Global Climate Change is so Much Worse

CO2 levels are up and it is becoming more and more farcical to deny global warming and climate change. The effects of CO2 and other greenhouses gases have been having dominos effects that aren’t being widely reported on outside of the relevant scientific communities.

Even if all humanity was able to collectively bring civilizations greenhouse gas emissions to zero the math is not in our favour when it comes to the effect this will have on global climate change. So many decades of emissions have taken their toll and the simple chemistry of carbon dioxide’s lifecycle cast a stark reminder of the true scale of planetary issues.

CO2 doesn’t expire quickly, as a gas it would continue to linger in the various lawyers of the Earth’s atmosphere for centuries without ever being sequestered, that kind of inertia is; perhaps, the greatest danger of inert greenhouse gases.

There’s very little we can do to concentrate CO2 already loose in the atmosphere. While CO2 is a major greenhouse gas it’s still a bit player in the chemical markup of the Earth’ s atmosphere so manually scrubbing it out of the air isn’t practical.

The backlog of CO2 we’ve been dutifully adding to since the Industrial age began is another consideration. Some estimates have the time to process all the CO2 being well over 50 years. The accumulation is something that will not go away on its own regards less of what efforts are made to make human civilization “net zero”. To put the situation in perspective to bring CO2 levels into parity, a 50 year offset would see us reaching CO2 levels from 1975 no sooner than 2075. That of course is predicated on our not producing any additional CO2 for 50 years.

Of course these are based loosely on historical rates of CO2 absorption and sequestering. These rates that are unlikely to hold as global climate change wreaks havoc on many of the methods the Earth biosphere normally uses for absorbing CO2.

While many natural sources of CO2 emissions like volcanic eruption, geological weather, and natural gas vents will continue blissfully unimpeded by human activity, global warming has intensified many others. Widespread wildfires have gone from infrequent problem to annual catastrophes. Not only do these fires release massive amounts of CO2 but the activities needed to combat the fires, manage the aftermath and potentially rebuild all generally produce CO2, other greenhouse gases, or worse.

The intensifying hurricanes; a phenomenon already attributed to global warming, have similar effects, alongside flooding, and droughts. The intensifying weather damage infrastructure which not only required energy and materials to build but also to replace/repair.

There are also the unseen effects of all this destruction. The first is that any time settled areas are destroyed there is a chain reaction. Buildings tend not only to be made of materials that shouldn’t be burned and or submerged in water but there are often hazardous chemicals stored in said buildings. That’s synthetics, toxic, and caustic chemicals being spread into the air and water.

CO2 in far from the only greenhouse gas, human activity has unearthed a whole collection of hydrocarbons like methane, a host of dangerous oxides from the nitrogen and sulfur families. Industrial processes have increasingly required larger quantities of, and more exotic varieties of chemicals that inevitable find their way into nature where they have no means of being naturally broken down. They simple persist in larger and larger concentrations.

It’s not as if no efforts have been made to curb these dangerous trends. Environmental protection has shot up the list of national priorities around the globe and there have been many success stories. CO2 however has been a bit of an outlier. As idiomatic as Global Climate change has been politically efforts to cut CO2 emission are ongoing. Efforts to manual sequester CO2 however are lacking.

Looking at the handful of initiatives that employ carbon capture techniques on an industrial scale, they are laughable small in scope and scale, more of a cottage industry than anything else. Carbon capture is a topic that fades in and out of the lime light and is more well known for their industry scandals than ground-breaking work. These carbon capture initiatives are simple subtracting a drop in the proverbial bucket out of the gigatons of the CO2 that needs to be handled.

The ways CO2 is sequestered in nature are more pervasive and while some are insulated from the devastations of an ever changing global climate, most are in decline with no end in sight.

The single largest means of sequestering CO2 is being absorbed by the ocean. It makes sense ~70% of the earth surface is ocean so most ground level CO2 is at sea so to speak. Wind and waves turbulence drives CO2 gas into the water where its absorbed by phytoplankton or directly by the water as carbonic acid, thus beginning the long process of turning CO2 in to crude oil.

