Mauna Loa Climate Change

Climate Change is not a new issue. There have been attempts all throughout the latter half of the 20th century to curb the effects of climate change, and some of them have even been somewhat successful. Extremely accurate measurements regarding the amount of CO2 present in the atmosphere have been taken since 1958 at the Mauna Loa Observatory, and the upward trend of the data gave us notice half a century ago about the changing of the climate. With this notice, several efforts have been made in the past, such as the Kyoto treaty to curb the emissions of these globe warming molecules. With new developments, such as massive superstorms and 100 year storms happening every 5 years, this issue has come to the public eye, and it has fallen upon the
Our first country of comparison, Qatar, is a developing Middle Eastern country with a strong economy based on the extraction of petroleum and natural gas. Based on its current situation, it would take a large amount of money and strong leadership in guiding the country to a more renewable position on energy as its economy is almost entirely based on the production and sale of fossil fuels. In contrast, Sweden is in a very different situation economically and culturally. As a developed country, Sweden has converted most of its power from traditional fossil fuel sources that emit large amounts of greenhouse gasses to renewable energies such as solar and wind power. Sweden holds a position of leadership in the Climate negotiations, as it is a developed country that has already implemented a lot of the new policies being discussed. Sweden also has the financial flexibility to transition more fully into renewables as their economy is not heavily based on fossil fuels. Unlike either of these nations, Djibouti is still a heavily developing nation. Nearly 99% of its energy comes from the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal. There is a lot of room for development through the utilization of renewable energy sources. As a developing country, Djibouti has the opportunity to draw from the
It borders both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on its southern end. Until 1939, Qatar’s economy consisted mostly of pearl-fishing in the gulf. However, massive discovered oil and natural gas reserves made the country into a massive exporter of fossil fuels (85% of current exports earnings), with the majority of its economy built on this. Today, because of this massive industry, Qatar is the richest country in the world, and has one of the highest per-capita GDPs. However, global warming would have a dramatic effect on the geography of Qatar. Due to its flat topography surrounded by water, sea level rise would take a massive amount of land away from the country (18% of land area with a 5m sea level rise). With 96% of the population living along the coast, this would be devastating. The desert (82mm of rainfall per year) also has a scarcity of drinkable water, forcing it to use desalinization of sea water and the small amount of groundwater