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Our planet is heating up due to an event that's been going on for AGES,
called the "greenhouse effect".
The good thing is, this is normal. The bad thing is, we're heating up the planet WAY more than normal due to everything extra we're doing.
This graph, shown at the bottom right, shows
the carbon dioxide ppm (parts per million) levels
for the past 800,000 years. As you can see, until
very recently (around the 1850s or so, the start of the Industrial Revolution), carbon dioxide ppm levels were fluctuating, as they should be.
But recently,
they've been
getting worse.
This is
undoubtably
(95%) caused by
human activity.
There has been, since at least the late 19th century:
It's obvious that since this started around the late 19th century, this is caused by human (that's us!) activity.
There's a ton of causes for global warming, let's take a look at 2 of them!
The greenhouse effect is when warming occurs when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space, and certain gases prevent this heat from escaping, like water vapor, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide, and methane. Certain activities can cause this to happen, like burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil (increases CO2).
Here's an informative GIF:
https://climate.nasa.gov/system/content_pages/main_images/1_greenhouse_effect_rev_5-22-19.gif
Click here!
It's OK to assume
changes in the Sun's energy
output can cause the climate to
change, since the Sun is pretty much our
only source of energy to drive the Earth.
And this has played a tiny role in the past climate
changes, e.g. a decrease in solar activity with an
increase of volcanic activity could have helped trigger
the Little Ice Age from 1650 to 1680. But, global warming
can't be completely explained by energy changes from
the Sun, because greenhouse gases are
trapping heat in the lower atmosphere,
creating a cooling effect in the upper
atmosphere and a heating effect on
the surface & the lower atmosphere.
And climate models that include solar
irradiance changes can’t reproduce
this temperature trend over the
past century or more without
including a rise in greenhouse
gases.
Climate change has
already affected the Earth, oh
the humanity! Glaciers have shrunk,
ice on rivers and lakes is breaking up
earlier, plant and animal ranges have shifted
and trees are flowering sooner, as well as extreme
heat waves, accelerated sea level rise, and loss of
sea ice. And the temperature will continue to rise, the
growing season will lengthen, precipitation will increase,
droughts and heat waves will get worse, the sea level will
rise by 1-4 feet by 2100, etc.
There's a ton of things that climate change is causing, and
there is scientific evidence that we're part of the problem.
If we don't fix this soon, we're gonna have to move to Mars.
And even if a 1.9°F increase in temperatures during the
20th century doesn't seem that bad, just think: this
is unusual for our planet's history. Our temperatures
are becoming more and more unstable.
Whew.. now that we're
past that wall of text that are the
stats, now we get into what we can really
do. Here are 3 things:
1. Stop cutting down trees: Every year, around 33
MILLION acres of forests are cut down. If we can be
more efficient with these agricultural practices, there
could be an equilibrium reached between the number of
trees cut down, and the number of trees planted.
2. Unplug your devices: In every house, there's at least a
dozen appliances, and even those can lead to global warming,
and thus, the climate change. So if we unplug these when we
aren't using them, this will decrease the emission of harmful
gases, and might even control global warming and climate
change.
3. Focus on renewable energy: Fossil fuels will be used
up in around 20 years, so we should move towards
these renewable energies, or the entire world will
go into chaos. Many cities are already
utilizing renewable energy, like wind
energy, solar energy, hydroelectric
dams, etc.
The carbon cycle is one of
the most important cycles on Earth.
Without carbon, pretty much all life on
earth would cease to exist, or rather, wouldn't
have even started to exist. Our economies, our
homes, our means of transport, they're all made out
of carbon.
Most of our carbon, all 65,500 billion metric tons of it, is stored in rocks, the ocean,
atmosphere, plants, soil, and
fossil fuels. This carbon goes
in slow and fast cycles, and
any change in either cycle
that shifts carbon out of one
reservoir can put carbon in
the other reservoirs.