For decades and decades, human factories and cars have discharged billions of tons of artificial greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the climate has begun to show many signs of global warming. On the other hand, some people want you to believe that global warming does not exist. There are many people are only out for personal gain and are outright liars. According to a scientist at NASA Global warming is the single largest threat to our planet(Weier2002).
Over the past two hundred years we seen significant changes in the effects on our environment, primarily due to humans and both their lack of awareness, or their total disregard for the effects that their actions have on the environment. Global warming is one of our toughest environmental challenges.
It threatens the health of people, wildlife and economies around the world. The problem is carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollution. This pollution mainly comes from cars, power plants and other industrial sources that burn gasoline, coal and other fossil fuels. This matter collects like a blanket in our atmosphere.
As a result, the planet gets warmer. We can say that the amount of radiation from the sun that reaches the earth each year has been fairly consistent from year to year and century to century until recently. Thirty percent of the total solar energy that strikes the earth is reflected back into space by clouds, atmospheric aerosols, reflective ground surfaces, and even ocean surf. Seventy percent of the solar energy is absorbed by the land, air and oceans. The absorbed light is mostly in the form ultraviolet and near infrared solar radiation(Weier2002). Absorption of this solar energy makes life on this planet possible.
The energy does not stay bound up forever. If it did our planet would wind up being hotter than the sun. Instead, when the rocks, air, and sea heat up, they give off thermal radiation, which escapes into space and allows it to cool down. This radiation is invisible to our eyes, but our hands can feel it radiating from a fire or a car engine. What we should be worried about now is that over the past 250 years, we have been artificially raising the concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. Factories, power plants, and cars, burn coal and gasoline and spit out a seemingly endless stream of carbon dioxide.
Power plants are the largest contributors to global warming. Every year they produce approximately 2. 5 billion tons of pollution. The second leading cause of this pollution is automobiles, which pumps approximately 1. 4 billion tons of pollution into the atmosphere each year. In addition to these, we as a human race produce millions of pounds of methane by allowing our trash to rot in landfills and by breeding methane-belching cattle (Weier2002). Nitrogen-based fertilizers, which we use on almost all of our crops, release unnatural amounts of nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere.
The increased concentrations of greenhouse gases have prevented additional thermal radiation from leaving the Earth. Therefore, these gases are trapping excess heat in the Earths atmosphere. Once these gases get into our atmosphere they are trapped for decades or even longer. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global warming and the industrial revolution go hand in hand. According to the IPCC, based on studies they have done on fossils and ices cores, theses two gases are at the highest levels now, based on a period of 420,000 years.
One of the many risks for this continuing issue is that the atmosphere will continue to have dramatic changes. Concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide will undoubtedly rise in the next 50 years (Balling2000). As many have noticed, the weather has become unpredictable, even for the experts. The effect on the mid-latitude and high-latitude areas, which includes areas such as the United States and Canada, is that temperatures will continue to climb.
Global warming will set the stage for more mild winters and much warmer summers. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC2003), the three hottest years on record have all occurred since 1998. In addition, the storms that we receive will become not only bigger, but also wetter, as evidenced throughout this past winter. Scientists at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which is a division of NASA that has taken the lead on issues related to the climate, has said that in the next fifty years, they anticipate that temperatures could increase upwards to 1C (Tennessean2004).
This correlates to approximately a thirty-degree increase. The outcome of this is a threat on our animal and plant life, as well as increased risks of heat exhaustion and strokes, especially for the young and the old. This increase is not only a problem for those of us in more well established countries, but can also raise issues to those in third-world countries. The biggest threat to these countries is that they do not have the funds necessary to address such issues. As the climate continues to change, they will be unable to keep.
The issues that arise from weather spark far harsher consequences in these countries. The heat and rain will cause an already strained economy to become barren. In addition to the onset of diseases mentioned above, these countries would face other diseases, such as malaria. For all of the horrendous things that have been mentioned above, there are still skeptics, who believe that global warming does not exist, or that the money spent on this is not worth the benefits it would give. This is basically saying that money is worth more than peoples health and lives.
