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Hello, and welcome to episode sixteen of the Spartan Spirit season three titled Rescuing Reason, where we examine topical political and socioeconomic issues affecting Western liberal democracies, particularly Australia, Canada, and the USA.
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And today we're beginning a three-part series on carbon and its relationship to global warming and climate change.
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I'm your host, Bill Carolakis.
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I'm a retired senior Air Force officer.
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I use history and research to baseline the topics on rescuing reason, and I'll be offering you a Spartan perspective about these topics, in other words, taking a pragmatic view that values the nation and broader Western society over individual interests.
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A few months ago, the thirtieth Conference of the Parties, or COP thirty, concluded.
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And Australia is leading the agenda for COP thirty one.
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So this is about the right time for Australians and close allies like Canada and the US to consider what approach Australia should be taking as it leads COP thirty-one.
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And that's why I'm doing this short series on climate change and global warming.
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For those of you who listened to season one of the Spartan Spirits, about half of this episode is drawn from episode seven of that season.
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The approach we'll take today is to start by considering some of the terminology like COP, climate change, global warming, carbon, and carbonization of the atmosphere.
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I'll then broadly cover the science both for and against the concept of climate change, followed by what is being done around the world to combat climate change and how COP twenty one shaped these initiatives.
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And by the way, COP twenty one established the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
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And I'll conclude by taking a risk perspective over the entire issue and then giving you a Spartan perspective on managing that risk.
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Now, before I get started, I need to say something to both sides or both views of this topic.
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I firmly believe that government's policies should be based on two underpinning threads.
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Firstly, what is best for the good of the nation and its people, and you could argue for the good of the world and its people.
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And secondly, those policies should be based on science in the first instance, combined with community values where able.
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Which leads me to note that when it comes to this huge topic of climate change, that bit about being based on science is problematic because in this age of misinformation, it's really hard to decide what science we should be following.
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I know plenty of very smart people who don't think that climate change is the catastrophe that many scientists are saying it will be.
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But I know even more smart people who do believe the science.
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Time will tell us which side is correct.
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But for now, I want to take a slightly different perspective for this series, and that's to take a look at climate change through a risk-based approach, as opposed to choosing one side or the other and arguing for that side.
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I come from the aviation industry, in which I was an accountable authority setting policies for aircraft operations over a fleet of about fifty military aircraft.
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I had to look at likelihood and consequence, which was then assessed as risk.
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It didn't matter whether I believed or didn't believe a crash would happen.
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I had to manage the risk mitigations to minimize the risks to a reasonable level without compromising the achievement of the mission, which was to fly the airplanes.
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I mean you could be as safe as you like by not flying the airplanes, but that's just simply ridiculous when you're talking about flying airplanes.
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In the aviation industry, when you get the risk calculus wrong, well, people die.
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But that doesn't mean that we stop flying aircraft.
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Rather, it means that we take risks to get the job done, and if we realize one of those risks, well then we have to look in the mirror the next day as leaders and managers and aircraft technicians and air crew and ask ourselves if we did all we reasonably could do without having been too conservative and then we attend the funerals.
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I see climate change much the same way.
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It doesn't matter if you believe that climate change is real or not.
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If there is a likelihood of an unacceptable consequence, like say runaway global warming, then we should be taking steps to mitigate those risks.
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We aren't going to stop flying planet Earth in the manner we are doing at the moment, which means using lots of energy and emitting lots of carbon into the atmosphere.
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So that means there is a chance we will have global warming.
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Whether you think that chance is one percent or a hundred percent, we have to consider how we are going to mitigate the risks.
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The amounts of energy, national finance, economic costs we put into the mitigation depends on how much you believe in the science, but either way, we need to discuss this issue, and as I said, we will take a risk view of this.
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Okay, well let's get cracking.
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I've mentioned the acronym COP several times already, so very quickly, COP stands for Conference of the Parties, which refers to the nearly two hundred countries that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNF Triple C, around 1992.
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And I'll discuss this framework in episode two of this series and COP more fully in episode three of the series.
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More importantly, for this episode, we need to address the main point.
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In other words, what exactly is meant by the term climate change.
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We could take a simple view and say, well, that we mean the climate is changing.
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But that definition doesn't capture what scientists, environmentalists, and governments are concerned about, because you could argue that the climate has always been and always will be changing.
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We will kick off defining climate change by calling on Bill Nye the science guy.
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By the way, he's a popular science personality, but he began his career as a mechanical engineer for Boeing.
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And he's going to give us one of the common interpretations of the term climate change, and here he is now.
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Climate change is a real and serious issue, but isn't the climate always changing?
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Well, the Earth's climate has changed throughout history.
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Most of these slight changes are caused by small variations in the Earth's orbit.
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But climate change as we know it today is characterized by an abrupt increase in the Earth's temperature.
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It is estimated to have gotten 1.2 to 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in just the last century.
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Ten out of the last 13 years were the warmest on record.
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97% of climate scientists agree that this new tendency is not caused by the variations of the Earth's orbit, but rather very likely caused by human activities.
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And since the Industrial Revolution, we have come a long way.
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Humans built airplanes, faster cars, developed remarkable technology, and learned how the natural resources around us can be used for our benefit.
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It also means we have increased our consumption of natural resources and in turn released a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
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Now, greenhouse gases occur naturally, but in excess can be dangerous to our planet.
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Modern human activities have increased the release of non-naturally occurring greenhouse gases because we have stepped up our demand for burning fossil fuels.
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The composition of greenhouse gases traps heat radiated from the sun.
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The more heat they trap, the warmer our planet gets, and as our planet gets warmer, we begin to feel the effects.
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Troubling signs of climate change are increased extreme weather events.
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Natural disasters like floods, tornadoes, and deadly heat waves are more obvious to humans because of their immediate impact and their sharing of the images in the media.
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Climate change, as we know it today, is change in our Earth's overall temperature with massive and permanent ramifications.
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Although its consequences can be planet-threatening, scientists still believe there are things we can do on a personal level to help recycle and reuse things, walk or use public transportation to get to work, turn off your electronics when you're not using them, eat less meat.
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When it comes to climate change, the main takeaway is that it's real.
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And although we are part of the cause, we can also be part of the solution.
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It's only fair that we should listen to the other side of the climate change arguments, because of course Bill and I was very much a believer that climate change is happening due to carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
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So here we have now Professor of Meteorology at MIT, Richard Linden.
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The statement that most of the warmings since 1950 or 60 is due to man's emissions.
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It's possible.
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No one knows where their estimate, you know, 90% likely came from.
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The most recent works I've seen suggest that it may be on the order of half.
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Now remember, we're talking about a few tenths of a degree.
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You know, anyone who follows the records knows that the summers are not getting hotter.
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Some are cold, some are hot.
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The variations occur sporadically over time scales as long as 100 years.
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Global mean temperature anomaly over the last 200 years has gone up on the order of three-quarters of a degree.
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Nobody in this room can perceive personally global mean temperature anomaly.
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If you're here in the UK or you're in Boston, the year-to-year variability in temperature can be two degrees, four degrees, much larger than for the global mean.
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The real controversy comes with the statement that having seen this, we must cut our emissions.
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Because the presumption is that these, which I call reasonably innocent statements, imply disaster.
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Now, to put it into perspective, let us say that man's greenhouse gas emissions accounted for all of it.
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That would be entirely compatible with no problem.
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No problem.
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I mean, it would say that we might expect by the next century a degree or so.
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And there is little doubt that man has dealt with much more than that.
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Environmental groups who are saying save the planet.
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We all know that's an extreme statement that doesn't mean anything.
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The planet has survived far more than this.
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Yet, what is the value of a statement that's so extreme?
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Well, it then bypasses any uh policy issue, anything.
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You do whatever you can because you don't have a planet anymore.
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But in a more rational world, we're talking about the potential of some damage, a little damage, maybe a lot.
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And the question is, what do you do and how much can you do?
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And what is worth it to people?
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What you have is, of course, for the large developing countries like India and China.
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You know, they're not going to give up their future development for this.
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Now Linden said quite a few things there, and he is a climate change skeptic, and you'll note that he didn't say that global warming isn't happening.
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It's that he just doesn't perceive the risk as being all that great, as do most of his colleagues who disagree with his conclusions.
