The Evidence Behind Global Climat Change

Global Warming and Climate Change are real threats. Some people still think that global warming isn't really happening. Some people say its not as serious as many scientists make it sound. A couple say humans don't have any real effect on it. I think they are all wrong and like many other people I have data to prove it.

Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas produced by the burning of fossil fuels used to power factories, automobiles, and other day to day human activities. Carbon dioxide is also produced partially by decaying material and other natural activities like when a cow burps. Carbon Dioxide goes from sinks to plants to animals back to sinks. These sinks are places where carbon dioxide collects such as the atmosphere, forests, and ocean. Normally the inflow and outflow of carbon dioxide is equal, using up carbon dioxide about as fast as nature creates it. Humans however have been disrupting that flow by using fossil fuels to power our activities. A long time ago carbon dioxide was stored in the ocean, soil, or was released by decomposing mater. The soil of that time was then buried deep beneath the earth under great pressure turning into things like oil. Humans have been using these fossil fuels more and more since the Industrial Revolution. When we burn these fuels like coal and oil we release back into the atmosphere old carbon dioxide from thousands of years ago. Today carbon dioxide levels are higher than in records found in ice samples from the Antarctic dating back to 650,000 years ago. Coral reefs are dying all over the world. Coral needs calcium to live. With more CO2 in the oceans the water has become more acidic, the acidity of the water deteriorates calcium creating less calcium than needed for corals to survive. Corals are the early indication of increased CO2 because the earth needs a sink to store the unused CO2. Measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere have been taken regularly since the 1950's. In 1960 carbon dioxide was at 325 parts per million (ppm) in 2005 it had gone up to 381 ppm and is still rising. This is a 25% higher than the highest recorded natural level 650,000 years. Methane, another greenhouse gas, has also increased 148% in the last one hundred years. There is no doubt that carbon dioxide levels are increasing, best estimates show that by 2065 carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could be as high as 700 ppm.

Now you may think, well what if carbon dioxide is increasing, so some coral dies. Well it's much more serious then that. It has been shown that with the increase of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, there is an increase of the greenhouse effect, creating more trapped heat and warming the planet. This warming of the planet is what we now know as Global Warming which leads to climate change. During the last 100 years the average temperature of the earth has increased 1to 2 degrees Fahrenheit, 0.6 to 1.4 Celsius. The last 100 years has also coincided with the Industrial Revolution when civilization started to burn more fossil fuels, coincidence? Couldn't this just be a short time of sudden increase and then the temperature goes back to normal? There has been hotter weather for short periods of time before that then have gone back to normal temperatures. This is not true for today's weather however. There is a close correlation between more carbon dioxide and hotter temperatures and less carbon dioxide and cooler temperatures. Since carbon dioxide has been increasing, temperature has been increasing with it. Nearly all of the twenty hottest years on record have occurred since the 1980s. The hottest months on record from 1880 to 2004 have happened since 1997. July of 2005 to June 2006 where the hottest twelve months since temperature readings have begun in the United States. The records show that temperatures are rising along with the concentrations of greenhouse gases.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change/IPCC, a group of world renowned scientists on climate change said that an early sign of global warming and climate change would be the melting of glaciers around the world. What the IPCC predicted has occurred, today glaciers are melting all over our planet, from New Zealand to the Arctic. You might say that this can't be because of the global temperature increase because an increase of one degree Fahrenheit can't be a big enough difference to melt glaciers. Think of it this way, water will freeze at 32 degrees or below but stays liquid at 33 degrees or above, the same is true for glaciers. Temperatures have also risen two degrees in places like the Arctic and Antarctica. In 2002 a glacier the size of Rhode Island collapsed into the ocean. This was caused because the Circumpolar Wind Cycle which normally blows clockwise around the Antarctic Peninsula became stronger due to increased temperatures, allowing it to go over a mountain which had been protecting the area from warm winds. This warm wind slowly melted what was know as the Larson B ice shelf until it collapsed into the ocean. NASA satellites found that in Greenland ice masses are moving into the ocean and melting twice as fast as they were ten years ago. In 1999, it was discovered that from 1958 to 1976 the average sea ice thickness was ten feet since; from 1993 to 1997, the average has been six feet. That is a 40% loss of Arctic sea ice in less then thirty years. Annual melting at Gangatri Glacier in India between 1842 to 1935 was seven meters; between 1935 and 1990, it has been eighteen meters. Since then, the annual melting has been 30 meters. Annual snow sea ice melts have also been increasing with less freezing back than in the past. This means that each year more ice melts then freezes back.

With less ice and snow the temperature of the earth is increasing even more. This is due to a decrease of the Albedo Effect. The Albedo Effect is when the white ice shelves or snow masses reflect heat cooling our planet because less heat lingers in the atmosphere warming our surface temperatures. When the snow and ice shelves begin to disappear due to climbing temperatures, more grass, trees, and soil cover the earth. These dark colored objects absorb heat, warming the earth's surface, thus air temperature, resulting in warmer average temperatures. Because humans are releasing extraordinary amounts of CO2 trapping more heat in the atmosphere and so warming the globe, ice shelves are melting allowing more heat to be absorbed. More heat absorbed means even more ice shelves melt. With warmer temperatures in Antarctica and the Arctic ,warm air traveling over it isn't cooled as much resulting in warmer air raising the earth's temperature and melting more glaciers.

From the evidence, it is clear that global warming and climate change are occurring. Global climate change has happened for thousands of years but never this fast. Since the last ice age 18,00 to 20,000 years ago temperatures have risen five to nine degrees. In one hundred years we have done what it took a few thousand years to do. Ice core patterns show that our climate is supposed to be cooling now, not warming. Glaciers are melting, warming the earth more and releasing solidified ice to melt in the ocean. This raises the sea level flooding coastal areas during storms and eroding beaches. The IPCC predicts that if we continue at this pace, by 2100 the average temperature could be 2.5 at best to 10.4 degrees higher. This increase could lead to a 20 foot increase in sea level covering many coastal areas and destroying islands. Disease such as malaria would increase because of better breeding conditions for mosquitoes. Some areas would be flooded others would experience severe drought. Thousands of species would die because the surrounding environment would be changing too fast for species to evolve. These predictions may seem impossible in such a short period of time; but with new computer models, predictions like this can be made fairly safely. Many people say that we can do something later; it is too expensive to do now. If we wait to do something later, it will only be worse, and to fix what we have done will only cost more. We need to do something now before we can no longer do anything, if we are to have a say in the future of humanity. We will not kill the world but the world may kill us.

The Evidence Behind Global Climat Change

Sunday, December 2, 2007

The Evidence!

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Links to My Other Pages

Carbon Chart

Glacier Melting

Sea Level Rise

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