It’s taken nearly a century of research to convince the majority of the earth’s population that humans are polluting the atmosphere and changing the climate of the planet. Decades of data now shows that not only is climate change real, but that our political disregard has now left us near the point of no return, with dire consequences ahead of us. As the earth heats up, climate change has now become the Climate Crisis. But how did we get to this point so fast?
By the 1800’s, coal had replacing charcoal and wood as the common fuel across Europe. Mining made it readily available and it took far less coal than wood to produce the same amount of heat. The invention of an efficient steam engine by James Watt, paved the way for the massive Industrial Revolution of the mid-century. It also began coal’s use across the globe in locomotives, steam ships, and mills.
As early as the 1820s, French physicist Joseph Fourier stated that some of the sun’s energy reaching the earth is held by the atmosphere, keeping our planet warm. He proposed that Earth’s thin atmosphere acts the same way a greenhouse does. Irish scientist John Tyndall explored which gases in the atmosphere played a role in that “Greenhouse Effect.” His tests in the 1860’s showed that coal gas, containing carbon dioxide and methane, was especially effective at absorbing heat energy.
By 1895, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius wondered if increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere from both natural AND manmade means might warm the Earth further. He investigated what might happen if atmospheric CO2 levels doubled. The possibility seemed remote at the time, but his results suggested that global temperatures would increase by a surprising 5C or 9F if left unchecked.
Several events outside the scientific world would change the planet forever.
In 1859, Edwin Drake struck oil in Titusville, PA, jumpstarting the modern petroleum industry, ultimately led by John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. In 1886, German Karl Benz unveiled his curious-looking horseless carriage, the Motor-Wagon, the first true automobile. It had a new-fangled internal combustion engine, running on a new fuel derived from oil called gasoline.
A 2nd Industrial Revolution exploded when Westinghouse’s AC electricity (created by burning coal or oil in power plants), expanded industries even further. The 1920’s saw the opening of vast oil fields in Texas. Then in far off places like the deserts of Arabia and Persia, where the British had discovered oil. Henry Ford produced the inexpensive and wildly successful Model T automobile to the general public. Suddenly the average person could afford a car.
By the 1930’s, British engineer Guy Callendar noticed that carbon emissions from all those tall, factory smoke stacks and car exhausts might be having a warming effect on the planet. He noted that the North Atlantic region had already warmed significantly following the Industrial Revolution. He argued for the next 30 years that the greenhouse-effect was warming the planet.
Our vast oceans naturally absorb some of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But in 1957, oceanographers Roger Revelle and Hans Suess showed that even our vast oceans will not be able to absorb ALL the extra CO2 that humans were belching into the atmosphere by burning coal and oil. In addition, the oceans too were warming and threatening aquatic life and the fishing industry.
Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory conducted probably the most famous climate research project. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography started it in 1958 when Geochemist Charles Keeling came up with a way to record CO2 levels. His data become known as the “Keeling Curve.” The upward, or hockey stick-shaped, curve showed an exponential rise in CO2 levels in our atmosphere. Later computer modeling predicted the possible outcomes of such a rise, showing that doubling CO2 could produce a 2 C or 3.6 F warming of the earth within 100 years.
But what exactly did climate change mean practically for the Earth?
By 1968, polar studies suggested the future collapse of vast Antarctic ice sheets, which would cause sea levels to raise catastrophically over a century. Some South Pacific island nations would quite literally disappear. That same year, Apollo astronauts orbited the Moon for the first time. Humans could now see the Earth as a fragile blue marble, with a wafer-thin atmosphere protecting it, an atmosphere we were constantly dumping pollutants into.
In April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day took place in the U.S. co-founded by Senator Gaylord Nelson and Harvard graduate student Denis Hayes. The new Environmental Movement had begun to attain political influence, spreading concern about global pollution. U.S. President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the Clean Air Act by year end.
In 1974, the earth’s population reached the 4 billion milestone, doubling in the roughly 50 years since the 1920’s. It would double again in 40 more years to 8 billion in 2014. Droughts in Africa, Ukraine, and India during the 1970s caused famine and world-wide food crises. It fanned fears about climate change and water shortages. The deforestation of CO2-absorbing equatorial Amazon rainforest in Brazil, the so-called Lungs of the Planet, were recognized as a major factor in climate change. In 1975, U.S. scientist Wallace Broecker first coined the term “Global Warming” in the title of a scientific paper, and it was suddenly everywhere.
IN THE 1980’s, the U.S. election of Ronald Reagan, however, brought a backlash against environmental regulations. Political conservatism, along with the petroleum industry, became linked to loud skepticism and ridicule of “global warming.” The meltdown of the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor in Ukraine put a pause on more nuclear plants. Japan’s Fukushima terrible tsunami disaster in 2011 more or else put the nail in nuclear power’s coffin. 1988 was a critical turning point when that year’s Summer became the hottest on record (one beaten MANY times since, most recently in 2016).
That year also saw more widespread droughts, wildfires and hurricanes globally.
Scientists sounded the alarm again about climate change and we finally saw the media, public, industry and some governments pay closer attention. A year later, in 1989, the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide a scientific, economic and political view of climate impacts. Conservative UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in a speech to the UN, called for a global treaty on climate change.