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But it's opinions like Richard Linden's and other academics that get drawn upon by climate skeptics, and they lead to statements by political leaders and influential people like Donald Trump.
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And here's Donald now talking in early 2025 at the United Nations.
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It's the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion.
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Climate change, no matter what happens, you're involved in that.
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No more global warming, no more global cooling, all of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong.
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They were made by stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success, if you don't get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.
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Now that statement by Donald Trump makes environmentalists and climate scientists absolutely cringe because it basically poo-poos everything they've been working on and blatantly ignores the science and doesn't take a risk perspective or a risk management perspective as simply puts your head in the sand and says, well, there's nothing to worry about here.
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And we could take that approach, but I don't think that's the right approach to take.
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So we're going to steer ourselves towards the risk view of climate change management.
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So yes, there are wildly differing interpretations out there, but what I can tell you is that the vast majority of scientists, governments, and environmentalists believe human activity is causing the planets to warm, leading to climate changes.
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The key issue, which is widely accepted, is that greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide, but there are others, are causing temperatures to rise in the atmosphere and oceans, and that this in turn changes our climate by making it warmer and having a multitude of effects on our climate.
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If you don't believe that science, that's okay, because we're going to take that risk perspective and we'll come back to the pros and cons of believing or not believing the arguments.
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As for the term climate change, I don't really like it because it's a general term that has many meanings, as implied by Professor Lyndon just a few minutes ago.
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And the general nature of the term leads to confusion and differing interpretations.
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And just like the term retard or the term dwarf, which are no longer in common use, I think the term climate change may have had its day, and maybe we need to change it to something else, something that's more descriptive.
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So, you know, I'd say something like human induced global heating, which by the way, you can change into an acronym called HIHIGH.
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You know, we need something there.
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Anyway, let's get on to the other relevant terms on this topic.
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And as you heard from Bill Nye, the science guy, carbon is central to this topic, so let's talk about carbon.
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Now, this is a bit of a carbon 101 lesson, and this is all from Encyclopedia Britannica.
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Carbon is the sixth element of the periodic table, and it's formed by the fusing of helium atoms in stars.
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It occurs naturally on planet Earth, and most of it is in the Earth's core, but about forty-three trillion tons of carbon is accessible to humans.
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In its pure forms, carbon can be found as coal, graphite, diamonds, and a few other materials.
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Although only the nineteenth most common material on Earth, it's widespread because it mixes with many other elements to form compounds, such as calcium carbonate, think seashells, some minerals, like marble, and thousands of organic compounds like oil, and yes, you are made of carbon too.
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In fact, 18% of you is carbon.
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And of course, there are gaseous forms such as carbon monoxide, and there's also today's culprit, carbon dioxide, called CO2 for short.
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Carbon moves around the planet through volcanic eruptions in fluids, so in oceans and oils, and as solids in organic matter and in gaseous forms.
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So this moving of carbon around the planet is what we're concerned with today and is part of what's called the carbon cycle, which relates to the production and absorption of carbon dioxide.
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And here is Professor Gavin Cauley of the University of East Anglia explaining this.
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Over the last few centuries, the amount of carbon dioxide or CO2 in the atmosphere has risen by about 40%.
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To explain why this is the case, we need to understand how the carbon cycle operates.
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The carbon cycle describes the flows of carbon between the atmosphere, the oceans, and the biosphere.
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Carbon sources release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
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Carbon sinks absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
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Some of these flows are the result of natural processes.
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For example, when plants grow, they absorb CO2.
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However, human activities also play a part.
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We release CO2 into the atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels.
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Land use change, such as deforestation, also releases CO2.
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Ice cores provide invaluable information on how atmospheric CO2 has changed over time.
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As the Antarctic ice sheet formed, it trapped small bubbles of air which stayed trapped for thousands of years.
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Cores drilled deep into the ice show us that prior to the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric CO2 had been fairly stable for several thousand years.
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The carbon cycle was in a state of natural balance.
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Carbon sources were roughly matched by carbon sinks.
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Human activity has upset this natural balance.
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Fossil fuels were formed millions of years ago from the remains of plants.
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When these plants died and were buried, the carbon was taken permanently out of the active carbon cycle.
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When we burn fossil fuels, we release this carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.
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As a result, CO2 levels have been rising.
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Scientists became more aware of this after 1958 when accurate measurements of CO2 concentrations were first made at the Morna-Lower observatory in Hawaii.
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Together with the ice core record, we see that atmospheric CO2 began to rapidly grow soon after the start of the Industrial Revolution.
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It would be a bit of a coincidence if this were a natural phenomenon.
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Furthermore, the increase in atmospheric CO2 has closely tracked the amount of CO2 that we've been releasing.
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This would be an even greater coincidence if the rise in atmospheric CO2 were natural.
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In fact, the amount of extra CO2 in the air has consistently been only about half of the CO2 we've released.
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So the evidence is clear that humans are raising CO2 levels, but not everybody accepts this.
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One myth is to argue that because the CO2 that humans release is small compared to the CO2 released by nature, our influence must be negligible.
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Unfortunately, this is incorrect because it only looks at half of the carbon cycle.
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It fails to consider the carbon sinks also absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.
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It's the difference between total sinks and total sources that actually governs the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
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There's a simple analogy that demonstrates that the rise in CO2 is caused by humans.
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Imagine my wife and I share a bank account which pays no interest and attracts no bank charges.
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I pay in£1,000 per month, but take no money out.
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If I notice that the balance rises by only£500, then I know that my wife has taken£500 more out of the account than she has put in.
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Now I don't have any direct knowledge of my wife's transactions, but whether she put in a million pounds a month or only one pound a month, I still know that she is taking out£500 more than she is putting in.
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The account obeys the principle of conservation of money.
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Likewise, the carbon cycle obeys the principle of conservation of mass.
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The carbon we release doesn't just disappear.
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It must either be removed by natural sinks or it ends up in the atmosphere.
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In other words, the change in atmospheric CO2 depends on the difference between the total sources and the total sinks.
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CO2 levels are rising more slowly than we are releasing CO2.
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This means that natural environment must be a net carbon sink.
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It soaks up carbon.
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It is taking more CO2 out of the atmosphere than it puts in.
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Nature has been a net carbon sink every year for at least the last 50 years.
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This fact alone establishes that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is not a natural phenomenon.
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In fact, nature is actively resisting the rise.
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I don't need to know the details of my wife's transactions to know that she was opposing the rise in our bank balance.
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Likewise, we don't need to know the exact strength of the individual sources and sinks to know that nature is opposing the rise in atmospheric CO2.
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We only need reliable measurements of atmospheric CO2 and of human emissions, which we already have.
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The error here is in taking an overly simplistic view of the carbon cycle, in this case considering only CO2 sources and ignoring the CO2 sinks altogether.
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In simple terms, carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere by plant matter during photosynthesis, and some is also removed by being dissolved in large bodies of water, which by the way acidifies the water.
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You can think of what it's like to drink a can of soda, which has carbon dioxide in it.
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And carbon dioxide is expelled into the atmosphere as a gas when we burn materials with carbon in it, like wood or coal.
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It is also expelled when organic matter decays or when water heats up.
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Again, think of a can of soda that goes flat, it's releasing its carbon dioxide.
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And believe it or not, when you breathe.
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You emit carbon dioxide.
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If we could get CO2 gas into a cube all on its own, one ton of CO2 would measure about 30 feet or 10 meters cubed.
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Imagine a telephone pole sized cube.
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That's how big it would be.
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But that's not possible because gas disperses in the atmosphere.
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So we measure carbon in the atmosphere in terms of parts per million.
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For example, pre-industrial revolution measurements for the concentration of CO2 gas in the atmosphere was around 280 parts per million.
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That means if you took one million molecules of air from the year 1850, 280 of them would have been CO2.
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By the way, 99% of our atmosphere is nitrogen and oxygen.
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The rest is made up of a bunch of different gases, and CO2 is only a small fraction of a percent of the atmosphere.
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If the carbon cycle was running as it had for the thousands and millions of years in pre-industrial eras, we wouldn't be talking about it.
00:23:05.839 --> 00:23:16.960
But through ice core samples, we've deduced that CO2 levels range from roughly 200 to 300 parts per million up until the Industrial Revolution.
00:23:17.200 --> 00:23:23.599
Since then, atmospheric concentration of CO2 has risen to over 400 parts per million.
