GLOBAL
WARMING
SMOKE Yes – smoking is not only bad for your health, but also helps to kill the climate. According the World Health Organisation, about 1.1 billion people worldwide smoke, and this number is expected to triple over the next 25 years. All that smoke and tobacco farming will surely have an impact on the climate. Smoking alone spews 2.6 million tons of CO2 and 5.2 million tons of methane into the atmosphere every year, says Kuhndt. But that’s not the worst part, tobbacco farming and disposing of waste has impacts on the environment too. The widespread monoculture inherent in growing tobacco extracts six times more potassium from the soil than growing other plants does. But now comes the big hammer: 150 kg of wood are needed for drying one kilogram of tobacco, which converts to 1.2 million hectares of forest. About 600 million trees are chopped down annually to make room for tobacco plants. These trees could remove 22 million tons of the climate-killing gas yearly. Not only that, all those cigarette filters end up on the ground and contaminate the groundwater with nicotine, dioxin, formaldehyde and cadmium, so claims Kuhndt.
EARTH
The Earth was formed about 4,540,000,000 years ago. In the beginning, the Earth’s atmosphere contained very little oxygen (less than 1% oxygen pressure). Early plants started to develop more than 2 billion years ago, probably about 2,700,000,000.Through photosynthesis, plants uptake carbon dioxide into the biosphere as organic matter, and release oxygen as a byproduct.Through geologic time, oxygen accumulated gradually in the atmosphere, reaching a value of about 21% of atmospheric gases at the present time. Through geologic time, surplu organic matter has been sequestered in the lithosphere as fossil organic materials (coal, petroleum, and natural gas).
Early animals (the first organisms with external shells) started to develop around 600,000,000 years ago.Animals operate in the opposite way than plants: they take up oxygen, burn organic matter (food), and release carbon dioxide as a byproduct.Early humans (Australopithecus anamensis) began to develop about 4,100,000 years ago.Cool climatic conditions have prevailed during the past 1,000,000 years. The species Homo sapiens evolved under these climatic conditions.Homo sapiens dates back to more than 400,000 years.Estimates for the variety Homo sapiens sapiens, to which all humans belong, range from 130,000 to 195,000 years old.The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was as low as 190 ppm during the last Ice Age, about 21,000 years ago.The last Ice Age began to recede about 20,000 years ago. The agricultural revolution, where humans converted forests and rangelands into farms, began to develop about 10,000 years ago.The agricultural revolution caused a reduction in standing biomass in the biosphere and reduced the uptake of carbon dioxide in midlatitudinal regions, indirectly contributing, however so slightly, to global warming.The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased gradually from a low of 190 ppm 21,000 year ago, to about 290 ppm in the year 1900, i.e., at an average rate of 0.00478 ppm per year.The industrial revolution, where humans developed machines (artificial animals, since they consume fuels, which are mostly organic matter), began in England about 240 years ago (1767).In October 2011, the world’s population reached 7,000,000,000, which is 2.5 times that of the year 1959.The world’s population is currently increasing at the rate of about 80,000,000 per year (about 1.2 %).
MELT
TING
The polar regions are important drivers of the world’s climate. When the “everlasting ice” melts at an increasing rate, the rest of the world is affected. Global sea levels are rising, dark meltwater pools absorb warmth from the sun which white ice would reflect back into space. Fresh water flows into the sea, changing ocean currents and the living conditions for marine organisms. For 20 years satellites have been monitoring earth’s biggest ice shields on Greenland and in the Antarctic, using different technologies from radar to gravity measurements. In the past, the uncoordinated publication of individual one-off measurements led to confusion, especially with regard to the state of the Antarctic ice. A new study, supported by NASA and European Space Agency ESA combines the data from different satellite missions. The Antartic is difficult terrain for scientists to access “It’s the first time all the people who have estimated changes in the size of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets using satellites over the past 20 years have got together to produce a single result,” Andrew Shepherd from the University of Leeds in the UK explained in an interview with DW. Satellite monitoring ends confusion “Thanks to the accuracy of our data set, we are now able to say with confidence that Antarctica has lost ice for the whole of the past 20 years. In addition to the relative proportions of ice that have been lost in the northern and southern hemispheres, we can also see there’s been a definitive acceleration of ice loss in last 20 years. So together Antarctica and Greenland are now contributing three times as much ice to sea levels as they were 20 years ago,” says the Professor of Earth Observation. According to the study, melting ice from both poles has been responsible for a fifth of the global rise in sea levels since 1992, 11 millimeters in all. The rest was caused by the thermal expansion of the warming ocean, the melting of mountain glaciers, small Arctic ice caps and groundwater mining. The share of the polar ice melt, however, is rising. The pattern of change differs considerably between the Arctic and the Antarctic. Two thirds of the ice loss is happening in Greenland. “The rate of ice loss from Greenland has increased almost five-fold since the mid-1990s”, says Erik Ivins, who coordinated the project for NASA. In the Antarctic, the situation is a more complex one. Scientists distinguish between the West and East, which are being affected differently by climate change. West Antarctica is losing ice at an accelerating rate.
FLOODING The UK has experienced heavy floods over the past decade, which have affected thousands of people and caused millions of pounds worth of damage. The rainfall in June and July 2007 was about 20% higher than ever seen before in records that go back to 1879.Although it is impossible to say this flooding was a result of climate change, some computer predictions say that we can expect to see more extreme weather events such as flooding in the future. The Met Office however project that while heavy summer rains may become more frequent, summers are likely to be drier overall, especially in the south of Britain. According to the Environment Agency, at present 2.3 million homes and 185,000 businesses are at risk of flooding in England and Wales representing property, land and assets to the value of over ÂŁ200bn. Adapting our homes to cope with flooding (particularly new homes) seems vital. Building them on higher ground, away from flood plains, with materials which can withstand heavy rainfall seems to be a good idea. However, the Environment Agencies throughout the UK are also looking into the problem of flood defences as there are many areas where these would be beneficial, although the financial implications of such schemes has to be considered. For many people around the World, particularly in developing countries, the dangers associated with flooding are serious. Houses in many countries can be destroyed instantly as a result of heavy rain and flooding.