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Let him who would move the worldfirst move himself Socrates Man has been endowed with reason and the power to create, so that he could add his own to what was given to him. But so far he has acted little as a creator, but only as a destroyer. He razes forests, dries up rivers, extinguishes flora and wildlife, He alters the climate and makes the earth grow deeper every day. Anton Chekhov |
In the absence of urgent measures for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, scientists predict in a few years global warming will outdo the threshold of no return with catastrophic effects on climate and, consequently, on our life.
Nowadays we are already experiencing the climate conditions of the future and we are facing catastrophic scenarios such as melting of glaciers and progressive disappearance of coral reefs.
If we want to believe in future, we must not deny that global warming and its devastating side effects are not only present and real, but also put future generations and our own health and safety at risk.
Unfortunately, we are slowly getting used to climate change effects, such as torrid summers and too mild winters, as well as to plastic infested sea, melting glaciers, deforestations, desertifications, and disappearance of some animal and plant species.
So we expect science and technology to solve these issues without taking instead political responsibility; this way we do not take on sacrifices and high costs but we hide from the naked true that the only way to face the problem is prevention that involves collective commitment before the cure becomes much more expensive or even impossible and not totally useful.
As Tim Flannery – in "The lords of the climate"- teaches us, we are human beings because all over the world we share the same situation for which we are both responsible and victims.
The future is only in our hands and will judge us for everything we could do but we didn't do.
To fully understand the complicated situation, we need to get to know three terms: greenhouse gas, Global Warming and climate change.
The climate system is made up of a dense network of relationships between the forces of nature: before reaching the earth's surface, the sun's radiation passes through the clouds, which absorb, reflect and transmit different amounts of caloric energy in the earth system. The surface of the earth and plants absorb the amount they need for photosynthesis and reflect the rest. Through this exchange, the earth's temperature should be kept around 14 degrees Celsius. But it is precisely the greenhouse gases that, under normal conditions, maintain this balance, because they have the task of retaining the heat emitted by the earth's surface, creating that effect encountered inside a greenhouse.
The greenhouse effect, therefore, would not be harmful per se, but if the concentration of greenhouse gases increases, more heat is trapped and as it has happened in recent decades the Earth overheats. In fact, increasingly frenetic human activities, industrialization, transport, fossil fuels have produced an abnormal amount of greenhouse gases, generating the increasingly dangerous global warming.
Greenhouse gases are gases that can trap heat near the earth's surface; when their presence in the atmosphere increases, the extra heat they retain leads to global warming which, in turn, exerts pressure on terrestrial climate systems, inducing climate change.
Climate is the set of atmospheric conditions: temperature, atmospheric pressure, winds, rains etc. that characterize each region of the earth, determine both its flora and fauna and different human habits and activities.
Climate is therefore variable in different latitudes and longitudes of the planet.
Its fundamental parameter is temperature which responds to the principles of thermodynamics that regulate the exchange of heat and energy between bodies through three mechanisms:
- by conduction, when heat propagates by contact between the atmosphere and the earth;
- by convection, when a moving fluid transports heat and energy from one body to another;
- by radiation, when the energy is transformed into electromagnetic radiation of various wavelengths between even distant environments.
These heat transfer mechanisms are a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics according to which heat can only pass from a warmer body to a colder one.
The temperature of a body is given by the thermal energy it contains; the temperature reached by a body is the result of exchanges of energy that cause heating and cooling.
As regards to the Earth, the exchanges of energy with the outside happen through electromagnetic radiation. Not all the energy that comes from the sun is absorbed by earth: a part is reflected by the clouds and the ground, giving the planet an albedo (in Latin: whiteness, candor) which is the fraction of incident solar radiation scattered in all directions, getting lost in the sidereal space.
The albedo is very high in glaciers, because a snow-covered land better reflects sunlight, whereas it is very low in oceans and woods.
We can appreciate the importance of this fact if we keep in mind that one third of all the solar energy that reaches the earth is reflected in white surfaces: fresh snow reflects light more than anything else (80- 90%).
Climate therefore depends on many variables due to multiple processes that take place in the atmosphere and its thermodynamic interactions with the earth and oceans. The atmosphere indeed ensures the transport of heat from the tropical to the polar region by acting as a thermostat, reducing temperature picks.
It should not be forgotten that the atmosphere is a protective shield capable of intercepting even the smallest meteorites which burn once they enter into contact with the atmosphere itself, giving rise to the phenomenon of falling stars.
The "great ocean of air" - as A. Russel Wallace called it - is composed of nitrogen (78%), oxygen (20.9%) and argon (0.9%). These three gases make up 99.95% of the air we breathe, which also contains large tons of anthropogenic CO2.
Actually, Gaia breathes as man does: inspiration takes place in the northern hemisphere every spring, when the arising vegetation extracts CO2 from the large ocean of air, and it leads to a reduction in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The exhalation instead occurs in the northern hemisphere in autumn, when the leaves decomposition generates CO2, and it enriches air with this gas.
However this physiological function is threatened by the Achille’s heel of our civilization which are fossil fuels.
Scientists continue to study how climate works: how dry lands, oceans and atmosphere absorb solar heat that is redistributed while generating storms, droughts rising seas and other phenomena.
