Byproducts of Rising Global Temperature The terms global warming and climate change are often thought of as interchangeable, while they are to some extent, particularly within the context of politics, in science the terms are taken more literally. As discussed earlier, the scientific community is in agreement with regards to the fact that global temperatures are increasing. So calling the phenomenon global warming is not technically incorrect, however, global warming does not encompass the additional externalities associated with a continually warming earth. The global climate is an extremely interconnected and complex system; a change in one variable has the capacity to influence other variables in ways that one might not expect. For example,
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Or better yet, how do we stop or mitigate the problem? The climate change issue is manifesting at a rapid pace, so much so that even if we halt greenhouse gas emissions entirely, the earth will still continue to warm at a rapid pace due to the carbon dioxide still present in the atmosphere, mind you CO2 has a residence time in the atmosphere of over 100 years. The most viable solutions to this problem have been geo-engineering methods, some of which are extremely clever, but also extremely costly and impractical. A lot of the proposed solutions have to do with removing the already present carbon dioxide gas through methods that involve installing stations equipped with synthetic material that chemically bonds with CO2--removing it from the air. The first question that might come to mind is: is that not why we have trees? The reality is that trees are fighting a losing battle, as mentioned in the beginning of the paper: On a typical day, the earth loses about 300 square kilometers of rainforest to logging (Fletcher, 2012. p.45). Other methods of removing CO2 from the atmosphere involve fertilizing thousands of square miles of ocean with iron. Iron enhances the growth of phytoplankton, which absorb tremendous amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, however the downside is that scientists are still unsure about the externalities associated with plaguing the ocean with phytoplankton, doing such a thing could potentially starve ocean life of oxygen and
Or better yet, how do we stop or mitigate the problem? The climate change issue is manifesting at a rapid pace, so much so that even if we halt greenhouse gas emissions entirely, the earth will still continue to warm at a rapid pace due to the carbon dioxide still present in the atmosphere, mind you CO2 has a residence time in the atmosphere of over 100 years. The most viable solutions to this problem have been geo-engineering methods, some of which are extremely clever, but also extremely costly and impractical. A lot of the proposed solutions have to do with removing the already present carbon dioxide gas through methods that involve installing stations equipped with synthetic material that chemically bonds with CO2--removing it from the air. The first question that might come to mind is: is that not why we have trees? The reality is that trees are fighting a losing battle, as mentioned in the beginning of the paper: On a typical day, the earth loses about 300 square kilometers of rainforest to logging (Fletcher, 2012. p.45). Other methods of removing CO2 from the atmosphere involve fertilizing thousands of square miles of ocean with iron. Iron enhances the growth of phytoplankton, which absorb tremendous amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, however the downside is that scientists are still unsure about the externalities associated with plaguing the ocean with phytoplankton, doing such a thing could potentially starve ocean life of oxygen and