Cut Soot to Stave Off Sea Level Rise
David Biello
Scientific American
4/14/13
Topic in Environmental Science: Pollution and Sea Levels
In the article “Cut Soot to Stave Off Sea Level Rise”, David Biello talks about how certain kinds of air pollution could limit the rise of ocean waters and buy time to address CO2 emissions and how they affect ocean water levels. Studies show that soot and a variety of greenhouse gases to not tend to last a ling time in the atmosphere such as methane. But, previous studies show that cutting these emissions can help slow down radical climate changes such as the ones we have now. Also, that this emission cutting can buy time to get the CO2 emissions under control as well as slowing down the rate at which the sea level rises, as much as 20% annually. With the cut of these emissions, there would be less ice sheets melting and less thermal expansion of waters. These shortages of emissions can also help the economy by lowering the prices demanded by the waves lapping ever higher at shore.
I chose this article because is interested me about how emissions could help the planet in many ways. Also, because there are many things we can do to help defend the planet against the threat of global warming and this article talks about the benefits that come out of just one of the ways we can help against global warming, cutting greenhouse gas and CO2 emissions. To me, the most interesting thing that I found in the article was that by reducing or cutting off most emission, we help not only our environment, but also our economy. In class, we were studying something similar to this article, how by overgrowing phytoplankton, it can benefit us but also be bad towards the environment.
I feel that after reading this article that we should take action and attempt to reduce the emissions that we produce to create many of the products we use today. by cutting off or reducing these emissions we can help many aspects of our lives, even our wallets. With these changes and these studies proposed in the article, we can all chip in our 2 cents and help the planet.