SIMPLE tips to address Climate Change

“Climate change is one of the most complex, multifaceted and serious threats the world faces. The response to this threat is fundamentally linked to pressing concerns of sustainable development and global fairness; of economy, poverty reduction and society; and of the world we want to hand down to our children.” - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

Nowadays, almost all people living in this world are experiencing the climate changes anywhere in the world. We all know that this is bring about the technologies we used, the innovations in technology though provide us the conveniences and benefits most of us are enjoying but behind this is destruction of our natural resources. If we are being asked about the causes of global warming and climate change, there are already answers in our mind that technologies caused it all. We are right of thinking that way. There are already several authors who write articles about it.

(S. L. O'Brien,2007) the increase of CO2 or greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere accelerates the climate change. This all started as innovation in technology brougth the industrial revolution came the idea of burning coal, smelting iron, and steam driven machines (Montagne, 2007). Since then, we have been emitting CO2 into our atmosphere at a rate faster than nature can compensate for. Now, we have produced so much CO2, that it is absorbing solar energy and changing our climate (Krulwich, 2007). These changes have been evident in extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Katrina, a two foot snowfall in Los Angeles, unprecedented rainfall in Bombay, India, severe droughts, and wildfires (Gelbspan, 2005).

The continuous wants of human in finding ways in making life easier, comfortable and faster with the aide of available technologies had contribute to greenhouse gasses increased in Earths atmosphere. Because of this technologies that we considered as out necessity, we are having insatiable need of energy to make used of it, much of which comes from burning fossil fuels and emitting toxic levels of CO2 into our atmosphere. The effects are global warming, intense weather, flooding, and drought.

However, to address the global warming and climate change need also the aide of latest technologies with concerned human participation. Finding ways to solve or lessens its effect to individual lives and the entire world as a whole, innovations for current technologies is the only way and optimum solution because of the increasing presence of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere. Developed and developing countries are finding ways to avoid the direct effect of climate change. What everyone wants are solutions which are not only good for the planet, but also good for business and good for development. Technological innovation is seen as the best hope and solution for these.

(Elizabeth March, 2008) Technological solutions are needed for the challenges of both mitigation and adaptation, as they are referred to in climate change terminology. Mitigation is about slowing down global warming by reducing the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Among the many mitigation technologies already on – or nearing – the market are renewable energy sources, such as biofuels, biomass, wind, solar and hydro power; low carbon building materials; and emerging technologies which aim to capture carbon out of the atmosphere and lock it away.

Adaptation involves dealing with the existing or anticipated effects of climate change, particularly in the developing, least developed and small island countries, which are most severely affected. In addition to “soft” technologies, such as crop rotation, hard technologies for adaptation include improved irrigation techniques to cope with drought, and new plant varieties which are resistant to drought or to salt water.

The Industrial Revolution in the 19th century saw the large-scale use of fossil fuels for industrial activities. These industries created jobs and over the years, people moved from rural areas to the cities. This trend is continuing even today. More and more land that was covered with vegetation has been cleared to make way for houses. Natural resources are being used extensively for construction, industries, transport, and consumption. Consumerism (our increasing want for material things) has increased by leaps and bounds, creating mountains of waste. Also, our population has increased to an incredible extent.

All this has contributed to a rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas supply most of the energy needed to run vehicles, generate electricity for industries, households, etc. The energy sector is responsible for about ¾ of the carbon dioxide emissions, 1/5 of the methane emissions and a large quantity of nitrous oxide. It also produces nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO) which are not greenhouse gases but do have an influence on the chemical cycles in the atmosphere that produce or destroy greenhouse gases.

Carbon dioxide is undoubtedly, the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Changes in land use pattern, deforestation, land clearing, agriculture, and other activities have all led to a rise in the emission of carbon dioxide.

Methane is another important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. About ¼ of all methane emissions are said to come from domesticated animals such as dairy cows, goats, pigs, buffaloes, camels, horses, and sheep. These animals produce methane during the cud-chewing process. Methane is also released from rice or paddy fields that are flooded during the sowing and maturing periods. When soil is covered with water it becomes anaerobic or lacking in oxygen. Under such conditions, methane-producing bacteria and other organisms decompose organic matter in the soil to form methane. Nearly 90% of the paddy-growing area in the world is found in Asia, as rice is the staple food there. China and India, between them, have 80-90% of the world's rice-growing areas.