We have assumed as certain knowledge for over a century that carbon dioxide (CO2) traps solar heat and that burning fossil fuels (such as coal, oil and natural gas) enters in the atmosphere with other carbon dioxide.
We also know that since the Industrial Revolution man has been burning more and more fossil fuels and that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by over a third compared to two centuries ago.
Not even the most skeptical can deny the "killer effects” of the increase in CO2 which is the most famous greenhouse gas: even the solar heat reflected from earth is captured by CO2 molecules and therefore before getting disperse into space, it warms up the air.
As a consequence the planet heats up more and more, the sea level rises, the oceans expand, glaciers and polar ice caps melt faster and faster. For the very same reason a greater quantity of water evaporates from soil and oceans, intensifying rainfall and snowfall in some areas and drought in others. The oceans and seas then influence local climate of coastal regions for the thermal energy they possess; energy which, through waters expansion, raises the surface of the seas.
Another main greenhouse gas is water vapor which constitutes about 60% of the total greenhouse effect. Its concentration in the atmosphere depends on both natural causes (evaporation of the oceans, waterways, lakes and humidity on the ground) and human emissions and it is linked to temperature: if the planet heats up, for example because the atmospheric CO2 rate increases, water evaporation intensifies and the atmosphere retains a greater quantity of water vapor which traps more heat and increases the temperature even further.
To make an example, on an autumn evening, if the sky is clear, the heat slip away into space and it will be cold, while if the sky is cloudy, the heat will be trapped by water vapor and temperature will remain warm, increasing the greenhouse effect.
Water vapor therefore amplifies the heating caused by CO2 derived from human activities and, together with CO2, is the main silent killer that causes Global Warming.
It is also the most insidious gas because we can only intervene in its atmospheric concentration indirectly through the control, of the CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.
In some areas of the earth, such as the Mediterranean area, the decrease in rainfall and the increase in evaporation due to global warming and higher temperature of the earth's surface, reduce the soil moisture, subjecting crops to stress water.
Another gas, the ozone, is responsible for around 8% of the greenhouse effect. The maximum concentration of ozone is in the stratosphere, at about 30 km above sea level, where this element creates a barrier that absorbs ultraviolet rays from the sun and prevents them from reaching the surface of the earth, though producing the greenhouse effect.
There is confusion between Global Warming and the so called “ozone hole”, because there is no relationship between the two phenomena, except for the fact that both have anthropogenic origins. The "ozone hole" consists in the thinning of the ozone layer present in the stratosphere. The depletion of stratospheric ozone is a global threat for which prevention and defense strategies must be developed.
The hole in the ozone layer is due to a group of chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), invented about thirty years ago as a refrigerant fluid for refrigerators, air conditioners and as a propulsor for spray cans. When CFCs arrive in the stratosphere, they destroy the ozone molecules (made of 3 oxygen atoms).
The hole in the ozone layer, allowing the ultraviolet rays of the sun to pass through, causes not only sunburns but does much more serious damages like skin tumors (melanomas, basaliomas and spinocellular carcinomas); it can also trigger asthma attacks, irritation of eyes and respiratory tract, aggravating chronic lung diseases, such as chronic obstructive bronchitis of smokers.
The third most common greenhouse gas after water vapor and CO2 is methane (CH4) which has natural origins in part because it derives from bacteria that decompose plant matter helping the termites to digest food. But it is also produced by human activities: oil and natural gas drilling releases the methane contained in the subsoil; waste fermentation in landfills.
Methane traps heat twenty times more efficiently than CO2 does, but it does not remain in the atmosphere for a long time because it breaks down into other substances.
In the fourth place among the silent killers is N2O (nitrous oxide), which has both natural sources such as bacteria, and artificial sources like fertilizers for agriculture, exhaust fumes of machines and the production of nitric acid from chemical plants. In this case, a straightforward environmental policy should reduce the market of diesel, which is the main cause of nitrous oxide emissions.
Other industrial chemical compounds are also greenhouse gases such as the aforementioned chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) which are ten thousands times more effective than CO2 in capturing thermal energy and can last in the atmosphere for many centuries.
Almost a fifth of the greenhouse gases that we emit daily, comes from the consumption of coal.
In fact, millions of years ago the wood of the forests fossilized into black and hard coal and, since the invention of the steam engine, man began to burn coal, using it as an energy source in various areas: from railways to electricity production.
Coal annually meets about 25% of the world's energy needs, also because it is abundant and costs relatively little.
The United States is the second largest producer of coal in the world after China and consumes it at such frantic rates that its reserves will be enough for only a couple of centuries.
But coal is made almost entirely of carbon and burning it releases a lot of carbon dioxide (about two kilos for every kilo of coal, naphtha, bitumen, tar, fossil fuels and soot), giving life to another fearsome silent killer: the carbon that is also present in the soil in the form of humus and in plants’ roots.
The quantity and type of carbon in the soil can vary based on the use that has been made of that particular land. The carbon dictatorship is paralyzing vital functions of Gaia and above all it is wearing out the thermoregulation of the planet earth.
For the same amount of energy, coal emits twice the quantity of CO2 compared to natural gas and a quarter more than oil. Overall, then, around 20% of greenhouse gas emissions come from the combustion of coal.
