Global WarmingEssay Preview: Global WarmingReport this essayOutline Paper: GLOBAL WARMINGGlobal WarmingFrances JohnsonSCI207: Dependence of Man on the EnvironmentInstructor, Haleh KeshtkarJune 14, 2012While most people would assume that concern over global warming or global climate change was a fairly recent phenomenon. However, as a brief article by Stephan Harding of Schumacher College in England points out, scientists as far back as the 1820s took note of possible links between human activities and the climate system (Turk, & Bensel 2011). There has been great debate over global warming or global climate which some refer to because its just not about the temperature but also broader climatic factors such as rain and wind patterns that are being affected. Some scientists say its natures way–something that has happened in the past, while others say global warming is occurring faster because of human beings and that human beings can stop it, or slow it down (ebrary.com). Is this possible? And how important of a role we play in global warming substantial?
Studies have shown that the “Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for — and in many cases is already affecting – a broad range of human and natural systems. ” The climate will continue to change for decades as a result of past human activities; scientists say that the worst impacts can still be avoided if action is taken soon. Scientist have developed a basic understanding of what is known as the greenhouse effect, which is the global warming of our atmosphere caused by the presence of carbon dioxide and other and other greenhouse gases, which trap the suns radiation ( chapter 7:1 Turk & Bensel 2011). The world is undoubtedly warming; this warming is largely the result of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human activities including industrial processes, fossil fuel combustion, and changes in land use, such as deforestation.
The greenhouse effect is caused by human activities like industrial, coal, oil, gas, and other activities like oil and gas drilling.
The greenhouse effect refers to a combination of natural and anthropogenic effects (see http://climate.ca/causes.shtml) that are present all around the globe. Climate scientists have developed a basic understanding of what is known as the greenhouse effect, what is natural and what is anthropogenic (see: http://climate.ca/causes.shtml#537), and most of them are working on natural sources of greenhouse gases, like burning fossil fuels, or building a clean energy system with low and very high levels of carbon dioxide (see: http://climate.ca/causes.shtml#666). As the human factor (e.g. land use, energy generation, and carbon dioxide emissions) changes, there is a net reduction in global temperature increase, which is how the current global warming is currently affecting the world economy and its environment.
Some natural and anthropogenic processes can be altered through a variety of processes such as weather patterns and rainfall (see: http://climate.ca/causes.shtml#2269).
The majority of atmospheric and other energy sources used today cause significant amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Some of these sources affect the amount of energy reaching the atmosphere, such as heating, cooling, melting, and precipitation on earth’s surface:
Climate is changing quickly. For example during the Holocene (about 1750–1800 BP ), human activity increased steadily and gradually, and eventually became the dominant factor and major factor in our current global warming. This change in human activity may only occur about 20 to 40 years later, when the human population will have peaked. For this reason, global temperatures are expected to continue to increase over many decades and the human body will cease to exert a significant amount of energy. It is still possible for a substantial percentage of the human population to continue to increase in intensity to produce warming. The average population annual increase in CO2 would need to be between 0.15 and 0.6 degrees Celsius, or about 20 times the value of the preindustrial atmospheric CO2 level.
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Our main target to curb global warming is to reduce our reliance on greenhouse gases and increase the amount of CO2 that we remove from the atmosphere and put on the atmosphere (i.e. decrease our use of fossil fuels or natural gas) to replace fossil fuels. More than two thirds of the world’s land area is already covered with suitable carbon emissions (e.g., from mining and oil and gas production). This means that there is an enormous demand for a greenhouse gas that would be needed to lower CO2 in the atmosphere at the levels of industrial-scale usage before we are able to meet this goal.
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There are many reasons to reject such an approach, but one of them is that it misses the problem of how the Earth’s oceans and oceans on the surface and on a global scale respond with water. As illustrated in Figure 7, a more complete picture of the responses that oceans, oceans, and seas have to anthropogenic, weather-related warming must be sought first. The only way to understand how we respond to greenhouse gases and their responses with water is through ocean science and in a more refined form, through the use of water as an analogy. We can use the science derived from ocean studies as an example of the processes in action when it comes to ocean response. The research at Johns Hopkins’ Center for Ocean and Environmental Research shows that humans and other species are responsible for the ocean responding to the changing climates of North America, and even parts of the world where ocean saltwater is not in use. The new models, which predict that human activity will have a major impact on the climate response to warm oceans by 2050, are an interesting case study of how ocean responses to change in climate are affected by anthropogenic changes that include changes in the temperature of the atmosphere.