Methane is also emitted from landfills and other waste dumps. If the waste is put into an incinerator or burnt in the open, carbon dioxide is emitted. Methane is also emitted during the process of oil drilling, coal mining and also from leaking gas pipelines (due to accidents and poor maintenance of sites).
A large amount of nitrous oxide emission has been attributed to fertilizer application. This in turn depends on the type of fertilizer that is used, how and when it is used and the methods of tilling that are followed. Contributions are also made by leguminous plants, such as beans and pulses that add nitrogen to the soil. Those are the common sources of greenhouse gasses.

All of us in our daily lives contribute our bit to this change in the climate. The following are our daily activities that contribute to the acceleration of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere:
- Electricity is the main source of power in urban areas. All our gadgets run on electricity generated mainly from thermal power plants. These thermal power plants are run on fossil fuels (mostly coal) and are responsible for the emission of huge amounts of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.
- Cars, buses, and trucks are the principal ways by which goods and people are transported in most of our cities. These are run mainly on petrol or diesel, both fossil fuels.
- We generate large quantities of waste in the form of plastics that remain in the environment for many years and cause damage.
- We use a huge quantity of paper in our work at schools and in offices. Have we ever thought about the number of trees that we use in a day?
- Timber is used in large quantities for construction of houses, which means that large areas of forest have to be cut down.
- A growing population has meant more and more mouths to feed. Because the land area available for agriculture is limited (and in fact, is actually shrinking as a result of ecological degradation!), high-yielding varieties of crop are being grown to increase the agricultural output from a given area of land. However, such high-yielding varieties of crops require large quantities of fertilizers; and more fertilizer means more emissions of nitrous oxide, both from the field into which it is put and the fertilizer industry that makes it. Pollution also results from the run-off of fertilizer into water bodies.


How would we address this global problem as as IT student?

To address this kind of problem is everybody's concern. Every little help will matter and make sense to reduced the amount of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere that is the primary reason of climate change. As a member of our society theres a lot I could do in helping out with this global problem. Greenhouse effect begin when human activities continue to create more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

As a student together with my fellow student around the world are introduced with the cause and effect of greenhouse gases to climate change. We are capable to do the following steps to address and help minimize its effect to our lives and environment:

Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

If there is a recycling program in your community, recycle your newspapers, beverage containers, paper and other goods. Use products in containers that can be recycled and items that can be repaired or reused. In addition, support recycling markets by buying products made from recycled materials. Reducing, reusing, and recycling in your home helps conserve energy and reduces pollution and greenhouse gases from resource extraction, manufacturing, and disposal. This would be a great help especially that almost all our equipment used are electronics which cannot easily disposed. Anyone of us has the capability to do this simple task yet provide a great help in solving problems regarding climate change. With this, the number of electronic waste (the remains of electronic equipments that we're not using) that stays in our environment for so many years can be reduced, as well as reduces greenhouse gases emission.

Garbage Segregation

To reduce the garbage to be send in landfills, it will help if we do garbage segregation at home. Only the non biodegradable be send to garbage fills, and we do composting of our biodegradable waste. We know its a good fertilizer to our plants a home, so we don't have to buy some at the store. This would have a double purpose, you have help address the greenhouse problem the same time you have save money to buy fertilizer.

Use for long term quality products

Choose for long term quality products when buying new equipments at home for instance. Products that are durable and can be used in a long period of time will reduce the amount of appliances dumped in landfills. Electronic product nowadays can easily be obsolete, and new products arrives in the market. In this scenario,we consumer have to buy the new one and dumped the old caused maybe by some compatibility problems. This is one of the business strategy of such companies, that also caused of the extensively increased of greenhouse gases emission in the environment.

Save energy
Saving energy will greatly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The more we used energy, it also produces gases. I know that most of us have our way on how to save energy in our home or work areas. Just don't used it if its not necessary.

Use water efficiently

Saving water around the home is simple. We can save water in our own simple way and common sense. Municipal water systems require a lot of energy to purify and distribute water to households, and saving water, especially hot water, can lower greenhouse gas emissions.


Support Programs that addressed Climate Change
Be active to participate in any programs that aimed to address the issues regarding climate change environmental activities will be. This will not require much on one time, however you can make a big difference. There a lot of institutions both public and private sectors, however they needing a lot of volunteer to joined them. If we can do to increase their member by signing ourselves in, it will also increased the possibility we ca succeed our mission.

Encourage other family member and friends

Tell family and friends that energy efficiency is good for their homes and good for the environment because it lowers greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. Share with them the simple tips you do to make it, and show them how you make it yourself. That's the best way to convince them. If you can encourage at least five of them would be a great help.

