I attended Prof. Katherine Clancy's talk on climate change today. She teaches the subject to students in the UWSP College of Natural Resources. She explained how measurements and estimates of past eras are obtained. At the end of her talk, she gave the group of senior citizens the CNN Global Climate quiz.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/04/specials/climate-change-solutions-quiz/index.html
The group was surprised at some of the answers. When I got home, I urged Lynn to take the quiz, too. We were both surprised at some of the most powerful moves recommended:
Improve the manufacturing and use, including trashing, of refrigerators and air conditioners (= 629 Million fewer cars on the roads)
Install onshore wind turbines (=593 Million fewer cars on the roads)
Cut down on food waste (=495 Million fewer cars on the roads)
Eat more plants and less meat (=464 Million fewer cars on the roads)
Restore tropical forests (=429 Million fewer cars on the roads)
The item #3 above elicited a comment that one of the group had recently attended a presentation on food waste. She learned that the major bit of food waste occurs at harvesting. The product needs to be very good-looking and many bits that look less that fine are left to rot in the fields.
Quora.com reports 268.8 million cars in the US so you can see that all of the recommendations would be very helpful in reducing climate problems. Clancy noted that the specialized substances in refrigerators and air-conditioners are thousands of times more powerful at affecting the climate that the main gas doing so, which is carbon dioxide, the gas we humans exhale.
The production of electricity worldwide is a major contributor to climate problems.
