Scientific Essay on Global Warming

Scientific Essay on Global Warming

Global warming and climate engineering

According to the measurements of the World Meteorological Organization, the summer of 2020 was the warmest ever, almost one degree Celsius above the average values ​​of the 20th century. This News, received with alarm by the environmental sectors, was accompanied by the terrible fires that throughout that year and 2021 have arisen in different geographies. Inescapable evidence of the gradual but unstoppable global warming of which we are witnesses, but also responsible, human beings.

Global warming must be understood as the vertiginous and constant increase of the temperatures global, consequence of the accumulation of gases rich in carbon (greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere. The latter prevent the irradiation of the solar energy towards space and bring about a gradual but drastic change in global climate dynamics, with very diverse and dangerous consequences for ecosystems and for humanity: the rise in the level of

seas and its acidification and deoxygenation; the retreat of the glaciers and the permafrost, and much more extreme climates, with long stages of drought and desertification.

Many of these latest catastrophic phenomena are no longer a premonition and are already taking place in different parts of the world. The debate around climate change and human responsibility for it (something that many economic and political sectors still prefer to ignore) forces us as species to think about quick and urgent solutions, many of which are debated on a global scale in international bodies such as the Framework Convention on the United Nations on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where many policies have been decided to reduce greenhouse gas emissions greenhouse.

However, it seems unlikely that such a socially, politically and economically unequal world will achieve such a large-scale reduction in time. First, because the world's energy demand has not stopped growing in the last 50 years: Humanity consumed in 2011 around an average of 15 terawatts (15 trillion watts) per year, most of which is generated through the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil or natural gas, releasing tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The response of the most developed countries can be summed up in the New Green Deal at the beginning of the 21st century: the march towards a economy less dependent on carbon. Thus, the greater state supervision of industrial dynamics is accompanied by an important substitution of traditional energy sources for renewable sources such as wind power, solar or hydroelectric. Each of these alternatives brings with it new problems and requirements., without in any case being as efficient and reliable as needed.

Furthermore, the problem runs through a very important economic and social axis, which requires a change in the dynamics of traditional consumption and the march towards a new more economical life model in energy and industrial matters, especially in the cases of China and the United States, the two economies that cause the most damage in terms of environmental.

As if that were not enough, all this must be done against the clock: the group of scientific advisers of the UN in the field climate has established the year 2030 as the limit to introduce significant changes in our dynamics energetic. After that moment, climate and environmental changes will be irreversible and accelerate each other, in an unstoppable feedback loop. If things continue as things are going, it is estimated that in 2100 our planet has increased its temperature on average by 8 ºC.

Towards a climate engineering

There are, however, initiatives that go against the ecological sectors and that, instead of aspiring to moderation or radical change in our production model, rather aspire to a technological solution that will sustainable. Different Atmospheric carbon capture technology initiatives are being piloted in Europe and the United States with relative success, although further exploration of their practical applications is still required to make them profitable.

These carbon sinks, however, are little to deal with the global scale of the problem, and while they could, assuming its worldwide application, reducing our future contribution to the problem, will not prevent the process already underway from continuing its course. That is why much more ambitious ideas are beginning to be contemplated.

One of them has to do with the management of solar radiation (GRS, Geoengineering of Solar Radiation), a technological scheme that would allow deflating part of the sun's radiation through mirrors or reflective devices located in space near our planet, or by increasing the albedo (the proportion between the light energy that affects a space) of the earth's surface, either through the seeding of clouds, or modifications of the earth's crust or surface Marine.

Another idea, on the other hand, proposes the artificial reduction of the carbon-rich gases present in the atmosphere, by means of the injection of sulfur aerosols (sulfuric anhydride or sulfuric acid) into the atmosphere through aircraft especially designed. However, according to scientific studies, these methods could prove worse than the disease, as they pose a serious threat to the ozone layer.

Whatever the proposed climate engineering models, represent a possible, albeit risky, way out of an imminent problem and of planetary consequences. The choice between the perpetuation of the productive industrial model and its replacement seems to be at the heart of the debate.

Climate engineering could provide us with a comfortable solution, which does not require so many immediate sacrifices and gives us a greater margin of time to design a system viable, but in return it could add one more responsibility to those we already have regarding the climate disaster, and become a bigger problem for generations future.

References:

• "What is a scientific essay?" on the National university of Trujillo (Peru).
• "Global warming" in Wikipedia.
• "What is global warming?" on National Geographic Spanish.
• "This is what scientists say: climate change comes earlier and stronger than expected" in United Nations.
• "Are the effects of global warming really that bad?" on NRDC.

What is a scientific essay?

A scientific essayit is a type of writing that addresses a scientific topic, explores it in depth and supports its findings, hypothesis and conclusions in scientific evidence, that is, in own and / or other people's research in the area. It is the main type of documents in scientific and informative publications, aimed at a specialized or general public, and whose fundamental purpose is to transmit and preserve knowledge scientific.

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