I was thrilled to get your last letter. I’m glad to see you are looking at some of the references I sent you last time. Figuring out who is responsible for higher atmospheric levels and how to respond to climate change can be difficult. First, let’s talk about where the carbon is coming from.
Some of my mathematical research is to try to prove that we need to stop adding carbon to the atmosphere so I have a couple specific ideas for you to think about. One of the pieces of evidence I study is the Keeling curve, which is the upward curve of measured carbon in the atmosphere. The measurements are taken in Hawaii. (pretty sweet location, right?) Well, scientists and mathematicians have actually figured out that we can determine where the carbon was released despite the location of the measurements [1]. So we can conclusively know which area of the world added the carbon to the atmosphere. The kicker is that most of the carbon is from industrialized nations like the U.S.A. and China. In 2000, the USA added more carbon to the atmosphere than every other country on earth. I’ve attached a clever map I found of the world where each country is scaled based on that county’s carbon emissions in 2000 [2].
See how big the U.S.A. is? As Americans, I think it’s our responsibility to fix some of what we caused. Sadly, my research alone will not solve the problem of global warming. But there are lots of real things that anyone can do to decrease the amount of salt they add to the batter.
So, to answer your second question: Yes! There are lots of ways that you can help. The IPCC reports that lifestyle choices “can contribute to climate change mitigation across all sectors” by decreasing GHG emissions [3]. There are these two guys, Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala who present 15 ways to reduce GHG, any 7 of which would hold the carbon emissions constant [4]. They are things like: decreasing the amount of energy you use in our home by 25% or using more wind power. Stuff our society already knows how to use. You might try to convince your school to recycle more, put up solar panels or to use energy efficient air conditioners the next time they remodel. You could also drive less…
So I agree with your idol, Miley Cyrus when she says we need to “wake up America” [5]. I think we need to start passing laws and legislation to decrease the amount of greenhouse gasses we are emitting and put money into developing new greener technology. We are putting too much carbon in the atmosphere and the scientists aren’t sure what’s going to happen. We don’t know how much carbon is too much and we don’t have a good way to pull it back out of the atmosphere. (Remember the salty pancake analogy from my last letter?) Thus, we, as a society, need to put some serious thought into the problem. The good news is there are actions you can take that we already know will help.
Love, Samantha
Samantha Oestreicher
oestr042@umn.edu
PS- As always, if you have any more questions, then please send them my way.
[1] Buermann, Wolfgang, Benjamin Lintner, Charles Koven, Alon Angert, Compton Tucker, and Inez Fung, “The changing carbon cycle at Mauna Loa Observatory” PNAS, vol 104, no 11.www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0611224104 March 13, 2007.
[2] SASI Group and Mark Newman, “Map 295” U. of Michigan and U of Sheffield.www.worldmapper.org 2006.
[3] Soloman et al. “Summary for Policymakers”, IPCC, Fourth Assessment Report, Workgroup 3, 2007, pg 12.
[4] Socolow, Robert and Stephan Pacala, “A plan to keep carbon in check” Scientific American, Sept 2006
[5] Cyrus, Miley. “Wake up America.” Lyrics. Breakout. Hollywood Records, 2008.