Now is the best time to step away from fossil fuels

Our planet is warming at an alarming speed, and the only credible remedy at hand is reduction in CO2 emission. At present, the pandemic seems to have decelerated the speed of global warming and investments are flowing back into fossil fuel industries to save the economy, but this is wrong. With or without pandemic, the planet needs us to cut down fossil fuel burning, and now is the best time to make this transition complete: we do not have the leisure to decide between short-term (sustaining the present energy status quo) and long-term benefits (shifting completely to renewable energy), we have to choose short-term loss and long-term benefits by shifting completely away from fossil fuels industry.

Some people still remain skeptical of the concept global warming when they observe a regional cooling, however this view lacks the large-scale perspective essential when evaluating global warming. In fact, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study has adjusted and merged 1.6 billion records on temperature trend from stations across the globe, confirming that the average land temperature had risen by approximately 1°C since 1950s. The key player contributing to this warming is the Greenhouse gas CO2.

Besides obstructing the reemission of infrared light from land to space, the danger proposed by CO2 emission rests primarily in their longevity in the atmosphere. Among the many types of Greenhouse gases, CO2 first appears not as the most devasting: on a short timescale, methane even harbors a surprising Global Warming Potential of 73. However, when comparing their impact over centuries, CO2 is the one that stays in the atmosphere. Using GEOCARB model, David Archer traces the lifetime of CO2 and finds substantial reasons to believe that 20% to 35% of CO2 emitted could persist after ocean equilibration for at least tens of thousands of years, until ultimately eliminated via the weathering process. Thus, the long tail of CO2 poses one of the most immanent threats to the climate.

As CO2 absorbs and traps the infrared light that land surface tries to reemit back to space, the earth practically turns into a heated greenhouse. Using simulations from the ISAM integrated climate system model, if the society were to pursue high business at the current CO2 emission rate, by the year 2100 the level of Cumulative Carbon Fluxes would reach 2449 Gigaton, leading to a potential temperature increase of 3.5°C by the next century. The impact of such abrupt warming means drastic changes to not just the habitat of living species, but also to a current carbon sink for the planet: the ocean. Increase in temperature could shift this ocean buffer from the present negative feedback loop that calms the temperature fluctuations to a positive feedback loop that aggravates the situation. Though currently a buffer absorbing both carbon and heat for the ecosystem, when the ocean surface is significantly heated by rising temperature, the carbon-absorbing ocean could turn to release the dissolved carbons it harbors in its sink. The ultimate result of such scenario would be an ecosystem spiraling out of control.

Scientists and governments have long proposed to limit temperature change by 2100 under 2°C, implicating an upper cap slightly over 1000 Gigaton of carbon emission. Up until today, we have already reached the halfway mark. Some scientists have turned their interests to Geoengineering, claiming that if the planet actually goes out of control, even shutting off the entire functioning of society could not have achieved a negative emission that would suffice to sustain the ecosystem. However, with lack of information on the exact effect and potential corollaries of such artificial means to reduce carbon concentration, it would be unwise to undertake such measures when even its risk level remains unknown. The hard truth could be, at present, the only remedy to our climate is to cut down CO2 emission while it still remains an option, and with COVID-19, we might have reached a possible turning point of a century to make that change happen.