Attorney Paul M. Sternberg, Houston

How Energy Use and Climate Change Are Linked

Attorney Paul Sternberg and Climate Change Are Linked By Wilbur Kilroy

As countries mature and become more industrialized, their need for energy increases dramatically. They require fuel to run their production plants and electricity for their equipment, as well as natural gas and oil to heat their homes. The use of other petroleum-based fuels such as gasoline increases as more of the population can afford to purchase vehicles. All of these forms of energy rely heavily on production and refining methods that produce emissions that can further increase the planets greenhouse effect.

The greenhouse effect is a scientific principle that governs how much heat is trapped by the layer of gas that surrounds our planet. This layer of gas permits sunlight to pass through it on the way to earth and when this sunlight strikes the planet it is converted to infrared radiation (heat) that would normally be reflected back up into space. The good news for us is that this layer of gas will actually trap this heat and keep our planet warm. The challenge is that many of the gases produced for the generation of electricity and the processing of fuels will settle into this layer of gas in the atmosphere and increase its ability to retain heat. By retaining more of this heat it makes our planet warmer than normal and can have a dramatic impact on our weather and climate.

As our planet’s energy needs increase, more of these greenhouse gasses are produced and the average temperature of our planet increases as a result. This is the main force behind global warming, which tends to be a very divisive topic among most people. Even though this is a very contested subject by laymen, most major scientific opinion is that the increase of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere is a direct result of our planets growing need for energy, and global warming is a real result of this change. This is one reason why there has been a renewed interest in alternative energy solutions for our electricity and other fuels that could help reduce our need for traditional fossil fuels.

The benefits to developing alternative energy solutions for our homes are many, and all of them can help reduce both the financial and environmental cost and also lower the impact our current solutions have on global warming. The advantage to using both solar and wind systems to generate electricity is that they rely on a power source that is renewable and available all over the world. This power source is also free and will produce no adverse affects as part of it’s conversion of either sunlight or wind to electricity. As a result, this helps reduce the adverse affects that traditional power conversion technology has on global warming. It also provides a less expensive source for this much-needed power and reduces our dependency on these shrinking and expensive fossil fuels.

Understanding that current energy use and climate change are directly related is the first step in solving the problem. Reducing our current dependence on traditional fossil fuels to power our homes and cars by find alternative energies can have a dramatic and positive impact on global warming. These alternative energy solutions are available today and both solar power and wind power can help you do your part and also help you spend less for the power you need for your home.

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World Needs Renewable Energy to Fight Climate Change?

Paul Sternberg Attorney Renewable Energy  By Ned Hall

Climate change is perhaps the biggest environmental challenge in history of mankind, and world leaders still hesitate whether to make significant emission cuts like many scientists expect them to do. Almost all politicians agree that each country needs to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions but once it comes down to actually making legally binding agreement politicians usually turn other face saying how at the present time, industry is too weak for such radical measures.

We all know what we need to do to halt climate change. The answer to this question is very simple, decrease CO2 emissions. CO2 emissions are mostly the result of fossil fuels burning. So what we need to do is decrease the use of fossil fuels to satisfy our hunger for energy. The easiest solution for doing so is to develop renewable energy sector such as wind, solar and geothermal power that emit very little or no emissions. Solution sounds fairly easy, but sadly reality is much more complex.

Renewable energy sector despite having so many benefits over fossil fuels still hasn’t developed sufficiently to take over from fossil fuels. Many energy experts are even convinced that with current global development of renewables oil, coal, and natural gas will very likely remain dominant energy sources by the end of this century, and perhaps even longer.

Renewables are still not getting enough funds for their development, and fossil fuels lobbyists are also doing anything that is in their power to halt their development because they do not want to lose their dominant position in industry. Renewables are highly promising but it will sadly take a real miracle to turn this promise into reality.

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