YPYQ – How does pollution contribute to global warming?
well this brings us really neatly on to the next topic actually because we had loads of questions on on pollution Plastics and as we've been discussing carbon dioxide CO2 well now let's hear from Liz on this topic if we continue polluting the Earth and making temperatures rise how long do we have until all the icebergs in the world melt well thanks lizes it's a question that I think many people ask when they look at the the polar regions and hear that the polar ice is melting so Emily what do we know about the question Liz asked and how long have we got until all the icebergs melt so thanks Liz that's a really great uh great question um so there's two different types of ice that we need to worry about the first is what we called sea ice that's when the sea literally freezes and in the polar regions that happens each year what we're seeing is that that I that sea ice is melting really significantly at the moment so in the Arctic Ocean over the last 30 years or so the amount of sea ice in the Arctic has decreased really dramatically it it always melts each summer um but not all the way and the amount of ice at the end of the summer melt season today is just half of what it was about 30 years ago and if we continue to warm the world in the way we are at the moment um then it may be gone entirely at the end of each summer um in just the next couple of decades the other ice that you have in the polar region sits on the land and forms um the ice sheets and then as it goes into the sea the ice shelves and that ice is also melting and that ice is melting two ways first of all it's melting on top because the warmer air on top is melting it but also what's happening is that as the oceans are warming up that warmer ocean water is getting underneath those ice sheets and melting them from below so they're getting double attacked by the warming that process happens quite slowly so it's not something that uh is going to those ice sheets going to completely disappear over the next uh few years but what we're really concerned about is that the processes that are starting the destruction of those ice sheets are happening now and when those that ice that sat on land eventually collapses and melts it gets into the water of the oceans and that's um significantly Rising the sea levels Lindsay it sounds very complicated there there the sea ice and the ice on the land and the sea temperatures and the land temperatures and the air temperatures um and then a question that just keeps coming up which is that is there a simple solution to this complicated problem which might be just plant more trees and we'll be okay yes well I think you're absolutely right it's very complicated and very complicated things don't generally have very simple Solutions and I think the truth is there isn't a single simple solution and in fact lots of scientists keep saying that that we need to do lots of different things all at the same time because this is a very big problem but planting trees is one of the things that we can do so we have cut down a lot of trees all around the world Britain uh for example here in the UK we would have had a lot more trees than we do now and so there are a lot of plans now to plant a lot more trees and that will help so as trees grow they draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and remember it's the fact that there's too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere it's one of the main main causes of global warming so as trees grow they will lock it up and they will lock it up in their trunks and in the wood and so that will take you know over the next one or hundred years if we plant a lot of trees now then we will be able to suck quite a lot of carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere but it's not the only thing we have to do we also have to concentrate on not continuing to put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the first place and I think perhaps Mark can say something about that yes I'm I'm happy to comment on that uh as Lindsay said the the other side of of the coin if you like is that we could also do a lot to reduce our energy consumption or at least be more efficient with the energy that we're producing um because it's through producing a lot of uh or at least using a lot of energy that this CO2 is created if we were to ask why are we burning so much fossil fuels this is often to fuel things like power station and so on to create electricity which we use for all sorts of things including probably your games consoles and other things as well so we've got to think uh more broadly about how we can what we can do we can do our bit individually if you like to reduce the amount of energy that we consume and I think that along with planting more trees uh and other Solutions will help to get us closer to a a solving this this uh World issue so so it's a balance Emily I think is what what we're hearing that we have to put less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and take more out at the same time would be the ideal thing to do yes BR you're absolutely right and the way that I like to think about this is that it's like a bath and on the one hand you have the tap in the bath uh that could be put in more water into the bath and the other you have the plug where water can be coming out of out out of it and so what we need to do is make sure that the amount of carbon dioxide that we're taking out of the atmosphere whether that's through planting trees or or other methods um is is as much as we're putting in from the tap
