The Impact Of Global Warming And Climate Change

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I. BACKGROUND
Global warming and climate change are often synonymously linked with carbon dioxide gas. Carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere in several ways, some of which are: burning fossil fuels, waste, and burning trees and other wood substances. According to the EPA, carbon dioxide accounts for 82 percent of harmful greenhouse gases being released into our atmosphere (“Overview of Greenhouse Gases” 2014). Greenhouses gases work by trapping heat in the atmosphere, and essentially reflecting it back down to Earth. As a result, greenhouse gases have become a major part of the climate change problem. However, carbon dioxide emissions are a tough problem to tackle, particularly politically, due to the fact that it stays in the atmosphere
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According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “greenhouse gas pollution is at its highest level ever,” and “emissions of all these gases in 2010 were 31 percent above their 1990 levels” (Burney et. al. 2013, 50). When the Kyoto Protocol was first being created, the countries who agreed to it “accounted for 60 percent of the world’s emissions;” however, “by the time the treaty was ratified… that number fell to less than one-quarter” (Burney et. al. 2013, 50). Obviously, without full compliance from all countries, we will be unable to keep climate change in check because it is a global issue and not a national one. Furthermore, the richer and still developing countries have taken to a “blame game” when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. For example, by 2035 China is expected to account for 60 percent of greenhouse gas emissions (Burney et. al. 2013, 50). “Rich industrialized countries blame developing countries [like China] for their failure to restrain their emissions; [and] the developing countries blame the industrialized world for failing to acknowledge its historical responsibility” in creating the majority of these gases to begin with (Burney et. al. 2013, 50). It seems as though no country wants to take the lead on pollution reduction out of fear that their economy will be weakened. If the same types of political strategies and treaties were applied to short-lived pollutants, which play a much larger role in climate change than was originally thought, the same outcomes could be expected. As a result, it is necessary to find alternative methods to deal with these pollutants, which can be substantially reduced within our

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