ASK YOUR PHONE ABOUT THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE:
LEARNING EXERCISE FOR STUDENTS AND ALL READERS
Use your phone or computer to ask the two questions given above to at least two of the AI sites. Compare and critically evaluate the responses.
PREFACE. 20 years ago, Al Gore's alarming movie (Inconvenient Truth) warned the citizens of the earth that climate change will wreak havoc to human and animal life. Historically (see: Global Warming Timeline), Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1859) and Arrhenius (1896) with great vision provided early alerts that increasing atmospheric gases could impact global temperatures. The response to these warnings has been extremely limited and inadequate. A climate change emergency has been reached with deadly storms striking on a weekly and even daily basis. The lethal incidents below should incentivize us to try to minimize future climate related destruction and deaths but Americans have elected a leader who refuses to recognize the impact of climate change on our lives. Worse, Donald Trump in his efforts to promote the use of fossil fuels, is reversing steps that have been enacted to combat climate change. In addition, Trump is expunging mention of climate change in government documents and crippling scientific research by severely cutting science research and science scholarship funding. In the long term, this decrease in science funding will knock the U.S. out of the world's leadership in discovery and innovation.
The trend from 1980 to the present clearly shows rapidly increasing harm caused by severe climate related events. There is a huge amount and continuously increasing amount of literature attempting to increase the level of climate science literacy. Unfortunately, Americans rank climate change as a very low priority. Our grandchildren will not reflect positively on our decision to elect a President who denies the overwhelming evidence that climate change poses perhaps the biggest threat ever confronted by society. Because society gives climate change a low priority, there is little discussion of the problem when other more perceived problems are in the news. However, if we continue to ignore the problem, the amount of inflation or the unrest in the Near East will be dwarfed by deaths and food shortages caused by climate change. It is imperative that climate change and climate change education be prioritized near the top of the issues that need immediate attention and action. A very brief description of the science of climate change will be presented here along with descriptions of some of the damage and projected damage and possible ways to mitigate the problems.
Over the last 20 or so years I have posted several climate change related websites. Please see: http://murov.info and click on CLIMATE CHANGE RESOURCES http://murov.info/#CLIMATE_CHANGE_-_DIRECTORY,_POWERPOINT,_SUMMARIES. The use of these sites has been very limited. This site with the Ask your phone approach is another attempt to make society aware that climate change destruction will continue to increase and that society needs to respond to this dangerous threat.
REPORTS OF STORM DAMAGE.
In 2025, there have already been multiple occasions of storm caused deaths. Climate change is causing an increase in the frequency of severe weather events. Tornados, flooding, heat, and wildfires as shown in Figure 1.
deaths from severe weather events 2025 by date
March 13-16: A major tornado outbreak occurred, impacting several states. It resulted in a total of 43 fatalities
March 26-28: Extreme rainfall and flooding in South Texas and Reynosa, Mexico, led to four deaths in the Rio Grande Valley.
April 2-7: Another major tornado outbreak resulted in at least 24 fatalities, including nine tornado-related deaths.
May 16: Powerful tornadoes swept through several states in the Central U.S., causing 28 deaths and dozens of injuries.
May 16: An EF3 tornado near St. Louis resulted in five fatalities.
May 16: A tornado in Laurel County, Kentucky, tragically
killed nineteen people.
June 15: Deadly flash floods kill 13 in San Antonio and at least 3 in West Virginia
July 4: Deadly flash floods kills over 100 in San Antonio and at least 3 in West Virginia.
The problem started with the onset of the industrial revolution in the latter half of the 18th century. As observed in Figure 2, the atmospheric CO2 concentration has been averaging about 280 ppm between 1 million years ago and about 300 years ago. For the last million years ago, the value varied between about 190 and 280 ppm. However, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the CO2 level has risen dramatically to the present day value of 429.6 ppm marking the highest level in over 2 million years. according to reports from NOAA. .
FIGURE 2 Carbon dioxide concentration as a function of year for last 400 million years.
Figure 3 Carbon dioxide concentration as a function of year for last 800 thousand years.
Figure 4 Carbon dioxide concentration as a function of year from 1751 to 2024
Figures 5, 6. CO2 concentration from 1960 to present and carbon concentration and temperature from 1880 to present.
Several observations should be made.
1. The increase from 280 to 430 ppm represents over a 50% change in the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Emphasis: human activity has changed the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere by a huge amount.
2. Figure 6 clearly shows that CO2 concentrations and global temperatures correlate. Although this does not verify cause and effect, it is clear that CO2 and other gases are increasing and the global temperatures are increasing at about the same rate.
3. Figure 4 shows that CO2 atmospheric concentration and CO2 production correlate providing strong evidence that human CO2 emissions are responsible for the increase in global CO2 concentration increases. The strong correlation between CO2 concentrations and global temperatures strongly suggests that humans are causing the warming of the earth. The cost of environmental damage also shows the same trend and correlation with carbon dioxide and temperature.
