By Stu Winters

Employing analysis of sediments from the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, research at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and the Universities of Utrecht and Bristol recently published in Nature Communications provides evidence that a doubling of the amount of CO₂ (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere could cause an increase in the average temperature on earth from 7 to 14 degrees Celsius.

“The temperature rise we found is much larger than the 2.3 to 4.5 degrees that the UN climate panel, the IPCC, (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has been estimating so far”, said one of the authors, Caitlyn Witkowski.

The researchers used a 45-year-old drill core extracted from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. “I realized that this core is very attractive for researchers, because the ocean floor at that spot has had oxygen-free conditions for many millions of years,” said Professor Jaap Sinninghe Damsté, senior scientist at NIOZ and professor of organic geochemistry at Utrecht University. “As a result, organic matter is not broken down as quickly by microbes and more carbon is preserved,” Damsté said.

“CO₂ over the past 15 million years has never before been examined from a single location,” Witkowski said. The researchers examined the upper thousand meters of a drill core which corresponded to the past 18 million years. From this record, the researchers were able to extract an indication of the past seawater temperature and thus infer an indication of ancient atmospheric CO₂ levels.

“That method uses specific substances that are present in the membrane of archaea, a distinct class of microorganisms,” Damsté explains. “Those archaea optimize the chemical composition of their membrane depending on the temperature of the water in the upper 200 meters of the ocean. Substances from that membrane can be found as molecular fossils in the ocean sediments and analysed to this day.”

The researchers developed a new approach to derive atmospheric CO₂ content by using the chemical composition of two specific substances commonly found in algae: chlorophyll and cholesterol.  When the researchers plot the derived temperature and atmospheric CO₂ levels of the past 15 million years against each other, they find a strong relationship. Using this methodology, it appears that the CO₂ concentration dropped from about 650 parts per million, 15 million years back, to 280 just before the industrial revolution.

The average temperature 15 million years ago, when CO₂ concentration was at 650 parts per million, was over 18 degrees: 4 degrees warmer than today and about the level that the UN climate panel, the IPCC, predicts for the year 2100 in the most extreme scenario. “So, this research gives us a glimpse of what the future could hold if we take too few measures to reduce CO₂ emissions and also implement few technological innovations to offset emissions,” Damsté said. “The clear warning from this research is: CO₂ concentration is likely to have a stronger impact on temperature than we are currently taking into account!”

In the final analysis, this new research represents an additional dire warning of the dramatic consequences to earth’s climate stability in the event that current levels of atmospheric CO₂ continue on their present course of increase, mainly driven by fossil fuel burning. Fossil fuel burning, and the pollution it releases, is not just a result of industrialisation, although that has played its part. Capitalism’s exploitation of the natural environment cannot be separated from the basis of its wealth – the exploitation of the labour of the working masses. The tiny minority of mega-billionaires that materially benefit from degrading and destroying the climactic conditions necessary for human survival must be expropriated, and their capital must be at the disposal of working people. Yesterday’s capitalism must make way for today’s socialism.

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