Whenever summer comes, we heard the news about that many people die because of summer scorcher. Last year in Europe 3,500 people died because of summer scorcher. Can you believe that people can die just because of hot weather? Although people are hard to believe, it happens all around the world. The summer scorcher is because of global warming. A couple of weeks ago, I watched a documentary DVD of “Inconvenience Truth” by Al Gore.
It is about global warming. One of the interesting scenes is that he showed two frogs. The first frog was put into boiling water then he jumped out immediately. The other was put into cool water then the water was started being heated to boil. In this case, the frog just stayed in the water even the water was boiling. Finally, the frog jumped out when the water boiled extremely. The second frog is as same as our world in global warming. Our world already has been warning and showing many climate changes by global warming; summer scorcher, melting glaciers and rising sea levels so on. Even though people know the warnings, they are used it just like the second frog. This might be worse than global warming.
Therefore, people should not only recognize reasons of global warming but also try to reduce the reasons. The major causes of global warming which need to be known by everyone include; green house effect, overpopulation and agricultural activities.
The first cause of global warming is the green house effect which can be described as the reflection of heat energy by the atmosphere. As almost all people know, the earth is rounded by the atmosphere which keeps warm the earth. However, the problem is the atmosphere is being thicken by green house effect. This is making the earth hotter and hotter. According to Al Gore (2006) in “Inconvenience Truth,” green house effect has been observed as the major factor which highly contributes to the increase in temperatures which comes from the gases which accumulate in the atmosphere leading to more gas concentrations in the atmosphere which in the end lead to the increases in the temperatures.
The most popular gas produced from the greenhouse is carbon dioxide which is produced from the power plants (Biggin, 2007). Since the Industrial Revolution, people have been using huge fossil fuels which produce carbon dioxide; using cars, heating and cooling system so on. In the DVD of Gore (2006), the other interesting scene is that he showed the today’s level of carbon dioxide. The level is shocked. There is a huge gap between today and the reports for 650,000 years.
In addition, the level keeps going up. Although people would know that the level of carbon dioxide is in danger, it should be hard to stop using the materials which produce green house gases and that they have used for a long time. What if people let carbon dioxide increase, next generations might not live in the earth or carry own cooling system anywhere. Therefore, green house effect is a major cause of global warming which should be reduced and recognized.
The second cause of global warming is overpopulation and human activities. According to Gore (2006), as the number of people tends to increase the consumption also increases a situation which causes the intake of more items which consume more energy to make. One of the examples is using cars. According to NRDC, the nation’s most effective environmental action group, it explains that “automobiles, the second largest source, create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually.” These cars emit carbon dioxide through the burning of gasoline in the internal combustion engines of various cars as well as other light trucks (Gore, 2006).
As the population increases more people tends to own cars which causes them to drive more cars. People are used the conveniences of cars. So what if they keep using cars even more, the earth should be hotter and hotter. Then melting glaciers make sea level go up, and all lands might be disappeared. In fact, this already happens in the world. While last a couple of years, our world has been hit by big hurricanes and typhoons; Jeanne, Frances and Ivan so on. As ocean temperatures increase, the wind velocity increases and the moisture content increase as well. This makes hurricanes and typhoons stronger and stronger.
Hurricanes and typhoons killed a lot of people and caused billion dollars’ worth of damage. Actually, people made these damages themselves because they cause global warming, which means human is killing by itself. In Alaska, there was 225 winter days thirty-five years ago but it is below seventy-five days a year (Gore, 2006). This means that many glacial have being melted which make sea level higher and higher. Therefore, increasing carbon dioxide by human activities and overpopulation is one of the major reasons caused global warming.
The third cause of global warming is agricultural activities which are done by human beings. The other important human activity is deforestation which results in the emissions of carbon dioxide that normally comes as a result of human beings cutting down trees as well as burning the trees to produce charcoal (Schneider, 1990). Deforestation reduces the amount of carbon dioxide absorption in areas where the trees have destroyed by human activities.
Studies by (Crichton 1990), shows that normally this results when farmers tend to move to new fertile areas to create more land for farming since rain forests are believed to have poor soil fertility and many people will tend to move from one place to another in search of fertile soils in the rain forests and by doing this the people tend to destroy the rain forests through the creation of new fields for planting (Theodore, 2004). Since people who live in the rain forests are poor and cannot afford to buy fertilizers for planting they tend to burn the fields to create manure for planting a situation which emits a lot of carbon dioxide to the air.
Due to lack of temperate forests to absorb the carbon dioxide emissions it leads to a situation where the carbon dioxide gases emitted to the atmosphere causes green house effect. Though the trees were created purposefully for air refreshing the people are misusing the uses of the trees for their human benefit (Maslin, 2007).If people will continue cutting down the trees then all the earth will be full of carbon dioxide emissions and the life of each individual on the earth surface will uncomfortable. The other important human activity is the use of aerosols which produce the suspension of small droplets in the atmosphere which are believed to the main sources of anthropogenic bacteria that is used by farmers who are growers of rice (Gore, 2006).
In conclusion there are many other causes of global warming except from the above listed such as air pollution, burning of fossils, industrial activities among others. Due to global warming the climate is expected to change drastically a situation which will cause new climatic conditions for the world and the habitats on the earth surface. The new climatic conditions will create an environment where the plants and animals will find difficulties adapting to such fasting changing conditions. Since global warming is becoming a major issue nobody knows the diverse effects it will have on the world in the future.
This therefore implies that everyone should concerned with the issue of global warming and its effects great on the atmosphere hence proper measures should be put in place to ensure that people adhere to them as well as providing education on ways that can reduce global warming for the purpose of future. An example could be the avoiding the cutting down of trees rather people should be encouraged to plant more trees to create more rain forests. So the issue is that everyone should be aware of global warming for the better future of everyone.
References
Al Gore, (2006), An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and what We Can do about it; Published by Bloomsbury.
Andrew Biggin, (2007), “Scientific bodies must take own action on emissions; Nature; Published by HM company.
John Theodore, (2004), Global warming: the complete briefing; Published by Cambridge University, Press, and 3rd edition.
Mark Maslin, (2007), Global Warming: Causes, Effects, and the Future; Published by MBI Publishing Company LLC.
Stephen H. Schneider, (1990), Global Warming: Are We Entering the Greenhouse Century; Published by James Clarke & Co.