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[personal profile] tnrkitect
Pollution is not a recent invention. Ever since men first began rudimentary industry and agriculture, there have been waste products generated. From cutting wood, Mining coal, pumping oil, to creating lye, smelting ore, refining crude.

Harvesting wood is not worry free, as trees can fall wrong, logs can split wrong, axes, saws and chainsaws can cut, logs can crush. Burning wood produces smoke, soot and ash, all of which can irritate the eyes and lungs.

Coal is worse, as the dust generated from mining it, if inhaled, coats and clogs the lining inside the lungs, creating a fatal condition known as black lung. The smoke generated from burning it is just as bad, generating thick soot that turns the air black causing respiratory problems. The soot also mixes with the moisture in the atmosphere, and becomes a nucleus around which rain drops can form. The water reacts chemically with the soot particles, and is turned acidic. This acid rain dissolves marble facades on buildings, and kills plant life.

Oil is even more deadly, as the fumes given off are toxic. Tapping a new well can be like tapping a powder keg, as the drill pierces through the cap rock providing a release for the tremendous pressures. Fire is a constant risk. The refining process requires intense heat and pressures, and releases even more fumes and toxic byproducts. The burning of oil products adds pollutants to the mix as well, ranging from unburned diesel particulates to carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. It is these last two that are being recognized as the true danger.

Carbon is the crux of the problem. All three fuel sources used by mankind over the ages contain carbon. In fact, the carbon dioxide we fret so much about from our automotive exhaust, a primary greenhouse gas or source of global warming, exists naturally in the earth’s atmosphere. However, according to sampling of trapped air pockets contained within ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, the levels of greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere are higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years.

Over the ages since then, the levels have decreased through natural means. Seawater is a natural “carbon sink” which soaks up CO2 from the atmosphere, to the tune of roughly thirty five trillion tons currently. Plant life captures and stores CO2 as well. This is due to the plants using the CO2 as the basic input for photosynthesis, where it is converted into oxygen and carbohydrates.

Normally, the sequestered CO2 within the carbohydrates in the plants tends to stay there. Short term ways that it is released are it dying and decomposing, being eaten, or being burned. At which point it is typically returned to the atmosphere as CO2 where it can float for millennia before it is recaptured. This is known as the carbon cycle.

Although decomposition of dead plants can reconstitute the carbon in the carbohydrates into CO2, a majority of it remains within the plant material. When eaten, animals convert the carbohydrates into the needed energy to sustain life, with unneeded amounts sequestered as fat cells. As the energy is used by the animal, it is converted into CO2 and released back into the atmosphere by exhaling, flatulence, or within excrement. As the animal dies, it too releases carbon back into the atmosphere during decomposition. However, what remains of the dead plants and animals can, under the right conditions, and over millions of years be further sequestered through creation of rock such as limestone, shale, and source rock, containing of course, the hydrocarbons known to most of us as coal, oil and gas.

The energy density explained previously, that coal contained 5 times the embodied energy of wood per pound, and that oil contained many times that of coal, was due to the concentration of carbon in the fuel. As each is consumed, the sequestered carbon is released back into the atmosphere, and logically, the levels of CO2 released by each corresponds to the amount of embodied carbon.

Up until the 1500s, the amount of CO2 sequestered in the oceans and plant life yearly was greater than the amount that was produced through decomposition or through burning either by natural means or in mankind’s cooking and heating fires. To put numbers to this, the natural carbon sinks soaked up around 213 billion tons of CO2 a year, while only 210 billion tons were released, giving a cushion of around 3 billion tons a year, in case of extra emissions due to volcanoes and the like.

When the wood shortages began to occur in the 1500s, this overbalance came back to and then dropped below the equilibrium point, as there was less plant life to sequester the CO2, with most of it having gone up in smoke in the chimneys of the industrializing world. As coal replaced wood, the imbalance widened further, and CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been rising ever since.

The CO2 production beyond natural emissions is known as anthropogenic CO2. As the industrial revolution took hold, these emissions rose from a miniscule 100 million tons of carbon a year to the current levels of around 6.3 billion tons a year. The earth’s biosphere can only absorb roughly half of that annually, causing CO2 levels to rise once again, from the pre-industrial revolution, equilibrium levels of 270 parts per million to a current level of around 377 parts per million.

Unfortunately, even if we were to freeze our emissions at current levels, we would still be increasing the concentration by about 1.5 parts per million per year, and just like your bank account, it adds up. Nature does not move quickly. Scientists have estimated that it would take the earth’s natural systems 200-300 years to reabsorb enough CO2 to bring the atmospheric levels back to a pre-industrial level.

Yet even freezing our current emission levels is not likely, as the increased energy demands from population growth and industrialization increases our carbon emissions by 3% a year, which is more akin to a credit card debt, in that the 3% compounds yearly, such that if we were to continue on a business as usual course, the current 6.3 billion tons a year in emissions would increase to 12 billion tons per year by the year 2030.

