There is no really absolutely perfect way to stop, reduce, or even reverse climate change, but we can’t just adapt either. We need to work together and the best way you can do this when you are still at school is to get informed. Currently I am taking a course by the university of Exeter all about solutions to climate change and it is where I got most of the information for this section. The course is on a site called futurelearn check it out by pressing on this link https://www.futurelearn.com/?utm_source=RakutenMarketing&utm_medium=Affiliate&utm_campaign=3343141:WA+Agency&utm_content=3:1&utm_term=UKNetwork&ranMID=42801&ranEAID=VW0I2QEkbtc&ranSiteID=VW0I2QEkbtc-WFnZYrj1NgsYQ21p8Xh2rg (it’s free)

Now onto the basics……

Climate change is when the climate changes in different ways. Climate change is a natural thing, it happened everywhere, there is a natural alter in temperature after a volcano erupts or in the past even the axis changing would cause colder winters and warmer summers, there could even be a change in orbit affecting the climate, but the important thing you need to know about the climate change we will be tackling is that it is man made, no matter what some delusional politicians may tell you, it is man made.

It has happened because we have been messing with nature, destroying it without even knowing and sometimes even destroying it with knowing for some extra cash. People can do this as they know, as grown adults, that this cash will be more useful to them than saving the planet because they have lived their life, they have had their fun. It is up to us, the people who have no real life experience. We have to work together for our future. All of our futures. But first of all we have to learn how……

In today’s world pollution from cars machines and anything that uses fossil fuels warms up our planet and causes destruction to those who can't adapt to the quick changes that are happening. Because of how slow the temperature usually changes most animals can usually adapt and as you know if there is any abrupt change, extinction leads.

The thing is nowadays we are warming up the earth very quickly as we have only started large scale production and destruction in the last few hundred years. Animals are going extinct and natural disasters are more common and as fierce as ever.

It's amazing how we have managed to change the earth so much. We have changed ecosystems, we can literally change the climate! I just can't believe that we have messed up so much. Here are some of the most horrible symptoms (things that happen because of) of Climate change.

I keep referring to greenhouse gas but I haven't told you fully about it yet so here is a video that you can learn from:

Now are you know about climate change and why it is so important that we reduce it, we will talk about about how to do just that.

Quick fun fact:

First of all I’m going to tell you about a fun fact I learned a while back.

The first ever scientists to find out about climate change and what fossil fuels can do to the earth were from an oil company called Exxon. This company employed these scientists because they wanted to innovate and innovate these scientists did!

These scientists produced groundbreaking studies on how the fossil fuels put into the environment would have an affect on the climate as the carbon produced would cause a greenhouse affect. The scientists also predicted higher sea levels because of the ice melting in the Arctic.

Hearing this the company did not invest in renewable energy, did not raise any awareness (in fact they paid people to lie or keep their mouths shut) instead they made plans to raise their drilling platforms to combat the rising sea levels and to drill in the new land that was previously covered in ice.

This lie has killed many people who had no control over it. If the rich men and women of the past didn’t care so much about money many lives, both human and animal, would have been saved but now we, the future, must learn from their mistakes, we the future, must pay for those mistakes.

By the way, if you’d like to know more about this visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbW_1MtC2So

Climate change solutions:

The three main ways to combat climate change is mitigation, adaptation and geoengineering.

You probably don’t know what these mean as they are part of the terminology (the body of technical terms used when talking or writing about a certain thing) often used when talking about solutions to climate change. Anyway here are their definitions.

Mitigation: The action of reducing the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of something. So in climate change’s case, it is reducing the seriousness of everything that comes with climate change like raising homes in places that flooding is common, ect.

Adaptation: the action or process of adapting or being adapted. So basically adapting to the new climate brought on by climate change.

Geoengineering: the deliberate large-scale manipulation of an environmental process that affects the earth's climate, in an attempt to counteract the effects of global warming. Taking carbon out of the atmosphere would be an example.

These three are things that have to work together to actually make a major difference. Mitigation is when you turn off the tap while you brush your teeth or turn off your light when you are not using it. On a global scale it is renewable energy and stuff like that.

Adaptation is, on a global scale, adapting to things we can not change, like the rising of temperature or the rising sea levels. We must try our best to adapt to these things.

Geoengineering is a tricky one, it is more difficult to put in act as it is very expensive. One way though that is popular is creating biochar, which can be mixed with soil to create terra preta. Biochar is charcoal used as a soil amendment (also called soil conditioner is something you put in plants to help them grow and be healthy) Biochar is a stable, solid, rich in carbon, and can endure in soil for thousands of years. It can effectively capture carbon and lock the carbon into the soil.

