Addressing The Changing Climate
*Hello, Astron here, this article is not only very important and holds information, but it also took a lot of time to make. I would be very appreciative if you read through the entire article instead of skipping parts or just leaving before you finish, thank you! So the full version of the document is at the end. Bye!*
Global Warming… What is it?
Global Warming is the heating of the Earth caused by Human interactions with the environment. Global warming is mostly caused by Fossil Fuels, a fuel burned to create electricity and power. Because fossil fuels are the world’s most common way of making power, the constant build up of greenhouse gasses emitted by fossil fuels slowly cause nature’s natural climate change to go haywire.
If you don’t know, Earth naturally heats up and cools down at its own pace. Every 100,000 years or so, a large part of Earth will cool down to such a low temperature to a point where all of the land and water surrounding that area will basically freeze. These sessions, where parts of Earth freeze, are also called ice ages. Ice ages happen every 100,000 years and last around 100,000 years. Scientists believe that there have been a total of 5 significant ice ages throughout the 2.5 million year history ice ages have existed. After a 100,000 year time period during the ice age, more sunlight is able to reach the higher latitudes, melting all the ice and the ice age is over.
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Side Note
If you are wondering how scientists uncover the secrets of the past, such as how this all happens and how they discover this, this following text may help explain.
Scientists don’t 100% know the ancient Earth, but they estimate everything about it, such as the temperature, environment, and more from one tactic. This tactic, or rather just observing, is where different types of scientists are able to discover and estimate the ancient Earth’s composition and temperature by just looking at ancient artifacts, weather records; and in some cases, extremely small sediments in rocks could reveal a whole new concept. Anyway, sorry if that not was a little hard to understand. I’m trying to keep it clean and comprehensible.
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When the ice age is over, the Earth gradually rises 4 to 7 Celsius or so across a 5,000 year time period. This means that after an ice age, the Earth rises 1 Celsius every 1,000 years. Also meaning that after around 3,000 to 4,000 years (after all the ice melts), the Earth will reach its normal temperature and the extra Celsius added will just add a bit of heat. However the burning of fossil fuels and the use of gasoline has caused Earth to not only speed up this natural heating process, but this is also causing Earth to heat up so rapidly that it is about to pass the point of no return. In fact, the global temperature has risen 1 c (~32 f) since fossil fuels have become a major power producer in the 1960s. And so far, Earth has risen 1 Celsius in 60 years, the same temperature it would've taken Earth to rise in 1,000 years.
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Rephrasing:
Prehistoric Earth would’ve risen 1 Celsius in 1,000 years. However, modern Earth today has managed to rise to the same temperature but in just 60 years alone.
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So in summary, global warming is the warming of Earth due to Human activity. And for a little comparison, almost 40% of the world’s power is produced by oils drilled from the ground, and nearly 30% is from burning coal. Around 21% is produced from natural gasses and less than 17% is coming from renewables such as Bio-thermal, solar, wind, hydro, and more. In fact it is predicted that wind, solar, and water energy combined is considered to be near 0% compared to the rest of the world’s energy (as Hydro power only makes up 2.4% of the renewable energy sources.) Bio-fuels and waste make up nearly 10% and wind and solar barely make up 1.3% of renewable energy sources. That’s just sad. If you wonder where nuclear energy is, it only makes up around 4% of the total energy sources in the world.
Arguably one of the biggest countries in the world, China, has a very one sided pie chart of what energy makes up what percent of their power. Roughly 80% of China’s power comes from burning coal alone. The remaining 20% goes to hydro, oil and natural gas. And less than 1% goes to wind.
...This Needs To Change…
We have yet to realize the actual large scale damage that burning coal and drilling oils actually do to the environment. There are many ways to fix this problem, and back then, these solutions may have been easier to input if done sooner. However, there is this single thought running throughout everyone,
“Why should I help fix it when everyone else would?”
And because this thought runs through everyone, causing the economy to believe that they shouldn’t fix their problems if others will do it for them. This train of thought runs through almost every individual in the world causing everyone to do nothing about the environment. This following article should convince you that the environment is important, and we must save the environment to save Earth.
Written on Google Docs…
Full Document: The Astron | The Changing Climate
