How a ‘wild spirit’ became the main culprit in the greenhouse trial

Zeg CO₂ and almost automatically your brain answers: greenhouse! The gas, which is only a tiny part of our atmosphere – less than half a thousand – is not only a crucial building material for all plants, it has also dominated global politics for many years now.

The CO content has increased mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels₂ in the air has risen from 0.3 to 0.4 promille, or more precisely: from 280 to now 420 parts per million. The effects of, in absolute terms, that ‘little bit extra’ can be measured all over the world; due to an increase in the average temperature by more than one degree, due to melting glaciers and ice caps and due to more extreme weather. The Flemish doctor and alchemist Jean Baptista van Helmont probably did not foresee this when he discovered this ‘wild spirit’ in 1600.

In his English book Carbon dioxide through the ages Professor Han Dolman, earth scientist and director of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (KNIOZ), describes how Van Helmont burned exactly 61 pounds of coal and was left with one pound of ash and a lot of gas, although the latter concept was still new at the time and elusive.

Dolman: “Strictly speaking, although Van Helmont was half an ‘alchemist’, he was also a doctor and approached his research quite scientifically for that time. In the ‘wild spirit’ that escaped from the burning coal, he identified no less than fifteen different substances, of which CO₂ turned out to be the most important.”

Not only carbon dioxide has been known for more than four centuries, the greenhouse effect is also an ancient fact, write in your CO₂-history.

“That discovery indeed dates back to the nineteenth century. At the beginning of that century, the British researcher Joseph Priestley had already discovered that a candle under a bell jar burns a little longer if you also put a plant under it. That was a basis for the discovery that plants absorb carbon dioxide, retain carbon and release oxygen once more.

“As early as 1856, the American Eunice Foote discovered in her laboratory that CO₂ might also retain solar heat, something that the Swede Svante Arrhenius was able to demonstrate in 1896 outside the lab. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1903 for his work in physical chemistry, but the link he was able to make between the comings and goings of ice ages and the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere, is at least as important today.”

The reliable measurement of CO₂ in the atmosphere is not from today or yesterday, you write, just like the notion that by burning fossil fuels we produce more CO₂ release into the atmosphere. Yet you only call the 2015 UN climate conference in Paris the real tipping point in thinking regarding the enhanced greenhouse effect.

“It has indeed taken a while for the awareness to become widespread. For example, in the late 1980s, the American physicist James Hansen gave an important speech to the US Congress on climate change. But at that time the doubt machines were also running at full speed. The big oil companies have, to put it mildly, played an unsavory role there.

“It was already known that the difference between 280 ppm CO₂, the level at the beginning of the industrial revolution, whether 180 ppm (parts per million, ed) might mean the difference between an ice age or not. But at that time we were already going the other way. At the end of the eighties we were already at 350 ppm. It was only around the climate summit in Paris that these connections were also widely recognized by policymakers.”

Of all CO₂ of which we emit, a quarter is absorbed by the oceans and 30 percent on land, mainly by plants and trees. ‘How long?’, you write at the end. Some will find that fatalistic, or even alarmist.

“It is a sober statement of the facts. The oceans cannot chemically hold CO indefinitely₂ and the trees will not grow to heaven. So it ends at some point and I really don’t know where that point is exactly. Best estimates now say that CO uptake₂ on land around 2050. Then the sink becomes a source. Instead of a ‘pit’ in which CO₂ disappears, the country then becomes a net resource, but there are still many uncertainties attached to that prediction.

“For oceans, that tipping point is probably a bit later. But if the question is whether that makes me sleep badly, the answer is: no. I generally sleep pretty well, thank you. And if I wasn’t optimistic regarding a possible solution, I wouldn’t be where I am now. I am amazed at the levity with which people regard the unrestrained emission of CO₂ looking and not realizing the seriousness of the matter. There is a really big problem coming.”

With a sober book regarding the science behind CO₂you enter the political arena.

“It is also a political theme. Science can now really make a hard connection between the average temperature on earth and the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere. The uncertainties are in the area of ​​melting permafrost and the release of the even stronger greenhouse gas methane, or in the area of ​​burning forests. But to keep the temperature rise to one and a half degrees, we really only have one hundred gigatons of CO₂emissions. At the rate at which we are currently emitting, that is ten years at the most. How to limit those emissions is a social issue.”

If you call ‘Paris’ the tipping point, then we as a world community have not been doing very much to limit emissions since then.

“No, and that is so worrying. Since the UN conference in Paris, there has been a lot of discussion as to whether the 1.8 degree warming should perhaps not reach 1.8 and whether the burning of coal should be ‘reduced’ or ‘abolished’. But if emissions continue as they are now, we will soon be on a scenario of three degrees of warming. Then you have to imagine that the increase in extreme weather that we are already seeing with one degree of warming increases at least by a factor of three.”

Is sufficient reduction of emissions still feasible? Shouldn’t we start working on a scenario in which we actively use CO₂ tapping out of the atmosphere?

“Definitely must. We can’t do anything but that. When it comes to ‘net-zero emissions’ at the UN conferences, what is meant is that the remaining emissions must be offset by carbon elsewhere.₂ to be removed from the system. The oceans will potentially be able to play a major role in this, for example by influencing the acidity of the water and thus the ability to absorb CO₂ record. That is why our marine research institute is also helping to set up a consortium of institutes, under the name of ‘greenhouse discoverer’ Arrhenius, to set up a research program for CO₂-removal.”

How do you prevent the removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere becomes an excuse not to reduce emissions?

“That is indeed a real risk. We cannot do without limiting emissions, but capturing and storing CO₂, the so-called CSS, already seems like an excuse for the big ‘fossil players’ to continue as before. Removing CO₂ should certainly not become elusive ‘geo-engineering’, where we tinker with the atmosphere and change things irreversibly. But the situation is now so threatening that we really have to take action.

“And I’m not talking regarding a seaweed farm here and a bit of olivine sand that CO₂ picks up there. A real solution will have to fit into the first five chapters of the book, which cover the basic science behind CO₂ has been described. We need to start with the current enormous level of 420 ppm CO₂ to stabilize and then return to a maximum of 350 ppm. But, admittedly, the latter is still a fairly idealistic story.”

Han Dolman: ‘Carbon dioxide through the ages, From wild spirit to climate culprit’, Oxford University Press; 352 pagina’s, € 28,50

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