Can We Really Call it Natural?

A close look at the human footprint and it's impact on alarming fluctuations in climate patterns and ocean acidification

On August 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey plowed through Texas with wind gusts reaching up to 132 mph, according to the National Weather Service. In Cedar Bayou, near Houston, a recorded 52 inches of rain flooded the area in a matter of hours. Harvey’s unforgivable rage demolished the entire region, totaling up to $180 billion in damages. In the top ten most destructive hurricanes ever recorded in US history, Harvey takes second place, just below Katrina.   

Just a few weeks later on September 10, Hurricane Irma followed behind. According to American Rivers, an organization devoted to keeping waters clean and healthy, at one point, Irma was the strongest hurricane the National Hurricane Center had ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean outside of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The National Weather Service says its -mph winds stretched out for 37 hours, a new record. Irma follows just below Harvey in rank of the top ten most destructive hurricanes ever recorded in US history.

Never before have two hurricanes of such magnitude been so near in time and proximity.

The brink of a new age in climate history is on the rise. Scientists and climatologists around the world are closely analyzing this dramatic shift in weather patterns, and 96 percent of them believe to have found the answer.

A New Era

For hundreds of years, humans have experienced the brute force of hurricanes as they barrel through, annihilating entire cities and towns. In the last decade, weather-related disasters have grown more frequent, some of them being the strongest ever recorded in history. In climate scientist James Hansen’s 2009 memoir, he warned of the “storms of my grandchildren.”

Little did he know he would be alive to see them himself.

According to NASA, a clear indication of an increase in intensity of tropical storms is apparent in this warmer climate. NASA says global warming could be boosting the intensity of hurricanes. Since 2000, nine of the ten most destructive storms ever recorded in United States history have bulldozed domesticated lands.

North America has witnessed the world’s most drastic inflation in the number of catastrophes in the past 32 years and their level of severity. According to David Call, associate professor of Geography at Ball State University, “Global warming has its fingerprints all over this.” Many climatologists around the world agree that tropical storms of this degree will prove to be the new normal, according to American Rivers.

The World Meteorological Association states that climate change leads to shifts in the frequency, duration, and intensity of extreme weather events and can result in unparalleled extreme weather and climate catastrophes. Climate change has impacted weather patterns by an increase in global temperature.

With an influx in temperatures comes more evaporation. This boosts the level of moisture in the atmosphere. When more water vapor is evaporated into the atmosphere, it works as fuel for more powerful, vicious storms to manifest. If the atmosphere is holding warmer air and ocean surface temperatures are also warmer, this can lead to increased wind speeds in tropical storms, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration states that since 1980, the Earth’s surface heat is increasing at .13 degrees F annually, with a total increase of 1.69 degrees F each decade. Global temperature over the last century increased by nearly 1 degree C (1.8 F).

Long-term inflations in the Earth’s core temperature may hold serious consequences. At a 3 degree C increase, which we are headed for rapidly, many regions of the world would be rendered uninhabitable. Agriculture would collapse along the equator, ultimately leaving humanity unfed, according to "Before the Flood," a documentary that discusses rises in sea levels. 

This poses the question: Where does humanity come into play when considering the dramatic alterations in chemical balances of the Earth?

The Relentless Rise of Carbon Dioxide

Since the start of the industrial revolution in the 1800s, overall CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has increased drastically. Much of those emissions can be traced back to resources used to power machines in modern day society: fossil fuels, coal, oil, and natural gas.

The industrial revolution has generated a linear model of production, consumption and disposal. On a finite planet with limited resources, how can this be sustainable? If the system is not cyclical, where does the waste go?

It goes into our water systems, air, and ultimately into our bodies.

Michael Brune, executive director for sierra club says “If we’re gonna fight climate change effectively, we have to start by acknowledging that most of our economy is based on fossil fuels.” Whether it be through the meat industry, transportation sector, industrial manufacturing, consuming electricity, or deforestation, just about everything we do pumps out vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

”The bottom line is that atmospheric carbon dioxide acts as a thermostat in regulating the temperature of Earth,” says Andre Lacis of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). According to Racing Extinction, an Academy award-winning documentary on climate change, the Earth is at its highest atmospheric CO2 concentration in 400,000 years.

In 2013, CO2 levels surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in recorded history. NASA defines a close relationship between the rise in CO2 and fossil-fuel burning, as 60 percent of fossil fuel emissions lie dormant in the air we breathe.

"When carbon dioxide increases, more water vapor returns to the atmosphere. This is what helped to melt the glaciers that once covered New York City," said co-author David Rind, of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Today, according to NASA we have entered a new geologic era, which has been coined as the "Anthropocene" period, an age where climate is vastly different than the one our ancestors knew. 

If fossil-fuel burning continues to rise (and it will if humanity does not find clean energy resources fast), CO2 levels could easily reach 1500 ppm. If it goes this far, the natural chemical balances of the atmosphere will never be the same again until tens of thousands of years down the future, according to NASA.

