What are three good ways to stop global warming?

Question

I have to write a persuasive report for school of why we should stop global warming. So far, I've only thought of 2 ways to stop the g. warming. The ones I thought of was "stop driving cars a lot" and "only turn on lights when you're using them" xcept the words are restated. can you help me think of one more way? and also your opinion on my two ways

Answer 1

Your two ways are actually related to each other, since each saves energy, which is a valid approach, since gas engines generate greenhouse gases. Another method would be a massive tree-planting effort to convert CO2 in the air as plant matter. A third would be research to "go with the flow" and find out the local consequences of global warming. For example, if an area growing wheat will be predicted to be able to grow corn in a warmer earth, some provision could be made for planning the conversion.
Remember that your report is about WHY we should stop global warming, and not so much about HOW we stop it or slow it down. If you don't persuade people to stop it, no one would care on how to stop it.

Answer 2

Why or How? Your 2 items appear to address HOW, not WHY but your question was WHY. To go along with your existing two methods, I would add the following -

1 - Setup a backyard pond, and/or added green space. Green space recycles our pollution and tries to counteract the effects that we have on the environment. A small pond with some algae, installed near a couple of newly planted trees will do wonders if it can be found in everyone’s back yard.

2 - Forget about trying to get people to stop driving - it won't happen even though it would help. Focus on cleaner modes of transportation. Little things mean a lot. For instance, ban cars older than 12 years from expressway or hiway driving, require stiffer smog testing at annual inspections, increase the minimum pump octane rating from 86% to 94%, require E85 or better to be available at all multi-pump stations. These would all help and are quite possible through legislation without significantly impacting our way of life.

3 - Color asphalt white instead of black. Sounds silly, but white roads and parking lots and rooftops reflect heat whereas black absorbs it.

4 - Use solar heat exchangers and photovoltaics to convert heat and sun light into electricity. Not because its efficient but because of the laws of conservation of energy, doing so takes heat and converts it to a useable form other than heat.

5 - Invest in widespread home insulation and energy efficiency improvements. Waste less, use less, equals lower emissions. - Related to your turn the lights off idea - Convert to Compact Fluorescents Lights.

6 - Champion Work From Home programs where people whose occupations support it are allowed to work from home certain days of the week instead of commuting to work. This would save on emissions.

7 – Encourage the use of “Atomic Power”. Its not perfect, but it’s the cleanest we have for now.

Answer 3

global warming is a organic procedure, and may't be stopped. The ozone hollow issue has no longer something to do with global warming, and the ozone issue is what could properly be managed. by technique of proscribing CFC (chlorofluorocarbons) emission, and in no way grilling out, topping off gas, mowing lawns etc, on warm days can help decelerate the ozone hollow issue. The ozone hollow issue does no longer reason a hotter temperature, yet quite an boost contained in the UV ordinary allowed into the ambience which causes epidermis maximum cancers. KB

Answer 4

Al Gore:

Putting the technology together to start cleaning up and reintroducing new ozone to the atmosphere is possible. The cost and size of this project means taking a long term commitment. I am proposing the biggest cleanup in history. Al, I do not see any proposal that is realistic or proven at any cost, not even Washington can solve this problem. But if every person on earth does his or her share, we may be ok. Never-the-less, I see governments acting like a deer in a car’s headlights and people doing the same thing. The inevitable is almost upon us. Cleanup and change is the only option.
The first cleanup machine starts with a ten billion dollars investment. Ten year later with twenty-five machines operating, these machines will produce enough ozone to replace both holes at the poles. But more importantly, these machines will remove chemicals that deplete the ozone. Beyond making ozone, decreasing the poisons that deplete ozone, these machines reduce the major greenhouse gases and unbelievably we can have all this for fewer than one hundred billion dollars.
Beyond cleaning up our atmospheric mess as I am suggesting, we humans must do a better job reducing or cleaning up carbon monoxide, collecting and storing methane and ethane for fuel, burning less of everything, cleaning up our forests and using more solar insolation. Solar steam electric generators are the type of systems we need and are 90 percent efficient and near 100 percent if heat recovery is used. I believe nearly 30,000 MW are needed in the USA and Mexico over the next 30 years. This opens the door to new electric cars, new construction vital to our way of life, new bullet trains, and these industries produce new high paying jobs. From small scale solar generators on malls, to 2000 acre collector sights, these systems are viable and ready for production. The Federal Government must give up some land, money and have less regulation to help save the planet from disaster.
Al, spreading the message that we can help ourselves is a key to the development of these businesses. Washington can help: the businesses need grants, patents, land and regulations. Congress must create a pollution surcharge. From gas, coal, diesel, wood to cooling towers, from cattle, other ranches to cigarettes, from agriculture burning to airplane passengers, this surcharge can fund parts of these projects and many stationary pollution control devices in general.
Your personal support is very important to getting the atmosphere cleanup started and developing sights for solar generators.

Sincerely,

Electric cars, skylights, whole house fans, evaporative cooling, I could keep going. But solar is very important. Cleanup vital.

