Question: what way do you hope global warming will stop?
Question: What way do you hope global warming will stop?
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I am a tecnological optimist. I hope that once we realise the future cost (harm) of living the way that we live we will find ways (solar, thermal) to create the energy we need to live in the society we have built. The biggest elephant in the room, is rising global population, just how many people can the planet support?
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I agree with Simon. I think there are many renewable energy technologies that if developed further, will allow us to use the same amount of energy that we use now with fossil fuels. Many people try to argue that fossil fuels are they only way, but this is very short-sighted.
Unfortunately most of our environmental problems have to do with our massive population. There are seven billion people on the planet and soon there will be nine billion! We may all have to start living a little more frugally (with less stuff) if we are to keep our planet healthy in all respects.
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According to the latest reports even if we stopped all carbon emissions today the earth would still heat up by 2 degrees (that doesn’t sound like a lot but that is a global average so that means whatever temperature it is now add two degrees to that, which in the end makes a huge difference). This is because some of the damage has already been done and there is a time lag associated with the carbon emissions and the temperature increasing.
But I very much doubt that all carbon emission will stop today! so we know the earth is due to heat up more than 2 degrees in the future for sure but if we carry on as we are it will rise much much higher.
However, some countries are trying to do something about it. Such as Australia has the carbon tax which discourages people from emitting too much carbon because they have to pay taxes on it! and lots of Australians have solar panels and recycle regularly. So that’s a great way to reduce emissions. Other things we can do are switch all electrical appliances and lights off when were not using them, using our cars less, buying environmentally friendly appliances and cars with low emissions, eat less meat, waste less food, recycle, use solar panels and other renewable energies, paint houses and roofs white (reflects heat), plant more trees, reduce deforestation, etc….
These are all things that we can do to reduce emissions and reduce the impact of global warming. There wont be one single ‘cure’ for global warming, it will be a combination of all the things I’ve just listed and everyone has to help!
So in answer to your question global warming wont be stopped from happening, it definitely will happen, but how severe the warming is depends on what we do about it now!
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I agree with the other scientist…
I hope we do reduce our emissions and use some of the technologies that have been developed. However there are two parts to global warming and climate change. (I wrote this is a previous question) There is the natural change and the human influence speeding up this change. The earth has been through a lot of temperature changes over and at the moment we are in a Natural Warming period.
It was only 10,000 years ago that the sea levels where so low, the Gulf of Carpenteria (northern Australia) was an inland freshwater lake. You could walk to PNG and Indonesia without getting your feet wet. The Great Barrier Reef did not exist as it does today.
About 9000 – 8000 years ago the temperature started to rise, melting some of the ice around the world and by 7000-6000 years ago the water levels had increase to what we see today, so we are in a warm part of the natural climate cycle.
The problem we are trying to solve is “are humans speeding up this natural cycle with our impacts on the earth”
Climate is going to change, we can’t stop it from changing. But human activities must not increase the speed that the climate changes. If climate changes too quickly then the animals and reef will die, because they don’t have time to change their adaptations to the new temperature.
According to the latest reports even if we stopped all carbon emissions today the earth would still heat up by 2 degrees (that doesn’t sound like a lot but that is a global average so that means whatever temperature it is now add two degrees to that, which in the end makes a huge difference). This is because some of the damage has already been done and there is a time lag associated with the carbon emissions and the temperature increasing.
But I very much doubt that all carbon emission will stop today! so we know the earth is due to heat up more than 2 degrees in the future for sure but if we carry on as we are it will rise much much higher.
However, some countries are trying to do something about it. Such as Australia has the carbon tax which discourages people from emitting too much carbon because they have to pay taxes on it! and lots of Australians have solar panels and recycle regularly. So that’s a great way to reduce emissions. Other things we can do are switch all electrical appliances and lights off when were not using them, using our cars less, buying environmentally friendly appliances and cars with low emissions, eat less meat, waste less food, recycle, use solar panels and other renewable energies, paint houses and roofs white (reflects heat), plant more trees, reduce deforestation, etc….
These are all things that we can do to reduce emissions and reduce the impact of global warming. There wont be one single ‘cure’ for global warming, it will be a combination of all the things I’ve just listed and everyone has to help!
So in answer to your question global warming wont be stopped from happening, it definitely will happen, but how severe the warming is depends on what we do about it now!
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I agree with Jenny that we should look at the way we choose to live our lives and decide to just consume less. We don’t actually need to use as much energy as we all do and we certainly don’t need all the products that we produce. There will be more and more people on the planet soon, so at some point our lives will have to change.
I also think that there are some pretty promising renewable technologies out there. The CSIRO has been involved in developing spray on solar panels which could be sprayed onto thin plastic sheets and rolled out across the world’s deserts. Renewable energy development is essential in slowing global warming (as Jenny said, it can’t be stopped now), but technology can’t always come to the rescue!
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I agree with the other scientist…
I hope we do reduce our emissions and use some of the technologies that have been developed, both for our own health and the health of the planet. I especially hope the oceans will be saved.
However there are two parts to global warming and climate change. (I wrote this is a previous question) There is the natural change and the human influence speeding up this change. The earth has been through a lot of temperature changes, climate change over the past 500 million years and at the moment we are in a Natural Warming period.
It was only 10,000 years ago that the sea levels where so low, the Gulf of Carpenteria (northern Australia) was an inland freshwater lake. You could walk to PNG and Indonesia without getting your feet wet. The Great Barrier Reef did not exist as it does today. The world was in a mini-ice age
About 9000 – 8000 years ago the temperature started to rise, melting some of the ice around the world and by 7000-6000 years ago the water levels had increase to what we see today, so we are in a warm part of the natural climate cycle.
The problem we are trying to solve is “are humans speeding up this natural cycle with our impacts on the earth”
The Climate is going to change, we can’t stop it from changing. But human activities must not increase the speed that the climate changes. If climate changes too quickly then the animals and reef will die, because they don’t have time to change their adaptations to the new temperature.
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If I am feeling positive I hope that humanity wakes up to the changes it is making and does in fact reduce the CO2 emissions and allow “limited” climate change to occure. We cannot stop climate change, we have locked in sealevel and temperature rises for the next 50-100 years. but what we can do is restrict their size (maybe)
When I am feeling negative, I see the three horsemen of the apocalypse on the horizon closely followed by Reverend Malthus (google them) and think that if we are not careful we will have a second (digital) dark age. during which time global population will shrink and the earth recover.
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