Carbon Dioxide and The Oceans

Not only does the rise in global temperatures increase the frequency and severity of hurricanes, it also alters the chemical makeup of the ocean. As fossil fuels continue to burn in our heavily industrialized society and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise, the ocean acts as a carbon sink by absorbing one third of those emissions. Such high levels of CO2 absorption lower the water’s overall pH, making it more acidic.

When the waters become too acidic, coral reefs endeavor what is called “bleaching.” Mass coral bleaching events and outbreaks as well as infectious diseases are growing more and more prevalent in the oceans. In the past 30 years, we have lost over fifty percent of all coral reefs in the oceans. Scientists estimate that nearly one million species of fish, invertebrates, and algae can be found in and around the world’s reefs. Those species’ are struggling to find a new home, as theirs dwindles away.

Millions of species are affected by these emissions, one of them being plankton. In a single drop of teaspoon water, an infinite universe of plankton resides. One might question the significance of such a minuscule organism, however, plankton plays a huge role in the health of our oceans. Scientists claim oceans as “the lifeblood of our planet and plankton its red blood cells.”

Since 1950, 40 percent of all plankton in the oceans have died out. “We are cooking the plankton,” says Louie Psihoyos, Academy Award winner and CEO of the Ocean Preservation Society in a phone interview.

If the oceans are not healthy, neither is humanity. Not only will it lower the quality of our health and the health of the Earth, it will also have a detrimental affect on our economy. According to the Climate Emergency Institute, the Third Symposium on the Ocean – held in Monterey, California (September 2012), suggests that ocean acidity may increase by as much as 170% by 2100, resulting in serious economic losses, most notably, to communities who depend on the ocean's ecosystem services.

“Climate Change Denialism”

“We are fighting this massive disinformation to confuse the public,” say climate scientist Michael Manns. “All of that hatred and fear is actually organized and funded by a few players.” Manns believes fossil fuel interests like Exxon, the Koch brothers, and shell, finance a “very large echo-chamber of climate change denialism.”

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, media outlets, political figures, and large industries are funded by fossil fuel interests. Because of their affiliation with these industries, they raise doubts about the whole truth of climate change.

Because of this mass disinformation to the public, it makes it much more challenging to implement the solutions needed to reduce greenhouse gases that cause global warming and lead to catastrophic “natural” disasters.

“I got to thinking how unfair it is to sort of name these things after harmless girls you know, every girl named Sandy in the New York metropolitan area is gonna spend the next ten years hearing bad jokes. Time to name them for the people who are causing them. We should go right through the alphabet, finding every oil and coal and gas company cause it’s these guys carbon pouring into the atmosphere that are supercharging these hurricanes,” says Bill Mckibben on “How to Let Go of The World and Love all Things Climate Can’t Change.”

Scientific findings about specific extreme weather and climate events reveal to be attributed to human-caused climate change. Yet this information is not being widely distributed, which hinders the general public’s ability to fully understand the magnitude of the issue.

Various media outlets, politicians and a handful of scientists outside of climate research continue to stand by the idea that we cannot directly attribute any individual event to climate change. According to the World Meteorological Organization, this could have been true in the 1990s, but in today’s world, it’s a different story.

“Climate change is real. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, but for all of humanity,” says Leonardo DeCaprio, actor and climate change activist.

We are living in the crescent of a new era in the Earth’s climate, an era that will not come with a warm welcome, but with vengeance.

 A Gleam of Hope

So the question is, how do we reverse such a large-scale, global issue quickly and find a way to use our resources more efficiently?

One answer could be a process called “going negative.” This essentially involves removing carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere. There are two solutions here—nature-based and engineered.

Nature-based solutions utilize photosynthesis to remove carbon dioxide. If more trees are being planted rather than cut down for land, then those trees can absorb the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and store it, according to the Center for Carbon Removal.

Engineered solutions involve technology to capture CO2 and store it in places such as rocks, building materials, and underground reservoirs. Other engineers are looking into creating carbon dioxide factories to remove emissions at a more efficient and higher rate.

Klaus Lackner, founder of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions at Arizona State University, discovered a new way to remove carbon dioxide with tiny amber colored beads. The beads contrived of resin normally used in water treatment to remove chemicals. Lackner discovered the beads could be repurposed. When dry, they absorb carbon dioxide, when wet, they release it. When the beads are exposed to air, they absorb the CO2, and release it in the wet phase, where it would then be piped out, and the whole process restarted again in a cycle.

Lackner says the beads could be purchased by the truckload. He calculated that a machine the size of a semi-trailer could remove one ton of carbon dioxide from the air each day.

In order to keep up with current emissions, one hundred million machines would need to be built.

The Choice is Ours

We know carbon dioxide emissions are causing irreversible damage to our ecosystems and will continue leading to more catastrophic events. We have technologies to reverse the issue - now what we need is political bodies and large corporations to come together and support by helping implement the readily available technology worldwide.

“Every generation has to adapt to this diminished world,” says Louie Psihoyos, CEO of the Ocean Preservation Society and director of “Racing Extinction. “If we do not make changes quickly, we will leave the next generation and the one after that with less biodiversity and less beauty.”

“The choice is ours,” says Psihoyos.