00:23:23.839 --> 00:23:32.480
This is largely due to all the carbon material we are burning, like gases and oils, and there are some other issues which we'll talk about shortly.
00:23:32.720 --> 00:23:45.279
From the US government's National, Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the last time the Earth had 400 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere was about 3 million years ago.
00:23:45.440 --> 00:23:51.759
Back then the Earth's temperature was about 3 degrees Celsius or 5 to 6 Fahrenheit hotter than it is now.
00:23:52.000 --> 00:24:01.119
And water levels were commensurately higher, with oceans being 15 to 75 feet or 5 to 25 meters higher than they are now.
00:24:01.519 --> 00:24:10.880
So let's talk about why it matters that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has changed from 280 to over 400 parts per million.
00:24:11.119 --> 00:24:13.119
The Earth reflects energy.
00:24:13.359 --> 00:24:21.440
Most of that comes from the Sun which heats up the Earth's surface, which in turn is emitted as infrared energy back into the atmosphere.
00:24:21.680 --> 00:24:27.599
If there was no atmosphere, that reflected energy would just go up and out into space.
00:24:27.920 --> 00:24:31.599
But infrared energy can be absorbed by some gases.
00:24:31.759 --> 00:24:37.680
One gas that is really good at absorbing infrared energy is methane, but we'll leave that for another day.
00:24:37.920 --> 00:24:43.119
The main absorber of infrared energy is CO2 because there's a lot of it.
00:24:43.680 --> 00:24:49.119
CO2 absorbs that infrared energy and then radiates it in all directions.
00:24:49.359 --> 00:24:54.400
Some of this radiated heat is directed back to the Earth and into the atmosphere above you.
00:24:54.640 --> 00:25:00.000
This effect is called the greenhouse effect, making CO2 a greenhouse gas.
00:25:00.319 --> 00:25:10.000
I should also mention that water vapor is a greenhouse gas and is compounding the problem because the warmer the planet is, the more water vapor there is.
00:25:10.799 --> 00:25:18.400
We do need some greenhouse gases because they help trap heat in our atmosphere, thereby making our planet habitable.
00:25:18.559 --> 00:25:24.480
If there weren't any greenhouse gases, the Earth's atmosphere would be much colder, well below freezing.
00:25:24.799 --> 00:25:37.440
The problem is that if CO2 concentration is too great, then too much heat is trapped, and if too much heat is trapped, we can expect to have negative effects on our planets and our societies.
00:25:37.599 --> 00:25:51.359
And according to the US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, since the mid-1800s, we have been adding much more CO2 to the atmosphere than the natural carbon cycle did for at least a million years beforehand.
00:25:51.519 --> 00:25:58.480
In fact, we have moved from 280 to 420 parts per million, so that's about a 50% increase.
00:25:58.640 --> 00:26:06.400
No one's disputing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, not even climate change deniers, and we'll talk more about quantities shortly.
00:26:06.640 --> 00:26:14.720
What is debated in today's world is whether or not this 50% increase is a bad thing or something we should act upon.
00:26:14.960 --> 00:26:28.559
We're not going to argue the following points today, but I'm about to give you a shopping list of what scientists tell us that the elevated level of CO2 is doing to our planet and the associated impacts on society.
00:26:33.759 --> 00:26:35.279
This list is from the U.S.
00:26:35.440 --> 00:26:40.799
government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as they listed it in 2023.
00:26:41.200 --> 00:26:51.839
But before I go through it, let's start with an overview of the predicted problems from Bernadette Woods Plackey of Penn State and Matt Fitzpatrick from the University of Maryland.
00:26:52.319 --> 00:26:54.400
You often hear people say, so what's the big deal?
00:26:54.559 --> 00:26:56.559
Climate has changed a lot in the past.
00:26:56.799 --> 00:27:08.480
Well, yeah, we know that because climate scientists have figured out how climate has changed in the past, and that's why we're so concerned, because the changes we're seeing are far outside of what we would consider natural variability.
00:27:08.880 --> 00:27:18.400
If we compare the future expected changes, right, we're talking over the next several decades of a few degrees Celsius, maybe five degrees Fahrenheit.
00:27:18.720 --> 00:27:23.279
Changes of that magnitude in the past have completely reorganized Earth's climate.
00:27:23.359 --> 00:27:30.720
So we're talking the difference between a deep ice age or a very warm greenhouse Earth, the changes of this magnitude.
00:27:30.880 --> 00:27:47.279
And if we continue to put emissions into the atmosphere, we expect to exceed the changes that we've seen in the historic record and basically put us back to climates that were present when the dinosaurs were roaming the earth and there were crocodiles near the North Pole and that sort of thing.
00:27:47.440 --> 00:27:53.440
So, you know, a couple of degrees Fahrenheit globally is a massive amount of climate change.
00:27:54.000 --> 00:27:58.319
Global warming is affecting different kinds of weather in different ways.
00:27:58.640 --> 00:28:04.400
The easiest one for everyone to understand is that you add more heat, you're going to have more heat.
00:28:04.640 --> 00:28:10.319
Temperatures are higher, heat waves are lasting longer, they are more intense, and we're seeing more of them.
00:28:10.559 --> 00:28:17.279
But some other ways that we're seeing our weather change is increase in extreme amounts of rainfall.
00:28:17.440 --> 00:28:19.200
And this is happening around the globe.
00:28:19.359 --> 00:28:24.799
Even in places that are drying out, you have to look at our world as a water world.
00:28:25.039 --> 00:28:36.000
So when you take a world that is mainly water, you evaporate that water into the atmosphere, there's more of it to actually come down in these heavy rainfall events.
00:28:36.079 --> 00:28:38.480
And that is what we're seeing everywhere.
00:28:38.799 --> 00:28:53.519
So going forward, what we can expect unless we do get a handle on our emissions that we're putting into our atmosphere is more extreme weather events, including heavy rain, including intense heat and intensifying tropical systems.
00:28:53.680 --> 00:29:06.079
We're also going to expect rising seas at an increasing pace, melting ice from land ice, from glaciers, and our sea ice not reforming the way it has in the past.
00:29:06.319 --> 00:29:12.160
And one thing that people don't always think through is that these increases aren't going to happen in a bubble.
00:29:12.319 --> 00:29:15.200
These increases are going to happen at the same time.
00:29:15.599 --> 00:29:17.759
By 2080, Washington, D.C.
00:29:17.920 --> 00:29:22.880
is going to feel like a town in northern Mississippi that's called Greenwood, Mississippi.
00:29:23.119 --> 00:29:30.640
So the typical winter in Greenwood, Mississippi is about 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than D.C.'s winter is at present.
00:29:30.720 --> 00:29:33.119
That's about five, six degrees Celsius.
00:29:33.279 --> 00:29:37.440
And it'll be 75% wetter in winter in Washington, D.C.
00:29:37.599 --> 00:29:38.160
than it is now.
00:29:38.400 --> 00:29:40.319
So it's going to become more subtropical.
00:29:40.640 --> 00:29:42.400
Children living in Washington, D.C.
00:29:42.559 --> 00:29:47.279
today, if they continue to live here, they're going to live through a dramatic transformation of climate.
00:29:47.440 --> 00:29:49.599
They'll be telling their kids what climate was like.
00:29:49.680 --> 00:29:54.720
And their children aren't going to believe that it used to snow potentially in Washington, D.C.
00:29:55.279 --> 00:30:00.640
Climate change is affecting everyone here and now, just in different ways depending on where you live.
00:30:00.880 --> 00:30:03.039
In the West, droughts are getting worse.
00:30:03.200 --> 00:30:07.359
That's upping the risk for wildfires, and that is worsening air quality.
00:30:07.519 --> 00:30:23.759
What we're seeing in the middle of the country, intense heavy rain events, particularly the Midwest, where there's a huge uptick in these heavy rain events, which are wiping out crops for farmers and really interfering with the timing of planting crops and harvesting crops.
00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:29.359
Across the South, intense heat is getting more intense and it's lasting longer.
00:30:30.319 --> 00:30:35.839
The real problem, I think, is related to our ability to grow food and extended drought.
00:30:36.000 --> 00:30:43.279
And maybe in places like Eastern North America that are predicted to become wetter, that's not going to be as big of an impact.
00:30:43.519 --> 00:30:49.359
But globally, you know, large-scale drought is going to force people to migrate to new regions.
