1Climate Change

Climate Change Solutions

Introduction

Climate change is a well-researched and widely accepted fact, for there is no better

explanation of the impact that man’s search for more comfort that brings on more damage to the

environment surrounding him. Thousands of studies have been performed and have consistently

shown that Global Warming is a thing that we have to be concerned about. The only real

controversy left about global warming is whether or not humans are adding to it, but there is no

controversy except those created by entrenched economic interests and media mouth pieces. All

reputed scientists agree that humans have some responsibility about global climate changes.

What remains is that we have to come up with solutions to combat the more harmful effects of

climate change.

This research paper explores several aspects of the climate change issue; with an eye to

understand the effects of climate change and propose solutions about interacting with them. In

order to do this, there is a comprehensive literature review of scientific journals so that we can

explore various aspects of climate change and their solutions. These may be like limiting or

eliminating fossil fuel usage, developing alternative zero emission energy sources, sequestering

carbon sources, improving pollution and emission standards, upgrading infrastructure, utilizing

alternative fuel sources like biomass and biofuels, etc.

Through this exploration we should be able to answer the question, “what are the climate

change strategies that can be reasonably implemented and have a positive impact on climate

change?”

Body

2Climate Change

One of the major changes in climate is global warming and that is having a slow but sure

effect on the situation that exist of the surface of the earth. Let us first look at the effects of

climate changes in the form of global warming and its causes.

It is now being seen that more attention is now required to the science and policy aspects

of the debate currently going on regarding global warming and concerned effects on health. The

result in the form of global warming is happening and the results are seen in the form of changes

in patterns of the climate. (Wiant, 1998, page 31)

The next question is about the impact of human activities and these can be viewed as

having certain undesired results like:-

1. Production of greenhouse gases, generally in the form of carbon dioxide

2. Increase in carbon dioxide resulting in global warming both in United States and all

over the world.

3. As a result of global warming, there has been an increase in increase of global sea

levels and that is from four to eight inches over the last hundred years and present rate

of growth is one-tenth of an inch a year.

4. The expectation is that this continued global warming will have impacts on

environment and human health, if this warming is not controlled. (Mank, 2005, page

1)

The reason for the global warming is the emission of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel

usage. These emissions of greenhouse gases have to be checked to stop the future warming by 2

to 10 degrees as is expected towards the end of the twenty-first century, the century that we are

3Climate Change

in now. These effects are not being still being fully understood, and the required changes in the

ecosystem and wildlife of the country are still not being achieved. (Mandes, 2006) Impacts of

increase in global warming are thus on:-

1. Impacts on environment surrounding us

2. Increase in sea levels

3. Shifting of animals from one region to another due to the impact of temperatures, rainfall,

growth of available food, etc.

The actual temperatures seen are changing from year to year and 1998 was the warmest

as compared to the average of the records that are available for 119 years. In 1999, the

temperature was the fifth warmest on record and six of the warmest years noted have taken place

during the last ten years. (Rubba, 2001, page 90)

The next point to be considered is how this trend of global warming affects the levels of

seas that have already been mentioned. This increase in temperature will result in melting of

polar ice caps and this will increase the available volume of water in the seas and a resultant

increase in the sea level. This process will result in floods in the coastal cities and many of the

agricultural areas will have little water due to the evaporation of ground water and become

deserts. (Rubba, 2001, page 90) This effect is being seen in many cities where high usage of

water is leading to over-exploitation of ground water and drinkable water is becoming a scarce

commodity.

