Climate Change

Climate change is a problem the world is currently facing. Carbon dioxide is a large contributing factor in climate change because it traps heat on the earth, warming it. Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of a combustion reaction, the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal. The release of carbon dioxide into the world can be constrained by air scrubbers but in most cases it isn’t and won’t be anytime soon.

Climate change is a big issue right now; carbon dioxide levels are rising, temperatures are changing, storms seem to be causing more damage, more storms are recorded, everyone wants to know: “why?” While the amount of carbon dioxide (henceforth referred to as CO2) in the air has risen and fallen multiple times in the past, there has been a dramatic uptick since the industrial revolution, and the common burning of fossil fuels began. CO2 is what is known as a greenhouse gas, this is because it traps heat in the air like a greenhouse.

When things burn they release CO2. Hydrocarbons that are present in fuel are burnt leaving water, CO2, CO, and some other reactants. Hydrocarbons are burnt on a wide scale in power plants and automobiles. Power plants and automobiles put CO2 into the air faster that trees and other plants can take them out.

There are pieces of technology in use in many industrialized countries known as scrubbers that reduce the amount of CO2 put in the air from power plants. The problems with this approach are that the scrubbers are in 1: power plants and 2: industrialized countries. Power plants may cause a goodly amount of pollution, but so do cars. Industrialized countries cause a great amount of pollution, but developing countries cause a massive amount of pollution. To reduce pollution (and therefore global warming) these need to be on every CO2 producing machine and this is so expensive in most cases that it can’t and won’t be done anytime soon