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Essay on Global Warming – Causes and Solutions

500+ words essay on global warming.

Global Warming is a term almost everyone is familiar with. But, its meaning is still not clear to most of us. So, Global warming refers to the gradual rise in the overall temperature of the atmosphere of the Earth. There are various activities taking place which have been increasing the temperature gradually. Global warming is melting our ice glaciers rapidly. This is extremely harmful to the earth as well as humans. It is quite challenging to control global warming; however, it is not unmanageable. The first step in solving any problem is identifying the cause of the problem. Therefore, we need to first understand the causes of global warming that will help us proceed further in solving it. In this essay on Global Warming, we will see the causes and solutions of Global Warming.

Causes of Global Warming

Global warming has become a grave problem which needs undivided attention. It is not happening because of a single cause but several causes. These causes are both natural as well as manmade. The natural causes include the release of greenhouses gases which are not able to escape from earth, causing the temperature to increase.

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Further, volcanic eruptions are also responsible for global warming. That is to say, these eruptions release tons of carbon dioxide which contributes to global warming. Similarly, methane is also one big issue responsible for global warming.

So, when one of the biggest sources of absorption of carbon dioxide will only disappear, there will be nothing left to regulate the gas. Thus, it will result in global warming. Steps must be taken immediately to stop global warming and make the earth better again.

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Global Warming Solutions

As stated earlier, it might be challenging but it is not entirely impossible. Global warming can be stopped when combined efforts are put in. For that, individuals and governments, both have to take steps towards achieving it. We must begin with the reduction of greenhouse gas.

Furthermore, they need to monitor the consumption of gasoline. Switch to a hybrid car and reduce the release of carbon dioxide. Moreover, citizens can choose public transport or carpool together. Subsequently, recycling must also be encouraged.

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For instance, when you go shopping, carry your own cloth bag. Another step you can take is to limit the use of electricity which will prevent the release of carbon dioxide. On the government’s part, they must regulate industrial waste and ban them from emitting harmful gases in the air. Deforestation must be stopped immediately and planting of trees must be encouraged.

In short, all of us must realize the fact that our earth is not well. It needs to treatment and we can help it heal. The present generation must take up the responsibility of stopping global warming in order to prevent the suffering of future generations. Therefore, every little step, no matter how small carries a lot of weight and is quite significant in stopping global warming.

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FAQs on Global Warming

Q.1 List the causes of Global Warming.

A.1 There are various causes of global warming both natural and manmade. The natural one includes a greenhouse gas, volcanic eruption, methane gas and more. Next up, manmade causes are deforestation, mining, cattle rearing, fossil fuel burning and more.

Q.2 How can one stop Global Warming?

A.2 Global warming can be stopped by a joint effort by the individuals and the government. Deforestation must be banned and trees should be planted more. The use of automobiles must be limited and recycling must be encouraged.

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• Global Warming Essay

Essay on Global Warming

The last few decades have been monumental when it comes to technological development. Humans have developed systems and machines that make our lives easier. Especially during the early modern period from the early 16th century to as far as the late 18the century, also commonly referred to as “The Scientific Revolution” or “The Enlightenment”, modern technology leapt ahead in development in such a short time frame compared to all of history.

However, with the development of society, there has been a severe detriment to the quality of Earth’s environment. One of the most massive threats to the condition of the planet is climate change. Inadequate research and reckless misuse of natural resources are some of the core reasons for the deteriorating condition of the planet.

To understand the concept of Global Warming and its causes and effects, we need to take an in-depth look into many factors that affect the temperature of the planet and what that means for the future of the world. Here is an objective look at the topic of Global Warming and other important related topics.

What is Climate Change?

Ever since the industrial and scientific revolution, Earth is slowly being used up for its resources. Moreover, the onset of the exponential increase in the world’s population is also very taxing on the environment. 

Simply put, as the need for consumption of the population increases, both the utilisation of natural resources and the waste generated from the use of said resources have also increased massively. 

One of the main results of this over the many years has become climate change. Climate change is not just the rise or fall of temperature of different areas of the world; it is also a change in the rain cycles, wind patterns, cyclone frequencies, sea levels, etc. It affects all major life groups on the planet in some way or the other.  

What is Global Warming?

Global Warming is often considered an effect of Climate change. Global Warming is the rapid increase in the temperature of the Earth’s environment that is causing many life-threatening issues to arise.

Global Warming is a dangerous effect on our environment that we are facing these days. Rapid industrialization, increase in the population growth and pollution are causing a rise in Global Warming. Global Warming refers to the increase in the average temperature of the earth's surface during the last century. One of the reasons why Global Warming is dangerous is because it disturbs the overall ecology of the planet. This results in floods, famine, cyclones and other issues. There are many causes and results of this warming and is a danger for the existence of life on earth.

The sign of Global Warming is already visible with many natural phenomena happening around globally, affecting each living species.

Here is some data that can help to give a more precise understanding of the reality of Global Warming in the last few years:

On average, the world’s temperature is about 1.5°C higher than during the start of the industrial revolution in the late 1700s. That may not seem a lot to you, but that is an average estimate. This number is only increasing. Many parts of the world face far more severe changes in temperature that affect the planet’s overall health.

In 1950, the world’s CO 2 emissions were at 6 billion tonnes which had quadrupled in volume until 1990, just 40 years later to 22 billion tonnes. Not only that, unchecked CO 2 emissions today have reached a whopping 35 billion tonnes.

The most evident causes of Global Warming are industrialization, urbanization, deforestation, and sophisticated human activities. These human activities have led to an increase in the emission of Greenhouse Gases, including CO₂, Nitrous Oxide, Methane, and others.

Causes of Global Warming

A variety of reasons causes Global Warming. Some of which can be controlled personally by individuals but others are only expected to be solved by communities and the world leaders and activists at the global level.

Many scientists believe the main four reasons for Global Warming, according to recent studies, are:

Greenhouse gases

Deforestation

Per capita carbon emissions

Global Warming is certainly an alarming situation, which is causing a significant impact on life existence. Extreme Global Warming is resulting in natural calamities, which is quite evident happening around. One of the reasons behind Global Warming is the extreme release of greenhouse gases stuck on the earth surface, resulting in the temperature increase.

Similarly, volcanoes are also leading to Global Warming because they spew too much CO₂ in the air. One of the significant causes behind Global Warming is the increase in the population. This increase in the population also results in air pollution. Automobiles release a lot of CO₂, which remains stuck in the earth.

This increase in the population is also leading to deforestation, which further results in Global Warming. More and more trees are being cut, increasing the concentration of CO₂.

The greenhouse is the natural process where the sunlight passes through the area, thus warming the earth's surface. The earth surface releases energy in the form of heat in the atmosphere maintaining the balance with the incoming energy. Global Warming depletes the ozone layer leading to the doom's day.

There is a clear indication that the increase in Global Warming will lead to the complete extinction of life from the earth surface.

Solution for Global Warming

Global Warming can not be blamed on individuals; however, it can be tackled and maintained from worsening starting at the individual level. Of course, industries and multinational conglomerates have higher carbon emissions levels than an average citizen. Still, activism and community effort are the only feasible ways to control the worsening state of Global Warming.

Additionally, at the state or government level, world leaders need to create concrete plans and step programmes to ensure that no further harm is being caused to the environment in general. 

Although we are almost late in slowing down the Global Warming rate, it is crucial to find the right solution. From individuals to governments, everyone has to work upon a solution for Global Warming. Controlling pollution, population and use of natural resources are some of the factors to consider. Switching over to the electric and hybrid car is the best way to bring down the carbon dioxide.

As a citizen, it is best to switch over to the hybrid car and to use public transport. This will reduce pollution and congestion. Another significant contribution you can make is to minimize the use of plastic. Plastic is the primary cause of Global Warming taking years to recycle.

Deforestation is another thing to consider that will help in controlling Global Warming. Planting of more trees should be encouraged to make the environment go green.

Industrialization should be under certain norms. The building of industries should be banned in green zones affecting plants and species. Hefty penalties should be levied on such sectors contributing towards Global Warming.

Effects of Global Warming

Global Warming is a real problem that many want to prove as a hoax for their political benefit. However, as aware citizens of the world, we must make sure only the truth is presented in the media.

Various parts of the environment, both flora and fauna, are directly adversely affected by the damages caused by Global Warming. Wildlife being in danger is ultimately a serious threat to the survival of humanity as we know it and its future.

The effect of Global Warming is widely seen in this decade. Glacier retreat and arctic shrinkage are the two common phenomena seen. Glaciers are melting in a fast way. These are pure examples of climate change.

Rise in sea level is another significant effect of Global Warming. This sea-level rise is leading to floods in low-lying areas. Extreme weather conditions are witnessed in many countries. Unseasonal rainfall, extreme heat and cold, wildfires and others are common every year. The number of these cases is increasing. This will indeed imbalance the ecosystem bringing the result of the extinction of species.

Similarly, marine life is also widely getting affected due to the increase in Global Warming. This is resulting in the death of marine species and other issues. Moreover, changes are expected in coral reefs, which are going to face the end in coming years.

These effects will take a steep rise in coming years, bringing the expansion of species to a halt. Moreover, humans too will witness the negative impact of Global Warming in the end.

FAQs on Global Warming Essay

1. What Global Warming will Cause?

Global warming will have a massive impact on our earth in the end. Flood, extreme weather conditions, famine, wildfire and many more will be the result. There will be hotter days, which will also increase the wildfire and famine. In the past years, many meteorological bureaus have added purple and magenta to the forecast.

Another impact of global warming will be rising sea levels. Increased ocean temperatures will lead to the melting of glaciers and ice caps. Increase in the sea level will lead to floods in many low-lying areas.