00:30:49.519 --> 00:30:53.279
That's going to destabilize regions, and we're going to have climate migrants.
00:30:53.359 --> 00:30:56.480
And I think that's probably one of the biggest near-term impacts.
00:30:56.640 --> 00:30:59.039
You know, we focus on natural systems or things like that.
00:30:59.200 --> 00:31:05.759
But these impacts to societies are going to be very large and they're going to ripple across the planet.
00:31:06.160 --> 00:31:11.279
Okay, so those are quite a few dire predictions, and we're going to have a look at some of those right now.
00:31:11.599 --> 00:31:13.599
And let's start with the obvious one.
00:31:13.839 --> 00:31:15.279
It's getting hotter.
00:31:15.680 --> 00:31:20.559
It's almost one degree Celsius hotter now than in 1900.
00:31:20.640 --> 00:31:23.200
And the prediction is that this is accelerating.
00:31:23.440 --> 00:31:25.039
Doesn't seem like much, right?
00:31:25.279 --> 00:31:32.640
But remember the temperatures are an average, so that means more hot days and fewer cool or cold days.
00:31:32.960 --> 00:31:40.960
Sea levels are rising at 3 millimeters per year, which is 1 millimeter per year faster than in 1900.
00:31:41.119 --> 00:31:49.359
Again, doesn't sound like much, but if you own beachfront property where storm surges and king tides happen, well then that's an issue.
00:31:49.599 --> 00:31:53.200
Glaciers are shrinking and Arctic sea ice is diminishing.
00:31:53.440 --> 00:31:55.279
This has a few implications.
00:31:55.519 --> 00:32:00.480
Ocean temperatures are rising overall, which in turn can affect fish stocks.
00:32:00.640 --> 00:32:09.519
Warmer water means more CO2 gets emitted from the oceans into the atmosphere, thereby accelerating the rise in carbon concentrations.
00:32:09.759 --> 00:32:17.039
It also means that water expands, albeit a tiny bit, but that tiny bit will accelerate sea level rise.
00:32:17.359 --> 00:32:25.039
Moving on, with more moisture in the atmosphere due to warmer temperatures, we get yet more greenhouse effect.
00:32:25.200 --> 00:32:34.240
Also, more moisture leads to stronger and more frequent heavy precipitation events, thereby leading to more flooding and infrastructure damage.
00:32:34.400 --> 00:32:41.920
This is because the violence of storms is directly related to how much water is in the atmosphere when low pressure systems develop.
00:32:42.160 --> 00:32:47.440
Some areas are going to experience more drought or enter drought-like conditions.
00:32:47.680 --> 00:32:53.440
That drought and increased heat can bring on wildfires more frequently than before.
00:32:53.680 --> 00:32:55.519
Food production will be affected.
00:32:55.759 --> 00:32:59.599
Given the seriousness of such a claim, I looked up some papers on it.
00:32:59.839 --> 00:33:11.680
From a paper called The Effect of Global Climate Change on Agriculture, which is a joint paper from York University in the UK and Uludag University in Turkey, they came up with the following.
00:33:11.920 --> 00:33:21.599
Plants actually do better with higher concentrations of CO2, but the pending changes are expected to mean that farming areas will have to move.
00:33:21.920 --> 00:33:34.799
This shifting of food production will affect economies and will potentially add to changing land use, including impacts on forestation or deforestation, which in turn could add to CO2 levels.
00:33:35.039 --> 00:33:44.240
The paper did point out that the research is not conclusive, and I will add that shifting land use is nothing new, so take this point with a grain of salt.
00:33:44.400 --> 00:33:53.119
If you want to know more about it, there's a good article on land use change in nature, which by the way is one of the leading science journals in the world.
00:33:53.279 --> 00:33:58.799
It was called Global Land Use Changes are four times greater than previously estimated.
00:33:59.119 --> 00:34:07.279
Warmer overall weather is expected to lead to more spread of diseases, particularly wherever there is increased flooding.
00:34:07.599 --> 00:34:13.760
Coastal communities can expect greater storm surges and some communities will have to be abandoned due to flooding.
00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:19.039
Coral reefs may die off due to the heat, along with the species that live in them.
00:34:19.199 --> 00:34:22.320
Global infrastructure may fail earlier than expected.
00:34:22.480 --> 00:34:24.719
This would have economic implications.
00:34:25.039 --> 00:34:35.679
And the last one on the list, more energy may be required to cool homes and businesses, again impacting our economics and adding to our power generation issues.
00:34:35.920 --> 00:34:38.159
There's more, but that'll do us.
00:34:38.800 --> 00:34:43.760
It's quite the doom and gloom list, and collectively it's called climate change.
00:34:44.000 --> 00:34:49.280
Remember, I'm not advocating or denying any of those doom and gloom points I just made.
00:34:49.440 --> 00:34:55.199
I'm simply saying that this list of concerns is very real for Western leaders.
00:34:55.440 --> 00:35:08.719
They feel compelled to do something to prevent climate change from happening because it impacts where people live, economies, food production, emergency response preparedness, and of course the environment.
00:35:09.119 --> 00:35:19.840
Given that science is saying CO2 is the main reason for climate change, Western nations, and of course other nations too, are looking for ways to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.
00:35:20.480 --> 00:35:34.480
Now that we understand what CO2 is, how it gets in the atmosphere, and what negative impacts it might cause, before we look at what can be done, we need to understand just how much of a problem it is.
00:35:34.719 --> 00:35:38.320
Let's start with looking at how much CO2 we're talking about.
00:35:38.480 --> 00:35:50.159
By the way, I compared a research paper from Columbia University titled How Exactly Does Carbon Dioxide Cause Global Warming and the data used by the US government and they're very similar.
00:35:50.400 --> 00:35:56.239
Prior to 1860, the human contribution to the carbon cycle was negligible.
00:35:56.400 --> 00:35:58.000
It just happened naturally.
00:35:58.320 --> 00:36:08.239
Since then, the burning of fossil fuels, land practices, and increasing population have led to increased releases of CO2 into the atmosphere.
00:36:08.480 --> 00:36:12.159
In other words, that's in addition to the natural carbon cycle.
00:36:12.320 --> 00:36:20.320
The rise was minimal at first, reaching about an additional 4 to 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide added each year.
00:36:20.559 --> 00:36:30.559
The commensurate rise in CO2 was about 10%, going from 280 parts per million to around 310 parts per million by 1950.
00:36:30.800 --> 00:36:35.199
Then the post-World War II economic boom got into full swing.
00:36:35.519 --> 00:36:43.199
We went from adding 4 to 5 billion tons per year to over 30 billion tons per year in the mid-2000s.
00:36:43.360 --> 00:37:00.079
Scientists estimate that about half of that is being reabsorbed back into plant matter and the oceans, but the other half stays in the atmosphere, resulting in the situation where CO2 concentrations are now around 420 parts per million and are rising.
00:37:00.320 --> 00:37:09.360
You might naturally say, well, we've increased carbon emissions a lot, but that's still only a 50% increase over the 1860 levels.
00:37:09.599 --> 00:37:11.760
And the answer is, well, it's not that simple.
00:37:11.920 --> 00:37:13.760
There are a few problems here.
00:37:14.079 --> 00:37:24.320
Most of what I'm about to tell you comes from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change.
00:37:24.480 --> 00:37:26.239
So let's see what they had to say.
00:37:26.960 --> 00:37:40.480
If we simply continue the trend of burning fossil fuels to meet our energy needs, we can expect the atmosphere to have around 800 parts per million by the year 2100, unheard of in the Earth's history.
00:37:40.719 --> 00:37:43.519
Fortunately, it looks like we're not heading that way.
00:37:44.079 --> 00:37:48.719
We already have a rise of one degree Celsius above the 1850 level.
00:37:48.960 --> 00:38:10.000
Scientists say that a rise of 1.5 Celsius will take us to that shopping list of disasters I mentioned earlier, and that if it gets to 2 degrees Celsius, then the IPCC's report called Summary for Policymakers does a great job of dealing just how much worse things will get than what I described earlier.
00:38:10.239 --> 00:38:16.559
Basically, the key takeaways are that millions of people and species will be negatively affected.
00:38:16.719 --> 00:38:26.880
And the real danger here, the thing that scientists are very worried about, is that we're going to see an accelerated loss of sea ice and polar ice caps.
