Donations
Veridica.md
Despite repeated warnings that we’re approaching the point of no return for averting a future catastrophic global warning event, not even those countries bent on combating climate change can reach consensus on exactly what steps should be taken. Meanwhile, adding to manmade greenhouse gas emissions are those generated by global warming itself.
In November 2021, global leaders convened in Glasgow, Scotland, in an attempt to revitalize an agreement to combat climate change. The much-anticipated meeting was a half-failure or, if you look at the bright side, a half-success. Commitments were made, but also derogations. The target summit participants pledged to achieve – maintaining the global temperature growth rate under 1.5 degrees Celsius – might seem overly ambitious if look at the current estimates. Scientists actually speak of an increase of 2.5 degrees in global temperatures above pre-industrial reference levels. And one of the factors amping up the greenhouse gas effect, which in turn affects the rise in global temperature, is carbon-gas emission.
Businesses in the European Union will be given a “green sustainability” rating
There are emissions which, at least in theory, can be controlled, and there are those that cannot be stopped by contemporary climate-friendly policies. European Union member states have at least pledged to achieve a net zero carbon gas emission target by 2050. In this respect, the European Commission has come up with a clear-cut project. Thus, all businesses will be given a “green sustainability” rating, much like eggs in a supermarket. In Brussels lingo, the term is used to designate compliance with the ecological standards in force. This will help investors know for the very beginning what kind of business they are willing to finance, whether it’s a polluting one, for instance based on coal or Diesel fuel consumption, whose future is uncertain, rated as 3, or a “green” one, rated as 9, which in the new eco-friendly context holds high chances of being favored by partners and clients.
According to a draft proposal leaked on December 31 last year, the Commission plans on accepting both natural gas and nuclear energy as climate-friendly energy sources on a temporary basis and under specific circumstances. They would be rated with a 1 score, according to the Commission’s taxonomy. The problem is that, not even to this day do we have an overarching agreement over the threat natural gas and nuclear power plants pose to the environment. Romania and other smaller EU member states have hailed the decision to preserve natural gas as an acceptable source of sustainable energy. In Germany, however, the European Commission’s initiative stirred quite the confusion. Germany is this year expected to shut down its last three remaining nuclear power plants, as part of its commitment made in 2020. For the Germans, nuclear energy is not green. But then again, this leaves many German businesses vulnerable to unsustainable energy consumption should EU standards be adopted. Of course, Germany will be able to import gas from the Russians, but not enough to cover the input of its entire industry. Some enterprises will turn to fossil fuel and even coal. Therefore, many German projects will not get favorable eco-scores.
Germany does not approve of nuclear power plants, which are temporarily considered by the EU as environmentally friendly energy sources
How should we explain Germany’s opposition to nuclear power plants, which now Brussels regards as a temporary solution to curbing CO2 emissions? The explanation has to do with the advent of Green political parties. According to The Economist, the identity of the German Greens was shaped up in opposition to nuclear programmes. When the Greens grabbed the power reins in Berlin, making up a ruling coalition with the Social-Democrats, their condition was to shut down nuclear power plants across the country. And it’s precisely what happened for a while, until the Christian-Democrats won the elections in 2005 and then tried to have the program suspended. Unfortunately for them, the 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima power plant in Japan brought back into discussion the issue of power plants.
The German Greens were right about the dangers of exploiting nuclear power. Fukushima and Chernobyl are deeply ingrained in collective memory. The European Commission, however, argues that, by implementing the right measures and disposing of nuclear waste in a responsible manner, the energy produced by nuclear power plants will significantly contribute to a reduction in the carbon-dioxide pollution of Earth’s atmosphere. But is that truly enough? A harsh warning comes from Siberia, where Russia has set in motion its carbon-mining operations.