The overall ecosystem of nature will be an imbalance. This will affect nature in the long-term.

2. Why Does Global Warming Happen?

There are many reasons for the cause of global warming. There are certain gases in the atmosphere called greenhouse gases. The energy then radiates from the surface; the greenhouse gases trap longwave radiation. We humans have added to the atmospheric blanket of greenhouse affecting the living species. Warming of air, oceans, and land is how global warming happens.

• Biology Article
• Essay on Global Warming

Essay On Global Warming

Essay on global warming is an important topic for students to understand. The essay brings to light the plight of the environment and the repercussion of anthropogenic activities. Continue reading to discover tips and tricks for writing an engaging and interesting essay on global warming.

Essay On Global Warming in 300 Words

Global warming is a phenomenon where the earth’s average temperature rises due to increased amounts of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and ozone trap the incoming radiation from the sun. This effect creates a natural “blanket”, which prevents the heat from escaping back into the atmosphere. This effect is called the greenhouse effect.

Contrary to popular belief, greenhouse gases are not inherently bad. In fact, the greenhouse effect is quite important for life on earth. Without this effect, the sun’s radiation would be reflected back into the atmosphere, freezing the surface and making life impossible. However, when greenhouse gases in excess amounts get trapped, serious repercussions begin to appear. The polar ice caps begin to melt, leading to a rise in sea levels. Furthermore, the greenhouse effect is accelerated when polar ice caps and sea ice melts. This is due to the fact the ice reflects 50% to 70% of the sun’s rays back into space, but without ice, the solar radiation gets absorbed. Seawater reflects only 6% of the sun’s radiation back into space. What’s more frightening is the fact that the poles contain large amounts of carbon dioxide trapped within the ice. If this ice melts, it will significantly contribute to global warming. 

A related scenario when this phenomenon goes out of control is the runaway-greenhouse effect. This scenario is essentially similar to an apocalypse, but it is all too real. Though this has never happened in the earth’s entire history, it is speculated to have occurred on Venus. Millions of years ago, Venus was thought to have an atmosphere similar to that of the earth. But due to the runaway greenhouse effect, surface temperatures around the planet began rising. 

If this occurs on the earth, the runaway greenhouse effect will lead to many unpleasant scenarios – temperatures will rise hot enough for oceans to evaporate. Once the oceans evaporate, the rocks will start to sublimate under heat. In order to prevent such a scenario, proper measures have to be taken to stop climate change.

More to Read: Learn How Greenhouse Effect works

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Global warming.

The causes, effects, and complexities of global warming are important to understand so that we can fight for the health of our planet.

Earth Science, Climatology

Tennessee Power Plant

Ash spews from a coal-fueled power plant in New Johnsonville, Tennessee, United States.

Photograph by Emory Kristof/ National Geographic

Global warming is the long-term warming of the planet’s overall temperature. Though this warming trend has been going on for a long time, its pace has significantly increased in the last hundred years due to the burning of fossil fuels . As the human population has increased, so has the volume of fossil fuels burned. Fossil fuels include coal, oil, and natural gas, and burning them causes what is known as the “greenhouse effect” in Earth’s atmosphere.

The greenhouse effect is when the sun’s rays penetrate the atmosphere, but when that heat is reflected off the surface cannot escape back into space. Gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels prevent the heat from leaving the atmosphere. These greenhouse gasses are carbon dioxide , chlorofluorocarbons, water vapor , methane , and nitrous oxide . The excess heat in the atmosphere has caused the average global temperature to rise overtime, otherwise known as global warming.

Global warming has presented another issue called climate change. Sometimes these phrases are used interchangeably, however, they are different. Climate change refers to changes in weather patterns and growing seasons around the world. It also refers to sea level rise caused by the expansion of warmer seas and melting ice sheets and glaciers . Global warming causes climate change, which poses a serious threat to life on Earth in the forms of widespread flooding and extreme weather. Scientists continue to study global warming and its impact on Earth.

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Related Resources

A problem built into our relationship with energy itself. Photo by Ferdinando Scianna/Magnum

Deep warming

Even if we ‘solve’ global warming, we face an older, slower problem. waste heat could radically alter earth’s future.

by Mark Buchanan   + BIO

The world will be transformed. By 2050, we will be driving electric cars and flying in aircraft running on synthetic fuels produced through solar and wind energy. New energy-efficient technologies, most likely harnessing artificial intelligence, will dominate nearly all human activities from farming to heavy industry. The fossil fuel industry will be in the final stages of a terminal decline. Nuclear fusion and other new energy sources may have become widespread. Perhaps our planet will even be orbited by massive solar arrays capturing cosmic energy from sunlight and generating seemingly endless energy for all our needs.

That is one possible future for humanity. It’s an optimistic view of how radical changes to energy production might help us slow or avoid the worst outcomes of global warming. In a report from 1965, scientists from the US government warned that our ongoing use of fossil fuels would cause global warming with potentially disastrous consequences for Earth’s climate. The report, one of the first government-produced documents to predict a major crisis caused by humanity’s large-scale activities, noted that the likely consequences would include higher global temperatures, the melting of the ice caps and rising sea levels. ‘Through his worldwide industrial civilisation,’ the report concluded, ‘Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment’ – an experiment with a highly uncertain outcome, but clear and important risks for life on Earth.

Since then, we’ve dithered and doubted and argued about what to do, but still have not managed to take serious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which continue to rise. Governments around the planet have promised to phase out emissions in the coming decades and transition to ‘green energy’. But global temperatures may be rising faster than we expected: some climate scientists worry that rapid rises could create new problems and positive feedback loops that may accelerate climate destabilisation and make parts of the world uninhabitable long before a hoped-for transition is possible.

Despite this bleak vision of the future, there are reasons for optimists to hope due to progress on cleaner sources of renewable energy, especially solar power. Around 2010, solar energy generation accounted for less than 1 per cent of the electricity generated by humanity. But experts believe that, by 2027, due to falling costs, better technology and exponential growth in new installations, solar power will become the largest global energy source for producing electricity. If progress on renewables continues, we might find a way to resolve the warming problem linked to greenhouse gas emissions. By 2050, large-scale societal and ecological changes might have helped us avoid the worst consequences of our extensive use of fossil fuels.

It’s a momentous challenge. And it won’t be easy. But this story of transformation only hints at the true depth of the future problems humanity will confront in managing our energy use and its influence over our climate.

As scientists are gradually learning, even if we solve the immediate warming problem linked to the greenhouse effect, there’s another warming problem steadily growing beneath it. Let’s call it the ‘deep warming’ problem. This deeper problem also raises Earth’s surface temperature but, unlike global warming, it has nothing to do with greenhouse gases and our use of fossil fuels. It stems directly from our use of energy in all forms and our tendency to use more energy over time – a problem created by the inevitable waste heat that is generated whenever we use energy to do something. Yes, the world may well be transformed by 2050. Carbon dioxide levels may stabilise or fall thanks to advanced AI-assisted technologies that run on energy harvested from the sun and wind. And the fossil fuel industry may be taking its last breaths. But we will still face a deeper problem. That’s because ‘deep warming’ is not created by the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It’s a problem built into our relationship with energy itself.

F inding new ways to harness more energy has been a constant theme of human development. The evolution of humanity – from early modes of hunter-gathering to farming and industry – has involved large systematic increases in our per-capita energy use. The British historian and archaeologist Ian Morris estimates, in his book Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve (2015), that early human hunter-gatherers, living more than 10,000 years ago, ‘captured’ around 5,000 kcal per person per day by consuming food, burning fuel, making clothing, building shelter, or through other activities. Later, after we turned to farming and enlisted the energies of domesticated animals, we were able to harness as much as 30,000 kcal per day. In the late 17th century , the exploitation of coal and steam power marked another leap: by 1970, the use of fossil fuels allowed humans to consume some 230,000 kcal per person per day. (When we think about humanity writ large as ‘humans’, it’s important to acknowledge that the average person in the wealthiest nations consumes up to 100 times more energy than the average person in the poorest nations.) As the global population has risen and people have invented new energy-dependent technologies, our global energy use has continued to climb.

In many respects, this is great. We can now do more with less effort and achieve things that were unimaginable to the 17th-century inventors of steam engines, let alone to our hominin ancestors. We’ve made powerful mining machines, superfast trains, lasers for use in telecommunications and brain-imaging equipment. But these creations, while helping us, are also subtly heating the planet.

All the energy we humans use – to heat our homes, run our factories, propel our automobiles and aircraft, or to run our electronics – eventually ends up as heat in the environment. In the shorter term, most of the energy we use flows directly into the environment. It gets there through hot exhaust gases, friction between tires and roads, the noises generated by powerful engines, which spread out, dissipate, and eventually end up as heat. However, a small portion of the energy we use gets stored in physical changes, such as in new steel, plastic or concrete. It’s stored in our cities and technologies. In the longer term, as these materials break down, the energy stored inside also finds its way into the environment as heat. This is a direct consequence of the well-tested principles of thermodynamics.

Waste heat will pose a problem that is every bit as serious as global warming from greenhouse gases

In the early decades of the 21st century , this heat created by simply using energy, known as ‘waste heat’, is not so serious. It’s equivalent to roughly 2 per cent of the planetary heating imbalance caused by greenhouse gases – for now. But, with the passing of time, the problem is likely to get much more serious. That’s because humans have a historical tendency to consistently discover and produce things, creating entirely new technologies and industries in the process: domesticated animals for farming; railways and automobiles; global air travel and shipping; personal computers, the internet and mobile phones. The result of such activities is that we end up using more and more energy, despite improved energy efficiency in nearly every area of technology.

