Hey guys! It's nice to have you here for the second episode of my webseries about climate change. A lot has changed in the world from the 2000s onwards.
That brick phone who had the snake game he ended up becoming a smartphone. That tube TV ended up becoming a smart TV and that means: a lot of young folks turned into geezers. Meanwhile the gas concentration carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which was 370 ppm increased to 418 ppm.
Over half of the carbon dioxide produced by human activity was disclosed in last 3 decades. And in this video, people will understand how this and other gases weight in the warming of the planet that was precisely the subject that we talked on the first episode of this series. But firstly, we will understand what is this PPM thing that is always together with the greenhouse gases.
In fact, ppm is a measurement unit the concentration of a gas in the atmosphere it is measured in ppm that means "part per million". But, you can see going around the measure of parts per billion, which is the ppb or even parts per trillion, which is the ppt. Now just for you visualize it better one part per million it's almost the same thing as a drop of water in a gas tank of a average car that means it is something very small.
But the atmosphere it's monstrously big and these zillion parts are spread all over the place. In fact, the greenhouse gases spread very well so it doesn't matter where on earth you measure it if it will be here in Brazil or if it will be there in China the data you will find will be the same anywhere in the world. We already know that the atmosphere surrounds the entire planet and that it interferes directly with our climate.
Several gases that are in this atmosphere interfere in the greenhouse effect like carbon dioxide, methane the nitrous oxide sulfur hexafluoride and CFC. But do you know how much of the atmosphere is composed for these gases that I told you? The answer is astonishing: all the gases that we will refer in this video the greenhouse effect gases they just make up 0.
04% of the atmosphere which is a small amount but it has a hell of an impact in the maintenance of the planet warmness. "But Jubilut, but if it's so little we shouldn't even be worried". That's where you are wrong.
It's this tiny amount of greenhouse gases of the atmosphere is what keeps the planet hot enough for us to live in it. And an interesting detail is that the different greenhouse gases they may have differences in the ability to absorb energy while in the atmosphere. So, to be able to compare gases we created a unit which is the GWP which means "global warming potential".
The higher the GWP the greater the potential of warming effect. Want to see an example? if we consider that the GWP of carbon dioxide is 1 and that of methane is approximately 30 the methane he has potential 30 times bigger of provoking the global warming in the time interval of 100 years.
The nitrous oxide has the GWP of 298 and the other gases, such as CFCs, HFCs sulfur hexafluoride they're called high GWP gases has much higher values the GWP of these gases is in the thousands scale, or tens of thousands. And since I mentioned the carbon dioxide which is the most famous greenhouse gas of all let's understand a little more about it and why it's so famous, and so worrying. Carbon dioxide, which is same thing as CO2 it is responsible for 66% increase of the greenhouse effect of our atmosphere.
In 2020, even during a pandemic who decreased a lot the economic activity the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 414 ppm. The biggest ever since the last 3 million years. Just so you can compare in 1960 this concentration was approximately 320 ppm.
In April 2022 this concentration reached 418 ppm. We already know that the carbon dioxide concentration it's going up because of of human action and that, in the past, the variation in this gas already deeply impacted the temperatures on the planet. We have already started to feel the effects of global warming and the impact of this carbon dioxide overproduction it hasn't gone totally measured yet because a lot of this CO2 is still stuck in ocean waters and these ocean waters they are releasing this carbon dioxide and the heat that is with this molecule slowly.
The mass of Earth's atmosphere it represents something like the first 3 meters of ocean water depth. So, if the average depth of the oceans on Earth it's 4. 5 km the whole atmosphere it's represented only in the first 3 meters.
So when the ocean it's hotter evaporate, throws energy the atmosphere feel it. So that's why it increases 1. 5ºC, I have severe phenomena.
Increasing 2ºC the phenomena will be much more severe. Just for you to have an idea if we stopped now to add to the atmosphere carbon dioxide produced by human activity the temperature of planet would still rise. Around 0.
