RISE: Climate Change, Global Warming, and Rising CO2 Levels

The Effects of Carbon Dioxide Emission

The effects of excessive emission of carbon dioxide are beyond the discovery of the terminology "Climate Change" nowadays by scientists. The effects of the excessive carbon dioxide emission are mainly due to as carbon dioxide is a human-made greenhouse gas, it enhances the "Greenhouse Effect" to a new level which all researcher are afraid of its impact on Earth's climate nowadays. It takes an only small change to have a tremendous effect.

Shrinking Water Supplies and Effect towards Food Web

As we all know that we, human, don't have much drinkable water left on the Earth. There are less than 1% of water resources left that is drinkable and usable for us, while 0.2% of that less than 1% is unreachable for us (thewaterproject.org). Moreover, the carbon dioxide also influences this less than 1% of drinkable water.

The climate change caused by carbon dioxide emission can lead to an increase of precipitation rate in some region on our planet (Cairoli). This in other ways provides the condition for the sediments and pollutants to be washed off and removed from the atmosphere, these materials might possibly end up in drinking water supplies such as damps and lakes. Additionally, the algae bloom might also likely to happen in those regions due to "Eutrophication" as the precipitation falls and washes the nutrients in the soil such as magnesium into drinking water supplies. For example, Taihu event in China is significant in such issue as because of the algae bloom, more than 2 million people were left without drinking water for a week. Moreover, Cyanobacterium and Microcystis aeruginosa (The micro-organisms living on algae) produced toxins that damaged the liver, intestines, and nervous system and threaten local's health in May 2007. Additionally, the quality of water got worse as it smells bad due to the algae in Taihu of the region.

Additionally, the food chains and food webs of areas such as Taihu were interrupted and eradicated. In other words, because the algae cover up the lake surface, sunlight can't be absorbed by the plants in the lake and the oxygen in water is all consumed by the algae that causing the fishes and plants to massively die out. For instance, as the sunlight are blocked for the seagrasses and beneficial algae in the lake, they will massively die out and cause the plankton's population to decrease as they having fewer food sources and they can only feed on the harmful and toxic algae. There are only about 1% of sunlight is absorbed by any primary producers, then as there are algae that covered the surface of the lake causes almost 0% of the sunlight energy to pass through; therefore, the producers at the bottom of the lake will massive die out. Furthermore, as considering the "Phytoplankton [or any type of planktons] form the base of marine food webs and provide vital energy to each trophic level." (CeNCOOS), their population decrease will also cause a decrease in population of fishes or any aquatic species that feed on them as they will have less food (Plankton). This process of decreasing population will pass down until it reaches the highest trophic level of the food chain or even the entire food web, and causes almost all of the species' population to decrease that are involved in that food web. Rationally, there should be still enough food sources to sustain population of Lake trout (for example) because taking that plankton 3-9 nutritional calories per gram (Fisheries Research Board of Canada in 1973), the Lake Trout only needs about 400-500 of planktons to sustain the survival; however, as there is only about 10% of energy passes down to next trophic level, the Lake Trout will consume about 4000 – 5000 planktons to sustain the survival. Therefore, the food web of the lake Taihu is greatly affected, and there isn't only Taihu one place that has been affected to such extend, but it is affected globally to such extend.

Rising Sea level also decreases our drinkable water resources. As the carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere, the temperature of Earth increases globally as there is more sunlight trapped in the Earth and constantly heating the Earth. This thermal expansion resulted in the melting of ice glacier which leads to the increase of Sea Level. According to EPA, "sea levels on the mid-Atlantic and Gulf Coasts have risen over 20 centimeters (8 inches) in just 50 years after almost 2,000 years of no observable change." Therefore, some of the sea water infiltrates into freshwater resources and causing the increase of additional task for workers – to distillate and purify the water that is contaminated.