Someone happened upon my blog by searching for info on CO2. They arrived on a page with an off-topic comment from last summer on climate change. The commenter says CO2 emissions are not a threat because pure CO2 is denser than air, which is made up of nitrogen, oxygen, and CO2. It’s true that CO2 is denser than air. CO2 is one of the components of air, and CO2 emissions rapidly mix in with air, adding to the percentage of CO2 comprising air. The commenter wrongly thought that CO2 emissions would go “into the ground” because of the density of pure CO2.
I never responded to this wishful notion partly because I share the same wish. Most of the huge increase in GDP the world has seen in the last two centuries and the huge increase in population that came with it has been made possible by energy from burning things. The price of this energy is climate change: temperatures rising faster than they would have without human activities. It’s very hard to calculate how much this will cost in the future versus the benefit we get to today. All we know is the thing that makes our way of life possible will make us pay a price in the future. The magnitude and uncertainty of the threat is so unnerving that it’s tempting to fall into wishful thinking.
I’m not keen to shatter people’s comforting fantasies, but when I saw someone come to my blog looking for information I realized I ought to shatter this one.
Human activities are changing the environment in ways that will certainly be costly to future generations. There is no magic trick that will make the problem disappear. Solving this problem will be as hard as finding a way to the moon and back before modern computers or as hard as winning WWII, things that look easier in retrospect than they did going into them. We must do our utmost to minimize anthropogenic climate change (i.e. control emissions and deforestation), prepare to deal with the repercussions of climate change, and work on technologies that might be able to reverse or control climate change.
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good post, my friend. i don't worry too much about climate change not from wishful thinking but on a basis that you cite in your post. that basis being on how hard it would be to get to the moon and back without the use of computers. the computers made it easier, no?
ReplyDeletemankind has always been very inovative when it comes to solving the problems it has faced and i have faith in that inovative spirit when it comes to this problem also. in fact i see it occurring now with the development of alternative power sources, some old yet some new.
it seems as inevitable that past generations have always given present generations new problems to solve.
my grandpappy use to say "stay out of trouble but when trouble becomes a problem then solve the problem."