00:38:26.960 --> 00:38:29.119
They really don't know the science yet behind this.
00:38:29.199 --> 00:38:31.840
It's too difficult and too complicated to figure out.
00:38:32.079 --> 00:38:41.039
But they think that it could lead to multimeter sea level rise, and that would affect billions of people and kill a lot of species.
00:38:41.280 --> 00:38:45.760
Now that's a doomsday scenario, but governments have decided we shouldn't take that risk.
00:38:46.800 --> 00:38:54.559
This brings us to where I want to talk about risk and how we're managing it, but that will have to wait for the next episode.
00:38:54.800 --> 00:39:04.079
Thanks for listening to this episode of Rescuing a Reason, and I hope you'll tune in to the next episode where we'll be discussing climate change through that risk lens.
00:39:04.400 --> 00:39:11.519
In other words, can we just keep doing what we're doing and run the risk of global heating and the associated climate change?
00:39:11.679 --> 00:39:19.519
Or what would we need to do to mitigate those risks and or slow down or prevent the damage associated with any climate change?
00:39:19.840 --> 00:39:23.119
If you enjoyed the podcast, please recommend it to a friend.
00:39:23.280 --> 00:39:25.280
Catch you next time around.
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Hello, and welcome to episode sixteen of the Spartan Spirit season three titled Rescuing Reason, where we examine topical political and socioeconomic issues affecting Western liberal democracies, particularly Australia, Canada, and the USA.
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And today we're beginning a three-part series on carbon and its relationship to global warming and climate change.
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I'm your host, Bill Carolakis.
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I'm a retired senior Air Force officer.
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I use history and research to baseline the topics on rescuing reason, and I'll be offering you a Spartan perspective about these topics, in other words, taking a pragmatic view that values the nation and broader Western society over individual interests.
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A few months ago, the thirtieth Conference of the Parties, or COP thirty, concluded.
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And Australia is leading the agenda for COP thirty one.
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So this is about the right time for Australians and close allies like Canada and the US to consider what approach Australia should be taking as it leads COP thirty-one.
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And that's why I'm doing this short series on climate change and global warming.
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For those of you who listened to season one of the Spartan Spirits, about half of this episode is drawn from episode seven of that season.
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The approach we'll take today is to start by considering some of the terminology like COP, climate change, global warming, carbon, and carbonization of the atmosphere.
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I'll then broadly cover the science both for and against the concept of climate change, followed by what is being done around the world to combat climate change and how COP twenty one shaped these initiatives.
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And by the way, COP twenty one established the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
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And I'll conclude by taking a risk perspective over the entire issue and then giving you a Spartan perspective on managing that risk.
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Now, before I get started, I need to say something to both sides or both views of this topic.
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I firmly believe that government's policies should be based on two underpinning threads.
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Firstly, what is best for the good of the nation and its people, and you could argue for the good of the world and its people.
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And secondly, those policies should be based on science in the first instance, combined with community values where able.
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Which leads me to note that when it comes to this huge topic of climate change, that bit about being based on science is problematic because in this age of misinformation, it's really hard to decide what science we should be following.
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I know plenty of very smart people who don't think that climate change is the catastrophe that many scientists are saying it will be.
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But I know even more smart people who do believe the science.
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Time will tell us which side is correct.
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But for now, I want to take a slightly different perspective for this series, and that's to take a look at climate change through a risk-based approach, as opposed to choosing one side or the other and arguing for that side.
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I come from the aviation industry, in which I was an accountable authority setting policies for aircraft operations over a fleet of about fifty military aircraft.
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I had to look at likelihood and consequence, which was then assessed as risk.
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It didn't matter whether I believed or didn't believe a crash would happen.
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I had to manage the risk mitigations to minimize the risks to a reasonable level without compromising the achievement of the mission, which was to fly the airplanes.
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I mean you could be as safe as you like by not flying the airplanes, but that's just simply ridiculous when you're talking about flying airplanes.
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In the aviation industry, when you get the risk calculus wrong, well, people die.
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But that doesn't mean that we stop flying aircraft.
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Rather, it means that we take risks to get the job done, and if we realize one of those risks, well then we have to look in the mirror the next day as leaders and managers and aircraft technicians and air crew and ask ourselves if we did all we reasonably could do without having been too conservative and then we attend the funerals.
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I see climate change much the same way.
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It doesn't matter if you believe that climate change is real or not.
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If there is a likelihood of an unacceptable consequence, like say runaway global warming, then we should be taking steps to mitigate those risks.
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We aren't going to stop flying planet Earth in the manner we are doing at the moment, which means using lots of energy and emitting lots of carbon into the atmosphere.
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So that means there is a chance we will have global warming.
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Whether you think that chance is one percent or a hundred percent, we have to consider how we are going to mitigate the risks.
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The amounts of energy, national finance, economic costs we put into the mitigation depends on how much you believe in the science, but either way, we need to discuss this issue, and as I said, we will take a risk view of this.
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Okay, well let's get cracking.
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I've mentioned the acronym COP several times already, so very quickly, COP stands for Conference of the Parties, which refers to the nearly two hundred countries that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNF Triple C, around 1992.
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And I'll discuss this framework in episode two of this series and COP more fully in episode three of the series.
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More importantly, for this episode, we need to address the main point.
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In other words, what exactly is meant by the term climate change.
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We could take a simple view and say, well, that we mean the climate is changing.
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But that definition doesn't capture what scientists, environmentalists, and governments are concerned about, because you could argue that the climate has always been and always will be changing.
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We will kick off defining climate change by calling on Bill Nye the science guy.
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By the way, he's a popular science personality, but he began his career as a mechanical engineer for Boeing.
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And he's going to give us one of the common interpretations of the term climate change, and here he is now.
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Climate change is a real and serious issue, but isn't the climate always changing?
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Well, the Earth's climate has changed throughout history.
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Most of these slight changes are caused by small variations in the Earth's orbit.
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But climate change as we know it today is characterized by an abrupt increase in the Earth's temperature.
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It is estimated to have gotten 1.2 to 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in just the last century.
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Ten out of the last 13 years were the warmest on record.
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97% of climate scientists agree that this new tendency is not caused by the variations of the Earth's orbit, but rather very likely caused by human activities.
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And since the Industrial Revolution, we have come a long way.
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Humans built airplanes, faster cars, developed remarkable technology, and learned how the natural resources around us can be used for our benefit.
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It also means we have increased our consumption of natural resources and in turn released a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
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Now, greenhouse gases occur naturally, but in excess can be dangerous to our planet.
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Modern human activities have increased the release of non-naturally occurring greenhouse gases because we have stepped up our demand for burning fossil fuels.
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The composition of greenhouse gases traps heat radiated from the sun.
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The more heat they trap, the warmer our planet gets, and as our planet gets warmer, we begin to feel the effects.
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Troubling signs of climate change are increased extreme weather events.
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Natural disasters like floods, tornadoes, and deadly heat waves are more obvious to humans because of their immediate impact and their sharing of the images in the media.
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Climate change, as we know it today, is change in our Earth's overall temperature with massive and permanent ramifications.
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Although its consequences can be planet-threatening, scientists still believe there are things we can do on a personal level to help recycle and reuse things, walk or use public transportation to get to work, turn off your electronics when you're not using them, eat less meat.
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When it comes to climate change, the main takeaway is that it's real.
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And although we are part of the cause, we can also be part of the solution.
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It's only fair that we should listen to the other side of the climate change arguments, because of course Bill and I was very much a believer that climate change is happening due to carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
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So here we have now Professor of Meteorology at MIT, Richard Linden.
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The statement that most of the warmings since 1950 or 60 is due to man's emissions.
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It's possible.
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No one knows where their estimate, you know, 90% likely came from.
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The most recent works I've seen suggest that it may be on the order of half.
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Now remember, we're talking about a few tenths of a degree.
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You know, anyone who follows the records knows that the summers are not getting hotter.
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Some are cold, some are hot.
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The variations occur sporadically over time scales as long as 100 years.
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Global mean temperature anomaly over the last 200 years has gone up on the order of three-quarters of a degree.
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Nobody in this room can perceive personally global mean temperature anomaly.
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If you're here in the UK or you're in Boston, the year-to-year variability in temperature can be two degrees, four degrees, much larger than for the global mean.
