Global warming is a real threat to our planet and if we don't take some sort of action it could be too late. The world needs to work together to stop this crisis, not just one country that has to change and conform. People will not take action until it is too late and that is no way to reverse the effects. There is a lot to global warming and there is much data that points to that people are the cause of global warming.
There are many different things people could look at to see that the climate of the world is changing. Earth does experience a change from an icehouse to a greenhouse climate. We can see this by looking at fossils for temperature and also ice cores which contain prehistoric air bubbles. The CO2 range should be about 180 to 280 parts per million, but currently it is around 338 parts per million. And some could argue that natural causes could change the climate so drastically. You could say that the sun is emitting more radiation, but scientists say that there is no change in solar output since 1970. Some may also say that volcanoes or el Nino would cause a great amount of climate change. But in reality that only amounts to about a .7 degree C change. In the last 25 years there has been about .4 degrees C warming, and in the past 100 years there has been about .75 degrees C warming. The 1990s was the warmest recorded decade, and the top 20 warmest years were ever year since 1992.This means that there is a decrease in snow cover with an earlier spring snow melt. Most alpine glaciers are retreating, and the rate of melting has accelerated in recent decades.There could be a 20cm to 60cm change in sea level in the next few decades. There could be a 1 meter change in the next 100 years. If all of the ice on the planet would melt there would be a 76 meter rise in the sea level. That is a scary thought because it would put most major cities underwater. With most of the natural causes of warming eliminated, the is only one major cause, human interaction.
With human interactions as the only source of global warming, many scientists are trying to figure out how much CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere and how to reverse what we are doing. The Keeling curve shows how much CO2 has been added by burning fossil fuels. The intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) has issues 5 messages saying that global warming is man made. If the climate was to change this drastically there would be oonger growing seasons in some areas and shorter in other areas, some species of animals would replace others, and deserts would appear where there was not a desert before. The planet would become much hotter and so then it would become too hot to grow things in some places. Many ideas are being looked at to fix this problem of global warming. Some ideas are to pump the CO2 back underground where the oil and other natural gasses are coming from in the form of geological storage. Another way is to have mineral carbonation or iron fertilization for the underwater plants. Also another way is to capture and store the CO2 in some way. There are many way to help fight this problem. Some solutions are readily available and cause a drastic change.
Global warming is a real threat to our planet and the way every one of us lives now. We all have to take action before it becomes too late to make any difference. The world needs to work together to make a change, not just one country.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
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3 comments:
One idea to fix global warming that was missed was to reduce consumption of carbon producing fuels. The idea that we can capture CO2 out of the air, compress it, and store it underground doesn’t pass the sniff test. I would be interested to see what the mass balance looks like between CO2 stored and CO2 produced during the capture and pumping/storage process. Also storage is a temporary solution. The gas will slowly escape possibly affecting future generations.
Very interesting. When we can't get nations to agree to stop shooting at each other, or to help feed each other, how can we expect them to agree on this? Isn't it woefully unfair if all nations decrease CO2 and then one doesn't? Actually, now that I think about, war has an enormous carbon footprint. What's the mpg of a tank? Maybe we just aim for world peace and we wouldn't have to worry about carbon
Interesting article in Oct. 25 Times Union talks about two other gases which are on the rise. Methane is the bigger worry of the two and is considered the No. 2 greenhouse gas based on the warming it causes and the amount in the atmosphere. The effect is about one-third that of man-made carbon dioxide. Thousands of years ago billions of tons of methane were created by decaying Arctic plants, and lies frozen in permafrost wetlands and trapped in the ocean floor. As the Artic warms, you can realize the methane will be freed and warming worsen. This is a big concern.
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