The Ecological Crisis & Its Solution (Part 1): Basic Climate Science for Skeptics

^{This post is part of a series on the topic of the human-caused ecological crisis, focusing predominantly on global warming but also touching on issues like nuclear waste and plastics. The first several posts will seem like "doom and gloom," but the final post will propose some solutions and be more optimistic. At the end, I will post a summary and anthology in one post with links to all the posts in the series.}

Humans have a huge ecological impact on the planet. Plastic and discarded electronics fill landfills, which leach toxins into our ground water. Runit Dome, which is filled with 73,000 cubic meters of radioactive debris from Cold War era nuclear bomb testing, will likely be completely submersed within two decades due to rising sea levels. The dome is not water tight. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 2011 both have huge ecological impacts, the full scope of which is still not readily apparent. Greenhouse gases released by burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming, which has led to the thawing of permafrost, allowing the release of tons of methane into the atmosphere as bubbles of natural gas burst through the soft thawed soil. As CO₂, methane, and other greenhouse gases lead to an increase in the Earth's average temperature, the warmer temperature is causing an increase in water vapor in the atmosphere. Since water vapor is itself a greenhouse gas, more water vapor in the atmosphere causes more global warming, which leads to more permafrost thawing, resulting in more methane being released from beneath the Earth, as well as more thawing of arctic ice, which will cause rising sea levels. Human activities upon this planet are causing an ecological disaster that could very likely result in human extinction.

Basic Climate Science for the Skeptics

I know that there is a lot of skepticism regarding global warming, but that skepticism is grounded mostly in politics. If global warming is actually occurring and is the result of human activity, it would appear that government policy is the best chance we have of fixing the problem. Consequently, conservatives and right-libertarians are eager to find pseudo-scientific refutations of climate science in order to bolster their laissez-faire ideology. According to their political ideology, it is wrong for government to intervene in free-market processes. Since most of the proposed solutions to the problem of climate change are solutions that require government intervention in the marketplace, conservatives and right-libertarians have a psychological need to reject and refute climate science in order to uphold their preconceived ideology about the proper role of government.

Scientists who warn of global warming say that CO₂ in the atmosphere traps heat, that humans are producing excessive amounts of CO₂ through burning of fossil fuels, that this is causing global temperatures to rise. They also claim that one of the effects of this will be that water will become more acidic. As water becomes more acidic, it could lead to mass extinction of aquatic animals. If you doubt climate science, I would challenge you to do a little scientific research into it. There are several very simple experiments that one can do in their own home in order to verify the claims of climate scientists.

Here's one simple experiment that you can do yourself. Take two jars. Place a thermometer in each jar. Place a heat lamp an equal distance from each jar. Fill one with regular air and the other with CO₂. Let them sit and monitor the temperature in each jar over time. You should find that the jar with CO₂ will be warmer than the jar with regular air. This experiment proves that CO₂ is a greenhouse gas—a gas that causes air to heat up faster and hold heat longer.

Note: When doing this experiment, you can put the CO₂ into the jar via a tube connected to a CO₂ tank. If you do not want to buy a tank, you could do the same experiment using baking powder (not baking soda). In this scenario, you would place an equal amount of water in the bottom of each jar, then add some baking powder to only one of the jars. When baking powder reacts with water, it creates CO₂. The water and baking powder simply replaces the need for a CO₂ tank.

Another simple experiment you can do is take a glass of water. For this experiment, you will need to buy some pH test strips, which measure the pH or acidity of the water. They can be bought on Amazon really cheap. Measure the pH of the water, then take a straw and blow into the glass for several minutes. After doing so, take another test strip and measure the acidity again. You should find that the water has become more acidic. We breath out CO₂. Some of the CO₂ you breath into the glass will be absorbed by the water, changing the waters acidity.

Note: If you do not want to purchase pH strips to do this experiment, you can utilize red cabbage to make the water change colors as the acidity changes. If you do the experiment this way, you will need two glasses of water, a control to see the original water color and a glass that you will breath into which will change colors as the acidity changes. Instructions on how to make your own pH indicator can be found here as well as elsewhere online.

You could also easily do experiments on the effects of water pH on plant growth. If you've ever tried to keep a fish aquarium, you might have noticed that the fish have a tendency to get sick or die if the pH changes too much. You could also experiment with the effect of pH on fish in an aquarium, if you are skeptical about that. However, I would recommend sparing the fish some unnecessary suffering and simply reading about the effects of water pH on aquatic life. The information that such an experiment would yield can easily be found online, so it isn't really necessary to perform the experiment oneself.

If you are skeptical of the claims of climate science, I would encourage you to do a few experiments for yourself and read up on climate science. If you do open your mind and look into these matters, I'm sure you will end up embracing climate science and realizing that global warming and human-caused climate change are serious matters.