Other natural methods like growth from everything from forest and jungles, to wetlands and coral reefs are length processes. Even the fastest growing carbon sink type biomes move at rates that could never overtake the production of CO2.

Reforestation and ecological recovery can be aided by human intervention but the depletion of these natural ecosystems has been in decline and large scale reforestation has not been forthcoming. Despite the now almost universal knowledge that deforestation is a serious issue the dwindling acreage of old growth continues either from direct clear cutting and development or as a result of other effects like desertification, industrial pollution, and unfulfilled land remediation.

More and more acreage is left unfit for healthy ecosystems everywhere as the rage of global warming outstrips the adaptability of local organisms. In many places new growth can’t survive in the evolving climate while established plants become more vulnerable.

Soil itself being biologically active is subject to the same stresses. As the soil dies off it releases more CO2 and sets back any possible regeneration in the future.

There’s a niche aspect of rising ocean temperatures that was news to me until just recently. The majority of the ocean contains dissolved gases including CO2. The amount of dissolved gas is dependent on factors including temperature, and not in a good way. The Ocean is vast and even a slight change in temperature means CO2 starts to leak back into the atmosphere, potentially setting back natural sequestering processes by years.

Plankton; a vital micro-organism that serves crucial role in sequestering CO2 dissolved in water. The lifecycle of plankton is a fascinating topic on its own but in this context they are another ecosystem in decline due to global climate change and other human activities. As ocean temperatures wise and more and more foreign chemicals enter the water systems, plankton is having a hard time. Their population are declining as plankton strains find themselves in unseasonable warmer areas that they can’t survive in. Marine traffic; which is at an historic high, routinely decimates the delicate biology of plankton. Ship noise alone is sufficient to kill plankton even at a distance.

The ever increasing introduction of forever chemicals (Chemicals; usually synthetic ones, that don’t naturally breakdown) from all sorts of industries continually interferes with the reproduction of plankton species which are doing exponentially more damage to their populations reducing the oceans overall capacity.

Plankton isn’t the only ocean bound fauna that are being destroyed. Major species including expansive blue carbon ecosystems that include coral reefs and aquatic biomes like marshes and mangrove forests are constantly exposed to the same mounting chemical pollutants as the wider ocean.

As their biodiversity becomes poisoned the risk of massive die offs could set off environmental collapse with far reaching effects. While Forever chemicals are hazardous enough on their own, the conventional toxins and contaminants that the environment normally handles are going to build up regardless. That’s untold tons of pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, all sorts of pesticides remaining in the water supply.

The melting of glaciers and the receding permafrost around the globe mean a long term for source of carbon storage is being depleted. Millennia old CO2 trapped in the ice is thawing out and leeching back into the atmosphere. With the temperature expected to continue to increase, the glaciers will continue to spew CO2.

The fossil fuel industry; a large contributor of CO2, have left an even more dangerous legacy. The thousands of gas wells that have been setup across the globe are often left abandoned after they become unprofitable. These derelict wells are often poorly sealed and under maintained. These wells are leaking hydrocarbons, have been for years and will continue to do so indefinitely. There’s little to no political will to deal with these wells and even if there was, legally these wells have been so far divorced from any current legal entity that assigning any responsibility would be next to impossible. What does this fact have to do the topic. Well the burden for properly decommissioning these wells would fall to taxpayers and they had hate footing the bill for environmental cleanups. So not only is there no political will but no will to deal with them in general.

This is far from an exhaustive list. There are many aspects that we still understand clearly and it’s not clear what new problems will crop up in the future. The eventual problems from rising sea levels and soil degeneration hold the promise of fun new ways Global climate change will worsen. However just as there are unknown on the negative side of the equation there are positives as well. With all the increased attention to the situation more and more effort is going into finding new solution. Ideas with merit are still being uncovered.