The Causes and Conequences of Global Warming

The causes and consequences of Global Warming

Over the 4.55 billion years or so that the Earth has been around, climate has fluctuated a lot. These fluctuations, however, were over long periods of time and totally natural, nothing like the Earth’s current situation. We are used to hearing about “Ice Ages” but this time it is the total opposite, Global Warming. Many theories about how global warming came to be and what it causes are floating around in both the scientific and public communities. Renowned scientists in the field agree that the major causes of global warming are: burning fossil fuels and deforestation. These factors have led to an overall increase in the world’s sea level, melting of glaciers as well as less predictable weather and increase spread of diseases.

First off, the major consensus among scientists is that the amount of carbon dioxide that the earth can “inhale” is at a point of saturation, meaning that there is simply too much carbon dioxide floating around in the air. Carbon dioxide, one of the notorious greenhouse gases, is created most notably through the burning of fossil fuels such as when we drive a motor vehicle and when we burn coal in order to make electricity. The fact that the earth is unable to control its greenhouse emissions leads to what is known as “The Greenhouse Effect”. Everyone has surely heard of the greenhouse effect before but most people do not know what it actually is. The greenhouse effect is the term given to what happens when heat radiates away from the earth’s surface but is caught in the excess greenhouse gases that have not been recycled by plants. Along with C02, which is responsible for around 50% of all warming, methane, ozone and chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s for short) are all apart of the greenhouse gases.

This brings me to my second point, deforestation. Even though we all know that paper costs the earth valuable resources and that it is good to recycle in order to reuse whatever we can, that is about all that the average person both knows and wishes to know. Cutting down trees has a lot heavier consequences than just running out of paper. The more trees we cut down, the fewer trees there will be too filter the greenhouse gases out of the air, the more global warming.

The consequences of global warming will prove to be quite extreme if we let it continue the way it is headed. One of the major consequences, at the moment, is the rise in the sea level. As the temperature throughout the planet continues to rise, Polar Regions start to melt away. A great example of this is glaciers. A good example of where glacier melt will result in a great loss is in the Himalayan Mountains, where glaciers provide water for China, India and a good portion of Asia. As the melting season of these glaciers becomes longer, the freezing season becomes shorter and soon, they will disappear, along with the water they provide for billions of people. With every centimetre that is melted off glaciers across the world, water is added to the oceans which then cover a little more of the land, notably in places near sea level.

The second big consequence to global warming is that the weather