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CLIMATE CHANGE: WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?

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By SinmilOluwa Okunade   “What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” —Henry David Thoreau The year is 2021, you have just come out of hiding and now have access to the internet. Amongst the many things the netizens are raving about, climate change seems to be a regular. You see ads mention eco-friendly , and save the planet campaigns are a thing. The colour green is being used to describe gases and energy, things that did not have colours before you went into hiding. Well, Welcome back! Let us start with the international headliner: Climate Change . This phenomenon that nearly everyone seems to be (rightly) agitating about is a long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define the Earth's local, regional, and global climates. Simply put, it is a change in the normal weather patterns of a place over a long period. Let’s say your hometown is Wasinmi, in Ogun State Nigeria, and the harmattan season usually starts...
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What can you do to fight climate change?

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  On some days, I sit back and try to imagine what the Earth was like many years ago- with little or no technology, dense forests, crude tools, minimal carbon emissions, and simple lives. I would not necessarily choose that life over my current one, but if I could take anything from it, it would be the clean, fresh air they breathed then. As someone who has lived most of his life in the Lagos metropolis, I have come to relish the clean air that greets me whenever I visit less populated areas. Familar surroundings of Lagos, Nigeria  SOURCE: techpoint.africa This article does not aim to compare city life to rural life but to highlight the need to take individual action to tackle climate change. If you are reading this, then you are probably using the internet, so it is safe to assume that you have at some point heard about climate change and its effects on life as we know it. While most of the world’s internet-serviced population has heard about climate change, whether or not ...
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Does buying second-hand clothes help fight climate change?

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A trader of thrift clothes, also known as Okrika, in Nigeria at his business. SOURCE: The GuardianNg In the year 2018, the fashion industry was responsible for more greenhouse emissions than the combined economies of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Data from the United Nations Environment Programme also show that the fashion industry is responsible for more emissions than international flights and water transportation combined, highlighting the need for sustainable fashion practices.  The fashion industry impacts the climate in a number of ways briefly detailed below.  How fashion drives climate change The process of producing and transporting clothes to the end-user consumes a lot of energy, most of which is gotten from burning fossil fuels. This leads to the release of greenhouse gases that warm the atmosphere and contribute to climate change.  The most common material used in making clothes is a form of plastic called polyester. It is durable and easy to cle...
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A general overview of coral reefs threats under accelerated anthropogenic climate change

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 By:  Víctor Hugo Hernández-Elizárraga ¹ The oceans are an amazing part of the planet Earth. They support a wealth of marine wildlife, but unfortunately, they are being impacted by anthropogenic climate change. The increasing greenhouse gas emissions are challenging marine ecosystems that are already stressed by overfishing, land-use change, environmental pollution, and human development. Climate alterations are affecting a wide variety of marine species such as fish, polar bears, sea lions, seabirds, penguins, plankton, and corals. One of the ecosystems most affected by accelerated anthropogenic climate disturbances are coral reefs. For thousands of years, coral reefs all over the world have offered support to humans, and today they continue to be essential for our survival. Despite constituting only 0.1% of the ocean surface, coral reef structures are unique ecoregions that provide diverse benefits to the earth’s population. These ecosystems represent an important source of ...
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Global warming and my neighbour's generator

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The time is 10:15 pm. There is no electricity, and my neighbour's generator set is on. I can barely think through the noise, so I try to sleep instead, but even that is proving to be too much to handle. It feels as though the sweltering heat is accentuating the noise of the generator. I can hardly believe that the month is December. The rainy season should be giving way to the cool Harmattan wind, but it's hard to say if there was a rainy season at all. The rains came and went so haphazardly for several months that I wonder how our farmers have coped since most of Nigeria’s agriculture is rain-fed.   I suppose these variations are largely due to global warming. I have read of melting Arctic sea ice, deforestation in the Amazon and the boreal forests of Canada and Russia, and the loss of coral reefs, but I have never quite understood how these events affect me. It was not long ago that they felt so far away, but this present discomfort brings it close to home. It is amazin...
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Facts about Climate Change

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1. Ov er the last 50 years, human activities – particularly the burning of fossil fuels – have released sufficient quantities of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to affect the global climate. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by more than 30% since pre-industrial times, trapping more heat in the lower atmosphere. The resulting changes in the global climate bring a range of risks to health, from deaths in extreme high temperatures to changing patterns of infectious diseases. 2. From the tropics to the arctic, climate and weather have powerful direct and indirect impacts on human life. Weather extremes – such as heavy rains, floods, and disasters endanger health as well as destroy property and livelihoods. Approximately 600 000 deaths occurred worldwide as a result of weather-related natural disasters in the 1990s, some 95% of which took place in developing countries.   3. Intense short-term fluctuations in temperature can also seriously affect h...
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Climate Change: Its Ill-Effects on Health

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The temperature increase in the atmosphere is more specifically referred to as global warming. But the climate change is the term currently favored by scientists, as it explicitly includes not only Earth's increasing global average temperature, but also the climate effects caused by this increase. Any gas, which has the property of absorbing infrared radiation emitted from Earth's surface and reradiating it back to Earth's surface, is called greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor are the most important greenhouse gases. Other greenhouse gases include, but are not limited to, surface-level ozone, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and chlorofluorocarbons. Though a naturally occurring phenomenon, the greenhouse effect results in a warming of Earth's surface and troposphere - the lowest layer of the atmosphere. Of the greenhouse gases, water vapor has the largest effect. Some important causes of greenhouse effect incl...
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