Global warming is a massive global heating event of the earth that is happening right now, and it is happening because of humans! It is human made, which means that us, humans, are destroying our own planet, and everything that comes with! But what is global warming exactly? How much CO2 do we emit? What are the causes and consequences of global warming? And what can we do to prevent it?
Photo by: Wesley Tingey
What is global warming?
Global warming is the general rising of global temperatures on earth.
In 2020 the total global emissions of CO2 was just over 35 billion tons(!), according to a chart shown by the United Nations that again was taken from the Global Carbon Project 2021. Every person in the world emits an average of 4.5 tons of CO2 annualy, written by the same source, but keep in mind that the average emittons per person varies a lot from country to country.
Global warming
Photo by: William Bossen
Causes and consequences:
Global warming is a phenomenon caused by unusal amounts of greenhouse gases ending up in the atmosphere. The unique thing about modern global warming, is that it is human made, which means that the emissions that causes the current warming of the earth, comes from stuff us humans do! Now, greenhouse gases are neccesarry for the earth to have life, because the greenhouse effect is what keeps the temperature on the earth habitable. But by overloading the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, we empower the heating effect of the greenhouse effect beyond the suitable temperature for life. The greenhouse effect is necessary for all life on earth, but when we strenghten the effect by emitting more greenhouse gases than the natural
Photo of ice floating in the ocean.
amount, it affects the natural state of the greenhouse effect which is neccessary and just in the sweetspot for enabling life to flourish here on earth. The greenhouse effect is what keeps a planet the temperature it is, and the gases in its atmosphere is determining what the temperature is like on every planet where the greenhouse effect exists. Anyhow, if the greenhouse effect strengthens, like its doing here on earth, it causes the temperatures to rise, which is what we call global warming. The greenhouse effect works by trapping some of the radiaton, which is basically the heat coming
Photo of dry, cracked up earth.
Greenhouse gases comes from a lot of things like factories, many different kinds of transportation that run on fossil fuels like cars, ships and planes. And production of electricity often uses fossil fuels like coal to produce it, and when we're burning fossil fuels, we emit greenhouse gases.
Global warming will have and currently do have massive consequences, both globally and locally. It will cause higher temperatures and extreme weather like ice melting and droughts. Beacause of this many people will get dehydrated and malnutritioned, and this can cause diseases and illnesses. This will aslo make animals lose their habitats, which can cause trouble in the food chain. Temperatures can rise too much and people will be overheated and exposed to dangerous temperatures, all this can also potentially lead to death, for both humans, and different species.
Questions answered on this page:
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What is global warming?​​
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What are greenhouse gases and how much of them do we emit?
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What causes global warming?
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What can you and I both do to prevent global warming from progressing?
Key words:
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Greenhouse effect
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Greenhouse gas
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Human made
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Consumption
from the light rays from the sun, so it stays here on earth for longer, while the rest gets reflected back into space. Altough this process is important, when more and more greenhouse gases stays in the atmosphere, it traps more and more radiation from the sun so it stays here on earth for longer, trapping more heat and essentially causing the global temperatures to rise.
What can we do?
Global warming is what causes climate change, and there are different drivers of global warming, some of which you can read about below. To prevent global temperatures from rising, there is a lot of things you can do to help! And it all involves lowering greenhouse gas emissions. You can make a massive difference, especially if you encourage others to make a change for the better as well! Together we can try and affect the decisions of the people with power as well, which can make for some really big and positive global changes for the earth and all humans!
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Here is a list of a few things you can do to help prevent greenhouse gas emissions:
Photo of four questionmarks.
Photo by: Buddha Elemental 3D
Drive less, and use more public transportation or walk!
This reduces your
carbon footprint a lot, because you either stop all emissions by walking, or use less energy to transport more people!
1
Drive less!
Travel sustainably!
2
Try travelling locally as much as you can and with busses or trains instead of driving or flying! This way, you get as much as possible out of the energy needed to travel, since the energy is more spread and there is more people taking advantage of it.
