Wharfie, if the Brazilian forests decide to go belly up, there's not much you can do about it. Look at the Sahara desert. That happened long ago and even if Neanderthal people had cellphones, they couldn't have stopped that.
The world's atmospheric system and sun shining on it are very large scale. If people really worked at getting rid of anything green on land and doubled CO2 levels, we still might not cause a substantial climate shift.
The oceans are huge. When looked at from space, Earth is mostly water. Good luck trying to stop the ocean's chlorophyl sucking up CO2.
If the next glaciation was at tipping point, we might have prevented that. Which would be excellent. But even that is unlikely. On the heating side, so far, after a century of serious effort, we have made nearly no progress in heating the planet and filling the atmosphere with CO2.
It's being sucked out of the air almost as quick as we can pump it in. We have been gaining ground, but it's a serious effort. I think about a third of the CO2 we put out is sucked out and dumped back onto the ocean floor after a few years.
If we don't sustain our effort with CO2, we'll find a rapid drop in CO2 levels back to unsustainable levels and we'll reach the tipping point into a glaciation.
It's vital that human activity be sustainable and avoid tipping points into climatic catastrophe. We must burn more carbon to avoid that desperate situation.
With the Peak People incipient plunge in population and avoidance of carbon consumption to save money, which is enabled by technological development and shifts in cultural norms [away from roaring up and down freeways in Otto cycle SUVs], I doubt that we'll be able to maintain our CO2 output at sufficient levels.
So far, we are okay and have been gaining ground.
Fingers crossed!!
Mqurice |