Among the measures to reduce the use of fossil fuels, safe storage of carbon, reducing extraction is fundamental.
The ocean is also an important carbon deposit - fifty times more then the atmosphere - because 98% of human CO2 emissions are destined to end up at sea. Oceans can be considered as greenhouse gas wells but unfortunately once in seas, CO2 increases the acidity of water with lethal consequences for the biodiversity of coral reefs and of all fish species.
As we will explain further, the increase in acidity has negative effects on the metabolism of some marine species, because acidity decreases the carbon ions that are fundamental for the calcification process of corals and plankton.
Two hundred years ago the pH of the oceans' surface was 8.2, whereas today it has dropped to 8.1; it seems a minimal difference but in fact, it means that oceans are 30% more acidic than before the Industrial Revolution, for which many marine species are threatened by increased acidification of the seas.
The damage is very serious and only seaweed could rebalance the situation; in fact, algae have an extraordinary ability to reproduce 600 times greater than any other living being, to absorb CO2, and to protect many other endangered marine species. Algae also manage to produce 12 gig tons of biomethane per year and to store 20 gigatons of CO2 per year, decreasing oceanic acidity and increasing eco-sustainable fish production.
Seaweed, especially posidonia oceanica (an endemic marine plant of the Mediterranean), are extremely important for the conservation of ecosystems due to their great ability to curb both ocean acidification and global warming, playing a fundamental role in regulating ecological balance of the sea. If it weren't for algae and plants we would be suffocated by CO2 in a short time and we would be short of oxygen.
Nevertheless human intervention is severely testing their survival.
Among the main threats are maritime construction, water pollution, and anchoring, dredging, elimination of dead leaves and algae from beaches and creation of artificial beaches.
If we take into account all the silent killers, it is CO2 that wins the entropic race, because altering their natural concentrations alters the energy balance and produces chaos in economy and social balance.
A quarter of the CO2 that is in the atmosphere today is due to the usage of fossil fuels; the rest is mainly generated by deforestation, intensive agriculture (monocultures, chemical fertilizers, etc.) and the cement industry.
For instance, the Amazon forest was normally able to absorb about two gigatons of CO2 every year; but in recent years, due to the effect of drought, it has been transformed from a carbon tank into a temporary producer of carbon, emitting the equivalent of five gig tons of CO2 for each year of drought.
If forests burn, with subsequent decomposition of plant matter, powerful greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen oxide are released.
Furthermore, the use of chemical fertilizers causes large nitrous oxide emissions, the production of cement from limestone and rocks rich in carbon releases CO2 in the heating process (in fact, every ton of cement produced generates a gigantic ton of CO2 and contributes alone to 5% of global carbon dioxide emissions).
Finally, the overpopulation of the earth produces a large amount of waste, which, in turn, requires a large number of dumps, a notable source of methane emissions.
The linear economy involves waste that damages the environment while a circular economy that uses waste as a raw material for eco-sustainable products helps nature.
The idea of circular economy is to make the economy work the way Gaia and all other living things work. In a circular economy, every life comes back to life, because every life brings a new one so that the production process is not forced to draw resources destined to run out.
Circular economy implies therefore re-appropriation, maintenance and recycling while linear economy does not take into consideration the limits of development, inducing consumption
without limits of soil and biodiversity.
The waste problem involves very serious social issues like “ecomafie”, “Terre dei Fuochi”, plastic islands in the middle of the oceans, micropolymers in the belly of fishes, protests against landfills and waste treatment plants, and cities swarmed from dirt.
Recycling is therefore an ethical operation. Our "Science for Peace.Eu" Foundation has identified one of the main causes of global warming in consumerism that produces goods destined to last a short time and to be quickly replaced by more attractive models.
Global capitalism is compelled by conflicting values such as growth and sustainability which make policies schizophrenic, creating fear, malice and violence in people.
Today we know that even if we eliminate CO2 emissions, the excess CO2 would be absorbed by plants and oceans and this absorption would still be insufficient; in fact, it could take millennia before all CO2 is removed from the atmosphere, unless every citizen of the planet plants and feeds a tree, so that only in Italy about 60 million trees would be planted.
Plants absorb CO2 and incorporate carbon into their tissues by holding it to death.
Each vegetable from a blade of grass to a giant sequoia is made of carbon absorbed from the atmosphere during its lifetime.
When a plant dies naturally, its carbon returns to the atmosphere little by little as it happens for leaves that spring up and fall in winter, whereas if the same plant burns, carbon is released all at once.
If new small plants replaced all the felled trees, they would start absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere again.
So the only living beings that make us breathe and feed us are trees, because they absorb atmospheric CO2 by emitting oxygen and producing sugary fruit.
As trees grow very slowly their positive effects on global warming can be seen over a distance of at least 50 years during which they must be fed by farmers and treated by tree doctors, the botanists, one of the most sought after and most important professional figures for the salvation of our ecosystems.
As far as oceans are concerned, however, we know that the more CO2 is released into the atmosphere the more the oceans absorb it; as we mentioned, almost a third of all the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels has been assimilated by oceans in the last 200 years.
