From Knowledge To Power

The Comprehensive Handbook for Climate Science and Advocacy

John Perona

• Publisher: Ooligan Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781947845282
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Warming & Climate Change
• Index: Biological Sciences

Together, humans can prevent the global temperature rise from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius, which would change life on earth as we know it. Politics and science collide as we learn what it really means to be an advocate for the environment.

The Earth is slowly heating up, and only we, as a global community, can stop it—with the knowledge behind what is happening, we can affect change. Using his PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale and his LLM in Environmental and Natural Resources Law from the Northwestern College of Law at Lewis & Clark University, Dr. John Perona takes us on a journey into the science and politics of the climate crisis in From Knowledge to Power: Your Handbook for Climate Science and Advocacy. Perona uses the basic science of climate change, the rise of green technologies, and the political implications of climate science to present a concise guide to the critical facts regarding our climate change. He offers actionable tips for how to engage in advocacy by calling for action at every level—leaders in both science and government, community groups, and individuals like you. Perona offers a grounded, optimistic outlook for humanity, but only if we engage with science and act with knowledge.

Chapter 1

Earth’s Climate System

From the indigenous North American people, who first learned how to live in harmony with our land, to naturalists, poets, and politicians—like John Muir, Walt Whitman and Al Gore—Americans have been blessed to have many eloquent voices speaking on the importance of environmental stewardship.1 Most scientists came later to this calling, but moved by the climate crisis, are overcoming natural reticence and recognizing that their advocacy adds a crucial dimension to the conversation.2 We should listen closely to all these voices with both our heads and our hearts. In today’s America, though, it is the hard-headed, no-nonsense voice of science, now under sustained attack by those who find its truths inconvenient, that most needs to be amplified.3

For advocacy, a good understanding of climate science is enormously beneficial because it empowers us to speak with confidence about the urgency of the problem. It can be tempting to skip the science, which sometimes appears difficult, and to jump right to solutions. But while the need to act rapidly is clear to climate advocates, many influential people seemingly lack this urgent perspective. Lawmakers, business executives, and community leaders—the individuals we must engage—are immersed in the health and economic crises brought on by the Coronavirus pandemic, and in the long-standing challenge of racial and social justice that is intertwined with both of these. In this context, the urgency of global warming, emerging from the basic science, is easy to overlook. But while slow-moving, climate change is inexorable. We are at a critical juncture, and all of our voices are vital.

Given the importance of understanding the science of climate change, this chapter begins with a straightforward description of the climate system. The second section explains how greenhouse gases naturally trap the heat emitted from the Earth’s surface to create a warmer, livable environment. The last section details why carbon is the most important element to the Earth’s climate, describing its various forms and how it naturally cycles through the atmosphere, land, and oceans. A key takeaway from this section is the persistence of heat-trapping atmospheric carbon dioxide over many centuries and millenniums, demonstrating the potentially devastating impact on future generations if we fail to act.

Figure 1.1: Components of Earth’s climate system—land, oceans, biosphere, ice, and atmosphere. Dotted lines depict outgoing radiation (Earthlight), which emanates from both the surface and the atmosphere. The sun and deep underground are outside the climate system.

1. Describing the Earth

How can we describe Earth’s climate in a way that takes advantage of our common experience and what we already know? Let’s begin where the pioneering 19th century Earth and environmental scientists also started—we’ll take a look at the Earth system, describe what we see, and then think a little about how this system might respond to external influences. Our observations can be categorized in many different ways, but the consensus today is to divide the climate system into five parts: the atmosphere, oceans, ice, land surfaces, and the biosphere (Figure 1.1).4 Among these, the biosphere has the unique property of being alive—the climate system includes essential functions for the biology of Earth’s organisms.5

The Earth’s atmosphere is a thin layer of gases that extends from the surface to the boundary with outer space.6 Most of the climate effects we are concerned with happen in the lowest atmosphere layer, the troposphere, which extends up from the surface for 5–10 miles (for reference, Mt. Everest is 5.5 miles high). Above this is the stratosphere, which extends 30 miles from the surface. The stratosphere is important because it contains the protective ozone layer as well as particles from volcanic eruptions that remain suspended for long periods of time.

