Habitability Havoc

Anyone who is paying attention to our environment or is not supportive of the fossil fuel industry has to be concerned with climate change, and may even be inclined to use the term “global warming,” without being concerned that they may be targeted by the powers that be. It is amazing that the fact of human-caused climate change remains off the political agenda on the part of most politicians—especially in the US.

I have been taking an online course offered by Sweden's Stockholm University, titled “Planetary Boundaries.” The term refers to an exhaustive study being conducted by a consortium of university researchers around the world. Their goal is to define the various kinds of environmental boundaries beyond which we might go, with the result that a tipping point happens, which flips the environment into a new realm, from which we cannot return. 

An example is the level of ocean acidification that will kill off all the world's coral reefs and the refuge they provide for many kinds of marine life. Another example is the triggering of glacier melting to the point that they cannot be re-formed. Each of these trigger points leads to a runaway situation that will tip the planet into a new era that has not been seen for millions of years.

These teams of scientists are quantifying the climate change process, so as to be able to describe accurately the ramifications of increased carbon dioxide, or air pollution, or water pollution, etc. Two recent remarkable results of their analyses struck me as particularly telling. Let me see if I can explain them adequately.

Currently the proportion of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is a little over 400 parts per million (ppm). Many environmental groups maintain that a safe limit is 350 ppm—a boundary we've already crossed. Analyses by the Stockholm scientists show that if we can stay below 450 ppm, for example, we have a 1.8% chance of exceeding a 6^o C (11^o F) rise in world temperature. To put this in perspective, a 6^o C rise in temperature would definitely create an uninhabitable planet for most of today's creatures—including us. Massive extinctions would occur—maybe even including humans.

But some people might look at the other side of this CO₂ analysis and say, “but wait, we also have a 98.2% chance of staying below a 6^o C rise. Isn't that an acceptable risk?” No. If we accepted that kind of risk in another area—say a 1.8% chance of airplane crashes—we'd be experiencing some 1500 crashes a day! We'd never accept that level of risk for air travel. Why do we seem to be so complacent about the planet's habitability?

Another example of a tipping point that we narrowly and blithely have already missed: In the 1960s the refrigeration industry chose chlorine as its coolant material. It could have just as easily chosen bromine, rather than chlorine; their chemical refrigerant properties are quite similar. In the 1980s scientists noted a huge hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, caused by the escaped chlorine compounds. Had the refrigeration industry 20 years earlier selected bromine instead, it would have caused the complete collapse of the planet's ozone layer, crossing a tipping point that would have made the Earth uninhabitable for most species. We'd all have fried under the high levels of ultraviolet radiation, from which the upper atmospheric ozone layer protects us.

These atmospheric scientists have defined nine different kinds of planetary threats—three of which have already crossed their safe boundaries. Humanity seems headed towards some frightening consequences, as we carry on with business as usual, because the polluting industries have much sway over politicians.