OPINION | The CO2 conundrum: to store or ignore
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas approximately 430 ppm atmospherically that is essential to life on Earth. The concentration is expected to increase with continued use of wood, coal, oil and natural gas that is also essential to life: our daily lives.
This increase presumes a threat to the planet because CO2 is considered a causative factor in global warming and climate change. Moreover, because some is derived anthropogenically, governments globally insist that this production be controlled or stopped altogether.
It has taken more than a half century of research and endless public argument for the UN to finally declare that, “The science is settled” to introduce measures, real or imaginary, of containing it.
“When higher than usual temperatures occurred a decade later, global warming arose as an even greater fear.”
A runaway greenhouse effect has generated a phobia that prevails and pervades the policy discussions in fora that continues unabated.
The improbability of this occurring has been explained by physicists and meteorologists who have presented data and analysis to explain Earth’s cooling by radiation that maintains a temperature equilibrium. Greenhouse gases (GHGs), CO2, CH4, N2O, O2, O3 and water vapour are absorbed at different (specific) wavelengths between one and 30 microns. At their wavelengths, heat is radiated to the upper atmosphere as infra-red radiation, while at frequencies where they are not absorbed, it is radiated back to Earth. The net effect of radiation and absorption maintains a thermal balance, the greenhouse effect that enables our existence.
Demonisation of CO2 began decades ago when it could be measured accurately. Repeated often enough, it revealed an upward trend that was correlated with extremes in weather, particularly temperature.
Cold temperatures of the early 1970s evoked fears of an Ice Age. When higher than usual temperatures occurred a decade later, global warming arose as an even greater fear. It has intensified since and is beyond control, for according to UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, unless CO2 is contained, Earth will “boil over”!
“These draconian measures are de facto expropriations of European farmers’ private lands inflicted by a tyrannous authoritarian administration whose decisions are arbitrary and lacking moral objectivity and science.”
It is also a reminder that climate is determined by changes in weather over long periods of time that are beyond control. Nevertheless, extreme anxiety has motivated Western governments to invoke “Net-Zero Emissions”, a policy to be achieved between 2050 and 2060, curtailing the use of carbon. Measures recommended for containment include Carbon-Capture and Storage (CCS) and financial disincentives or penalties for present carbon use.
Despite urgings of the UN and Western democracies, Asian governments are not overly enthusiastic in accepting these measures.
Fear has overcome fact, at least momentarily as European farmers protest recent EU environmental regulation policy that is an endorsement of the UN’s objective, “Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. CO2 emission from machinery and equipment used in agriculture is the EU’s primary regulatory concern, but two other GHGs, methane (NH4) produced by farting livestock and nitrous oxide (N2O) from fertilisers, are also included because they are assumed to contribute to global warming and climate change.
Additional regulatory constraints include removing 20 per cent of their lands from agricultural production: 10 per cent for re-wilding and ecosystem restoration and another 10 per cent for tree plantations to sequester CO2. These draconian measures are de facto expropriations of their private lands inflicted by a tyrannous authoritarian administration whose decisions are arbitrary and lacking moral objectivity and science. Presently, the policy is being fiercely resisted by thousands of protesting farmers whose livelihoods will be destroyed.
Understandably, fishers have also joined EU farmers in their protest. Moreover, it also assures disruption of an orderly, well-established food supply system.
The argument over temperature controlling factors continues, but Earth’s thermal equilibrium will not change significantly no matter if CO2, NH4 and the remaining GHGs increase beyond their present levels.
Article reprinted with permission from the IWMC – World Conservation Trust.
