The first part of the sixth report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) on current climate change has just been published. Current, because throughout the history of our planet the climate has constantly changed, but what interests us today is this climate change, since it affects us directly: increasingly frequent fires, floods, rising sea levels, droughts, waves of hot and cold …
According to the IPCC assessment, we have not succeeded in slowing the rise in the global average temperature of the Earth. During this year and a half of the pandemic, the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere has continued to grow at the same rate as in previous years and decades.
There is no longer any doubt that this increase in global temperature is due to the constant emission of carbon dioxide from the extraction of energy from fossil fuels and, in recent years, from the emission of methane from the thawed tundras of Siberia. and Canada. There were never doubts among scientists, since the phenomenon is transparent, but there have been (and still are) among politicians who have to implement alternatives to burning fossil fuels.
CO₂ acts in the atmosphere as a kind of blanket that makes it difficult for energy to escape in the form of infrared radiation (which is felt under an awning heated by the sun on beach and summer days) from the planet’s surface to outer space. . Thanks to this gas, our temperature is not Mars. But because there is not too much CO₂ in the atmosphere, that temperature is not 400 ℃ on the planet Venus.
From the last ice age to climate change
In the cooling of the last million years (the glaciations) the sea has lowered its level as the water is deposited in the Nordic areas and in the mountains in the form of glaciers. As a consequence, the pressure on the clathrates of the oceanic slope has decreased, so that they have released enormous amounts of methane. This works like CO₂, but thirty times more intensely.
The cold atmosphere of the glacial stages has warmed up. And with it, the oceans, which have released, like a soda put on fire, the carbon dioxide they have dissolved. Methane and CO₂ changed glacial stages to hot stages. The last one had its maximum about 6000 years ago, when the glaciers melted, dragging fertile mud towards the valleys and producing, in conjunction with the existence of Homo sapiens (appeared during the last glacial stage) the first energy revolution, the agricultural revolution.
Today, as a consequence of the second energy revolution (started in England around 1800 with the massive consumption of coal, and continued with the even more massive extraction of oil and gas) we are releasing much more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than was finally released. of the last ice age.
The consequence is obvious: the rise in temperature is much faster than then, and the levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere today have no equivalent in the last three million years. That is why the IPCC report affirms that the change has already been made, and that the temperature will continue to rise even if we could abruptly stop CO₂ and methane emissions.
Now it is a question of not further increasing this current climate change. A 1.5 ℃ rise in global mean temperature is bad, but a 3 ℃ rise would be truly catastrophic. If with the pandemic societies have suffered for a year and a half (in Spain it will take many years to regain the standard of living before 2007) it is easy to think what full decades of climate disturbance could be with the constant increase in meteorological extremes.
How to stop the advance of climate change
We have all the tools in our hands to stop global warming on the planet, we just need the decision to get down to work. Three components of our lives are essential in the increase in the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere and its consequence, the increase in methane: poorly insulated buildings (around 50% of responsibility), vehicles with internal combustion engines and burning of natural gas (coal is no longer burned in Spain today, but in huge quantities in China and India) to generate electricity (another 30%).
New buildings are already being built relatively well, although insulation and forms of heating and cooling need to be improved. For example, with the passage of radiators to radiant walls, floors and ceilings. It is essential to address the refurbishment of old buildings.
In terms of vehicles, we already have the necessary technology to eliminate oil. And sodium batteries can already be produced, a metal much more abundant and cheaper than lithium, since it is part of sea salt. It is necessary to accelerate the production of electric vehicles, cars and trucks.
But that production is useless if electricity continues to be produced using fossil fuels, which must be eliminated, and if there is no infrastructure capable of rapidly charging vehicles. It is necessary to fill the streets and highways with electric cables that allow them to be recharged with the same speed and ease with which they are refueled at gas stations. Without this, the production of electric vehicles will not advance.
The climate system is a non-linear system, and these systems have the tremendous characteristic of feeding back and starting to accelerate. The disappearance of the ice from the north of the planet increases warming more and more. Tackling the problem is not urgent, it is extremely urgent.
Antonio Ruiz de Elvira Serra, Professor of Applied Physics, University of Alcalá
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.
