Two Degrees Cooler

The Paris Agreement was mentioned a lot in the news over the past few years. The gist is that it’s an agreement that the majority of countries have signed to limit global warming to below 2 ° C. But how is this achieved, who signed, and is it feasible?   This is an agreement organised by the United Nations that was devised at the end of 2015. It is effectively a pledge to keep average temperature increases at about 1.5 ° C above pre-industrial levels. It comprises of three aims:   (a) Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change;   (b) Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production; ...

I’m writing this in the middle of May 2020, a year that will be infamous in the future as the worst pandemic for a century. We thought with technology and medical advancements that we were invincible, but the world was brought to a screeching halt as COVID-19 gathered momentum in Wuhan, China, spread to parts of Europe, and quickly settled in almost every country in the world and started to grow exponentially. The World today remains in lockdown meaning everyone is staying at home. And it looks like the environment is taking notice. Only time will tell how this pandemic changes us but this is an interim report on whether or not the current pandemic is good for the environment.   Corona, COVID-19, or SARS-COV-2 is an infectious virus that spreads through droplets. It affects the respiratory system and can be deadly to anyone with underlying conditions. It began in Wuhan, supposedly due to someone eating an infected bat which caused the virus to spread to humans. It has an r0 of 2 to...

  Climate change is a buzzword that everyone is vaguely worried about. However, it seems like it just pops up in a scary headline and then goes away. What is it, what’s the evidence, and how worried should we be? What is Climate change?   In really basic terms, Climate is the average weather in a place, and for many years the average weather (temperature, rainfall, etc…) has been changing all over the world. The term used to be ‘Global Warming’, suggesting the average temperature was going up. That was kind of misleading because the weather was becoming more extreme all around, so now we talk about all aspects of the climate.   Climate Change is mostly due to humans polluting the planet with Greenhouse Gases such as Methane and Carbon Dioxide. This is done by burning fossil fuels, such as coal. When Greenhouse gases are released, they fill up the earth’s atmosphere and trap heat, which makes the earth warmer. This makes the average temperature rise and causes ice to melt ...