Plan B 4.0 Chapter 3 Summary

Source: http://zpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Global-Warming-2.gif

It is an unfortunate (and even more unsettling, outright deniable) scenario in today's standards, but the earth is facing the inevitable conclusion that is global warming (also known as climate change by today's standards). Rapid temperatures fluctuations, including the atmosphere and the ocean's temperature, are increasing slowly but surely and are affecting weather patterns all across the continents. Levels of carbon dioxide in the air is expanding due to factories and other harmful emissions, and is magnifying the green house effect by trapping more and more heat inside the atmosphere. Although they are symptoms now, they need to be addressed before they become more than just symptoms. Otherwise, we will be dealing with a environmental crisis the world has never seen before. 

I read an chapter from Lester Brown's Plan B 4.0 and he iterates some of these concerns time and time again. "This warming is caused by the accumulation of heat-trapping 'greenhouse' gases and other pollutants in the atmosphere." (Brown 57). A disadvantageous effect of growing population and rapid industrialization. Another one of these negatives is also the melting of the polar ice caps. "Ice is melting so fast that even climate scientists are scrambling to keep up with the shrinkage of ice sheets and glaciers." (Brown 61). Although we have been causing the harmful effects of global warming, we have been doing some methods in order to rectify them. Take CFC's for example; They were used in a wide variety of products from fire extinguisher and refrigerator coolant to aerosol cans and exhaust from funnel stacks, and they depleted the precious Ozone layer that protects us. They were thankfully banned (at least in the United States) in 1978, and the Ozone layer ever since then started to regenerate.

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Future_ozone_layer_concentrations.jpg

 

Another extensional crisis that can be caused by climate change is lower food yields and harvests. "If all the earth's mountain glaciers melted, they would raise sea level... but it is the summer ice melt from these glaciers that sustains so many of the world's rivers during the dry season." (Brown 66). Even though we as a species have hunger and famine as a huge detriment as of now, it would be even more catastrophic if we were to continue the trend of climate change. "Agriculture in the Central Asian counties of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and  Uzbekistan depends heavily on snowmelt from the Hindu Kush, Pamir and Tien Shan mountain ranges for irrigation water." (Brown 67). As climate change increases the temperature of our environment, natural irrigation will soon slowly come to a stop, soil erosion would possibly be more probable, and newer and more costly farming techniques would have to be developed. Hopefully more efforts to spread awareness and information comes to fruition, otherwise humanity as a species can see a bleak future for itself sometime soon.

Source: http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wamc/files/201312/Foods_%28cropped%29%5B1%5D.jpg