Could climate change just be a result of a record amount of humans simply breathing?
The world's climate is warming, and it is now established that this is due to an identified rise in CO2 in the atmosphere, which traps heat. Most people have seen the following CO2 graph:
You might have also seen the following graph for global temperature:
People think it is down to the industrial revolution
Because both the CO2 rise and the global temperature rise co-incide with the industrial revolution, people have understandably thought that burning fossil fuels has caused it.
After all the process of burning fossil fuels involves a combustion reaction between oxygen in the atmosphere, and the carbon locked away in the fuel, producing by-products of heat and light energy, and CO2.
Humans have the same combustion mechanism
Humans (and other animals) act in the same way - we breathe in oxygen, which then combusts the carbon-laden food we eat, and that produces heat (which keeps our body temperature up) and a by-product of CO2, which we then breathe out.
Now take a look at the following graph of the world's population:
See how it suddenly shoots up after 1950? Now take a look at the graph at the top of this page, where the CO2 suddenly jumps after 1950.
In 1950, there was 2.525 bn people in the world, up from 1.6 bn in 1900, and 1 bn in 1800.
In 2017 there are now 7.49 bn people - so the population has tripled in the last 67 years. And all those people are breathing out carbon dioxide, as are all the animals we keep to feed us.
Ladies and gentlemen, the culprit is us
The world won't start cooling again till the population drops. Luckily the birth-rate is falling world-wide. People are still living longer though, so that post-war baby boom will still be causing us problems for some time.
In the meanwhile, if you want to do something about it, grow some trees, shrubs and keep some house plants. Plants have an opposite process to humans and animals. They breathe in CO2, use the sun's energy via photosynthesis to split the molecule, retain the carbon in the form of plant cells and wood, and breathe out oxygen. If we had been smarter, we'd have increased the amount of plant material as the human population rose, to offset the CO2 we breathe out. But it is not too late to plant trees and have greenery around you.
Instead, we just take down more forests and greenery to make more room for all of these people and their businesses.
Humanity is so super smart!
yeah - we're idiots.
In theory, if we could plant large forests everywhere, we could absorb all the CO2, especially if we plant hardwood trees that live for several centuries.