Week 8 - Global Warming - Ryan Klassy

Boston after sea level rise due to global warming and melting of ice caps.
Retrieved from: https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/ (screenshot taken of map)

Today I decided to brush the dust off the old TARDIS and zip a few thousand years into the future. I was a little rusty with the controls, but I think I landed somewhere around the year 7020, plus or minus a decade. My location was set for the New England Aquarium in Boston, MA, but I think I might have done something wrong, because when I opened the door I saw nothing but water! I mean, I was expecting to see water at an aquarium, but not like this. I was staring out into the open sea. Then it hit me; the aquarium was gone. To be more specific, what was left of the aquarium was now deep under water. Not only that, but it sure did feel hot outside for Boston this time of year! It was mid March and it was 75 degrees outside! This was about 20 degrees hotter than I was expecting. I checked the atmospheric readings on my panels and sure enough, the temperature had risen due to the high concentrations of greenhouse gasses. CO2 was at over 900 ppm! That is enough to give me a headache for sure.

So I decide to fly in a bit to the west where I can see the new coast line. Obviously there has been some serious sea level rising, but what could have caused this? I go to the new beach and am happy to see that the city has rebuilt and is thriving. Of course the technology is quite a bit more advanced and this place is far busier than I have ever seen it. The flying cars look like something out of a movie; all moving autonomously through the air, perfectly spaced, all moving at the exact same speed to their destinations. So I land on the beach where I see a person on the harbor eating a sandwich. I sit next to him and ask him if I can ask him a few questions about the past. Lucky me, he is happy to talk!

He tells me to look out over the water, so I do. All I see is the great Atlantic Ocean. He then tells me that part of Boston used to be right there! Sky scrapers and all. Over hundreds and hundreds of years, CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels increased so much that the greenhouse effect overcame the planet. Scientists were trying to warn the public about the dangers of these gases, but they just didn't listen. Everyone continued driving their cars. He explained to me that as the shortwave gamma radiation from the sun enters the Earth's atmosphere, it reflects off the ground and becomes longwave infrared radiation. This radiation is easily absorbed by the excess greenhouse gasses and in turn, heats up the atmosphere. Although CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels was the biggest contributor to this, it was not alone. Methane gasses from farming and livestock grew and incredible rates, eventually surpassing the emissions for CO2 (only due to the advancements of renewable energy lowering our dependence on fossil fuels). Methane from livestock, combined with Nitrous Oxide from excess soil fertilization kept the temperature rising.

Wow, I couldn't believe that human beings were capable of changing the environment that much! Just when I was thinking that, he said that not all the reasons for the increase were due to human activity. He said that in the year 3001, Yellowstone in Wyoming had erupted, spewing massive amounts of ash across most of the United States. The amount of greenhouse gasses sent out from that eruption accounted for almost an entire year of human caused burning of fossil fuels. All in all, volcanism, both on land and underwater in deep sea trenches, only accounted for about 1% of the overall problem.

I asked him why the scientists and governments didn't do anything to stop this. He told me that they did. They tried many different things. They first tried putting large reflectors on the ocean to reflect more light back into space, but unfortunately these reflectors were negatively effecting the marine life in the ocean. Lowering the amount of marine life could send the entire ecosystem into chaos, so they were forced to remove them. Next they tried injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, to reflect more radiation, but this began to change weather systems all around the globe and natural forests and areas of vegetation began to suffer. In the year 6001, they finally had the technology to launch giant mirrors into space to help reflect the sunlight. This was the best solution that they could have done, and they continued to do this for over 100 years. He then said he wanted to show me something. He reached into his bag and pulled out a flimsy little pair of paper sunglasses. I recognized them as being similar to the solar eclipse glasses I have back home. He told me to put them on and look up at the sun. When I did, I instantly noticed a tiny black dot, almost perfectly centered in the sun. He told me that those were the mirrors that saved Boston from being completely covered under water.

Since those mirrors were installed, the rise in global temperatures began to stabilize. He told me that about 6% of the sun's radiation was reflected back by those mirrors. Millions of them. Large sheets of solar mirrors orbiting the earth. The drastic number of 6% was not how it started, but they had to increase the number of mirrors until they found the sweet spot.

Although it was sad to see how far this had to go before humanity fixed the problem, I was happy to see that they were making progress. Although I didn't get to go to the aquarium, I was pleased to see that 100% of fossil fuel burning had been banned worldwide, and that the main source of energy for humanity was now solar. So I popped on my shades, hopped in the TARDIS and went back home to share the news.