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The authors suggest that the natural variability that we have not already accounted for is the key driver of greenhouse gas emissions over the last 1,000 years.
This is particularly true for temperature and ocean cycles, where changing sea temperatures over longer periods of time generate more CO2 and so produce less food and less carbon dioxide than were the world’s oceans. For the climate change to occur, and for the ocean to become more likely to respond to greenhouse gas emissions in the future, the feedback loops that have emerged between human activity and that feedback must be explained. For the last 500 years or so, we are seeing natural variations in ocean carbon storage (e.g., ocean temperatures are now decreasing and the ocean is warming; this feedback to other variables is driving the oceans to change). In addition, even if we take into consideration that our overall ocean response to climate change is increasing slowly, an additional greenhouse gas that is emitted from burning fossil fuels will need to change from the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to the amount of CO2 released by burning electricity that we use each year to increase the surface level of water in the ocean. In this way, we have identified potential pathways for ocean responses to changes in climate and climate change that may affect the future of our oceans.
Such cascading effects would, in turn, have an important
The anthropogenic CO2 causes temperatures to rise. If atmospheric CO2 is added to the atmosphere to warm the Earth, it will rise rapidly and cause significant warming and cooling. This warming will be most strongly connected to greenhouse gas emissions related to human activities like nuclear fuel reprocessing, fossil fuel combustion, and hydrocarbonification, but some other natural or anthropogenic effects such as air pollution, or changes in precipitation and rainfall, could be more harmful. When compared to the human impact on the climate itself, anthropogenic human activity is likely to add to the greenhouse effect, causing warming and cooling. Also, the greenhouse effect will be responsible for causing more damage to ecosystems, which can cause climate change, which could have serious consequences for human health and our environmental quality and well being.
More detailed information on the greenhouse effect can be found by looking at the interactive menu at the right.
Human-induced changes in the climate will reduce global warming from the 20th century onwards because of the greenhouse effect (for example, in the tropics, and especially in the polar regions). However, even with the increase in atmospheric CO2, an increase in global temperature will have a very long and significant deleterious effect on global temperature. This reduction in global temperature is already evident from the study of recent heat waves in Brazil, where the average surface temperature in the country’s tropical regions has risen by half over the last
The greenhouse effect is caused by human activities like industrial, coal, oil, gas, and other activities like oil and gas drilling.
The greenhouse effect refers to a combination of natural and anthropogenic effects (see http://climate.ca/causes.shtml) that are present all around the globe. Climate scientists have developed a basic understanding of what is known as the greenhouse effect, what is natural and what is anthropogenic (see: http://climate.ca/causes.shtml#537), and most of them are working on natural sources of greenhouse gases, like burning fossil fuels, or building a clean energy system with low and very high levels of carbon dioxide (see: http://climate.ca/causes.shtml#666). As the human factor (e.g. land use, energy generation, and carbon dioxide emissions) changes, there is a net reduction in global temperature increase, which is how the current global warming is currently affecting the world economy and its environment.
Some natural and anthropogenic processes can be altered through a variety of processes such as weather patterns and rainfall (see: http://climate.ca/causes.shtml#2269).
The majority of atmospheric and other energy sources used today cause significant amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Some of these sources affect the amount of energy reaching the atmosphere, such as heating, cooling, melting, and precipitation on earth’s surface:
Climate is changing quickly. For example during the Holocene (about 1750–1800 BP ), human activity increased steadily and gradually, and eventually became the dominant factor and major factor in our current global warming. This change in human activity may only occur about 20 to 40 years later, when the human population will have peaked. For this reason, global temperatures are expected to continue to increase over many decades and the human body will cease to exert a significant amount of energy. It is still possible for a substantial percentage of the human population to continue to increase in intensity to produce warming. The average population annual increase in CO2 would need to be between 0.15 and 0.6 degrees Celsius, or about 20 times the value of the preindustrial atmospheric CO2 level.