The role of United States in these processes of change in environment and increase in

temperature should be considered. The country is a major producer of harmful gases from the

4Climate Change

coal burning power plants. The country produces around 24 percent of the emissions in the world

of carbon containing gases, and this is more than any other country. According to estimates

worked out, between 1990 and 2001, the emission of these harmful gases in the country have

increased by 12 percent and the share of these gases are now between 81 and 84 percent of all

gases produced in the country and let out in the atmosphere. (Mank, 2005, page 1)

The main reason for this is that carbon intensive energy has been found to be the most

important source of power for humans, and using carbon based material is what leads to global

warming. This usage has been going on for the last one hundred and fifty years or so. There are

new technologies that can assist in reduction of greenhouse gases produced from the process. For

this, a coordinated activity among all concerned is required. (Victor, 1999, page 147)

The reason why this is not being achieved is that coal and petroleum are cheaper than

other sources of energy, and the present government has refused to solve the problem through

legislation. The only action that it wants to take are to support research and voluntary efforts for

increasing efficiency of energy. This country has refused to accept the Kyoto Protocol that was

passed in 1997. This required developed countries to reduce their emissions of these gases to

eight percent below the level that existed in these countries in 1990 and the target was to be

achieved by 2008-12. (Mank, 2005, page 1)

On the other hand, the animals are being used and they have an inherent capacity to

change with a change in the climate, but the present rate of climatic change is so high that it is

more than the capacity of some of the species to adjust. The present method of adjustment by

them is through migration. At the same time, when one species shifts to adjust with the change of

climate, it may interfere with another set of animals or species which had been able to adjust. An

5Climate Change

example is the shifting of the red fox into the area of the arctic fox and that is continually

reducing the area available for the arctic fox. (Mandes, 2006)

Another observation is that an earlier spring leads to an earlier flowering of plants and

species as also their reproduction. For this reason, even butterflies in United States are shifting to

the north so that they can get acceptable climate conditions. There are also some species that are

not able to adjust are disappearing totally. There are also direct effects on land and the Arctic

tundra is now thawing and this is probably releasing carbon dioxide. This process is only

resulting in further increase in the portion of carbon dioxide available in the atmosphere. Further,

it would only increase the rate of global warming. (Mandes, 2006)

Another important factor in the destruction of the environment is the construction of

buildings by men to stay and these effects are seen the most in Pakistan where there have been

many earthquakes.

“In Rawalakot during the recent earthquake, most modern buildings collapsed except the six-

sided polygon shaped ancient temple built hundreds of years ago based on certain principles

of construction.

Dome and hexagon are the fundamental, essential, and perfect form of buildings to disperse

seismic forces equally in all directions and are therefore safe in case of natural calamities.

Irregular shapes result in uneven distribution of forces, thereby making buildings prone to

collapse.” (Abbasi, 2006) This is what happened and the land became useless.

Apart from excess heat that is generated due to human activities, there is also the

question of humans building their own residences. This is again a human activity over which

humans have control.

6Climate Change

Thus the question that we have to deal with are now to find solutions to climate changes

which have been seen to happen due to human activities. There has also been a rapid increase in

environmental and natural degradation due to human activities. It is thus a question of

controlling human activities which cause natural degradation and then to climate changes.

Impact of climate changes

One of the areas most affected by climate changes is China and a picture of the recent

situation is shown in the Appendix. Yet the country has a history of human civilization for

thousands of years and there have been checks in the country on pollution and its impact also.

These studies have concentrated on pollution in the agricultural sector as it was felt that pollution

was most likely to harm agricultural production.

The method was to collect data sets of mean temperature, precipitation and other climate

parameters through weather stations across China′s Mainland. This was used to analyze climate

changes in mainland China. These data sets were processed carefully, and in-homogeneities that

existed in the monthly mean temperature data had been checked and corrected. Widely accepted

procedures for creating area-averaged climatic time series and for calculating linear trend has

been used for this exercise.

Analyses were made for annual and monthly mean temperature, precipitation, pan

evaporation, sunshine duration, wind speed, and the maximum depth of snow cover. The

analyses showed that annual mean surface air temperature in China′s Mainland as a whole rose

by about(1.1 degrees Centigrade) for the last 50 years, with a warming rate of about 0.22 /10℃

years. Naturally, this will have a long term effect as the study is based on actual figures over 50

years.

