It's us?

Q: How are Americans making Earth hotter?
A: CO2

Earth's climate is delicately balanced, for starters. It does not take much, we know now, to change things. The climate has always changed slowly, all by itself, and usually these were large changes, quite beyond the ability of humans to adapt to. It has been, for the most part, very much hotter. Our current pleasant climate is not the norm. This may be the first "climate crisis" that humans have experienced. Luckily, we are causing it ourselves. May our civilization please survive this one to someday have a second one.

Units of time

The farther back in time we go, the less detail we know about the climate, and the more we speak in generalities. For example we know that one day a meteor changed the climate and killed the dinosaurs. But we know when that happened only within a million years.

The usual units of measure for time are the day, the month and the year, which are good for human history, but not for geologic history. The units of measure that are used for Earth's geologic history are billions (3 commas) of years, and millions (two commas) of years, and thousands (one comma) of years.

The age of Earth and the solar system is the only period that needs 3 commas, billions (4.5 billion)

The age of living things (called the phanerozoic) uses 2 commas, millions. The Cambrian explosion was about 500 million years ago.

The phanerozoic, is divided into three parts - the old part, the middle part, the recent part. The old part is the largest, the middle part is smaller, and the recent part is smaller still. The names for the parts are the Paleo(old)zoic, the Meso(middle)zoic, and the Cenozoic. Since the Cenozoic goes up to the present, it is too big to see ourselves, so this recent part is subdivided into parts three(tertiary) and four(quaternary), at about the time of Lucy, which is also at the start of the Ice Ages. The most recent ice sheet retreat starts the current pleasant stable inter-glacial period, which we call "the Holocene". No idea where that word came from.

You can click on this chart to expand it

We have ice cores that go back a million years. Ice cores contain bubbles that are a historical sampling of the atmosphere. We can measure CO2 concentration directly, in the bubbles.

The last ten thousand years, called the Holocene, have been delightful. The stable climate has allowed for the growing and storing of wheat, and for the development of civilization, and for the internet. The ice has retreated to the poles. This period would be called an inter-glacial, except it does not look like the ice will be coming back any time soon.

Climate Change. Might our climate change, change for the worse? There have already been many natural extinction "events", where most life died. The mechanism is thought to be monster volcanic CO2 emissions from the Siberian Traps. The atmosphere and oceans warmed. A warm ocean lost its oxygen, killing sea life, and became over run with thermophilic organism that vented poisonous SO2 into the air, causing a mass extinction. Could mankind wreck the climate?

Well yes. The sun is busy trying to fry us to a crisp, while Earth, like a blueberry pie fresh from the oven, is trying like mad to cool off. Earth would like to get to absolute zero, like its pal Pluto. It is a delicate balance. But man pours great amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. CO2 makes it harder for Earth to cool. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the harder it is for Earth to cool, so the hotter Earth becomes.

Climatologists warn us that we humans have been messing with the climate, and we have done that because cheap power has made us richer than kings. (Could we be happy being richer than Barons?) Atmospheric CO2 levels, which for a million years varied between 200 and 300 ppm, are now above 400 and are rising, swiftly.

Two degrees, in context
For the last 2000 years, Anno Domini, the Greenland average surface temperature, as best we can tell, has varied one degree up or down. Climate scientists are creating scenarios that include temperature increases of eight [8] degrees. Brave New World.

We are running an unplanned experiment on the only world we have, betting all the marbles, and the one blue marble we live on, on a course of action that benefits some, but puts at risk everyone and everyone's kids. Plentiful cheap energy is the goose that lays a golden egg, but there is a downside. We have been slowly destabilizing the climate.

You have humans. Luckily, it doesn't last long.

What shall we do? A couple of options.
1) Business As Usual, and
2) Apollo-13.
Business as usual means the First World will off-load the damage and the risk of damage onto everybody else, and we will muddle through.
Apollo-13 means stop all emissions of CO2. Get in the Lunar Lander, and have Mission Control try to calculate a plan within the energy budget that allows us to parachute back to a safe Earth.
Thoughts and prayers.

Political action, united political action, seems to be the only hope for avoiding major damage. To others, but to ourselves as well.

Here are some "actions" that are delusional.
There is talk about "clean coal" or about "carbon capture" but this is a fantasy, far from ready to be used at scale, even though all IPCC plans assume it. Just think of the numbers: to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, by just 1 ppm, you need to remove 8 billion metric tons of CO2, and we would like to remove 100 ppm. And stash it some place. Here are two good people, from COP21, Paris 2015, talking about that.

All the same, "What shall we do?"
1. Stop burning gasoline(walk) and natural gas(dress warmly.)
2. Stop eating meat! Fix Agriculture. Shut down CAFOs
3. Reduce energy use. Weatherize.
4. Join Extinction Rebellion.
5. Do not pollute the air, water, or soil.
6. Speak up. Tell your kids. Be an extremist. Join the community.
7. Shut down fossil power plants
8. Create serious time-of-day tariffs, to use the market to level demand.

Let's re-enact the American Revolution; live like they lived.
Low carbon.

Spoiler alert.

Q: Why are these men smiling? A: They don't know. They have been lied to. The "body count" problem.

Grasses v. trees for removing CO2. Skip the first 4 minutes.


Grasses and removing CO2. Another talk

David MacKay, Solutions, by the numbers

More of his thoughts. Note @15:00 - CCS is a fantasy.

Is the Science Settled? Pondering what that means.

The history of CO2? How we came to believe it was CO2.

Carbon Capture 8 billion tonnes of CO2 is 1 ppm. 800 billion tonnes is 100ppm.

Steven Schneider 2009