Some biologists believe higher levels of carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures may cause forests to become warmer and more alive. Warmer oceans may help algae and fish. Unfortunately most changes will be for the worst. What about trees or animals that cannot adjust to these climate changes? Some scientists believe that the results will do nothing more than warm up some winters. They point to flaws in scientists measurements, the complexity of the climate, and the uncertainty in the climate models used to predict climate change.
Also, these scientists say attempting to lower artificial greenhouse emissions may do more damage to the world economy and human society than any amount of global warming. I do agree that the future probably falls somewhere between both sides of this argument, but things still have to be done. The world economy may be affected, but to help fight global warning we must think of the bigger picture. There is no way that an unusually warm fall or that a particularly wet winter is due to normal weather changes, and there is no scientist that can convince me of that.
Presently large corporations are the largest contributors to this ongoing issue. As far as I have found in all of my research, the only companies or corporations that have taken any steps towards the fight on global warming are included in the Coalition of Major Silicon Valley. These companies include some of the following larger companies: Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Calpine, Lockheed Martin, and PG&E. These companies announced a plan on March 29, 2004, that they would take the steps necessary in order to cut artificial greenhouse gas emissions to collectively fight global warming.
They plan to cut carbon dioxide levels down 20% or more. They feel that with their well-established names and worldwide innovation they have the capability to make a change. Their goal is that others will catch on and follow their lead. You have to start somewhere, said Robert Parkhurst, a global environmental program manager at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, California. (Rogers2004) The important message is that private industry thinks global warming is real and is willing to do something about it, (Rogers) said Michelle St.
Martin, a spokeswoman for the California Environmental Protection Agency in Sacramento, California. (Rogers2004) I am a strong believer in the fact that something needs to be done, and the one person our country should turn to when we have problems is our President. Why wont the United States, the worlds biggest culprit in emission of carbon dioxide, lead the fight against global warming? There is no reason for the United States to be such a failure in addressing the problem. Upon George W. Bushs nomination into the White House in 2000 he promised changes.
In a June 2001, press conference from the White House, George Bush commented on global issues, saying, We are committed to protecting our environment and improving our economy, to acting at home and working in convert with the world. This is an administration that will make commitments that we can keep and keep the commitments that we make(Bush2001). In February 2003, President Bush and his administration, developed a plan called the Clear Skies, and submitted this to Congress as a proposal to amend the Clean Air Act, which is the primary federal law governing air quality.
Yet, Clear Skies does nothing more than weaken and delay the health protection already required under the Law. It is ironic to look back at this almost 4 years of our Presidents work to see what accomplishments that he has made. Or in the case of this president, I should say the accomplishments that he promised yet never fulfilled. While President Bush continues to delay the inevitable issues of global warming he is getting pressure from others around the world.
An article written by Maric Wolff on Independent. -uk, it states that Tony Blair has come to the forefront in the fight against global warming when carbon dioxide emissions rose in the United Kingdom last year. The article also stated, Blair is expected to apply fresh pressure on the American President George Bush to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol to take carbon dioxide emissions, the principle gas causing global warming. It is a shame that it is going to take other world leaders to bend our presidents ear on an issue that affects the American people.
The Kyoto Protocol is a ratified United Nations pact that was originally adopted in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 by The United nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or the UNFCCC. The purpose of this was to tackle issues of carbon dioxide emissions. As of now there are eighty-four parties that have signed and one hundred twenty-one parties that have ratified or acceded the protocol. In 1997, President William Clinton signed the treaty but never submitted it to the United States Senate after the Senate voted 95-0 to oppose it unless China and India were included, which presently they are not.
Now President Bush opposes the treaty, saying it would harm the United States economy and has abandoned a campaign promise to have the United States Environmental Protection Agency regulate carbon dioxide. We can do many things to help fight this terrible threat and help save our planet. The United States is the leader in new technologies in order to stop global warming, but yet we are the number one polluters with only 4% of the worlds population. We can take old, out of date; power plants used for electricity and replace them with new cleaner ones.
This may take a lot of money but will help us in the long run. We should use renewable energy sources, such as solar power. The automobile industry has started to get on board with this with the release of the cars such as the Honda Hybrid, which have electric engines and help significantly cut down on pollution. We can use fluorescent lighting in out homes and offices instead of incandescent light bulbs, which would decrease the levels of carbon dioxide in the air. These are just a few of the beginning baby steps to secure a safer future for our planet and future life to come.
