Geoffrey Styles has summarized well how our activities have upset the balance of the carbon cycle, “overloading it through the rapid release of vast quantities of stored carbon that had accumulated over geological time in fossil fuels.” If we accept the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change, then the goal of climate policy is to cut that overloading by eliminating carbon-intensive energy sources, e.g. coal, and replacing them with much more efficiency and with lower-carbon energy.
“The coal industry destroy the land, pollute the air and water, impoverish communities, and sicken tens of thousands of people a year.”
“Yes, but it’s for the Greater Good.”
“What Greater Good?”
“Destruction of Life on the Planet as We know It.”
Some reject the idea of human-caused climate change out of principle; they have a God-given right to destroy life on the Planet as we know it. And, some reject the idea because of money; the idea threatens how and where their profits are made. (Or, it is profitable to support the denial.)
A tactic of those denying human-caused climate change is to use a basic understanding (which came about at the time of the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of a United States of America, see The Invention of Air) that we need oxygen and plants need carbon dioxide. How plants make use of CO2 is part of the carbon cycle.
GP Wayne explains how this fact is used to deceive. Since it is recycled, a key part of the deception is that the CO2 will go away. The extra CO2 is cumulative because natural processes have not and increasingly cannot absorb all the extra CO2. Because the excess CO2 chiefly comes from burning fossil fuels, the level of atmospheric CO2 is building up, and that build up is accelerating. “Man-made CO2 has increased the overall level of CO2 in the atmosphere by a third since the pre-industrial era”.
“Carbon is exchanged through natural processes among the land, ocean, atmosphere, and living things.” Our growing carbon footprint has upset the balance.
Consider what happens when more CO2 is released from outside of the natural carbon cycle – by burning fossil fuels. Although our output of 29 gigatons of CO2 is tiny compared to the 750 gigatons moving through the carbon cycle each year, it adds up because the land and ocean cannot absorb all of the extra CO2. About 40% of this additional CO2 is absorbed. The rest remains in the atmosphere, and as a consequence, atmospheric CO2 is at its highest level in 15 to 20 million years (Tripati 2009).
Editor’s note: Tripati, et al suggest that a natural change of 100ppm normally takes 5,000 to 20,000 years. The recent increase of 100ppm has taken just 120 years and 2.3ppm between 2007 and 2008. This blog has suggested before such increases show non-linear threshold behavior.
P.S. The title comes from Don Blankenship calling Washington and state politicians caring about coal miner safety “as silly as Global Warming.”
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And, speaking of trends in CO2 sinks, and as Northwest Passage melts free fourth year in a row, Professor Joe has an excellent post warning that Arctic sea ice volume is headed toward a record low.
Source: The University of Illinois Cryosphere Today.
“The Arctic sea ice extent image for August 24, 2010, showed the northern route (Western Parry Channel) through the Northwest Passage was completely clear of ice, as was the Northeast Passage. The southern route through the Northwest Passage was still partially blocked.
Romm quotes an analogy made by Uber-meteorologist Jeff Masters: “Diminishing the importance of Arctic sea ice loss by calling attention to Antarctic sea ice gain is like telling someone to ignore the fire smoldering in their attic, and instead go appreciate the coolness of the basement, because there is no fire there. Planet Earth’s attic is on fire.”
The blog noted a Romm-relayed warning before how the Arctic has been a carbon sink since the end of the last Ice Age up until recent time. Now the rapid rate of climate change in the Arctic – about twice that of lower latitudes – could eliminate the sink and instead, possibly make the Arctic a source of carbon dioxide, to the tune of 800 million metric tons of CO2.
Speaking of Silly Safety Regulation, Matthew Wald reports that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is proposing (PDF) a fine for a power plant that overexposed its workers to radiation. ” The plant, though, is not a reactor; it runs on coal.”