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Vail Daily letter: Take action on climate change

I am writing to express my concern about the immense threat that is climate change. Climate change is a growing problem that poses a hazard to our future generations and to our country. Ninety-seven percent of actively climate publishing scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities (NASA).

Heat from the sun travels through the Earth’s atmosphere and warms the surface. When the surface heats up, the heat energy gets sent back into the atmosphere. There are certain gases in the atmosphere that keep the heat from escaping. Some of these gases are water vapor, methane and carbon dioxide. When humans emit more carbon dioxide, it disrupts the natural balance of carbon dioxide being naturally emitted and the amount being removed from the Earth.

Climate change is happening to our planet. Climate change includes things such as global temperature rise, glaciers melting, decrease in snow cover and sea level rise. Since 1969, the top 2,300 feet of ocean have experienced a 0.302 degrees Fahrenheit increase. In the past three decades, sea surface temperature has been higher than any other time since the 1800s.



Some scientists disagree with climate change. Some say that the temperature is varying naturally, or that it is still cold where they live. They are getting confused between climate change and weather, which are two different things. Just because I live in Colorado and I still get blizzards does not mean that the rest of the Earth is not getting warmer. Weather changes every single day. Climate change happens over long periods of time. There is evidence that proves our oceans are getting warmer and glaciers are melting. The increases in temperature are not variations, it is global warming.

I believe that climate change is one of the most important and urgent problems that our country is facing, along with the rest of the planet. We cannot look over this issue, and we must start doing something about it now. This will be a hard problem to fix and it will certainly take a lot of time. We need to take action now, not tomorrow, to fix this critical issue that we face as a society. Thank you for your attention to this problem.

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Campbell Sullivan

Ninth grade, Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy


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