Carbon Footprint (Part 2)

Last Thursday, we started a general discussion on that thing called "climate change," a very popular, oft-repeated news item that's gaining much support worldwide, from both those who understand it and those who don't. Which is probably good, for indeed it is a cause worth fighting for - preventing the extinction of the human race, you don't really need to know how it works, but any man or woman, God-believing or not, should take this seriously. I hope. But it would be nice to have a better understanding of what we are fighting for.

Again, a lot of people who know the issues in depth would frown on attempts on making this a comic book article. But for as long as we stick to the very basics which is understandable to ordinary mortals (again, I hope), I think there is no harm in trying. Of course you can always search the Internet for more comprehensive and scholarly dissertations.

Climate change is generally the long-term changes in the earth's climate over millions of years resulting in the up and downs of the earth's atmosphere's average temperatures. Together with the evolution of the earth's flora and fauna, it produced such a time as the Mesozoic Era, more popularly known as the "dinosaur age." Intermittently, there were times of long-term reduction in the earth's surface's temperature which we call today as the Ice Ages. Of course, everyone knows the popular computer-animated comedy "Ice Age". Since we are fairly warm in this age and time, the earth also had instances of warming up in the past.

We have to realize that we are measuring time in millions of years here. The human race is fairly recent and did not experience any of those ice ages, including the one when dinosaurs became extinct. One may be tempted to inject the controversy between the Christian concept of creation and evolution here, but we need not go into that. Faith in God is sufficient to reconcile the facts - man and this universe were created by God and all the scientific evidences of the geologic age of the earth should fall into place. That is why, in the end, the discussion of Climate Change has to redound to a strengthening of our faith in God.

This current issue of climate change in the 21st century boils down to "Global Warming," a minute but definite increase of the average temperature of the earth's surface year after year, and which scientists nowadays attribute to human activity rather than astronomic or geologic causes. At the center of the issue are the so-called greenhouse gases (GHG), which absorb or emit heat in such a way that it causes greenhouse effects in our atmosphere and thus induce a warming effect. Out of many, there are six which are significant: water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), ozone (O3), and the CFCs or chlorofluorocarbons. The last ones are the refrigerants in our refrigerators and air-conditioners.

The more we (humans), or our activities, emit these substances into the atmosphere, the greater is the "greenhouse effect" on it and the contribution to global warming. We shall discuss the end effects of this at a later time, but let's look at these six chemicals first. The last one, the CFC's have been already regulated since the 1970's because of its effect on the ozone layer. Nowadays, it is banned and no longer used in our home and industrial appliances. For the others, we need to remember that some of the items in the list have more damaging effects than others on a per volume basis, but there existence are so little that overall, the less damaging ones are the more dangerous due to their volume in the earth's atmosphere.

That is why, among the six, it is carbon dioxide which stands out and is made the measure of all contributions of GHGs towards global warming. Thus you hear the term: tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent, as a measure of GHG emission. There is also the factor of their dependence on human activity. Clearly, a gas which is not related to human activity would be more difficult to manipulate than one which is. And carbon dioxide stands out as the GHG which directly relates to what we do every day. We even breathe it out every few seconds.

Collectively, GHG from the six gases are measured in terms of CO2-equivalent. And since CO2 contains the element "carbon," it now boils down to how much carbon we emit every day, or even every hour or minute. That's we call it the carbon footprint. (to be continued)