This blog is named after how the Earth looked to the astronauts on Apollo 8 as they rounded the moon in December 1968. It looked like a blue marble in the blackness of space. Seeing the Blue Marble’s loneliness in space affected them all in different ways. The one commonality in their perceptions was this little Blue Marble contains the entire world’s fauna and flora with no other place to go to if the Earth becomes uninhabitable. The plot for hundreds of science-fiction movies are based on something happening to the Earth. Often some of the people invent some way of getting off the planet and going to some pristine planet or cruising around until the Earth is livable again. Some have a catastrophic event which so damaged the planet billions died and massively upset the ecosystem.
Nearly two centuries ago scientists found that the Earth’s atmosphere held the sun’s reflected heat radiation controlled by carbon dioxide. They surmised a little more or less caused the climate’s temperature to be higher or lower. Shortly after, the industrial revolution started to kick in, spewing CO2 at an ever increasing rate. Now we must figure out how to stop putting more CO2 into the air and how to reduce what is there rapidly.
Probes to Venus are very short-lived because surface temperatures can melt lead. Analysis of their data shows it may once have been Earth-like before volcanic activity put massive amounts of CO2 out creating so much heat it evaporated the water. Carbon dioxide and water vapor blanket the planet to the extent all radiation of the surface is kept inside the blanket. Our spewing of CO2 could be having the same effect as the volcanoes on Venus. We have done this much damage in a couple hundred years. How will we be able to solve the future destruction of all life on Earth?
What the Astronauts saw surrounding the Blue Marble was a small ring of air around the blue orb. This thin layer protects us and at the same time keeps us from freezing. We loose some of that small ring of air every day but without it life will not exist on Earth. If it gets too warm or too cold life as we know it cannot exist. Although carbon dioxide is only a tiny percentage (.03%) a minute increase or decrease changes the balance we need to survive.
By analyzing the air bubbles in glaciers scientists have been able to determine the parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the air over many thousands of years. At the start of the industrial revolution about 1744 the CO2 content was 277 ppm. In 1915 it was 301pp. Even though we had inefficiently burn coal for warmth for centuries, we were now starting to burn massive quantities of it to produce electricity. In 1960, it was 317 ppm with thousands of coal and petroleum burning power plants coming on line along with millions more cars each year. Forty years later it was 370 pppm. In 2017, it was 407 ppm. The delicate balance is obviously being upset. The last figure available to me is 2019 and 409.8 ppm with the most rapid increase being the last decade. The question now is this: Is it too late to save us all?
The Earth has many built-in mechanisisms which normally keep the CO2 level from getting too high. The oceans absorb it making them more acidic. Oceans can do this up to a certain percentage. They have already absorbed so much that shellfish and coral are having trouble forming shells. Several ideas have been proposed to reduce the current acid load and to attract more to an additive. One additive under consideration is thousands of tons of iron powder.
Another of Earth’s remedies is volcanic activity. The sulfuric gases and ash block the sunlight cooling the air and the surface. However, too much and we get 1816’s year with no summer in the Northern hemisphere. June had 6 inches of snow and a hard frost every month of the year. Eruptions of an Indonesian volcano caused the disruption lasting several years.
Another is putting fine powder or moisture high up in the stratosphere to reflect light. The idea came from the total shut down of all jet traffic after 9-11, allowing the air to clear of all contrails and their moisture. Did the pandemics reducing the number of flights help to raise the temperature in 2020 and 2021? I have asked a professor friend of another science to talk to someone in climatology or physics to think about it.
Trees pull carbon out of the air and hold it until they rot or get burned. One of the inventions is solar powered devices acting like a tree to collect carbon dioxide. The cost is prohibitive but may be necessary in the overall plan to save all life.
Today’s news is forest fires in the Western States, Canada, Greece, Italy, Turkey, and Siberia among other places. Most of those areas in the Northern hemisphere have had significant forest fires for the last several years. The Southern hemisphere’s fires in Australia and South America have scorched millions of acres. Fires in both areas have contributed to global warming. Fires around the Arctic Circle plus an occasional 100 degree day have caused the tundra to melt releasing methane. Methane is over 30 times more effective than CO2 in keeping the heat from escaping.
Many people deny the facts because of politics and greed, or both. They overlook the higher temperatures each year, fires, droughts, and floods as predicted by climate change scientists decades ago. The political reasons because they are guided and bought by fossil fuel industries and the culture of living for today. These people only care about themselves and not about their children’s future. These people cannot be easily changed so we must trust their children and grand children to do their best to save not just themselves.
They don’t recognize that insects and animals are surviving winters farther North. An excellent visible example is the White Birch Beetle is killing forests on the Colorado-Wyoming border when it seldom survived the New Mexico border in the 1960s. A warming climate means flora and fauna must move higher up the mountains in the Western states to keep their optimum temperature. Armadillos are approaching Central Illinois. Updated nursery zone charts are showing plants able to survive in areas farther North than a few decades ago.
The line charts have gone from a gently sloping line to one starting to curve upward indicating a quicker rising temperature. The greater the arc, the faster the temperature rises. The plan is try to stop the rise to no more than four degrees Fahrenheit over pre-industrial levels by the year 2100. It has already risen almost two degrees of the four. If we don’t make a serious effort to stop the rise by cutting CO2 and methane emissions, we can’t even hold the rise to five or six degrees by the year 2100.
If we can’t unite enough to stop it Earth can become another Venus where CO2, methane, and other heat capturing gases have evaporated the water., The water vapor and gases have blocked the radiated heat in so much of the surface temperature can melt the land. Venus has gone from Earth-like to a fireball. At what point does the build-up start a runaway increase in temperatures causing the Blue Marble to become another lifeless body in the solar system?
More articles to follow will be about how we can save ourselves. Some will be repeat ideas while others will be new. We are doing this to ourselves and we are the only ones who can save us.
Commentary About the Blue Marble 