Is Global Warming Real And Are Carbon Emissions To Blame?
The topic or even just saying the word global warming is a very controversial topic in politics around the world, split by the belief that it not due to human intervention and doesn’t exist or that it’s the single most underrepresented problem to solve in human history. So I got interested and decided to dive into global average temperatures and see if it’s increasing.
I found my dataset from Berkely Earth (a nonprofit that focuses on environmental data science). The outer lines of the graph show the uncertainty from a lower range and higher range. The middle line is the average global temperatures per year. As you can see, since 1850 there has been a steady increase in global temperatures of at least 1 degree Celsius(1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).
So why is this happening and how does this affect our lives? Why is this important to so many people? Well, a supermajority of scientists has addressed their concerns on the impact of global warming from more violent weather patterns to rising sea levels that could cause millions to become homeless. Now let’s take a look at probable cause.
As you can see from 1850(Industrial Revolution), we see an exponential increase in Carbon Emissions. This seems to have a direct correlation with the recent spike in global temperatures and at this rate, scientists believe we could cause irreversible damage to our environment. For example, less inhabitable land, smaller populations of polar bears, and more effort spent rebuilding communities hit by extreme storms. How can we limit carbon Emissions? Well, let’s take a look who is proportionally contributing the most carbon emissions.
We can see that China yet being the biggest contributor to carbon emissions is lower than the United States and Australia based on Carbon Emissions Per Capita. We can see than many oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia also are large contributors to carbon emissions proportionally.
Conclusion:
One way we could reduce our carbon emissions would be making all countries agree on carbon emissions limits based on Per Capita. Also, the world has already started moving towards this solution with the Paris Agreement which sets the framework in reducing carbon emissions. Many European countries have introduced a carbon tax that can be used to build expensive renewable energy infrastructure.
My Notebook with datasets:
https://github.com/John-G-Thomas/Projects/blob/master/Project_1_Code.ipynb