During the past two centuries at least (and likely for much longer), our yearly energy use has doubled roughly every 30 to 50 years . Our energy use seems to be growing exponentially, a trend that shows every sign of continuing. We keep finding new things to do and almost everything we invent requires more and more energy: consider the enormous energy demands of cryptocurrency mining or the accelerating energy requirements of AI.

If this historical trend continues, scientists estimate waste heat will pose a problem in roughly 150-200 years that is every bit as serious as the current problem of global warming from greenhouse gases. However, deep heating will be more pernicious as we won’t be able to avoid it by merely shifting from one kind energy to another. A profound problem will loom before us: can we set strict limits on all the energy we use? Can we reign in the seemingly inexorable expansion of our activities to avoid destroying our own environment?

Deep warming is a problem hiding beneath global warming, but one that will become prominent if and when we manage to solve the more pressing issue of greenhouse gases. It remains just out of sight, which might explain why scientists only became concerned about the ‘waste heat’ problem around 15 years ago.

O ne of the first people to describe the problem is the Harvard astrophysicist Eric Chaisson, who discussed the issue of waste heat in a paper titled ‘Long-Term Global Heating from Energy Usage’ (2008). He concluded that our technological society may be facing a fundamental limit to growth due to ‘unavoidable global heating … dictated solely by the second law of thermodynamics, a biogeophysical effect often ignored when estimating future planetary warming scenarios’. When I emailed Chaisson to learn more, he told me the history of his thinking on the problem:

It was on a night flight, Paris-Boston [circa] 2006, after a UNESCO meeting on the environment when it dawned on me that the IPCC were overlooking something. While others on the plane slept, I crunched some numbers literally on the back of an envelope … and then hoped I was wrong, that is, hoped that I was incorrect in thinking that the very act of using energy heats the air, however slightly now.

The transformation of energy into heat is among the most ubiquitous processes of physics

Chaisson drafted the idea up as a paper and sent it to an academic journal. Two anonymous reviewers were eager for it to be published. ‘A third tried his damnedest to kill it,’ Chaisson said, the reviewer claiming the findings were ‘irrelevant and distracting’. After it was finally published, the paper got some traction when it was covered by a journalist and ran as a feature story on the front page of The Boston Globe . The numbers Chaisson crunched, predictions of our mounting waste heat, were even run on a supercomputer at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, by Mark Flanner, a professor of earth system science. Flanner, Chaisson suspected at the time, was likely ‘out to prove it wrong’. But, ‘after his machine crunched for many hours’, he saw the same results that Chaisson had written on the back of an envelope that night in the plane.

Around the same time, also in 2008, two engineers, Nick Cowern and Chihak Ahn, wrote a research paper entirely independent of Chaisson’s work, but with similar conclusions. This was how I first came across the problem. Cowern and Ahn’s study estimated the total amount of waste heat we’re currently releasing to the environment, and found that it is, right now, quite small. But, like Chaisson, they acknowledged that the problem would eventually become serious unless steps were taken to avoid it.

That’s some of the early history of thinking in this area. But these two papers, and a few other analyses since, point to the same unsettling conclusion: what I am calling ‘deep warming’ will be a big problem for humanity at some point in the not-too-distant future. The precise date is far from certain. It might be 150 years , or 400, or 800, but it’s in the relatively near future, not the distant future of, say, thousands or millions of years. This is our future.

T he transformation of energy into heat is among the most ubiquitous processes of physics. As cars drive down roads, trains roar along railways, planes cross the skies and industrial plants turn raw materials into refined products, energy gets turned into heat, which is the scientific word for energy stored in the disorganised motions of molecules at the microscopic level. As a plane flies from Paris to Boston, it burns fuel and thrusts hot gases into the air, generates lots of sound and stirs up contrails. These swirls of air give rise to swirls on smaller scales which in turn make smaller ones until the energy ultimately ends up lost in heat – the air is a little warmer than before, the molecules making it up moving about a little more vigorously. A similar process takes place when energy is used by the tiny electrical currents inside the microchips of computers, silently carrying out computations. Energy used always ends up as heat. Decades ago, research by the IBM physicist Rolf Landauer showed that a computation involving even a single computing bit will release a certain minimum amount of heat to the environment.

How this happens is described by the laws of thermodynamics, which were described in the mid-19th century by scientists including Sadi Carnot in France and Rudolf Clausius in Germany. Two key ‘laws’ summarise its main principles.

The first law of thermodynamics simply states that the total quantity of energy never changes but is conserved. Energy, in other words, never disappears, but only changes form. The energy initially stored in an aircraft’s fuel, for example, can be changed into the energetic motion of the plane. Turn on an electric heater, and energy initially held in electric currents gets turned into heat, which spreads into the air, walls and fabric of your house. The total energy remains the same, but it markedly changes form.

We’re generating waste heat all the time with everything we do

The second law of thermodynamics, equally important, is more subtle and states that, in natural processes, the transformation of energy always moves from more organised and useful forms to less organised and less useful forms. For an aircraft, the energy initially concentrated in jet fuel ends up dissipated in stirred-up winds, sounds and heat spread over vast areas of the atmosphere in a largely invisible way. It’s the same with the electric heater: the organised useful energy in the electric currents gets dissipated and spread into the low-grade warmth of the walls, then leaks into the outside air. Although the amount of energy remains the same, it gradually turns into less organised, less usable forms. The end point of the energy process produces waste heat. And we’re generating it all the time with everything we do.

Data on world energy consumption shows that, collectively, all humans on Earth are currently using about 170,000 terawatt-hours (TWh), which is a lot of energy in absolute terms – a terawatt-hour is the total energy consumed in one hour by any process using energy at a rate of 1 trillion watts. This huge number isn’t surprising, as it represents all the energy being used every day by the billions of cars and homes around the world, as well as by industry, farming, construction, air traffic and so on. But, in the early 21st century , the warming from this energy is still much less than the planetary heating due to greenhouse gases.

Concentrations of greenhouse gases such as CO 2 and methane are quite small, and only make a fractional difference to how much of the Sun’s energy gets trapped in the atmosphere, rather than making it back out to space. Even so, this fractional difference has a huge effect because the stream of energy arriving from the Sun to Earth is so large. Current estimates of this greenhouse energy imbalance come to around 0.87 W per square meter, which translates into a total energy figure about 50 times larger than our waste heat. That’s reassuring. But as Cowern and Ahn wrote in their 2008 paper, things aren’t likely to stay this way over time because our energy usage keeps rising. Unless, that is, we can find some radical way to break the trend of using ever more energy.

O ne common objection to the idea of the deep warming is to claim that the problem won’t really arise. ‘Don’t worry,’ someone might say, ‘with efficient technology, we’re going to find ways to stop using more energy; though we’ll end up doing more things in the future, we’ll use less energy.’ This may sound plausible at first, because we are indeed getting more efficient at using energy in most areas of technology. Our cars, appliances and laptops are all doing more with less energy. If efficiency keeps improving, perhaps we can learn to run these things with almost no energy at all? Not likely, because there are limits to energy efficiency.

Over the past few decades, the efficiency of heating in homes – including oil and gas furnaces, and boilers used to heat water – has increased from less than 50 per cent to well above 90 per cent of what is theoretically possible. That’s good news, but there’s not much more efficiency to be realised in basic heating. The efficiency of lighting has also vastly improved, with modern LED lighting turning something like 70 per cent of the applied electrical energy into light. We will gain some efficiencies as older lighting gets completely replaced by LEDs, but there’s not a lot of room left for future efficiency improvements. Similar efficiency limits arise in the growing or cooking of food; in the manufacturing of cars, bikes and electronic devices; in transportation, as we’re taken from place to place; in the running of search engines, translation software, GPT-4 or other large-language models.

Even if we made significant improvements in the efficiencies of these technologies, we will only have bought a little time. These changes won’t delay by much the date when deep warming becomes a problem we must reckon with.

Optimising efficiencies is just a temporary reprieve, not a radical change in our human future

As a thought experiment, suppose we could immediately improve the energy efficiency of everything we do by a factor of 10 – a fantastically optimistic proposal. That is, imagine the energy output of humans on Earth has been reduced 10 times , from 170,000 TWh to 17,000 TWh . If our energy use keeps expanding, doubling every 30-50 years or so (as it has for centuries), then a 10-fold increase in waste heat will happen in just over three doubling times, which is about 130 years : 17,000 TWh doubles to 34,000 TWh , which doubles to 68,000 TWh , which doubles to 136,000 TWh , and so on. All those improvements in energy efficiency would quickly evaporate. The date when deep warming hits would recede by 130 years or so, but not much more. Optimising efficiencies is just a temporary reprieve, not a radical change in our human future.

Improvements in energy efficiency can also have an inverse effect on our overall energy use. It’s easy to think that if we make a technology more efficient, we’ll then use less energy through the technology. But economists are deeply aware of a paradoxical effect known as ‘rebound’, whereby improved energy efficiency, by making the use of a technology cheaper, actually leads to more widespread use of that technology – and more energy use too. The classic example, as noted by the British economist William Stanley Jevons in his book The Coal Question (1865), is the invention of the steam engine. This new technology could extract energy from burning coal more efficiently, but it also made possible so many new applications that the use of coal increased. A recent study by economists suggests that, across the economy, such rebound effects might easily swallow at least 50 per cent of any efficiency gains in energy use. Something similar has already happened with LED lights, for which people have found thousands of new uses.

