Cloudscape

There are some that say that as the earth has been able to sustain itself for billions of years, we need not worry about climate change. The danger about climate change, however, is not that it would destroy the Earth but that it would damage it. One might as well say that as one usually survives a bout of flu, there's no need to use medication against it. Climate change has caused mass extinctions in the past and it is certain to do so again in future unless it is prevented. No-one wants to live in such a period of mass extinctions. But mass extinctions are effectively happening, likely in part due to natural causes and in part due to anthropogenic causes.

Solar activity, deforestation and global warming may all play their part in this. Either how, it cannot be said that we are ourselves too small to have an impact on the globe, as we've already impacted 83% of the Earth's land area. In fact, it's quite likely that deforestation is partly responsible for the increase of C14 (carbon-14, a more useful measure in climatology because it is found both in CO2 and CH4, methane). The Amazon Forest alone is thought to be responsible for 10% of world's the carbon stores.

The radiative forcing of carbon dioxide has been measured, moreover, and those measurements prove that the increase of carbon dioxide is at least in part responsible for the global warming: it has been shown, mathematically, that a doubling of carbon dioxide leads to an increase of 3 kelvins. Well, carbon dioxide concentration hasn't been above roughly 250 ppm for the past thousands of years, and hasn't been above roughly 300 ppm for the past hundreds of thousands of years, but since the Industrial Revolution it rose to 390 ppm as of 2009 (sources), an increase of 30% which would cause 0,5 kelvins of increase in global temperature, which is pretty close to the increase which has been observed, about 0,75 K. It must be noted that the 0,5 kelvin value does not include positive climate feedbacks, which may or may not account for part or most of the remaining 0,25 K.

It is sometimes said that the radiative forcing of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is no more than roughly 3 watts per square meter, which would be equivalent to placing a christmas light on every square meter of the planet, but this representation is quite misleading. Against what one would expect, those christmas lights could count up to something quite big. Counterintuitively, when one does the math, one achieves the same figure: a radiative forcing of 3 watts per square meter would still cause an increase of average global temperature of half a degree. The solar constant is 1368 watts per meter. About 30% of this energy is reflected back into space, leaving about 960 watts. These 960 watts account for an average temperature of 290 kelvins (which would otherwise be close to absolute zero). 960 by 3 is 320. 290 by 320 is 0,9. This is, of course, but an approximation.

An increase of about one kelvin doesn't seem much, but in the span of a century, which is an extremely short time on geological scale, this is quite a lot. In fact, should this change continue for another thousand years, which is still a very short time on geological scale, then this would lead to an increase of temperature equivalent to that of the Paleocene-Eocene Temperature Maximum. During the PETM, the temperature had increased by 7 degrees over a period of thousand years, an effect so dramatic as to bring about tropic forests as high as the arctic circle, called boreotropic circles. Worse, the global warming is speeding up, and is predicted by the most accepted scenario's to be 1,4 kelvins for the twenty-first century, though some scenario's predict an increase of only 0,5 kelvins, while others predict 4,4 kelvins. The only solace is that while a hundred years may be little on geological scale, it is quite a lot today on human scale, so that it may give us time to reverse global warming.

Then there's the less important issue that as carbon dioxide increases further, it could eventually have mild toxic effects. If the carbon dioxide further increases, it could have an impact on health both to humans and animals (especially to humans, which spend a lot of time indoors). In the US, carbon dioxide concentrations in working environments may not exceed 0,5 percent by law. The average percentage outdoors is already 0,38%. A concentration of 1% causes dizziness within hours. However, if we were to breathe air of somewhat lower concentrations not just for hours but for our entire lives, it could have a greater effect on our health, especially since this concentration is higher in cities.

Over the past hundred and fifty years, CO₂ concentrations have increased from 280 to 380 ppm, and this increase is exponentially. Based on observations from Mauna Loa (R. F. Keeling et al.), the carbon dioxide concentration has been increasing from 338 ppm in 1980 to 380 ppm in 2008, with an average increase of about 0,4% per year. If this trend continues, then within 50 years, the CO₂ concentration will have increased to 463 ppm. In 100 years, 570 ppm, or 0,57%. In just 30 years, if working places are still to follow the US law that the air should not contain more than 0,5% CO₂, they will have to be built in the countryside. In fifty years, it will no longer be possible at all. Meanwhile, people in metropolises will be faced serious health complications. In some congested areas in metropolises such as in Kaduna, the CO₂ concentration can already rise to 1800 ppm, enough to increase the risk of accidents.

