This document needs more careful citing.
Any additions, clarifications, improvements, whatever are acceptable
The first thing I hope we can do is share some common understanding about what climate change is. The following is what I've learned/discovered/understood so far. If you have questions or different understanding, bring it up and we will use today as a question generating opportunity. If you have more to share on something I mention please feel comfortable doing that.
At the most broad definition, climate change is simply the modification of earth’s climate due to atmospheric changes. Understanding climate change means understanding earth's complex interconnected systems
Global warming is often used interchangeably with climate change — but global warming is an aspect of climate change — climate change includes global warming AND its effects. (wikipedia global warming page)
Nasa defines climate change as a broad range of global phenomenon created predominantly by burning fossil fuels which add heat trapping gases to Earth’s atmosphere. These phenomenon include the increased temperature trends described by global warming. but also encompass changes such as sea level rise and ice mass loss in greenland, antarctica, and the arctic and mountain glaciers worldwide. Shifts in flower blooming, and more severe and extreme weather events.
Buckminster Fuller liked to refer to our planet as "spaceship earth" -- we float through space on our earth just like astronauts on a spaceship: we only have the air, food, and resources onboard.
Life is dependent on the energy from the sun and cosmos in order to sustain itself. Life as we know it can be understood as a vast system through which the suns energy travels. These systems are both biological and geological. We harvest energy from both these systems in the form of food and fuel.
All energy is sun energy in some form, even fossil fuels, they are fossilized deposits of biological matter produced on the earth millions of years ago. They have been called our “fossilized sunshine”.
Over the past 100 years our understanding of the earth's climate has gone from one of a inexhaustible, static system beyond the realm of human alteration to a delicate, interconnected system that can be effected by the impact of human behavior. It is possible to look at the earth’s many systems as manners with which energy is transferred from one place to the next. An activity of our oceans and atmosphere is to exchange energy in the form of heat. This exchange creates the dynamic that is our weather.
Our species is defined by its relationship to energy. Prior to the 19th century the main sources of energy were wood for cooking and heating, animals and wind for transportation and human labor for agriculture and manufacturing.
The Modern era/Industrial age is fueled by petroleum and coal. The parallel events of the discovery of fossil fuels and the invention of engines are what have defined our civilization for the past 150 years. The mechanics of engines are what give us access to the concentrated energy held by the fossil fuels. Supported by this highly concentrated form of solar energy the worlds human population has expanded extremely quickly.
It is valuable to look at the parallel increase in population that follows this access to energy.
- 1750: 791 mill.
- 1900: 1.6 bill.
- Today: 7.6 bill.
- 2100: 11 bill.
In 150 years between 1750 and 1900 it is estimated that world pop grew by 609 million. In nearly 120 years between 1900 and 2019 world pop has grown by 6 billion.
Coal is about 1.6 times more energy dense than wood, and crude oil has an energy density 1.4 times greater than coal. So in 200 years we moved from wood to oil, a source of energy over twice as dense (232% — math/stats based on wikipedia energy density information) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
To return to the importance of engines: in order to access the energy stored in oil/coal, the substance needs to be burned. This burning does two things; it releases the energy and makes it available to perform work, like pushing a car around or boiling water to make steam for electricity production. And it produces smoke. Wood is the same; but the carbon in wood is from the atmosphere the carbon in oil/coal is sequestered carbon we’re releasing…
When carbon based fuels are burned the carbon locked inside them is released into the atmosphere as CO2 (more on this in the carbon cycle lecture!?), these with other manmade or anthropogenic gases (sulfur, methane, nitrous oxide, carbon tetra fluoride) remain in the atmosphere and have come to be termed “greenhouse gases” as they trap reflected solar radiation that would otherwise be released into space. This phenomenon was first identified by British scientist John Tyndell in 1859. (coincidentally same year as 1st oil well)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#/media/File:Greenhouse-effect-t2.svg
Basically the layer of gasses in our atmosphere act like greenhouse glass: capturing and holing onto more of the sun’s energy as heat; and reflecting a portion of the heat trying to radiate out into space back down to earth instead… A few extra gas molecules ends up making a big difference.
