Some Power Plants Pollute Worse Than Volcanoes

Climate change isn’t all that difficult to understand. A British scientist proved shortly before the U.S. Civil War that carbon dioxide absorbs heat, and a Swedish chemist doodled out the first equations involving fossil-fuel emissions before the 20th century even began.

What was difficult to separate out, however, was identifying the human-driven signal within the noise of the vast, messy and natural climate system. We know that what we burn ends up in the atmosphere, driving up the Earth’s planetary fever. At least, at first it does. What happens to carbon dioxide after that? Sure, some of it can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. But much of it—on average, half of annual global emissions—leaves the atmosphere for greener pastures, literally, or for the ocean, which is ultimately the biosphere’s biggest carbon repository.