Moreover, an obvious discrepancy has been observed between solar activity and carbon dioxide concentration, which becomes especially conspicuous from 1950s onward, whereas before the 1800s, the two had been parallel (Reimer et al., SIDC, NGDC). However, this deviation becomes less apparent dependent on what scale one places it in the graph, so that it can be represented as being smaller than it really is. We are dealing with small variations, of course, but in such a complex system as the biosphere, those small variations can have big results — not over the long run, but surely enough to affect our own lives, which is, after all, what matters to us. Also, in contrast to C14 concentrations, sunspot activity hasn't been particularly high over the past few thousands of years according to some sources (Solanki et al.), though according to most sources, it is warmer now than thousands of years ago.

In fact, research indicates that the Arctic has been receiving less and less energy over the past 8000 years, and that this cooling trend would normally have continued for another 4000 years, weren't it that another phenomenon had reversed it (University of Arizona). The north pole should have been cooler than it has been in the past eight millennia, and yet it is melting rather than growing.

It is true that through sunspot activity, increase in global temperature can increase carbon dioxide, but as most data show that the former is not responsible for the latter, it must logically be the other way around. It is a often a premature assumption that if two things are causally related and either precedes the other, one thing causes the other and that is the end of it. However, this leaves the possibility that the causal relationship is bidirectional, ie either may cause the other.

A similar and even worse prejudice is that when it is found that something causes a particular effect, it is also the sole cause of the observed effect; however, it is very often so that an observed effect has several causes, especially with more multiplex systems, such as those of psychology, biology, sociology and in this case, geology. In fact, when there is widespread dispute amongst scientists which of several possible causes is the effective cause, what we find is that it is, one could almost say, almost always so that all are at least to some extent involved, as the mere fact that so many scientists find reasons to assume that a particular cause could be responsible often means that those are good reasons. The truth often lies not in either extreme but in the middle.

Some researchers argued that the increase of C-14 follows the increase of global temperature, rather than the other way around, based on the fact that in past cases of global warming, the increase of C-14 often lagged behind the increase of global temperature by 800 years. It is indeed true that global warming causes a release of C-14, partly because drought releases C14 from withering plant material and partly because heat releases C14 from melting ice reserves. However, it must not be forgotten that this causality is bidirectional: temperature increase will lead to an increase of C14, but an increase of C14 may also lead to an increase in temperature, so that these form a positive feedback. It is unscientific to simply assume that because the latter can cause the former, the former cannot cause the latter.

Either how, the abrupt increase of temperature from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution would be very coincidental if there was no correlation. Keep in mind that a hundred years is an extremely little time on geological timescale; hundred years for the entire earth is about twenty seconds for the average human. If someone gives an injection to a human and he faints twenty seconds later, it is likely to be due to the injection.

Nonetheless, we should be open to possibilities, as this correlation might indeed have another explanation. The sun can have a great variety of effects, since the entire biosphere thrives on it. Chizhevsky propounded that for some reason or other, most historical events appeared to be related to a high number of sunspots, based on examination of human history and its relation to past sunspot activity. This might, for instance, be because of the stimulant effect of sunlight, which increases dopamine, serotonin and glutamate, along with other neurotransmitters. These changes are ideal to stimulate motivation, which is one of the reasons oriental philosophies associated yang, masculinity, with the sun. Sunlight has been implicated in an increase of cognitive and creative abilities, and perhaps — who knows? — this was what prompted the sudden revolutions in the nineteenth century, not only in technology (the Industrial Revolution itself), but also in science (the later part of the Scientific Revolution), and arguably even in art (the rise of romanticism which, for instance, produced some of the best-known classical composers). I am saying this not because I believe this to be the case, but to open our minds to possibilities: it is very hard to know for sure what causes what in matters that take so much time, as there is no way to experimentally verify it and therefore no way of scientifically fully proving it.

It has recently been proposed, based on a comparison of today's global warming with that of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, that carbon dioxide alone does not fit into the models of global warming for that period, and that some other cause must have been involved as well (Rice University). If our models are wrong, it may well be that there is another factor responsible for global warming today, as well. However, it might be that this study overlooked other greenhouse gases such as CH4, a far more potent greenhouse gas.

Either how, whether we are the most important factor in global warming does not matter that much in itself: either how, we are the only ones who can deliberately do anything about it. If we were the ones who caused the increase of carbon dioxide, then it's too late now to repair that by simply stopping anyway, and if not, then there's no way to stop it anyhow; instead, then, we must reverse it. Either how, the increase will continue for some time now unless we do something; partly because it takes a lot of time to revamp an entire civilization of seven billion people, partly due to a vicious cycle of increase of heat leading to increase of carbon dioxide and vice versa. Being so slow and long-winded, geology is a very inert system, and so is our own civilization. We need to take active measures to actually restore the earth's temperature.