Answer 5

I just showed my Integrated Science classes the documentary by Al Gore called "An Inconvenient Truth", which is all about global warming. My students were enthralled. It is an excellent documentary explaining everything you would ever want to know about global warming, along with all the things that we can do to stop it. You can rent this DVD at your local Blockbuster or any other movie rental place that you use. I highly recommend it. Once you see this DVD, I think you will write the best paper in your class . . . guaranteed!!!

TEACHER

Answer 6

this is a very involved issue ,and there are much more than 3 ways

Global warming is in theory reversable,but it will mean global co operation between all countries ,and taking into account human nature and the world politics ,it is unlikely that this will happen,

At least not untill we are all in the middle of planetary disastres and it becomes a battle for the survival of humanity every where.

SOLUTIONS
if you want to help the planet ,plant a tree every week ,if everyone on the planet did we we would be able to reverse the destructive processes

reduce carbon emisions,and they are already working on that by alternative forms of energy and regulations on carbon producing materials,aerosol cans,burning rubbish,industrial chimneys,powerplants etc.

the capture of carbon and the production of water and assist the aquiferous manta.

the world bank pays large subsidies for reforrestation to capture carbon and the best tree for this is the Pawlonia

Waterharvesting projects ,such as millions of small dams.to redirect over ground waterflows from the rains into the ground to supply subteranian water supplies.

the protection of existing forrests.

stop building more highways,urban planning to include vegetation stop building cities encourage people to return to the land to conduct their business from there which now has become possible thanks to the internet.

education to motivate people to auto sufficiency by building more home food gardens.

education on environmental awareness
education on family planning to curb over´populaion

Agricultural education and improvements to follow the principals or sustainability and soil management.

more environmental or land ,design to prevent bush fires,such as--fire breaks

,more dams.regulations and control for public behaviour

alternative effeciant public transport to discourage the use of the internal conbustion engine

recicling wastes,limit water use

i am a Permaculture Consultant for the department of Ecology for the regional government in Guerrero Mexico
http://spaces.msn.com/byderule

Source(s) Lester E Brown is the director and founder of the global institute of Environment in the United states .he has compiled a report based on all the satalite information available from NASA,and all the information that has
come from Universities and American embassies WORLD WIDE ,
his little book--a planet under stress , Plan B has been trans lated into 50 languages and won the best book award in 2003.

Answer 7

make sure you describe why driving less would help. and why using lights less would help (i assume you know that its because most of our electricity comes from coal burning facilities, and using less energy means using less coal, so less co2 is released into the atmosphere) also describe how cars are non-point sources (they move and are not stationary so its harder to control them) and a coal burning power plant is a point source which stays in one place and can be regulated easier. another way would be to investigate alternative energy sources such as biofuel (basically gasoline from corn), hydropower (from dams or from turbines in a fast moving river), nuclear power (fission currently being used and fusion being researched). you can also talk about reducing co2 that stays in the atmosphere not by controlling the emissions but by increasing the removal. i mean cutting down on deforestation (no pun intended) because trees use co2 that is released into the air. thats about all i can think of. sorry if that was of no help.

Answer 8

shut down all factories in the world, Shut down all coal and oil fired electric power plants, Shut down all airlines and shift to solar power, Stop cutting down rain forest they absorb carbon monoxide and creat oxygen. Shut down all ships and oil barges. Although all of this sounds to be impossible but man can live on this earth strickly on solar energy from the sun. But
industry , commercailizim, and Governments are to greedy to change.

Sincerely yours,
Fred M. Hunter
[e-mail]

Answer 9

1) blow up the eatrth and all life on it.
2) Build massive refrigeration units
3) Melt the polar ice caps and let the cool water travel and cool the earth

Answer 10

Go vegetarian...

1.Caring for the enviroment-
America's meat eating habits are bad.Half of the water used in the U.S. is used for animal agriculture.Our topsoil is damaged by raising animals for food,we only have about 6 inches of topsoil left,it takes 500 years for 1 inch of topsoil to be created.Every year in the US an area the size of Connecticut is lost to topsoil erosion--85% of this erosion is associated with livestock production.
.Animals create a huge amount of waste,a population of 60,000 pigs creates the same amount of waste as a group of 240,000 people,and our poop is flushed and filtered so the water can be used again,animals' waste is put into a manure lagoon or a small amount can be put back into soil,but most of it builds up.Think about what I said before
60,000 pigs=240,000 people
and now think of the 10 billion animals raised for food each year.Imagine the waste created.The number of farm animals on earth has risen fivefold since 1950: humans are now outnumbered three to one. Livestock already consume half the world's grain, and their numbers are still growing almost exponentially.This is why biotechnology - whose promoters claim that it will feed the world - has been deployed to produce not food but feed: it allows farmers to switch from grains which keep people alive to the production of more lucrative crops for livestock. Within as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world's animals or it continues to feed the world's people. It cannot do both.

