¶ … Global Warming and Its Effects
For many years, people have been talking about how the weather has changed over the past ten years. In fact, you may have witnessed these changes first hand. The earth's climate has been continuously changing for millions of years. Currently, studies indicate that the Earth is undergoing global warming. The first time I ever heard about global warming was a television commercial. I remember that the commercial featured two children and an adult. In the commercial, the adult started to explain global warming, however his explanation was beyond the scope of the children's understanding. The little girl in the commercial was too confused by the explanation that then prompted the adult to flash-forward into the future to show the children the effects of the climatological concept he was talking about. While the trio are seen in a luscious park at the beginning of the commercial, future shows them living on a barren and deserted island; the island is devoid of trees or animals, is so hot that their feet burn from just standing on the ground, and they can't even go into the water because the island's surrounding waters are boiling. This commercial introduced me with the concept of global warming, however as the years progressed, the subject faded from the spotlight. Until recently, I had not heard more about global warming, that is until I saw the movie An Inconvenient Truth. After watching the movie, I realized that global warming had not gone away, but in fact was getting worse. After watching the movie, I wanted to know more about the phenomena and started researching global warming and even talked to my biology teacher about it. After conducting research and talking to my teacher about it, I realized that global warming poses a real threat. Global warming is threatening our everyday lives and has contributed to an increase in average temperatures, made natural disasters more harmful, and has aided in the spread of diseases. If we do not take action now, our future is doomed.
One of the most readily visible signs of global warming is the change in weather and climate. Because global warming is the result of greenhouse gases becoming trapped within the atmosphere with less infrared light escaping, temperatures within the atmosphere begin to rise. Over the last hundred years, temperatures around the world have increased slowly, yet steadily. For instance, since 1980, the average temperature, globally, has gone up 0.2 degrees Celsius, or 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit, per decade. As of 2006, the eight hottest years on record were from the past ten years.
One of the greenhouse gasses that get trapped within the Earth's atmosphere is carbon dioxide. When carbon dioxide becomes trapped in the atmosphere it creates a blanket that insulates the Earth and does not release heat into space. Dramatic changes in the Earth's overall average temperature during the past 150,000 years indicates that there may be a direct correlation between global temperatures and carbon dioxide levels. Evidence supports this theory as historically, temperature fluctuations have been directly proportional to carbon dioxide levels. Currently, carbon dioxide makes up 0.03% of the gasses found in the atmosphere. Given this low percentage, and how levels affect global temperatures, any slight increase or decrease of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will have a disproportionate effect on the environment. There are many ways in which carbon dioxide gets put into the atmosphere, but industrial civilization has contributed the most through the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gasoline
Global warming's effect is magnified because of humans trying to compete with natural cylces. It is predicted that if people keep outputting the same amount of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere at a steady rate, by the year 2030, temperatures will be rising by as much as 0.5 degrees, or more, per decade. That said, it is estimated that global temperatures...
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