Governments chargeable with Ecocide
If any of us were found at the crime scene and there was clear evidence against him, he would be arrested, jailed and later taken to trial.
This would happen to each of us… Why doesn't it happen to the rulers (and consequently media and companies) who in recent years have become guilty of Ecocide? Simple, because there is no crime. After all, the evidence is so clear that there is no escape.
And this article presents the clear proof of that.
Extinction of species, ecosystems' devastation, poverty, migrations and even wars.
We have been seeing the extraordinarily high costs we’ve been paying for fossil fuels for decades. How did we get here?
When we turn our eyes skyward, it looks like our world stretches forever.
But in reality, we are confined to our “Blue Marble” and the thin layer of atmosphere that surrounds it. This thin layer of atmosphere is critical to all life on Earth. It is composed of a variety of gasses, carefully balanced, including naturally occurring CO2.
CO2 is exhaled by all living animals and released by decomposing tissue. These gasses perform a vital function. Every hour we receive enough solar radiation from the Sun to supply all of Earth’s energy needs for a full year!
Some of the sun’s energy that passes through our atmosphere is absorbed by the Earth, but much of it is reflected back outward. The normal composition of our atmosphere retains some of that energy to maintain our normal temperature, but some of it passes through the atmosphere and is reflected back out into space. As the concentration of CO2 and other Green House Gasses (GHG) increases in our atmosphere, more heat is trapped and reflected back to Earth than usual.
This effect was discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1827. His observations and data were perfected and confirmed later in that century by the Irish scientist John Tyndall and others. This is not some new untested theory!
It would be nice if some people (including our elected representatives) would catch up with 19th century science.
Need more evidence? Check out this headline from a New Zealand newspaper in 1912!
At this link of the National Librry of New Zealand you can find the whole edition of that day: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/rodney-and-otamatea-times-waitemata-and-kaipara-gazette/1912/08/14/1
So how much Green House Gasses are we putting into the atmosphere? In 1900 we were putting less than 1 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels every year. By 1975 it had increased to nearly 5 billion metric tons. In the year 2000 it was about 6 billion metric tons and in 2019, just 19 years later, we were dumping 10 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year from burning fossil fuels!
Why am I giving you data from 2019 to look at? Because in 2020 we saw a decrease in the Greenhouse Gas production. That decrease was due to the covid-19 pandemic. Hopefully we can find another way to reduce these emissions other than the deaths of over 4,000,000 people worldwide, not to mention the suffering and financial cost of so many more.
If we look at all sources of Greenhouse Gasses the picture is even worse! Every day we dump 152 MILLION TONS of GreenHouse Gasses into our atmosphere! Where does it all come from? Industrial processes, oil refining, landfills, farms, fires, coal mining, thawing permafrost, and by far, the largest carbon emitter of all - our dependence on fossil fuels.
Written and edited by Corinne Le Quéré (UEA) with the Global Carbon Budget team. Graphics by Nigel Hawtin.
Infographic funded by the European Commission VERIFY (776810) project.
Yet, even in 2020 the concentration of GHG increased. How can this be if the amount we produced was less? Unfortunately, the answer is a simple one. Even at the reduced 2020 production rates, we still put more GHG into the atmosphere than what was taken out by forests and other vegetation and sources. That’s why we cannot rely on planting trees alone. It is literally impossible to plant enough trees to make up for the GHG we are emitting. We need to stop burning fossil fuels and plant trees. Stop the production of GHG and take measures to remove them from the atmostphere and sequester them in the soil. There is an excellent explanation of this in the documentary film “Kiss the Ground”.
So we’ve known for almost 200 years that GreenHouse Gasses trap additional heat in our atmosphere. We know that we’ve been dumping GreenHouse Gasses into our atmosphere at unprecedented rates and in ever increasing amounts. But how much is too much? What effect has it had?
NASA reports that 19 of our last 20 years were the hottest years ever recorded for average global temperatures. The only year that was not in the top 20 was 2000.
And the top 5 years for hottest average global temperature in descending order are: #1 (hottest) 2016, #2 2019, #3 2017, #4 2015 and #5 2018.
The only year that made it into the top 20 years ever recorded that was before 2000 was the year 1998.
In addition, we have all seen the extreme climate conditions all over the world. Huge forest fires on parched dry land, flooding, droughts, extreme temperatures, worsening storms, flooding, and land becoming inhabitable. Yes, all of these thing have happened in the past – but not all at once and to such a degree.
So in summary...
- We know that greenhouse gasses trap additional heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, and we have known this for nearly 200 years.
- We are dumping more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere every year at an alarmingly increasing rate.
- 19 of the last 20 years have been in the top 20 of hottest global average temperature ever recorded.
There is no question that global warming is real and that it is man-made.
There never has been.
The author, Walter Mueller, retired Emergency Medical Technician who lives in Indiana, USA, is a passionate researcher and writer of climate change.