How is using energy connected to climate change and how this affects people?
I am doing a geography project and would like to find out how using energy such as electricity connected to climate change and how could this affect people? if anyone could help then please do, and also I would like to include long term and short term effects of climate change.
any help/advice things to point me in the right direction would be great.
thank you
if you believe in warming happening which i do not the real cause would be the environmentalists blocking nuclear power plants in favor of coal fired ones.
Producing energy using carbon fuels like coal, oil or gas, produces an enormous amount of carbon dioxide as a waste gas.
This is a greenhouse gas, that means, in then air it tends to retain heat in the atmosphere, not letting it escape into outer space.
More CO2 = higher temperature of the atmosphere and the oceans.
The short answer is that about 80% of global electricity generation is done with fossil fuels. These fuels were produced over 3.5 billion years through the process of life forms sequestering atmospherically available carbon in their tissues after they die. This process takes long periods of time, and can be disrupted by modern processes such as plowing, which releases carbon from the soil. A living plant will take in CO2 in order to photosynthesize, but most plants also release most of their carbon when they "exhale" so minimal carbon is actually sequestered in their tissue. Over billions of years, the sequestered carbon was converted to coal, natural gas and oil. When we generate electricity with fossil fuels, we take sequestered carbon and convert it into atmospheric carbon, which then acts in some cases as a greenhouse gas, notably CO2 (CO is not a GHG). Greenhouse gases trap infrared radiation emitted by the Earth, and re-radiate them causing the Earth to be about 15 degrees warmer than it would be without them. CO2 is normally a scarce gas in the atmosphere, but over the last 150 years we have doubled the concentration through fossil fuel combustion. This means that it can ‘trap’ twice as much radiation, leading to a global warming trend.
We have recently realized that this warming trend has caused the release of another greenhouse gas, CH4 (methane) because partially decomposed organic matter is thawing in the northern latitudes. This increase in methane is causing an acceleration in warming that is unaccounted for in present models. In the short term, we will see more extreme weather events, such as hard frosts followed by quick thaws, flood level rains instead of steady drizzles, and changes in global circulation models. In the long term, we shall see changing coastlines, less albedo (reflectivity) of the Earth’s surface, and new deserts. You can find more information in the IPCC report of 2007. Read the FAQs, rather than the report or the summary, as it explains things rather than assuming prior knowledge.
Be careful about taking credit for something that U do not have control of. The Left think that we are going to run out of oil. That is just stupid… The CO2 that is so bad is recycled by plants ,which gives O2.The plants keep the C ,which is food for the plants. When the leaves fall off by the ton ,will be washed down the rivers where it will break down into oil & gas. The plants have done this for millions of years and the plants will continue.