The climate is an angry beast,
and we have been poking at it with sticks,
e.g., in 2010, 30.6 gigatons of global
CO2 emissions (1) - a new record.
With 4.5% of the world's population, the US is responsible for nearly 30% of global CO2 emissions. The output fromTexas alone exceeds that of all of Canada. Humans add about 16,000,000,000 metric tons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year.
It was 20,000,000 years ago that the Earth's atmosphere last had our current atmospheric levels of CO2. (1) Three hundred and fifty parts of CO2 per million of atmospheric air or less is thought by some to be the maximum concentration compatible with maintaining the planet in the state to which human life is currently adapted.* Fossil fuel use, along with deforestation, is responsible for a great deal of the CO2 increase.
Methane (CH4), like CO2, is a heat-trapping gas. It is 25 times more potent than CO2
as a greenhouse gas over a 100-year period.
As it escapes into the atmosphere, methane adds even more to the pace of global warming. Concentrations of atmospheric methane have increased 150% since 1750.
Our species faces 3 enormous problems: population growth, resource depletion, and global warming. Future generations of homo sapiens may suffer mightily for what we have done to our only home. (1)
*Note: It'll be at least five hundred parts per million within the next forty years according to this expert. This guy explains possible effects of global warming in a manner a 14-year-old can understand, (1 -politics and science from a Nobel Peace Prize winner) Here's a skeptical expert.
Want less. Use less. Conserve energy.
Get off the carbon highway!