We measure gas in the atmosphere in parts per million
A way of understanding CO2 PPM is to think of a cube of air that is comprised of 1 mill. particles. The CO2 PPM number is how many of these particles that are made up of CO2. CO2 is reflective so the greater the PPM # the greater the reflectivity or heat trapping the atmosphere is.
{some sort of cube image}
There are many greenhouse gases, but we talk about carbon dioxide because its prevalent and always in a measurable quantity… and it lasts a long time… and its part of the building blocks of life…
The study of the history of the earth’s climate or “paleoclimatology” has focused since its origins in the mid 19th century around the puzzle of the cyclical nature of ice ages. The recurrence of ice ages over millennia had been recognized by people like Tyndell but what caused them was not well understood. There are many factors that appear to be connected to this cycle, solar variation, the wobbling of the earth’s axis and the presence of C02.
A paleoclimatologist named Lonnie Thompson who was pursuing CO2’s relationship to ancient changes in the earth’s temperature developed the technology and logistics capable of drilling through high altitude glaciers and looking at the air bubbles they contained, as they would show atmospheric conditions, as they were 1000’s of years ago.
The most recent of these cores were taken from the East Antarctic from a depth of 3.2 kilometers; the ice at this depth fell as snow 800,000 yrs ago.
These ice cores provide a clear scientifically reproducible correlation between the concentration of CO2 and the earth's temperature.
In general: More CO2 = hotter / Less CO2 = cooler
we’re currently seeing a rough average of nearly 2 degrees F higher temperatures…
What is evident from the ice core record is that there has never been a period of high concentrations of CO2 without a corresponding increase in temperature (where do these figures come from, look up Thompson's works?)
We are currently at nearly ≈412ppm pf CO2 in our atmosphere
The this is how things changed historically, this is where we are now/
{crazy co2 graph}
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-concentration-long-term
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence
While contested as biased the source of this “hockey stick” slide made famous by Al Gore’s film as actually from various US Government websites produced during the Bush administration, chiefly NOAA and the EPA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy
That CO2 is the chief cause of planetary warming is what has been under debate for the past 20 years. Some of this has been a debate among the scientific community.
A great deal of it though has been a debate generated from the enormous economic and political consequences of a necessary withdrawal from a fossil fuel based economy.
This is a controversial subject. You will find a wide range of opinions, predictions and scenarios, they will range from ones that see climate change as beneficial in that there will be greater crop yields and a stimulus to scientific and industrial processes to the apocalyptic, ones that state that we are done as a species and there is nothing that can avert extinction of ourselves and most everything else.
For the purposes of sanity we will try and stay on positive things; though this can be hard as even conservative/middle of the road places now are very bad in terms of outlooks...
There is now a profound scientific consensus. In 2017 the IPCC, a UN chartered organization released its 5th assessment report. This report is comprised of peer-reviewed findings of over 2,500 scientists from 130 countries.
(also, any references from the US one??? did I print these to read, are they in my piles???)
The scientific evidence has been mounting for decades. Recent analyses, including the latest National Climate Assessment (NCA) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) most recent report, affirm what we already know: climate change is not some problem in the distant future—it's happening right now.
Our new climate reality is fraught with stronger hurricanes, polar vortex shifts, recurrent high tide flooding, life-threatening heat waves, longer wildfire seasons, and more rain during heavy downpours. And studies show that climate change is not affecting everyone equally. Low-income communities and communities of color, as well as indigenous peoples, often suffer most.
We have reached a tipping point on climate action—Scientists say we have roughly one decade left to avoid the most severe consequences of climate change.
“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average of air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising average sea level.” — IPCC 4th report summary NOV 2007 (AGAIN, UPDATE THIS!)
We are now entering an age that is beyond the highest concentration of CO2 in the planets observable history.
The present concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is approximately 412 ppm.
Sidenote: When this class first began in 2007 the amount was 380ppm.
The IPCC states that there is a 90% certainty that manmade CO2 in the atmosphere is the strongest driver of atmospheric changes in 10,000 years. We can now understand ourselves as a force of nature.
This is now an enormous field of study and industry. The need to understand, predict and prepare for the impact of a warming world have engulfed scientists, economists, agriculturalists, world health and disease community, disaster relief agencies, engineering and architecture, and art and design.