3
Save electricity, especially if electrcity in your home comes from fossil fuels. You can do this by showering for a shorter amount of time, turning off electrical appliances like lights, fans and fausets when they're not in use, and also you can try lowering the temperature in your home and wearing more clothes instead(assuming you live in a place where your house needs heating).
Save energy!
Be wise about your food!
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Try to eat more local food and eat less meat. Many different kinds of food needs transportation from around the world, which causes a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. You can limit these greenhouse gas emissions by eating foods that haven't travelled for such a distance and comes from local producers. You can also to eat less meat, you reduce methane emissions by eating less meat, beacause producing meat often causes a lot of methane emissions, which is a really strong greenhouse gas, as well as CO2 emissions from transporting that meat.
Foodwaste
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​​Causes and consequences:
Much of the causes to foodwaste is beacause the food doesn't reach a specific criteria for it to be able to sell in stores. In many countries different kinds of foods has a specific criteria it needs to reach before it can go to the storeshelves. Fruits and vegetabels for example often has to be a certain size before being allowed to go to the stores that sell them. They can't be too small or even too big, and if they have any marks or bruises, they will be thrown straight into the trash can, even though they're completely edible. A lot of food also goes bad before it can be eaten, because it isn't taken care of. Many people throw away food at home beacause they're scared that it's gone bad, and
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We throw away a lot of food, and that is an enormous problem! Foodwaste is a massive driver of global warming, and is often an overlooked problem in the world. To produce food, we use energy - a lot of energy. And then when we throw the food away, we waste the energy - and yet people starve across the globe every day! But how much food is wasted? And what consequences does foodwaste have?
What is foodwaste?
Foodwaste, in short terms, is edible food that get's thrown away. In 2019, 17% of all the food in the world that was available for consumers, got wasted, that's about 931 million tons of food, according to the United Nations! Annually, around 1/3 of all the food in the world gets wasted, and that is about 1.3 billion tons of food, according to the United Nations!
Photo by:
Mariana Medvedeva
What can we do to stop foodwaste?
Photo of half finished food
Keywords on this page:​
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Foodwaste
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Consumption
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Production
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What is foodwaste?
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How harmfull is it?
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How much food gets wasted?
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Can we stop it?​
All of these questions and more are answered on this page!
many people don't take care of their leftovers. A little food here and there quickly adds up, and it becomes huge amounts after a while.​ Food needs a lot of energy and space when produced, so when we throw away this food, all the resources that gets used on making the food completely goes to waste, everything. Therefore all the greenhouse gases that gets emitted is for nothing. And when you throw away food and it ends up in landfills it cannot decompose organically and therefore produces methane, which empowers the greenhouse gas effect.
​​Foodwaste is a massive problem, and causes a lot of unnecesarry use of valuable resources. Food consumption and production needs to be managed better, and us individuals can have a huge direct impact on foodwaste! Thankfully there are plenty of things we can do to lower our waste of food, and it is really simple!
Here is a list of a few things you can do to help prevent foodwaste:
1
Make a shopping list!
Make a list of what food you're going to buy before you go shopping, and stick to it!
2
Save leftovers!
Instead of throwing
them
long to eat them, or else they
away leftovers, store
with them later so they
don't go to waste, but make
sure that you don't wait for too
and make a meal
will go bad.
3
The expiration date is misleading!
​​Don't be afraid of the expiring date, smell, see, touch and taste if a food has gone bad before you potentially throw it away!
Photo by: Evan Dennis
Photo of question marks painted on trees.
Deforestation
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Causes and consequences:
The biggest cause of deforestation is agriculture. Around 90% of deforestation happens beacause of agricultural expansion, according to The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Deforestation will and are having massive consequences. Trees store CO2 naturally, as they need CO2 to carry out the photosynthesis, and when they die, all the CO2 they stored gets released into the air and the atmosphere. There is usually no reforestation after the deforestation, as the goal is often to utilize the space left behind from the deforestation, for example for agricultural expansion. Therefore
Photo by: gryffyn m
Two photos of halfway deforested forests
Across the globe we have massive forests, spreading far and wide through every continent, and these forests holds an enormous amount of the earth's biodiversity, and they are massive carbon collectors! Since trees and forests store massive amounts of CO2, deforestation is an enormous driver of global warming. Still, humans deforest a lot of these natural treasures, and they are shrinking at a massive rate! But how much forest do we chop down? Why does it matter?
