“Even if, by some miracle, we manage to keep the carbon dioxide levels at 390 ppm (parts per million), as it is now, the earth’s atmosphere will go on heating for the next 20 years,” said Taylor Volk, science director of Environmental Studies and associate professor of Biology at New York University (NYU).

Volk, who recently published ‘CO2 Rising’, a book study about the rise of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and 
its effects on our planet, was invited 
by NYU in Abu Dhabi to give a lecture here on Sunday on the topics presented in his book.

“Not all carbon dioxide is bad, though,” said Volk in an interview to Khaleej Times.

The gas is produced during respiration by human beings, plants, animals and all living organisms. In this atmospheric state, it is, in fact, beneficial. The harmful carbon dioxide is the “unnatural”, dug-out one from fossil fuels, used to produce oil, gas and coal.

“Without atmospheric carbon dioxide, plants would die and the earth will become frozen, but the carbon dioxide coming from underground it’s new, not part of the cycle, added to the atmosphere,” said Volk.

Over the years, so much of it has been added into the air that it is now the main cause of global warming and climate change.

“Considering the magnitude and the scale of it, carbon dioxide is the world’s greatest environmental challenge,” stressed Volk.

“And it is not an ordinary pollutant, like acid rains, whose harmful effects disappear once they are absorbed in the ground.”

Carbon dioxide, mostly absorbed by oceans, is released back into the atmosphere, taking a very long time until it is finally “digested” by sea or forests.

Since the industrial revolution in early 1960s, carbon dioxide has been on the rise, now going over the acceptable limit of 350 ppm and reaching an alarming 390 ppm.

“By 2060-70, the amount is predicted to be doubled. Imagine what that would do to the atmosphere. I get worried about the unpredictability of it.”

Measurements show that carbon dioxide is now even polluting the “clean” South Pole, where there is hardly any human activity, and yet high levels of this greenhouse gas were found in the atmosphere.

“There were some theories that global warming could be caused by natural release of carbon dioxide, but scientists are now able to measure its emissions from air bubbles found in glaciers formed centuries ago and all these point to a steady, linear emission of carbon dioxide until the industrial revolution, when it started to go sharply up,” explained Volk.

With marine fossil fuels coming to an end, therefore oil wells drying up in a few decades, we might be forced to slow down our “production” of carbon dioxide but, as Volk points out, it all depends on what we replace it with.

silvia@khaleejtimes.com