Part of the dissolved carbon dioxide reacts with water, forming carbonic acid which increases its acidity. This process damages many forms of marine life: shells and coral reefs made almost entirely of calcium carbonate, which dissolve in acidic waters without however reforming.
Barrier reefs are home to one of the most diverse and thriving ecosystems in oceans. They are created by colonies of small marine organisms that are covered with a shell of calcium carbonate, the same material that forms the shells of molluscs. Over time in presence of favorable temperatures, water salinity and so on, these coral colonies can grow to form coral reefs.
Inside each coral there are small algae, which can even reach several million in an area, which is the size of a finger. In general, this cohabitation is advantageous for both organisms: corals offer algae the main nutrients, a comfortable shelter and protection from predators; algae supply corals with sugars produced by photosynthesis.
When the temperature of the sea rises too high, corals react by expelling the symbiotic algae that live in their tissues causing the particular coloring. Without this alga the coral polyps could neither feed nor build the skeleton that forms the coral. In a few weeks, the coral polyps starve. The loss of algae changes the color of the coral, from the typical brown to white, the natural tint of the coral shell. For this reason we speak of "coral bleaching". Scientists claim that coral ecosystems are destined to disappear and with them fish biodiversity.
The sea temperature rises much less than that of the atmosphere but still enough to trigger the bleaching of corals which increases with the acidification of sea water.
Since the marine food chain is made up of tiny shell organisms, acidification affects the other marine inhabitants who feed on it.
In fact, according to scientists, the acidification of oceans can cause the mass extinction of coral molluscs and other marine organisms necessary to maintain fish biodiversity.
On planet earth, a series of natural mechanisms react to global warming in order to intensify it (positive feedback) or mitigate it (negative feedback).
An example of positive feedback is the aforementioned case of water vapor: when temperature rises, the evaporation of oceans increases and water vapor is formed. As a greenhouse gas that traps heat, just like CO2, it makes increase temperature and trigger extreme, and often destructive, atmospheric phenomena.
Just take fo example the hurricane which “is a thermal machine activated by the latent heat released when huge quantities of water vapor condense. To get this machine moving, a huge amount of hot and humid air is needed and to keep it running, a constant supply is needed"(Lutgens-Tarbuck). Evaporation transfers heat to the atmosphere as we can easily see on our skin, when we sweat during a hot day, transferring the heat of our body to the air: sweat is a very effective form of heat transfer because for every gram of water evaporated by our body with sweat, 580 calories are transferred into the atmosphere. If we think about the difference in size between our body and an entire ocean, we can imagine the energy, often uncontrolled, that the heat deriving from oceanic evaporation releases.
Trapped in a vicious circle, excessive heat burns the planet earth which is our only home, as Greta Thunberg says.
Another example of positive feedback is the fusion of permafrost, a perennially frozen soil located in Alaska, Canada, Siberia and other very cold areas.
With the increase in temperature, the plant matter that has been trapped for centuries in permafrost begins to decompose, emitting other CO2 that contributes to planet warming; also methane is released if permafrost happens to be on marshy land.
An example of negative feedback for the greenhouse effect occurs when in particularly arid areas after the drought, the wind raises a very large amount of dust and the particles of this dust shield the sun's rays, causing the beneficial effect of cooling the temperature.
The predominant feedback would depend on the type of clouds and the altitude at which it forms, the underlying land surface (sea or land) and other factors of which the forecast is very difficult.
The extension of glaciers, vegetation, forests and clouds as well as the rate of dust in the air determines heating acceleration in certain regions, while in others it can slow down and even reverse.
The amount of snowfall or rainfall also varies from one region to another. At the poles for example, if ice starts to melt, the reduction of frozen causes less sunlight to be reflected in space, which means that earth and seas absorb more energy, causing a further rise in temperature.
Until today ice flowed very slowly from the continental glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica to the sea. But now those glaciers move dangerously much faster.
Different parts of the planet react differently to rising temperatures: for example, scientists have observed that in the long term the North Pole region warms up faster than the rest of the planet but also that warming is faster at the equator than at poles because they receive a greater amount of perpendicular solar rays.
In the last 50 years the Earth's surface and the lower layers of the atmosphere have heated up considerably while the upper layers have even cooled down a bit and this is due to the fact that greenhouse gases hold back in the lower layers of the atmosphere preventing heat from spreading into space.
Briefly we can say that the energy balance of the Earth has changed.
Our "Science for Peace.Eu" Foundation maintains that if we help nature, it will help us, but to help nature we must understand it and its capacity for change and adaptation.
For example, the plants’ growing season has lengthened because of many factors, among which the difference in temperature between night and day which has decreased in recent decades. This phenomenon has been predicted along with greenhouse gases increment in the atmosphere: the heat they trap keeps the earth's surface warm even when the sun does not shine in the sky.
Life on earth takes place at the rhythm of seasons. During spring, in temperate regions, the soil heats up and seeds germinate, grass grows, birds nest and hatchlings are born; in autumn the leaves turn yellow, the fur of some animals thickens, birds retrace the spring migration in the opposite direction and bats hibernate.
Human beings have begun to take note of the times in which some of these physiological phenomena of nature have occurred since ancient times.
With global warming, however, ecosystems are going crazy.
