EARTH WARMING

Author’s note. Trill is a fictional female acquaintance who makes it possible for me to write in  what is for me a comfortable style, on virtually any subject.


My Dear Trill,

    How did I know that some day you would be asking me about climate change?.After all, the media is full of  self-styled “experts,” mostly global warming deniers, pontificating on the subject, comfortable inside their skins with things just as they are, and confident that Earth will experience climate changes  every few thousand years and there is nothing we can about it. I am not an expert, Trill,  admittedly, but I do have ability to separate  hard scientific data from mere conjecture and am happy to pass on what I know.
    What I do know is that vast changes have taken place ever since humans have sought ways to ease manual labor, increase production of goods, and travel far and wide. The revolution (often called the Industrial Revolution) began rather recently, around 1775, when in England James Watt made improvements to the Newcomen steam engine that  accelerated its application to all kinds of things, from powering the machines in factories, to trains and ships. Long after that development, another engine that burned gasoline and similar fuels was invented, called the Otto cycle after the inventor,  that underlies the operation  of gasoline engines in the millions of cars, buses and trucks that cruise the highways. The Diesel engine was a further development on the gasoline engine. All of this, in addition to stationary power plants for generation of electricity as well as  a development of air travel, led to enormous consumption of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. The burning of these fuels produce huge quantities of carbon dioxide.
    In earlier times, natural processes on Earth like plant growth, which consumes carbon dioxide, and absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans, were able to consume the carbon dioxide as fast as it was produced. As consumption increased the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere grew beyond the ability of natural processes to handle it. Carbon dioxide is a heat trapping gas. It hampers the ability of Earth to radiate into space some of the heat gathered from the sun. Methane has similar properties. Sulphur dioxide, on the other hand, shields Earth from the rays of the sun.
    There are people who downplay the the contribution of humans to global warming, arguing without basis that a single volcano emits a quantity of carbon dioxide equal to the output of all the automobiles in the world. The truth is quite different, All the volcanoes in the world , according to the U.S. Geological Survey, emit a total of .26 giga-tons of carbon dioxide in a year, (That’s .26 followed be twelve zeros). In contrast, the automobiles, ships, trains and aircraft emit a total of 30 giga-tons, a hundred twenty times as much.
    Here’s something for you to ponder. Where does all the carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide emitted by volcanoes come from? One theory is that the gases were present when Earth was nothing but a huge gas ball. Then the rocks started to pour in, forming the hard planet with an atmosphere around it. As Earth cooled, fissures and cracks appeared that got filled with gas from the atmosphere and then got sealed in by further crustal movement.  Volcanic eruptions are largely caused but pressures generated when the gas is heated to high temperatures by Earth’s magma.
    Trill, there is no doubt that climate change is upon us, and some think that we have already passed the tipping point and it is beyond the capacity of humans to reverse it. If true, you will be witness to some enormous changes in your lifetime, with the snow caps, icecaps and glaciers  melting, ocean level rising, regionally some very hot weather, violent storms, and entire civilizations moving to safer ground. Your home, given its location, unfortunately will probably be under water.
    These observations will, I hope, help to guide you and place limits  on how and where you plan to spend your days and years on Earth. It will be quite an exciting time. Not bad for the planet. It will simply be in transition to another form. But very sad for most of its occupants. Sea creatures may be the only survivors and we will begin all over again, when the first ones crawled onto the land.