7Climate Change

The warming in the later half 20th century is found to be more rapid in China than the

average values of the world and the Northern Hemisphere. The most evident warming occurred

in winter and spring as expected. Northeast China, North China and Northwest China

experienced more significant warming in terms of annual mean temperature, while a cooling

trend reported in earlier studies is still continuing. The reason for cooling is not known. Summer

mean temperatures in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River have also decreased in

the last 50 years. No significant long-term change in the country-averaged annual precipitation or

rain was seen for the past 50 years.

But, there was drying up of the Yellow River Basin and the North China Plain due to lack

of rain, and the largest drop in precipitation occurred in Shandong Province. For the Yangtze

River Basin, there was an increase in annual rain and the cause of this was an increase in summer

rainfall. In short, there is a higher amount of rain and higher temperature.

It is worth to note that average sunshine duration and wind speed are also experiencing a

tremendous drop in most regions of the country during the past 50 years. In parts of the North

China Plain, annual sunshine duration in the recent years is almost 500 hours less than that of 50

years ago. (Ren Guoyu et al, 2005-6) There is no reason for this decrease in summer hours of

sunshine. Except that the sun is remaining hidden behind the clouds.

It is clear that extra efforts are being put into agriculture to yield more crops and this

may be treated as an economic reason for pollution that has reached an unbearable level now.

This makes it clear that changes have been taking place, scientists have known about it,

conducted research on it and come out with various reports. While the direct causes of the

problem are clear, there have not been enough efforts to control the hidden reasons like warming

8Climate Change

up due to leaking in of extra radiation from space, usage of fuel in quantities more than the earth

can bear, extra efforts done on the soil for profits, etc. have not been highlighted. Naturally,

while knowledge has increased due to studies, yet there have not been any effective steps taken

to resolve the problem.

Modern agriculture, food production and distribution have resulted in more of greenhouse

gases. It is now known that agriculture is directly responsible for 14 per cent of total greenhouse

gas emissions, and other rural land use changes have an even larger impact. Deforestation

currently accounts for an additional 18 per cent of emissions. Thus the land use sector

contributes 32 per cent of the present greenhouse gas emissions.

A Professor of Soil Science at Ohio State University, has calculated that over the last 150

years, 476 billions of tonnes of carbon has been released from farmland soils due to improper

farming and grazing practices, and this may be compared with 270 billion tonnes released from

the burning of fossil fuels. These figures may not be totally accepted as the generally accepted

figure is of 200 to 250 billion tonnes of carbon being released to the biosphere from land as a

total in the last 300 years.

Agriculture is an important starting point for two of the most pollution agents in the

atmosphere, nitrous oxide and methane. Nitrous Oxide comes from farmland and the reason is

the high usage of nitrogen fertilizers in the soil. This is also the source for more than half of the

of total agricultural emissions including nitrous oxide. On the other side, methane results from

the digestive process of farm animals. Both of these pollutants are also produced during storage

and spreading of animal manure.

9Climate Change

Whatever be the correct figure, this loss of carbon has been due to the following reasons

as observed by experts:

deforestation

biodiversity loss

accelerated soil erosion

loss of soil organic matter

Salinization of soils

coastal water pollution and

acidification of the oceans

Land use changes have also taken place, especially during the recent years and advances

in farming, and they have also contributed to climate change. Some well known reasons are

deforestation (as mentioned), soil erosion due to growing of repeated crops on the same piece of

land and machine-intensive farming. Soil erosion by water, wind and tillage has more effects and

it is on both agriculture and the natural environment. Soil loss, and its associated impacts on

agriculture is also one of the most important of today's environmental problems. To understand

the total picture, a comparative position of the carbon loss due to individual animals is given

below:

The contribution of farm animals to global greenhouse gas emissions is quite

significant:

10Climate Change

(Rattan Lal)

Emission of gases from agricultural usage of land is difficult to control and there is no

way that it can be done immediately, and at all places where agriculture is done. Reduction of

gases have to be done by the direct efforts of farmers and through policies to make it a

sustainable practice in the long run. Some of the required methods are to modernize farming

equipment, training and advisory services for farmers and increased bio-gas production along

with proper utilization of the bio-gas produced. (EU Agriculture)

Climate change solutions

The reasons for climate changes are taking place from different activities of humans to

sustain themselves in the world and let us look at this problem, not as a whole but in areas where

it will matter the most. Some of the areas that are now being looked into are:

Food Security

What is required are methods that improve food security along with sustainability of food

systems on one side and also mitigate and enable methods to adapt to climate change on the

11Climate Change

other. At the farm level, this means increasing the use of renewable energy in food production,

restoring degraded soils and diversifying crops or crop rotation.

