PLEASE WRITE A 400 OR MORE WORDS ESSAY ON THE FOLLOWING LESSON AND PLEASE CITE T

Question

PLEASE WRITE A 400 OR MORE WORDS ESSAY ON THE FOLLOWING LESSON AND PLEASE CITE THE SOURCES USED TO WRITE THE ESSAY THANK YOU!

Lesson 9

Climate change and geoengineering

The science is conclusive: climate change is real and it is caused by human industrial activity. The global temperature has risen by nearly 1.5 (.7 ) since accurate records started being kept in the 1880s; 9 of the 10 hottest years on record occurred since the year 2000, and 2016 was the hottest year on record. Similarly, atmospheric carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, has reached levels over 400 ppm; our evidence from the geological record shows that the planet hasn’t seen this level of atmospheric carbon for over 600,000 years, long before our first homo sapien ancestors evolved some 200,000 years ago. This explosive rise in atmospheric carbon correlated almost exactly with the rise of the modern industrial era over the last 150 years.

As a result of these changes, we’re encountering climate conditions unlike any seen in the history of our species. The last major climate shift was a period of relative climate cooling called the Younger Dryas, and occurred roughly 12,000 years ago. Given that the entirety of recorded human civilization has developed within the period of relative climate stability immediately following the Younger Dryas, it seems clear that the prosperity and growth of humanity is closely connected to the stability of our climate. The industrial age marks the end of this period of climate stability; in order to survive, we’ll need to evolve. And we’ll need to do it soon.

Climate scientists usually recognize a temperature increase of 2 (3.6 ), and a carbon concentration of 500 ppm, as a threshold beyond which climate disasters are unavoidable. We’re expected to pass these thresholds by 2050, within your lifetime and the lives of your children.These interactive charts show the impact of meeting the current pledges to reduce climate change from major nations around the globe. As you can see, even, even optimistic estimates for climate change will have a significant impact on the temperature over the next century. We’re already seeing the impacts of climate disasters, that we’ve already passed critical thresholds, and that disasters is unavoidable. For this reason, scientists expect both widespread devastation to coastal cities, loss of crops and other key species humans depend on, and the escalation of armed conflicts as environmental calamity puts political stresses on the environment. The U.S. military recognizes climate change as a key security threat in the near future.

So climate change isn’t just an environmental science issue, and it isn’t just a political and ethical issue, and it impacts everyone on the planet.Your assignment this week is to write a normal length post (400+ words) discussing the technical, industrial, political, or ethical dimensions of climate change and our response (or lack thereof). How did we get in this position? How can we change it? What prevents us from realizing the changes we need to see? What responsibilities fall on governments, businesses, communities, and individuals to contribute to these solutions? Given what we’ve learned about other major engineering disasters, what strategies would you recommend going forward? In preparing your response, please consider the following sources:

Required reading:

Your textbook (Martin & Schinzinger: ch 8, pg 219- 225, 232-237) covers a variety of issues related to environmental ethics and engineering, especially the relationship between economic, environmental, public, and civic concerns. They focus on the role of environmental leadership in communicating a company’s values to their customers. Unfortunately, the textbook uses the dated example of Compaq to demonstrate environmental leadership. Consider instead the recent VW emissions scandal, not just from the perspective of engineering ethics, but also from the perspective of environmental ethics. To what extent do scandals like these compromise our capacity to respond effectively to climate change?

climate.nasa.gov: NASA has an excellent website detailing the science and evidence behind our best understanding of the climate and its trends. The climate it perhaps the most complex system we’ve ever studied, and building models to predict its behavior is among the most challenging tasks scientists have ever faced. The overwhelming consensus of scientists on this issue is a tremendous human achievement involving thousands of scientists and engineers from every discipline and country. If you haven’t educated yourself on the facts motivating the scientific consensus, spend some time here. Most of the quiz will be drawn from this website.

Geoengineering: My friend and collaborator Jon Lawhead is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern California studying the foundations of climate science, with a focus on geoengineering (or “climate engineering”). Remember, the “climate” refers to the large scale atmospheric dynamics across the planet earth, not just local temperature and weather. So geoengineering involves not just attempts to make it rain, but attempts to manipulate climate phenomena at much larger scales. The science behind geoengineering projects is not well understood, and the consequences can be dramatic and difficult to control. For these reasons, geoengineering research is controversial and has raised a variety of ethical concerns. Watch Lawhead’s talk at USC on Climate Change by Design, and follow along with his Prezi here. You are also encouraged (but not required) to read Robock’s 2012 discussion of the ethics of geoengineering research.

Optional:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a U.N. body commissioned to assess the scientific, economic, and sociopolitical dimensions of climate change. They’ve released several reports over the last few decades, the most recent being the 5th report linked above. This is among the most comprehensive documents assessing the scientific consensus, and makes a variety of recommendations and policy proposals in light of the science. Because of its nature as a consensus building, international body, many scientists fear that the IPCC is too conservative in their proposals, and underestimate the extent and timeline of impending climate disasters.   

You are also encouraged to conduct your own research on the causes, impact, or responses to climate change and present your findings and original research to the class. Note: For this assignment I will grade more strictly against poorly supported claims, conjecture, or failure to cite relevant evidence. The burden of proof on climate change skeptics will be very high, and I will have very little tolerance for sloppy reasoning in this thread. Please don't use this class to spread mis- or disinformation. Check your (and my!) sources for bias and credibility. If you still aren’t convinced that climate change is a fact, use this opportunity to educate yourself on this issue. It is perhaps the most important challenge facing humanity today, and we need you working with us, not against us.

Explanation / Answer

climate change is poorly appreciated by most people: the higher temperatures and other effects induced by increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will persist for a very long time. Scientists have long realized that carbon dioxide emitted during the burning of fossil fuels tends to linger in the atmosphere for extended periods, even for centuries.The mismatch between when we need to act and when many of the benefits will accrue helps to explain why climate change is such a politically and economically thorny problem. How do you convince people and governments to invest in a far-off future? Clearly, it is not a problem that can easily be addressed by most politicians, given the immediate and pressing needs of their constituents. Because it involves defining and understanding our responsibilities to future generations, our action (or inaction) on climate change falls squarely into the realm of moral and political philosophy.One of the most controversial issues in economic analysis of climate-change policy is how to weigh the cost of implementing changes now against the benefits that future generations will realize—or the harm they will avoid. It might be supposed that we should do everything we can possibly do now, but that would probably be wrong, suggests Broome, since extremely radical action would have such negative consequences for those alive today that the effects would be felt for generations. geoengineering is the latest example of our hope that “techno-fixes” will rescue us from global warming. since geoengineering could turn out to be the “lesser evil” in some future climate emergency, we should be researching it now to understand the technology and its risks.

Energy can be conserved and as temperature increses because of global warming, we can make use of the solar energy and make the cities as solar cities. By this way we can save non renewable resources. Vaccum cleaners will absorb dirt right? Why can't we arrange some devices with that technology near industries to absorb that dirt. And after that we fan connect those devices to any purification or filtration devices. By this we can reduce the pollution and we can keep environment clean to some extent atleast

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