Your Key Questions About Climate Change Answers
The world is heating up. There is no longer any doubt about this. With a new report detailing how screwed up we were , it’s time to step back and talk about the basics of the situation we found ourselves in.
Why is the world getting warmer?
Because there is a lot more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than ever before. Carbon dioxide is one of the “greenhouse gases” that trap heat on the earth’s surface. (There are others, like methane, but carbon dioxide is the most important when we talk about climate change.) NASA has a good explanation for this .
There are both natural and man-made sources of carbon dioxide, but the number of anthropogenic sources increases over the years. When we burn fossil fuels, we release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This includes driving cars (gas is a fossil fuel) or using electricity that comes from coal-fired power plants (coal is also a fossil fuel), just to name a few.
But are we sure?
Yes , there is no doubt about that . Scientists agree that virtually all types of measurements, from today’s weather stations to historical data and layers of ice captured thousands of years ago, point to a dramatic increase in carbon dioxide over the past 150 years or so, accompanied by an increase. by temperature.
But we’re only talking about a few degrees, right?
The earth has already warmed about one degree Celsius since we started burning huge amounts of fossil fuels. (Celsius is greater than Fahrenheit, so that’s 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.) Countries that have signed the Paris Agreement are trying to keep warming below two degrees Celsius. A few degrees globally is a lot.
What if I like warm weather?
It’s not about you. If you like the California climate more than the New York climate, you can live in California and New York will still exist . As the earth warms up, there will be no cooler places and seasons.
There are little things: more mosquitoes (including disease-causing ones), less maple syrup , perhaps no more coral reefs . Most importantly, more hurricanes , less ice in our ice caps , rising sea levels. We have already gone up 8 inches .
How inevitable is it?
This is what scientists discussed in a report released this week, and it doesn’t look good. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has prepared a report for the countries of the Paris Agreement, which says that we are approaching a warming of three degrees Celsius (that’s 5.4 Fahrenheit).
The good news (not really) is that if we stop burning fossil fuels right now, we can continue to heat below 1.5 degrees Celsius. In theory – we’re optimistic here – we could also stay below 1.5 degrees of warming if we drastically reduced the rate at which we burn fossil fuels and do our best to remove carbon from the atmosphere as well. But it will require a technology turnaround that seems to never happen. As said one of the scientists Washington You the Post :
“Even if it is technically possible, without agreeing on the technical, political and social aspects of feasibility, this will not happen,” added Glen Peters, research director at the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo. “To limit warming below 1.5 ° C, or 2 ° C for that matter, all countries and all sectors must act.”
This scenario gives us only 10-14 years of our current emissions and will likely require high carbon taxes to slow down carbon emissions.
Okay, but what if I recycle?
If you want to reduce your personal carbon footprint, the most important thing you can do is have fewer kids, ditch your car, fly less, and go vegan . But this is a bigger picture than what we can tackle individually, so lobby your representatives to embrace sweeping changes that will impact our overall global carbon footprint.
Politically, there is room for controversy about what we should do in this situation, including what the high-income countries bear versus the low-income countries. But scientifically, there is no doubt that the Earth is warming up and that it will take an almost superhuman effort to reverse this trend. I wish us the best.