• Question: Do you know how to put a stop to global warming? If so, please tell me!

    Asked by anon-260560 on 16 Oct 2020. This question was also asked by anon-260562.
    • Photo: Richard Fielder

      Richard Fielder answered on 16 Oct 2020:

      The only way to stop global warming is for us to stop emitting substances that cause global warming; carbon dioxide in particular but also other things like methane. Unfortunately we’ve already put enough stuff into the atmosphere that some global warming has already happened, and we can only really hope to limit how much worse it gets. Since this is a global problem, the only way to make changes on the scale needed is to campaign to governments and large companies to take the necessary steps to fix things. Clean energy like solar and wind will be the biggest changes we can make, along with other changes like electric cars to reduce our overall reliance on fossil fuels.

      There are also ideas about actively trying to take carbon dioxide out of the air. But so far none of them have really been shown to be useful at a large scale, and many of them have issues with how to store the carbon in the long term without it just leaking back into the atmosphere again. They also tend to require their own energy use to work, so it’s not easy to make sure you actually gain anything overall.

    • Photo: James Smallcombe

      James Smallcombe answered on 16 Oct 2020:

      The consensus is that we need to massively reduce the amount of greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide CO2 and methane CH4) that are being produced.

      The main sources of CO2 emotions that we need to take tackle are power, heating and transport.

      For power we are making headway, but still have challenges. We need to stop burning fossil fuels in coal and gas power stations and instead replace power stations with renewable sources like solar and wind. This is already being done on a massive scale, but needs to be accelerated. Because many renewable sources are not controllable, we also need to invest in power storage and build more nuclear power plants which can provide a stable base level of power without greenhouse emissions.

      Reducing emissions from transport means a combination of improving public transport and getting people to switch over to vehicles with low or no emissions, such as electric cars. Though due to the cost and environmental impact of producing the batteries just switching every petrol vehicle for an electric one probably isn’t a possible solution.

    • Photo: Pam Harrison

      Pam Harrison answered on 22 Oct 2020:

      In short we all need to live sustainably – meaning everything we use can be replenished at the rate we use it. So we need to use renewable energy and stop burning fossil fuels and oil. Travel less, think about the food we eat – a veggie / vegan diet is much more sustainable, stop producing so much waste – reduce, reuse, recycle so that less stuff has to be made in the first place.
      The David Attenborough documentary on netflix has a few ideas of how we can heal ourselves that i found interesting.
      The more people that think about the impact they have in the world the better – making small changes at a time and influencing your family and friends is a great place to start,

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