Talking Climate Change

Climate change is as real as the world around you and it is greatly affecting the world around you.

It seems that the only way to get this point across to people is to be blunt about it. Democrats and Republicans in America's government have spent so many hours inside the halls of Congress debating back and forth about its existence and what to do with it, have cut money cited as "pork" at the time that focused on climate change, and have, even in my short lifetime, largely ignored the subject.

Isn't it funny, then, that now that people have started to accept that it is happening, everyone in the government is clamoring to do something about it, but still, little is actually getting done.

CO2 emissions are the biggest cause of this climate change. And this is how it happens:

CO2 is released into the atmosphere, where it stays and is not broken down. Sunlight travels in through the atmosphere to the earth's surface, where some of it is absorbed, and some reflected. The sunlight (and energy) that is reflected bounces back into the atmosphere, where most passes through back into space, but an increasing amount (due to the buildup of CO2) is being retained by our atmosphere, thus creating the Greenhouse Effect that we've all heard about.

But the part that you probably haven't heard about has nothing to do with the Earth's solid surface, but its liquid surface. The amount of sun reflected is called albedo, and is measured on a scale of reflectivity. The ocean, being dark blue, retains a lot of light and heat and has a low albedo, while ice, being white, reflects nearly all of the light and heat, and has a high albedo. Since global temperatures have begun to rise, glacial ice and sea ice have begun to melt, creating a rise in water levels. Every year, less and less ice is retained in places like Greenland, the tundra of Canada, and Antarctica. Since there is less ice, and that ice is becoming water in the case of sea ice, there is a lower global albedo as the ice is not around to reflect that light and heat. So where does that light and heat go? Into the oceans, which in turn become warmer. Warmer water means less ice during the annual freeze, thus furthering the cycle.

Since every year, more ice melts, the rate at which the oceans are warming just because of the ice melts is alarming. Add in the factors of pollution and the general lack of response by many nations to acknowledge this problem, much less act on it, and we have a climate change crisis on our hands. Also, much of the industrial processes that were employed by the US, UK, and other western nations that started the problem are now being used by developing nations like China and India because it is the cheaper alternative to new, cleaner technology.

Acting on this situation is something that needs to be done by the global community, and action needs to come fast because if it is not already reversible, it seems it may be soon.
(Photo at right source surveygalaxy.com, NASA)