Key words:
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Deforestation
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Biodiversity
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Habitat
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What is deforestation?
Deforestation is when forest gets chopped down on purpose. This usually happens on larger scales, and is devestating for the species and wildlife living in the forest, resulting in them losing their habitats.
1 soccer field worth of rainforest gets lost every 6 seconds according to The Guardian in an article from 2020! In a minute, that would be 10 soccer fields worth of rainforest!
In a year, around 10 000 000 hectars worth of forest across the globe gets deforested, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. 10 000 000 hectars is a bit larger than the entire country of Portugal!
Deforestation causes so much greenhouse gas emissions that 10-15%(!) of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions comes from deforestation in some kind of way.
Photo by: Annie Spratt
To deforest means to chop down forest.
the emitted CO2 goes straight to the atmosphere, and there is nothing to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions. So when the forests shrink there will be less trees, causing more and more CO2 to be released into the atmosphere, and less and less to get collected and stored.
In total around 10-15% of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions happens due to deforestation!
Another big consequence of deforestation is the loss of biodiversity. Deforestation destroys the habitats of the different species living there, and therefore since different forests are habitats for so many different kinds of species, many species gets endangered or even go extinct. Species gets endangered due to deforestation because deforestation is such a big change that the species either don't have time to adapt to the new surroundings, or because they have to compete with other species for space, at expense for either their own specie or another.
How can we prevent deforestation?
Here is a list of a few things you can do to help prevent deforestation:
Deforestation is such a big problem in the world that it needs to be taken into account, and we need to do something about it. It is more difficult for us as individuals to work against deforestation, since we can't really directly prevent people from deforesting, because that's beyond our circle of influence, but we can still do some things to indirectly help out the world's forests for the better!
1
Don't use palm oils!
Try to not use palmoils, as when they get produced it can lead to substantial forestloss, as palm oil comes from palm trees.
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Use less paper!
Try also to use less paper,
or maybe something else to write on, both at
home, and at work!
2
Plant plants!
and you don't need too much space
possibilities for what to grow at home,
naturally! There is a lot of
plants at home, as plants
is a great way to store CO2
You can plant some
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either, try to do some research on
what you can grow and how, and
then try it!
Endangered species
Many different species of animals, plants, insects and fungi are become endangered and going instinct much faster than usual at an alarming rate. But why do we need to have so many different species, why are they important? And how many species are endangered?
What are endangered species?
An entire species goes extinct when the last individual of a species like an animal, plant, insect or fungi dies. Endangered species are classified endangered when there are very few individuals left of a species, and their species are threatened of extinction. The global red-list IUCN Red List Of Threathend Species has considered about 157 000 of all known species in the world if they are endangered, and more than 44 000 of them are! That is roughly 28% of the considered species! In the world though, there are a lot more species, but we don't really know exactly how many there is. The number of identified species lies around 2.16 million species according to Our World In Data, but they warn about the possibility for one specie being identified as two different in some instances.
Causes and consequences:
Loss of habitat and food alternatives is a big reason for animals becoming endangered. Loss of habitat can happen due to
Endangered animals can cause imbalance in ecosystems and can affect other animals in the food chain negatviely, also impacting the different insects, bees, fungi and decomposeres and more that gives us food and that keeps the cycle of the nature going.
Animals going extinct affects the biodiversity in that area and essentially in the whole world as well. Biodiversity(The diversity of plant and animal life) is important beacause it forms a structure for life on which we depend for a lot of things like stable climate, food, water and a lot more, according to the United Nations.
