Above all the main one, the one without which – according to scientists, if science still counts for anything in public opinion – everything else is ineffective or little more than a cure-all.
The reduction of CO2.
We are losing the main battle, the one whose loss will let the ‘enemy’ spread across our lands and devastate them, as happened in the ancient invasions.
CO2 is not only not falling. It is rising.
This is the news of the last few days. And it is bad news, even if, as usual, some will play it down or pass over it in silence – indeed this has already happened in recent days.
These are the figures from the latest report published by the WMO, the World Meteorological Organization. It is the world’s leading agency for meteorology, which grew out of the International Meteorological Organization founded in 1873 and in 1951 became the United Nations agency for meteorology and the related sciences.
The summary of the report is clear.
In 2023 atmospheric CO2 increased by more than the ten-year average. Compared with 2022, the annual average rose by 2.3 ppm. This means that the current level of atmospheric CO2 is already 51% higher than in the pre-industrial era.
Over the last twenty years, that is, since awareness of the environmental emergency became widely shared and widespread, emissions have had a real surge: +11.4% of CO2.
The CO2 level recorded last year was 420 ppm: compared with 2004 data, when it was 377.1 parts per million (ppm), there has been an increase of 42.9 ppm. That is, 11.4% in the space of 20 years.
Last year, the biggest surge in the growth of atmospheric CO2 (2.4 ppm) occurred between 2014 and 2023. That is, over the last ten years. Despite everything that has (or has not) been done.
And that is not all. According to the report, a significant cause of the seemingly unstoppable rise in greenhouse gases is forest fires, which also reduce the forests’ capacity to absorb carbon.
But is it possible to quantify more precisely and accurately the scale of this increase and, above all, its impact on the atmosphere and the land?
Certainly, although science still has a long way to go in this direction. The basic concept, scientists explain, is radiative forcing, which measures the influence of a factor such as rising CO2 on the balance between the energy entering and the energy leaving the Earth and its atmosphere. In other words, it indicates the weight a factor has in the process of climate change.
Well, this radiative forcing caused by greenhouse gases, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates, rose by a full 51.5% between 1990 and 2023.
Among long-lived greenhouse gases, CO2 is estimated to be responsible for about 81% of this increase.
In short, the data speak clearly. The need to act truly and effectively is ever more pressing. The famous ‘last call’ for planet Earth is ever closer: if it is not this one already.
