Solutions to climate change 1
Solutions to climate change
1. Desert Greening
Desert greening is the process of bringing arid and semi-arid areas become suitable for farming, forestry, and also for ecological reasons. Desert farming could tackle current world problems such as fresh water and food scarcity, and energy demand in the desert region. There are many methods that have been using for reclamation of the desert but only these four methods that are most commonly used.
The first one is seawater farming. Seawater is a helpful method because it uses salt water from the ocean alongside solar energy as the main resources to produce food and fresh water. This method was first introduced by Charlie Paton in the early 1990s. The concept of seawater farming has two processes. First, people pump salt water from the ocean to an arid area and use them to humidify and cool the air. Secondly, the salt water is evaporated by solar heating and distilled to produce fresh water. The humidified and the fresh water is now good to use for planting. The seawater farming is a great solution to the world fresh water scarcity and peak water.
Another method is reforestation in the desert area. This method seems likely impossible to achieve since in arid area water is hard to provide even for people. So, scientists decided to plants those trees that need less water to survive and/or could grow in high salty soil. They use pioneer species plants, which is a hardy species that could grow on rocks without soil. Subsequently, they break down the rock into soil for plants. People also grow salt-loving plants such as Salicornia and Halophyte.
The last method is landscaping method. This form of desert greening was used to reduce evaporation, erosion, sandstorm, and high temperature.
2. Using Renewable Energy
Using 100% renewable energy was first suggested in a science paper in 1975 by Danish physicist Bent Sorensen. Renewable energy refers to any energy that was generated from natural and renewable resources such as wind, sunlight, waves, rain, and geothermal heat. Renewable energy includes wind power, hydropower, solar energy, biomass energy, and nuclear power provide the benefits for electricity, transportation, and the total amount of energy globally.
Hydropower: generated 16.6% of the world total electricity and 70% of all renewable electricity. Hydropower is the most commonly used renewable energy, producing by 150 countries throughout the world. There are two common form of hydropower: wave and tidal power. The wave power uses the ocean surface waves to create energy. The tidal power converts the electricity from the power of high and low tides.
Wind power: generated electricity by using the flow of the wind to run the turbines and hence, it produces energy. Wind energy is the second largest source of electricity among all of the renewable energy, with the proportion of 4% of the world electricity demand in the year 2005 and approximately 63GW of new wind power capacity installed. Modern wind turbines could produce electricity from 600KW to 5MW and with the full load hour wind turbines, this number rose from 16% to 57% annually depending on the speed of the wind and the site of the wind power station.
Solar Energy: is a form of energy that converts light and heat from the sun to electricity. Solar technology has two categories: passive solar and active solar, depending on the way they capture, generate, and distribute solar energy. The development of the solar technology could lead to the minimizing of the productive cost, gaining more electricity output, and substituting for the inefficient energy such as coal and fossil fuel.
Biomass: is a form of energy that derives from dead plants and animals. The advantages of modern biomass are methane generation and production of alcohol for automobiles fuel and fueling the electric power plants.
Geothermal Energy: gaining energy from the heat storage of the Earth surface is a kind of geothermal energy production. This process could use to warm a building in winter and cool a building in summer. The geothermal energy, in this case, can be used to limit the need for other energy in order to keep the building comfortable condition.
The benefits of these renewable energies are they allow us to make the transition from the non-renewable to the renewable and eco-friendly energy. All of these energies (except hydropower) have low environmental cost and could have mega impact if we wish to avoid using fossil fuel or when the world ran out of oil.
3. City Greening
City greening is a program that has been using to minimize the environmental cost through plans that bringing more green space to the city. That is, every project or activity has to be free of environmental impact and give benefits as much as possible to the city atmosphere. To create green cities, the world has used a lot of strategies includes:
Planting street trees: trees clean the air in the atmosphere, prevent flood and erosion, and reduce global warming. Trees produce oxygen that we need for breathing and remove the pollutants such as carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide from the air. Moreover, one mature tree, on average, produces approximately 120 kilograms of oxygen in a year, which is the amount of oxygen needed for two people. Hence, if we plant enough trees, the air pollution is no longer a problem. In addition, trees could prevent flood by storing 50-100 gallons of water during rainstorm and let the water soak into the soil.
Green infrastructure: involves planting trees in the yard of the building, create gardens, and use green roof and wall. Planting trees near the building could lower the temperature in summer and warm the building in winter. Thus, this will limit the demand of fans, air conditioners, and also air warmer machines.
Build smart cities: Since congestion result in an excessive amount of carbon dioxide emission, if we know how the traffic moves in the city, we will be able to improve its flow and avoid the road congestion. Smart city can handle this if we use modern technology in the development of the city.
To sum up, city greening could improve the efficiency of urbanization through well-organized plans to turn the city into green place and reduce the problems that city have been facing.
4. Inventions in technology
To solve climate change as well as global warming, scientists have invented numerous amount of modern technologies that have positive effects on the environment.
Artificial Trees: The artificial trees have been developing by the Global Research Technologies company. The trees were made of a special resin that could react with carbon dioxide in the air by trapping it and removing it from the atmosphere. The CO2 can be released and then stored by adding water. When the tree is dry, they could be used to remove the carbon dioxide again. In some countries, the Artificial trees were placed alongside the road where there are high rates of greenhouse emission.
Algae Mobile: was invented by a young American scientist Param Joggi in 2011. The Algae Mobile was made from aluminum cylinders that can be inserted into car’s exhaust pipe. The cylinder contains a colony of algae that can convert carbon dioxide into oxygen through photosynthesis.
Magnetic Levitation Train (Maglev Train): is a noticeable form of the cutting-edge train, which use a series of electromagnets to activate. The magnets force and push the train up off the track and then move the floating train forward. The Maglev train could move at a great speed (up to 600 k/h) because of the low friction produced by the magnets. These set of trains are also possible to recover the energy when the train breaks and recycle it into clean power. The Maglev trains are also known as the zero-emission train because they are much safer, faster, greener, and more convenient than the old tradition form of trains.
5. Reducing Carbon Footprint Individually
As human, we consume a lot of products demanded for living. Hence, it produces carbon footprint that harms the environment that we living in. Effective individual activities are required to take part to minimize their production of carbon emission.
Food Mile: when you buy food, think about the distance that they were brought from the place where they were made and transfer to your market. Some foods were imported by airplanes that produce a lot of carbon dioxide, while the same foods may also be found locally. You can help the environment by buying local products that have lower carbon footprint rather than imported products.
Transportation: your way of choosing vehicles is also important for cut down the emission. If you would like to share your car with friends or other people, it will decrease road congestion and fossil fuel used; therefore, air pollution. Furthermore, using public transport such as bus and train for travelling would have more advantage than any other transports because it keeps private cars off the road.
Use eco-friendly devices: When you want to buy a new car, consider buying the more convenient car such as small vehicles, electric car, hybrid car, or those with low gasoline consumption rate.
References
Carbon footprint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTfgNFz1DBMTrees benefits: https://www.fuf.net/benefits-of-urban-greening/Desert greening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_greeningSeawater farming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater_greenhouseRenewable Energy: http://www.altenergy.org/renewables/renewables.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy#cite_note-45inventions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tefoNsmgEA;feature=youtu.be
