Fossil Fuels Drool Earth’s Atmosphere Rules

Alex Moon

There us four hundred and nine thousand parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There has been one point eight degrees Fahrenheit increase in global temperature since 1880, and three point two millimeters of sea level rise every year according to NASA. Do you need more facts to convince you that fossil fuels are dangerous?

There has been debate of whether climate change is real or not. It is.  It is happening at such a rapid rate then it ever did before. It has taken only two hundred years for the temperature to rise at the same amount as it took for the temperature to rise during the past four hundred thousand years. The Earth’s climate responds to changes in greenhouse gases. According to NASA, “Ancient evidence can also be found in tree rings, coral reefs, and ocean sediments.”

People need to care about this because it’s gonna affect people down the line. Not only will my generation in the future be affected, but so will the next. Let’s take a look at the polar bears in the arctic. Due to global warming, the polar bears cannot get the seals they eat because of the ice melting. Just a little insight for you, according to the NASA website, the polar ice caps have decreased by 12.8 percent a decade since 1979. This will impact our oceans.

According to the National Geographic website, “if we keep burning fossil fuels indefinitely, global warming will eventually melt all the ice at the poles and mountaintops, raising sea level by 216 feet. Just a little insight of what that looks like: The entire state of Florida would be submerged, Boston, all of Long Island, the capital of the U.S., New Orleans, Houston, Charleston, half of Massachusetts, it would form a large lake within the middle of California bay area.   It would be submerged, as well as L.A. and San Diego.” That is just the U.S.. This is why climate change matters in Ipswich because in the near future we will not have a home to live in.

Now there are things we can do to change this coming disaster. Most of them you already know of such as not driving your car as much or not at all. Also, a big one to help make a change is to stop burning fossils fuels.

To support this, I’ve interviewed Mrs. Lafrance, my environmental science teacher. She specializes in teaching earth sciences like Marine and Coastal and Environmental. She said that “I think that climate change is pretty much inevitable at this point because the damage has already been done to the earth. So the question isn’t if it will happen, but when it will be reduced.” . She also said, “the governments of the world have come together on this issue, but not all of them. And the U.S. is trying to withdraw from the Paris Conference.”

Every day we wait for answers from our government on what we should do for climate change. But every second, 2.4 million pounds of CO2 is released in the atmosphere.  Something needs to change!