Global Warming- how serious is the issue, and why you should care

Before the industrial revolution in the mid-eighteenth century, and for the previous 10,000 years, planet earth had roughly 280 parts per million by volume, of CO2 in the atmosphere. That is, if we cut a block of million molecules of air from the atmosphere 200 years back, it would contain 280 molecules of CO2. Today, the same block would roughly contain 384 CO2 molecules.

The explanation for such a large differential in such a short time can be attributed to the emission of carbon from the industrial use of fossil fuels by humans and from deforestation. There are several factors responsible for changes in temperatures, but the correlation with CO2 is linear. Whenever the level of CO2 goes up, temp increase, and vice versa. This has led to a 6 degree Celsius change in global average temperatures.

There are vast stretches of tundra in the arctic, in western Siberia and in Alaska, in which approximately 500 billion tons of carbon- about 1/3rd of carbon in the world’s soils, is trapped in frozen peat bogs. If the permafrost in those bogs were to thaw, much of this carbon would be quickly converted to methane, another greenhouse gas. Because methane is more potent than C02, a massive release could be equivalent to billions of tons of CO2, and provide a substantial short-term kick to climate change.

Approximately 1.6 billion people in the world today are without electricity. But should these 1.6 billion people connect to the power grid based on coal or natural gas or oil, the pollution and subsequent climate change implications would be devastating. If we have already seen a 6 deg temp rise by 75% of the world using fossil-fuel-based electricity, imagine what would happen if we added another 25% to the equation.


----Quoted and Rephrased from Thomas Friedman’s “Hot Flat and Crowded”