Climate change

最近被Science teacher催作业，然后昨天Leo花了两个小时写了下面这篇文章。我觉得写得很不错。可见Leo不是写作能力有问题，而是以前大部分的题目他不感兴趣，遇上他感兴趣的题目还是很有话说的。

Climate change

In 2027 to 2042 the world is predicted to cross the threshold of dangerous climate change. In 1896, a paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. This was the first mention of climate change. In the 1960’s this warming effect was becoming more evident. By the 1970’s scientific opinion increasingly favored the warming viewpoint. By 2003 there was the first climate disaster that was noticed: collapse of ice sheets in West Antarctica and Greenland. In 2008 Climate scientists (although not the public) recognized that even if all greenhouse gas emissions could be halted immediately, global warming will remain for a millennia. In 2019 the threats increased to wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes.

Most people believed that climate change was caused mainly by coal plants, gas cars and burping cows. So solutions would be simple: rows of solar panels, bike to work. But let’s look at the full picture. Most rich people cause more carbon emissions than poorer people, well we simply tell country’s be be more poor, because 63% of carbon emissions come from middle to high income states. What do they say? NO. A country likes to advance and cutting back on income is not something they are fans of. Let’s take concrete, 8% of CO2 emissions come from concrete, well let’s find an alternative. But concrete is cheap and easy to make, and it’s used to make large infrastructure. So finding a solution that doesn't emit that much CO2 that's cheap and easy to make, and is reliable is going to take a lot of time and a lot of experiments and experiments cost money. Where's that money coming from?

Let’s take a look at meat, 40% of habitable land is used to produce meat. But meat comes from animals which emit methane which oxidizes to turn into carbon dioxide. Traditionally meals are mainly plant based topped with a bit of meat, but now there is more demand for meat. Now this 40% of habitable land is alarmingly a lot. Most of that could be used to plant natural ecosystems with trees, since trees basically suck up carbon dioxide and emit oxygen.

Now let’s talk about solutions. One thing people say a lot is: “we’ll make a zero carbon emission alternative for everything that has carbon emissions.” First of all for meat, that as we talked about emits carbon. So what are you thinking? Meat in test tubes or what, since I’d rather have my meat start on the open range rather than a test tube. Since technology is advancing so fast, won’t some technology in the future swoop in and save us all? Well technically something like that already exists, direct air capture of CO2 which sort of looks like a few air filters that are stacked up on each other, it captures carbon from the air and stores it underground in tanks so it can be used to make useful products. But if we wanted to make enough so that it actually makes a dent, then it would cost some ten trillion dollars. Currently where we could get that is from either investors that are fans of carbon capture, or the government. But you won’t make any profits, so investors are out of the list. Finally the government simply refuses to offer it, in fact it is doing the exact opposite, it is funding coal and oil plants. Joe biden actually promised to fix climate change by 2036, but if the government simply won’t fund carbon capture I don’t know how he’s going to do it. So what can YOU do to help stop climate change? Well take simple steps, why not buy an electric car? Why don’t you switch off the lights when you're not using them? How about eating less meat? Having the public take these steps makes it easier for the big contributors in climate change to take steps too. But we did all that, yes we did. Even if you don’t know you did, I know you did. In the pandemic we had no choice but to do all this. And what did it do? It lowered carbon emissions by 7% in 2020. If you eliminated 100% of your emissions for the rest of your life, you would save one second’s worth of emissions from the global energy sector. So you can’t do much but you can do something.

Sources:
● https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-limits-of-the-earth-part-1-problems/
● https://history.aip.org/climate/timeline.htm
● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc