Need help writing an essay please! below is the main questions I need to answer

Question

Need help writing an essay please! below is the main questions I need to answer in this essay, thanks! The Energy and Climate Change assignment combines two of the most important environmental issues: climate change and energy. Are these two topics linked? How? (think about Global Warming and Fossil Fuels) Address this first, and then write a summary of the climate change issues (described below), and a paragraph about energy. Are we starting to see global weather patterns change? Will we be able to adapt to these changing conditions? You can read about US energy policy. What are some the issues and policy guidelines included on the site? Should we modify our extraction techniques to obtain petroleum? Are there alternative energy strategies that have potentially less impact on climate change and may reduce or possibly eliminate our need for petroleum?

Explanation / Answer

two topics linked : Renewable energy offers an immediate means to decarbonise the global energy mix. Doubling the share of renewable energy by 2030 could deliver around half of the required emissions reductions and, coupled with energy efficiency, keep the average rise in global temperatures below 2 °C and prevent catastrophic climate change. A key pillar of several countries’ mitigation strategies is decarbonisation of the energy sector through renewable energy deployment. Energy use accounts for just over two-thirds of total annual GHG emissions.

global warming and fossil fuels:

Fossil fuels are the main source of energy in the world today. The word "fuels" means they are burned to create energy. Fossil fuels happen to be long-chain hydrocarbons (i.e. they are made up of hydrogen and carbon bonded together.) When the fuel is oxidized (i.e. oxygen added at high temperature), the bonds break and release a lot of energy. The energy does things like move our cars and generate electricity. Sometimes it's just the energy itself we want (as in heating our homes). When hydrocarbons get burned, the hydrogen atoms join with oxygen to form H2O, which is water, and the carbons join with oxygen to form CO2, which is carbon dioxide. Both the water and the carbon dioxide get released into the air.

The "fossil" indicates that they come from deep within the Earth, where they arrived after millions of years of geological transformations. Back in the day, fossil fuels were actually atmospheric carbon that got slurped up by plants in photosynthesis, and then possibly eaten by animals and so on.

So- in the present day, we pull these fossil fuels out of the ground, where they've been for millions of years. We burn them, which releases their carbon into the atmosphere. When this happens on a large scale, as it does in the present day, the effect is releasing a tremendous quantity of CO2 (and H2O) into the air. The quantity really is massive, on the order of 100 million tons of CO2 a day.

Now, the atmosphere is a really big place. But if you emit 100 million tons of something into it, day after day, year after year, for 10 or 50 or 100 years, it starts to add up. Geophysical processes on the planet will adjust for some of this-- for instance, the oceans soak up a lot of carbon dioxide from the air. When plants grow, they slurp up CO2 into their plant matter, just as those prehistoric plants did millions of years ago. But the planetary systems can't adjust for all of it, and over time, emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion have dramatically changed the amount of CO2 in the air.

The historic level of atmospheric CO2 was around 280 parts per million for most of human history (meaning for every 1 million atoms you choose out of the atmosphere, about 280 of them will be CO2). But, starting in the mid 19th century, when people started burning coal and then oil for power on a large scale, that proportion has gone up, and now it is closer to 400 parts per million.

As it happens, one of the things CO2 does in the atmosphere is absorb heat from the sun. When there is 40% more of it, it absorbs 40% more heat. That causes the planet to heat up.

And that's not the only thing-- those geophysical coping mechanisms, like the uptake of CO2 by the oceans, also have ill effects. CO2 in the ocean causes the creation of carbonic acid, which (at a very large scale) has the effect of making the ocean slightly more acidic. This means that the shells created by ocean life, such as coral, is more fragile, putting coral colonies (coral reefs) at risk. Coral reefs are already at risk from human activities harvesting food from the ocean; now that risk is compounded.

There's nothing particularly special about 280 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere- in the ancient past it was much higher- or at times, lower-- except that 280 ppm is what the planet's ecosystems are "used to" (including human agriculture). As that number changes, as the temperature of the planet changes, then we see stable, established ecosystems get disrupted. And that has the tendency to cause a lot of things in nature to die. And that, in turn, makes the planet harder to live on and less pleasant besides.

What carbon does is accumilate in the atmosphere. As was already pointed out a percentage of carbon emissions produced is absored by natural planetary sinks: the oceans, plants and trees. Unfortunately we produce so much CO2 that the natural sinks can no longer neutralise the massive amounts of carbon being expelled and it is starting to gather in the atmosphere.

As I hope you know the Earth is heated by the Sun. As solar energy hits the Earth's atmosphere some bounces back out into space, the rest hits the surface of the Earth. Now, the darker the place where the solar energy hits the more is retained. This is called the albedo effect. White reflects the most energy while dark blue retains the most. (This is also part of the concern regarding ice melt around the world. The less ice there is the more heat is retained which melts more ice which retains more heat - do you see where I'm going with this. Year by year this positive feedback loop will increase exponentially.)

But back to the carbon. The Earth reflects a percentage of the energy which reaches the Earth's surface. The darker the land mass that the solar energy strikes the less energy is reflected back. Some of this reflected energy heads back out into space. The remainder is bounced back to Earth by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. CO2 is a major componant of greenhouse gas.

The greenhouse gases act like a blanket and are good for our planet, to a point. As the concentration of greenhouse gases increases the amount of solar energy retained increases. Increased gases means more heat is retained which increases temperature, which increases melting, which increases ice melt and dark surface areas, increasing the absorbtion of heat etc, etc, etc.

CO2 is a naturally occuring gas and plays a vital role in the stable climate that has permitted life on Earth to flourish. There is a naturally occuring balance in nature that sustains the status quo. What burning fossil fuels has done is increase the CO2 produced and changed the natural balance which givess us our stable climate patterns.

summary of climate change:

Africa :

Europe:

Increased water restrictions. Significant reduction in water availability from river abstraction and from groundwater resources, combined with increased water demand and with reduced water drainage and runoff as a result of increased evaporative demand, particularly in southern Europe. Risk is medium-to-high with some potential for adaptation

Asia:

Australia:

North America:

Central and South America:

Spread of vector-borne diseases in altitude and latitude. In the medium-term this carries medium risk with potential for adaptation. No long-term risk information.

Polar regions:

Small Islands:

Oceans:

Reduced biodiversity, fisheries abundance, and coastal protection by coral reefs due to heat-induced mass coral bleaching and mortality increases, exacerbated by ocean acidification, e.g., in coastal boundary systems and sub-tropical gyres. Under a high-emission pathway, the long-term risk is very high with no potential for adaptation.

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