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The real controversy comes with the statement that having seen this, we must cut our emissions.
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Because the presumption is that these, which I call reasonably innocent statements, imply disaster.
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Now, to put it into perspective, let us say that man's greenhouse gas emissions accounted for all of it.
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That would be entirely compatible with no problem.
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No problem.
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I mean, it would say that we might expect by the next century a degree or so.
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And there is little doubt that man has dealt with much more than that.
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Environmental groups who are saying save the planet.
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We all know that's an extreme statement that doesn't mean anything.
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The planet has survived far more than this.
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Yet, what is the value of a statement that's so extreme?
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Well, it then bypasses any uh policy issue, anything.
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You do whatever you can because you don't have a planet anymore.
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But in a more rational world, we're talking about the potential of some damage, a little damage, maybe a lot.
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And the question is, what do you do and how much can you do?
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And what is worth it to people?
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What you have is, of course, for the large developing countries like India and China.
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You know, they're not going to give up their future development for this.
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Now Linden said quite a few things there, and he is a climate change skeptic, and you'll note that he didn't say that global warming isn't happening.
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It's that he just doesn't perceive the risk as being all that great, as do most of his colleagues who disagree with his conclusions.
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But it's opinions like Richard Linden's and other academics that get drawn upon by climate skeptics, and they lead to statements by political leaders and influential people like Donald Trump.
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And here's Donald now talking in early 2025 at the United Nations.
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It's the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion.
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Climate change, no matter what happens, you're involved in that.
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No more global warming, no more global cooling, all of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong.
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They were made by stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success, if you don't get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.
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Now that statement by Donald Trump makes environmentalists and climate scientists absolutely cringe because it basically poo-poos everything they've been working on and blatantly ignores the science and doesn't take a risk perspective or a risk management perspective as simply puts your head in the sand and says, well, there's nothing to worry about here.
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And we could take that approach, but I don't think that's the right approach to take.
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So we're going to steer ourselves towards the risk view of climate change management.
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So yes, there are wildly differing interpretations out there, but what I can tell you is that the vast majority of scientists, governments, and environmentalists believe human activity is causing the planets to warm, leading to climate changes.
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The key issue, which is widely accepted, is that greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide, but there are others, are causing temperatures to rise in the atmosphere and oceans, and that this in turn changes our climate by making it warmer and having a multitude of effects on our climate.
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If you don't believe that science, that's okay, because we're going to take that risk perspective and we'll come back to the pros and cons of believing or not believing the arguments.
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As for the term climate change, I don't really like it because it's a general term that has many meanings, as implied by Professor Lyndon just a few minutes ago.
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And the general nature of the term leads to confusion and differing interpretations.
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And just like the term retard or the term dwarf, which are no longer in common use, I think the term climate change may have had its day, and maybe we need to change it to something else, something that's more descriptive.
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So, you know, I'd say something like human induced global heating, which by the way, you can change into an acronym called HIHIGH.
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You know, we need something there.
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Anyway, let's get on to the other relevant terms on this topic.
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And as you heard from Bill Nye, the science guy, carbon is central to this topic, so let's talk about carbon.
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Now, this is a bit of a carbon 101 lesson, and this is all from Encyclopedia Britannica.
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Carbon is the sixth element of the periodic table, and it's formed by the fusing of helium atoms in stars.
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It occurs naturally on planet Earth, and most of it is in the Earth's core, but about forty-three trillion tons of carbon is accessible to humans.
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In its pure forms, carbon can be found as coal, graphite, diamonds, and a few other materials.
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Although only the nineteenth most common material on Earth, it's widespread because it mixes with many other elements to form compounds, such as calcium carbonate, think seashells, some minerals, like marble, and thousands of organic compounds like oil, and yes, you are made of carbon too.
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In fact, 18% of you is carbon.
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And of course, there are gaseous forms such as carbon monoxide, and there's also today's culprit, carbon dioxide, called CO2 for short.
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Carbon moves around the planet through volcanic eruptions in fluids, so in oceans and oils, and as solids in organic matter and in gaseous forms.
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So this moving of carbon around the planet is what we're concerned with today and is part of what's called the carbon cycle, which relates to the production and absorption of carbon dioxide.
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And here is Professor Gavin Cauley of the University of East Anglia explaining this.
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Over the last few centuries, the amount of carbon dioxide or CO2 in the atmosphere has risen by about 40%.
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To explain why this is the case, we need to understand how the carbon cycle operates.
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The carbon cycle describes the flows of carbon between the atmosphere, the oceans, and the biosphere.
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Carbon sources release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
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Carbon sinks absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
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Some of these flows are the result of natural processes.
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For example, when plants grow, they absorb CO2.
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However, human activities also play a part.
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We release CO2 into the atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels.
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Land use change, such as deforestation, also releases CO2.
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Ice cores provide invaluable information on how atmospheric CO2 has changed over time.
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As the Antarctic ice sheet formed, it trapped small bubbles of air which stayed trapped for thousands of years.
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Cores drilled deep into the ice show us that prior to the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric CO2 had been fairly stable for several thousand years.
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The carbon cycle was in a state of natural balance.
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Carbon sources were roughly matched by carbon sinks.
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Human activity has upset this natural balance.
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Fossil fuels were formed millions of years ago from the remains of plants.
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When these plants died and were buried, the carbon was taken permanently out of the active carbon cycle.
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When we burn fossil fuels, we release this carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.
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As a result, CO2 levels have been rising.
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Scientists became more aware of this after 1958 when accurate measurements of CO2 concentrations were first made at the Morna-Lower observatory in Hawaii.
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Together with the ice core record, we see that atmospheric CO2 began to rapidly grow soon after the start of the Industrial Revolution.
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It would be a bit of a coincidence if this were a natural phenomenon.
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Furthermore, the increase in atmospheric CO2 has closely tracked the amount of CO2 that we've been releasing.
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This would be an even greater coincidence if the rise in atmospheric CO2 were natural.
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In fact, the amount of extra CO2 in the air has consistently been only about half of the CO2 we've released.
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So the evidence is clear that humans are raising CO2 levels, but not everybody accepts this.
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One myth is to argue that because the CO2 that humans release is small compared to the CO2 released by nature, our influence must be negligible.
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Unfortunately, this is incorrect because it only looks at half of the carbon cycle.
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It fails to consider the carbon sinks also absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.
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It's the difference between total sinks and total sources that actually governs the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
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There's a simple analogy that demonstrates that the rise in CO2 is caused by humans.
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Imagine my wife and I share a bank account which pays no interest and attracts no bank charges.
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I pay in£1,000 per month, but take no money out.
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If I notice that the balance rises by only£500, then I know that my wife has taken£500 more out of the account than she has put in.
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Now I don't have any direct knowledge of my wife's transactions, but whether she put in a million pounds a month or only one pound a month, I still know that she is taking out£500 more than she is putting in.
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The account obeys the principle of conservation of money.
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Likewise, the carbon cycle obeys the principle of conservation of mass.
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The carbon we release doesn't just disappear.
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It must either be removed by natural sinks or it ends up in the atmosphere.
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In other words, the change in atmospheric CO2 depends on the difference between the total sources and the total sinks.
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CO2 levels are rising more slowly than we are releasing CO2.
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This means that natural environment must be a net carbon sink.
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It soaks up carbon.
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It is taking more CO2 out of the atmosphere than it puts in.
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Nature has been a net carbon sink every year for at least the last 50 years.
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This fact alone establishes that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is not a natural phenomenon.
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In fact, nature is actively resisting the rise.
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I don't need to know the details of my wife's transactions to know that she was opposing the rise in our bank balance.
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Likewise, we don't need to know the exact strength of the individual sources and sinks to know that nature is opposing the rise in atmospheric CO2.
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We only need reliable measurements of atmospheric CO2 and of human emissions, which we already have.
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The error here is in taking an overly simplistic view of the carbon cycle, in this case considering only CO2 sources and ignoring the CO2 sinks altogether.
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In simple terms, carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere by plant matter during photosynthesis, and some is also removed by being dissolved in large bodies of water, which by the way acidifies the water.
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You can think of what it's like to drink a can of soda, which has carbon dioxide in it.
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And carbon dioxide is expelled into the atmosphere as a gas when we burn materials with carbon in it, like wood or coal.
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It is also expelled when organic matter decays or when water heats up.
