27/03/2025
It's become apparent that many people, including our decision makers, authorities, fringe elements, general public and others know a small amount of information, about the state of our environment.
One being, is our climate changing?
We'll try to put it into layman terms, the best we can, (and we aren't perfect) to attempt to help everybody have a better understanding.
We must start at the beginning, which reveals alot, if you can please bare with us🙏
A simple example is asking anyone, ( besides earth science specialists), " What is our lower atmosphere's composition"?.
Obviously it's not a question general people walk around talking about. But we've reached a time where we ALL need to know and talk about this, from the older citizens to our young children.
Most people will automatically focus on oxygen (O2) when thinking about our lower atmosphere.
For the human race and life to live and breathe, our lower atmosphere at a healthy level is comprised of 78% Nitrogen (N2), 21% Oxygen (O2), .9% Argon (a "noble" or "inert gas, more of those later).
Then there are present, what may surprise some people, .1% of Carbon Dioxide, Neon, Hellium, Methane, Krypton, and Nitrous Oxide.
You might recognise in our healthy lower atmosphere we have the Greenhouse gases Carbon dioxide 415 ppm, Methane 1.9 ppm, Nitrous Oxide .3 ppm
Ppm means parts per million eg: there is 1 molecule of that gas for every 1 million molecules of air.
(Note: water vapour is present, we'll address that another day).
The diagram below from Steven Earle Phd, shows what a healthy lower atmosphere looks like.
People might say, why would these "bad" greenhouse gases be in our atmosphere?
They are there in very tiny amounts as
they are needed in order for a healthy lower atmosphere.
(Emphasis on "very tiny amounts)
To understand the imbalance in our atmosphere gets scientifically complex, so we'll try to give an example to try and keep it simple.
Its so important to understand what's going on with our atmosphere, therefore life of every kind.
Without getting into atmospheric gas atoms just yet, you can see from the diagram attached how important the composition and % of gases of our lower atmosphere is, which enables us to breath, is the perfect recipe.
Imagine now you're baking a perfect cinnamon apple cake. Your recipe requires lots of ingredients like 3 apples, 2-3 eggs, 360gr of flour, 4 tsp baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt 200 gr caster sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and so on.
You follow the recipe perfectly, but then somehow instead of putting 1 teaspoon of cinnamon in, you put the entire bottle in! And instead of 4 teaspoons of baking powder, you put in 40 teaspoons in!, instead of 1/2 teaspoon of salt you put 1/2 a box in!.
Then you put it in the oven and...well, its uneatable, it's probably blown up. A huge disaster.
Luckily with a cake, you can start again and do it right.
Since approx 1945, "clever" humans created a plethora of chemicals/gases etc and pumped them into our lower atmosphere. (We'll talk about the upper atmosphere another time).
Some have been beneficial, others have not.
Some of those chemicals/gases produced were Greenhouse gases like Carbon dioxide, Methane, Nitrous Oxide and so on.
These greenhouse gases trap heat, this is called the greenhouse effect.
Just as too much certain cake ingredients, destroyed the cake, so does too much Greenhouse gases destroy our atmosphere.
Now apply that scenario to the forests, oceans, rivers, wildlife on a worldwide basis, knowing we now face an extinction crisis and atmospheric troubles.
Unlike our disastrous cake, we cannot fix earth fast as human demands, infighting, greed and lack of understanding works against common sense and earth science.
But there is hope which we'll talk more about soon.
We hope you enjoyed this attempt to describe this small but very important piece of information.
We look forward to any comments.
Save Eungella Rainforest Reserves Australia Capricorn Conservation Council Environmental Defenders Office Australian Conservation Foundation Community Voice Australia Wildlife Queensland Eungella Community Development Association Oberon Against Wind Towers Kalapa Wycarbah Local Action Committee Inc. Queensland Environment LEAN Australia - Labor Environment Action Network Andrew Powell MP EPBC (Environment Protection & Biodiversity Conservation) Referral Notices Australian Geographic Sky News Australia The University of Queensland 7NEWS Mackay Amanda Camm MP ABC Tropical North Wildlife Rescue Sunshine Coast Reckless Renewables Environmental Justice Australia
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