As my civic issue blog comes to an end this semester, I would like to dedicate this blog to talking about the technology that will become essential in our fight against climate change. This tech is advancing very quickly, and it seems promising to be able to help solve climate change. It should not be viewed as a cure though because we still need to do much work to stop our massive carbon emissions.

Batteries

This may not seem like something you would think of when talking about the fight against climate change, but it is a necessity to be able to improve our battery technology. As it currently stands, we are still relying on fossil fuels as our main energy source, and many people want to switch to renewable sources immediately. Currently, this switch would be devastating in its own regard because we would often run out of power across the globe. Renewable sources are not effective at all times of the day/year, and this means that there is not a steady energy output such as that of fossil fuels. In order to combat this, we need massive batteries that can be charged when our energy production is high. When it is low, we will use up the battery to meet our energy needs.

Carbon Capture

Many people have heard of carbon capture technology, but not many know what it actually is. While there are many forms of carbon capture, I will be focusing on one that pulls CO2 from the air. This tech has a big fan that pulls in CO2 directly from the atmosphere and has it dissolve in solution. This solution is then mixed with Ca2+ cations to precipitate CaCO3. This CaCO3 can then be heated and pressurized to create liquid CO2 that can be buried or used to make products. One of the products that can be made is fuel. This “synthetic crude” can be put into cars and is considered Carbon neutral because it was made by removing CO2 from the atmosphere. This tech is going to be expanded much further across the country, but they are a little worried to do so. When people hear about the promise of Carbon Capture, many start to believe that we do not need to do anything else. They think that this technology can completely fix climate change when that is not the case. We still produce far too much carbon emissions for this to be our only solution, and this technology can not be implemented fast enough before dramatic events begin happening.

We already know that climate change will be affecting us in the future, but we need to get a clear picture of the actual effects it will have. There are many places to look at, such as the ocean,  and global temperatures. Oftentimes, there is not a clear discussion of what will actually happen, so you must take these points with a grain of salt. 

Global Temperatures

By our current estimates, it seems that the overall global temperature will rise by three degrees Celsius by 2100. This is a very tragic number because of the various implications that it would have, but it is slightly hopeful considering estimates a decade ago put this number at around 7 degrees celsius. This should not be the cause of celebration because the warming of three degrees still will result in a major disaster. There will be major increases in the size and frequency of hurricanes and wildfires. There will also be the destruction of stable ecosystems and the many species that live in them. Most notable for the human population is that these temperatures will ruin much of the agriculture in developing nations. These countries will no longer be able to feed their citizens and we will see a large increase in famine. Experts expect that there will be a large migration north from the equator because it will simply be too warm in those areas for most people.

The Ocean

By 2100, experts believe that our oceans will rise around 1.5-2 meters. This is a massive increase in the ocean and will have major impacts on the coastal regions of the world. Places such as New York City and Miami will be underwater and this will mean the relocation of millions of people. This will also put many island nations underwater and there will be significant damage from this. Along with this increase in the sea level, the ocean will also become much more acidic due to climate change. The current estimate is that the pH will drop below 7.8 which would mean a 1.5 times increase in the acidity of the ocean. This will ruin ecosystems and cause the extinction of much wildlife. Coral reefs are already being bleached by this pH difference, and ocean life is already migrating due to temperature differences. 

Conclusion

There are still so many other things that would occur with climate change that has not been mentioned, but it is clear that there is a lot of work that needs to be done. The point of my blog is not to scare people, but to make people aware. We have done little to combat climate change and we have known about it for decades. It is time to be more proactive if we wish to not see these estimates come to fruition.

Lake Chad

Climate change has had effects on the globe pretty much everywhere, but, within our country, we have not felt the drastic effects that others have. It is important to put things in perspective because it may be easy for us to say that climate change really is not that big of an issue. It has likely not affected us personally, so we assume that this is the case across the world. One of these major issues that can help us reign it in is Lake Chad. This is a lake found in Africa that has been disappearing rapidly as a result of climate change. This lake provides much of the water to not only the wildlife of Africa but also many of the people that live there. Water is essential to life, and there is now barely any of it left to be extracted. People are dying in Africa due to our pursuit of energy here and we need to realize this.