Researchers began accepting the ramifications of a warming Earth. There would be rising ocean levels, polar ice melting, severe heat waves, droughts, famines, and more powerful typhoons/hurricanes fueled by hotter oceans. Studies predicted that as the poles melted, sea levels could rise between 11 and 38 inches (28 to 98 cm) by 2100. That would be enough to swamp many of the Earth’s low-lying coastal cities like Miami, Amsterdam, Bangkok, and Manilla.
The UN’s IPCC produced an Assessment Report concluding that temperatures have indeed risen over the last century. Humans are indeed adding to the atmosphere’s greenhouse gases and influencing climate. Reports of the breaking up of Antarctic ice shelves and Greenland glaciers began affecting public opinion. The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, was the first global agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, and was signed by India, China, EU Leaders and U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Kyoto called for reducing the emission of 6 greenhouse gases in 41 countries by 2012. The next year, a freak Super El Nino produced the warmest year on record … once again. The controversial “hockey stick” graph appeared again, indicating that modern-day temperature rise is striking, compared with the last, relatively flat 1,000 years.
In 2001 however, U.S. President George W. Bush withdrew the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol (joining Sudan and Afghanistan). He said it was “fatally flawed” and that it would hurt the U.S. economy. 2003 brought a deadly Summer Heat Wave across Europe, accelerating the split between European and U.S. public opinion. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore released a controversial documentary in 2006, An Inconvenient Truth, on the dangers of climate change. The film won an Oscar and Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Politicization of climate change exploded, with some industry and government skeptics arguing that IPCC predictions and films like Gore’s were nothing but overblown, liberal science fiction.
The next milestone was the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.
In the Paris Agreement, 197 countries pledged to set targets for their greenhouse gas cuts and to report their progress. Its goal was to prevent a global temperature rise of 2 C (3.6 F), a critical limit. It was signed by U.S. President Barack Obama. The U.S. had gotten a taste of that when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans a decade earlier, spurring debate over the impact of global warming on storm intensity.
Then President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement (joining Iran and Libya) in 2016. He cited “onerous restrictions” that punished the United States. That same year, NASA and NOAA found Earth’s 2016 surface temps to be the warmest in modern record. Sounding familiar now? By 2018, the UN IPCC concluded “rapid, far-reaching” actions were needed NOW to cap global warming in order to avert dire, irreversible consequences for the planet by 2050. In 2020, President Biden placed the U.S. back in the Paris Agreement, then in 2025, President Trump withdrew it again, calling climate change a hoax.
Meanwhile, the younger generation was watching the adults’ indecision and inaction impacting their future planet. In 2018, a Swedish teenage girl named Greta Thunberg began protesting in front of her country’s Parliament. Her protests to raise awareness for climate change went viral and over 17,000 students in 24 countries participated in her climate strikes. In 2019, Thunberg was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The UN Climate Action Summit has since set a deadline for achieving net zero emissions in 2050.
The 2020‘s brought the Earth multiple, heavy impacts of climate change.
We saw a record number of wildfires in the western U.S., burning 10 million acres. A record number of named hurricanes in the Atlantic , with a dozen reaching U.S. landfall. Record setting droughts experienced in East Africa, Australia and the southwestern U.S. Record setting monsoon season flooding seen in Bangladesh and eastern India. Record setting typhoons, cyclones and flooding hitting the Philippines and South East Asia. Record deaths of large coral reefs and species loss throughout the world. Record setting glacier retreats in mountain ranges including the Alps, Greenland, and Alaska. Record setting melting of the Antarctic polar icecap into the oceans.
Over the last decade, new renewable energy systems have developed exponentially. Cost efficient solar, wind, and geothermal tech are surging in the marketplace. Renewable energy is now profitable and a new source of employment. Investment in coal has stalled, and in some countries stopped completely. More automobile manufacturers, like Elon Musk’s Tesla, are making profitable electric vehicles.
Nevertheless, we are still a fossil fuel-based global economy and any transition away from that faces a massive political struggle. The entrenched and very powerful petroleum industry fights it every step of the way, lobbying and funding politicians. Some political leaders continue to call climate change a hoax and have convinced millions it’s some type of scientist-lead conspiracy.
Generation Z is now young, 20-something adults, raising their voices and votes against the causes of climate change and those politicians choosing to ignore it. Gen Z’ers knows THEY will inherit the resulting planet the Baby Boomers have polluted. Our human adoption of carbon-based energy was turned on by the Industrial Revolution, and can be turned off in the future given pro-active action.
Renewable energy is not a cure-all. We won’t magically stop using petroleum fuels and return to a clean atmosphere, cooler oceans, and normal temperatures. The effects of greenhouse gases will take decades to work themselves out, IF we reduce their output very soon. To not do so is frankly unthinkable, for those living, our children and grandchildren, and those yet to be born.
Good history. But the solution is drastic decease in the total amount of energy we use, not in renewables. An eighty per cent. reduction by 2040 should be our goal. New zero us not a realistic concept . It is an allusion.
After the Scotland Climate Summit, I fear neither is realistic.
Five months after that I agree that both are unrealistic.