Despite the near total collapse of non-essential economic and social activity of human communities around the world over the whole of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021, a new record of 419 ppm of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide was set in May 2021.
The requirement for the biosphere to maintain its diversity and the survival of most of its species is a carbon dioxide concentration of 278 ppm. Unless a radical change emerges now, as in: right now, you & me are the last generation of human folks to make this kind of mistake, ever.
What this metric demonstrates, but is hidden in plain view, is that the fundamental challenge for life on planet Earth is to balance the incoming and outgoing flows of energy, to create a global temperature homeostasis, other then by storing the surplus. The current stored surplus is the ticking time bomb of global extinction that has gone off several times already in the past and is going off again right now. The fuse is lit – and the human civilised mindset hasn’t helped to fix this.
The problem is simple. The sun provides most of the energy for life on our planet. It does so in abundance. Over-abundance in fact. Life created and maintains a thick atmosphere that shields us from many harmful gifts from space. It also prevents most energy from returning to space. Carbon dioxide is one of the gasses that trap this energy. Still there are a few narrow frequency bands that allow energy to pass from the surface of the planet back into space.
The solution is perhaps even simpler. Recent research and development into systems to use those heat windows show that it takes just that: when objects have a specific temperature and direct that energy outward to space, it will pass unhindered though the atmosphere, while cooling down its environment. One such solution is a super white paint, that absorbs very little energy from the sun, but can radiate the ambient energy at just the right temperature. Painted on roofs, the radiated energy disappears directly into space.
Why does it have to be this super white colour? Because otherwise the painted surface would heat up too much and the radiated energy would be stuck in the atmosphere again.
Would it be possible for organic beings to come up with a similar solution? Absorb as little energy as possible from the sun, yet radiate at just the right temperature (between 28 and 38 degrees C), directed at the sky? So far there don’t appear to be any organisms that have come up with this by themselves – or did they? Other strategies may work too.
Yes, they have many solutions to store the excess energy, but this only means that they have pushed the problem of dealing with it into the future.
And the future is now, as it turns out 😉 What are the odds of that?