On a state and regional level, the first step is to recognize food as a basic human right and

then make policy decisions that flow. As an example, using land to produce food would take

precedence over using the same land to produce biofuels or animal feed; states and regions

would establish and maintain adequate food reserves, and be able to set their own food and trade

policies. States and regions have to promote energy and water efficiency through the food system

to enable good knowledge about the policies.

One of the most important international problems is the rapid growth of our population.

Among the best ways to achieve this is to educate girls and women and provide them access to

contraceptives. There is also the need to reduce food waste and over-consumption of food by

wealthy people and nations of the world.

Then there is the question of food security, and the developed world is going the wrong

way. The emphasis has been on increasing availability of food and feeding the world which

benefit corporations of the developed world. Instead, the emphasis should be on improving food

access, reducing over-consumption in the developed world, and looking at the question as to why

poor people can’t feed themselves in the world which has more than enough food for all its

inhabitants. (Anderson and Reilly, 2013)

Usage of Fossil Fuels

There is no shortage of fossil fuel left in the earth’s crust. The estimates are that at

current global rates of use more than 1,200 years quantity of oil, natural gas and coal is

12Climate Change

recoverable. It is possible for us to extract and process it using currently or near-currently

available technologies.

How much of damage would it do to the Earth’s atmosphere? According to estimates, the

total carbon content in these fossil fuels is almost 15,000 petagrams (1 petagram = 1 billion

metric tons). A lot of it is in coal, but there is also oil and natural gas. When we compare it to

past usage, there has been a production of a total of 346 petagrams of carbon fuel worldwide

since 1751. If we put all the available amount of carbon amount of carbon into the atmosphere,

the planet’s climate system will be changed in ways that will make the 1 or 2 degree rise of

temperature during the last century seem insignificant.

The only method to stop putting this carbon in the atmosphere is to start using non-

carbon fuels. Renewable sources of energy like wind, biomass, hydro, geothermal, and especially

solar totally have the potential to meet and far exceed the present and future global electricity

and other power demand.

There are significant barriers in building up a low-carbon, and renewable energy supply

for future. The first question is of the enormous and growing sunk costs in fossil fuel

infrastructure built-in. The second is that major energy transitions from wood to coal, and from

coal to oil has historically taken 30 years or more.

Another major problem is that the market has a wrong set of costs for energy. The

environmental and human health external costs not reflected in the existing price as the

associated with fossil fuels are staggeringly large. In the case of coal, the conversion costs

exceed the market price. These prices have to be changed if we want to change usage of energy

sources.

13Climate Change

Apart from this, the cost of renewable energy is a significant barrier to their being

accepted for usage. Wind power has a cost now that is 50 percent higher than power produced

by combined-cycle natural gas plants. Solar energy is twice as expensive as other energy, even

though the cost of producing solar energy have come down sharply in the last 20 years. The

transition to a green energy future will have costs to be met by us.

Let us remember that fifteen of the 20 largest corporations in the world sell carbon

though they are not in the cigarette business. Tobacco companies had covered up and denied the

fact that smoking causes lung cancer, there are serious efforts from these companies to deny the

reality of climate change.

Ultimately, there’s another question in American energy politics and that is the demand

side. No president since Jimmy Carter has had the courage to talk to the American people about

our use of energy. How, and how efficiently, we use energy has also to be decided.

This is the pre-eminent question for all persons of the world, and especially, Americans.

