SAVE THE PLANET
Biggest factors in Climate Change
In the start of the industrial era, we have been emitting CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) and other greenhouse gases in to our atmosphere. Along with it are the developments of other technology that makes our lives easier but makes our world more polluted. As we learned more and more about the effects of our development, we found out that climates having changing drastically. The natural disasters that we experience are increasing in numbers and in power, and we think that we can make a change. By using different kinds of media, we hope that we can make other people aware that small change can make big differences, and the future relies on us.
Fossil fuels
When fossil fuels are burned, they release large amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the air. Greenhouse gases trap heat in our atmosphere, causing global warming. In fact, the average global temperature has already increased by 1C. Warming above 1.5°C risks further sea level rise, extreme weather, biodiversity loss and species extinction, as well as food scarcity, worsening health and poverty for millions of people worldwide.
Fossil fuel emissions are the most dominant cause of global warming. In 2018, 89% of global CO2 emissions came from fossil fuels and industry. Coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels and responsible for over 0.3C of the 1C increase in global average temperatures – making it the single largest source of global temperature rise. Oil releases a huge amount of carbon when burned - approximately a third of the world’s total carbon emissions. There have also been a number of oil spills in recent years that have a devastating impact on our ocean’s ecosystem. Natural gas is often promoted as a cleaner energy source than coal and oil. However, it is still a fossil fuel and accounts for a fifth of the world’s total carbon emissions.
Deforestation
We need trees for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that they absorb not only the carbon dioxide that we exhale, but also the heat-trapping greenhouse gases that human activities emit. As those gases enter the atmosphere, global warming increases, causing climate change.
Forests and trees store carbon. When they are degraded or completely cleared, for example, by fire – a process referred to as deforestation – this stored carbon has the potential to be released back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and contribute to climate change. Deforestation contributes up to 10% of the carbon dioxide emissions caused by human activity, according to 2013 figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This figure rises to 15% if forest degradation and tropical peatland emissions are included. Tropical forests now emit more carbon than they capture, due to deforestation and degradation, so that they are no longer a carbon ‘sink’, according to a study published in 2017 using satellite data from 2003–14.
CFCs and fluorinated gases
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and halons destroy the earth's protective ozone layer, which shields the earth from harmful ultraviolet rays generated from the sun. CFCs and HCFCs also warm the lower atmosphere of the earth, changing global climate. Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) also act to warm the planet.
Ozone layer depletion is caused when chlorine or bromine reacts with ozone. 84% of the chlorine entering the stratosphere is from man-made sources, such as CFCs and HCFCs with the remaining 16% from natural sources, such as the ocean and volcanoes. About half of bromine entering the stratosphere is from man-made sources, mostly Halons.