The discovery of the rotiferous worm in Siberia - clear evidence of permafrost thawing
It has guts, a brain and a nervous system. Although it’s a microscopic organism, it can inch-worm and free-swim through sterile fluids in which it is cultured. It’s a Bdelloidea type of worm, a class of rotifer, the scientific name given to organisms that can reproduce parthenogenetically. And it is twenty-four thousand years old, according to radiocarbon dating.
No, this is not the normal lifetime of a rotifer worm. More specifically, it didn’t exactly “live” that long. The microworm hibernated, reducing its metabolic activity to zero, frozen stiff a dozen feet underground. The soil, however, started to thaw, releasing the worms from their thousand-year captivity. Now, the rotifer must hurry if it wants its species to endure, since it has only a few weeks left to live.
The microscopic worm spent millennia locked away in permafrost in faraway Siberia. The name permafrost is derived from joining the words “vechnaya merzlota”, which is Russian for “eternal frost”. For the last few decades, however, the Siberian deep freeze is no longer as eternal as Soviet scientist Mikhail Shumghyn deemed it to be a hundred years ago when he advanced this term. The high temperatures of recent years have achieved what thousands of years had failed before: a thaw of the superior permafrost layers. If that hadn’t happened, the rotifer worm would have remained undiscovered.
Russia is the largest country in the world. The biggest part of its territory (two thirds more specifically) is covered by permafrost. In other words, a quarter of the Earth’s northern hemisphere is made up of permafrost, a type of soil that, even after the last glacial period, remains frozen all year-round. Or at least it used to.
A threat greater than industrial pollution: the permafrost bomb
Signs of permafrost thawing are now visible all over Siberia. The Batagaika crater is a few hundred meters deep and continues to expand. Locals call it “the Gateway to Hell”, seeing it resembles a huge, dark hole leading to the innards of the Earth, sucking on its endless source of melted water. And Batagaika is a not a singular case. There are hundreds of other similar, smaller craters that have recently surfaced. In other parts of Siberia, whole regions have now turned to swampy wetlands spotted with small stretches of firm terrain. Houses are sinking into the ground in towns and villages. This is hardly news for the people of Siberia. As buildings generate their own heat, the ground below starts to squirm and cave in, eating up whole houses. It is what happened in 1941, when the NKVD headquarters in Yakutsk sank into the earth, probably overheated by prolonged activity. At the time, the Russians started to erect their buildings on concrete pillars, ensuring a continuous flow of cold air above the ground and thus keeping the permafrost intact. But today, even the air got warmer. In Yakutia, the average annual temperature has gone up by three degrees Celsius in the last fifty years.
But that is hardly the biggest issue of the Siberian thaw, in spite of all the headaches it has caused real-estate developers in Yakutsk. We’ve seen that the permafrost meltdown has brought back to life the bdelloid rotifer, an organism a few tenths of a millimeter long. And it almost revived mammoths – some were discovered in such a pristine state of conservation, that they oozed blood upon being dissected, to the great joy of certain researchers who hope to remap their genome. But what is truly disturbing about the permafrost thaw is that it has restarted the decomposition of organic matter that was previously trapped in the ice. And this process is the real problem.
There are parts of the permafrost that remained frozen for five hundred thousand years, even when temperatures in the Arctic were by five degrees higher than at present. However, these layers run deep. What is melting now is the upper layer, which is only a few meters thick, but which is richest in carbon and methane. The contribution of the permafrost thaw to the greenhouse gas emissions in Earth’s atmosphere is undeniable, and it’s the final straw on the long list of problems caused by manmade pollution. Its exact share is unclear. According to some estimates, permafrost thaw currently accounts for a fifth of total greenhouse gas emissions. As researchers say, “in the issue of global warming, the permafrost meltdown is a sort of wildcard”, we don’t yet ascertain its full scope. Even though the emission is not explosive, but gradual, the process does seem to pick up speed and become irreversible. Whereas industrial pollution can be kept in check, the permafrost-generated carbon dioxide, once released, cannot be reversed. “Politicians cannot issue a decree to stop permafrost emissions”, a scientist recently wrote in The New Yorker.
