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Unfortunately, global warming might have advanced too far for any of us to do something about it.
Greenhouse gas emissions are becoming more and more of a problem with the constant rise in global warming and now, NASA reveals problems regarding CO2 emission removal via natural ways, through the use of plants and oceans.
The National Aeronautic and Space Administration, NASA for short, is keeping a close eye on the amount of Carbon Dioxide, CO2, throughout the years in order to better understand the process through which our planet absorbs these emissions.
Considering that in some years the CO2 levels remain the same and in other years, levels are almost zero, the only explanation that NASA could find at the moment is that Earth itself is absorbing the emissions through plants and oceans. The emissions are currently monitored by the Orbiting Carbon Observatory -2, OCO2, a satellite specifically built for this purpose.
Even though levels are fluctuating constantly, the biggest problem at this point is the theory that plants and oceans have done all they could up to this point and our rate of CO2 emission far exceeds the capabilities of our planet to overcome it alone.
This is mostly due to the fact that forests and large patches of vegetation are becoming rarer because of our constant expansion into uninhabited territory, destroying forests and ecosystems along the way. But this is not the only reason. Global warming itself is forcing vegetation to evolve making it less susceptible to gas emissions, without it having the capability of transforming large quantities of CO2, they simply resist it.
Even though roughly 50% of CO2 emissions remain in our atmosphere throughout the year, these emission have grown since the Industrial Revolution about 250% reaching almost 400 parts per million. This is extremely alarming, scientists considering that our oceans and seas will no longer be capable of absorbing them at all, leading to a rapid increase in global warming, far surpassing the 2C threshold ( if the planet grows hotter each year by 2 degrees Celsius, global warming will no longer reversible and catastrophic global events will start occurring).
In order to combat this problem, NASA and other agencies around the world will conduct the Acritc Boreal Vulnerability Experiment which will study for a period of ten years the amount of CO2 absorbed and released in the northern parts of Canada and Alaska. By doing so, scientists hope to discover ways to lessen the load of CO2 emissions on the processes that recirculate the gas in order to keep a healthy planet, without oversaturating it.
Considering that NASA reveals problems regarding CO2 removal via natural ways a couple of weeks before the annual Global Warming conference in Paris, it will more likely spark discussions regarding ways of reversing this effect in order to slow down Global Warming, if stopping it has really become and impossibility.
Image source: www.pixabay.com
