PLANET VENUS IS A REAL VICTIM
OF GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE.
When we think of earth, we think of
this beautiful blue planet that has been there for millions of years favourable
for life. But, earth had very rough past with 5 mass extinctions for various
reasons such as erruption of major volcanoes, asteroid impact etc. Life existed
on earth for more than 3,500 million years, but humans evolved only the last 3
million years or so.
In all of human history, we
haven't lived with the kind of atmosphere we have today. Carbon dioxide levels in the past sixty years are the highest we've experienced in all of human history. Throughout the entire Pleistocene era - which started 25,80,000 years ago - the concentrations of CO2 were, on average, roughly 250 parts per million (ppm). Today, our planet has reached 415 ppm for the first time in 2.5 million years. Our ancestral species such as 'Homo Erectus' around 2 million years ago were living in a very low carbon ennvironment.
What does more CO2 means for our planet and humans?
Earth reflects 30% of sunlight back
into space. But increasing levels of CO2 in atmosphere capture sunlight and
traps in it & the planet warms, the
greenhouse effect. Our sister planet Venus is full of volancoes which have been
releasing a lot of carbon dioxide into its atmosphere. Sunlight gets in but
doesn't get out as CO2 traps the
sunlight. The greenhouse effect on venus has gone so bad the planet is now at a
temperature of 465 celcisus making it inhospitable for life. Our earth could become like Venus (picture above) in a few hundred years
from now because of human activity.
The current high-carbon dioxide
environment on earth is not only an experiment for the climate and the
environment - it's also an experiment for us, for ourselves, for our species.
Extinction do not happen in a day or two. Extinctions are gradual. In a decade or so, Climate change may become an irreversible effect. We may have
triggered our own extinction.
We might fail as a species. The 6th Mass Extinction.
We might fail as a species. The 6th Mass Extinction.
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