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MP Mark Butler came to our school on Monday to talk to us about climate change and specifically in Australia. He first stated that sea levels around the world are rising. Climate change is the causes these rises in sea level because it heats up the ice caps causing them to melt as well as heats up the water in the ocean. Ice caps melting is a problem because the more the ice caps melt the more amount of water there is in the seas. Heating of water is an issue because hot water expands.
Another issue is that the acidity of the water is rising making the water become acidic affecting the ecosystems around. As the the CO2 in the air increases it reacts with the water molecules to produce an acid. Mark Butler, this impacts the ecosystems in the ocean, and the coral reefs in particular being impacted.
Sea level rising is an important issue for lots of places around the world in particular the Pacific islands, as some island are only around 3 meter above sea level. Therefore it is a large issue for them because if the sea levels continue to rise the island would then be underwater and people won't be able to live any longer there.
This is all happening because the climate is changing. The climate is changing because of carbon pollution, which is all carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere over the last 200 to 250 years, since the industrial revolution. Carbon pollution is measured in parts per million (ppm). Before the industrial revolution there was around 280 parts of carbon dioxide per million parts in the atmosphere, however now there is around 400ppm in the atmosphere. He also stated that the scientists say that if it goes above 450ppm then climate change will become very dangerous, and will include much more storms, droughts, fires, specie extinctions and sea level rises.
Another important situation is the clearing of land and large forests. As these forests help in exchanging the CO2 in the air to O2 which we need to live.
Australia as a whole produces the most carbon dioxide per person than pretty much any other country. Reasons for this are that Australia is a spread out country and 80% of Australia's electricity come from coal. A solution to this is to use solar power and panels. Mark Butler said that Australia does better than any other country on solar power on our roof tops. Wind is also another big solution to this issue. Apparently 1/3 of Australia carbon pollution id produced by electricity.
Solution that he said they were looking for in Australia to lower their carbon pollution is that Australians will have these three things in their households. First is that they will have solar panels on their roofs and batteries called tesla's to store the energy, and to get electric cars.
