 billion in 2020, also in a Tiny, Tiny period of 70 years.
That population explosion is the result of and a contributor to the enormous technological, economic, industrial advances since 1960 – leading to record-high CO2 emissions being trapped in the atmosphere the last 60 years at a level not seen on Mother Earth for one million years! Annual CO2 emissions are now around ±38 billion tons, rising to ±48 billion tons including other GHGs (e.g., methane).
We are trending towards an existential climate crisis of the Earth warming up 3C to 4C, to 5C (worst scenario) by 2050 or 2060. For all living species, that hard to-survive planet “heating-up” reality is menacingly on a path to irreversibility in the next 30 years. It’s truly an uphill global struggle NOT to exceed a 2C temperature rise in 2050. Biden’s team is aware what this challenge calls for.
The global average surface temperature across land and ocean has increased 1.19C since the pre-industrial era (1880-1900). That may seem small, but it means a significant increase in accumulated heat. In 2019, 85% of the Earth’s surface was much warmer than the average surface temperature during 1951-1980. Through November 2020, global warming ended up the hottest on record for the planet – that’s despite a recent La Nina that caused cooler than average sea surface temperatures across the tropical Pacific ocean slightly lowering the global average temperature for a short period.
The overall upward trend in the globally averaged land and ocean surface temperature shows that more areas are warming than cooling. The extra heat has been powerfully driving regional and seasonal temperature extremes and variations, causing massively destructive fires and tornadoes, intensifying rainfall, reducing snow cover and sea ice, changing habitat ranges for plants (e.g., food) and animals.
What Does All This Mean?
Research in 2020 has shown that global warming by far is not slowing down. It’s still growing. A critical task that ‘must’ be activated is a well-coordinated, rapid multi-faceted green energy transition to a 60% green energy norm by 2030, to an 85% green energy norm in 2050. This requires reducing current CO2 concentrations of +417 ppm to below 350 ppm in next 30 years. This in turn means bringing down the annual average CO2 increase of +2.2 ppm today to ZERO by 2050.
Sadly, the speed, scale, technical strength, innovation pace, and cooperation among nations are still far from being on track to meet a maximum surface warming of NOT more than 2C in 2050. To achieve that target, policy actions and technology for getting out of fossil fuels FAST must be accelerated. Some promising multi-faceted Bottom-Up and Top-Down actions, big and small, for dramatically replacing, removing, storing, reducing CO2 and CH4 gases from the air and production processes include:
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accelerating advanced development of effective carbon capture and storage systems, including, for example, CO2 recycling for covered food production systems
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addressing the low cost carbon-capture potential of a widespread cultivation of industrial hemp; it grows incredibly fast in all sorts of soil conditions making it a very powerful carbon sink superior to trees
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rapid development of an exciting new power cycle technology (the Allam Cycle) that can produce low cost, reliable, flexible power from natural gas – while also generating no atmospheric emissions and capturing all CO2 emissions
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developing renewable energy boosters that overcome the intermittency of wind and solar, wind-solar hybrid generation, offshore floating wind mills
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taking advantage of a valuable by-product of geothermal power, ‘lithium’ which is a critical component of large scale battery technologies used in battery energy storage systems and electric vehicles
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developing advanced fuel cells and ‘green hydrogen’ created by the process of electrolysis of water
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investing in very advanced, clean, safe nuclear fusion or preferably fission or thorium-based power plants or possibly geothermal plants
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expanding significantly the planting of trees and strictly limiting deforestation
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eating plant-based foods and lab-based meat; adopting a far more efficient lifestyle versus feeding plants to animals and then eating the animals; de-concentrating animals and huge animal waste on industrial farms
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expanding on a large scale bicycle pathways in towns and medium-sized cities
Undertaking an aggressive combination of these ‘going green’ actions for getting out of fossil fuels by stopping GHS emissions aggressively before the warming irreversibility sets in in 2050 or 2060. A way of accomplishing this comes from Imperial College (in London) climate scientist Joeri Rogelj, who has a key role writing the next key climate evaluation report for the International Panel on Climate Change: He says, “It is our best understanding that, if we bring CO2 down to net zero, the warming will level off. The climate will stabilize in a decade or two. There will be very little to no additional warming. Our best estimate is zero.” Prof. Rogelj’s words show just how serious the CO2 emissions problem is.
CONCLUSION: CO2 has a lifespan of a 100 years, to 1,000 years, up to 10,000 years before it exits the atmosphere. A reduction in emissions today will lower far into the future the heating-up of our planet, but will not yield the reduced, cooler temperatures needed in the next ±10 years This means that heat-trapping greenhouse gases released today from cars, trucks, buses, airplanes, industrial plant activities, power plants, agricultural animal wastes, etc. are determining the survival existence of future generations of all living species.
