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Warming up
The sun is getting hotter. It is also incredibly old -- about 5000 million years old! One day it will blow up but that won't be for another 5000 million years or so. But the earth's climate seems to be heating up much too fast. And the reason seems to be you people and your machines.
Almost all your machines use oil, gas or coal. All of them produce pollution -- you know the smelly stuff that comes out of car exhaust pipes and factory chimneys, that sort of thing. Much of this is a gas you can't see called carbon dioxide. It's this gas, which seems to be the main cause of the trouble.
Greenhouse Earth
What happens when you go into a greenhouse on a sunny day? It's hot, isn't it? That's because the glass in the greenhouse traps the heat from the sun. This gas carbon dioxide does the same in the earth's atmosphere. It acts like glass in a greenhouse, doing the same as my feathers do when I'm swimming in the very cold sea: my feathers keep me warm, the glass in the greenhouse keeps the plants inside warm, and the carbon dioxide keeps the planet warm. Without it, we'd freeze. Too much of it means that we boil! Because people are burning fuels with carbon in (that's oil, gas and coal, which you use in cars, aeroplanes, power stations and so on), all this carbon is dumped into the air, mixed with the oxygen we all breathe, and so adds to our greenhouse gas problem. And the planet warms some more.
What happens next?
The thing that bothers me is that the ice of the poles is going to start to melt. Some of it already is melting fast.
For a start, all the ice that melts will start to fill up the oceans and make them
overflow on land. And the water itself will take up more space simply because it is warmer (this is called thermal expansion). That will make it overflow even more onto the land.
Good news for fish; bad news for people
More sea and less land is fine for penguins and for fish, but it's no good at all for people and other animals that live on the land. Some of the best land for growing food is also the most low-lying. That means it will be flooded first. It also happens that some of your biggest cities, like London, New Orleans and Cairo, will get flooded too. Loads of people will go hungry and many more will have nowhere to live. This is very worrying.
Storms ahead
I'm afraid worse is to come: people who study earth's climate have found that as it warms up, the weather is going to get more violent and unpredictable. Hurricanes will become more common and will be more violent -- a big worry for people living in the south of the United States, in the Pacific or the Indian ocean areas (Bangladesh, the Philippine islands and so on). Deserts will probably increase and places like the Great Plains of America will get drier.
It's not really happening, is it?
It seems to be, but there are some people who say it is not. Can you think who these might be? You guessed it! The people who don't think climate change is happening are those who use lots of fuel, who make things like cars that use lots of fuel, or actually get the fuel out of the earth: that's heavy industry, carmakers and the oil, gas and coal companies. This is what people call 'vested interest'. These are people who depend on other people using lots of fuel if they are to continue making money. It's not surprising that they don't think there is any climate change. But it doesn't make them right!
Yes, climate change is real
Many people have studied the climate all around the world. They agreed several years ago that climate change really was happening. As a result, all countries in the world came together in a big conference at Kyoto in Japan. Here they began to try to agree what to do about climate change. Many promises were made but countries haven't been very good at carrying them out. Since then, the evidence of change has become stronger and stronger. The special computer 'models' that scientists had used have become more and more accurate. The ice sheets in both the Arctic and the Antarctic are melting, in some cases very fast. Sea levels are rising. Temperatures are rising, especially in the Arctic and Antarctic. Glaciers on other mountains of the world are melting very fast -- especially in the Himalayas. Animals and plants, which like warmer conditions, are moving further north and south. Yes, it's happening all right. The world is warming up. And I'm sorry to say it's all people's fault. We other animals are innocent because the only fuel we use is that which we get from our food ... so what are you folks going to do about it?
Some people talk a lot of rot about chemicals as if all chemicals are bad. Everything is made of chemicals. Some are 'good' while others are 'bad'. Water is a chemical; so is air. Some people think that if something is 'natural', then that's okay. But some natural chemicals are very poisonous: things like sulphur dioxide (that comes out of volcanoes) and Rican (a deadly chemical made by the castor oil plant). The difference between these natural chemical poisons and ones, which humans have made, is that life has got used to the natural poisons. It's learned to live with them over millions of years. Some life -- certain types of bacteria -- even eats poisons, which would kill you or me.
But humans have made thousands of new types of poisons, called toxins, which living things have never seen before. Most of these new poisons have been made with good intentions. But they have quite unintended side-effects, and pollute much of the air we all breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink (or in my case, swim in). The best known of all these toxins are things like the pesticides farmers spray on food crops. Some of these chemicals are very stable. They don't go away. Almost no life can break them down and make them harmless. Instead they tend to build up inside animals' bodies. This can mean they can't have babies or it can make them ill or even kill them. Perhaps you've also heard of ? These chemicals are not toxic but they do damage the atmosphere. They destroy a gas called , which shields the planet from the strong radiation of the sun. People sensibly agreed to stop making them at a meeting called the Montreal Protocols but the agreement is . The 'hole' in the ozone shield gets bigger every year, especially over Europe.
Ozone gas is a type of oxygen. It filters the powerful radiation from the sun - the heat you feel and light, which makes the days. Without this shield of ozone, most life couldn't exist on the surface of the planet. So humans are messing up something, which affects almost all plants and animals.
