Turn off Climate Change!
Welcome to the Environmental Center’s global warming page. Here you’ll learn about global warming, its causes and effects, and some simple things you can do to start lessening your impact on it. While global warming is serious and can be a depressing topic that sends people running, first know that it’s not hopeless. There are things you can do to lessen your impact on it.
What is causing global warming?
How will global warming affect me?
Other solutions to global warming
What one small action can do to make an impact!
Global warming is a hot topic
No longer just the cause of the Sierra Club and “bunny-huggers”, global warming has gone mainstream. Some people who believe climate change is real, also believe it is something that will happen long in the future and that we can take our time in dealing with its causes. But more and more people are talking about global warming (also called climate change) because we are already seeing its effects in Colorado, in the U.S. and globally.
Being concerned about global warming and doing things to slow it doesn’t make you a hippy freak or unwashed environmentalist. It means you feel strongly about the state of the world and for those who will suffer the consequences. The threat of climate change is the most challenge current and future generations will face. But finding solutions to the problem could also be our generation’s greatest contribution to the world.
Who’s saying and doing what about global warming? Here’s a short list.
Pearl Jam, Death Cab for Cutie, Blackalicious
The “debate” is over
More than 2000 of the world’s top climate scientists, including U.S. researchers, recently released a sobering report stating that “human activities” are causing the earth’s average temperature to rise and that effects of warming are happening faster than predicted.
What is global warming?
“Global warming” is the term used to describe the phenomenon of the Earth’s average temperature rising. The average global temperature has risen about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. This doesn’t sound like much. But everywhere on the planet isn’t getting warmer by the same amount or rate. In the polar regions -- the Arctic and Antarctic -- for example, the average temperature has risen about 5 degrees over the past couple decades, causing the ice to melt rapidly.
The Earth’s climate is an immense, complex, interconnected system that has been “balanced” and therefore predictable for many centuries. A one degree rise is enough to throw off this balance and change climate patterns in ways we’re not used to or prepared for. This is why global warming is also referred to as “climate change”. Because as the atmosphere warms, it’s changing all the precipitation, temperature, wind, and other climate patterns we’re used to.
Climate predictability and reliability has allowed humans to know where we can depend on our food to grow and our water to come from, where to build our towns and cities, locate our tourism and resource industries, and so on. You could say we’ve built our modern civilizations around climate predictability.
For example, cities and towns on Colorado’s Front Range, like many of the world’s cities located near mountains, were settled and grew because of a reliable year-round water supply from mountain snow that melted all summer into our creeks and rivers. But now we’re getting less snow and it’s melting earlier and faster, creating a less reliable water supply and the likelihood of water shortages.
And while scientists say it’s impossible to say that one weird or extreme weather event is definitely the result of global warming, or how many feet coastlines will flood because of melting polar ice caps, they can predict that these things are very likely to happen.
What is causing global warming?
Global warming is caused by “greenhouse gases”, put into the atmosphere by human activities. Once they’re in our atmosphere, these gases act like a blanket that traps the heat from sunlight. Normally, some of the heat from this incoming sunlight stays in the atmosphere and keeps the Earth at a temperature that can sustain life. Some of it is absorbed the land oceans and some is radiated back into space. But this blanket of greenhouse gases is preventing this radiating heat from escaping, keeping it in our atmosphere. And slowly warming it.
The most abundant greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide (CO2) created by the coal, natural gas and oil we use for our energy – in electricity, transportation, heat, air conditioning, hot water and so on. Most of the electricity we use in Colorado comes from plants that burn coal, a huge source of CO2.
Of course, we’re not going to stop using these things today. But whenever and wherever we save energy, we make an impact. Most of us do not think about our daily energy use or its connection to global warming. But simple actions like turning out lights when we leave a room or using daylight instead of lights makes an impact. Start there and work your way up.
How will global warming affect me?
You’ve probably already heard predictions of global warming making stronger hurricanes, melting polar ice and rising sea levels, creating droughts, hotter summers, and more rain in some places and less in others. But we are already seeing the effects of global warming -- in Colorado and the rest of the world. How we’re affected depends on where live. But because we’re all connected nationally and globally in so many ways, like where we get our food, take our vacations, and look for jobs after college, the impacts happening in other places will effect us as well.
And the economic impacts could be far-reaching and very costly – far more costly than what it will take to stop global warming from getting worse.
In Colorado
Shorter ski seasons with less snow. More dying pine forests. Longer droughts and wildfires. They’re already happening in Colorado. And they’re expected to get worse as temperatures rise.
Scientists predictions of less snowfall in the Rocky Mountains will have significant consequences for Colorado, creating water shortages in the Front Range and hurting local economies dependent on winter sports or farming. And when they hurt, the rest of us feel it.
And if you’ve been in the mountains lately you’ve seen the effects. Every year, more and more of Colorado’s mountain pine trees are dying from Bark Beetle infestation. Cold winters usually keep the beetles under control by killing most of their larvae. But several years of consistent and relatively mild winters has allowed the population to boom and they’re killing trees at an alarming pace. These dead trees are increasing the danger and intensity of wildfires.
