Renewable energy, Global warming, and Carbon Footprints
It’s understandable that former-Vice President Al Gore met with some opposition when he released his movie, the aptly-named Inconvenient Truth. The film showed the negative effects that we’ve had on our environment, which has resulted in global warming. Obviously, nobody wants to hear that we’ve ruined our own living space, and many people have brushed off the idea of global warming as “fiction.” Some have even refused to acknowledge that it exists! But even if it’s not a huge problem right now, scientific proof states that it will get worse if we keep polluting at our current rate.
But what is global warming, specifically? Some people will regard an exceptionally hot as the result of global warming–but global warming refers to the climatic change of the planet over a short time period. For example, a one degree Celsius-increase over 100 years would be considered global warming (the “Ice Age” only had an average five degrees Celsius lower than modern temperatures).
Global warming generally refers to the climate change caused by CO2 emissions from human-produced technology. Carbon dioxide is a compound found naturally in the earth’s atmosphere, but only in small quantities (about .04%). As infrared waves from the sun enter through the atmosphere, many of them are reflected from the earth’s surface, and very few of them are absorbed by the CO2. The fossil fuels that we burn with our cars and factories emit a surplus of CO2 into our atmosphere, which absorbs more of the rays – thus warming our planet (like a car left out in a sunny parking lot). This is also known as the greenhouse effect.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of scientists from many nations got together in February 2007 to discuss their long-term findings on the effects of global warming. They stated that the average temperature from 1906 to 2006 rose .74 degrees Celsius – a significant indication of global warming. They also found that out of the last 12 years, 11 had the highest-recorded averages and the ocean’s temperature has increased up to depths of 98,000 feet (the ocean absorbs up to 80% of the added heat).
Skeptics look at trends in the Earth’s past climate-changes and say that we’re just experiencing another cycle of warm climates. What they’re missing, however, is the rate of climate change; it has never been as rapid as the last 100 years. Even with the irrefutable proof, some people believe there are no effects of global warming. For instance, President Bush pulled the US out of the Kyoto Treaty, an agreement that would restrict a nation’s CO2 output, because he does not believe there is proof of climate change.
We can all promote a cleaner environment to curb the onset of global warming. Some simple ways include riding a bike instead of driving, recycling (less methane-producing trash in the landfills), and turning off appliances when they’re not in use.