It was in, the Antarctic, where people first realised what was happening to the ozone. An enormous hole appears every spring, bigger each year. No one worried too much because few people (never mind us poor penguins!) live in that part of the world. Then the hole got so big it began to affect southern countries like Australia and New Zealand. People there now have to wear clothes and big hats on sunny days to stop the sun burning their skins and causing skin cancers. And now there's another big hole, which opens up above northern Europe and North America every spring too. By 1996, the ozone had dropped to half what it should have been in the spring [2].
CFCs come in many different sorts. Not only do they destroy the protective ozone, they are also very strong greenhouse gases and so add to global warming. The richer countries have stopped making most of them. But even so, the levels of the two main types of CFC in the air remained the same during the1990s. They last a long time. Worse: others are rising. China has been building new factories to make CFCs and halons (used in fire-fighting) and now makes the most. It has a huge export market, which includes illegal ('black market') sales to Western countries. All countries are supposed to get rid of these chemicals completely by 2010. But will that be in time?
Sources Of Pollution
The air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels in factories is an extremely important problem. The bad chemicals released into the air cause many people to have serious health problems every year. One of the chemicals, Sulphur Dioxide, contributes to the formation of smog. Acid rain is also formed by two of the chemicals released, Sulphur Dioxide and Nitrogen Oxides. All three of those are results of our problem, which harm the environment and living things. There is several medical problems air pollution caused by air pollution such as irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat, and headaches or nausea. More serious illnesses such as bronchitis or pneumonia can also occur. The harmful chemicals also trigger allergic reactions. In high quantities the chemicals can even cause cancer, other terminal diseases, and death.
Smog and acid rain are both types of air pollution related to our problem. Smog is formed by the combination of ash, soot, and particulates with Sulphur Dioxide. It usually takes the form of a mix between fog and smoke. Smog blankets cities, reducing visibility and causing health problems, sometimes even death. Acid rain is formed when the toxins Sulphur Dioxide and Nitrogen Oxides mix with the water in rain clouds. It can contaminate bodies of water making them uninhabitable by animals and too toxic to use for drinking water. Acid rain damages trees, crops, and buildings, and can kill humans and animals that are out when it rains. Acid rain is particularly dangerous because the cloud can travel miles away from where the toxins originated before raining.
A picture that show the bad health problems, smog, and acid rain caused by our problem.
The air pollution released by burning fossil fuels in factories is an immense problem that grows every year. It is important because it has the severe side effects acid rain, smog, and health problems. This problem needs to be solved because of those same side effects. We have thoroughly researched it to learn all that we can about it so that we could find a way to fix it.
The Amount Of Pollution Released In To The Air:
What We Do About The Pollution:
Solutions to Air Pollution
To combat pollution in the United States, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 gave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to establish and enforce air pollution standards and to set emission standards for new factories and extremely hazardous industrial pollutants. The states were required to meet “ambient air quality standards” by regulating the emissions of various pollutants from existing stationary sources, such as power plants and incinerators, in part by the installation of smokestack scrubbers, electrostatic precipitators, and other filters. Auto manufacturers were mandated to install exhaust controls or develop less polluting engines. The Clean Air Act, as amended in 1977, authorized the EPA to impose stricter pollution standards and higher penalties for failure to comply with air quality standards.
In 1990 when the act was reauthorized it required most cities to meet existing smog reduction regulations by the year 2005. The 1990 amendments also expanded the scope and strength of the regulations for controlling industrial pollution. The result has been limited progress in reducing the quantities of sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, ozone, particulate matter, and lead in the air. The EPA also regulated hazardous air pollutants, which in 1992 included mercury, beryllium, asbestos, vinyl chloride, benzene, radioactive substances, and inorganic arsenic.
The most satisfactory long-term solutions to air pollution may well be the elimination of fossil fuels and the ultimate replacement of the . To these ends efforts have begun in the United States, Japan, and Europe to develop alternative energy sources), as well as different kinds of transportation engines, perhaps powered by electricity or steam. A system of based on trading emission credits has been established in the United States in an attempt to use the free market to reward pollution reductions. Other proposed solutions include raising electricity and gasoline rates to better reflect environmental costs and to discourage waste and inefficiency, and mechanical controls on coal-fired utility plants. In 1992, 150 nations signed a treaty on global warming at the UN-sponsored summit on the environment in Rio de Janeiro. A UN Conference on Climate Change, held in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, produced an international agreement to combat global warming by sharply reducing emissions of industrial gases. ()
Together we have to be strong and stand against the war with pollution. We have to fight for our freedom is active, for all we know we won’t have a world to live in for the future. We should open more environmental agencies. Use safer cleaner fuels; and modify our life for a better world for the future.
What You Can Do?
- Turn the heating down in winter. If you're cold, wear more clothes! Turn the air conditioning down in summer or use a fan
- If you can, buy your food from local farm shops and try to avoid imported goods. Trucks and planes bringing in food and stuff from other countries, or from distant parts of your own country, use huge amounts of fuel
- Don't travel long distances unless you really have to. Particularly try to avoid using aeroplanes and big, gas-guzzling cars like SUVs. See if your friends and parents could holiday locally
Join a group which campaigns for traffic reduction, planting trees, and public transport -- you name it; there are lots of them.
Here Are Some:
