NATS 1760 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Industrial Revolution, 350.Org, Bill Mckibben
17 Jun 2017
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More evidence establishing likelihood of climate change. Plants, algae combine carbon with sunlight to make more compressed carbons that store sunlight"s energy: sugars, oils, cholesterol, hydrocarbons. Plants, algae fixed carbon, died, crushed into fossils, oil deposits. every energy dense fossil fuels ( concentrated solar energy! ) Burning carbon-source fuel ex; wood, coal, uses energy and also releases the carbon as co2. thus releasing greenhouse gases. How much is in the atmosphere so far? we broke 400 parts per million last year. One estimate is that earth should have 350ppm for normal climate. Contention over this ( what is normal? who says what is normal?) The interesting story how this number has become important via research, politics, such as bill mckibben and james hansen"s 350. org. Humans have burned biofuels, coal, even oil since discovering fire, what is changed is the rate of burning (releasing millions of years of collected solar energy really quickly)