5°C, up to achieve balance what happens is that the ocean's presence makes the warming process slower but still, an inevitable process And it's been a while since we interfere in the planet's carbon cycle mainly because we take the oil from underground bringing to the surface and burning everything. The carbon contained on carbon dioxide produced by industrial activity is an atom that was tucked away under the land or sea. But how this carbon went underground?
I do not know if you know but all living beings are made by carbon molecules. The carbon dioxide that it's on the air is used by plants in the photosynthesis process. In this process they remove the carbon of this carbon dioxide and turn it into energy for the body.
The animals that do not do photosynthesis they get their carbon eating these plants or eating other animals which are also made of carbon. This carbon will move through food chains and when an animal dies the decomposing organisms will decompose this being and releasing carbon back to the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. But when this animal is buried in a place that don't have oxygen the decomposing organisms who need oxygen they can't work.
And then this matter organic, this carbon gets stuck under the rocks and turns into what we call fossil fuels. Because the planet exists most of the time without us the carbon cycle was organized at a certain degree the carbon went on and back to the atmosphere in a balanced way. Then we arrived burning all these fossil fuels releasing so much carbon into the atmosphere that the planet is begging for us to stop.
But Jubilut, how do we know if this carbon dioxide that it's in the atmosphere really came from human activities or if it is not a consequence of volcanic activities? That's a big question! and the answer is, in fact that there are isotopes these carbon atoms and the isotope that exists in the oil it is an isotope that was formed millions of years ago and now we are realizing that this isotope it's showing up in bigger quantity in our atmosphere.
Isotopes are atoms which basically demonstrates the same activity only they have different atomic masses so we can identify them. It's like an ID of the carbon. It is estimated that 10 billion tons of carbon released annually come from the fuel burning of petroleum products and all this we know identifying these isotopes.
The kick off for this increase in burning of decomposed fossils it was the Industrial Revolution. The first fossil fuel to become the most important source of energy worldwide it was coal. At that time, the heat generated in its burning was used in steam production that moved machines locomotives, and even ships.
From there other energy sources were becoming popular like petroleum that today is the most used fuel fossil. It is from the oil that it's made gasoline diesel oil, kerosene the LPG that is liquefied petroleum gas fuels that are widely used in the industry transportation, energy production and these activities that are emitting the most carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. And then, if we stop here only with carbon dioxide it would already have enough gas to cause global warming.
But it's not just that we also release other gases with our actions that's the case of methane, which I've talked about before and that has a potential 30 times greater of global warming comparing to carbon dioxide. In the last 35 years the concentration of methane in the atmosphere rose from 1630 ppb for approximately 1910 ppb in 2020. With this concentration he was responsible for a 16% increase in the a greenhouse effect.
The responsibility of this gas on global warming It is huge! But the big question is: where does he come from? 22% percent of methane emitted by humans comes from production and use of oil and natural gas.
just for you to have an idea, in the USA there are more than a million and half a miles of tubes a million valves all for gas transportation operating every day, 24 hours. The amount of leaking of methane is immense and a large part of these leaks make the 690 thousand tons of methane that are released in the atmosphere every year. Obviously that there are other sources which will also issue methane to the atmosphere 18% come from waste management for example in dumps and landfills 11% comes from coal extration 8% of rice cultivation the other 8% comes from biomass and burning of biofuel and the rest is assigned to transport industry, and cattle raising which is what we're going to speak soon.
The good news is that methane has a short life in the atmosphere so instead of staying thousands of years in the atmosphere in a 12 years span he would be already consumed by the reactions what happen there. So if we can reduce the methane emissions we will be able to see a positive result very fast. but nonetheless we are seeing an increase in this gas concentration that comes mainly from a bad management of our waste from agriculture and livestock.
