Sustainable Earth - Climate change

Climate crisis

Sustainable Earth - Climate change

Humans will not be the next dinosaurs

With a sustainable earth, I mean sustainable for humankind. It’s unlikely that sapiens will survive as long as dinosaurs did, if you look at our self destructing behavior. Yes, humans are social. You take care of your family. You vote for what’s best for your country. But, this is at the cost of others. You are willing to share food as long as your family has plenty. You will give somebody a job, as your family has the better jobs. If others react aggressively because they don’t have enough to live reasonable, you think they are unreasonable. After all, you earned it.
But wouldn’t it be nice, if your children, your grand children, and your grand grand children can still live reasonable comfortable on this earth? Wouldn’t it be nice, if not only the rich has a decent live? But with more than 9 billion people on earth in 2050, this will be a big challenge.

Face the truth

Ok, we could talk about pollution in our own food chain. The fish we eat contains heavy metals, micro- and nanoplastics, if they are not dead because of pesticides, or gone because of overfishing. The list of endangered species is long. Bumblebees are going extinct so we have to use drones to pollinate plants. That’s mad. Yes, We live in a mad world.

But climate change looks the most devastating. Some things we can see coming, so we should act. When do we finally react and change our habbits? It’s not only politics, it’s also the things we do or don’t do, the stuff we buy or throw away. I guess, most people are in some state of denial. If you are poor, you don’t have the means, if you are rich, you don’t have the incentive.

Short horror story

The planet’s early ocean evaporated, water-vapor molecules were broken apart by ultraviolet radiation, and hydrogen escaped to space. With no water left on the surface, carbon dioxide built up in the atmosphere, leading to a so-called runaway greenhouse effect that created present conditions.

Venus is similar to Earth in terms of size and mass, but the temperature at the surface is 467 °C (872 °F) and it has clouds of sulfuric acid. Well, ok, Venus is of course a lot closer to the sun. It makes really a difference that earth 1.5 times further away from the sun.

Mars

Elon Musk wants to bring people to Mars. Like designated survivors for the human race. Except, Mars is just a big rock, not suitable for humans. No breathing atmosphere, no magnetosphere, very dry, very cold. Radiation will make you very sick. It’s safer in Chernobyl. It’s easer to survive in death vallay. If you have the money; it makes far more sense to try to resque earth and safe billions of lives, instead of invading Mars with a few people and die there.

Ice age

In the long run it will get colder. We are now in a interglacial period, called the Holocene. The interglacial period is the warmer period between ice ages where glaciers retreat and sea levels rise. You could say that we are delaying the next ice age, but it’s going way too fast! Starting global warming now is a disaster, we should wait multiple millennia. If we only look at Milankovitch cycles and ignore tectonic migration, we will be heading to the next ice age in about 12000 years. Mind you, the ice age will last 100.000 years. Human species proved they can survive an ice age, although it makes a difference if there are only 9 million or 9 billion people inhabiting the world.

If the human race goes extinct, nature will come back slowly, inhabeting the world with new species for the next billion year. In 1.1 billion years the sun will be 10% brighter, and Earth will look like Venus is now. The sun will increase brightness even more and eventualy become a red giant.

Timeline

  • 1971 Study of Man’s Impact on Climate
  • 1979 Climate change was recognized as a serious problem by the First World Climate Conference
  • 1990 First assessment report of the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
  • 1991 Shell made a climate concern movie
  • 1996 Revised Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories - IPCC. Chapter 10: Emissions from livestock and manure management.
  • 1997 Kyoto protocol, reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012
  • 2005 Hurricanes Wilma, Rita and Katrina are three of the ten most intense Atlantic hurricanes ever. Katrina caused over 1800 deaths and $125 billion in damage.
  • 2006 An Inconvenient Truth - Al Gore, book and movie
  • 2012 Kyoto protocol extended to 2020
  • 2014 Okjökull glacier declared dead
  • 2016 The Paris Agreement sets out a global framework to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2 °C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F)
  • 2019 The European Parliament declares climate emergency
  • 2019 Supreme court upholds Urgenda climate case against Dutch government. Judges rule the Netherlands should deepen emissions cuts to at least 25% by 2020, in landmark legal decision.
  • 2019/20 Australia’s devastating bushfire season is likely to have released 830m tonnes of carbon dioxide
  • 2020 Covid crisis demonstrates that extraordinary measures are possible in extraordinary times, if the political will is available.
  • 2020 Friends of the Irish Environment win historic ‘climate case Ireland’ in the Irish supreme court.
  • 2020 Wildfires in the artic (!) releases more than half-a-billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.
  • 2020 Siberian heatwave. The heat also affected the Laptev Sea, where ice extent dropped to a record low.
  • 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season is the most active season ever.
  • 2021 A Paris court convicted the French state of failing to address the climate crisis and not keeping it’s promises to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.

We probably already failed on the Paris agreement. On land, in Europe, the temperature is already 5 degrees higher on average. Yes, after 20 years we can see if it was really a climate change and not an anomoly, but you don’t fool me! On average the world climate heat up might be still lower than 1.5 °C this year. There is about 322.000.000 cubic miles (1344.000.000 km3) of ocean water, that doesn’t heat up so easily. But the ocean is warming. Ice glaciers are melting. Less ice on the artic, means less reflection of sunlight. Permafrost is melting, releasing methane in the atmosphere. Wildfires release extra carbon dioxide. To me, this sounds like a runaway greenhouse effect.

What now?

  • Vote on politicians who take climate changes seriously. Politics shoud treat the climate emergency as a real crisis, requiring immediate bold actions. Currently they delay everything (for the established businesses in the current economy) until it’s too late. A climate crisis can also give new economic opportunities; please get the priorities straight and spend money more wisely.
  • Use less fuel. Don’t fly. Don’t take a cruise. Carpool or better: cycle. Buy things locally.
  • Eat less meat, milk, cheese and eggs. Meat, milk, cheese and eggs are cheap and very tasty, but livestock supply chains account for 7.1 GT CO2, equivalent to 14.5% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Cattle (beef, milk) are responsible for about two-thirds of that total, largely due to methane emissions resulting from rumen fermentation.
  • Don’t waste food.
  • Insulate your house.
  • Try to use less electricity. Use led lights.
  • Invest only in substainable solutions. Check where your pension fund invests.
  • Lower your ecological footprint. Consume less.

Does this help? Yes, if large groups do this.

Disclaimers

This is just my opinion.

I am not a scientist.