Our Precious Atmosphere Is Finite In Size

A reader comments on my article 2GreenEnergy Has A Broad Focus and Results That Are Hard to Measure–But There’s Good News Too…. By the way, very nice piece. I think that the only way we make progress is if people raise their voices and calmly and logically discuss their views. You have done that better than most, and thus had a very big influence on people…..You mentioned the small blue dot in your piece. I know people have a hard time to get their head around that.

One thing that amazed me and made it more real was watching Felix Baumgartner jumping from space (especially) seeing how thin is the atmosphere that protects us all. It makes it much easier to realize how conceivable and believable it is that we can impact that atmosphere and change our climate…. anyway, thank you for your efforts, and keep it up.

I appreciate the kind words, as well as the opportunity to re-enforce what you wrote here, that our atmosphere is finite in scope, and quite vulnerable to the horrific impacts that we’re making on it. The photograph above depicts this quite clearly, and the graphic below, courtesy of Adam Nieman. reminds us of how tiny this volume really is.  The blue marble shows the volume of the oceans, and the white marble represents the volume of the atmosphere, if it were all at standard temperature and pressure.