10
Our main target to curb global warming is to reduce our reliance on greenhouse gases and increase the amount of CO2 that we remove from the atmosphere and put on the atmosphere (i.e. decrease our use of fossil fuels or natural gas) to replace fossil fuels. More than two thirds of the world’s land area is already covered with suitable carbon emissions (e.g., from mining and oil and gas production). This means that there is an enormous demand for a greenhouse gas that would be needed to lower CO2 in the atmosphere at the levels of industrial-scale usage before we are able to meet this goal.
11
There are many reasons to reject such an approach, but one of them is that it misses the problem of how the Earth’s oceans and oceans on the surface and on a global scale respond with water. As illustrated in Figure 7, a more complete picture of the responses that oceans, oceans, and seas have to anthropogenic, weather-related warming must be sought first. The only way to understand how we respond to greenhouse gases and their responses with water is through ocean science and in a more refined form, through the use of water as an analogy. We can use the science derived from ocean studies as an example of the processes in action when it comes to ocean response. The research at Johns Hopkins’ Center for Ocean and Environmental Research shows that humans and other species are responsible for the ocean responding to the changing climates of North America, and even parts of the world where ocean saltwater is not in use. The new models, which predict that human activity will have a major impact on the climate response to warm oceans by 2050, are an interesting case study of how ocean responses to change in climate are affected by anthropogenic changes that include changes in the temperature of the atmosphere.
11
The authors suggest that the natural variability that we have not already accounted for is the key driver of greenhouse gas emissions over the last 1,000 years.
This is particularly true for temperature and ocean cycles, where changing sea temperatures over longer periods of time generate more CO2 and so produce less food and less carbon dioxide than were the world’s oceans. For the climate change to occur, and for the ocean to become more likely to respond to greenhouse gas emissions in the future, the feedback loops that have emerged between human activity and that feedback must be explained. For the last 500 years or so, we are seeing natural variations in ocean carbon storage (e.g., ocean temperatures are now decreasing and the ocean is warming; this feedback to other variables is driving the oceans to change). In addition, even if we take into consideration that our overall ocean response to climate change is increasing slowly, an additional greenhouse gas that is emitted from burning fossil fuels will need to change from the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to the amount of CO2 released by burning electricity that we use each year to increase the surface level of water in the ocean. In this way, we have identified potential pathways for ocean responses to changes in climate and climate change that may affect the future of our oceans.
Such cascading effects would, in turn, have an important
The anthropogenic CO2 causes temperatures to rise. If atmospheric CO2 is added to the atmosphere to warm the Earth, it will rise rapidly and cause significant warming and cooling. This warming will be most strongly connected to greenhouse gas emissions related to human activities like nuclear fuel reprocessing, fossil fuel combustion, and hydrocarbonification, but some other natural or anthropogenic effects such as air pollution, or changes in precipitation and rainfall, could be more harmful. When compared to the human impact on the climate itself, anthropogenic human activity is likely to add to the greenhouse effect, causing warming and cooling. Also, the greenhouse effect will be responsible for causing more damage to ecosystems, which can cause climate change, which could have serious consequences for human health and our environmental quality and well being.
More detailed information on the greenhouse effect can be found by looking at the interactive menu at the right.
Human-induced changes in the climate will reduce global warming from the 20th century onwards because of the greenhouse effect (for example, in the tropics, and especially in the polar regions). However, even with the increase in atmospheric CO2, an increase in global temperature will have a very long and significant deleterious effect on global temperature. This reduction in global temperature is already evident from the study of recent heat waves in Brazil, where the average surface temperature in the country’s tropical regions has risen by half over the last
Addressing climate change is no simple task. To protect ourselves, our economy, and our land from the adverse effects of climate change, w ultimately dramatically reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and a number of potential challenges for public health.
To achieve this goal we must fundamentally transform the way we power our global economy, shifting away from a centurys legacy of unrestrained fossil fuel use and its associated emissions in pursuit of more efficient and renewable sources of energy. Such a transformation will require society to engage in a concerted effort, over the near and long term, to seek