What is happening
Reading time: 3 minutesIt’s us. It’s happening quickly. We are doing something about it but not quickly enough.
Human activities are resulting in a rapid addition of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The result is the planet is warming rapidly and natural systems that have been in place for tens of thousands of years are changing.
A bunch of carbon was buried in the earth for millions of years, the climate settled, then we decided to dig it up and burn it to power our economy. That’s disrupting the climate very rapidly.
What are the indicators?
- Carbon dioxide concentration is rising
- The temperature on land is rising
- The ocean temperatures are rising
- Sea ice is shrinking
- Glaciers are melting
- Sea levels are rising
Source: Professor Ed Hawkins (University of Reading) and ShowYourStripes.info
Then what
With the disruption will come enhanced droughts, floods, worse storms, sea-level rises and more. We are also heading towards potentially irreversible Climate Tipping points where the planet’s adjustments to the rising temperature results in things that accelerate the changes via feedback loops. At this point it will be very difficult for humans to slow these changes down.
For example, if the permafrost melts and emits more methane gas - this contributes to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, adding to the heating. Which melts more permafrost …
It’s not just the air that is getting warmer, the oceans are too. Also as the oceans absorb CO2 it is changing their overall chemistry which has an impact on fish, coral and all the other organisms in the ocean.
There’s many types of greenhouse gases and they each have their own lifespan and forcing effect on the temperature. We mainly talk about carbon-dioxide, and most of overall emissions are reduced to the equivalent of CO2. Think of it a bit like currency conversion. For accounting / target purposes shorthand rather than list of each gas each time, we shorten it to CO2 equivalent, or CO2e, or often now just carbon emissions.
For example, methane is another common greenhouse gas but has a much higher effect on the temperature but it doesn’t live as long. One tonne of methane is equivalent to many tonnes of CO2. Have you heard of natural gas? That’s methane.
The key to the problem is also it’s cumulative emissions that are the problem. Consider a bathtub.
On a long enough timeframe the planet will be fine, and might even return to the condition we’ve known it to be. Of course the climate has changed before and will change again even without human contributions. But the current pace of change is a major risk to civilisation because it’s disruption - it’s not a controlled change. It’s not simply a case of “It’ll be two degrees warmer, so what?” - where we grow our food, where we live, how we move, the diseases we face and much more are all going to be disrupted. Some parts of the planet will benefit, but a lot will not. What happens when hundreds of millions of people don’t have enough food and water?
Sounds alarming - that’s why it’s called a climate emergency.
And it’s already here and killing people.
It’s already driving up your insurance costs and taxes.