Biochar is made using a process called pyrolysis, a process that involves placing the biomass into a special oven before heating with little or no oxygen. Another form of geoengineering is taking carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it into the ground.

So now we know a little about climate change terminology, let's talk about how we can put mitigation into action

Mitigation

Mitigation (how you and others can put it into action)

Mitigation, as I said earlier is the number 1 way you can make a difference and fight climate change. It’s also the simplest. Just doing some of the things on this list can make an impact

• Using solar energy or any other renewable energy rather than fossil fuels (main ones being coal, natural gas, oil, petroleum, LPG) or any other non-renewable fuels. Renewable energy is getting better and cheaper which you can learn about here. Though, even if we all did just stop using fossil fuels, the climate's temperature would still rise about 0.6 degrees (this happens because even if there is a certain amount of ppm (parts per million) in the atmosphere the climate will still take years to fully heat up, kind of like an oven but with a longer time span.

All these forms of mitigation can be issued in every household that has access to recycling bins etc but the number of households who don’t is breathtaking.

To be fair though, if you are not aware of the things that happen because of your actions (the ripple effect), why would you change them? Though it may seem small, pure ignorance, from world leaders to normal civilians, is destroying some vital efforts to reduce climate change.

For example, On June 1, 2017, United States President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would stop all participation in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation. He’s doing this because he thinks that it will hold the US back more than other countries. The lies spread by Exxon have led to a lot of sceptics (people who doubt climate change), as you can see through Trump and his followers. But for the world, when estimating countries populations from a 2008 World Bank population estimate, 61% of people worldwide were aware of global warming, with developed countries being more aware than developing, with Africa the least aware. The people who thought of it as a threat was less than half at only 47%.

Latin America and developed countries in Asia led the belief that climate change was a result of human activities, while Africa, parts of Asia and the Middle East, and countries from the Former Soviet Union led in the belief that it was natural.

Awareness often translates to concern, although of those aware, some people in Europe and developed countries in Asia perceived global warming as a greater threat than others. In North America, 61% of Americans say they are concerned about climate change, that is 30% lower than Mexico (at 91%) and 20% lower than Canada (at 81%), and, in the US only 41% believe that climate change could impact them personally. Nonetheless, 70% of Americans believe that environmental protections are more important than economic growth according to a Yale climate opinion study (this means that yes, the people of the USA are against Trump's idea of stepping out of the Paris agreement).

So what about Ireland well, a new EU survey shows that 91% of Irish respondents consider climate change to be a serious problem with 68% considering it a very serious problem. This compares to an EU average of 92% and a high of 97% in Greece. The survey, which was carried out in March, also shows that 95% of Irish respondents take personal action to fight climate change, above the EU average of 90%. But, all in all, our government is not reaching its goals fast enough and although our goal is to have no carbon emissions by 2050 things are pretty much business as usual with not a lot being done. So as stated above, most of us do know climate change as a serious threat so why don't we, the people do something about it and be the ones to reduce our own carbon emissions and fight against the government for being so corrupt and careless about the future ? That is mitigation.

Geoengineering

(Disclaimer: This is only telling you about geoengineering. I am not suggesting the technology is developed enough to put it into action)

If you learn better through videos here are some ones I suggest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_6n-ROdL3g and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30zhNzdGzGs)

So we’ve already gone over geoengineering a little bit so now we are going to go right into the details.

Source: http://www.exeter.ac.uk/g360/geoengineering/

Main types of geoengineering:

• Carbon dioxide removal (CDR).
• Solar radiation management (SRM)

So these are the two ‘types’ of geoengineering. In them, they contain different ways to, let's say, remove carbon dioxide or manage solar radiation. Anyway here is a bit about them both…..

Carbon dioxide removal

CDR is basically reducing global warming by reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and storing it deep in the ground (in Sweden (and probably many other places) there’s a plant for doing this! Check it out here https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/switzerland-giant-new-machine-sucking-carbon-directly-air) This, in turn, reduces the greenhouse effect. For example, carbon dioxide could be captured and stored by artificial trees, large-scale planting of biomass or fertilising the ocean.

A natural way we reflect solar radiation is through the ice but because that is melting earth is warming up even more. You can learn more about this here. Arctic warming accelerates climate change https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/climate/arctic-warming-climate-change-23042019/?utm_source=pushnot.

To find out if both of these forms of geoengineering are effective there has been countless stimulations and even a thing called the SPICE project (if I was you I would look into it further here http://www.spice.ac.uk/ or here National Environment Research Council's web page or read this little description from the University of Exter………)

• The SPICE project (Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering) is a collaboration between researchers at the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Oxford, together with Marshall Aerospace. The project aims to investigate the feasibility of one technique: the idea of simulating natural processes that release small particles into the stratosphere. These reflect a few per cent of incoming solar radiation and cool the Earth.