If gains in efficiency won’t buy us lots of time, how about other factors, such as a reduction of the global population? Scientists generally believe that the current human population of more than 8 billion people is well beyond the limits of our finite planet, especially if a large fraction of this population aspires to the resource-intensive lifestyles of wealthy nations. Some estimates suggest that a more sustainable population might be more like 2 billion , which could reduce energy use significantly, potentially by a factor of three or four. However, this isn’t a real solution: again, as with the example of improved energy efficiency, a one-time reduction of our energy consumption by a factor of three will quickly be swallowed up by an inexorable rise in energy use. If Earth’s population were suddenly reduced to 2 billion – about a quarter of the current population – our energy gains would initially be enormous. But those gains would be erased in two doubling times, or roughly 60-100 years , as our energy demands would grow fourfold.

S o, why aren’t more people talking about this? The deep warming problem is starting to get more attention. It was recently mentioned on Twitter by the German climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf, who cautioned that nuclear fusion, despite excitement over recent advances, won’t arrive in time to save us from our waste heat, and might make the problem worse. By providing another cheap source of energy, fusion energy could accelerate both the growth of our energy use and the reckoning of deep warming. A student of Rahmstorf’s, Peter Steiglechner, wrote his master’s thesis on the problem in 2018. Recognition of deep warming and its long-term implications for humanity is spreading. But what can we do about the problem?

Avoiding or delaying deep warming will involve slowing the rise of our waste heat, which means restricting the amount of energy we use and also choosing energy sources that exacerbate the problem as little as possible. Unlike the energy from fossil fuels or nuclear power, which add to our waste energy burden, renewable energy sources intercept energy that is already on its way to Earth, rather than producing additional waste heat. In this sense, the deep warming problem is another reason to pursue renewable energy sources such as solar or wind rather than alternatives such as nuclear fusion, fission or even geothermal power. If we derive energy from any of these sources, we’re unleashing new flows of energy into the Earth system without making a compensating reduction. As a result, all such sources will add to the waste heat problem. However, if renewable sources of energy are deployed correctly, they need not add to our deposition of waste heat in the environment. By using this energy, we produce no more waste heat than would have been created by sunlight in the first place.

Take the example of wind energy. Sunlight first stirs winds into motion by heating parts of the planet unequally, causing vast cells of convection. As wind churns through the atmosphere, blows through trees and over mountains and waves, most of its energy gets turned into heat, ending up in the microscopic motions of molecules. If we harvest some of this wind energy through turbines, it will also be turned into heat in the form of stored energy. But, crucially, no more heat is generated than if there had been no turbines to capture the wind.

The same can hold true for solar energy. In an array of solar cells, if each cell only collects the sunlight falling on it – which would ordinarily have been absorbed by Earth’s surface – then the cells don’t alter how much waste heat gets produced as they generate energy. The light that would have warmed Earth’s surface instead goes into the solar cells, gets used by people for some purpose, and then later ends up as heat. In this way we reduce the amount of heat being absorbed by Earth by precisely the same amount as the energy we are extracting for human use. We are not adding to overall planetary heating. This keeps the waste energy burden unchanged, at least in the relatively near future, even if we go on extracting and using ever larger amounts of energy.

Covering deserts in dark panels would absorb a lot more energy than the desert floor

Chaisson summarised the problem quite clearly in 2008:

I’m now of the opinion … that any energy that’s dug up on Earth – including all fossil fuels of course, but also nuclear and ground-sourced geothermal – will inevitably produce waste heat as a byproduct of humankind’s use of energy. The only exception to that is energy arriving from beyond Earth, this is energy here and now and not dug up, namely the many solar energies (plural) caused by the Sun’s rays landing here daily … The need to avoid waste heat is indeed the single, strongest, scientific argument to embrace solar energies of all types.

But not just any method of gathering solar energy will avoid the deep warming problem. Doing so requires careful engineering. For example, covering deserts with solar panels would add to planetary heating because deserts reflect a lot of incident light back out to space, so it is never absorbed by Earth (and therefore doesn’t produce waste heat). Covering deserts in dark panels would absorb a lot more energy than the desert floor and would heat the planet further.

We’ll also face serious problems in the long run if our energy appetite keeps increasing. Futurists dream of technologies deployed in space where huge panels would absorb sunlight that would otherwise have passed by Earth and never entered our atmosphere. Ultimately, they believe, this energy could be beamed down to Earth. Like nuclear energy, such technologies would add an additional energy source to the planet without any compensating removal of heating from the sunlight currently striking our planet’s surface. Any effort to produce more energy than is normally available from sunlight at Earth’s surface will only make our heating problems worse.

D eep warming is simply a consequence of the laws of physics and our inquisitive nature. It seems to be in our nature to constantly learn and develop new things, changing our environment in the process. For thousands of years, we have harvested and exploited ever greater quantities of energy in this pursuit, and we appear poised to continue along this path with the rapidly expanding use of renewable energy sources – and perhaps even more novel sources such as nuclear fusion. But this path cannot proceed indefinitely without consequences.

The logic that more energy equals more warming sets up a profound dilemma for our future. The laws of physics and the habits ingrained in us from our long evolutionary history are steering us toward trouble. We may have a technological fix for greenhouse gas warming – just shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources – but there is no technical trick to get us out of the deep warming problem. That won’t stop some scientists from trying.

Perhaps, believing that humanity is incapable of reducing its energy usage, we’ll adopt a fantastic scheme to cool the planet, such as planetary-scale refrigeration or using artificially engineered tornadoes to transport heat from Earth’s surface to the upper atmosphere where it can be radiated away to space. As far-fetched as such approaches sound, scientists have given some serious thought to these and other equally bizarre ideas, which seem wholly in the realm of science fiction. They’re schemes that will likely make the problem worse not better.

We will need to transform the human story. It must become a story of doing less, not more

I see several possibilities for how we might ultimately respond. As with greenhouse gas warming, there will probably be an initial period of disbelief, denial and inaction, as we continue with unconstrained technological advance and growing energy use. Our planet will continue warming. Sooner or later, however, such warming will lead to serious disruptions of the Earth environment and its ecosystems. We won’t be able to ignore this for long, and it may provide a natural counterbalance to our energy use, as our technical and social capacity to generate and use ever more energy will be eroded. We may eventually come to some uncomfortable balance in which we just scrabble out a life on a hot, compromised planet because we lack the moral and organisational ability to restrict our energy use enough to maintain a sound environment.

An alternative would require a radical break with our past: using less energy. Finding a way to use less energy would represent a truly fundamental rupture with all of human history, something entirely novel. A rupture of this magnitude won’t come easily. However, if we could learn to view restrictions on our energy use as a non-negotiable element of life on Earth, we may still be able to do many of the things that make us essentially human: learning, discovering, inventing, creating. In this scenario, any helpful new technology that comes into use and begins using lots of energy would require a balancing reduction in energy use elsewhere. In such a way, we might go on with the future being perpetually new, and possibly better.

None of this is easily achieved and will likely mirror our current struggles to come to agreements on greenhouse gas heating. There will be vicious squabbles, arguments and profound polarisation, quite possibly major wars. Humanity will never have faced a challenge of this magnitude, and we won’t face up to it quickly or easily, I expect. But we must. Planetary heating is in our future – the very near future and further out as well. Many people will find this conclusion surprisingly hard to swallow, perhaps because it implies fundamental restrictions on our future here on Earth: we can’t go on forever using more and more energy, and, at the same time, expecting the planet’s climate to remain stable.

The world will likely be transformed by 2050. And, sometime after that, we will need to transform the human story. The narrative arc of humanity must become a tale of continuing innovation and learning, but also one of careful management. It must become a story, in energy terms, of doing less, not more. There’s no technology for entirely escaping waste heat, only techniques.

This is important to remember as we face up to the extremely urgent challenge of heating linked to fossil-fuel use and greenhouse gases. Global warming is just the beginning of our problems. It’s a testing ground to see if we can manage an intelligent and coordinated response. If we can handle this challenge, we might be better prepared, more capable and resilient as a species to tackle an even harder one.

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global warming summary

Learn about the causes and effects of global warming.

global warming , Increase in the global average surface temperature resulting from enhancement of the greenhouse effect, primarily by air pollution . In 2007 the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast that by 2100 global average surface temperatures would increase 3.2–7.2 °F (1.8–4.0 °C), depending on a range of scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions, and stated that it was now 90 percent certain that most of the warming observed over the previous half century could be attributed to greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activities (i.e., industrial processes and transportation). Many scientists predict that such an increase in temperature would cause polar ice caps and mountain glaciers to melt rapidly, significantly raising the levels of coastal waters, and would produce new patterns and extremes of drought and rainfall, seriously disrupting food production in certain regions. Other scientists maintain that such predictions are overstated. The 1992 Earth Summit and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change attempted to address the issue of global warming, but in both cases the efforts were hindered by conflicting national economic agendas and disputes between developed and developing nations over the cost and consequences of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

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Argumentative Essay on Global Warming

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10 (page 173) p. 173 Conclusion

• Published: November 2008
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The ‘Conclusion’ confirms that global warming is the major challenge for our global society. There is very little doubt that global warming will change our climate in the next century. So what are the solutions to global warming? First, there must be an international political solution. Second, funding for developing cheap and clean energy production must be increased, as all economic development is based on increasing energy usage. We must not pin all our hopes on global politics and clean energy technology, so we must prepare for the worst and adapt. If implemented now, a lot of the costs and damage that could be caused by changing climate can be mitigated.

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Language matters when the Earth is in the midst of a climate crisis

Professor & Director, Global Ecological Change & Sustainability Laboratory, University of Guelph

Disclosure statement

Madhur Anand receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, the Canada First Research Excellence Fund & the James S. MacDonnell Foundation.

University of Guelph provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA.

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In a 2015 essay , poet and novelist Margaret Atwood wrote, “It’s not climate change, it’s everything change.”

Atwood asked us back then to reconsider the term “climate change” because there is not a system — human or non-human — that will remain untouched by the impacts of climate change. Everything will be affected, and so, likely, everything (as we know it) will have to change.

