Understanding Climate Change Effects and Human Role in It

Did you know that most of the increase in world temperature since 1950 has been caused by us humans? And scientists say if we continue polluting at this rate climate change could be irreversible by 2030. In my climate change persuasive speech, I aim to compellingly convey the urgency of addressing environmental challenges and inspiring action towards a sustainable future.

Unavoidable Human Contributions to Climate Change

Climate change is the shift in temperature and weather patterns during a long period of time, climate change can either be caused by human activities due to burning fossil fuels or naturally through variations in the solar cycle. The Earth's atmosphere is made up of three gasses, oxygen, nitrogen and greenhouse gasses. Carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane are known as greenhouse gasses. When sunlight hits the Earth surface, the Earth absorbs some of that energy heating its surface, the rest of that energy gets reflected and gets trapped by the carbon dioxide greenhouse gas layer, then gets sent back to the Earth surface heating it up even more, this is known as the greenhouse effect. When an excess amount of carbon dioxide is polluted into the air the greenhouse layer thickens therefore trapping more heat and increasing the temperature even more. It wouldn't have been a big problem if carbon dioxide only stays for a small amount of time but carbon dioxide tends to live for over 100 years. It's nearly impossible for a normal human being to live one day normally without using any energy, even when you sleep while keeping your phone in the charger you are still indirectly affecting the climate change. volcanoes for instance, the largest natural pollutant of the Earth, produce 500 million tonnes of full volcanic CO2 every year, it may sound like an atrocious amount, but that's not even 2% of the CO2 that our civilizations have produced. Most of the CO2 gas is usually produced by gasoline cars and burning coal, but cutting down trees or clearing land and forests is a bigger problem not only because they are using air polluting machinery, but also because they are taking down plants and trees, which are in charge of that absorbing the carbon dioxide in the air, so the more we deforest our Earth the more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, being left out in the atmosphere harming everyone and everything on the Earth.

Let's Not Forget About What Awaits Us in the Future

If emissions continue to rise a thicker layer of carbon dioxide would form trapping more heat into the Earth's atmosphere causing a large amount of natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, heatwaves, droughts, and cause the sea level to rise. These disasters would be so severe leading to a point were nations would be destabilised and forced to flee their home countries, creating many refugees. When climate change occurs and the world temperature rises, glaciers melt, shifting their state from solid to liquid, adding more water volume in to the ocean causing the sea level to rise. According to statistics, the global sea level has risen 8-9 inches since 1880 due to climate change, reaching the highest sea level in 2020. Costal cities infrastructure would be majorly affected by the constantly rising sea level forcing citizens to leave their home countries. Let's not forget about the food shortage that could be created due to droughts, which could make us live in a world where we would have to fight to live, due to there being not enough food to feed us all. In modern days the animal and plant life are struggling to adapt to conditions caused by climate change due to the damage on their ecosystems and habitats, if only one species goes extinct all the species depending on it for food would get extinct, causing a domino like effect to the food chain, no living plants no living animals means no living humans. That's why engineers need to come up with new solutions to set a limit to climate change. Either by incorporating reliable energy to power our day to day life or by new ways, such as removing the damaging CO2 from the atmosphere and trapping it underground or below the sea, or by releasing sulphur particles into the stratosphere over 10,000 feet above the ground, aiming to reflect 1 or 2 percent of the incoming sunlight, those are some of the ideas stated by a DW documentary. This is a critical issue for all engineers and unless they come up with more ways to stop polluting at this rate, all the harm done would be irreversible in just a decade. It is also an ethical manner because our negligence is going to cause damage that is going to affect the upcoming generations more than us.

What Can We Do to Slow Down Climate Change?

The thing is how do we stop this, how do we stop polluting our atmosphere and harming the Earth, there are many ways, for instance instead of burning fossil fuels and using them as energy, we could use renewable energy like solar and wind energy that emit 0 carbon emissions unlike fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are limited and we have a scarce resource of them, on the other hand solar energy and wind energy are infinite we can never run out of them. Infact more solar energy falls on the Earth in an hour than all the energy that our civilizations consume in one year. Engineers have calculated that we can power most of the Earth using renewable energy only if we commit and take action. If we stop deforesting, cutting down trees and plants not only are we going to cut down emissions but there will be more plants and forests absorbing the harmful carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. If we recycle and reuse we could reduce the amount of energy needed to make new products, this will also reduce the massive amount of landfill dumping that causes the emission of methane acid into the atmosphere.

Conclusions

You might be thinking on a personal level, how could you as an individual help? Well if you drive an electric car instead of a combustion engine car, you could prevent the emission of about one tonne of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per year or if you couldn't afford a car, just by walking or using public transport you could help. The invention of energy efficient light bulbs use only a fraction of the power that regular light bulbs use, that would be a great option in terms of reducing energy usage. Replacing your regular meat diet and buying a vegan products, could prevent the emission of about 1.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Even as little as using eco modes on washing machines can help significantly. Eco modes were developed by engineers in order to reduce the harm and the emission of CO2 gases into the atmosphere. Engineers have also come up with her machine that sucks the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and buries it over 1 kilometre below the Earth surface trapping it, this is still a new invention and in the work.