The Ocean

One of the largest effects of climate change has been on our ocean life. We have seen coral reefs slowly deteriorate from bleaching, and many species migrate to places they did not use to live. One reason for these events is the lowering pH of our ocean. As carbon dioxide continues to rise in concentration in our atmosphere, the pH continues to decline. This is because a substantial amount of the carbon dioxide gas dissolves into our ocean and produces carbonic acid. This carbonic acid then breaks apart into two protons and a carbonate. These protons can cause several changes to the environment, but very specific adaptations within species are drastically affected by this new pH. After this continues for long enough, we will eventually see the extinction of many aquatic life forms.

Another thing that we have perceived with the ocean is the warming at the poles. The large ice sheets that make up the poles are shrinking and this is increasing the height of the ocean. As of right now, the mean ocean level has risen 8 to 9 inches. This has had a dramatic effect on locations near the sea and flooding has become much more prevalent. New York City has had a large increase in flooding, and, soon enough, the city streets will be underwater permanently. 

Pollution

Another of the most observable issues from our energy hunger is pollution. We have been constantly burning fossil fuels for the past hundred years and have noticed clear changes in the atmosphere. Air quality has decreased significantly and it has had a major impact on the lives of this country and the world. Air pollution from fossil fuels is believed to cause around seven million deaths each year and this number has been increasing with time. We need to understand these effects if we wish to convince people of the dangers of climate change because these issues are only the beginning.

If you have watched the news at some point during the last ten years it is likely that you have heard about climate change. This is a process that has been talked about for much longer but became very influential in the news due to our concerns about irreversible damage to the globe. With most scientific issues, the general public is not nearly as informed about them as people who study the field in question. This often causes a lot of denial from the public towards these sorts of issues. Denial of these scientific truths leads to many problems towards solutions. With climate change, we need cooperation from the whole globe in order to effectively fix our mistakes. This makes it very difficult to implicate globally since so many people deny the truth of climate change. In this blog, I will be discussing how we know that climate change is real.

Isotopes of Carbon

One important step towards proving that climate change is real is to prove that it is our fault. This is one of the more difficult things for many people to accept because they just blame climate fluctuations on nature. We can prove that it is our fault through the studies of isotopes. Fossil fuels are mostly made of a lighter isotope Carbon-12. This is because fossil fuels originate from ancient plants. Currently, most other contributors to carbon emissions are composed of Carbon-13. When we take a look at the proportion of carbon-12 to carbon-13 in the atmosphere, we can notice that carbon-12 has been increasing in recent years. This means that our fossil fuel consumption is directly influencing the atmosphere.

The Chemistry of Climate Change

Many people have heard the term “the greenhouse effect,” but it is almost never explained. When UV light and visible light from the sun reaches the surface of the globe, it is absorbed and then released as heat or infrared light. This infrared light then heads back up to our atmosphere and hits many of the molecules within it. It can pass over most molecules, but, when it hits greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, the infrared radiation is scattered in random directions. This random scattering keeps the heat within the atmosphere and warms it more than it would without the scattering. The greenhouse effect keeps our world at a reasonable temperature, but the increased carbon in our atmosphere is pushing it past this temperature. We are now seeing much more acidic oceans, increased water levels, and raised global temperatures as a result of our influence. We need to do something about the climate now, and the first step is to educate the world on this issue. 

Nuclear energy is often debated as a good source of energy. There have been a few major disasters caused by nuclear power plants that have made them feared by society. This fear surrounding nuclear energy can actually be detrimental to our safety because the use of this power is essential to slowing climate change. Nuclear energy is not a permanent solution but is significantly more efficient than fossil fuels in the transition to renewable energy.

How Safe Are Nuclear Power Plants?

