Climate Change

By Sourav Kumar Nagal, a student at Amity University Rajasthan  The planet’s atmosphere is heating up and our oceans are acidifying at alarming rates because we burn too much fossil fuel. To put it simply, if we want to solve climate change we must go “net zero” – virtually eliminating all greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century. The terms “climate change” and “global warming” have become buzzwords in national politics, the media, and even everyday conversation. It’s such a big topic that it’s sometimes overwhelming to talk about. Some people call human-caused climate change the world’s greatest problem. Others deny its existence. Why is that? I examine different perspectives on human caused climate change to help answer this question. Ultimately, I aim to ask and answer a different, more important question: “What am I to do?”            -  Andrew Eliot Binder Climate change isn’t just a ...

EFFECTS  OF  CLIMATE  CHANGE What are the effects of climate change?   Climate change destabilises the Earth’s temperature equilibrium and has far-​reaching effects on human beings and the environment. During the course of global warming, the energy balance and thus the temperature of the earth change, due to the increased concentration of greenhouse gases, which has a significant impact on humans and the environment. It is not scientifically possible to assign individual weather events to the current climate change, however, it can be statistically proven that global warming will increase the probability of extreme weather events. The direct consequences of man-​made climate change: rising maximum temperatures rising minimum temperatures  rising sea levels  higher ocean temperatures  an increase in heavy precipitation (heavy rain and hail) shrinking glaciers thawing permafrost The indirect consequenc...

DEFORESTATION: Deforestation is an issue that has been brought to the front of the international scene since the past decades. Unfortunately, as the human needs grow, so is the deforestation. As urbanization is developing, more and more lands are needed, but at what price?  What is deforestation?  It is the fact of cutting trees and removing forests for the human use like agricultural expansion, housing or even illegal logging. As we are more and more numerous on the planet, we need more space, but this exposes the planet to many risks.  Reasons forests are destroyed  The World Bank  estimates that about 3.9 million square miles (10 million square km) of forest have been lost since the beginning of the 20th century. In the past 25 years, forests shrank by 502,000 square miles (1.3 million square km) — an area bigger than the size of South Africa. In 2018,  The Guardian reported  that every second, a chunk of forest equivalent to...

Ocean Acidification In the 200-plus years since the industrial revolution began, the concentration of  carbon dioxide (CO 2 )  in the atmosphere has increased due to humans burning fossil fuels (such as car emissions) and changing the way land is used (such as deforestation).  During this time, the pH of surface ocean waters has fallen by 0.1 pH units. The pH scale, like the Richter scale, is logarithmic, so this change represents approximately a  30 percent increase  in acidity. figure:1. Ocean Acidification  The ocean absorbs about 30% of the CO 2  that is released in the atmosphere, and as levels of atmospheric CO 2  increase, so do the levels in the ocean. When CO 2  is absorbed by seawater, a series of chemical reactions occur resulting in the increased concentration of hydrogen ions. This increase causes the seawater to become more acidic and causes carbonate ions to be relatively less abundant. ...