Author: Ben Wendel

On Global Warming

August 05, 2007

There has been a lot of who-haw about global warming, so I figured it would be important for everyone to get the facts straight.  First of all, we must all be aware of the causes of global warming.  To make a very long story short, global warming is due to gas particles in the atmosphere absorbing heat that is radiating off of the Earth and trapping heat that would otherwise be lost to space.  The three major gasses that absorb heat in this way are carbon dioxide, water vapor, and methane.  Yes, it is true that cow farming is contributing to global warming.  Cows eat large amounts of grass, which is digested in their guts by bacteria.  The digestion of cellulose, the main component of grass blades, releases methane gas, which is then released by the cows in the form of farts, so it is true that cows farting are contributing to global warming.  Water vapor is a strange greenhouse gas, as they are commonly referred to, because water is such a common and important substance all around us.  Water is extremely important to life, and the quantity of water vapor in the atmosphere is so low that its effects can be nearly ignored completely, but it is a greenhouse gas nonetheless.  Carbon Dioxide is, of course, the biggest and most well known greenhouse gas.  Burning anything, even calories, releases carbon dioxide into the air because it is one of the products of combustion.  Automobile, consequently, are one of the biggest contributors of carbon dioxide because of all of the gasoline that is constantly being burned in the engines.  But carbon dioxide is not all bad.  Carbon dioxide is the main reactant, along with water, in photosynthesis, which is how plants create all of our food and our food’s food.  Carbon dioxide is another necessary greenhouse gas.  With all the fuss about carbon dioxide, many people would be surprised to hear that it comprises less than one percent of the atmosphere which is dominated by nitrogen and oxygen. 

      But enough about the causes let us continue to the detection of global warming.  This process is very difficult because you cannot simply take the average temperature for every year and compare it to years previous.  This is because the weather is dependent on many other things, and one of them is the orbit of the Earth around the sun.  The Earth goes in and out of ice ages, which is when the orbit shifts slightly and causes the Earth to be further from the sun for longer periods of time.  We are currently coming out of an ice age so temperatures should be expected to rise slightly.  Actually, they should be expected to rise very slightly very slowly, but it is very difficult to determine what temperature change is caused naturally and what is caused by greenhouse gases.  Our best guess is to make models and run them to see how the gases effect mini environments. 

      The detection of global warming and its severity is key because it can have dramatic effects.  If the world were to heat up, the ice caps, which reflect light coming from the sun because they are white, would begin to melt, which would stimulate more global warming.  This positive feedback loop would continue until the ice caps were completely melted, which would result in the sea level rising and coastal cities, such as San Diego, could be endangered.  Another problem with the sea level rising would be that the salt concentration in the ocean could be diluted which could disrupt oceanic currents which are responsible for the mild places, such as England, that are far from the equator.  Notice that I say could a lot because none of this has been proven and nobody knows for sure, but these are feasible effects of global warming.  Global warming could also change the distribution of arable land and cause a lot of problems for everyone.  Places normally used for productive farming could become arid desert and ruin the economy around the area.  Adjusting to these changes would be possible but would take a lot of time and effort.  Another effect could be that global warming could warm the oceans and disrupt oceanic environments.  The temperatures of the oceans are relatively stable because they are such massive bodies of water, so organisms living in them are no used to adjusting to temperature changes, so increasing the temperature could cause some of them to go extinct if they cannot adapt to the new conditions.  I could go on, but this is supposed to be around 500 words and I have well exceeded that mark, so I shall end on the note that, regardless of whether u believe global warming is a problem, conserving gas and planting trees will not hurt the environment, so why not give it a try?

 
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