Since changes in ecosystems are always favorable for some species and adverse for others, it is difficult to establish which are positive or negative for which ecosystems.
Scholars could only assess the repercussions of climate on a single species: the human one. So they expect for some of the current harmful ecosystems to disappear and new and healthy ones to form.
Obviously we cannot foresee what the future hold for us if we do not stop the effect of greenhouse gases, the silent killers that cause and increase Global Warming.
This is not really comforting. The violence of hurricanes due to the heat of tropical oceans but also to the winds favorable for diversity of temperatures between different oceans will be greater and stronger than that of a few decades ago; if sea level continues to rise, the anomalous waves will increase resulting in devastating tsunamis (very large walls of water pushed ashore by hurricanes) as happened in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina brought an anomalous wave, arriving from the Gulf of Mexico, that broke through the protective dams and flooded the city of New Orleans causing thousands of deaths, destruction of hundreds of homes and loss of many jobs.
If we consider the costs of Global Warming around the world, we realize that the price for exercising the license to pollute the earth, the atmosphere and the oceans is truly excessive in terms of human lives, unemployment and suffering are a really huge burden that we leave as a legacy to future generations.
As a consequence climate change is already creating millions of climate migrants: people who have to abandon their homes and move for the upheavals in temperatures that put water reserves at risk and for the rising sea that threatens countries such as Bangladesh, the Maldives and Papua New Guinea.
As Luca Mercalli, President of the Italian Meteorological Society, reminds us: "in the coming years there will be increasingly extreme events, with greater drought, and the increase in sea level due to the melting of large glaciers will change geography. All this will cause gigantic migrations, far superior to the current ones".
In addition to migration, Global Warming also causes political instability, poverty and conflicts so much that civil wars will probably increase by 54% in 2030.
As doctors, we predicted that climate change seriously jeopardizes human health because, in addition to the extinctions of some species, according to the WHO, in the last few years, about 150 thousand deaths have occurred mostly among children, due to the silent killers we are talking about in these pages.
The high concentration of ozone on the ground increases asthma and allergic problems. The heat and sudden changes in temperature make infectious diseases grow, because of insects such as mosquitoes and ticks that can inoculate human beings with malaria, dengue, encephalitis and other types of disease such as typhoid, cholera transmitted through food and contaminated water especially in developing countries and in the poorest regions.
Most notably children are and will be the most vulnerable due to undernutrition, malnutrition and retarded maturation of the immune system.
Climate change can also cause mass extinctions of many living species, even if new ones are discovered each year thanks to biodiversity.
Nobody knows when and if we begin to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, but we are certain that a minimal increase in warming condemns by 2050 a 15% of the present species but if the increment will be maximum the extinction rate will rise to 40%, depending on the ability of each species to adapt or migrate.
In many regions of the world, especially the arid ones where the population is increasing, water scarcity is and will be the greatest problem.
In fact, some rivers already dry up almost completely (such as the yellow river in China, the Colorado river in the United States and the Ganges in India) and during large part of the year have an insufficient flow to irrigate crops and quench their thirst riverside population. Moreover, about a sixth of the world's population depends on water from the melting of snow and glaciers which relentlessly pull back.
Asia appears to be the main protagonist and responsible for Global Warming, but also the potential victim for the density of the current and future population since the territories of river deltas such as the Ganges, the Indus and the Brahmaputra are constricting, the construction of dams engulfs millions of hectares of agricultural land, and the rapid melting of the Himalayan glaciers causes serious floods.
Talking about water which is the main element for life existance, it is important to make some considerations.
The economic power of some multinationals is based on water, amplifying the differences between rich and poor. The desire for possession, combined with the drought due to Global Warming, reduces the water heritage which should instead be a collective good of humanity. In fact, water is not a commodity but a universal right for all living beings.
One persone out of three in the world does not have access to drinking water, that is according to Unicef and Who, 2.2 billion people, while in Europe with water networks full of holes, we consume 20 liters per day per person.
Actually, 70% of the planet is made up of ocean, but 97.5% of this water is salty, only 2.5% is fresh and only 0.1% of it goes to human consumption.
An open tap wastes 10 liters of water per minute and a dripping tap wastes 90 drops per hour equal to 4000 liters in a year.
In Italy 9.5 billion cubic meters of water are consumed every year, with 220 liters per person per day, compared to 120 in Germany and 128 in France.
Indeed, with regards to purification and reuse of water, Italy is the tail light with 62.5% against 97% in Germany and 93% in Greece.
Ultimately, water is not an unlimited resource. Nontheless we need 15,400 liters of water to produce 1kg of beef, 4000 liters for 1kg of pork, 3900 liters for 1kg of chicken meat, 1900 liters for 1kg of pasta.
Raising temperature also increases the evaporation of water from rivers, lakes and from ground, so that clouds forms faster and climate warming accelerates; it means more floods and more droughts and a strong water stress which will irreparably damage agriculture.
Finally the shortage of water can lead to destabilization in food production and potential wars to gain access to water sources which will not be distributed fairly, once privatized.
In addition, changes in temperatures and rainfall may reduce agricultural yield, with consequent increases in food prices and accelerate the maturation of crops and plants.
