Imagine that today aliens landed and gifted us a carbon-free limitless energy source. And instead of killing each other over this technology, we immediately decided to transform the world into a carbon-free society.
Electricity, oil refineries, coal and natural gas plants all these wondrous sources would power our homes, industries, cars and planes. So, if we cut down our carbon addiction today, what does that mean for global warming? So, if we stopped burning carbon, would the climate suddenly go back to the calmer, cooler atmosphere where humans lived before the Industrial Revolution? The short answer to this question is: Not exactly. The climate would continue to change and temperatures would remain higher for many ages. So, that’s not good. I know, we’ve been told for years that devastating greenhouse gas pollution is the key to stop climate change. But unfortunately, those solutions wouldn’t immediately stop our planet from warming up. One reason is that over the last 60 years, 80% of the extra global warming has gone into the oceans. It takes time for oceans to heat up, but once you drop adding additional heat, they’d still emit the heat that had previously accumulated. It’s kind of like how a vessel of boiling water continues to give off heat long after you’ve turned off the stove. Because water heats up slowly, it cools off slowly too. And as all this excess heat fully mixes in the deep ocean the oceans would continue to increase, rising sea levels for centuries. The other reason Earth would stay hot is that carbon dioxide molecules -- which cause more than 80% of the warming -- remain in the atmosphere for an unusually long period. If you burn 7 gallons of gas today you create about 140 pounds of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But way off in the year 3000, as much as 50 pounds of that gas will still be floating in the sky, warming up this planet. Since the industrial revolution earth has warmed by about 0.8˚C [1.4˚ Fahrenheit]. Supposed If we turned off greenhouse gas emissions today, shorter-lived greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide would be chemically broken down and dissipate first. That would cause the surroundings to cool by maybe half a degree, over about a century. But carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere way longer because it’s so chemically stable. So that would keep, the earth warmer for at least one and half thousand years. So, many of the impacts we’re experiencing now, like the melting ice, droughts, and extreme thunderstorms would probably also continue. In the end, carbon dioxide might take as long as 10000 years to finally return to pre-industrial levels. So even if we cut down all emissions today, the truth is we are confirmed some amount of climate change and warmer temperatures. But switching to a carbon-free society would still give us a lot of benefits immediately. Health is one of the most important. Over two and half billion people worldwide breathe air that is so polluted that it doesn’t meet World Health Organization guidelines. Air pollution from stoves or fossil fuels is thought to cause more than 4.5 million deaths per year, thanks to things like heart disease, lung cancer and stroke. Most of those deaths occur in developing countries, where there’s more pollution. So awkward fossil fuel burning would immediately improve the lives of millions of people. Wild places would also benefit. Some of the world’s most primeval environments contain abundant fossil fuels. Stopping emissions would mean closure of fossil fuel extraction, which means less construction in wild areas, less noise pollution, and cleaner air and water. Awkward emissions sooner rather than later mean that future generations might still face climate impacts, but they’ll probably be less severe. For example, with each degree of additional global warming, the area burned by wildfire in the western United States should be two folds. Each degree of additional global warming is also thought to reduce crop yields by as much as 15 percent. Lowering emissions means fewer fatalities in extreme weather, hardly any severe storms, and more children manage the hardship of migration to cooler places. And who knows, maybe one of those kids could grow up to establish some technologies to actually absorb the extra carbon straight out of the sky and speed up the cooling. The idea of aliens providing us a magical greener energy source is of course a fantasy. But today we’re already installing real clean energy technologies that could detach us from fossil fuels, things like solar cells and wind turbines.
The decisions we’re making today will affect not only our future generation but their grandchildren also. Our obsession with carbon has put us and our descendants into a deep hole. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine how we will move out, but the good we can do for ourselves and them is to just stop digging.
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