The writing impressed me, and I agreed with her thesis, but somehow it wasn’t this essay that shook me up as much as another recent reading on climate change did.

The recent scientific Special Report on the impacts of 1.5C of global warming of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded: “Limiting global warming to 1.5C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”

That’s what gave me pause: Rapid. Far-reaching. Unprecedented. All aspects of society.

Everything screamed “emergency,” even though the word wasn’t used.

I know how cautious scientists can be in their communications — I am one myself. That is precisely why those words were sufficient to evoke an emotional response.

It was this shift in language (and not the countless graphs, reports, books and scientific articles I’d read — and indeed created myself — as a global-change ecologist) that finally elicited a tipping point in my own behaviour towards mitigating climate change.

Between “cliffhanger” and “climbdown”

Recently, the Guardian updated its style guide to revise its use of the term “climate change.” The move both echoes the tones of Atwood’s essay and the seriousness of the latest IPCC report.

The newly defined climate change terms appear in the guide, right between “cliffhanger” and “climbdown.”

Climate change … is no longer considered to accurately reflect the seriousness of the situation; use climate emergency, crisis or breakdown instead.

The IPCC reports with high confidence that global warming reached approximately 1C above pre-industrial levels in 2017, and several catastrophes, indeed we could say “emergencies,” including floods, forest fires, drought and storms have been linked to this change.

Researchers have determined that media can influence policy and public understanding of the environment. Both of these things can also affect human behaviour. So the language they use is indeed important.

The Guardian wants to tell it like it is , but where did the term “climate change” come from in the first place?

New terms now old?

The study of anthropogenic climate change is quite old. Svante Arrhenius proposed the connection between fossil fuel combustion and increases in global temperature in 1896. In the late 1950s, Charles David Keeling’s measurements of atmospheric CO2 from the Mauna Koa Observatory determined the effect of human activities on the chemical composition of the global atmosphere. But widespread adoption of the term climate change is relatively new.

I was a student in the very first cohort of the Environmental Sciences Graduate Program at Western University more than 20 years ago. We learned about global warming and the greenhouse effect, both of which had become well-established facts decades earlier. But I don’t recall the term climate change ever being used in my courses and neither do some of my classmates.

Read more: The meaning of environmental words matters in the age of 'fake news'

NASA claims the term climate change was introduced in 1975 , in an article titled “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of Pronounced Global Warming?” published in Science .

The article communicates the difference between the two commonly used terms: “Global warming: the increase in Earth’s average surface temperature due to rising levels of greenhouse gases. Climate change: a long-term change in the Earth’s climate, or of a region on Earth.”

Yet when my colleagues and I published our textbook Climate Change Biology in 2011, it was, to our surprise, one of the first with the term in its title in our field. With several climate change terms already in existence, it does merit some consideration as to what might be the impact of the new terms the Guardian wants to use.

Climate change poetics

Poets, who have been famously dubbed “the unacknowledged legislators of the world” by Percy Bysshe Shelley , know the power of language is not only about accuracy but also metaphorical potential.

Many poets, some of whom are discussed in the book Can Poetry Save the Earth? have been working to use language to foster change. In my 2015 found poem based on one of my climate change scientific articles, “ Especially in a Time ,” I refer to a need for a new word for “change” when I write: “a prolonged change is also under scrutiny.”

But poetry alone, by definition, overshoots the aim to serve as specific propaganda, even for good causes, and thus we must also look to the language of other discourses to create the change we want. Certainly, politicians know the power of language when they prepare speeches .

What might emergency mean?

The past few years there has been a dramatic change in the language scientists use to communicate their science. This isn’t unusual; science could not progress without the invention of terms to communicate new discoveries precisely.

And to be fair, scientists have long referred to different kinds of change related to climate and weather in scientific papers. There’s “abrupt climate change,” “extreme events,” “acceleration” (the rate of change of change) and even “regime shifts,” which all have specific scientific definitions.

But generally speaking, scientists often refrain from using emotion-inducing language. As such, you will rarely find the term “emergency” in a scientific article about some new impact of climate change.

Read more: The impact of climate change on language loss

Consider another example of language change from the Guardian Style Guide : The term “child abuse images” is recommended over “child pornography,” “child porn” and “kiddy porn,” to avoid “a misleading and potentially trivializing impression of what is a very serious crime.” Reporters and editors are also urged to add a footnote with details about support services to stories about child sexual abuse.

And the United Nations rarely uses the term genocide, but when it does, it demands attention. This includes “ naming and shaming the persecutors ,” something others have said should be done for the climate crisis.

Not everyone is on board with changing “climate change” to “climate emergency.” Just this past week, my own city council voted against it in favour of the term “crisis.” Words do carry weight. One of the councillors feared that “to knowingly say emergency today, knowing that that will kick 20, 30, 40 per cent of the people in our city out of that conversation because they will not engage any more.” This councillor worried that if the general public heard this, some of them might disengage, thinking it was for the radicals, not them.

Arundhati Roy, one of my favourite writers , is wary, and indeed prescient, of how the term “emergency” may get used by those in power. She finds, especially in India and the Global South, that “increasingly the vocabulary around it is being militarized. And no doubt very soon its victims will become the ‘enemies’ in the new war without end.”

Still, as a global citizen, as a scientist and as a poet, I commend the Guardian for its change in style. The IPCC report language led me to make personal lifestyle changes (diet, car, air plane use and divestment), but the word “emergency” adopted by governments and media would certainly make me more hopeful for the kind of rapid and far-reaching and unprecedented change we need. I wonder if in the future the style guide will include a footnote with details about support services for readers to be added to future climate emergency stories.

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Global Warming Speech: 1, 2, 3-5 Minute Speech

• Updated on  
• Feb 3, 2024

Global warming refers to the long-term rise in Earth’s average surface temperature. Since the 18th-century Industrial Revolution in European Countries, global annual temperature has increased in total by a little more than 1 degree Celsius. Global Warming is one of the most concerning issues facing us, as it threatens the existence of life on Earth. Greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, industrial processes, waste management, etc are all reasons for global warming.

Did you know: Antarctica is losing ice mass at an average rate of about 150 billion tons per year, and Greenland is losing about 270 billion tons per year, adding to sea level rise?

Today, weather prediction has been becoming more complex with every passing year, with seasons more indistinguishable, and the general temperatures hotter. The number of natural disasters like hurricanes, cyclones, droughts, floods, etc., has risen steadily since the onset of the 21st century. The supervillain behind all these changes is Global Warming. The name is quite self-explanatory; it means the rise in the temperature of the Earth. Since childhood, we all have heard about it, but just as a formality, let us first understand what global warming is!

Quick Read: 2-Minute Speech on Holi

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Short global warming speech 100-150 words (1 minute), global warming speech 250 words (2 minutes), global warming speech 500- 700 words (3- 5 minutes), 10-line global warming speech, causes of global warming, ways to tackle global warming.

It means a rise in global temperature due to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activities and inventions. In scientific words, Global Warming is when the earth heats (the temperature rises). It occurs when the earth’s atmosphere warms up as a result of the sun’s heat and light being trapped by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, water vapour, nitrous oxide, and methane. Many people, animals, and plants are harmed by this. Many people die because they can’t handle the shift.

Good morning to everyone present here today I am going to present a speech on global warming. Global Warming is caused by the increase of carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s atmosphere and is a result of human activities that have been causing harm to our environment for the past few centuries now. Global Warming is something that can’t be ignored and steps have to be taken to tackle the situation globally. The average temperature is constantly rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius for the last few years. The best method to prevent future damage to the earth, cutting down more forests should be banned and Afforestation should be encouraged. Start by planting trees near your homes and offices, participate in events, and teach the importance of planting trees. It is impossible to undo the damage but it is possible to stop further harm.

Good morning everyone and topic of my speech today is global warming. Over a long period, it is observed that the Earth’s temperature is rising rapidly. This affected the wildlife, animals, humans, and every living organism on earth. Glaciers have been melting, and many countries have started water shortages, flooding, erosion and all this is because of global warming. No one can be blamed for global warming except for humans. Human activities such as gases released from power plants, transportation, and deforestation have resulted in the increase of gases such as carbon dioxide, CFCs, and other pollutants in the earth’s atmosphere. The main question is how can we control the current situation and build a better world for future generations. It starts with little steps by every individual. Start using cloth bags made from sustainable materials for all shopping purposes, instead of using the high-watt lights use the energy-efficient bulbs, switch off the electricity, don’t waste water, abolish deforestation and encourage planting more trees. Shift the use of energy from petroleum or other fossil fuels to wind and solar energy. Instead of throwing out the old clothes donate them to someone so that it is recycled. Donate old books, don’t waste paper.  Above all, spread awareness about global warming. Every little thing a person does towards saving the earth will contribute in big or small amounts. We must learn that 1% effort is better than no effort. Pledge to take care of Mother Nature and speak up about global warming. 

Also Read: How To Become an Environmentalist?