The impending crisis will be accelerated by the depletion of both phosphate fertiliser and the water used to grow crops. Every kilogram of beef we consume, according to research by the agronomists David Pimental and Robert Goodland, requires around 100,000 litres of water. Aquifers are beginning the run dry all over the world, largely because of abstraction by farmers.Approximately 1.3 billion cattle populate the earth at any one time. They exist artificially in these vast numbers to satisfy the excessive human demand for the meat and by-products they provide. Their combined weight exceeds that of the entire human population. By sheer numbers, their consequent appetite for the world's resources, have made them a primary cause for the destruction of the environment. In the US, feedlot cattle yield one pound of meat for every 16 pounds of feed. (Within the 12-year period preceding 1992, the number of chickens worldwide increased 132% to 17.2 billion.)It takes an average of 2,500 gallons of water to produce a single pound of meat. According to Newsweek, "The water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer could float a destroyer." In contrast, it takes only 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat.Feeding the average meat-eating American requires 3-1/4 acres of land per year. Feeding a person who eats no food derived from animals requires only 1/6 acre per year. Recent marginal growth in animal protein consumption in increasingly affluent developing countries has led to huge increases in the need for feed grains. In 1995, quite suddenly, China went from being an exporter to an importer of grain. World shortages are predicted as both populations and meat consumption rise together--an unsustainable combination. Early in 1996, the world was down to a 48-day supply of grain. According to Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute, the world "may have crossed a threshold where even the best efforts of governments to build stocks may not be enough."The passage of local laws favoring massive corporate pork operations in North Carolina recently propelled the state into the number two spot in national hog production, practically overnight. In terms of manure, the state might as well have grafted the human population of New York City onto its coastal plain, times two! Studies by North Carolina State University estimate that half of the some 2,500 open hog manure cesspools (euphemistically termed "lagoons"), now needed as part of hog productions there, are leaking contaminants such as nitrate--a chemical linked to blue-baby syndrome--into the ground water. In the summer of 1995, at least five lagoons actually broke open, letting loose tens of millions of gallons of hog waste into rivers and on to neighboring farm lands. No mechanical method of retrieval exists that cleans contaminants from groundwater. Only nature is able to purify things again; and that could take several generations.Worldwide demand for fish, along with advances in fishing methods--sonar, driftnets, floating refrigerated fish packing factories--is bringing ocean species, one after another, to the brink of extinction. In the Nov., '95 edition of Scientific American, Carl Safina writes, "For the past two decades, the fishing industry has had increasingly to face the result of extracting [fish] faster than fish populations [can] reproduce." Research reveals that the intended cure--aquaculture (fish farming)--actually hastens the trend toward fish extinction, while disrupting delicate coastal ecosystems at the same time.A scientist, reporting in the industry publication Confinement, calculated in 1976 that the planet's entire petroleum reserves would be exhausted in 13 years if the whole world were to take on the diet and technological methods of farming used in the US. Trees are being cut down at an alarming rate in the US, as well as around the world, for meat production. If tomorrow people in the US made a radical change away from their meat-centered diets, an area of land the size of all of Texas and most of Oklahoma could be returned to forest.It is estimated that livestock production accounts for twice the amount of pollution in the US as that produced by industrial sources. Livestock in the US produce 20 times the excrement of the entire US population. Since farm animals today spend much or all of their lives in factory sheds or feedlots, their waste no longer serves to fertilize pastures a little at a time. One poultry researcher, according to United Poultry Concerns literature, explains: "A one-million-hen complex will produce 125 tons of wet manure a day." To responsibly store, disperse, or degrade this amount of animal waste is simply not possible. Much of the waste inevitably is flushed into rivers and streams. Becoming a vegetarian does more to clean up our nation's water than any other single action.Methane is one of the four greenhouse gasses that contributes to the environmental trend known as global warming. The 1.3 billion cattle in the world produce one fifth of all the methane emitted into the atmosphere.Meat contains no essential nutrients that cannot be obtained directly from plant sources. By cycling grain through livestock, we lose 90% of the protein, 96% of the calories, all of its carbohydrates, and all of its nutritional fiber.Agricultural engineers have compared the energy costs of producing poultry, pork and other meats with the energy costs of producing a number of plant foods. It was found that even the least efficient plant food was nearly 10 times as efficient in returning food energy as the most energy efficient animal food.Since so much fossil fuel is needed to produce it, beef could be considered a petroleum product. With factory housing, irrigation, trucking, and refrigeration, as well as petrochemical fertilizer production requiring vast amounts of energy, approximately one gallon of gasoline goes into every pound of grain-fed beef.The direct and hidden costs of soil erosion and runoff in the US, mostly attributable to cattle and feed crop production, is estimated at $44 billion a year. Each pound of feedlot beef can be equated with 35 pounds of eroded topsoil.A nationwide switch to a pure vegetarian diet would allow us to cut our oil imports by 60%.Compared to a vegan diet, three days of a typical American diet requires as much water as you use for showering all year (assuming you shower every day). acre of land can produce 20,000 pounds of potatoes, but only 165 pounds of beef. In the U.S., 260 million acres of forest have been destroyed for use as agricultural land to support our meat diet (over 1 acre per person). Since 1967, the rate of deforestation has been one acre every five seconds. For every acre cleared for urban development, seven acres are cleared to graze animals or grow feed for them.