Dr Andrew Glickson of the Climate Change Institute
A new paper, released last week, measures the impact of burning fossil fuels on a geological timeframe.
Doctor Andrew Glickson’s paper, Fire and Human Evolution, measures the amount of energy, carbon and oxygen stored or created by plants in early geological ages and its rate of release throughout human history.
“Human respiration dissipates 2 to 10 calories per minute, a camp fire covering one square metre releases approximately 180,000 Calories per minute, and the output of a 1000 megawatt/hour power plant expends some 2.4 billion calories per minute, namely some 500 million times the mean energy level of individual human respiration.”
It breaks the era of human intervention in the Earth’s systems (the Anthropocene) into three distinct phases.
“Early Anthropocene” ∼2 million years ago, when fire was discovered by Homo ergaster.
“Middle Anthropocene” when extensive grain farming developed.
“Late Anthropocene” with the onset of combustion of fossil fuels.
Glickson concludes that the discovery of fire leads directly to the consequence of runaway climate change.
” It would take a species possessing absolute wisdom and total control to prevent its own inventions from getting out of hand.”
This provides academic rigour for the simple contention that by burning a billion years of sunlight in a little over a century we are inevitably going to warm the earth enough to lead to climate chaos.
For the last 10 years or so George Orwell’s dictum “those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future” [1] has been expressed through a small number of people, arguing against long-established basic laws of physics, the principles of climate science and current measurements.
According to the leader of the Australian opposition “It’s a market, a so-called market, in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one” [2].
But perhaps no so invisible? (see Figure 1).
Given major media platforms, the anti-science lobby has (continues to) provide polluting interests and their political mouthpieces with pseudo-scientific excuses allowing an increase carbon emission and lulling populations to a false sense of security (see: Merchants of doubt [3]).
The consequences are upon humanity and nature:
Fig. 2. Growth in CO2 and CO2 equivalent (CO2+CH4) during the Pleistocene and the Holocene.
CO2 levels have reached record levels of 400 ppm exceeding those of the Pliocene (2.6-5.2 million years ago) within less than a couple of centuries, at an unprecedented rate of 2-3 ppm/year [4] (Figure 2).
Since the 19th century global warming has reached 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures on the continents [5]. Mean temperature higher than 2 degrees Celsius are masked by sulphur aerosols, which already constitute an unintended global geo-engineering measure [6]. Ocean temperatures to 100 meters depth have risen by ~0.4 degrees C [7], which has already resulted in melting of the Arctic summer ice (12.6 to 11 million square kilometer between June 1979 to 2013 [8]) and is driving melting of the Antarctic ice sheet [9].
Consequent on the rising CO2 levels ocean acidity has increased by approximately -0.1 pH points [10][10a], placing plankton and corals at risk.
Consistent with rising temperatures in the oceans, increased evaporation and consequent precipitation lead to floods and increased heat/energy results in the intensification of hurricanes [11]
Rising temperatures over continents have already resulted in increase in heat waves and fires [12][12a], Australia being no exception [13].
Not that the above features too much in the Australian elections, where the reality of climate change has been replaced with the hit-pocket-nerve term “carbon tax”, “emission trading scheme” or “direct action”. In the context of the fast deteriorating global climate, plans by both
major parties of 5 percent reduction in emissions relative to 2000 represent no more than climate window dressing.
Nor are coal exports mentioned too often, despite current exports and planned future exports of representing carbon emissions tracking toward an order of magnitude higher than local emissions [14].
According to Dr Adam Lucas of the Science & Technology Studies Program, University of Wollongong, currently Australia (with ~0.3% of the global population) contributes domestic missions of about 1.8% of global emissions [15]. The total domestic and overseas consumption
of Australian coal is responsible for more than 2% of global emissions. Plans to triple or even quadruple coal export volumes over next 10 years would raise Australia’s total contribution to global GHG emissions to around 9% to 11% by 2020 [15].
Which places the “Great moral challenge of our generation” [16] in perspective.