Also Read: Essay on Global Warming

Global warming isn’t a prediction, it is happening! A person denying it or unaware of it is in the most simple terms complicit. Do we have another planet to live on? Unfortunately, we have been bestowed with this one planet only that can sustain life yet over the years we have turned a blind eye to the plight it is in. Global warming is not an abstract concept but a global phenomenon occurring ever so slowly even at this moment. Global Warming is a phenomenon that is occurring every minute resulting in a gradual increase in the Earth’s overall climate. Brought about by greenhouse gases that trap the solar radiation in the atmosphere, global warming can change the entire map of the earth, displacing areas, flooding many countries and destroying multiple lifeforms. Extreme weather is a direct consequence of global warming but it is not an exhaustive consequence. There are virtually limitless effects of global warming which are all harmful to life on earth. The sea level is increasing by 0.12 inches per year worldwide. This is happening because of the melting of polar ice caps because of global warming. This has increased the frequency of floods in many lowland areas and has caused damage to coral reefs. The Arctic is one of the worst-hit areas affected by global warming. Air quality has been adversely affected and the acidity of the seawater has also increased causing severe damage to marine life forms. Severe natural disasters are brought about by global warming which has had dire effects on life and property. As long as mankind produces greenhouse gases, global warming will continue to accelerate. The consequences are felt at a much smaller scale which will increase to become drastic shortly. The power to save the day lies in the hands of humans, the need is to seize the day. Energy consumption should be reduced on an individual basis. Fuel-efficient cars and other electronics should be encouraged to reduce the wastage of energy sources. This will also improve air quality and reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Global warming is an evil which can only be defeated when fought together. It is better late than never. If we take steps today, we will have a much brighter future tomorrow. Global warming is the bane of our existence and various policies have come up worldwide to fight it but that is not enough. The actual difference is made when we work at an individual level to fight it. Understanding its importance now is crucial before it becomes an irrevocable mistake. Exterminating global warming is of utmost importance and everyone is as responsible for it as the next.  

Students in grades 1-3 can benefit from this kind of speech since it gives them a clear understanding of the issue in an accessible manner.

• Although global warming is not a new occurrence and has been a worry since before civilization, the danger is only getting worse over time.
• The average global temperature is rising as a result of pollution and damage to the natural systems that control the climate, including the air, water, and land.
• Population growth and people’s desire to live comfortably are the main causes of pollution.
• The primary sources include carbon emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels, factories, cars, trains, and other transportation, as well as from the coal industry.
• When these dangerous pollutants are discharged into the atmosphere, protective layers like ozone begin to erode, allowing dangerous solar rays to enter the atmosphere and causing a temperature rise.
• Because of the disastrous consequences of global warming, the threat has increased.
• This causes unnatural effects like the melting of glaciers, the rise in sea level, hurricanes, droughts, and floods, which alters the climate and upsets everything.
• Changes in rainfall patterns have only made agricultural lands and hence the vegetation worse.
• Using renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind, for power and other requirements can help us slow down the effects of climate change.
• To protect the environment and our natural resources, we must begin living sustainably.

Various factors lead to global warming. These days people have become so careless and selfish that they mainly focus on their growth and development. They tend to ignore nature’s need for love and care. Enlisted are the various causes of Global Warming:

• Industrial Activities : Industrial Activities lead to the vast usage of fossil fuels for the production of energy. These fossil fuels release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which leads to global warming. This energy is used for heat and electricity, transportation, industrial activities, agriculture, oil and gas production, etc.
• Agricultural Activities : The activity which provides every living thing with food is the one that leads to climate change, i.e., global warming. Agricultural activities use harmful commercial fertilizers that reap nitrous oxide, the most potent greenhouse gas. Methane is the other potent greenhouse gas that comes from the decomposition of waste, burning biomass, digestive systems of livestock, and numerous natural sources.
• Oil Drilling : Residuals from oil drilling release carbon dioxide. The processing of these fossil fuels and their distribution leads to methane production, a harmful greenhouse gas.
• Garbage : A recent study shows that 18 per cent of methane gas comes from wastage and its treatment. This methane gas leads to harmful conditions, i.e., global warming.

Also Read: Essay on Sustainable Development: Format & Examples

• Afforestation : Every individual should take up an oath to plant at least five trees a year. This will lead to an increase in the number of trees, ultimately reducing the overall temperature.
• Reduce, Reuse and Recycle : We should focus on reducing the use of fossil fuels and other products, which lead to the production of harmful gases. Reusing means repetitive use of a single product. We must focus on reusing products to omit the disposing procedure, which leads to the production of harmful greenhouse gases. One must also focus on recycling paper, glass, newspaper, etc., which can reduce carbon dioxide production, ultimately reducing global warming.
• Reduce Hot Water Use : We should reduce the unnecessary use of hot water that leads to the production of carbon dioxide. A recent study shows that high hot water usage leads to an approximate output of 350 pounds of carbon dioxide.
• Buy Better Bulbs : It’s observed that traditional bulbs consume more energy as compared to LED bulbs. LED bulbs approximately conserve 80 per cent of the energy that might get wasted using traditional ones. So, one must shift to efficient and energy-conserving bulbs, which will ultimately help reduce global warming.

Also Read: Environmental Conservation

The three main causes of global warming are – burning fossil fuels, deforestation and agricultural activities.

Some of the ways through which we can stop global warming are – driving less, recycling more, planting trees, replacing regular bulbs with CFL ones, avoiding products with a lot of packaging, etc.

Climate change affects human health as it depletes the water and air quality, leads to extreme weather, increases the pace at which certain diseases spread, etc.

Mother Earth is facing the consequences of our careless actions. It is high time now that we act and protect the environment. A few decades ago, afforestation, using renewable sources, etc., was just an option, but today, these have become a necessity. If we do not change and move towards a more sustainable growth model, this planet that we all share will be significantly affected, and life, as we know it today, may perish. Let’s take a pledge to conserve and restore the beauty of our planet Earth. For more such informative content, follow Leverage Edu !

Sonal is a creative, enthusiastic writer and editor who has worked extensively for the Study Abroad domain. She splits her time between shooting fun insta reels and learning new tools for content marketing. If she is missing from her desk, you can find her with a group of people cracking silly jokes or petting neighbourhood dogs.

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Essay on Global Warming – 10 Lines, Short and Long Essay For Children

Key Points To Remember When Writing An Essay On Global Warming For Lower Primary Classes

10 lines on ‘global warming’ for kids, paragraph on ‘global warming’ for children, short essay on global warming in 250 words for kids, long essay on global warming for children, what will your child learn from the essay on global warming.

Global warming is the brutal reality of our times, resulting in climate change. Global warming is threatening the existence of our planet and every living species on it. According to researchers, global warming also endangers marine life’s presence. Kids need to know about this threat in their early years to make small but impactful changes in their approach to the planet’s survival. Writing an essay on global warming   will allow kids to analyse this issue with a fresh perspective. Given in this blog is an   essay for classes 1, 2 and 3 on this important topic.

Global warming is a massive problem, so teachers and parents ask kids to write about this serious issue to make them aware of it. Given below are key points that will answer their question about  how to write an essay on global warming:

• There should be an introduction describing global warming.
• The body of the essay should cover points like its impact, causes, precautions, etc.
• The conclusion should mention the summary of all the points mentioned above.
• If a kid writes, their point of view on the whole problem is crucial.
• Make short and simple sentences.

When writing about an important topic like global warming, teachers expect students in junior classes to write short sentences for better clarity. Given below are a  few lines on global warming  for writing an  essay for classes 1 and 2:

• Global warming can be defined as the rise in the surface temperature of the earth.
• The main reason behind global warming is the greenhouse effect.
• The depletion of green cover and the increase of gases like CO2 in the atmosphere is leading to global warming.
• Climate change is caused due to global warming, among other factors.
• Climate change leads to situations like droughts and disturbances in monsoon patterns.
• The mindless use of natural resources is another reason for global warming.
• An increase in global temperature leads to melting glaciers, resulting in a rise in sea level.
• Due to global warming temperature of the sea/water is also increasing. Thus, affecting marine life.
• We can prevent global warming by planting more trees and controlling the emission of harmful gases into the atmosphere.
• We need to understand that every activity that harms nature supports global warming.

Global warming is a crucial problem our planet faces due to humans’ mindless actions, and this is something kids need to understand at an early age. Given below is an essay on  global warming in 100 words for their reference:

In simple words, global warming means a rise in the earth’s average temperature. The main reason contributing to global warming is the greenhouse effect. The primary effect can be seen on our glaciers, as they are melting and raising the sea level, affecting human existence. The rise in water temperature is affecting marine life, and climate change triggered by global warming is creating extreme weather conditions. Deforestation and mindless use of our natural resources are some factors behind global warming. We must stop activities harming our nature’s balance to control global warming.

Writing on topics like global warming enhances thinking and evaluating abilities. Given below is an essay for classes 1, 2 and 3 on global warming for their reference:

We are living in an age where there are many threats to the existence of our beautiful planet. But, the most crucial one is global warming. It is a concern among many intellectuals, politicians, researchers, policymakers, geographical experts, etc., as it endangers living beings’ very survival. So, what is global warming? The continuous rise in the temperature of the earth is called global warming. It is said that the earth’s temperature has risen by 0.08 degrees celsius every ten years since 1880. The leading cause behind global warming is human’s careless and excessive use of natural resources. The depletion of green cover and the rise in the greenhouse gases like CO2 in the atmosphere are other factors behind global warming. The primary effect on the planet due to global warming is climate change. We observe a drastic shift in monsoon patterns every year and experience drought and floods like calamities. Many other notable changes are happening due to global warming. For example, heat waves have increased, some crucial animals have extincted, the effect on marine life is relentless, our glaciers have shrunk, and many more. We need to understand this and work on ways to improve the living quality on earth. Initiatives like planting trees, adopting spaces and making them sustainable are ways to improve this world. Even small things like cycling to school instead of using the car or public transport are a small way we can make a difference. 

Global warming is such a sensitive issue that needs to be addressed faster. Our future generations are going to play a significant role in the same. So, given below is an essay for class 3 on global warming.

Nature has given us so much to use, enjoy, explore and value. But our greed has destroyed everything- the very purpose of this beautiful earth. Now, we are on the edge of destruction as nature has started showing signs of floods, earthquakes, droughts, etc. But, one of the major challenges we are facing now is global warming, and all the points mentioned above are the outcome of this issue.