The choice of the powerful is to keep pulling fossil fuels out of the earth’s crust, and the

infrastructure in place to continue using it. When we become really concerned about climate,

then we need to make changes and that will cause a lot of disruption. (Jesanis et al, 2013)

Transportation

Transportation is the cause for 29 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions in U.S.

According to EPA, the average car owner releases 4.8 metric tons of carbon dioxide in the air

each year through driving and that is far more of carbon dioxide than the carbon emissions that

from heating and lighting a house.

14Climate Change

The worst part of transportation greenhouse gas emissions is not their size, but the growth

that is taking place. As an example, for Massachusetts, which is an urbanized state with good

energy efficiency programs for its buildings, transportation accounts for 36 percent of their

greenhouse gas emissions. This is the fastest growing share of emissions. The truth is that the

increase in greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector now covers up the entire

savings of carbon emission from all changes in the commercial and industrial building

improvements that the state had made over the last two decades.

The total amount of carbon generated by the transportation system comes from four

elements: vehicles, fuels, operational efficiency or inefficiency of the whole system (like traffic

jams), and travel. There are reasonably hopes that technology can be used to reduce greenhouse

gas emissions caused by the first three factors. Changing the method of how people travel will

not be so easy to change.

While most transportation planners think that the purpose of a transportation system is to

move people from one place to another, then it is required that we measure mobility, and an

increase in vehicle miles traveled will seem to be a positive social good.

There is also a changing and growing school of thought which suggests accessibility, the

ability to get the things we need, is what people really require. With a change in social utility of

the transportation system being redefined as the second purpose, then mobility becomes a much

smaller requirement for people.

As an example, let us say that the nearest supermarket is 20 miles away, then the

individual has to drive 20 miles to get groceries. On the side, if the nearest supermarket is only a

few blocks away, then a person could walk or ride a bus to buy the same groceries. There is also

15Climate Change

the choice of buying groceries online which requires connectivity. The goods will be delivered

by the delivery truck and that would emit far less of greenhouse gases than it would be caused by

20 neighbors each driving to and from the supermarket.

This requires the ability to change land use patterns by tying them up with transit and this

reshapes a region to permit totally different transportation behaviors (like walking, biking, car

sharing, mass transit) instead of driving. This leaves a much smaller carbon footprint which is

probably what the world requires.

As an example let us consider the situation of eastern Massachusetts where less than 3

percent of the residential land is within a half mile of a transit station. This should be compared

with 30 percent of the region’s households. These 30 per cent of households have a dramatically

lower transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions than other households which do not have

a convenient access to transit.

The point being brought out is that we can reduce vehicle miles traveled without

sacrificing the benefits that the transportation system provides for us and the economy, and in

this case is to give us access to the things we need. This is well known. There are some results in

Massachusetts in the past few years that are being seen, and most of the reason is the walkability

in this region and transit system. (Pollock and Biehler, 2013)

Conclusion

Today, one specific target in climate change is to limit atmospheric concentrations to

about 450 parts per million (ppm) of harmful gases. However, the concentration of these gases

have risen from 275 ppm in the late 18th century to around 440 ppm today, and is growing up

steadily.

16Climate Change

There is a good news about climate change, and anything we do to limit greenhouse gas

emissions has its biggest effect on the worst possible situations that may arise. That is why the

world must continue the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions even though some targets will

be difficult to meet. An interesting fact is that President Obama talked about climate change in

his inaugural address, and there was a huge effect of recent storms and drought on public

understanding of the risk of climate change. This may help toward a more aggressive policy

response. (Jacoby, 2013)

All species in the world have developed in the world and ruled it for sometime, often for

thousands of years and then disappeared due to their own inability to adjust with the world. Is the

human species also moving in such a direction?

17Climate Change

Appendix

The image on the left is of an 1859 etching of the Rhone glacier in Valais, Switzerland, and

shows that ice fills the valley but in 2001, the picture is totally different.

(Courtesy: BBC)

Pollution in China as reported by ABC

18Climate Change

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19Climate Change

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