Seacoast NRG

Currently worldwide consumption of oil is roughly 85 million barrels per day, and worldwide consumption of coal is approaching 15 million metric tons per day.  The burning of these two fossil fuels alone emits more than 6 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere annually.  Add in the burning of natural gas and the manufacture of cement (an energy-intensive process that produces lots of carbon dioxide emissions) and the emitted carbon totals 8 billion metric tons (over 17 trillion pounds) annually.  And that’s ignoring other man-made sources, such as the burning of wood and other fuels.  The man-made emissions dwarf the carbon dioxide output from natural sources, such as volcanic eruptions and forest fires, which contribute, at most, a few hundred million tons annually.

Of the emitted carbon, some falls back to earth in the form of soot or acid rain.  Some gets absorbed into the increasingly saturated oceans.  Some becomes part of the photosynthesis cycle.  And some serves to increase the concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. 

An interesting question to ask is:  over 8 billion metric tons this year alone; what have we done over the entire course of the industrial age?

I found some interesting data that can be used to address that very question.  These estimates, compiled by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the years 1750 to 2004, tally the carbon emissions from several of the primary man-made sources:  the burning of fossil fuels, the manufacture of cement, and the flaring of natural gas (once considered a nuisance by-product of oil drilling, the natural gas found in oil fields often was, and sometimes still is, simply burned as an open-air flame, with no attempt made to capture it, or its energy).  I’ve graphed the results below.

Summing the estimated carbon emissions over the years 1750 to 2004 yields a value of over 315 billion metric tons, or nearly 700 trillion pounds of emitted carbon.  More than half of this total has been emitted in just the last 30 years.  The CDIAC estimates that approximately 64% of the atmospheric carbon dioxide increase that has occurred since 1850 has been caused by the burning of fossil fuels and the manufacture of cement.  The remaining 36% is attributed to land-use changes, such as deforestation.  

While it is a very small portion of the entire mass of the atmosphere, how do we imagine the magnitude of 700 trillion pounds of emitted carbon?  That would be the weight of 700 million 747 jets, fully loaded.  Or a block of concrete over 30 cubic miles in size.  Or, in more human terms, all human life on the planet, all 6.5 billion of us together, have a combined weight that is not even two-tenths of one percent of 700 trillion pounds.  And yet, in a relatively short period of time, we’ve taken that enormous mass of carbon, dug it up from far beneath the ground, and burned it into the air.

Wouldn’t it be quite surprising then, if the climate were not changing because of our excesses?