These CO2 emission forces have been dramatically intensified and reinforced by the massive rise in population since 1950. Here’s a staggering picture of the historical 1850–2020 and projected 2020–2050 world population growth.
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1.2 billion in 1850, a 500 million 58% rise 1750-1850 (100 years)
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2.4 billion in 1950, a 1.2 billion 100% rise 1850-1950 (100 years
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7.8 billion in 2020, a 5.4 billion 225% rise 1950-2020 (70 years)
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9.8 billion in 2050, a 2.0 billion 26% rise 2020-2050 (30 years)
Note: 2.4 billion in 1950, a 7.4 billion 308% rise 1950-2050 (100 years)
Little wonder, when one relates above to the simultaneous leap in economic and industrial growth 1950-2020
(vs. 1850-2050), CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere in record Earth time to super ultra-dangerous concentration levels. The inevitable result? A mounting excessive overheating of the planet’s atmosphere, land, and oceans. One climate expert sums up in Plain English this sunlight “heat radiation-in” and sunlight “heat radiation-out” Earth heating- up imbalance that’s worsening right before our very eyes:
“Simply by being present in the atmosphere, CO2 absorbs infrared light radiation emitted by the Earth. You can liken this to what happens when you put a “blanket” over yourself. The fibres of the blanket, and the air trapped between those fibres, absorb the heat from your body and trap it near you, preventing it from quickly escaping into the larger volume of air in the room.
So, by absorbing the infrared light radiation, CO2 keeps the heat in the atmosphere longer; and the more CO2 you add to the air, the “thicker” the “blanket” becomes. We KNOW that the planet’s CO2 “blanket’ is more than a third thicker than it was before the industrial revolution. We KNOW that we are the ones thickening it. We KNOW that CO2 traps infrared light radiation. And we KNOW that the atmosphere and the ocean global temperatures are rising.”
We are going to have to evolve – much quicker than we can fathom perhaps – to a fundamental way of being a civilization that first protects the planet’s health to insure our own sustainable future. To avoid a massive die-off or a complete collapse, a dramatic reconfiguration of human society over the next 30-40 years is an absolute necessity. This cries for prioritizing, integrating the fundamental energy and lifestyle changes scientists are recommending.
Time is not on our side. Planet Earth reacts unkindly to manipulators or moderates who play with or deny risks of a once in a million years planetary climate change threat – hitting Earth hard in a TINY geological time period.
SEE: “Global Warming: How Hot Exactly Is It Going To Get?” by Kate Marvel, May 12, 2019
A study just released last July 8, 2019 by MIT geophysics Professor Daniel Rothman shows that carbon levels today could be fast approaching a ‘tipping point’ threshold that may trigger extreme ocean acidification. A threshold similar to that built up over many centuries that ultimately contributed to the Permian mass extinction 250 million years ago where 90% of life on Earth died out. During extensive ocean model testing by Professor Rothman and his MIT team, carbon was continuously pumped into the oceans. The ocean model eventually reached a threshold that triggered what MIT called ‘a cascade’ of chemical feedbacks, or ‘excitation,’ causing extreme acidification, greatly worsening the warming effects of the originally added carbon.
Frank Thomas The Netherlands May 3, 2021
Attachment:
Below is a short Overview of where selected countries are today based on 2019 per data of total CO emissions and CO2 emissions per capita. (Source: European Commission – 2020 Report):
COUNTRY 2019 CO2 Total Emissions 2019 CO2 Tons Per Capita
% Share of World Emissions
United States 5.1 billion tons = 13.43% 16.1 tons
Canada 588 million tons = 1.54% 15.7 tons
Europe-EU-27=UK 5.6 billion tons = 8.70% 5.5 tons
UK 365 million tons = 0.96% 5.5 tons
Germany 703 million tons = 1.85% 9.1 tons
France 324 million tons = 0.85% 5.0 tons
Netherlands 156 million tons = 0.41% 9.1 tons
Belgium 104 million tons = 0.27% 9.0 tons
Italy 332 million tons = 0.87% 5.6 tons
Spain 259 million tons = 0.68% 5.4 tons
Scandinavia 32.5 million tons = 0.08% 6.3 tons
China 11.5 billion tons = 30.26% 8.1 tons
South Korea 652 million tons = 1.71% 12.7 tons
Australia 433 million tons = 1.14% 17.3 tons
Japan 1.2 billion tons = 3.05% 9.1 tons
India 2.6 billion tons = 6.83% 1.9 tons
The World 38 billion tons = 100% 4.87 tons
Note: China is designing and building very FAST a whole new generation of coal plants to cover current and expected ±10 year Gap in their inability to convert to 100% renewables.
By: Frank Thomas, The Netherlands, May 3, 2012