“Ok. So carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising. What does this do, exactly?” you might ask.
Well, quite simply, Carbon Dioxide is what is known as a greenhouse gas. It acts as an insulating agent in the sky, meaning that when energy from the sun strikes the surface of the earth, it passes through the atmosphere relatively easily, yet as it strikes the surface of the earth, the wavelength changes slightly. Some of the energy is absorbed by the earth’s surface warming it, but a majority is reflected back through the atmosphere back into the depths of space.

Greenhouse gases however share a unique property. They are transparent to the incoming wavelengths from the sun, yet opaque to the slightly changed, reflected waves. Thus, they reflect this energy back towards the ground, where additional absorption (and warming) occurs.

Now, the earth undergoes natural cycles of warming and cooling. Scientists are not saying otherwise. What they attempt to explain to the naysayers is that the warming that has occurred since the dawn of the industrial age is tempering the cold spells and enhancing the warm spells.

The politicians may deny that global warming is occurring, while pocketing the industry lobbyist’s kickbacks, but if you talk to any person that has lived in the southern US for the last 30 years, they will tell you that things are getting warmer. All you have to do is ask them about snow. In Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, (states I can vouch for personally) the frequency and amount of snowfall has dropped precipitously. In the 70’s school systems built snow days into their schedule, as they knew that on average, there would be enough snow to close schools for about 7-10 days a year. Even then, the number and severity of the snows were lessening from those that occurred during the decade prior. Snowfalls like the one that just occurred, where parts of Tennessee saw 3-5 inches fall, are now a rarity.

Meteorological observations have shown that the 11 warmest years recorded since such things were measured have occurred since 1995. In fact, recent observations have recorded that the earth is warmer now than it has been in the last 1,200 years. The warming is not necessarily just causing things to get hotter. Rather, it is causing greater extremes of weather; hotter, drier summers, and colder, wetter winters.

Now, I will not say that the recent record number of tropical storms and hurricanes are due to global warming, for that is not the case. Hurricane frequency waxes and wanes on a roughly 17 year cycle, and we are currently at the beginning of an upswing in activity.

What I will state is that the severity of the storms is a function of global warming. It is the warmth of the tropical waters in which the storms form, and across which they travel that gives the strength to the storms. As the earth’s climate warms, the waters of the earth’s oceans are warming as well, albeit at a slower rate than the atmosphere. As the waters warm, the storms that feed upon this warmth strengthen.

Tropical storms form when in past years they would have remained tropical depressions. Hurricanes form when in past years they would have remained tropical storms. Hurricanes reach catastrophic strength with more frequency than previously. Global warming does not cause more storms, but it does mean that the storms that form reach greater strengths, and retain their intensity for longer periods.

The warming is also having profound effects upon the weather patterns of the world. Meteorologists and climatologists are watching the changes unfold, still unsure of the full effects to come. What they have observed however, is that they are changing. Certain areas are drying out, receiving less rain than normal, while others are getting more.

Unfortunately, we can not stop these changes immediately. The increases in carbon gases and other greenhouse gases are already having an effect, and as I mentioned previously, it will take a while to reduce them back to pre-industrial levels. Meanwhile, the alterations are still occurring, and increasing. Not all the nations of the world mind either.

Russia actually prefers the changes. The warming is melting the permafrost in the Siberian tundra, allowing more grassland to arise. It is also melting the artic ice, allowing for shipping along the continent’s northern shore. Since the 1970’s the seasonal ice coverage has shrunk by 3 to 4 percent per decade. The older ice, that which lasts year round, is shrinking twice as fast. The ice has thinned by 42% in the last 35 years. It was not until 1977 that a ship first sailed to the North Pole. In the last 2 years, 17 ships sailed there. In mid August of 2000, an ice breaker discovered open water there, and had to move away to land people on ice for pictures.

This warming trend is allowing them to maintain a shipping lane along the northern shore. Shipping from Europe to the Far East via this Northern Sea route cuts 40% off the trip via the Suez Canal. The fabled North-West Passage, long the prize for intrepid, exploratory sailings, is now a viable alternative to the Panama Canal. A new route directly over the top of the world is increasingly being used.

The ability to have access to western Siberia via sea is cause for celebration for the oil companies. The pipelines that link the western Siberian oil fields with St. Petersburg and the rest of Europe are already near maximum capacity, so the ability to use oil tankers to increase the volume flowing to market is “ochen horoshie” for the Russians, as it brings in needed hard currency for their economy.

The major oil companies are also chomping at the bit to have access to the region. The steady march of oil prices to the current levels of $60 a barrel makes the region, formerly shunned due to the inhospitable nature, much more attractive. The Arctic region is estimated to contain a quarter of the known oil and gas reserves. The thinning ice allows for the prospecting and supply ships to venture northward, and production platforms to be set up. Tankers will be able to retrieve the oil, and transport it to refineries.

Yet the change in climate is causing more harm than good.
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tnrkitect - Musings of an Unconventional Mind

June 2011

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