Therefore, climate change also poses a serious threat to food security.
Many of these problems could be solved by an effective political will to invest the necessary funds in agriculture, but also to increase renewable and inexhaustible sources of energy such as sun, wind and rain.
We can act right away chosing energy sources such as solar, wind or hydroelectric energy which fight silent killers and have reduced or even zero CO2 emissions.
Another resource that could be implemented is "bioenergy", that is, energy production from plant matter.
They are all absolutely renewable energies, because sun, wind, rain and plants never run out.
The sun is obviously the first and best source of clean energy, in fact it provides to the earth every hour more energy than what humans produce in an entire year, burning fossil fuels.
However, photovoltaic solar panels capture sunlight and convert it into only 10% of electricity; as a consequence, photovoltaic energy is more expensive than that obtained from fossil fuels and insufficient because it does not give electricity during the night.
The wind is another source of natural energy, but the gigantic wind turbines are often placed in windy areas far from where people live because they are noisy and ruin the landscape; moreover winds are very variable and unpredictable and the turbines require great maintenance.
Around the world hydroelectric sources serve 16% of the electricity, but it cannot grow because dams have already been built on most of the largest rivers which, however, are insufficient to meet the need for world electricity.
Geothermal energy uses natural heat that is released from within the earth as it happens inside volcanoes, but it is insufficient because it is only possible in very few sites and drilling is very expensive.
With the aim of practicing a natural therapy of Gaia, we know that the carbon content in plants and humus can be increased through sustainable agriculture or even the possibility of creating an artificial photosynthesis to be able to take carbon directly from the atmosphere.
Biofuel biomasses such as ethanol and biodiesel are renewable but exploit plants excessively and with poor results because a kilogram of biomass contains much less energy than a fossil fuel.
Therefore a larger volume of biomass is needed to generate the same amount of energy.
Unfortunately fossil fuels are more abundant and less expensive than other cleaner and renewable energy sources.
In fact, in order to completely replace fossil fuels, the world's peasants should grow more plants for energy production, deforesting the territory and thus causing a food deficit.
Greener energy entails heavy initial costs of setting up the infrastructures and other fix costs that nobody wants to pay, as it showed the revolt of the “yellow vests” in France unleashed because President Macron established a small tax, then promptly revoked, for the emissions of CO2.
If the electric companies converted on a large scale to the energy produced by wind turbines or solar panels and the sale of electric or hybrid cars increased, the cost of new technologies would drop, because sun, wind and water are free. In Sweden, electric cars are powered by atomic power plants that we do not have in Italy.
In the electric cars market which is estimated to grow by 280% by 2025, the lithium-ion battery have some supposed "limits" such as heaviness, duration or recycling. For each ton of lithium extracted from used batteries, a huge amount of polluting dust is released and one million liters of water is consumed.
Although the manufacture of electric cars consumes in an unsustainable way, a very rapid evolution is taking place on this matter. On the recycling side, considerable resources are being invested to improve processes: in 2018, 97,000 tons of batteries are treated, half of batteries reached their end of life. In some cases, it is now possible to recover 80% of the various components.
Finally, nuclear energy does not produce CO2 emissions, but it takes other problems. By splitting the atoms of radioactive elements such as uranium and plutonium, this cleavage frees not only energy but also radioactive waste: the fuel used by nuclear power plants in fact remains radioactive for thousands of years, also when the nuclear power plant has finished generating energy.
Future technologies that go under the name of "geoengineering" assume that technology (for now only tested in the laboratory) has to be used to subtract CO2 from the atmosphere or to increase the amount of sunlight reflected from our planet.
To give an example, one way to reflect more sunlight is to lighten the clouds by watering the sky with thin jets of salt seawater; the effect would be the reduction of the size of the droplets that make up the clouds that would become brighter and reflective. However, it is not clear how this "cloud seeding" could influence weather phenomena and ocean currents; more research are necessary before large-scale tests can be done.
We are the first generation to feel the effects of climate change and the last to be able to do something for the increasingly violent and unpredictable alteration of climate balance, for the increasingly invasion of plastic waste and for the increasingly unbreathable air.
We need to make a new deal of coexistence with nature for a more ecological future that establishes a non-predatory way of relating to Nature, because Gaia is not a place to deprive but a subject of rights, fundamental as other human rights.
This natural contract between humans and Nature has now become unavoidable, even if it is not even conceivable by the lords of the climate who, indifferent and denialists, mystify with economic facade measures that are nothing more than placebo.
Nature must be attributed a legal configuration that unifies nature, culture and economic sciences to govern the future of humanity with a global mobilization.
Our "Science for Peace.eu" Foundation hopes that ecological policies join the various scientific disciplines for the survival of the planet in an authentically green vision of life.
We have sufficient scientific knowledge to deal with Global Warming but not the political will to find the financial resources to implement eco-sustainable projects.
There is no will to face the problems of ethnic discrimination regarding work, housing emergency, civil rights, health care and schooling of immigrants.
The value of ethnic biodiversity should facilitate coexistence knowing that human solidarity and biodiversity are due to the fact that each living being is unique and unrepeatable: individual uniqueness is enriched with the diversity of all human beings.
