Causes and Effects of Global Warming

People are arguing if global warming is caused by man or if its a natural occurrence. Well, volcanoes have contributed to global warming such as El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991 they have cooled the earth’s temperature but this was temporary. however, the amount of carbon dioxide they reliance is small compared to humans there are other things that can cause natural temperature changes tiny wiggles in the earth’s orbit can change when and where sunlight hits even vareasens in the sun itself can change the amount of solar energy hits the earth, natural occurring fires can also have a very small effect these things certainly don’t account for the changes we have noticed.

global warming is caused by greenhouse gasses being put in the atmosphere such as nitrous oxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, carbon dioxide, and even water vapor. These greenhouse gasses let the energy of the sun in but does not let it all out like the glass walls of a greenhouse, the more of these greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, the stronger the effect is. This change in the climate can and has had an effect on our weather, food, health, and oceans. Most of these things are already happening, ice sheets like antarctica are melting causing sea levels to rise and flooding of areas by oceans. The warmer weather also makes more severe natural disasters happen more often. Undoubtedly, most people would take this as fact, but more and more people and even scientist are starting to question the theory of global warming being caused by human beings. The main cause of how humans cause global warming is by letting carbon dioxide or other carbon based materials into the air. But there are many factors on how humans do so.

First of all, when we burn carbon based materials, carbon dioxide is transmitted into the air. Whether or not it effects the global climate has be being researched since the 19th century and all that is being found is supporting that humans emitting greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Facts relating to carbon in the air and global temperature is no doubt related, during the onset of antarctic glaciation carbon levels were at a low. Now in 2018 the carbon levels are at a all time high and so are the temperatures. You may ask how we know what the temperatures were millions of years ago there are many ways scientist can do this, such as drilling into ice shelves in Antarctica, these ice shelves act like time capsules traps small amounts of air as it freezes. Scientists can also see what the temperature was in the past by looking at the cross section of trees. Trees make circular rings going outward as they grow.

The thickness of these rings determine how long the growing season was. That can mean many things, like how much precipitation there was, but more importantly it give us a peek of what the climate was. While you might ask why we think greenhouse gasses are a real thing, scientists will agree that our atmosphere traps heat. Without the gasses Earth will be a cold rock not able to support life. If you look at Venus, that has a lot of CO2 in its atmosphere, it has way more drastic temperatures as high as 837‰ and as low as 106‰. The greenhouse gasses are necessary to sustain life on earth, but too much of a good thing is not good. In the pre-industrial era to now the amount of carbon in the air has increased by 280 ppm no one predicted if we would get to 400 ppm but now we are there. Stephen Jackson,is a director of the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center and an ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey and his team did paleoecology research they studied a period from 2000 years ago to about 1000 years ago they found that the temperature increased 7 to 12 degrees they are warning that that same increase could happen in the next 100 to 150 years.

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