1.1 Climate In Crisis
Humans owe who we have become to the climate and the climate's recent regularity owes everything to humans. About 12,000 years ago, for some reason humans across the planet stopped looking at the natural abundance around them and took what was needed in hunter gather and nomadic societies, and started looking at the Earth as a clay to be molded. Literally.
The Agricultural Revolution resulted in humans unintentionally harnessing the carbon and countless other natural Earth cycles and stabilizing global temperatures. It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that the unintentional manipulation of carbon would come at a great cost to human life. Fossil fuels. They are a tricky thing. The accumulation of carbon rich materials life forms over millions of years deposited across the Earth's cross created the fossil fuels we use today. These early life forms existed before something evolved to decompose them. As always, Existence finds a way. The radiation eating fungus growing in Chernobyl is proof of this. Since no fungus existed to decompose these life forms, they lingered and accumulated over millions of years. Eventually amassing and breaking down into carbon rich fossil fuel deposits.
The beauty of fossil fuels is that they are a readily transportable highly concentrated form of power. There is no equivalent. We literally drive around giant hunks of metal with gallons of it strapped in because of the immense amount of work we are able to complete with a vehicle. We understand how useful a vehicle is and it is directly tied to the ability to carry around gallons of fuel to power your mobility. The problem is the unintentional effects displacing that carbon has.
When we burn fossil fuels we become time travelers. We take the accumulated sum of the Sun’s energy over millions of years, use it, while wasting vast amounts of energy in the process, and convert lifeforms from billions of years ago into atmospheric carbon in exchange for the ability to accomplish more than our bodies are capable of. The exchange rate is not worth it.
The implications of our actions are dire. No period in the geological record compares to the rate we’ve blown carbon into the atmosphere. As global temperatures rise feedback loops across the planet risk making our climate a runaway hellscape. Yes, many scientists will disagree that current models don’t support an apocalyptic near future. What if the models are wrong?
The models are only as good as the data put into them. The Earth is billions of years old. We have real world data for a hundred of the four billion and the rest is inferred from rock samples. I’m 27. Summer is different from when I was younger. I see the lack of fall beauty. We don’t know enough about how the Earth’s atmospheric systems work to be sure of anything when the only thing we know for certain is atmospheric carbon corresponds to higher global temperatures, the last time carbon was as high as it is now was 3 million years ago, and 3 million years ago average temps were 2.5 - 4 C warmer than now. We have barely cracked 1.5 C in 2025.
Every fraction of a degree and every metric ton of carbon we emit matters. If some feedback loops are set up, who's to say we could stop them? Methane bombs and sinkholes in the tundra as permafrost melts and millions of ice age life forms begin decaying. Larger storms wiping out infrastructure requiring further extraction and fossil fuel use to replace. Melting glaciers that will take centuries to replenish. Rising seas that threaten Billions of people in coastal cities. Excess heat ruining crop yields. Exhaustion of our potash deposits. The list goes down.
The point is that we cannot afford to continue to exist without a plan. Regardless of whether that plan gets adopted, people support it, or we restore our climate in the end, a plan needs to exist for how we, humanity, seek to right one of so many ecological wrongs. We need a plan and I hope what you read is a worthy start.