Climate Change: One of Earth's Biggest Problems
Aug 15
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Climate change refers to shifts in weather patterns and temperatures, often driven by burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and specific agriculture practices. Climate change has been an issue that's been getting worse year after year. Since the early 1800's, climate change has been on the rise. However, not a lot of people even understand the scope of the issue and know what to do about it. In this post, I will talk about what climate change is, what its effects are, and what we can do to prevent it from getting worse.
What is Climate Change & Global Warming?
Climate change is the long-term changes in weather patterns on Earth locally, regionally, and globally. Climate change is interchangeably used with global warming, which is incorrect. Global warming is the long-term changes in temperature on Earth. Climate change refers to global warming's effects, which is why they are mistaken for one in the same so often.
How Does Global Warming Occur?
Global warming occurs because of the greenhouse effect. When the sun's rays enter the Earth's atmosphere, it bounces off the Earth and reflects back into space. However, natural occurring gases in the atmosphere known as greenhouse gases trap a some of the sun's rays, warming up the Earth. If the amount of greenhouse gases in the air is constant, the Earth should be relatively the same temperature each year. However, because humans have released more greenhouse gases each year, the global temperature of the Earth has risen dramatically.
Because of greenhouse gases, the ozone layer has been thinning out. The ozone layer is located in the stratosphere, which is meant to prevent the harmful rays of the sun to get into Earth's lower atmospheres. However, CFC's that are released by humans through numerous methods are able to break down the ozone chemical compound in the ozone layer. Because of this lack of ozone, the ozone layer has been thinning out, which results in more rays being let into Earth. Because of the atmosphere trapping the sun's harmful rays in, global warming is also affected, increasing drastically with this factor as well.
How Does Climate Change Occur?
Climate change has several causes/factors that result in this extreme weather:
Human Causes/Intensified by Humans:
Greenhouse effect
Burning fossil fuels
Utilization of CFC's in technology
Transportation
Agriculture
Oil developments
Deforestation
Global warming
Natural Causes:
Volcanic Eruptions
Solar Radiation
Tectonic Shifts
Changes in Orbit
Effects of Climate Change
Climate change has an effect of various different things:
Weather: The most obvious given it's name, but it's still important to discuss. Climate changes make droughts, storms, floods, and snowfall both more intense and unpredictable. It also creates a perfect environment for longer lasting forest fires.
Environment: Climate change also has drastic effects on the environment. For one, it melts a lot of sea ice caps which is rising the sea level every year. This makes cities in low-lying cities, like Ney York and Mumbai, to see a lot of damage in the next few decades. It can also harm coastal ecosystems. It's also very likely to cause more pests, invasive species, and pathogen infections in forests, which would disrupt ecosystems all over the world.
Agriculture: There are a few, but important, effects that climate change has on agriculture. It causes less predictable growing seasons, reduced soil health, and food shortages.
Animals: Climate change can rapidly and drastically destroy the habitats of animals all over the world. this includes animals that are already struggling to survive in this changing world. If this continuous, more than 500,000 species will be at risk of extinction.
Humans: Air quality can worsen as climate change worsens. This can have a huge impact on human health, causing more lung diseases. It can also result in developing countries to struggle. Wealthier countries can afford to shield their citizens from climate change but developing countries don't have the budget to do so compared to others. There will also be a lot of economic impacts.
What Can We Do?
While understanding how deep the issue of climate change is can make some of us feel like there's no coming back, there's still things we can do.
Spread the word: There are still people today who refuse to acknowledge that climate change is an issue. Spreading the word and reminding people can help encourage others to take steps to help.
Political Pressure: All policies made about global warming is made by politicians. If they can hear out voices, and feel the pressure, they might be willing to help.
Transportation: Vehicles are a huge contributor to greenhouse gases. You can try walking or biking to your destinations, or even carpooling with other people to reduce vehicular emissions.
Reduce Power Usage: Try switching to a zero-carbon or renewable energy provider to reduce your footprint.
Buy Local: Try eating foods that are local and in season. With this, you can help reduce the number of emissions that come from transport and cold chain storage.
Plant Trees: Deforestation is a huge problem in the modern day. We can reverse the problem by planting trees when we can.
Climate change is on the rise. Fortunately, many people are beginning to understand the risks and problems that come with climate change and are starting to make small changes that can help reduce the issue. If all of us come together and continue to make small changes to our lifestyle, it's possible that we can reverse the problems of today.
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