Unlike school teaching that has always concerned the past and the present but never the future, our Foundation, with his Project of a "World Green Gaia's University", is committed to a larger training project of "Teachers for future" and " People for Planet ".
There can be no dialogue between two views of the world of which one speaks a language that the other does not understand and there can be no dialogue if they face rigid opposing positions and above all if there is no real disposition to make changes.
Fortunately, environmentalism today is bridges that mobilizes and unites millions of young people all over the world who feel how their future is in danger and commits to achieve global ecological awareness, making clear the gravity of climate change and requesting viscerally a green future.
It is therefore necessary to impose limits on energy consumption and CO2 emissions, to establish a real intergenerational meeting and to abolish the borders with future generations on which it is criminal to discharge the public debt and the consequences of tax evasion of various nations.
We are all born with a tacit social contract which, however, should not be limited only to man, but should include Mother Nature, that is, Gaia, guardian of universal ecological rights and justice without which we risk the extinction of biodiversity.
This is why our Foundation intends to promote climate justice as a world heritage.
To start changing the world, scientific knowledge should be oriented by ethical choices. Justice and equity can guide the political choices for the future because politics is precisely the ability to plan the future of a renewable world while recognizing the richness of diversity of human nature.
Therefore to add to the social contract a natural contract means care, attention, respect and reciprocity with Nature, replacing domination and property with knowledge and commitment.
Any form of parasitism, even the human one, confuses the use with the abuse of resources, takes everything and gives nothing with the only aim to make the maximum profit, almost without realizing it damages and destroys Nature.
A good example of this is the parasitism of capitalist power that accumulates and devours everything, even people's lives, giving back only illusions and conflicts.
Plant blindness can also be seen as a form of human parasitism towards Gaia with whom we live under a vital contract of mutual symbiosis.
The research of our “Science for Peace.Eu" intends to deal with all three medical aspects of Gaia's pathology:
- the diagnosis or the causes of climate change (anthropic causes);
- the therapy or the possible remedies;
- and the prognosis or the consequences.
Our Foundation adopts a scientific method because despite science cannot give us certainty, it constitutes the best tool to formulate reliable predictions based on observations and experiments and to discover the laws that control natural phenomena.
If politics governs society, political opinions should conform to scientific demonstrations, recognizing that the scientific method is at the basis of democracy.
We need science to make us live better and to allow circular well being.
Scientific evidence is not an opinion, so it is necessary to network and implement shared databases among scientists, politicians and civil society in the common effort to spread the truth.
Science is an indispensable working method to enhance human knowledge and improve the quality of life of the whole planet.
In the matter of climate change, the most accredited theory seemed to be the one that considers CO2 as solely responsible for greenhouse effect, whereas it was then observed in subsequent research that other greenhouse gases are also involved.
So we are not only talking about one, but about multiple silent killers and yet we don't know if there are other lethal causes of climate change.
Moreover, even in medicine, diagnosis, therapy and prognosis can reach a good level of certainty through long clinical studies and medical consultations.
Our Foundation did a scientific consultation also for what concerns Gaia, reaching the conclusion, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the causes of her illness are multiple and anthropic; so far the responsibility for Global Warming is due to the lack of global ecological policies.
Unfortunately for future generations, the prognosis for climate seems dreadful because the causes are progressively underway and Gaia's fever does not tend to decrease in the absence of adequate therapies. In fact, every year Gaia's disease causes 9 million victims of unbreathable air, polluted water and food.
But an illness can be cured by eliminating the causes or alleviating the symptoms, when occurs the criterium ex adiuvantibus, that is when therapy reaches the homeostasis of Gaia.
Every day we should mentally repeat the mantra "1.5°C " (also posed by the Paris agreements of 2015) because a heating to 2°C already causes extreme climatic and viral changes in all continents such as the emission of methane from oceans and permafrost and the complete melting of the Greenland glaciers, with the consequent death of phytoplankton and collapse in the absorption of CO2.
Over the past 15 years, heat waves have caused 100,000 victims in northern Europe and as many in Russia and the USA, even though the scientists of the IPCC (Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change) are attempting, under the aegis of the UN, to enforce the Paris Agreement.
We should also always remember that the CO2 emissions in the atmosphere have exceeded the absorption capacity of CO2 by plants and by carbon deposits in subsoil and oceans.
Similarly, in the case of climate change we can intervene through global actions among all the nations in the world by reducing the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, by reforesting the land, planting trees, taking more trains and fewer planes (it is calculated that, with the advent of low cost flights, there are about 100,000 planes that fly at the same time every day), eating less meat, installing solar panels on the roofs of houses and promoting sustainable development that reduce inequalities and protect ecosystems.
Global Warming is the global threat of silent killers, likewise terrorism, cyber hacker attacks, economic crises, epidemics and above all, the risks of nuclear conflicts and extermination for world hunger.
Those who dominate the world politically and economically and all those who are indifferent or deny Global Warming are responsible.
For this reason we must revive the conscience of those who inhabit the planet as unconscious.
In addition to inequalities, poverty and social justice, we must have the utmost attention for global ecological justice which affects us all; in fact, capitalism has shaped and distorted the world, making it blind to the physiology of planetary life.
