Focus on Climate Change

Climate change

The world is warming up

• Because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions the earth is dangerously warming up. As we burn up the planet’s coal, oil and gas reserves, and cut down its remaining forests, greenhouse gases are pouring into the atmosphere. The delicate balance of atmospheric gases that sustains life is thickening, trapping more and more heat and irreversibly changing our world.

Causes of climate change

• Burning fossil fuels like coal and oil produces huge amounts of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

• Other sources of greenhouse pollution include the transport and very construction sector (carbon dioxide), agriculture (methane), white goods (fridges and air conditioners emit F-gases, potent greenhouse gases) and deforestation (carbon dioxide).

The impact of global climate change

Global Melting• As the Earth warms, its ice melts.

This global melting is an early and obvious sign of climate change, but its implications go far beyond merely losing snow and ice. For starters, some people and ecosystems depend on the ice - glaciers for water supply in areas of seasonal rainfall, for example, and sea ice for habitat.

• Climate change has caused dramatic glacial retreat. This is Rongbuk glacier in Tibet in 2007.

Habitat loss

• Human caused climate change will alter temperatures, precipitation and sea level - wiping out some habitats and shifting others faster than many species can migrate.  

Coral reefs

• Bleached coral, Great Barrier Reef. Coral bleaching is the result of high water temperatures which kill the coral. Climate change will dramatically increase damage like this.

Polar bears• Arctic sea ice could disappear

within 70 years, and wild polar bears with it.   Polar bears are the world's largest land predator.  They can go for long periods, even months, without eating, but need to build up fat to live through lean times.  The polar bear does this mostly by eating seals they catch on the ice.

Penguin

Sea level rise

• Between the Greenland ice sheet and the Western Antarctic ice sheet the world could well be facing a 13 metre (43 foot) rise in sea level if we do not drastically curb our greenhouse gas emissions. Even a small fraction of this much sea level rise would be an economic and humanitarian disaster.

• Pita Meanke, of Betio village, stands beside a tree as he watches the 'king tides' crash through the sea wall into his family's property, on the South Pacific island of Kiribati.

Venice under water

Extreme weather

• There is strong evidence that extreme weather events – such as hurricanes, floods, droughts , snowstorm and heat waves – are increasing because of climate change. In fact, the Financial Initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) recently calculated that the economic costs of global warming are doubling every decade. The cumulative number of people affected by disasters rose to two billion in the 1990s, up from 740 million in the 1970s. Virtually all of these millions were concentrated in poorer countries.

hurricanes

floods

droughts

snowstorm

Health, food and water

• It is estimated by an UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) director-general that climate change will decrease food and agricultural production by up to 30 percent in parts of developing countries in 2050.

• Heat waves attributable in part to climate change are forecast to kill hundreds of thousands in this century. However, climate change will also have disastrous effects on water supplies, agriculture and the spread of disease. The rich and poor will be affected, but the developing countries that are already struggling to provide food and water for their people will suffer the most.

Solutions

• The latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms that hundreds of technologies are now available, at very low cost, to reduce climate damaging emissions, and a serial of government policies should be formulated to remove the barriers to these technologies.

• It’s the time for us to end our addiction to fossil fuels and other climate damaging technologies. Why not to use new energies? The new energies, including wind, solar, bioenergy, hydroelectric, are not only cheap but also clean.

One of the largest wind farms in Xin Jiang

Sanxia Dam, Changjiang

We are obliged to face up to climate change, and we may have a long road during dealing with the result of climate change. And the process not only relies on me or you but also everybody living on the earth. Because one world, one dream.

The 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention

on Climate Change

• Time: From December 7 to 18, 2009

• Place: At the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark

• Aims: According to the Bali Road Map, a framework for climate change mitigation beyond 2012 is to be agreed there

• Participant: Some 90 world leaders to attend Copenhagen climate summit

• Backgrounder: Kyoto Protocol and Bali Road Map

China's voice on Climate Change

• Global climate change has a profound impact on the survival and development of mankind. It is a major challenge facing all countries. ………………………………….

Let’s do something from now on,

because we love this world~!

Our group• Chairman: Xiaoyan Ma

• Speaker: Xiaoyan Ma

• Timer: Weiwei Wu

• Secretary: Chengjun Li

• Keeper: Lian Wang

Thank you ~!