The most devastating nuclear meltdown in history caused 51 direct casualties and a few thousand indirect casualties. This is a significant number of deaths, but when you put this in perspective of the deaths that fossil fuels cause each year, the number seems minuscule. Air pollution from fossil fuels is said to cause seven million deaths each year; fossil fuels make up around 79% of our energy production with around 5% being from nuclear energy. This 5% has been estimated to have saved around 1.9 million people from air pollution-related deaths. Along with this, the deaths that are caused by nuclear meltdowns have been significantly reduced as our technology has advanced and powerplants have become exponentially safer.

Do Nuclear Powerplants Cause Pollution?

Radioactive waste that is produced from nuclear reactors lasts for thousands of years. Although, the entirety of the nuclear waste the United States has produced can be contained within a football field that is thirty feet high. This is such a small amount of waste when put in comparison to the gigatons of carbon that is pumped into the atmosphere each year from other energy areas. Along with this, the waste that is produced from nuclear power plants is safely stored to not be released into the environment; the radioactive material is put into concrete barrels and sent hundreds of feet into the Earth so that it will not emerge from earthquakes and other natural events for thousands of years.

As climate change persists as a result of our fossil fuel production, we need to find a way of reaching net 0 carbon emissions. It would be easy to say that we could simply switch to renewable energy immediately, but we do not currently have the energy storage capacities capable of maintaining this change. We need to replace our fossil fuel plants with nuclear energy in transition to renewables in order to support the energy needs of our population. If we wait to develop the energy storage capacities necessary for a full switch to renewables, then we may risk causing irreversible damage to the globe. Nuclear energy is not a perfect energy source but is a “lesser evil” in the pursuit of stopping climate change.

In our current world, it is difficult to go about your life without ever hearing about climate change. It is seen as a major threat to our world, so climate change often consumes a lot of the media. Many estimates establish very bleak outcomes if we do not fix this issue, but is it even feasible to end climate change at this point? The global environment takes thousands of years to create small differences in the overall temperature, and we have changed it significantly in only a hundred years. This is why the results of climate change are often seen as irreversible. In this blog, I will establish a few of the reasons why we struggle so much to stop carbon emissions and I will address if it is realistically possible to stop it.

Population Growth and The Economy

We know that humans are the cause of climate change due to our substantial ability to pump carbon into the atmosphere. This is the result of industry and the production of goods. This is pretty alarming because our population is growing exponentially. With more people entering our world than leaving, we will continue to see the consumption of goods and services go up. This consumption is directly related to our energy production (which is mostly fossil fuels), so carbon emissions have grown along with the population. There is no ethical way of stopping population growth, but, hopefully, our rate of growth will begin to decline as the world becomes more advanced.

Another reason why it is difficult for us to limit our carbon emissions is due to the economy. Global economies have been growing and along with this also comes more consumption. For example, one American produces about the same carbon emissions as twenty people in an underdeveloped nation. It is easy to assume that as a nation gets more developed, the energy resources will become clean. This is sadly not the case because we crave greed. We will continue to grow our economy, and the only way to support this rapid growth in production is with fossil fuels. Our renewable energy has simply not become advanced enough to support our nation’s desire to industrialize. Along with this, even if our country switches to renewable sources, other countries around the globe have not advanced as much as us. They would like to grow just as much as us, so they would use the fastest way to accomplish a strong economy (fossil fuels).

Realistically, are we too late?

If I were to be brutally honest, I would say that it does not look that great for humanity. It would be nearly impossible to see a switch to renewable energy sources overnight. Greed will likely bring us to our world’s breaking point, and we will reach a point of no return. This statement is however in the mind of a person from 2022. It is difficult to imagine what technology will advance to in the future. It is possible that our technology becomes so efficient that the energy consumption is small enough to reduce our emissions significantly. It is also possible that carbon capture technology advances to the point where we can reverse the effects of climate change. I still have faith in humanity, but there is still so much more we need to do before we can be confident in the fight against our environment.