Biodiversity is “the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic, species and ecosystem levels. Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth; it is usually greater in the tropics as a result of the warm climate and high primary productivity in the region near the equator. Tropical forest ecosystems cover less than 10% of Earth’s terrestrial surface and contain about 50% of the world’s species.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity)
Biodiversity is linked to climate change. When the climate is changing, ecosystems change and with them species must also adapt and change. If the climate change is rapid, some species may not be able to change at a sufficient pace and their numbers will decline rapidly. Conversely biodiversity is often boosted by practices designed to reduce climate change – eg planting more natural woodland, restoring natural habitats such as peat bogs and wet lands, etc benefits and therefore boosts biodiversity.
Carbon sequestration is a formal name given to the processes by which carbon is captured from the atmosphere and stored on a long-term basis. Such long-term storage might include peat bogs, forests, kelp beds etc and may be referred to as ‘carbon sinks’.
Carbon sequestration can be used as a means of mitigating the effects of climate change. This can be biologically by, for example, planting more forests, restoring peat bogs and wetlands, and re-establishing kelp meadows. This natural sequestration can be enhanced, in the case of forests, by using felled timber to make items such as buildings, furniture etc and keeping those items for hundreds of years. However growing trees for timber needs to be carefully managed to a) maximise the carbon captured by the growing tree, and b) to maximise the flourishing of biodiversity.
Carbon can also be sequestered geologically if the CO2 can be captured eg from a cement factory. Then the CO2 “can be compressed to ≈100 bar into a supercritical fluid. In this form, the CO2 could be transported via pipeline … and injected deep underground, typically around 1 km, where it would be stable for hundreds to millions of years.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration)
The earth’s systems have various ways of absorbing and using carbon dioxide in such a way as to enable life to flourish. Plants absorb carbon dioxide as part of the process of photosynthesis storing the carbon as cellular material in their leaves, branches etc. Plants release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere as they respire – breathe. A living growing plant absorbs more carbon dioxide than it releases. When the plant dies, the carbon that has been stored as leaves and branches etc slowly decays – breaks down – and the carbon returns to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. This is as true of water and marine plants as it is true of land plants.
Soil in part is made up of dead plant and animal material which decays slowly overtime. Soil is therefore a storer of carbon.
The seas and oceans also contain carbon dioxide that is dissolved in the water. This carbon dioxide cycles through the water as marine plants take in, store and release the carbon as they grow. Marine waters and the layers of sediment at the bottom of the seas and oceans store carbon in the same way as does soil.
This brings us back to an earlier post about how much carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere (measured in part per million) and the rate at which that concentration is increasing due to human activities – https://greentau.org/2024/02/19/counting-on-day/
“The formation of oil takes a significant amount of time with oil beginning to form millions of years ago. 70% of oil deposits existing today were formed in the Mesozoic age (252 to 66 million years ago), 20% were formed in the Cenozoic age (65 million years ago), and only 10% were formed in the Paleozoic age (541 to 252 million years ago). This is likely because the Mesozoic age was marked by a tropical climate, with large amounts of plankton in the ocean.
“The formation of oil begins in warm, shallow oceans that were present on the Earth millions of years ago. In these oceans, extremely small dead organic matter – classified as plankton – falls to the floor of the ocean. This plankton consists of animals, called zooplankton, or plants, called phytoplankton. This material then lands on the ocean floor and mixes with inorganic material that enters the ocean by rivers. It is this sediment on the ocean floor that then forms oil over many years”.
The dead plankton, plus algae and bacteria form an organic rich mud.
If the mud remains in an anoxic environment – lacking in oxygen such as stagnant water – it does not decompose and so retains its carbon content.
This anoxic environment becomes embedded by subsequent layers of mud, compressing the carbon rich layer into an organic shale.
Overtime the shale sinks as more layers are added. At a depth of 2 to 4km the temperatures from the earth’s core plus the increased pressure converts the organic shale to oil shale.
If the temperatures at this depth are between 90 and 160C this oil shale is transformed into oil and natural gas. This will either seep upwards being lighter than water, or maybe sealed in by subsequent layers of impervious rock.
Again it is mind blowing to reflect that these oil and gas deposits that took millions of years in the making, are now being burnt at an annual rate of 6.6 billion tonnes, such that we have 47 years of reserves remaining – should we be foolish enough to want to burn them.(https://www.worldometers.info/oil/)
We should keep in mind that the IEA warns that a cannot risk developing and burning new oil and gas reserves without exceeding the 1.5C global warming limit.
The UK government runs a National Adaptation Programme which assesses the risks arising from climate change and how best we can adapt to reduce of cope with these risks – as well as building on any opportunities where we can gain from change. These plans are reviewed and every five years a new National Adaptation Programme is produced. NAP3 covers the period from 2023 to 2028. It includes items such as:
“protecting the natural environment
supporting business in adapting to climate change
adapting infrastructure (for example, our electricity networks and railways)
protecting buildings and their surroundings (for example, from hotter temperatures)
protecting public health and communities
mitigating international impacts on the UK (for example, on food supplies imported from abroad)”
“Julia King, chair of the adaptation subcommittee of the CCC, said: “The evidence of the damage from climate change has never been clearer, but the UK’s current approach to adaptation is not working. The national adaptation plan published last July, known as Nap3, was the third in a series of five-yearly updates in response to an assessment of climate risks, required under the 2008 Climate Change Act, from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
“But the CCC found that although it was an improvement on previous efforts, the new plan was still inadequate and required improvement before the next scheduled update in 2028.
A Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) is a climate action plan that shows how a nation will cut its emissions and adapt to climate change. (Being nationally determined allows for differentiation between nations according to the current ability to effect change. Wealthier countries should be able to reduce emissions at a faster rate).
Each Party – ie nation or state – to the Paris Agreement is required to establish an NDC. Collectively these NDCs should ensure the world’s greenhouse gas emissions peak and then fall, and so address the climate crisis. Each NDC covers a five year period – being submitted to the UNFCC in 2020, 2025, 2030 etc – but is subject to ongoing review by each nation.
Since 2021 the UNFCC has produced a synthesis report that collects, collates and analyses all the NDCs, to determine whether or not nations are on track to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement. The most recent, published in November 2023 in the run up to COP28, found that the national climate action plans were still insufficient to limit the global temperature rise to just 1.5C. The hope was that this announcement would spur on the parties at COP28 to take radical action to address this shortcoming.
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Its job is to advance scientific knowledge about climate change caused by human activities… It has 195 member states who govern the IPCC. The member states elect a bureau of scientists to serve through an assessment cycle. A cycle is usually six to seven years… The IPCC informs governments about the state of knowledge of climate change. It does this by examining all the relevant scientific literature on the subject. This includes the natural, economic and social impacts and risks… Thousands of scientists and other experts volunteer to review the publications. They compile key findings into “Assessment Reports” for policymakers and the general public; Experts have described this work as the biggest peer review process in the scientific community. The IPCC is an internationally accepted authority on climate change. Leading climate scientists and all member governments endorse its findings.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change
The most significant UNFCCC treaty was The Paris Agreement which was hammered out at COP21 in 2015 and came into force in 2016. Its aims were to limit the rise in global temperature to less than 2ºC above pre-industrial revolution levels, while aiming to hold it at 1.5ºC.
“The International Energy Agency Agency (IEA) is a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organisation, established in 1974, that provides policy recommendations, analysis and data on the global energy sector. The 31 member countries and 13[1] association countries of the IEA represent 75% of global energy demand… The core activity of the IEA is providing policy advice to its member states and Associated countries to support their energy security and advance their transition to clean energy.[3] Recently, it has focused in particular on supporting global efforts to accelerate clean energy transition, mitigate climate change, reach net zero emissions, and prevent global temperatures from rising above 1.5 °C.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Energy_Agency)
It seems strange that the membership does not include any of the oil states from the Middle East, and very few African nations who surely have an equally vested interest in energy security.
Back in 2021, the IEA declared that the exploitation and development of new oil and gas fields must stop if the world was to stay within safe limits of global heating and meet the goal of net zero emissions by 2050. It is thus worrying that so many countries and so many companies have since then continued to grant licences and develop new oil and gas fields. The UK’s current government is even proposing to increase the frequency with which it issues new licenses!
This message was reinforce in 2023 when, having noted the strong growth in clean energy provision, the IEA reported that whilst there was no longer a need to maintain current investment levels in fossil fuels, investment in oil and gas was in fact twice what would be necessary to achieve net zero emissions targets. (https://origin.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2023)
On the plus side, the IEA’s report of March this year on clean energy, notes: “The deployment of solar PV, wind power, nuclear power, electric cars, and heat pumps from 2019 to 2023 avoids around 2.2 billion tonnes (Gt) of emissions annually. Without them, the increase in CO2 emissions globally over the same period would have been more than three times larger.” (https://www.iea.org/reports/clean-energy-market-monitor-march-2024
1.5C is the level of warming within which we should be trying to stay if we are to avoid an unbearably worse deterioration of the global climate. This figure is the product of over 6,000 scientific references, and was prepared by 91 authors from 40 countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Report_on_Global_Warming_of_1.5_°C
This is not to say that even with global warming at 1.5C there won’t be adverse effects. The extreme hot summer temperatures, floods, wild fires, droughts, and storms that we have experienced over the last few years will now be the norm. Glaciers, sea ice and ice caps will continue to melt and disappear, causing rivers to dry up in the summer, and elsewhere raising sea levels. The change in climate is already altering natural habitats reducing numbers of plants, birds, animals, insects etc, and having similar adverse effects on agriculture. Food and water security are already being threatened. Warming oceans is reducing marine life. All this will increase as temperatures rise.
Each fraction of a degree of further global warming will accentuate these problems for all life forms. The charts show how much greater would be the effects of 2C warming over 1.5C.
The concentration of carbon dioxide is measured as so many ‘parts per million’. Measurements of carbon dioxide are made at the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii (NOAA). Recordings there first began in 1958.
Pre industrial levels of CO2 were fairly constant (for at least 6000 years) at around 240ppm. However since the Industrial Revolution this has been rising. Between 1750 and 1800 the average CO2 levels was 278ppm and it is from this baseline that the IPCC has been measuring increases. It has been suggested that between 280 and 350ppm represents a safe level. However we have past 350ppm in 1987. In 2018 scientific models suggested carbon dioxide levels of 425-785 ppm would lead to 1.5 °C temperature rise, and and 489-1106 ppm for 2 °C.
As of January 2024 the level of carbon dioxide had risen to 423ppm. In 2023 global temperatures were 1.5 °C higher than the pre-industrial average – but this in part was due to the El Niño effect, so in terms of human-made heating, the rise for 2023 is calculated at 1.3°C of warming.
The red lines and symbols represent the monthly mean values, centered on the middle of each month. The black lines and symbols represent the same, after correction for the average seasonal cycle. The latter is determined as a moving average of SEVEN adjacent seasonal cycles centered on the month to be corrected, except for the first and last THREE and one-half years of the record, where the seasonal cycle has been averaged over the first and last SEVEN years, respectively.
The Green Tau 