April 22, 2022

Maya Puterman

9th Grade

Ramaz Upper School

You’ve most likely heard of people talking about climate change and the need to take action against it, increasingly so over the last few years. But what is climate change? And why is it so dangerous?

The United Nations defines climate change as “long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns.” Rising temperatures are causing natural disasters. The globe is already more than 1°F warmer than it was before the Industrial Revolution. Though seemingly insignificant, a temperature increase of just one degree is enough to wipe out an entire population of sea life and wildlife and disrupt the food chain. As climate change causes warmer weather, ice in the Arctic and Antarctic is melting and resulting in dangerous floods. 

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, humans are the “dominant cause” of global warming. The rising usage of fossil fuels by humans is releasing significant quantities of greenhouse gasses into the air. When coal, oil, and gas are burned to generate energy, carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is released into the Earth’s atmosphere. A greenhouse gas is a gas in the atmosphere that traps heat. As a result of these gasses, global temperatures are rising. 

Additionally, deforestation, the removal of trees and forests, is causing a rise in the planet's temperature. Trees store surplus carbon dioxide and use it to help them grow while supplying oxygen to humans. However, when trees are cut down or burned as a result of human actions, their stored carbon is released into the atmosphere. Methane is another hazardous air pollutant and a powerful greenhouse gas. It traps 30 times more heat than carbon dioxide. 

According to climate scientist Ed Hawkins, in order to reduce global temperatures, we need to remove carbon dioxide from the air. That is why Klaus Lackner, director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions at Arizona State University, has designed an artificial tree that can pull carbon dioxide out of the air. The leaves of this artificial tree are coated in a resin that contains sodium bicarbonate, a substance to which carbon dioxide sticks. In order for the leaves of this artificial tree to remove the carbon dioxide they’ve collected, the leaves are rinsed in water. Klaus Lackner calculates that his artificial tree can remove 1 ton of carbon dioxide from the air per day.