What Is Global Warming?

In simple words, global warming is the gradual increase in the earth’s temperature due to the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect or greenhouse gases like CO2, methane, etc., are good for the planet as these gases capture the heat from the sun and keep the atmosphere warm and liveable for living beings, but an increase in these greenhouse gases leads to more heat trap on earth which causes unnecessary earth heat up and lead to global warming.

What Are The Causes And Effects Of Global Warming?

There are many causes and effects of global warming – 

Causes of Global Warming

• Greenhouse effect or greenhouse gases:  Global warming happens when increased greenhouse gases like CO2, methane, and other pollutants absorb the sun’s heat more than the requirement and make the planet hotter.
• Volcanic eruptions:  These eruptions increase carbon dioxide, leading to global warming.
• Excessive use of automobiles: Excessive vehicles on the road lead to unnecessary emission of carbon dioxide gas into the environment, which is responsible for global warming.
• Deforestation:  The careless cutting of forest for building houses and sky-rises is depleting our green cover. So the absorption of carbon dioxide is decreasing, leading to global warming.
• Fossil fuel burning:  Excessive fossil fuel burning leads to unwanted carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. Again, contribution to global warming.

Effects of global warming

• Climate change:  Researchers agree that climate change is happening due to global warming. Earth’s rising temperature triggers heat waves, excessive rainfall, frequent droughts, etc.
• Disappearing glaciers:  Due to the rising temperature of the earth, glaciers are melting rapidly, resulting in rising sea levels.
• Extinct animals:  Many animals and birds go extinct due to unfavourable climatic conditions.
• Hampered agriculture:  Heavy rainfall in some places, drought in others, and heat waves destroy agriculture.

How Can Global Warming Be Prevented?

• Plant more trees:  A collective plantation drive should be initiated to compensate for the green cover. More trees and less CO2 in the environment can lead to controlled global warming.
• Take public transport:  Take public transport whenever possible. Don’t use private vehicles for luxury. This way, fewer greenhouse gases will get emitted into the atmosphere, reducing global warming.
• Save energy:  Use energy-sufficient appliances at home. Energy efficiency is the most cost-effective way to lessen unwanted environmental emissions.
• Conserve natural resources:  We need to stop the irrelevant overuse of our natural resources, which include water, soil, fossils, etc., for a better future and controlled global warming.

By writing an essay on global warming, your child learns about this global concern in detail, and may understand the importance of keeping things in check. They may contribute to taking preventive measures to stop global warming.

Noise Pollution Essay for Kids Essay On Tsunami in English for Children How to Write An Earthquake Essay for Lower Primary Classes

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Climate Change Can Also Transform Language

As our world warms, warps and melts, metaphors of the past take on new meaning

Rob Nixon, Aeon

Language bends and buckles under pressure of climate change. Take the adjective "glacial." I recently came across an old draft of my PhD dissertation on which my advisor had scrawled the rebuke: ‘You’re proceeding at a glacial pace. You’re skating on thin ice.’ That was in 1988, the year that the climatologist James Hansen testified before the United States Senate that runaway greenhouse gases posed a planetary threat.

If I repeated my advisor’s admonition on a dissertation today, the student might assume that I was rebuking them for writing too darn fast. Across all seven continents glaciers are receding at speed. Over a four-year span, Greenland’s ice cap shed 1 trillion tons of ice. Some geologists expect the Glacier National Park in Montana to lose the last of its glaciers around 2033, just as the equatorial glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro are also set to disappear. An Icelandic glaciologist calculates that by the end of the next century Iceland will be stripped of ice.

Are we moving toward a time when tourists will visit Montana’s National Park Formerly Known as Glacier? When students will read Hemingway’s story ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ (1936) not as realism but as science fiction? And when Reykjavik will be the capital of DeIcedland?

This shift reminds us that dead metaphors aren’t always terminally dead. Sometimes they’re just hibernating, only to stagger back to life, dazed and confused, blinking at the altered world that has roused them from their slumber. (Dead metaphor is itself a dead metaphor, but we can no longer feel the mortality in the figure of speech.)

During the Little Ice Age, which stretched from the 14th to the 19th century, the median Northern Hemisphere winter was significantly colder than it is today. Glaciers more often advanced than retreated, sometimes wiping out communities as they moved. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem ‘Mont Blanc’ (1817) captures the menacing aura that adhered to those frozen rivers of ice:

… The glaciers creep Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains, Slow rolling on … in scorn of mortal power

Shelley saw glaciers as predatory, immortal forces, eternal beings, before whose might mere humans quaked. But global warming has flipped that perception. We are now more likely to view glaciers as casualties of humanity’s outsize, planet-altering powers.

Glaciers in the 21st century constitute an un frozen hazard, as receding glaciers and ice packs push ocean levels higher. Just as alarming as the big thaw’s impact on sea rise is its impact on the security of our freshwater reserves. For glaciers serve as fragile, frigid reservoirs holding irreplaceable water: 47 per cent of humanity depends on water stored as seasonally replenished ice that flows from the Himalayas and Tibet alone.

From the Himalayas to the Alps and the Andes, glacial retreat is uncovering the boots and bones of long-lost mountaineers. But such discoveries involve a haunting, double revelation: each reclaimed climber reminds us of the glacier’s own vanishing. Siachen Glacier, where Indian and Pakistani troops have battled intermittently since 1984, is, for Arundhati Roy, the "most appropriate metaphor for the insanity of our times." The melting glacier is coughing up "empty artillery shells, empty fuel drums, ice axes, old boots, tents and every other kind of waste that thousands of warring human beings generate." This ghostly military detritus is being made visible by a more consequential war, humanity’s war against the planet that sustains us, a war that has left the Siachen Glacier grievously wounded.

R alph Waldo Emerson spoke of dead metaphors as "fossil poetry," noting in an essay in 1844 that "the deadest word" was "once a brilliant picture." If every metaphor involves a tenor (the object referred to) and a vehicle (the image that conveys the comparison), a failure to visualize once-brilliant pictures can result in a multi-vehicle pile-up. As George Orwell put it: "The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot."

In Politics and the English Language (1946), Orwell laid out six rules for writers, the first of which declares: "Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print." An inert metaphor such as "hotbed of radicalism" conveys very little: we can no longer feel the blazing temperature between the bed sheets, just as – prior to public awareness of global warming – we’d stopped noticing the icy fossil poetry in "glacial pace."

As consciousness of climate change has grown, a new class of dead metaphors has entered the English language. We speak routinely of carbon footprints, of wiping species off the face of the Earth, and of greenhouse gases, but we no longer see the feet, the hands, the faces and the backyard sheds that were once vivid when those phrases were newly coined.

Geologists now talk of searching for the "human signature" in the fossil record. Some geo-engineers want to inject vast clouds of sulphur aerosols into Earth’s atmosphere in the hopes of "resetting the global thermostat." Many of these coinages attempt to give an intimate, human dimension to planetary phenomena that can seem intimidatingly vast and abstract. Adam Smith in 1759 responded similarly to the massive scale of economic forces by inserting the human body in the form of the "invisible hand" of the market. Today, the science-fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson brings that dead metaphor back to life, complaining that, when it comes to the environment, "the invisible hand never picks up the check."

As our planet’s cryosphere thaws, we can detect all kinds of stirrings in the cemetery of dead metaphors. At Austrian and Swiss ski resorts, the natural "blankets" of snow have become so threadbare that resort owners are shielding them with actual isothermic blankets. And in the Arctic, the threat looms of im permanent permafrost from which climate-altering methane will bubble free.

Planet-wise, we’re all skating on thin ice.

"Calving glaciers" is shorthand for the seasonal rhythm whereby glaciers amass winter ice, then shed some of that accumulation each summer in the form of icebergs and growlers. When scientists refer to "calving glaciers," we do not typically visualize a Wisconsin dairy herd: as the phrase became routine, the calves have vanished from view. Now that climate change has thrown the balance between glacial accumulation and shedding out of whack, the dead metaphor reasserts itself as a living image. Is the prolific calving we’re now witnessing a fecund or a fatal act, a birthing ritual or a symptom of the death of ice?

Before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015, the sculptor Olafur Eliasson and the geologist Minik Rosing travelled to Greenland, where they lassoed some ice calves that they transported to the Place du Panthéon. There they created Ice Watch , an arrangement of mini-icebergs in the shape of a clock face. Over the duration of the conference, the public could watch time, in the form of ice melt, running out.

Greenpeace, too, has sought to mobilize people through art to act against accelerated calving. More than 7 million people have viewed the Greenpeace video in which the composer Ludovico Einaudi performs his ‘Elegy for the Arctic’ (2016) on a grand piano balanced on a fragile raft. As the raft drifts through the ice melt pouring off a glacier in Svalbard in Norway, the pianist’s plangent chords reverberate in counterpoint with the percussive booming of massive chunks of ice crashing into the ocean.

Have we reached a linguistic tipping point where "glacial pace" is incapable of conveying meaning with any clarity? Under pressure of a warming world, does "glacial" need to be decommissioned and pushed over the climate cliff?

Abrupt climate change challenges not just the capacity of the living to adapt, but also the adaptive capacities of human language. The "glacial" scrawled in the margins of my 1988 dissertation isn’t the "glacial" of 2018, any more than the polar bear that starred in Coca-Cola commercials (tubby, sugared-up, a cheerful icon of the good life) is interchangeable with today’s iconic polar bear – skinny, ribs bared, a climate refugee adrift on a puny platform of ice, impossibly far out to sea. In symbolic terms, the two bears scarcely belong to the same species.

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Global Energy Crisis

How the energy crisis started, how global energy markets are impacting our daily life, and what governments are doing about it

• English English

What is the energy crisis?