When someone develops a disease because of toxins in the plumbing, you're not just going to remove the toxins in the plumbing and wait till the disease stops, and whether the toxins in the plumbing are from the pipelines (of human cause) or from the water supply itself (natural cause) has little to do with that. We must cure the diseased ecosystem, even if the disease will pass with time and the victim will survive it.

The biosphere is not afflicted by the bubonic plague, but nor is what happening just a common cold, either. If we follow this analogy, it could best be compared to a bad bout of flu. It's not terminal. We've had it before. For a week or two we're bedridden, but afterwards we have renewed inspiration for life. Except that in this analogy, that "week or two" is actually millions of years. One day nature will have renewed inspiration for life, but right now, we're still having a bad bout of flu, and by the time it's healed of itself, we will no longer be there. If we want to live in a healthier, richer biosphere, we'll have to cure it ourselves. We need medicines.

It is factual that the biosphere is going through mass extinctions, and while this will allow the biosphere to evolve further, right now, we're still in the middle of a mass extinction event. Are we really so keen on being the ones to see that happen, or would we rather see another scene of the theatre?

I believe we have the inclination to shy away from this task because we are afraid to face our own responsibility. We do not like to be the culprits. Yet, if the Earth were going through a mass extinction event of its own fabrication, we would gladly be the brave heroes to tackle the problem. But does it really matter whether it is our fault or nature's? Either how, we need to stop this. It can be done. Various techniques have been proposed to capture carbon dioxide — scrubbing towers, artificial trees, quicklime process. Other forms of geo-engineering have been proposed as well, such as space sunshades, cloud seeding or reflectivity enhancement, ocean nourishment to increase phytoplankton, and increase of albedo through such simple methods as cool roofs or cultivation of reflective crops such as wheat.

In the past, mass extinction events have ceased just as they came, naturally. Now, however, it did not come naturally, and so it is not likely to cease naturally, since we appear to be the cause. Nature can heal her wounds, but not when the knife is still stuck in her flesh.

How dangerous global warming is for us, I think, is not so important. Our primary concern is not our own safety but the safety of nature, and it is short-sighted to worry more about our own prosperity than about the thousands of species we bring to extinction. Humans can adapt. When struck by floods or hurricanes or desertification, they can be displaced. But nature is not as flexible as ourselves. It does not possess our ingenuity with which we can change in a matter of centuries, and it is not used, even after all the calamity it had gone through, to change this fast. The ecosystems have already been weakened, for instance by our continuous practices of deforestation; in this state, it cannot be put under any more stress without irreparable damage. Sure enough, it will come through whatever torment we put it through: but it will come through maimed, leaving our children on an earth that has become homogenized. One day, our descendants will despise us for having destroyed so much beauty in the world just to satisfy our decadence.

I do not think that global warming in itself is the worst thing we are doing to the planet. If we can cause global warming, we might also cause global cooling. Furthermore, we have increased the temperature with only about half a degree, whereas we have impacted 83% of the Earth's surface, and a large part of it in the most abominable way. Across the entire earth, we have reduced beautiful treasures of nature into into apocalyptic landscapes of materialism. We have bedecked the earth with sights more horrible than any ever seen in the billions of years of our planet's history, and while these industrial sceneries may in themselves have a simple and twisted kind of beauty, it is none that could replace the sublime and multiplex beauty of nature. Global warming in itself can be reverted with the proper technology, and technology is advancing fast; but the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of their species, however, is a lot harder to reverse through technology.

Mass extinctions are effectively happening, partly due to global warming and partly due to deforestation. These mass extinctions have happened since the beginning of the Holocene epoch when the first larger settlements arose; this ongoing series of mass extinctions has been called the Holocene extinction event. The ecosphere has gone through many mass extinctions before, and it needed them for evolution to occur, but we really do not want to be the ones to have to go through such mass extinction, lest we lose the most beautiful thing on earth in our lives, nature. At some point, if you have been saved from being blunted by society, you must have been moved by that beauty; can we afford to lose that? Has our comfort become more important to us than beauty?

We are the only species on the planet having the power of controlling the earth in such way a we do: we should make extinction obsolete, and not accelerate it. We should take care of life as tenders of a garden, and not damage it by becoming its harmful weed.