The great blindness on climate change is also a "moral issue" because as Enrico Berlinguer claimed, the corruption of the international bureaucracy is also responsible for Global Warming. For this reason bureaucrats and political leaders are unable to deal with the causes of Global Warming, deny them and consider climate negotiations an obstacle to their often-corrupt lifestyle.
There is a cold war going on between denials and environmentalists, whose tip of the iceberg is the war of tariffs between the USA, Europe and China.
China, in particular, became a real land predator, especially in Africa, and has a higher GDP than that of the United States and Europe togheter. Then, with "the new silk road", it is promoting its own personal globalization to undertake a vast infrastructure plan with which to cut distances with Europe, Central Asia and Africa: roads, railways, harbours through which goods and people travel. But also energy networks and optical fiber, to accelerate the transmission of data which are a wealth equal to oil.
These economic wars are increasingly disturbing the food and energy markets and are likely to cause an ever more unequal distribution of planetary wealth and resources, generating mass migration.
The GDP of the great nations is conniving and accomplice for Global Warming.
Negotiations on climate change could overturn the global hierarchy of capitalist power, and in the name of climate justice, could make profound cuts in profit, which is the engine of, economy and responsible for inequalities.
Power and money support with cynicism the current energy system, making any change in the ecological sense very difficult and push the great blindness on silent killers and climatic emergency.
Eleven thousand scientists from 153 countries (260 Italian) have signed a petion in which they claim “our efforts must be increased to preserve life on the planet and avoid unspeakable suffering”.
Scientists believe that it is not only a problem related to temperature, but also the evils of the planet are divided into thirty symptoms.
Forty years ago, for the first time in Geneva the nations got to confront on the fact that climate was "getting sick", in the meanwhile greenhouse gases, sea temperatures and extreme events have grown, glaciers in the North and South Pole have decreased, we eat more meat and we travel more often by plane. "Despite 40 years of discussions and negotiations, we continue with our business as usual, failing to keep our promises."
But nature asks the bill and "the climate crisis is accelerating at a much faster pace than many scientists expected. To safeguard our future, we must change demographic and economic policies, and thus focus on sustainable food growth rather than a mere increase in GDP, eating more plants and less animals". For the survival of the planet and future generations, we rely on the enthusiasm of young people like Greta and other planetary men and women of good will as well as on the contribution of committed researchers such as those of "World Green Gaia's University" of our Foundation.
The psychology and psych politics departments of our Foundation have found that most people do not want to become aware of the current economic crises because they are trapped in the desire to continue living according to their standards of well-being that caused the economic, climatic and ecological crisis, pushing the consumerism into a dead end.
Only the Club of Rome in 1992 with its research on the "limits of development" focused the problem of prevention and of the political, environmental and health consequences of limitless growth.
There is a minority that consumes too much energy like the big multinationals that see only the profit to be achieved even with the violence that will increase with the intensification of global warming.
Notwithstanding the collapse of political systems and many humanitarian and economic crises, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank continue to behave according to what Naomi Klein defined in her book, the "Shock Economy" (natural disasters, economic crisis and wars have represented for decades a gluttonous occasion on which the vultures of the new finance venture), favoring companies, including foreign ones, which intend to work only for profit, using thoughtlessly advertising and marketing to win over the competition and thus fueling the spiral, often reckless, of growth and consumption.
Each industrialized country wants to be world champion of exports even it it means exploitation of planetary resources and disastrous tariff wars such as that one unleashed by the US President Trump or that one between Russia and China.
The economic growth of industrialized countries always involves human and environmental damage, financial problems profit-driven and orchestrated by large lobbies.
On the opposite, a more equitable distribution of wealth would make people more healthy, less angry and violent and with fewer mental disorders. In fact, for our Foundation, the mission of the economy should be to give everyone well-being and enjoyment of common goods (Common Good).
Unfortunately the financial machine is without brakes and does not stop; convincing the financial giants to give up even a small slice of profits would be an unprecedented challenge because financial giants are the real masters of the earth where fear of global warming is turning into anger.
The fight of our Foundation against global warming, through scientific knowledge, is comparable to the struggle between David and Golia, though we are aware that innovative initiatives cannot achieve rapid results because such changes need long times and several generations to follow.
We agree with what is called "Natural Climate Solution" which aims to address the fight against climate change in three directions:
- Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), related to land use and changes in land use;
- Capturing and storing additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere;
- Improving resilience of ecosystems, thereby helping communities adapt to the increase in flooding and dry spells associated with climate change.
We also feel very close to the positions of the "Extinction Rebellion", a movement which believes in the importance of non-violence, in leaving our "comfort zone" to make a change in lifestyles, in peace, in science, in altruism, in sharing of knowledge and in deep respect for the ecosystem.
But our greatest hope is that each member country of the UN would establish its own Ministry for fair and equitable economy, also extended to future generations because the Earth, Gaia, is the common home of humanity and as Pope Francis says in its encyclical Laudato sii:
"Environmental protection cannot be ensured only on the basis of financial calculation of costs and benefits. The environment is one of those goods that the mechanisms of the market are not able to defend or adequately promote", for which "an integral ecology is needed, also made up of simple daily gestures in which we break the logic of violence, exploitation, selfishness and globalization of indifference".