Fastest rise in CO2 in the last 50,000 years
Humans exist neither in an ice age nor in a hot age. The planet we live on today could hardly be better for us humans. It has enough water, an oxygen-rich atmosphere and an ozone layer that protects life from harmful ultraviolet rays.
For human life to exist, everything must be in a certain balance. US climate researcher Michael E. Mann: “Human civilisation has existed for just under 6,000 years, that’s 0.0001 percent of the Earth’s history – a fleeting moment in geological time.”
However, the current rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is ten times faster than at any other time in the last 50,000 years, as researchers have discovered on the basis of a detailed chemical analysis of old Antarctic ice. The main cause is the burning of coal, gas, oil and petrol in our time.
These findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide important new insights into abrupt climate changes in Earth’s past and offer new insights into the potential impacts of climate change today.
“Studying the past teaches us that today is different. The rate of CO2 change today is truly unprecedented,” said Kathleen Wendt, assistant professor in the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University and lead author of the study: “Our research has identified the fastest rates of natural CO2 increase ever observed in the past, and today’s rate, which is largely caused by human emissions, is ten times higher.” Climate change is the greatest challenge of the 21st century. It is the question of humanity’s survival.
More and more countries are getting caught in the headlock of climate change. A study by World Weather Attribution in June 2024 shows that climate change makes deadly heatwaves 35 times more likely in the USA and Mexico. If humans continue to burn fossil fuels, weather extremes could become even more frequent, according to the study. The 1.6 degrees of global warming caused by climate change over the last 150 years would have made the difference between life and death for “many people in May and June 2024,” explained Karina Izquierdo, community advisor for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Red Cross Climate Centre. At the same time, over a thousand pilgrims also died during the Hajj in Saudi Arabia in 51.8 degree heat.
It was even hotter at the end of May 2024 in New Delhi, India: 52.3 degrees. According to the Robert Koch Institute, more than 3,100 people died in Germany in 2023 due to the heat. No wonder that four out of five people surveyed globally want their governments to do more to protect the climate.
According to a survey by the United Nations Development Programme (UNEP), eighty per cent of respondents worldwide – 75,000 people in 77 countries – call for the fight against climate change to be stepped up. This demand is most common in the most affected countries of the Global South, but also in China (73 per cent) and the USA (66 per cent). In Africa, millions of people are affected by climate change, to which they have contributed the least. The causes are well known: Devastation, desertification, aridity, drought, water shortage. The consequences: Hunger, hardship, misery and millions of deaths, primarily caused by the rich industrialised nations.
According to a survey by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 90 per cent of people in Germany consider climate protection to be “important” or “very important” (taz.de, 21.06.2024)
Never before has climate change concerned people as much as it does today, says the head of the UN Development Programme Achim Steiner. He is hopeful that “some countries in Africa and Latin America are already producing 90 per cent of their electricity from renewable sources”. That would have been unimaginable just ten years ago. Just as it is unimaginable for many people today that we will be producing all of the world’s energy from renewable sources in perhaps another ten years (21 June 2024).
An expert from the German Meteorological Office told Der Spiegel (21 June 2024): “There are around 35 ways to die because of the heat.”
We must finally free ourselves from our self-made self-destruction. Thanks to inexhaustible solar energy – including wind energy, hydropower, bioenergy and geothermal energy – we have an alternative to the complete replacement of fossil and nuclear energy sources and the further destruction of our home planet. These are the opportunities and the hope of the solar world revolution. Yes, we still have the chance to save our climate. But we are probably the last generation that can.
Climate change follows physical laws that we cannot change. But we can change our energy behaviour by switching to 100% renewable, environmentally and climate-friendly energy in the next few years. The sun alone sends us 15,000 times more energy than the eight billion people consume today. The solar world revolution is possible and necessary.
Source
FRANZ ALT 2024 | Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator
