What is the Energy Transition?
The world has been running on fossil fuels for 250 years.
They are deeply embedded into our very existence.
The science is in.
- The burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming.
The effect of global warming is climate change. - We must make an energy transition away from fossil fuels for the continued survival of humankind.
Water is an essential ingredient of life, but if a couple of quarts of it get into your lungs, it ends life very quickly. The same is true with CO2. Too much of it in the wrong place upsets the natural balance, and it becomes a life threatening hazard.
CO2 is created naturally by vegetation decomposing on land and sea, venting volcanoes, forest fires, and hundreds of millions of flatulating ruminant animals (cows, sheep, goats, moose, camels, deer, giraffes, and buffalo).
Biomass (forests, jungles and farms etc.) capture CO2 and make oxygen. Plants combine CO2 with H20 to make carbohydrates, and release an extra molecule of oxygen in the process. This is a step towards food production, when kept in proper balance with other atmospheric gases.
What is the Greenhouse Effect?
How does one ton of fossil fuel create three tons of CO2? When fossil fuel is burned, carbon atoms are released. During combustion, one carbon atom combines with two atoms of oxygen to create a CO2 molecule, which weighs three times as much.
Since the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1700s, we have been burning fossil fuels. This has been altering the balance of gases in the atmosphere for the last 250 years. This invisible gas accumulates in the atmosphere and acts like glass in a greenhouse, trapping heat close to the Earth. Global warming is the result of the land, the ocean, and the atmosphere absorbing the trapped heat.
As the Earth warms, more water evaporates into the atmosphere. On a global scale, there are untold trillions of tons of water vapor storing massive amounts of energy in the atmosphere. This increasing bank of energy is powering the more frequent destructive storms we now see. It is altering seasonal weather, causing droughts, flooding, and impacting food production.
If we do nothing, in 8-10 years we will reach a tipping point where nothing we can do will stop runaway warming.