10. We Are Terrifyingly Close to the Climate's 'Point of No Return

Holthaus wrote about the human impact on the environment and its consequences if the government does not act immediately. He mentioned that the temperature of the earth rose up to 2.5°C since the start of the 20^th century. Recently, IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ensured that representatives from 195 member countries agreed on a document that emphasized the impact of the environment nowadays, the prevision of what will happen in the future and how to avoid these impacts. Holthaus also mentioned that the drastic change of climate caused warming of more than 10°C in certain regions, extreme rainfall and droughts, the Arctic melting in the summer and the increase of pH in the oceans. The agreement of IPCC highlighted the high temperature of the entire globe’s surface, the elevated rate of sea level, the increase in the concentration of CO2, methane, and N20, the extreme precipitation events, the ice-free Arctic Ocean and lastly, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. IPCC also encouraged the use of “geoengineering technologies” which are technologies used to neutralize the impact on the environment. The agreement signed forced the countries to act immediately and reduce the human impact on the earth.

             Holthaus used good language to inform the readers about the new agreement signed between many countries in order to reduce the overall human impact on earth. He used bullet points to emphasize the main points of the document so that it is easier for the readers to understand and locate them throughout the essay. He also described the comparison of the global climate change in the 21^st century in order to give the readers an idea of seriousness of this particular subject. He used specific examples and statistics to support his article to increase its credibility, for example, he mentioned that the world emitted 531 gigaton of carbon from 1870 to 2011. He also wrote brief background information about OPCC so that the readers can have an idea of the purpose of this organization and it also increases the overall credibility of the article. However, he should have described more about the plans that IPCC has in order to reduce the environmental impact.  He only mentioned briefly about the “geoengineering technologies” which left the readers curious about the new technologies. Overall, he was able to achieve his goal by using simple vocabularies and sentence structures so that it is suitable for all types of readers. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/09/we-are-terrifyingly-close-to-the-climates-point-of-no-return/280076/