Is Global Warming Caused By Humans, Or Is It Natural?
Imagine an earth without an atmosphere, swollen with blistering heat, the oceans completely disintegrated. Our earth may very well turn into a martian environment if we can’t stop the most prodigious menace of the 21st century, global warming. With the average global temperature rising yearly, not only are we in danger, but so are the animals and insects that rely on our climate to survive. So what is causing the global temperature to rise and the glaciers to melt? With our over reliance on fossil fuels and the quickly growing world population, humans are one of the main causes of global warming. But contrary to common belief there are some natural causes. For example we have no idea about what the earth’s cycle is going to do; for all we know, global warming could be natural, and the earth could go back into an ice age in another thousand years. Global warming is in fact caused not only by humans, but by natural causes as well. As earth dwellers, we need to find a way to change our daily habits and conform to a changing world to protect it for future generations.
There are two major causes of global warming. The natural cycle that the earth takes is completely uncontrollable and unpredictable. It is climate has been constantly changing, even without any human interaction, and there is no way to predict what the earth is going to do next. On the other hand there are human causes. We have depleted the earth’s natural resources, pumped harmful gasses into the atmosphere and cut down rainforests to build massive farms and civilizations. So how can we tell what is causing global warming? Truthfully we can’t argue one way or another because there is significant evidence on both sides of the debate.
One the most misunderstood fears of global warming is the effect of greenhouse gasses. Most people think that greenhouse gasses causes global warming, but they actually work to fight off global warming. According to “How Stuff Works,” the green house effect is when solar radiation passes though the atmosphere. Around seventy percent of the energy will stay in the atmosphere, while the other thirty percent is reflected back into the atmosphere off clouds and snow. The seventy percent that stays in the atmosphere is absorbed in land, oceans, plants, and other things, but is eventually put back into the atmosphere. The sun’s radiation, continuously hitting the surface of the earth, keeps it warm, but moderates it at the same time by cooling it down. “The heat that doesn't make it out through Earth's atmosphere keeps the planet warmer than it is in outer space, because more energy is coming in through the atmosphere than is going out. This is the greenhouse effect that keeps the Earth warm” (How Stuff Works). If the earth didn't have a green house effect, it would probably look a lot like Mars.
These two differing opinions have sparked a debate on whether or not greenhouse gasses are from humans or nature. One side believes that green house gasses are causing global warming, while the other side thinks that it actually moderates the temperature. The reality of this is:
With too many heat-absorbing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, too much radiation gets trapped, causing the Earth to warm beyond its ideal temperature. Basically, Earth is not able to expel enough heat to keep itself cool, resulting in what's become known as "global warming" (How Stuff Works).
So, in other words greenhouses gasses are only bad because of the extra gasses that we pump into the atmosphere. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the earth’s temperature has been slowly rising and the ice caps that cover our poles have been slowly ebbing into the warming ocean. So could we really be overreacting to climate change, or is it a natural occurrence? There are many reasons for people to think that scientists are overreacting to climate change. To start with there is no way to tell what the earth’s climate cycle is going through; for all we know this could just be natural, and the earth could go into another ice within a thousand years. Amy Witherbee argues this point in her article, “Over Reacting To Climate Change.” She states that,“We are dealing with a planet that is more than four billion years old and is in a constant state of dramatic, often unimaginable, change.” She then goes on to state that, “The last 30 years of scientific work on global weather patterns and climate shifts is not the culmination of a mature science, but the first infant steps into a new and basically unknown territory.” So in other words scientists can’t even begin to predict the earth’s cycle. In fact the European Foundation has come up with 100 reasons why climate change is caused by nature and not humans. Their number one reason is that, “There is "no real scientific proof" that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man's activity” (Top Ten Reasons). Would this mean that all of global warming is just a natural phenomenon and doesn’t have anything to do with human made pollutants? That, to me, would be impossible! Yes, the climate could naturally be changing, but there is no doubt in my mind that global warming has something to do with human made pollutants.
So what are those dangerous pollutants that are destroying the earth’s atmosphere? According to (“ThinkQuest”) there are two main human causes of global warming; pollution and population. Pollution is caused when we burn fossil fuels or any organic material for that matter, “When fossil fuels are burned they give off a green house gas called CO2” (ThinkQuest). Methane is also a major cause of pollution. Since it is stored in the ground, when we go to mine oil and other fossil fuels, the methane is released naturally. Population is the other major human made cause of global warming. Whenever you breathe out, you release carbon dioxide, which is a major contributor of global warming. Our increasing world population and our dwindling forests have made this problem even more significant, since trees naturally absorb our CO2 emissions.
One of the world’s leading political figures in the push to stop global warming is Al Gore. Al Gore has been on the forefront in the fight against global warming ever since 1976. He has helped pass the Kyoto Protocol in the United States, received the Nobel Peace Prize, started charitable organizations, made movies on climate change, and even wrote a book telling the horrors of global climate change. That book, titled An Inconvenient Truth: the crisis of global warming, follows Al Gore in his efforts to educate the world about how dangerous global warming really is. The one interesting thing about this book is how Al Gore focuses on the man made causes of global warming and never really mentions natural causes. The book would have been easier to believe if he had mentioned the possibility of natural causes contributing to climate change. When Gore was asked how he would describe the essence of the climate crisis on the Norwegian talk show NRK, he stated that, “This is far beyond politics; it’s not a political issue at all. It’s really a moral issue, because it has to do with our responsibility for our children and our grandchildren, and all that come after us” (NRK). He then goes on to state that, “We have multiplied by four times, the population of our planet in-less than 100 years, and because of this we are now in a very different relationship with our planet” (NRK). Gore shows that the population is what is mainly causing global warming; with more population comes more carbon dioxide emissions, and more environmental pollutants.
Global climate change will affect everyone and everything on earth. Over time ocean levels will rise, covering miles of coastal environment, major cities, and islands. To combat this we must find ways to live on our planet while simultaneously reducing our carbon footprint. Both human and natural causes have impacted the earth, but its seems as if the human causes are out weighting the natural ones. We cannot do anything about the natural causes of global warming, so we must find a way to solve this problem by changing the way humans affect our planet. Maybe one day the natural balance will fall back into place but for now the earth is hanging by a thread. If we can’t fix our environmental problems I fear that one day that thread will snap, and there will be no turning back.
Works Cited
"Al Gore on "An Inconvenient Truth"" Youtube. NRK, Mar. 2007. Web. 02 Dec. 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T-yqlH67_4&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1>.
"Causes." Oracle ThinkQuest Education Foundation. Web. Nov.-Dec. 2010. <http://library.thinkquest.org/J003411/causes.htm>.
Gore, Albert. An Inconvenient Truth: the Crisis of Global Warmzing. New York: Viking, 2007. Print.
Layton, Julia, and Ed Grabianowski. "What is the Greenhouse Effect?" 26 May 2005.HowStuffWorks.com.<http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/question746.h tm> 02 December 2010.
"Top 10 Reasons to Say Global Warming Is Not Man-made." (2009): TOPICsearch. EBSCO. Web. 2 Dec. 2010.
Witherbee, Amy. "Point: Overreacting to Climate Change." Points of View: Global Warming (2009): 5. Points of View Reference Center. EBSCO. Web. 2 Dec. 2010.
