CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change is a big environmental problem that has become critical in last couple of decades.
Well what exactly is climate change?
Climate change is defined as a long term change in the Earth’s overall temperature with massive and
permanent ramifications. Climate scientists believes that this isn’t caused naturally by the earth but
by human activity. Earth’s atmosphere consists of gases such as oxygen and nitrogen and others
gases known as greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide and methane. Incoming
light from the sun hits the Earth’s surface. The Earth absorbs some of that energy heating the surface
of the planet. The rest of that energy gets reflected. Some of that energy goes back into space but the
greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide trap the energy and send it right back to the Earth’s surface
heating it up even more. This is known as the greenhouse effect. Now a little greenhouse effect is
natural and it is a good thing to have but a large greenhouse effect can be catastrophic causing a lot
of that energy to stay in our atmosphere and heat up the earth at an accelerating rate.
Some of the main human activity that emits greenhouse gases are fossil fuel burning, animal’s
agriculture and deforestation and waste and recycle pollution. Burning fossil fuel like coal, oil and
natural gas are some of the largest pollutants of carbon emissions.
The practice of deforestation in agriculture purposes leads not only to the emission of greenhouse
gases but also it gets rid of plants, trees and forests- the things on our planet that actually absorbs
carbon dioxide. The more we deforest our earth the less carbon dioxide it can absorb from
atmosphere.
An average person produces 4.3 pounds of trash per day, that’s 1569 pounds of trash per year for
one person. With the 7.9 billion people that live on the globe that’s 12,4 trillion of trash per year.
Rising temperatures makes the earth’s oceans become warmer which causes the rise of acid levels in
the oceans from the carbon dioxide reacting with the salt water. As a consequence, it harms animal
life and is what’s causing the death of the Great Barrier Reef. This is a problem because it is the
main source of protein for some people. Since the oceans are becoming warmer the polar ice caps
are melting. The oceans with too much water lead to coastal regions get flooded and destroyed.
Climate changes also causes more frequent and intense natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods,
tornadoes, heat waves.
So the question is how do we stop this?
Instead of burning fossil fuel we need to convert to renewable such as solar and wind power which
emit zero carbon emissions when operating. Energy from the sun and wind are infinite unlike fossil
fuels, we will never run out of them.
But how can I help personally right now?
1. You can drive an electric car. If you can’t afford that you can walk or run the bike, take public
transportation.
2. Use energy efficient lightbulbs. LED lightbulbs use only the fraction of the power of incandescent
lightbulbs.
3. Air dry your clothes instead of using power guzzling machine like dryers.
4. Turn off lights when you’re not using them.
5. Eat less meat
6. Reduce, reuse, recycle
7. And of course spread your knowledge and concerns of climate change