CO2 & Climate Change

Firstly, it is not a doom and gloom scenario – it's a real situation that needs a practical, pragmatic solution, which is what mycarbondebt.com is all about.

Emissions

CO2 is a greenhouse gas which is released into the atmosphere when fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas are burnt, and which dramatically affects climate change. CO2 emissions are increasing at a worrying rate, at levels the atmosphere simply cannot sustain. For hundreds of millions of years, carbon rich plant and animal matter has decayed and compressed into what we now know as coal and oil, and trees have successfully grown for hundreds of years, storing carbon as they grow. The result is that coal, oil and wood have been very efficient stores of carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere, until that is, humans found reasons to burn it. It is only in the last couple of hundred years, that human activity has been responsible for burning these fossil fuels, and releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere at unmanageable rates

Climate Change

It's a good thing right? Long hot summers and mild winters may appear to be a dream come true, but in fact it's an environmental nightmare. The earth has a 'blanket' of gasses protecting its temperatures and maintaining a delicate climate balance. The effect of an increase in CO2 levels is that the 'blanket' thickens, allowing heat from the sun into our atmosphere, but preventing enough heat from escaping, raising the overall temperature of the earth.

There is already plenty of evidence that this process has begun; the melting of the Siberian permafrost, and the shrinking of the polar ice caps are evidence that the atmospheric temperature does not have to increase by very much to have dramatic effects

Some of the effects of climate change are that sea levels will rise, shrinking coastlines and wiping out entire species of plant and animal life. Since the earth manages a delicate balance of plant and animal species, the impact of wholesale eradication of species cannot fully be understood, but is expected to be considerable. Additionally, with populations on the increase globally, any reduction in available land will make living conditions for humans difficult, and food resources scarce.