Those are the simple tips in which a student like me have something to do to address the global problem and climate change. However, being an IT student made us one step ahead from other student in terms of the ways we can do in solving this global problem.

As what have mentioned earlier that technology is the biggest contributor to climate change. The increased of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has started on Industrial Revolution that bring about the evolution of technology. This is where the innovation in technology takes place from generation to generation for the purpose of finding ways to met the unending wants of human in making their lives comfortable, faster and easier. Having the degree of Bachelor of Science in Information Technology, technology is somewhat the focus of our study and we belong in this field of specification.

As IT we can acquire knowledge and skill that enable us to make a difference. How? In the future we will be working in technology related job, we might become a software developers, system analyst, web developers, web designers and the like. But what we really have is the capacity to introduced future technology and the chance to make it environment friendly.


The following is a story of a open source software developer that have help address the global problem of climate change. This is very related to us as soon to be IT people, and might encourage us to do the same.

(Thomas W. Malone, Mark Klein,2007) Matt Shields works in Santa Clara, California, designing integrated circuits for Cisco. He loved programming in college, but now he doesn’t get much chance to write software at work. So for several years, he has spent some time at night and on weekends contributing to the Linux open source software project. Matt is also passionate about environmental issues. He drives a hybrid car, recycles everything he can, and recently has been thinking about getting involved with some kind of environmental activism. When he heard about the Climate Collaboratorium, he knew it was for him! Here was a place where he could use his programming skills, indulge his passion for software, and try to make the world better, all at once.

Collaboratorium project has a goal to address the global problem of climate change through the creation of a new class of web-mediated discussion and decision making forum, called the "Collaboratorium." This system, currently under development, will use an innovative combination of internet-mediated interaction, collectively generated idea repositories, computer simulation, and explicit representation of argumentation to help large, diverse, and geographically dispersed groups systematically explore, evaluate, and come to decisions concerning systemic challenges.

The current version of the most widely used Collaboratorium simulator divides world economic activity into five major regions. For the last six months, Matt has been working on new software modules that will allow people to subdivide these regions into much smaller units (such as countries, states, and cities). Matt had a clever idea about how to do this, and he’s now almost through debugging the new software he wrote.With a little luck, he hopes to get his new modules accepted by the Collaboratorium software committee and included in an official software release. And he hopes that soon after that, people all over the world will be using his software to develop more detailed models of their own cities and regions. One of Matt’s friends recently got a job offer from Google, based in part on the volunteer programming work he had done on the Collaboratorium.Matt is happy with his current job, so he’s not looking to copy his friend. But he sometimes daydreams about a day—many years from now—when he can tell stories to his grandchildren about how, in his twenties, he helped saved the world from a global climate catastrophe.

This forums are accessible worldwide, anybody can participate in sharing each ideas and views, as well as suggest solutions for the problem. In the current trend of technology, wireless connection enable everyone to be connected and participate in this online activity. As IT we have also able to host a forum, earn money online for the benefits of environmental activities. From that, you can help.

Is it too late for our planet? No, because we still have something to do for it. Though we are experiencing it right now, we still have the chance not to make it worst. The idea is as long as we're still in the top of this planet, we still the chance to do the ways suggested above.

Have we done too much damage? Basing on the current situation in which countries all over the world is experiencing climate change, we can say that we have done to much damage. Because of our activities we contributed to the extensively increased of greenhouse gases in the earth atmosphere. The earth suffered for global warming and greenhouse effect due to human generated greenhouse gases emission.

What we are experiencing now is still not the worst thing greenhouse gases could give us. Changes in climate is not only we have to experienced if we refuse to realized our responsibility to address it. Perhaps there is still time to make changes, changes that will help to reverse the effects of our current practices. While we may have caused the acceleration of global climate change, simple actions, like reducing energy and water consumption, recycling, and changing to compact fluorescent light bulbs, can help restore the balance. These small changes may very well result in the restoration of our planet.


References:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/377459/causes_for_climate_change_what_makes.html
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/195464/climate_change_throughout_modern_times.html?cat=58
http://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2008/01/article_0001.html
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/07/11/global-solar.html
http://www.exxonmobil.com/files/PA/UK/cc_our_view.pdf
http://www.edugreen.teri.res.in/EXPLORE/climate/causes.htm
http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/a/greenhouse.htm
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/itgg.2007.2.3.15?cookieSet=1
http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2008/07/climate-collaboratorium-harnessing.html