ENVIRONMENT
writers
CLIMATE CHANGE
PHILIP MENG , ERIC WU photographers
JULIAN LAU , SHANTING HOU layout
CRISIS.
O
ur generation’s largest upcoming challenge is that of Climate Change, an issue that has virtually no borders and requires the cooperation of all countries to combat. Unfortunately, misinformation on this topic, has led many to believe false facts and theories about climate change. This article aims to give readers an unbiased, scientific explanation of the main causes and consequences of climate change, and shine light on the actions we all can and should do to save our planet. First of all, climate change and global warming are two different concepts that are often mistaken for the same thing, which they are not. The important difference is that global warming only refers to the Earth’s rising temperature, whilst climate change refers to the shifts in Earth’s climate and weather patterns. In a simple explanation, global warming is only a piece of the much larger problem of human-caused Climate Change. Throughout its 4.54 billion year history, Earth’s temperature has fluctuated dramatically many times and these extreme changes in temperature and climate happen around every 100,000 years.. Earth has had colder periods, for example, the major ice age from 2.6 million years ago until around 11,700
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years ago, and warmer periods, including the Holocene interglacial period that we are currently in. Most recently the Earth’s temperature has increased at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years. The main causes for the sudden increase of Earth’s temperature include the extensive destruction of marine ecosystems, deforestation, overpopulation, but most importantly the burning of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels contain a huge amounts of carbon, and therefore when they are burnt, they release excessive amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This contributes largely to the greenhouse effect, a natural process that warms the Earth’s surface. This process works similarly to a greenhouse in which the glass walls of a greenhouse trap the sun’s heat, increasing the temperature inside the greenhouse. In the earth’s case, an array of greenhouse gases in the including methane and carbon dioxide, trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere, increasing the temperature of the earth.
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As the earth’s temperature becomes increasingly hotter, we are seeing worse and more extreme impacts on our climate and weather. Some of the expected and observed environmental effects include extreme changes in weather and climate, changes in ecosystems, desertification, acidification of the oceans, extinction of species, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, etc. These drastic changes in the environment can cause and have already caused extremely detrimental effects to the human population, including deadly heat waves that have caused 36 deaths and counting, wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of homes in California, a severe food crisis caused from the 2011 East Africa drought and more. These consequences are irreparable, and immediate change is needed to prevent such detrimental effects. As governments and companies have deemed largely unresponsive to this pressing issue, young individuals decided to take this issue into their own hands, most significantly, a 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist, Greta Thunberg. Thunberg’s famous words are, “The eyes of all future generations are upon you.” Representing that the future generations need the United Nations to work together. As the leading figure in the modern fight against climate change, Greta Thunberg
