We know that the availability of non renewable energy sources is limited, but it is hardly that which is the biggest problem today. The environmental and climate threat overshadows everything else, and must take precedence in any discussion of resources.
CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are 30 % higher today than before the start of industrialisation, over 150
years ago. The UN IPCC climate panel states that this increase has already changed the world’s climate. The Earth’s average temperature, for example, has increased by 0.5 °C in the last 100 years. Glaciers have started to melt, and sea levels have risen by 3 cm. The relationship between human influence, caused by increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere from combustion of coal and oil, is regarded as almost entirely certain.
Even with a temperature rise of only 2 °C, millions of persons will risk a shortage of clean water, and up to 30 % of economic systems risk being destroyed. A temperature rise of 3 °C represents a boundary at which scientists expect that the sea and biosphere would become a carbon dioxide source, rather than a carbon dioxide sink as today. This would mean that a temperature rise of over 4 °C would be unavoidable. Glaciers would melt, ice would disappear and sea levels would rise. A temperature rise of 5 °C represents the threshold at which almost all life on Earth would be wiped out.
A scenario worth thinking about
The quantities of carbon dioxide that are the result of anthropogenic combustion are nothing in comparison with what could happen in a worst-case scenario. Enormous quantities of frozen methane exist in deep ocean depths and in the Arctic permafrost, held in these locations by a combination of low temperatures and high pressure. With the Earth’s average temperature - and thus the ocean temperatures - rising, there is a risk of these methane hydrates being released. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 21 times as potent as carbon dioxide. If these enormous quantities of methane were to be released into the atmosphere, they would create a runaway catastrophe situation, with steadily rising temperatures and even more methane.
However, an uncontrollable global temperature rise is not a likely scenario, although scientists are becoming more and more convinced that it has happened in the Earth’s past. About 250 million years ago, volcanoes in Siberia emitted enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, causing a temperature rise of 5 °C and wiping out 95 % of all life on the planet’s surface. One of the IPCC scenarios postulates a 6 °C temperature rise during this century: a scenario that should be given serious thought.
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