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Again, think of a can of soda that goes flat, it's releasing its carbon dioxide.
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And believe it or not, when you breathe.
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You emit carbon dioxide.
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If we could get CO2 gas into a cube all on its own, one ton of CO2 would measure about 30 feet or 10 meters cubed.
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Imagine a telephone pole sized cube.
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That's how big it would be.
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But that's not possible because gas disperses in the atmosphere.
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So we measure carbon in the atmosphere in terms of parts per million.
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For example, pre-industrial revolution measurements for the concentration of CO2 gas in the atmosphere was around 280 parts per million.
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That means if you took one million molecules of air from the year 1850, 280 of them would have been CO2.
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By the way, 99% of our atmosphere is nitrogen and oxygen.
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The rest is made up of a bunch of different gases, and CO2 is only a small fraction of a percent of the atmosphere.
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If the carbon cycle was running as it had for the thousands and millions of years in pre-industrial eras, we wouldn't be talking about it.
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But through ice core samples, we've deduced that CO2 levels range from roughly 200 to 300 parts per million up until the Industrial Revolution.
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Since then, atmospheric concentration of CO2 has risen to over 400 parts per million.
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This is largely due to all the carbon material we are burning, like gases and oils, and there are some other issues which we'll talk about shortly.
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From the US government's National, Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the last time the Earth had 400 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere was about 3 million years ago.
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Back then the Earth's temperature was about 3 degrees Celsius or 5 to 6 Fahrenheit hotter than it is now.
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And water levels were commensurately higher, with oceans being 15 to 75 feet or 5 to 25 meters higher than they are now.
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So let's talk about why it matters that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has changed from 280 to over 400 parts per million.
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The Earth reflects energy.
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Most of that comes from the Sun which heats up the Earth's surface, which in turn is emitted as infrared energy back into the atmosphere.
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If there was no atmosphere, that reflected energy would just go up and out into space.
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But infrared energy can be absorbed by some gases.
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One gas that is really good at absorbing infrared energy is methane, but we'll leave that for another day.
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The main absorber of infrared energy is CO2 because there's a lot of it.
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CO2 absorbs that infrared energy and then radiates it in all directions.
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Some of this radiated heat is directed back to the Earth and into the atmosphere above you.
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This effect is called the greenhouse effect, making CO2 a greenhouse gas.
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I should also mention that water vapor is a greenhouse gas and is compounding the problem because the warmer the planet is, the more water vapor there is.
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We do need some greenhouse gases because they help trap heat in our atmosphere, thereby making our planet habitable.
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If there weren't any greenhouse gases, the Earth's atmosphere would be much colder, well below freezing.
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The problem is that if CO2 concentration is too great, then too much heat is trapped, and if too much heat is trapped, we can expect to have negative effects on our planets and our societies.
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And according to the US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, since the mid-1800s, we have been adding much more CO2 to the atmosphere than the natural carbon cycle did for at least a million years beforehand.
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In fact, we have moved from 280 to 420 parts per million, so that's about a 50% increase.
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No one's disputing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, not even climate change deniers, and we'll talk more about quantities shortly.
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What is debated in today's world is whether or not this 50% increase is a bad thing or something we should act upon.
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We're not going to argue the following points today, but I'm about to give you a shopping list of what scientists tell us that the elevated level of CO2 is doing to our planet and the associated impacts on society.
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This list is from the U.S.
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government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as they listed it in 2023.
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But before I go through it, let's start with an overview of the predicted problems from Bernadette Woods Plackey of Penn State and Matt Fitzpatrick from the University of Maryland.
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You often hear people say, so what's the big deal?
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Climate has changed a lot in the past.
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Well, yeah, we know that because climate scientists have figured out how climate has changed in the past, and that's why we're so concerned, because the changes we're seeing are far outside of what we would consider natural variability.
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If we compare the future expected changes, right, we're talking over the next several decades of a few degrees Celsius, maybe five degrees Fahrenheit.
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Changes of that magnitude in the past have completely reorganized Earth's climate.
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So we're talking the difference between a deep ice age or a very warm greenhouse Earth, the changes of this magnitude.
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And if we continue to put emissions into the atmosphere, we expect to exceed the changes that we've seen in the historic record and basically put us back to climates that were present when the dinosaurs were roaming the earth and there were crocodiles near the North Pole and that sort of thing.
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So, you know, a couple of degrees Fahrenheit globally is a massive amount of climate change.
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Global warming is affecting different kinds of weather in different ways.
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The easiest one for everyone to understand is that you add more heat, you're going to have more heat.
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Temperatures are higher, heat waves are lasting longer, they are more intense, and we're seeing more of them.
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But some other ways that we're seeing our weather change is increase in extreme amounts of rainfall.
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And this is happening around the globe.
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Even in places that are drying out, you have to look at our world as a water world.
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So when you take a world that is mainly water, you evaporate that water into the atmosphere, there's more of it to actually come down in these heavy rainfall events.
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And that is what we're seeing everywhere.
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So going forward, what we can expect unless we do get a handle on our emissions that we're putting into our atmosphere is more extreme weather events, including heavy rain, including intense heat and intensifying tropical systems.
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We're also going to expect rising seas at an increasing pace, melting ice from land ice, from glaciers, and our sea ice not reforming the way it has in the past.
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And one thing that people don't always think through is that these increases aren't going to happen in a bubble.
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These increases are going to happen at the same time.
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By 2080, Washington, D.C.
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is going to feel like a town in northern Mississippi that's called Greenwood, Mississippi.
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So the typical winter in Greenwood, Mississippi is about 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than D.C.'s winter is at present.
00:29:30.720 --> 00:29:33.119
That's about five, six degrees Celsius.
00:29:33.279 --> 00:29:37.440
And it'll be 75% wetter in winter in Washington, D.C.
00:29:37.599 --> 00:29:38.160
than it is now.
00:29:38.400 --> 00:29:40.319
So it's going to become more subtropical.
00:29:40.640 --> 00:29:42.400
Children living in Washington, D.C.
00:29:42.559 --> 00:29:47.279
today, if they continue to live here, they're going to live through a dramatic transformation of climate.
00:29:47.440 --> 00:29:49.599
They'll be telling their kids what climate was like.
00:29:49.680 --> 00:29:54.720
And their children aren't going to believe that it used to snow potentially in Washington, D.C.
00:29:55.279 --> 00:30:00.640
Climate change is affecting everyone here and now, just in different ways depending on where you live.
00:30:00.880 --> 00:30:03.039
In the West, droughts are getting worse.
00:30:03.200 --> 00:30:07.359
That's upping the risk for wildfires, and that is worsening air quality.
00:30:07.519 --> 00:30:23.759
What we're seeing in the middle of the country, intense heavy rain events, particularly the Midwest, where there's a huge uptick in these heavy rain events, which are wiping out crops for farmers and really interfering with the timing of planting crops and harvesting crops.
00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:29.359
Across the South, intense heat is getting more intense and it's lasting longer.
00:30:30.319 --> 00:30:35.839
The real problem, I think, is related to our ability to grow food and extended drought.
00:30:36.000 --> 00:30:43.279
And maybe in places like Eastern North America that are predicted to become wetter, that's not going to be as big of an impact.
00:30:43.519 --> 00:30:49.359
But globally, you know, large-scale drought is going to force people to migrate to new regions.
00:30:49.519 --> 00:30:53.279
That's going to destabilize regions, and we're going to have climate migrants.
00:30:53.359 --> 00:30:56.480
And I think that's probably one of the biggest near-term impacts.
00:30:56.640 --> 00:30:59.039
You know, we focus on natural systems or things like that.
00:30:59.200 --> 00:31:05.759
But these impacts to societies are going to be very large and they're going to ripple across the planet.
00:31:06.160 --> 00:31:11.279
Okay, so those are quite a few dire predictions, and we're going to have a look at some of those right now.
00:31:11.599 --> 00:31:13.599
And let's start with the obvious one.
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It's getting hotter.
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It's almost one degree Celsius hotter now than in 1900.
00:31:20.640 --> 00:31:23.200
And the prediction is that this is accelerating.
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Doesn't seem like much, right?
00:31:25.279 --> 00:31:32.640
But remember the temperatures are an average, so that means more hot days and fewer cool or cold days.
