Letter to 2216

Dear students of 2216,

What we know about climate change is that it is the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that is heating the planet and causing ice caps to melt and water to rise. The Earth is surrounded by a layer of greenhouse gasses, we need these gasses to keep us warm for the cold empty space around us

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But since 40% of the world’s power comes from coal which releases a large amount of carbon dioxide, all of which gets stuck in the Earth’s atmosphere, causing the global temperature to rise. This could soon be a very bad thing because Earth’s eco system and the life it supports is quite fragile, we are the perfect distance away from the sun, not to far or it would be a constant ice age, but not to close or we would all be bone kabobs. What is interesting though is that CO2 isn’t even that harmful, but when there is so, so much of it, the gas can be extremely damaging. CO2 is released from many different types of natural fuel sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas.

The Earth is basically like a person, it is not technically a living thing, but basically with all the life it supports, it is. So say Earth is watching a movie and they put a blanket over themselves, not because they’re cold, but it’s still no problem. Then Earth puts another blanket on, then a sweatshirt, then a wool coat and even more blankets. Well now Earth is really hot to the point where it is damaging their body, just like the gasses are damaging the planet.

As more and more pollution is being put into the air by humans, it causes the polar ice caps to melt. As the glaciers are melting it is causing things such as the water levels to rise, and more and more rainfall across the globe because as the melting ice is creating more water, more water is being evaporated into the sky. And by doing this it is putting more water into the water cycle which then causes more precipitation all across the globe. But maybe if we just clean up our act and use safer alternatives we can fix it, wrong, according to Susan Solomon even if we go completely green the Earth will not go back to it’s natural state  for over a thousand years. The bad thing for humans is that a thousand years to the planet is nothing, merely a blip in the history, but to humans, that could be the entirety of human existence.

As global warming gets worse, some experts have ongoing concerns about certain species of animals going extinct because of the Earth heating up. One example of this happening is the decline of the Adelie penguins on Antarctica, where the numbers of breeding pairs have fallen from 32,000 to 11,000 in 30 years due to the ice caps melting and due to the fact that because of this these animals have no other place to go, said Bill Fraser.

As the temperatures keep rising, especially during the summer, more and more harmful effects are happening, drought leads to fire, and floods lead to extreme water damage in many places. Since 1970, the amount of wildfires that have occurred have increased by 400 percent, and the amount of land burned has increased by 650 percent.

In an article on the site nature.org researchers predicted that due to all the harmful effects of climate change a quarter of the world’s species could be extinct by 2050. That is an extremely big number, we have already lost a mass of really cool animals to extinction due to climate change, but ¼ would be completely outrageous.

This is what we know and believe to be true about our planet and the crisis of climate change. We

may be wrong on some things but we do know for certain this is a big problem, who knows if there 

will even be anyone to read this in 2216 after all the things we are doing that damage the planet that 

we live on.


http://www.climatehotmap.org/global-warming-effects/water-supply.html- this source was used for the information on what all we use water for, and what global warming's effect will be on those uses.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99888903- this source was one of the best ones, it was the information on how global warming is irreversible, I found this very interesting and very useful.

https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/science/causes.html- this source is basically an explanation of climate change and what effects it has

http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/aboutcc/cause/- this source was apparently taken down.