#1: My Climate Warming Journey

“Climate Change is real. [...] It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities” (IPCC, 2001). For all deniers out there, this blog does not attempt to pull you over. For everyone else who feels like exploring ways to combat global warming – be my guest!
I am UCL student and part of a "Global Environmental Change" module for which I write this blog. Other than that? Let me share my sort-of climate-epiphany with you: Some years ago, when working for an environmental journal called  ‘Greenpeace Magazin’ I was asked to travel to Stockholm to interview Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) the founder of the NGO 350.org, author and laureate of the 'Alternative Nobelprize'.Talking with him about his pathway and visions was this wow-moment you only get so and so often. Hitherto I got more and more involved in the discourse around causes and implications of climate warming. So much on my climate-me. 

The Climate is constantly changing. Right now, we are faced with extraordinary global warming.  Source: NASA, 2013

In the über-complex arena of climate warming, one gets lost easily. To level the playing field before starting this blog I looked at the Global Carbon Budget 2016 report. This is a leading annual study aiming to quantify the exact input of anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the storage capacity of carbon sinks. For the period from 2000-2015, 91% of all anthropogenic carbon emissions (or other greenhouse gases which are usually measured in Carbon dioxide equivalent, in short CDE) were emitted by of burning fossil fuels and industry. The remaining 9% resulted from land-use change. (Counter-intuitively), not even half of these emissions 'end up' in the atmosphere (44%). Terrestrial (30%) and marine sinks (26%) are additional storages. (This aspect was also mentioned in the first lecture - I would assume many of us were not aware of the relevance of these sinks.)
In the light of constant temperature-pollution-emissions-degradation records, this blog will look at practical (proposed) solutions to mitigate global warming (hence the title). Taking the beforementioned climate warming figures into account, throughout the next three month I want to look at ways to deal with the rising amount of anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a root cause of climate warming. For this blog to evolve comprehensively, I will focus on a rather a small number of approaches and attempt to actually unpack some of them.
Since global warming gets very technical, very quickly I plan to regularly insert a Google Earth Frame for us to digitally "dive in" a relevant geo-climate hotspot relating to the post content. I am excited to see how that works out. Here is what that could look like:

On first sight, this might look like a fairly unexciting US American field. Almost. Except, this is where, in a rather abstract way, climate warming mitigation happens. In 2016, the Scared Stone Camp was opened by a Sioux elder to mobilize resistance again the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, an extension of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The pipeline is supposed to connect the Bakker Oil Plant in the north with Nebraska and is considered to severely impact the affected environment, such as the Sioux reservation. On a larger-scale, the movement, which hitherto grew to a nationwide grassroots mobilization  (#NODAPL) criticized the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure in the light of climate warming. Pretty exciting.

I am looking forward to this journey and invite you all to follow, comment and question.
Oh, and for any interested German reader around, here is a link to my interview in 2015.