A warmer atmosphere has consequences that are not fully understood or entirely predictable. (One good consequence of this so far is that in trying to understand CC we are learning a great deal more about the interconnected nature of our world.)
James Hansen of the Goddard Space Flight Institute has stated that the field of Climate Change has gone from one of “predictive science to the observable.”
So, as energy from the sun is trapped by the earth’s atmosphere this energy expresses itself in the form of heat. This is now causes several observable phenomena
This includes:
- Sea level rise: as the planet heats the glaciers and polar regions melt, also oceans expand as they become warmer. This affects everything from the flow of ocean currents, the life inhabiting the oceans to the majority of the world’s population that inhabits the coastal areas.
- Hurricanes: a 2009 study conducted by the National Science Foundation and published in the journal Nature finds that hurricane activity has increased in both frequency and strength and is at its “highest level in 1,000 years”
- Drought and flood: warmer land and sea surface cause greater evaporation rates that cause both droughts in equatorial regions and greater rainfall in higher latitudes. This has a myriad of repercussions from a decreasing water supply in arid areas, stresses on indigenous and agricultural plant species, animal migrations and human refugees.
- Species loss: the earths climate is changing faster than species can adapt, predictions for many species and the food chain they are part of is very dire. Every single study performed on animal species over the past one hundred years has generated results of stress and depletion.
- Glacial and arctic sea ice melting
- melting permafrost
- ocean acidification…
The most recent IPCC report has stated that we are committed to 2-4 feet of sea level rise and 8-10 F degree increase in temperature by the end of the century. The IPCC findings state that this will result in over 70 million refugees. Maybe more on all fronts and maybe sooner.
Seen through an economic lens the cost of coping with such numbers of refugees and the loss of land could cripple even major nations.
I mentioned earlier that the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 412 ppm — the next important figure is 450. It is at this level that there is no historical precedent (well there is no precedent from where we are now either) but computer modeling indicates a state of runaway climate change that is difficult for anyone to imagine our civilization continuing in.
We are on a path to reach that level sometime in the next 50 years, maybe sooner.
It is now considered that in order for the atmosphere to remain stable a level of 350ppm must be reached, to do this we need to lower the amount of globally emitted CO2 by 90% by 2050. And we need to rapidly draw down co2 we have already emitted…
(350.org wants us to get back to 350ppm for example as a sensible atmospheric number based on historic data)
What is also understood is that is that we don’t have 50-100 years to act. It takes awhile for the CO2 to reach the upper atmosphere. It also takes awhile to alter the industrial and social fabric of society. Current models from the last UN IPCC report believe we have 10 years or less to stop producing more co2 just to keep temperature rise to below 1.5C
Very, very dire.
This is a global problem. It is important to note that the carbon in the atmosphere was put there over the past 150 years primarily by the US and to a lesser degree Europe and former USSR. China and India now have the fastest growing populations and economies, with China now leading the world in CO2 output. US is #2 overall, but #1 per capita still.
We are on converging paths of crisis. No significant, easily accessible deposits of petroleum have been found in over 40 years. What is known to remain is either technically difficult or politically dangerous to obtain. Its horizon as an available source of energy can now be seen. We are running out of oil, I guess that is a good thing. But we are running out of time. And we currently still need oil to build and do anything…
Concurrent with this are very serious threats to marine and terrestrial biological systems. They are all being massively strained.
This completely overwhelming dilemma is now defining our current era. How we respond is defining our future.
It is also the focus of this class.
We will look at the range of problems and solutions from the individual to the global. We will look at how the fields of art and design are responding to this situation. We will discuss the possibility of our civilizations realigning its relationship to the planet. We will discuss how we consume its energy and manage our waste. We will study the potential of replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources and look at innovations in designing industrial and social systems that will both mitigate the causes of climate change and adapt to its unavoidable consequences.
And so. That’s the bad news. The climate is potentially wrecked. But, there are clear solutions: get CO2 out of the atmosphere (and the ocean) and back into plants and the ground, etc. So, stop producing new carbon dioxide. Draw down the excess that we’ve put into the atmosphere already. There are so many potential ways to do this (from our transit to our food to political action to objects we make and buy to our societal fabric, etc.), and that gives me hope! We just have to start trying things immediately. Maybe that is where our class can come in?