Global Warming: Causes, Effects, and Solutions Essay

Global Warming is the rise in the average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans since the late 19th century and its projected continuation. Many people do not see this as a problem. However, it is currently a huge issue that is often talked about among scientists and many other people. Global Warming is caused by many different things. Greenhouse gases, deforestation, and solar activity are three different proven facts that cause global warming. Global warming is not something that is going to disappear; it is only going to get worse if people do not start doing something about it. The main cause of global warming is the burning of greenhouse gases. Some of the main gases are: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and the loss of forests. Most of the harmful gasses are emitted by humans through the combustion of fossil fuels in cars, factories, and electricity production. But why and how do these specific gases cause global warming, it is because all of these gases have very different heat-trapping abilities. A molecule of methane produces more than 20 times the warming of a molecule of CO2. Nitrous oxide is 300 times more powerful than CO2. Other gases, such as chlorofluorocarbons (which have been banned in much of the world because they also degrade the ozone layer), have heat-trapping potential thousands of times greater than CO2. But because their concentrations are much lower than CO2, none of these gases adds as much warmth to the atmosphere as CO2 does. Trees provide an important ecosystem function by storing carbon, a cause of climate change, in their biomass. Currently the world’s forests store 283 billion tons of carbon in their biomass. Half the world’s tropical forests have been cleared or degraded. Every hour, at least 4,500 acres of forest fall to chain saws, machetes, flames, or bulldozers. In 2012 three million hectares of mature forests were cut down. This is a causing effect to global warming and continues to rise every year. Something called solar activity is also reasoning behind global warming. Solar activity is simply the amount of heat that comes off of the sun. Scientists can tell that solar activity contributes to global warming because there have been recent changes in temperatures at different levels in the Earth’s atmosphere. There are models showing how the greenhouse effect is warming the lower part of the atmosphere (known as the troposphere) but cooling the upper atmosphere (known as the stratosphere). However, if the sun was responsible for the observed warming, warming of both the troposphere and stratosphere would be expected. Global warming also has countless numbers of effects in the environment. It has been proven that the increase in Earth’s average temperatures have already been causing tons of ice to melt worldwide, also causing sea levels to increase over time. It is also causing precipitation to increase worldwide on average. It is predicted that if we do not stop global warming other effects could happen later this century; such as; Hurricanes and other storms becoming stronger, floods and droughts will become more common, and ecosystems will change to the point of some becoming extinct. All of this stuff may not sound that bad, but you have to think that over centuries and centuries it is only going to keep getting worse. There are things we can do to help this, to solve this. If the human race were refrain from using greenhouse gases, or even stop using them all together, it would help immensely. Depending on our choices scientists say it can only increase by 2. 5 degrees, or increase by 10. There are also other options to reduce the gases we emit into the atmosphere. We could try to decrease them by increasing the amount of gases we take out of the atmosphere. This can be achieved by planting more trees, increasing forestlands, and changing the way we farm. All of these things would help to increase the amount of carbon dioxide we are storing. Global warming is something that is still around today and will continue to be around if we do not decide to do something about it. There are many causes of it, some to which are still unknown to scientists. For every cause there is an effect, and this unfortunately is not a good thing for Earth. However there are solutions to reverse the effect of global warming. Even though some of these ideas have fallbacks, there are a variety of options that put us on a path toward a more stable climate. Work Cited: 1. http://environment. nationalgeographic. com/environment/global-warming/gw-solutions 2. http://www. facingthefuture. org 3. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Global_warming#Solar_activity Video: 1. http://www. youtube. com/watch? v=ROZJmX73FF4