One thing though that you need to remember is that even though these may reduce global warming it does not mean that there will be no climate change. These ways to reduce can be effective but they need to be combined with mitigation and adaptation to be completely effective.

Also, you need to do your bit too so here is the ultimate way you can geoengineer….

• Plant trees. Planting trees is probably the easiest and best way to geoengineer. Afforestation (or reforestation) can take carbon out of the air and also combat other problems as well such as desertification and species extinction.

Adaptation

Adaptation. Adapting is what species need to do to live. Because climate change is already happening and more will happen, we do all need to find a way to adapt but in today's world, it does not seem like we have a lot of wiggle room left. Our society is built on trade and the stability of the countries we trade with (this can happen through the nation prospering through fair trade and good governments but more often than not it is done through setting up puppet government or helping the big companies get a lot of control of the government) Climate change though will make countries unstable and unable to feed it’s people if it goes on the way it always has or if it takes a ‘buisiness as usual’ approach. Adaptation is when we change what our ‘business as usual’ approach to suit what is happening. Thinking about it, mitigation, geoengineering and adaptation crossover a lot. Like you could say geoengineering is a form of both adaptation and mitigation. It is a way to adapt to a situation and reduce the severity of it. This applies then to both adaptation and mitigation in their own regards. Anyway, let’s get into adaptation….

How we can learn from the past:

One thing that you might have not have known is that humans have survived an ice age. A time when most places were too inhospitable to live. The way we survived this though was mostly through being in the right place at the right time (southern Africa according to this article https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1297765/Last-humans-Earth-survived-Ice-Age-sheltering-Garden-Eden-claim-scientists.html) One thing you must keep in mind though is that we did nearly get extinct and we definitely can’t use the strategy of letting everyone die if they’re not in the right place. No, with climate change coming the main reason we are adapting is to make sure this doesn’t happen. The no.1 thing we don’t want is a humanitarian crisis everywhere. So now the question is, can we learn from how we adapted in the past and the answer is, in my opinion, not really. The simple answer is is that we have never have had geoengineering technology and we have never had such a thing as the internet to access such a large audience. But the reason I said not really and not just NO is because I think that we can learn by seeing the similarities in the climate and then seeing like which places were able to grow which food and things like that.

How we are planning to adapt to climate change:

Before we get into anything we need to look at our current adaptation strategies. These can be several things but technological solutions such as coastal defences and changes in consumption habits (of course like all adaptation stratagies the cost will increase with the rising temperature so it is not sustainable). Another thing is the vulnerability of human populations to climate change and its consequences can be affected by other factors, such as pollution, conflicts, or epidemics such as AIDS. An emphasis on sustainable development can help human societies reduce their vulnerability to climate change. However, climate change itself can become an impediment to their development.

How you yourself can adapt to reduce your risk of being affected by climate change:

You know, apart from the obvious adaptation strategies like moving out of a vulnerable area, most adaptation is like mitigation. You can adapt by buying sustainable food, sustainable energy. Really just having a sustainable lifestyle is the best form of adaptation.

What have we learned?

Now that your short course on climate change is coming to an end we need to make sure you don't forget about this and go back to your normal life. We need to make sure you know why you should adapt, mitigate and even geoengineer. So, even though I’ve already thought you a lot about climate change, I have some homework for you. You need to watch David Attenborough’s new climate documentary (it’s really good, you really should check it out by clicking this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqjoLAxauhc) and then give me a short summary of what you learned and how you are going to become more sustainable. After you do this I encourage you to share this site with your friends and the documentary too. Thank you for reading and this is SeeNdoo out….

Some channels and newsletters you should subscribe to:

• Sign up to Nasa’s newsletter about climate change https://climate.nasa.gov/newsletter_signup/
• Sign up to this one to https://www.eesi.org/newsletters/climate-change-news-ccn
• This is a good channel to subscribe to (youtube) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNXvxXpDJXp-mZu3pFMzYHQ
• This one’s fun for a less serious approach https://www.youtube.com/ClimateAdam
• This one https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo-r5Q-5TWB43oLI8eZ6euA

Basically, look up climate change channels or climate change sites and you’ll find plenty.

Anyway, that’s the end hope you enjoyed and if maybe in the future we have products to help you become more sustainable, we’ll let you know.

Other articles that are relevant to climate change that you should read

I can't cover everything so this is a box with articles from different websites.

(Btw for more environmental news go to www.wasted.ie, especially if you are Irish.)

• Extra methane might be realised from permafrost. This is a growing concern to scientists. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2785/unexpected-future-boost-of-methane-possible-from-arctic-permafrost/