Climate change is here to stay for the foreseeable future and the only question is how are we to limit its impacts. Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions directly impact not only our climate, but also our health. Over the last 12 months, 78% (6.3 billion) of the global population experienced at least 31 days of extreme heat. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts we are in for the worst hurricane season Many of us have flown or driven through heavy smog in large cities, even years ago. The military has been researching climate change since the 1950's because it impacts its operations. Much of the global militarization is devoted to protecting the flow of petroleum. The fossil fuel industry has obviously also known about climate change for a long time and has devoted significant resources to disinformation. The Kyoto Conference officially recognized it in 1997. According to Geoffrey A. Ozin ("The Story of CO2", Toronto Press 2020), there are about 100 companies that are responsible for 71% of the emissions, with no one going after them. Most of them are transnational oil companies or state-owned oil companies. In addition, military (operations, bases, training) and war emissions are not included in this! A related issue: During the 1970s it was recognized that man-made, ozone-depleting chemicals were destroying the ozone layer, but it took until 1987 (The Montreal Protocol) for regulators to start legislation. It will take many decades, if ever, for the ozone layer to recover – meanwhile, other chemicals also responsible for climate change are complicating the recovery.
We need to know what has brought us to this critical point to understand what needs to be done. In this first of a pair of articles, I am going to describe what is causing our climate to change. In the next one I will talk about tipping points as we come increasingly closer to the 1.5°C mark – where, if reached, we would have no hope of being able to control climate change at all. It would put most of our planet’s life forms on the way to the end of the line.
To put climate change in context we need to understand that outer space is -270°C.
Earth would be frozen, except for an incredibly thin layer of atmosphere. It is the composition of the atmosphere that has protected us from space. It is a dynamic, complex system that has taken millions of years to find a balance that would support life. The sun's ultraviolet rays are able to penetrate the atmosphere; this warms the earth, which re-radiates it as heat back into the atmosphere. The atmosphere contains gases such as CO₂ that have been able to trap that heat (The Greenhouse Effect) preventing it from escaping to outer space. Millions of years ago, there was a lot of CO₂ in the atmosphere and earth was quite a hot place. Nature sequestered CO₂ by burying organic material deep in the earth, which, under heat and pressure, formed oil, gas and coal. We have been so busy bringing it back to the surface and burning it up that we have changed that CO₂ concentration and the atmosphere is overheating again. Under 'normal' conditions it takes about 100 years for emitted carbon to be absorbed by the planetary systems. This is important because it means emissions from decades ago are still very much in the atmosphere and will be for quite some time, accumulating. If we keep putting more in, at an increasing rate, we can only blame ourselves for the problems created.
In our own lifetimes, there hasn't seemed like much was changing and we get desensitized by reports of extreme weather in other parts of the world, or even in our own country. However, consider that the changes we have caused in such a brief amount of time would have taken place over 10,000 years in untouched nature, allowing many life forms time to adapt. (Even so, unlucky others would still have gone extinct.) At 1.5°C change in global temperature, we can already take credit for the extinctions of 30% of the life forms on this planet – even if we were to stop burning fossil fuels now. For places like the Canadian Arctic, we are already over 2°C of warming. This is because the arctic ice has been melting and the exposed, darker water absorbs more radiation from the sun (the albedo effect) instead of that radiation getting reflected off snow and ice. It was something like 53°C in India last week, so areas that were already hot are getting hotter. What has kept us from really extreme temperature rises is the ocean itself. Water is good at absorbing the heat and has been able to absorb 80% of it. It is also able to absorb about 1/3 of that carbon we have been putting into the atmosphere, carbon which would have kept a lot more heat from escaping into space. It is the temperature changes in the oceans that are causing the climate to change, and are causing the increased frequency of extreme weather events. However, as the ocean warms up, it becomes less able to absorb more heat, and its ability to absorb carbon also slows down. (And yet we robotically emit more GHGs than ever.) What is also at play here are ocean currents. They enable the upwelling of cooler water from the ocean depths. When arctic ice, which contains no salt, melts, it is denser than salt water and slows the movement of warmer water from the south (via the Gulf Stream) moving northward. Also, with so much heat getting absorbed by surface water, it reduces the water mixing that brings cooling water up from the depths, and so the hot water is staying on the surface.
How is life in the oceans doing? Not good. Life in the oceans is very much adapted to temperature zones. Coral reefs, the birthplace of so much life in the oceans, are bleaching and disappearing. There are some parts of the ocean that are already up to 37°C and would be dangerous for us to swim in for even a short time, let alone be suitable for fish. Plankton, which forms the base of the food chain in the ocean, likes cooler water. Plankton are also the lungs of the earth, producing about 1/3 of the oxygen we breathe (photosynthesis). One form of plankton, the Coccolith, binds carbon in shells which, when they die, sink to the floor of the ocean, becoming sequestered carbon. This is a significant amount of carbon in the earth's chemical balance. When the ocean absorbs CO₂, it becomes more acidic, which affects the Coccolith's ability. Shellfish and the bones in fish are not doing well either.
Not only are we experiencing increased crop failures on land, but the 99% of Earth’s life that lives in the ocean is taking a big hit as well. We need to be completely weaned off fossil fuels by 2050, and must figure out how to cope with the damage we have created. Otherwise, we are all in deep trouble, globally! Globally we have to stop whining and get our act together!