What is Climate change ?
Be it the news, politics, youtube videos, celebrities or your neighboor, everyone is talking about climate change. What is it really ? What causes it ? What are the consequences and what can we do about it
© Picture Alliance / Patrick Pleul
A documentary movie called “Once you know”, directed by Emmanuel Cappellin was released this month, September 2021 as of this writing. The movie itself tells the journey of the author through the frightening reality that is the climate change crisis. The movie goes with different French scientists, engineers and activists and follow the life-changing experience that is being aware about climate change and the accepting the imminent risk of cataclysmic effects on humanity. As the title suggest, Once you know, everything is different. When discussing this topic with my family and friends, it is clear that being the prophet of doom is met with skepticism and disdain, while more often than not I am quietly suggested to hold on to my thoughts because “I am ruining dinner”. This article aims to be an introduction to the different aspects of this topic and hopefully enough to get you interested to know more.
The Climate is changing
The planet is getting hot. It’s a fact, we can measure it, and even the most ferocious climate skeptics do not deny it. It is estimated that the average temperature increased by 0.8 - 1.3°C during the 2010 - 2019 period in comparison to the beginning of the industrial era (1850-1900) In fact, 2020 was 1.1°C hotter, and 2021 is well on its way to beat that and become the hottest year ever recorded.
This raises a couple of questions : Why is this happening and should we care about it ?
Why is the climate changing
Since the industrial era, humanity has tamed the usage of fossil fuels to power machines, which in turn multiply our productivity and make our lives more comfortable. Coal, Gaz and especially Oil are natural resources, formed over millions of years underground, given to us by mother earth and scattered around the planet. Since 1850, we extract, transform, transport and burn it in larger and larger quantities in order to produce enough energy to fuel our way of life.
– queue fossil fuel usage over time worldwide
And for good reason, the industrial revolution has enabled societies with food that is cheap, tasty and abundant; warm houses for everyone and multiplied by 2.5x our life expectancy.
A world before fossil fuels, is a world with small cities, a vast majority of people working as farmers, all day every day and a life expectancy around 30 years old.
– insert diagram of farmers into the total population
The problem lies in the byproduct from the combustion of fossil fuels. They all respect the following formula CxHy + O2 + Ignition -> CO2 + 2H20 + Energy
To obtain the energy from igniting a fossil fuel in reaction with the air, we have a byproduct of water, and carbon dioxide.
On top of that, the growth of 8x the population magnified other nasty side effect of human activity, like beef cattle husbandery, rice paddy fields or landfills which all emits large quantities of methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas.
Greenhouse gases
You all know how a greenhouse work. You build a glass structure that can easily receive sun rays, but the glass will prevent the heat it creates from escaping - essentially heating the greenhouse - usually to grow and maintain plants to a microclimate different from the outside.
Carbon dioxide - and methane, are in fact powerful “greenhouse gases”, or gases provoking a greenhouse effect. This phenomenon is well known, since the french physicist Fourrier demonstrated its effect in the 19th century : When released into the air, the Carbon dioxide rise into the atmosphere and provoke a greenhouse. It lets sun rays pass into the earth but retain their heat from leaving it. This heats the planet.
There is, in 2021, absolutely no doubts that the heating of the planet we observe, is in fact caused by human activity and the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere
Should we care
