It's Gettin' Hot in Here

Here, meaning the planet Earth.  This week's blog is devoted to some research about climate change.  Climate change, as the name suggests, is a significant, lasting change in the Earth's current norm of distribution of weather patterns.  These periods of change can last anywhere from decades to millions of years.

This little baby is losing his habitat.
photo found at blogspot.com

According to the United Nations Climate Change Information Kit (UNCCIK), the Earth's climate is indeed changing right now, and the Earth is growing hotter.  The UNCCIK claims that the rate of the Earth's warming in the 20th Century (1900s) was the greatest it's been in the last 1,000 years.  They say that the average global temperature has increased by 0.6 degrees Celsius, +/- 0.2 degrees.  This rising temperatures have a very strong possibility of contributing to rising sea levels as well.  Furthermore, snow cover has declined 10% since the 1960s in the Northern Hemisphere.  Artic sea-ice now decreases by 10-15% in the summer and thinned by 40% in the summer to early autumn.  This habitat degradation affects all the animals that live there, including polar bears.

Now why do these statistics about climate change matter?  Isn't this a natural process the earth goes through?  Simple answer: yes.  The Earth does have periods where it heats up and cools down naturally, for example: the ice age.  However, humans are affecting this natural process now, messing with the Earth's natural heating and cooling cycles.

So, how do humans affect climate change?

Human activities release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and these gases control how natural energy flows through the climate system.  The increase in greenhouse gases interferes with the process of the sun providing energy to the Earth, and the Earth releasing energy back into space.  So, the Earth has to raise its global temperature to adjust to the "thicker blanket" of greenhouse gases to properly maintain the flow of energy to and from the Earth.

The use of these affects the Earth more than we think.
photo found at freefoto.com

This term "greenhouse gasses", what does it mean?

A greenhouse gas is a gas in the atmosphere that emits and absorbs energy through the thermal infrared range and help regulate the natural energy flow.  Greenhouse gases are things like carbon-dioxide (which is released when burning fossil fuels and when forests are burned down) and methane & nitrous oxide (which is released during agricultural activities).  Since humans rely so heavily on current agricultural methods to feed people and the burning of fossil fuels to provide energy, a ton of extra greenhouse gas is added daily to atmosphere.

So, why does this matter to humans?  How is this going to affect us?

For one, there are food security and agricultural risks to consider.  Certain areas will no longer be able to produce the same amount, type, or any crops if the climate changes too much.  This increases the already horrible economic strain on countries who can't feed their people, and it puts people in affluent societies at risk of going hungry as well.  Furthermore, with rising sea levels, we lose coastal areas of land where people live or visit for recreational purposes.  More humans will move inland, meaning less space for people overall, and the low-income nations whose national wealth rely heavily on income provided by tourists will suffer greatly.

The Earth warms and cools on its own.  As of now, we
don't know how much human activity affects this process,
says the global warming skeptics.
photo found at nasa.gov

Now, it behooves me to address the opposition as well.  There is much skepticism surrounding global warming, and most of it centers around the fact there is no overwhelming consensus on whether global warming is really a crisis.  Many argue that scientists don't understand the Earth's cooling and heating process nearly well enough to predict what will happen in the future.  Furthermore, we don't know exactly which percent of the Earth's warming is caused by human activities.  One of the biggest reasons implied in the hearland.org article that the skeptics hold so tightly to their arguments is the sheer cost of implementing change and preventative measures.  It would increase taxes and call for more government control over the disbursement of money.  So, people are worried about it costing both money and freedom.

Given what I learned, I believe that should humans continue using fossil fuels with no thought to the environment, the Earth will be a much, much hotter place in 50 years.   The farming and agricultural industries we rely so heavily upon will produce much less than what is needed to feed the world, and only the humans who can adapt to the harsher conditions will continue on.  Basically, humanity is greenhouse-gasing itself into an earlier cycle of natural selection.  Like Charles Darwin wrote, those best suited to living in the environment will survive.