4. A note on concentration units. Unfortunately, most reporting of CO2 concentrations give results in ppm or parts per million. CO2 has increased from 280 ppm to 430 ppm during the industrial revolution. This is a rather abstract unit and does not give a good sense of its meaning for most people. To put this into perspective, nitrogen, oxygen and argon are 780,480, 209,460 and 9,340 ppm respectively in the atmosphere. These concentrations could be reported more understandably as a percentage. Using percentages, the CO2 concentration has increased from 0.028% to 0.043%. It is important to note that this is a very low value as it would require the counting of 10,000 molecules of air to locate 4 CO2 molecules. CO2 ranks only as the number 4 gas in dry air (water varies from 0 to 4% of the air) far below nitrogen (79%), oxygen (21%) and almost 1% argon) air. Because CO2 is so low, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels have substantially increased the CO2 concentration in the air. Most people cannot correctly name the top 2 let alone the top 3 gases in the atmosphere (not counting water).
5. CO2 along with methane and other gases are so-called Greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases absorb energy that otherwise would escape from out atmosphere. The warming as a result of increased Greenhouse gases is totally consistent with science and the absorption spectra of the gases. As a result, the earth and its waters are warming at a rate that correlates with the increasing CO2 and methane concentrations.
6. Warming of the air and the oceans results in more violent and damaging storms along with deadly heat waves, drought, flooding and wildfires.
7. Society tends to react only in times of crisis. We are in a time of crisis as people are dying and animals are migrating and going extinct. This crisis is different than most of our previous crisis as turning climate change around takes not days, months or years but many decades.
8. A TV ad used to say that we could pay now or pay later. The ignoring and actually making the problem worse by the Trump administration seems to be adopting the policy of act now or die later with die later the choice of Donald Trump. The Trump administration is committing a crime against humanity by not acting to minimize climate change and its resulting damage. The government is deleting mention of climate change from government documents. This censorship action is reminiscent of fascist and dictatorial regimes. Neither ignoring climate change or deleting its mention will serve to decrease the problem. The problem will increase dramatically year after year until there is a shortage of resources and people lose their civility. This will be the legacy of Donald Trump and the Republicans that bend over backwards to please the tyrant.
9. A hidden and potentially destructive force is buried in the Permafrost in the Arctic regions. Substantial amounts of Greenhouse gases are trapped in the frozen ground. However, with the warming of the earth, the Permafrost is melting and could release amounts of Greenhouse gases that will accelerate the warming trend.
10. As a result of warming oceans, sea levels are rising. Miami has already erected walls and installed pumps to delay the sea level rise problem. Most coastal communities will eventually find that tidal and storm surges cause significant destruction with possible relocation required.
11. Climate change has resulted in severe loss of bird life and many animal extinctions. Birds seem to be noticing climate change more than humans as many have moved their habitats northward hundreds of miles.
12. Effects of climate change will impact the lower socioeconomic groups first and worse while the upper socioeconomic groups are the biggest users of energy.
SOLUTIONS
Consumption of fossil fuels must be reduced ASAP with a phase out of their use. Solar, wind and geothermals must be used to replace fossil fuels. It might be necessary to construct small scale nuclear reactors to avoid climate change consequences.
Electric vehicles should be phased in with the stipulation that the electricity be provided by renewable or nuclear resources. Currently, hybrid and EV vehicles should be the only kind available.
New homes and buildings should be required to have solar panels that are capable of providing most of the energy needs.
Car pooling needs to be promoted with huge incentives and single driver vehicles should have fees that discourage single driver use.
Pursue more research on decarbonization. Trump has substantially decreased funding for this research.
Battery research investment should be dramatically increased.
Cars that fit needs instead of having wasted power and space should be the priority when new cars are purchased
Car mileage decreases significantly at high speeds. The small amount of time gained in most cases achieved by going very fast is not worth the damage to the environment.
Figure 7 Global temperature changes over the last 75 years.
Data.GISS: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (v4): Global Maps
More on Trump's failings:
Immediately following the failed assassination of Trump, Trump kept yelling 'FIGHT'. Yes, we must fight but not with Trump but against many of his policies especially his negative response to climate change.
Trump claims that the sea level will rise 1/8 inch in the next 497 years when science measures an increase of about 1/8 inch per year. Trump is wrong by a factor of almost 500.
There is overwhelming evidence that climate change is real and poses a real and potentially disastrous threat to life and the environment. We need to act now to combat this threat. Some say that because it is a global problem, the effort of the U.S. will go to waste while others say the problem is to big and all we can do it try to adapt. Giving in is not the answer and we must do everything possible to decrease the amount of climate change. Donald Trump is driven by the desire for fame, power and wealth and totally self gain and is not willing to make any sacrifices today that might have a positive impact in the future. Most have heard of the Midas touch. Despite having the Sadim touch, Trump has been able to brainwash half of America with lies. Americans have a clear choice. They can choose to follow a selfish party and its visionless leader or choose a pathway that minimizes climate change caused death and destruction and provides hope for a high quality of life.
Site uploaded in late June of 2025 (updated on 7/4/25 with minor changes on 8/28/25). Visitor hits: