Re: Global Warming Essay In Pdf File
Vida Hubbert
There are many reasons for the cause of global warming. There are certain gases in the atmosphere called greenhouse gases. The energy then radiates from the surface; the greenhouse gases trap longwave radiation. We humans have added to the atmospheric blanket of greenhouse affecting the living species. Warming of air, oceans, and land is how global warming happens.
Are we on a slippery slope now? Can human-made global warming cause ice sheet melting measured in meters of sea level rise, not centimeters, and can this occur in centuries, not millennia? Can the very inertia of the ice sheets, which protects us from rapid sea level change now, become our bete noire as portions of the ice sheet begin to accelerate, making it practically impossible to avoid disaster for coastal regions?
The threads in this tangle have names like climate change, Covid, wildfire, cancer, arctic. They have to do with the permeable boundaries between fact and feeling, self and landscape, inner and outer, vulnerability and refuge.
But in March 2020, Covid-19 cancels everything. We reschedule our Alaska trip for 2021, when surely this virus will be history. My husband and I become rigorous Covid avoiders: To protect ourselves and others, we stay home or outdoors, wear masks, see friends only, and rarely, on Zoom.
Summer 2020. We stay home in Colorado. Two large wildfires burn nearby; as their smoke covers our sky, we buy room air purifiers and shut ourselves behind closed doors. One of the fires is named East Troublesome. We prepare to evacuate more than once. No 2 a.m. call comes from the sheriff, though, as it did in 2012 when hot winds blew flames from the foothill forests out across drought-crisped pastures, stopping short of our house but leaving burnt pinecones on our roof. Sending us to take refuge in the nearby middle-school gym, that fire upended our sense of home: These were events we had not then thought to fear. Now each summer we wait for fire to find us again.
For now, it is again protected, in its long see-saw between peril and safety: Republican presidents open it to oil companies, Democratic presidents close it. Deep in its center, despite the collapsing pingos and other results of melting permafrost, despite the many stories of a changing landscape we hear from our bush pilot and guides, I feel protected too. At some point on this river, I realize that I feel like myself for the first time in years.
I have so loved this trip that I sign up for a second summer-solstice visit to the Arctic Refuge in 2022, this time to raft another river several drainages to the west of the Hulahula, starting high on the Marsh Fork of the Canning River and floating out onto the coastal plain.
This time the winter this far north has been snowy. Again I spend my flight staring down at the many designs of patterned ground, signs of permafrost. I spot several large patches of thermokarst, places where the ground, frozen solid for tens of thousands of years, has just this season thawed into black mudslides. Though spring is late, the flowers slow to bloom, the caribou few, the weather cool and wet, we pass miles of collapsing riverbanks, green tundra caps slumping over the permafrost they can no longer keep cold. In some of these dark slides we spot ice lenses; if we searched, we might find the bones of extinct animals. The arctic, new studies suggest, is now warming four times faster than the global average.
Walking across the notoriously unsteady tundra tussocks, I remember something a physical therapist once told me when I was worried that I was starting to fall too often. As I showed him an unsteady effort to stand on one leg, he said that wobbling is good; it works lots of little muscles and trains them to recover from lost equilibrium. Maybe, I think, maybe recovery is more powerful than stability, wobbling more useful than a balance built on stasis.
The everyday world seeps inexorably back. As I fly to Seattle, another shocking January 6 congressional hearing is underway: I watch the opening comments in the hotel lobby and read the headlines in the airport in Seattle, as yet more wounds to our democracy are revealed. I wear my mask diligently throughout the long journey home, taking it off only to gulp airplane liquids and gobble a yogurt.
SueEllen Campbell created and for over a decade curated the website "100 Views of Climate Change," a multidisciplinary collection of pieces accessible to interested non-specialists. She is especially interested...More by SueEllen Campbell
Global Warming is a term almost everyone is familiar with. But, its meaning is still not clear to most of us. So, Global warming refers to the gradual rise in the overall temperature of the atmosphere of the Earth. There are various activities taking place which have been increasing the temperature gradually. Global warming is melting our ice glaciers rapidly. This is extremely harmful to the earth as well as humans. It is quite challenging to control global warming; however, it is not unmanageable. The first step in solving any problem is identifying the cause of the problem. Therefore, we need to first understand the causes of global warming that will help us proceed further in solving it. In this essay on Global Warming, we will see the causes and solutions of Global Warming.
Global warming has become a grave problem which needs undivided attention. It is not happening because of a single cause but several causes. These causes are both natural as well as manmade. The natural causes include the release of greenhouses gases which are not able to escape from earth, causing the temperature to increase.
Further, volcanic eruptions are also responsible for global warming. That is to say, these eruptions release tons of carbon dioxide which contributes to global warming. Similarly, methane is also one big issue responsible for global warming.
After that, the excessive use of automobiles and fossil fuels results in increased levels of carbon dioxide. In addition, activities like mining and cattle rearing are very harmful to the environment. One of the most common issues that are taking place rapidly is deforestation.
So, when one of the biggest sources of absorption of carbon dioxide will only disappear, there will be nothing left to regulate the gas. Thus, it will result in global warming. Steps must be taken immediately to stop global warming and make the earth better again.
As stated earlier, it might be challenging but it is not entirely impossible. Global warming can be stopped when combined efforts are put in. For that, individuals and governments, both have to take steps towards achieving it. We must begin with the reduction of greenhouse gas.
Furthermore, they need to monitor the consumption of gasoline. Switch to a hybrid car and reduce the release of carbon dioxide. Moreover, citizens can choose public transport or carpool together. Subsequently, recycling must also be encouraged.
In short, all of us must realize the fact that our earth is not well. It needs to treatment and we can help it heal. The present generation must take up the responsibility of stopping global warming in order to prevent the suffering of future generations. Therefore, every little step, no matter how small carries a lot of weight and is quite significant in stopping global warming.
A.1 There are various causes of global warming both natural and manmade. The natural one includes a greenhouse gas, volcanic eruption, methane gas and more. Next up, manmade causes are deforestation, mining, cattle rearing, fossil fuel burning and more.
A.2 Global warming can be stopped by a joint effort by the individuals and the government. Deforestation must be banned and trees should be planted more. The use of automobiles must be limited and recycling must be encouraged.
In response to a request from the U.S. Congress, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published a series of peer-reviewed reports, titled America's Climate Choices, to provide authoritative analyses to inform and guide responses to climate change across the nation. Relevant to this question, the NAS report titled Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change explains policies that could be adopted to slow or even reverse global warming. The report says, "Meeting internationally discussed targets for limiting atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and associated increases in global average temperatures will require a major departure from business as usual in how the world uses and produces energy."
Transitioning to energy sources that do not emit greenhouse gases, such as solar, wind, biofuels, and nuclear, can slow the pace of climate change, though these energy sources face hurdles ranging from manufacturing capacity to debates about where to install some facilities. Images courtesy Energy.gov.
Alternative methods to slow or reduce global warming have been proposed that are, collectively, known as "climate engineering" or "geoengineering." Some geoengineering proposals involve cooling Earth's surface by injecting reflective particles into the upper atmosphere to scatter and reflect sunlight back to space. Other proposals involve seeding the oceans with iron to stimulate large-scale phytoplankton blooms, thereby drawing down carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Such methods could work, in principle, but many climate scientists oppose undertaking geoengineering until we have a much better understanding of the possible side effects. Additionally, there are unresolved legal and ethical issues surrounding geoengineering.
Given these concerns, the American Meteorological Society published a position paper (readopted in January 2013) in which it said: "...research to date has not determined whether there are large-scale geoengineering approaches that would produce significant benefits, or whether those benefits would substantially outweigh the detriments. Indeed, geoengineering must be viewed with caution because manipulating the Earth system has considerable potential to trigger adverse and unpredictable consequences."
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