More effects of global warming in Colorado
In the U.S.
This past January the Northeast U.S. had a couple weeks of temperatures in the 60s and 70s when usually they rarely get above 50. And even though everyone was wearing shorts in New York city in January, most probably felt it was a little creepy.
Here’s one small example of how weird weather in the Northeast affects us in Colorado: Maple trees bloomed too early and they’re not producing maple syrup. Imagine a time when maple syrup is so scarce we have to pay extra for it in restaurants that once left it on the table for free.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Which, by the way, are melting faster than scientists predicted
More national and global effects of global warming
In the rest of the world
Global warming early warning signs
What can YOU do?
After hearing all this, who can blame you for wanting to crank up your music and tune it all out? The immensity of the problem can make us feel like there’s nothing we, as an individuals, can do about it.
The good news is that tackling global warming is possible. And there are things – some pretty simple ones – each of us can start doing now to slow global warming.
While new technologies -- like wind and solar -- and government action are important in solving the problem, we won’t reach this goal without each of us taking some action. The power to slow global warming is in all of us. We just have to know how and start taking action.
Small, individual, actions may seem too insignificant to impact a global problem, but they add up and will make a significant impact when we’re all doing them. And taking action now will mean the severity of the impacts later will be less than if we do nothing at all.
The main way each of us can make an impact on climate change in our daily lives to reduce the amount of energy we use. But it doesn’t have to be complicated or inconvenient. Much of this actions are really just reducing energy waste, meaning it’s energy we’re using when we don’t need to be.
7 simple actions to impact climate change today
Turn off lights when you leave a room. Don’t use lights if adequate daylight is available.
-
It’s easy to forget, so make it a habit
Replace conventional incandescents with compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).
-
CFLs use 75% less energy and last 10 times longer!
Turn your computer and monitor completely off any time you’re not using them for more than several hours, including nights and weekends.
-
It’s a myth that turning computers on and off shortens their lifetime
Set your computer, monitor and laptop to go to “sleep” after being idle for 10-15 minutes.
-
Reduces their electricity usage by up to 90%. Directions for setting sleep mode
Recycle
-
It takes less energy to make paper, aluminum, glass and plastic out of recycled materials than it does to make them from “virgin” materials.
Unplug electronics chargers when they’re not charging.
If you have one, set your thermostat at or below 68 degrees in the winter and at or above 75 degrees in the summer.
-
You probably won’t notice a difference, but changing it even one degree makes a difference in energy.
More ways to cut energy waste and impact global warming.
You can also reduce the global warming effects of your electricity and driving with wind power or “carbon credits”.
What one small action can do to make an impact!
Compared to a 60-watt incandescent, over its 10 year lifetime, a CFL, based on 1400 hours of annual use, will reduce:
-
the amount of CO2 equal to what is absorbed by 14 trees
-
the amount of CO2 produced by 64 gallons of gasoline
-
University energy costs by $80
And that’s just from switching one light bulb. Imagine the impact if everyone on campus switched.
What is CU doing?
On February 22, 2007 CU Chancellor George “Bud” Peterson signed an historic commitment to significantly reduce CU's impact on global warming towards a goal of producing no net emissions of global warming gases. This has put CU in a position of national environmental leadership – again. Full press release
In January 2007, the UCSU student government passed legislation to make Wardenburg Health Center, the Recreation Center and the UMC “carbon neutral”.
Even before these aggressive commitments, CU has been doing a number of things to reduce the energy we use and our impact on global warming. And we’re only getting started.
-
By improving the efficiency of our buildings we reduced our electricity usage between 3-5% per square foot every year.
-
CU students have voted to increase their student fees to buy electricity from wind for campus buildings equal to 9% of the campus total electricity usage.
-
We’re going to be using solar power from systems built right on campus. Keep an eye for out these.
-
All new CU buildings, like the Atlas building, are being built with high standards for energy and water efficiency.
-
Several “Buff buses” run on clean biodiesel.
-
Through students’ efforts, we recycle about 30% of our waste. But we can do better.
Other solutions to global warming
Here are just a few of the solutions being used to tackle global warming. Check back later for updates.
Frequently-asked questions about global warming
Email us your question about global warming. We’ll post it with an answer here.
In the meantime, check out the Union of Concerned Scientists Global Warming FAQs
Take more action!
Post a " 7 simple actions to impact climate change today" flyer in your home or a public area.
Go to the Stop Energy Waste page for more ways to cut energy waste and make an impact on climate change in your home and office and home.
Report energy or water waste on campus to the Conservation Hotline
Email your state and federal representatives in government and tell them you want to see them take action to reduce the causes of global warming.
What's New?
CU Students Invest in Colorado Carbon Fund
Learn about climate change and how to turn it off CU Buffs Live Green: Pledge to make a positive impact.
University of Colorado Environmental Center
207 UCB, UMC 355, Boulder, CO 80309-0207
Phone: 303-492-8308 Email: ecenter@colorado.edu
© 2005 Regents of the University of Colorado