Our planet and its environment
Environment. One word but with so many different meanings to different people. Many seem to interpret the word as referring only to the natural world or nature; while others ascribe it to particular settings – school environment, work environment, home environment and so on. For this blog I use a very inclusive definition. Our environment is everything that surrounds us – on earth and beyond! Just to be clear, I don’t mean the afterlife. By beyond I mean the stars and planets and galaxies – the universe at large. But mostly I will stay focused on earth.
Environmental change
A few words on Science
Science is a systematic process for acquiring knowledge. Sometimes science confuses us. Often science frustrates us. But that is usually because we think science is something it is not.
First and foremost – we can not prove anything through science. That is frustrating, right? Especially since so much of the world we have created – from frozen food to nuclear weapons – have been created using knowledge acquired through science.
What science, or stated more correctly, the process of scientific inquiry gives us, is an increasingly better understanding of the truth of an idea or the causes behind various phenomena.
After repeating the scientific method several times we build confidence that our hypothesis regarding some observed phenomenon is probably correct. Usually we repeat the experiments several times and in several different settings. We apply statistical tests to confirm that we are highly probably right.
Most of us apply some version of the scientific method every day of our lives to solve little problems.
It becomes more complex as we study phenomena related to nature. Its even more complicated when we can not actually do a controlled experiment . For example, we cannot control when a volcano will erupt or an earthquake happens!
I could write volumes of text if I were to go into all the nuances of science but that is not the purpose of this blog. Much of what I write on the environment will be based on years of scientific inquiry and data analysis by many scientists. Their work is then reviewed and verified by others with the appropriate experience and knowledge.
Geological change
The earths’ environment is changing all the time. Some of the changes, such as geological change are natural, beyond the control of any living organism. Volcanoes and tectonic plate movements are natural phenomena that humans have relatively little control over. Erosion, deposition, and related processes also help change the earth, usually more slowly.
One of the newest naturally formed islands, the island of Surtsey – now the southernmost tip of Iceland. It was formed between 1962 and 1967 due to an underwater volcano that erupted 130 meters below the sea. Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai in the kingdom of Tonga was formed even more recently, in 2014 also from an underwater volcano.
These newly formed islands are an ecologists dream to study how life (nature) colonizes and changes the islands over time. Some plants are primary colonizers, they are the first to appear and grow. In doing so they change the island so that other plants (and animals) can successively colonize and change the island. The first plants and animals appeared on Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai within four years of the island being formed.
And then there are those times when change comes in clusters. Also in Tonga, the island of Lateiki was formed in 1995. It was destroyed by another volcanic explosion in October 2019. Then reborn the same year as a new island 400 feet to the west of the “old” island. I’m sooo glad I didn’t buy some beachfront property on the first Lateiki!
The earth is estimated to have formed around 4.5 billion years ago. That is 4,500,000,000 years. The forms of earths landmasses are continually undergoing change due to continental drift, erosion and deposition by wind and water, volcanoes, earthquakes. Even extraterrestrial forces such as meteorites have changed the earth’s form.
The surface of these lands (both above and below water) are then changed again by plants and animals. Geological change is usually measured in terms of thousands, or even millions of years.
Biological change
Change is a core part of all life on earth. An individual butterfly lays eggs that hatch and morph into caterpillars. Caterpillars morph into pupa that morph into more adult butterflies. The butterflies lay eggs and the cycle continues. Organisms overall may change over time. Antibiotic resistant bacteria, pesticide resistant mice have evolved to survive a changed environment much quicker than evolution usually occurs.
Communities and ecosystems are changing all the time. Think of land deforested due to fire regrowing back to a forest through various steps such as grassland to scrubland to shrubland to forest. When we introduce a changing climate to the mix, the changes become accelerated and more extreme.
Extreme change of any ecosystem can lead to extinction of its species. Species extinction is a normal part of change on earth. However, right now, more species are going extinct much faster than normal.
