“Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee – I’m in Los Angeles and it’s freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!” — Donald Trump, Dec. 6, 2013

The Ex-US president is not the only one who has a hard time believing in Global warming. Many weather fluctuations, including cold weather and floods, may lead us to think that our planet’s temperature is not that high. However, Understanding the science behind “Climate” and how our daily lives affect it, will give you a completely new perspective.

Extreme heat, drought, and dry crops are not the only effects of Global warming. These are merely the HOT weather aspects we might experience. In fact, Climate is a set of many weather changes that fluctuate depending on the location and the time of year, like storms, precipitations, and water temperature. Any extreme change in these indicators is a sign of climate change.

In the Past years, extreme weather has included floods, droughts, increases in heat waves, irregular storms, arctic meltdowns, and increases in coastal sea levels. These were all traced back to an increase in temperature. As we can see in the graph below, our planet’s temperature has significantly increased in the past 100 years and we reached today 1 degree Celsius above the normal average.

So, global warming is the climate change we are facing, but why?

Several causes are contributing to the increase of our planet’s temperature, the most important and significant of them are Greenhouse gases and CO2 on the rise.

The Earth already had greenhouse gases in its atmosphere as part of its natural carbon cycle, and this was before humans ever came along. But since the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, humans have been adding even more carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. These act like the windows on a glass greenhouse. Some gases in the atmosphere will trap certain wavelengths of energy from bouncing back into space (below highlighted in red), and that trapped energy heat, keeps our planet warm.

The dashboard helps us visualise that greenhouse gases have been on the rise since 1960 without halt. We can also observe that even though the CO2 emission has slightly decreased since 2017, this decrease comes from decline in industry and construction activity. CO2 Emission coming from factories and constructions went down from causing 32% fall CO2 emissions to nearly 13% due to several laws obliging factories to apply stricter rules reducing emission. However, the high rise in CO2 emissions from electricity production (which climbed from 30% to 42%) and transportation ( going from 12% to 27%) which made the positive decrease in industry emission negligible.

Its also important to notice that although environmentalist have been calling upon the human race to implement strategies that reduce pollution and CO2 emissions, the decrease in those 2 monitored values are nearly negligible.

As reasoned earlier, and evident in the dashboard, the highest increases in CO2 levels are caused by the production of Electricity! Yes, the electricity we as humans can no longer live without, is mostly produced by fuels: When fuels are burned for energy, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are released as bi-products.

in the below plot, its noticeable from recent data that we are still highly relaying on the oil, coal and gas (fossil fuels) in the production of %82 of electricity, which is considered a still high percentage especially after global efforts to reduce such polluted energy and to rely on green alternatives such as hydro, nuclear, wind and solar powers.

Our reasons for concern come from the more indirect effects of global warming. Long term damage is bigger than what we imagine as illustrated in the below diagram, and it is approaching more rapidly:

The weather effects will surely lead to serious social, economic, and health-related complications, that is why it is important that we all unite in the face of this rapid climate change, and take a stand by conserving energy and calling for cleaner energy sources.

There are many ramifications to climate change, but one thing is a fact: ending fuel based electricity production, will eliminate the biggest source of CO2 production.
Other promising methods of providing electricity, all of which with Zero gas emissions should and can be used instead. they will have low carbon print and will definitely reduce the global increasing temperatures.

With everything discussed, there is no denying that global warming is real. we can conclude that even though producing electricity is currently the largest contributor to global warming, the hoax is assuming that we need to live in the dark ages to avoid the problem. however we must acknowledge that there is a serious need to make a positive shift towards green energy.

Don’t burn your kid’s future. Stop Global Warming.