There is a greater concentration, or pressure, of gases close to the surface, and most of us have experienced how the atmosphere thins out with increased altitude (in mile-high Denver, Colorado, the pressure is 82 percent of what it is at sea level—already enough to send some of us puffing). Free circulation of the air means that the atmosphere is well-mixed, so the emissions of gases from the surface become distributed everywhere within a few weeks to a few months. Although the effects of air pollution can be local—for example, the daily smog in the Los Angeles basin mostly stays there—in regards to long-term climate, the whole atmosphere is freely inter-connected. The atmosphere is a global commons, a resource shared by everyone, and essential to making Earth a livable planet.7

Earth’s atmosphere consists mainly of two gases: nitrogen and oxygen, which together make up about 99 percent of the entire mixture.8 Most of the remaining 1 percent is an inert gas called argon. Oxygen plays a central role in the chemistry of the atmosphere and is essential for breathing, while nitrogen gas is important for its role in the overall nitrogen cycle, by which this element moves around among the atmosphere, land, vegetation, and oceans. It’s important to note that none of these gases play a role in the greenhouse effect, which allows heat to be trapped near Earth’s surface and thus leads to global warming.9 Instead, most of the naturally occurring greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone—are present only in very low amounts. There are also a few greenhouse gases that are entirely of human creation, like the hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) used today as refrigerants (Box 1.1).

Surprisingly, the most important gas for greenhouse warming is water vapor, which gives the atmosphere its humidity. While water vapor is not well-mixed it does vary throughout the Earth’s surface (think of the difference between deserts and jungles), at a level of 1–3 percent. The amount of water held in the atmosphere increases as the Earth warms, but only in response to increases in the other greenhouse gases.10 So, you don’t need to call the global warming police when your neighbor waters her lawn, because that water will just evaporate and rain out again as part of the natural cycle.

It is easy to conceptualize this effect for yourself. If you have ever camped in the desert, you probably noticed that it got quite cold at night, even in the summer. It doesn’t cool off nearly as much at night in Florida. The low humidity of the desert atmosphere means that when heat escapes the surface after the Sun goes down, there is much less water vapor to absorb it and radiate it back down to you.

Let's move on to the other parts of the Earth system. Saltwater oceans occupy 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and contain the vast majority (97 percent) of our water; the remaining water can be found in ice, and in both surface and underground lakes and rivers. The most important role the oceans play in the climate system is to absorb heat from the Sun (which occurs primarily in the tropics) and to distribute that heat to the North and South poles.11 The Atlantic Gulf Stream, which starts in the Gulf of Mexico and keeps Northern Europe warm despite its high latitude, is the most well-known part of this circulation. Another crucial role that oceans play in the climate system is to take up and dissolve gases from the air—especially carbon dioxide. After carbon dioxide dissolves in the oceans, it no longer contributes to the greenhouse effect.12

The ice component of Earth’s climate system, also called the cryosphere, consists of three main parts. Sea ice floats over the liquid ocean surface and is found only near the North and South poles. The other two parts are the large continent-sized ice sheets found on land in Greenland and Antarctica, and the mountain-glacier ice that occurs at high altitudes in many parts of the world. All exposed ice has a bright white color, which allows it to reflect a large percentage of the incoming sunlight that strikes it, keeping Earth’s surface cooler than it otherwise would be.13

Finally, the land and biosphere form the last two crucial parts of the climate system. A great deal of solid carbon is stored in both the living biosphere and the nonliving parts of land–in soils and limestone rocks, for example. Similar to the oceans, these parts of Earth’s surface also take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Some of this uptake occurs very slowly, over what we can think of as geological time. Vegetation, however, takes up carbon dioxide quickly through photosynthesis, which occurs on an annual summer-winter cycle. This function of vegetation is crucial and is the reason why climate scientists place so much emphasis on maintaining the size and health of forests. A good deal of photosynthesis also occurs in the oceans, for example through microscopic algae called phytoplankton (Figure 1.1).

Knowing the five parts that make up the Earth’s climate system gives us the grounding we need to start exploring climate change. What’s important to recognize is that we have so far described the system. The next step is to look at what is outside the system that influences how the five parts interact with one another. There are just two natural factors that are of importance—the Sun and the deep underground, the great part of the subsurface that humans do not access (Figure 1.1). The deep underground exerts its effects via volcanic eruptions and, in the very long term, through geologic forces. Appreciating the role of these factors will put us in a much better position to understand how humans have changed the climate, what consequences our actions have already wrought, and what it all means for the future.

2. The Sun and the Greenhouse Effect

Earth’s position in the solar system is sometimes described by the Goldilocks principle. Earth is not too hot (like Venus), nor is it too cold (like Mars). Instead, Earth is just right—it’s the perfect distance from the Sun to allow a temperature suitable for life as we kn...

Table of contents

• Praise
• HalfTitle
• Copyright
• Acknoledgements
• About The Author
• Preface
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Interlude and Color Plates
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine
• Chapter Ten
• End Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Ooligan Credits