By now, everybody has heard of climate change and generally knows what it is. In this post, I am going to go a little deeper into the details of what climate change is and the effects it has. The formal definition of climate change is “long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns”. Although this might occur naturally, human activities have escalated the damage. Some of these activities include the burning of fossil fuels, fertilizing crops, raising livestock, clearing forests, and producing certain industrial products. The main damaging result of these activities is the release of greenhouse gases, which has caused most of the global warming since 1950. One of the main greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide, which has contributed most to recent climate change. It comes mostly from burning things like fossil fuels, solid waste, trees, and biological materials. Methane and nitrous oxide are also released through fossil fuel burning/extraction. Ground-level ozone is formed when heat and sunlight trigger reactions between nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds. In addition to being a greenhouse gas, it can also cause respiratory health problems and damage ecosystems.
Now you might be wondering, why are these greenhouse gases so bad? Well, the temperature of the Earth depends the balance between the energy coming in and going out of the planet’s atmosphere. Energy from the sun is absorbed by the Earth’s surface, creating warmth. After it is absorbed, some of the energy is returned back into the atmosphere as heat. Greenhouse gases that are released into the atmosphere absorb energy, which prevents/slows the loss of heat to space. They create a blanket in the atmosphere to make the Earth warmer than it would normally be, called the greenhouse effect. Although the greenhouse effect may be natural and necessary, the recent overload of greenhouse gases from human activities is becoming dangerous to life on Earth.
There is plenty of evidence proving that climate change and global warming are indeed real. Some of the visible effects of climate change include increasing ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, changes in frequency and duration of extreme weather events, and shifts in ecosystem characteristics. As climate change becomes more and more of a prevalent issue, it is important to recognize the consequences of our actions as humans and become aware about what the government and society is doing to reduce the effects. Stay tuned for my next post continuing the climate change discussion.
I appreciate this post for its simplicity. After hearing so much about climate change in so many different places, it’s helpful to revisit the fundamentals of how it is occurring in order remember exactly what the problem is. Additionally, this post was helpful in getting me thinking about the role of carbon dioxide emissions again, as this is the focus of my paper in another class this semester.
I find it incredible that people don’t “believe” in Climate Change. Not only is there a mountain of evidence, but you can see the results. It. might have been a bit of a fluke, but it was almost 70 degrees in February here on Wednesday, and the past two weeks have all been in the 40’s with no snow. While some winters may be warmer than others, this has been happening pretty consistently over the past few years, and each year seems to be warmer. In addition, with a scientific explanation (which is what you focused on), I find it even more unbelievable that people deny the existence of global warming, especially when people explain it in a factual, intuitive way like you did.
It is really interesting to me that people don’t think this is real, even with all of the statistics and evidence supporting it. I appreciate this post because I never really learned about climate change in any of my schooling. I’m not sure if it’s too recent of a relevant topic or what, but I am glad I am getting more information from your blog. I can’t wait to hear more about it!
I really like how you simplified the issue into the basic facts and talked about the patterns and changes we are seeing. From what I have seen, most people do agree that there is climate change going on. However, the bigger issue is how to balance development with keeping the planet healthy. Specifically countries that are developing right now, like China/India/Africa/etc. are being told to cut emissions while they are trying to grow their economies/pull people out of poverty while countries like the US/Western Europe have already done enough damage to the environment during their own industrial revolutions.