The accelerated extinction rate and the scale of extinction (number of species going extinct) has scientists and nature lovers worried. It should worry us all because much of the food we eat depends on other organisms – like bees that pollinate flowers.
Yes, change is normal. What is not normal is the amount (scale) and rate (speed) at which change is happening. Some causes of extinction are the indiscriminate use of pesticides and hunting. Another cause is loss of habitat (places for the animals or plants to live). This happens as land is converted to farm/grazing land, urbanization, desertification and salinization.
Most plants and animals are not adapted to live in non-native environments. You can’t take an alligator from the southern swamps and put it in the wilds of Montana and expect it to live a happy and fulfilling life. In the same way, you couldn’t drain a Louisianna swamp and pave it over with asphalt and expect alligators to live happily thereafter.
The problem is, that is exactly what we are doing. Often intentionally, sometimes unintentionally we are changing our environment very drastically. We are changing our environment directly and physically, and we are changing it indirectly as we speed up climate change.
Climate change
Earth’s air temperatures, recorded since 1880 show that the earths temperature has increased by 1.8 oF+ (1 oC+). This sounds like a small change but in terms of how global temperature affects overall climate, the change is enormous. But, an increase in temperature alone is not climate change.
The earths climate is usually very resilient. We have hot years and we have cold years. We have years with cold temperatures, or a lot of snow, or lots of rain, or many hurricanes and to offset that we have years with warm temperatures, or little snow, or less rain, or fewer hurricanes. Over time, however, these varied years would even out. That pattern appears to be changing to one of increasingly extreme climates with a general trend toward higher temperatures.
I plotted the graph below using publicly available data from the most comprehensive data available for the US, at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The graph shows how US average annual temperatures have changed between 1844 and 2020. The trend-lines show the pattern (of increasing temperatures) so far, and also suggests what will continue happening. The red line is the scarier of the two because it suggests that average temperatures may rise rapidly going forward.
Why is there a focus on carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by human activity as the probable cause of global temperature increase?
A lot of scientific research has been carried out on a variety of topics that scientists have combined to synthesize the most logical and most likely explanation for why temperatures are increasing globally. A simple explanation is:
- The sun emits energy that reaches the earth as a broad spectrum of light (only some of which we can see).
- The earth absorbs some of that energy (causing it to heat) and reflects the rest back out to space.
- The energy absorbed by the earth is emitted by the earth as infra-red (IR) light. This is like the energy you can feel but not see when you turn an electric hotplate on.
- Carbon dioxide reflects IR light.
- So, as CO2 in the air builds, it reflects some of the IR light back to earth. The more CO2 in the air, the more IR light is reflected.
- Because the earth can not shed some of the heat energy into space as infra-red light, the heat gets trapped on earth, causing the earth to heat up.
Scientists didn’t just find a likely culprit in CO2 and stop looking. Enormous amounts of effort and resources have been spent trying to understand if climate change is real and if so, all the possible causes of global climate change. All available evidence says climate change is happening, and the only factor that consistently and very closely correlates to global climate change is CO2 concentration in the air.
The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis) is a must read. Find it here.
I can see some readers wondering “Well, is there anything we can do about this? What if we waste lots of money trying to fix this and it doesn’t even work? Science doesn’t prove anything…so why not just carry on doing what we have been doing and let the next generation worry about it?”
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
George Bernard Shaw
I’m not going to answer that question. Its best left to each individual. It is very clear there are things we can do to slow or even reverse global warming. The question is: do we have the moral strength to put this little blue planet of ours ahead of short term personal gain and greed?
I don’t know.
2 thoughts on “Our planet and its environment”
Believe that the time for addtional studies has come and gone several times and now we must ACT to reduce global CO2 emissions.
Question is how do we the people convince the governments and the corprate elites to actually enact and carry out significant work to this end rather than continue greenwashing because, in their limited worldview, the next election or Quarterly Anaylst’s Report on share prices is all that matters.
Yes, I agree. It is a conundrum that only an intelligent and informed populace who are willing to think and act together for the long term can resolve. But we are just so polarized these days.
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