Record prices, fuel shortages, rising poverty, slowing economies: the first energy crisis that's truly global.

Energy markets began to tighten in 2021 because of a variety of factors, including the extraordinarily rapid economic rebound following the pandemic. But the situation escalated dramatically into a full-blown global energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The price of natural gas reached record highs, and as a result so did electricity in some markets. Oil prices hit their highest level since 2008. 

Higher energy prices have contributed to painfully high inflation, pushed families into poverty, forced some factories to curtail output or even shut down, and slowed economic growth to the point that some countries are heading towards severe recession. Europe, whose gas supply is uniquely vulnerable because of its historic reliance on Russia, could face gas rationing this winter, while many emerging economies are seeing sharply higher energy import bills and fuel shortages. While today’s energy crisis shares some parallels with the oil shocks of the 1970s, there are important differences. Today’s crisis involves all fossil fuels, while the 1970s price shocks were largely limited to oil at a time when the global economy was much more dependent on oil, and less dependent on gas. The entire word economy is much more interlinked than it was 50 years ago, magnifying the impact. That’s why we can refer to this as the first truly global energy crisis.

Some gas-intensive manufacturing plants in Europe have curtailed output because they can’t afford to keep operating, while in China some have simply had their power supply cut. In emerging and developing economies, where the share of household budgets spent on energy and food is already large, higher energy bills have increased extreme poverty and set back progress towards achieving universal and affordable energy access. Even in advanced economies, rising prices have impacted vulnerable households and caused significant economic, social and political strains.

Climate policies have been blamed in some quarters for contributing to the recent run-up in energy prices, but there is no evidence. In fact, a greater supply of clean energy sources and technologies would have protected consumers and mitigated some of the upward pressure on fuel prices.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine drove European and Asian gas prices to record highs

Evolution of key regional natural gas prices, june 2021-october 2022, what is causing it, disrupted supply chains, bad weather, low investment, and then came russia's invasion of ukraine.

Energy prices have been rising since 2021 because of the rapid economic recovery, weather conditions in various parts of the world, maintenance work that had been delayed by the pandemic, and earlier decisions by oil and gas companies and exporting countries to reduce investments. Russia began withholding gas supplies to Europe in 2021, months ahead of its invasion of Ukraine. All that led to already tight supplies. Russia’s attack on Ukraine greatly exacerbated the situation . The United States and the EU imposed a series of sanctions on Russia and many European countries declared their intention to phase out Russian gas imports completely. Meanwhile, Russia has increasingly curtailed or even turned off its export pipelines. Russia is by far the world’s largest exporter of fossil fuels, and a particularly important supplier to Europe. In 2021, a quarter of all energy consumed in the EU came from Russia. As Europe sought to replace Russian gas, it bid up prices of US, Australian and Qatari ship-borne liquefied natural gas (LNG), raising prices and diverting supply away from traditional LNG customers in Asia. Because gas frequently sets the price at which electricity is sold, power prices soared as well. Both LNG producers and importers are rushing to build new infrastructure to increase how much LNG can be traded internationally, but these costly projects take years to come online. Oil prices also initially soared as international trade routes were reconfigured after the United States, many European countries and some of their Asian allies said they would no longer buy Russian oil. Some shippers have declined to carry Russian oil because of sanctions and insurance risk. Many large oil producers were unable to boost supply to meet rising demand – even with the incentive of sky-high prices – because of a lack of investment in recent years. While prices have come down from their peaks, the outlook is uncertain with new rounds of European sanctions on Russia kicking in later this year.

What is being done?

Pandemic hangovers and rising interest rates limit public responses, while some countries turn to coal.

Some governments are looking to cushion the blow for customers and businesses, either through direct assistance, or by limiting prices for consumers and then paying energy providers the difference. But with inflation in many countries well above target and budget deficits already large because of emergency spending during the Covid-19 pandemic, the scope for cushioning the impact is more limited than in early 2020. Rising inflation has triggered increases in short-term interest rates in many countries, slowing down economic growth. Europeans have rushed to increase gas imports from alternative producers such as Algeria, Norway and Azerbaijan. Several countries have resumed or expanded the use of coal for power generation, and some are extending the lives of nuclear plants slated for de-commissioning. EU members have also introduced gas storage obligations, and agreed on voluntary targets to cut gas and electricity demand by 15% this winter through efficiency measures, greater use of renewables, and support for efficiency improvements. To ensure adequate oil supplies, the IEA and its members responded with the two largest ever releases of emergency oil stocks. With two decisions – on 1 March 2022 and 1 April – the IEA coordinated the release of some 182 million barrels of emergency oil from public stocks or obligated stocks held by industry. Some IEA member countries independently released additional public stocks, resulting in a total of over 240 million barrels being released between March and November 2022.

The IEA has also published action plans to cut oil use with immediate impact, as well as plans for how Europe can reduce its reliance on Russian gas and how common citizens can reduce their energy consumption . The invasion has sparked a reappraisal of energy policies and priorities, calling into question the viability of decades of infrastructure and investment decisions, and profoundly reorientating international energy trade. Gas had been expected to play a key role in many countries as a lower-emitting "bridge" between dirtier fossil fuels and renewable energies. But today’s crisis has called into question natural gas’ reliability.

The current crisis could accelerate the rollout of cleaner, sustainable renewable energy such as wind and solar, just as the 1970s oil shocks spurred major advances in energy efficiency, as well as in nuclear, solar and wind power. The crisis has also underscored the importance of investing in robust gas and power network infrastructure to better integrate regional markets. The EU’s RePowerEU, presented in May 2022 and the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act , passed in August 2022, both contain major initiatives to develop energy efficiency and promote renewable energies. 

The global energy crisis can be a historic turning point

Energy saving tips

1. Heating: turn it down

Lower your thermostat by just 1°C to save around 7% of your heating energy and cut an average bill by EUR 50-70 a year. Always set your thermostat as low as feels comfortable, and wear warm clothes indoors. Use a programmable thermostat to set the temperature to 15°C while you sleep and 10°C when the house is unoccupied. This cuts up to 10% a year off heating bills. Try to only heat the room you’re in or the rooms you use regularly.

The same idea applies in hot weather. Turn off air-conditioning when you’re out. Set the overall temperature 1 °C warmer to cut bills by up to 10%. And only cool the room you’re in.

2. Boiler: adjust the settings

Default boiler settings are often higher than you need. Lower the hot water temperature to save 8% of your heating energy and cut EUR 100 off an average bill.  You may have to have the plumber come once if you have a complex modern combi boiler and can’t figure out the manual. Make sure you follow local recommendations or consult your boiler manual. Swap a bath for a shower to spend less energy heating water. And if you already use a shower, take a shorter one. Hot water tanks and pipes should be insulated to stop heat escaping. Clean wood- and pellet-burning heaters regularly with a wire brush to keep them working efficiently.

3. Warm air: seal it in

Close windows and doors, insulate pipes and draught-proof around windows, chimneys and other gaps to keep the warm air inside. Unless your home is very new, you will lose heat through draughty doors and windows, gaps in the floor, or up the chimney. Draught-proof these gaps with sealant or weather stripping to save up to EUR 100 a year. Install tight-fitting curtains or shades on windows to retain even more heat. Close fireplace and chimney openings (unless a fire is burning) to stop warm air escaping straight up the chimney. And if you never use your fireplace, seal the chimney to stop heat escaping.

4. Lightbulbs: swap them out

Replace old lightbulbs with new LED ones, and only keep on the lights you need. LED bulbs are more efficient than incandescent and halogen lights, they burn out less frequently, and save around EUR 10 a year per bulb. Check the energy label when buying bulbs, and aim for A (the most efficient) rather than G (the least efficient). The simplest and easiest way to save energy is to turn lights off when you leave a room.

5. Grab a bike

Walking or cycling are great alternatives to driving for short journeys, and they help save money, cut emissions and reduce congestion. If you can, leave your car at home for shorter journeys; especially if it’s a larger car. Share your ride with neighbours, friends and colleagues to save energy and money. You’ll also see big savings and health benefits if you travel by bike. Many governments also offer incentives for electric bikes.

6. Use public transport

For longer distances where walking or cycling is impractical, public transport still reduces energy use, congestion and air pollution. If you’re going on a longer trip, consider leaving your car at home and taking the train. Buy a season ticket to save money over time. Your workplace or local government might also offer incentives for travel passes. Plan your trip in advance to save on tickets and find the best route.

7. Drive smarter

Optimise your driving style to reduce fuel consumption: drive smoothly and at lower speeds on motorways, close windows at high speeds and make sure your tires are properly inflated. Try to take routes that avoid heavy traffic and turn off the engine when you’re not moving. Drive 10 km/h slower on motorways to cut your fuel bill by around EUR 60 per year. Driving steadily between 50-90 km/h can also save fuel. When driving faster than 80 km/h, it’s more efficient to use A/C, rather than opening your windows. And service your engine regularly to maintain energy efficiency.

Analysis and forecast to 2026

Fuel report — December 2023

Europe’s energy crisis: Understanding the drivers of the fall in electricity demand

Commentary — 09 May 2023

Where things stand in the global energy crisis one year on

Commentary — 23 February 2023

The global energy crisis pushed fossil fuel consumption subsidies to an all-time high in 2022

Commentary — 16 February 2023

Fossil Fuels Consumption Subsidies 2022

Policy report — February 2023

Background note on the natural gas supply-demand balance of the European Union in 2023

Report — February 2023

Analysis and forecast to 2025

Fuel report — December 2022

How to Avoid Gas Shortages in the European Union in 2023

A practical set of actions to close a potential supply-demand gap

Flagship report — December 2022

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