00:31:32.960 --> 00:31:40.960
Sea levels are rising at 3 millimeters per year, which is 1 millimeter per year faster than in 1900.
00:31:41.119 --> 00:31:49.359
Again, doesn't sound like much, but if you own beachfront property where storm surges and king tides happen, well then that's an issue.
00:31:49.599 --> 00:31:53.200
Glaciers are shrinking and Arctic sea ice is diminishing.
00:31:53.440 --> 00:31:55.279
This has a few implications.
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Ocean temperatures are rising overall, which in turn can affect fish stocks.
00:32:00.640 --> 00:32:09.519
Warmer water means more CO2 gets emitted from the oceans into the atmosphere, thereby accelerating the rise in carbon concentrations.
00:32:09.759 --> 00:32:17.039
It also means that water expands, albeit a tiny bit, but that tiny bit will accelerate sea level rise.
00:32:17.359 --> 00:32:25.039
Moving on, with more moisture in the atmosphere due to warmer temperatures, we get yet more greenhouse effect.
00:32:25.200 --> 00:32:34.240
Also, more moisture leads to stronger and more frequent heavy precipitation events, thereby leading to more flooding and infrastructure damage.
00:32:34.400 --> 00:32:41.920
This is because the violence of storms is directly related to how much water is in the atmosphere when low pressure systems develop.
00:32:42.160 --> 00:32:47.440
Some areas are going to experience more drought or enter drought-like conditions.
00:32:47.680 --> 00:32:53.440
That drought and increased heat can bring on wildfires more frequently than before.
00:32:53.680 --> 00:32:55.519
Food production will be affected.
00:32:55.759 --> 00:32:59.599
Given the seriousness of such a claim, I looked up some papers on it.
00:32:59.839 --> 00:33:11.680
From a paper called The Effect of Global Climate Change on Agriculture, which is a joint paper from York University in the UK and Uludag University in Turkey, they came up with the following.
00:33:11.920 --> 00:33:21.599
Plants actually do better with higher concentrations of CO2, but the pending changes are expected to mean that farming areas will have to move.
00:33:21.920 --> 00:33:34.799
This shifting of food production will affect economies and will potentially add to changing land use, including impacts on forestation or deforestation, which in turn could add to CO2 levels.
00:33:35.039 --> 00:33:44.240
The paper did point out that the research is not conclusive, and I will add that shifting land use is nothing new, so take this point with a grain of salt.
00:33:44.400 --> 00:33:53.119
If you want to know more about it, there's a good article on land use change in nature, which by the way is one of the leading science journals in the world.
00:33:53.279 --> 00:33:58.799
It was called Global Land Use Changes are four times greater than previously estimated.
00:33:59.119 --> 00:34:07.279
Warmer overall weather is expected to lead to more spread of diseases, particularly wherever there is increased flooding.
00:34:07.599 --> 00:34:13.760
Coastal communities can expect greater storm surges and some communities will have to be abandoned due to flooding.
00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:19.039
Coral reefs may die off due to the heat, along with the species that live in them.
00:34:19.199 --> 00:34:22.320
Global infrastructure may fail earlier than expected.
00:34:22.480 --> 00:34:24.719
This would have economic implications.
00:34:25.039 --> 00:34:35.679
And the last one on the list, more energy may be required to cool homes and businesses, again impacting our economics and adding to our power generation issues.
00:34:35.920 --> 00:34:38.159
There's more, but that'll do us.
00:34:38.800 --> 00:34:43.760
It's quite the doom and gloom list, and collectively it's called climate change.
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Remember, I'm not advocating or denying any of those doom and gloom points I just made.
00:34:49.440 --> 00:34:55.199
I'm simply saying that this list of concerns is very real for Western leaders.
00:34:55.440 --> 00:35:08.719
They feel compelled to do something to prevent climate change from happening because it impacts where people live, economies, food production, emergency response preparedness, and of course the environment.
00:35:09.119 --> 00:35:19.840
Given that science is saying CO2 is the main reason for climate change, Western nations, and of course other nations too, are looking for ways to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.
00:35:20.480 --> 00:35:34.480
Now that we understand what CO2 is, how it gets in the atmosphere, and what negative impacts it might cause, before we look at what can be done, we need to understand just how much of a problem it is.
00:35:34.719 --> 00:35:38.320
Let's start with looking at how much CO2 we're talking about.
00:35:38.480 --> 00:35:50.159
By the way, I compared a research paper from Columbia University titled How Exactly Does Carbon Dioxide Cause Global Warming and the data used by the US government and they're very similar.
00:35:50.400 --> 00:35:56.239
Prior to 1860, the human contribution to the carbon cycle was negligible.
00:35:56.400 --> 00:35:58.000
It just happened naturally.
00:35:58.320 --> 00:36:08.239
Since then, the burning of fossil fuels, land practices, and increasing population have led to increased releases of CO2 into the atmosphere.
00:36:08.480 --> 00:36:12.159
In other words, that's in addition to the natural carbon cycle.
00:36:12.320 --> 00:36:20.320
The rise was minimal at first, reaching about an additional 4 to 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide added each year.
00:36:20.559 --> 00:36:30.559
The commensurate rise in CO2 was about 10%, going from 280 parts per million to around 310 parts per million by 1950.
00:36:30.800 --> 00:36:35.199
Then the post-World War II economic boom got into full swing.
00:36:35.519 --> 00:36:43.199
We went from adding 4 to 5 billion tons per year to over 30 billion tons per year in the mid-2000s.
00:36:43.360 --> 00:37:00.079
Scientists estimate that about half of that is being reabsorbed back into plant matter and the oceans, but the other half stays in the atmosphere, resulting in the situation where CO2 concentrations are now around 420 parts per million and are rising.
00:37:00.320 --> 00:37:09.360
You might naturally say, well, we've increased carbon emissions a lot, but that's still only a 50% increase over the 1860 levels.
00:37:09.599 --> 00:37:11.760
And the answer is, well, it's not that simple.
00:37:11.920 --> 00:37:13.760
There are a few problems here.
00:37:14.079 --> 00:37:24.320
Most of what I'm about to tell you comes from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change.
00:37:24.480 --> 00:37:26.239
So let's see what they had to say.
00:37:26.960 --> 00:37:40.480
If we simply continue the trend of burning fossil fuels to meet our energy needs, we can expect the atmosphere to have around 800 parts per million by the year 2100, unheard of in the Earth's history.
00:37:40.719 --> 00:37:43.519
Fortunately, it looks like we're not heading that way.
00:37:44.079 --> 00:37:48.719
We already have a rise of one degree Celsius above the 1850 level.
00:37:48.960 --> 00:38:10.000
Scientists say that a rise of 1.5 Celsius will take us to that shopping list of disasters I mentioned earlier, and that if it gets to 2 degrees Celsius, then the IPCC's report called Summary for Policymakers does a great job of dealing just how much worse things will get than what I described earlier.
00:38:10.239 --> 00:38:16.559
Basically, the key takeaways are that millions of people and species will be negatively affected.
00:38:16.719 --> 00:38:26.880
And the real danger here, the thing that scientists are very worried about, is that we're going to see an accelerated loss of sea ice and polar ice caps.
00:38:26.960 --> 00:38:29.119
They really don't know the science yet behind this.
00:38:29.199 --> 00:38:31.840
It's too difficult and too complicated to figure out.
00:38:32.079 --> 00:38:41.039
But they think that it could lead to multimeter sea level rise, and that would affect billions of people and kill a lot of species.
00:38:41.280 --> 00:38:45.760
Now that's a doomsday scenario, but governments have decided we shouldn't take that risk.
00:38:46.800 --> 00:38:54.559
This brings us to where I want to talk about risk and how we're managing it, but that will have to wait for the next episode.
00:38:54.800 --> 00:39:04.079
Thanks for listening to this episode of Rescuing a Reason, and I hope you'll tune in to the next episode where we'll be discussing climate change through that risk lens.
00:39:04.400 --> 00:39:11.519
In other words, can we just keep doing what we're doing and run the risk of global heating and the associated climate change?
00:39:11.679 --> 00:39:19.519
Or what would we need to do to mitigate those risks and or slow down or prevent the damage associated with any climate change?
00:39:19.840 --> 00:39:23.119
If you enjoyed the podcast, please recommend it to a friend.
00:39:23.280 --> 00:39:25.280
Catch you next time around.
