Citizens Addressing our Changing Climate: You can't change anything without changing everything - Bemidji Pioneer

Citizens Addressing our Changing Climate: You can't change anything without changing everything

We urgently need to return carbon dioxide and other gasses toward those levels when our atmospheric hazards were less extreme.

There is a fundamental issue with Earth-Sun relationships. The sun shines on Earth 24/7 with an array of energy called the solar spectrum. The peak of that array is visible light, which we call sunshine.

Our atmosphere is pretty much transparent to sunshine. If it hits a cloud-free atmosphere, it glides right through to the earth's surface, where it can either be absorbed or reflected. A tricky part is that the sunshine that is absorbed warms things, and they, in turn, radiate heat back to the atmosphere.

They radiate infrared, which our atmosphere absorbs, and, in turn, the air warms. Our atmosphere, in turn, radiates heat back to Earth and space at the same time. The gasses that absorb infrared have been increasing in our atmosphere for the past two hundred years, and therefore, the atmosphere has been steadily warming.

Just because it's measured in millionths doesn't mean it doesn't matter! Let's take it this way: we had a stable world in which everything was in balance for a long, long time.

Many gasses were there in fractions of a percent yet still had critical roles in balancing our atmospheric temperature and supporting life as we know it. Among those was carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide was persistently at a level that kept temperatures comfortable for all of our lifeforms.

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Then, about 200 years ago, we started adding carbon dioxide to our atmosphere, and those levels, measured in parts per million, started rising. Many of the gasses that complete our atmospheric mix play a role in maintaining global temperatures, which were pretty stable for a long time.

CO2 was steady at about 228 parts per million. With the industrial revolution, we keep putting more carbon into the atmosphere. With more CO2, our atmosphere could absorb more heat, and temperatures started to rise.

Simply put, as we increase carbon in the atmosphere, we increase the temperature with our atmosphere acting as a blanket. Raising the levels of carbon compounds in the atmosphere acts just like adding more filling to a comforter.

The earth's surface keeps radiating heat, but more of it is held by atmospheric absorbers, particularly carbon compounds.

We progressed from about 228 parts of carbon dioxide in the 1830s to 330 parts in the 1960s, the "down" in our atmospheric quilt did just what it should. It made us warmer. Now, at over 420 parts, it is really causing turmoil.

Raising the average temperatures over our earth intensifies all kinds of weather: hurricanes, floods, catastrophic storms, water evaporating from lakes and rivers, wildfires and droughts. All these as our atmosphere adjusts to all that extra energy trapped by all that additional absorbent gas.

We know the sources of carbon that have caused our blanket to thicken perilously. Mostly it relates to industrialization, starting with burning wood and coal to drive 19th-century trains, ships and factories.

Then we largely replaced wood and coal with oil and gas, except for a few industries like electric generation that largely still burn coal. As our global human population has grown, all those industries have also expanded using the cheapest energy that they can find, namely fossil fuels.

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How do we know about the mix of gasses in past centuries? The best data are from ice cores taken from glaciers and ice sheets around the world. This intriguing data, and the ice itself, has been carefully kept frozen in laboratories.

Similar to counting tree rings, the glacial ice has annual changes that can be counted. Along with occasional layers of volcanic dust that are from known, dated eruptions, we can see when carbon compounds changed in our atmosphere. The current levels are unprecedented in human history.

We really shouldn't expect to be able to increase the amount of the gasses that absorb the earth's outgoing heat by 50% without causing significant changes in climate.

So, what can we do? We can improve energy efficiency and change the generation mix to eliminate burning fuels that release carbon into our atmosphere. We may, eventually, be able to capture some of that extra carbon.

Electrical generation from wind, water and solar radiation can help reduce our need to burn carbon-based fuels. Nuclear fuels also do not release carbon. We got along well for thousands of years with two-thirds as much CO2 as we have in our atmosphere today.

We urgently need to return carbon dioxide and other gasses toward those levels when our atmospheric hazards were less extreme.

A simple action that we can do is to switch all of our light bulbs to LED’s. Consider adding an electric heat pump if you need to replace your heating system. Reduce your driving by combining tasks into fewer trips. Changes to more efficient technologies will reduce your carbon footprint and contribute to rolling that carbon dioxide level back toward that magic number of 228 parts per million.

Figures in this editorial may be verified in the May 12, 2023, NOAA publication "Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" By Rebecca Lindsey Reviewed By Ed Dlugokencky.

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Changing weather is reported in "Gloomy forecast: The economic costs of extreme weather" in March 2023.

Charlie Parson is a member of the Citizens' Climate Lobby organization. For more information, visit CitizensClimateLobby.org.

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