The first main realization of Global Warming was in 1896 when a Swedish scientist claimed that fossil fuel combustion may eventually result in a enhanced global warming, and he was right. In 2013, 36 gigatons (36,000 megatons or 36 billion tons) of CO2 was released globally from fossil fuels and more. This was 2.3% higher than the previous year, and continues to grow each year. "But surely I'm not contributing to this... am I?" Well... you are, but hopefully not by a lot, and here is a fun website where you can calculate your own carbon footprint (how much carbon emissions a person or group emits). Well how come are carbon emissions are so extremely small compared to this massive number I gave you at the beginning of this post? Well, the answer is simple. Like I said in my previous post (Global Warming: A Hot Topic), most of the carbon emissions come from cars, factories, electricity production and more. An average coal burning factory emits about 1.3 million tons of CO2 per year. Combine all of this with all factories in the world, all the emissions from cars, electricity production, grazing animals and more. That's where you get that number.
Now, what can YOU do to help solve this global issue? The first step would be to do simple things like walk instead of traveling in a car, or even just using public transport like the public bus would help. Another thing to do to lower your carbon footprint would be to install energy efficient appliances every chance you get. Unfortunately, there is not a lot you can do about the big scale of things, like factories. The best thing to do is spread awareness, but other than that, it's hard to do solve all by yourself. Factories are usually run by people who just want to be able to get the cheapest way to make money, fast. Most of them don't care that they are slowly killing us, as long as they have a big fat pile of paper, they are happy.