Photo by: Uriel Soberanes
Photo of an orangutan
deforestation, forest fires, ice melting etc, and for marine life it can occur due to loss of coral reefs. Animals might lose their food alternatives due to loss of habitat, less rainwater, less plants and fruits, and also less animals. Beacause if one animal moves, it can affect the whole foodchain, causing other animals in the same foodchain to lose their food options.
Species go extinct due to climate change in the form of habitatloss, which often include deforestation, coral bleaching, icemelting and others, depending on what kind of habitat the specie lives in. Therefore everything you can do to help prevent climate change, plastic pollution, deforestation and habitatloss, will also help maintain the great biodiversity on earth!​​
Here is a list of a few things you can do to help prevent more species from going extinct:
How can we help maintain great biodiversity?
Make a beehive!
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Make a beehive or a wonder garden for animals by planting a lot of plants and giving out food and water to animals and insects in your garden. If you don't have a garden, or isn't capable of doing so, a simple birdfeeder on your balcony can do the trick!
1
Use less plastic!
Plastic can harm animals, using less of it will reduce the risk of animals dying beacause of it.
2
Recycle!
Try recycling and picking up plastic and trash so it
doesn't end up in the
nature! This can be a great acticity to do with children!
Make a beehive!
Plastic pollution
​​Plastic pollution will have a lot of consequences like animals that will die and get endangered, and plastic will be everywhere in the nature and oceans and it will affect the life there negatively. Animals often think that plastic is food, so they eat it and then they get a fake feeling that they're full. This can make them starve, or even get choked. Also plastic needs a lot of energy to be produced. For producing one kilogram of plastic, you would need to kilograms of oil, according to NRK from the same video made in 2017. When all of the energy ​
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Our oceans and our nature is getting filled with plastic and garbage and it is affecting the biodiversity here on earth more than ever, and indirectly empowering the greenhouse effect. But why does this matter? And how much plastic really ends up in the ocean?
What is plastic pollution?
Platic pollution is when plastics ends up in the nature and does harm to different kinds of species and the nature itself. Every year, we humans use over 311 000 000 tons of plastic across the globe! This means that 591 tons of plastic gets used every minute globaly, and in the same time period, 15 tons of plastic gets released into the ocean, according to NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation), in a video from 2017.
Photo by: Hermes Rivera
Photo by: John Cameron
Causes and consequences:
Plastic pollution is caused by plastic not getting recycled or thrown away correctly. Every piece of trash or plastic you throw or see on the street will most definetly end up in the ocean. This happens beacause of wind and rainfall dragging the plastic into the rivers and oceans that are nearby. And this also happens when plastic doesn't get recycled correctly. In some poor areas it is also quite common to throw trash directly in the nature, rivers and oceans nearby, beacause the inhabitants have nowhere else to throw it away.
neccesary to make plastic don't even get used properly, and rather affects the nature negatively, it has a huge impact on the climate and the earth. If you recycle, you will give the plastic you have used another life, and it would also do so that there is no need to produce a replacement for the plastic you have used.
Photo of trash lying on the ground
Photo of a boy walking between piles of trash and plastic
Questions answered on this page:
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What is plastic pollution?
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How much plastic do we use and waste?
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What are the consequences of plastic pollution, how does it affect wildlife?
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How can we prevent plastic pollution?
How can we stop plastic pollution?
Here is a list of a few things you can do to help prevent plastic pollution:
To stop plastic pollution we need to prevent plastic from getting in the nature and the oceans, we need to clean up the plastic that we already have polluted and we need to use less plastic
1
Recycle!
By recycling you make sure that plastic gets taken care of and doesn't end up in
the nature!
2
Use less plastic
You can do this by buying products that don't have plastic or that have less plastic. For example you can try to buy food that is stored in a glass
container, and not in a container
and containers!
store leftovers in glass jars
made of plastic, you can also
3
Pick some plastic!
Go outside and pick up some plastic, by doing this you prevent that plastic goes into the ocean and potentially hurt other animals, you can pick up plastic whenever you see it on the street, and then throw it in a nearby garbage can!
Key words:​​
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Plastic
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Waste
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Recycling