The year 1700 marked the birth of the Industrial Revolution. This is when mechanized mass production factories started using fossil fuel to power start up plants for textile, agriculture, steel, and all sorts of industries that paved the way to more sophisticated machinery. The new fabrication plants at that time neglected pollution that causes long-term destruction to the planet. The Industrial revolution was born in Great Britain and spilled all over Europe and the Americas. Carbon Dioxide accumulation in the Earth's atmosphere began.
Scientific data gathered from the onset of the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide collection spewed in the atmosphere is estimated to be 1,540,000,000,000 tons. It is so vast that you can build a 22-meter square solid structure with it from here to the moon.
Though half of the accumulated Carbon Dioxide still remains in the atmosphere, an estimated half is dissolved in the oceans causing the rise of our water's acidity. The decrease of ph and the rise of acidity has its own catastrophic effects, hampering reef-building abilities of corals to produce their stony skeletons that support corals and reefs when ocean acidity is high. The acidic solution of our waters hinders corals to absorb calcium carbonate essential to coral formations.
With the marine life imbalance, the food chain will be affected for humans as shellfish needs calcium carbonate to fortify their protective shells. It is a necessity for coral reefs to remain protected and healthy as we rely on them for food, coastal protection, medicines, and tourism.
Nature has its way to remove CO2 by its natural process, but emissions overtake the process by 100 times it is consumed by plant life. In effect, Global temperature has breached our safe warming limit of 1 degree C. Over this threshold would put our thermal situation in the category of the Eemian period 125,000 years ago where sea levels rose to about 10 meters, as reported by The Conversation.
A rise of the 10-meter sea level category would mean a displacement of 10 percent of the world's population. Eve a two-meter rise in sea levels translates to a 200 million people evacuation to higher grounds.
The Paris Climate Agreement had the consensus to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C. But with a yearly emission of 37 billion tons of humanity's own which 10 billion tons is credited to carbon burning, it is imperative to cut down emissions drastically. These efforts, if implemented, leaves more carbon dioxide to deal with, as reported by the Business Standard.
According to scientists, every 100 billion tons of CO2 extracted from the atmosphere equals to a temperature drop of 0.28 degrees F or 0.16 degrees C. The need to get rid of Carbon Dioxide and reduce emissions is now.