The raising of cattle releases a lot of methane 30% of anthropic methane comes from the brew that happens in the oxen's intestines and then released through of farts and burps. It's crazy to think about it, fart and burp but it is a serious problem for future generations. And when we compare the highest percentages methane release which is 30% from cattle and 22% of oil and also gas they're not that far away.
our big herds of oxen release so much methane as for the whole gas and oil industry they're both problems that we have to face as soon as possible. Now let's continue talking about agriculture and talk about another gas that has a lot to do with it and it is also problematic for global warming which is nitrous oxide. in 2001 the atmospheric concentration of this gas was approximately 315 ppb and in 2020 it was 334 ppb.
Despite nitrous oxide be released naturally in the nitrogen cycle making possible that plants have the needed nitrogen to grow the gas is also released by the excess of fertilizers used in agriculture. It's so much fertilizer that they arrive in the rivers, on the ground and spread. There, the bacteria consume these fertilizers and releases nitrous oxide that will end up in the atmosphere.
As power plants and road transport also release that gas since they burn fossil fuel in order to function. And it's powerful! a ton of released nitrous oxide equals 298 tons of carbon dioxide when we compare the potential to provoke global warming.
It is terrifying, isn't it? And as if that weren't enough, the we made more of a mess with a new gas that didn't exist in nature. We created a gas SF6 or hexafluoride of sulfur that has a global warming potential almost 24 thousand times bigger than carbon dioxide.
In 1997 this gas concentration in the atmosphere was approximately 4 ppt and in 2020 it increased to 10. 78 ppt. It is an artificial gas, synthesized by man so it is not accepted, nor destroyed naturally and can stay in the atmosphere for 3,200 years.
But at the same time, the SF6 it is important because it is an excellent isolate in the electric industry and you can avoid receiving electrical overload in the high voltage network and decrease the explosion hazards. Again, we have to walk a tightrope measuring the pros and cons and trying to change to as much as we can. we already know that from policies and investment in new energy sources we will be able to decrease the release of carbon dioxide and also methane.
But we have to plan also a strategy to replace SF6 because it's production comes increasing in recent years. But I don't want this video to be just bad news let's leave some good news here we can now talk about a greenhouse gas that we got a greatly reduce in emission which is chlorofluorocarbon, the famous CFC. As if it wasn't enough destroy the ozone layer this gas also causes global warming.
In 2020, CFCs were responsible for 8% increase in the greenhouse effect. But even though we have reduced this gas emission the problem with the CFC it's still far from having a happy ending That's because, around the world there are cemeteries of air conditioners coolers, foams all old models, which still releases CFC. If that CFC from these cemeteries gets fully released he will contribute to the global warming in a scale to 9 billion tons of carbon dioxide metric tons.
It's terrifying! In addition, we ending up replacing CFCs for other products as is the case with HFCs but then we found that HFCs can be converted in the atmosphere in CF4 or carbon tetrafluoride which, guess what, is even more problematic than the CFC. So that we always is walking on a tightrope when we try to solve the problems that we created ourselves.
And there's still a special gas that you can't even imagine it is also a greenhouse gas and that can cause global warming. This gas is water vapor which is the biggest absorber of heat from the greenhouse effect. This water vapor comes from the surface of the water, ice or snow from the surface of the ground vegetables surfaces and also from the surface of the animals.
We'll talk more about importance of water vapor and the clouds interference in the global climate in the next video from this series. It's been decades since we're studying these gases and their influence global warming. And we already understood that if we force the planet to the limit, it will answer and it will answer in a strong way.
Almost all the technological and industrial progress of last 200 years we build upon unbridled exploitation of natural resources. We burned and still burn all oil we can find using a copious amount of fertilizers and having the biggest herds of all time. Rather we understand once and for all that screwed up the limit has arrived or our children will have to deal with the consequences.
In the next video in the series we will talk about these consequences and about how they're affecting us already in things happening nowadays So don't wait see you in the next video! Needless to say it was a great pleasure to be here with you a big hug, bye!
