Global Warming Essay, Research Paper

(After a lot of reading and hunting around on the net, I found a great deal of

information on this topic. I had never really researched on it before so wanted

to make sure that calculations agreed from report to report. Most of them did so

I will base my answer on these different reports. This subject is extremely

interesting, scary and a bit of a shock as to how much we have abused and taken

advantage of this Earth. Though progress as far as technology has been something

we make use of and enjoy, we are paying for it in ways I never thought of before

this subject came up in this class! Please forgive my ignorance. I am troubled

that my children and their children will suffer because of our lack of concern,

knowledge and greed. I read a short story the other day, about the people in a

village having never heard the word cancer until they were run out of their

homes and into the city area’s. Years later, some of the people from this

village are dying from disease. my point is that before they came to the cities,

they had always died of old age …) FIRST of all, it is important to know that

the "greenhouse effect" is not a bad thing in itself. In fact, this

planet would be a life-less waste land without its natural greenhouseing. There

are a collection of gases called "greenhouse gases," which are water

vapor, carbine dioxide, ozone, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons

(CFC). Without the natural greenhouse effect, the surface temperature of our

planet would be an average of -18?C (zero degrees F). The mixture of these

gases have remained pretty much stable over the centuries and have kept us all

living. But here we are in the late nineties, and we are not so stable anymore.

Our activities and what we use to perform our activities is increasing year to

year, many of them doubling and tripling. It’s a case of the amount of gases

that Earth produces naturally vs. the amount of gases produced manually by us.

Do you drive? How about using those disposable diapers that NEVER disintegrate?

Do you smoke? How about garbage or junk burning? Do you BBQ? Where do you work?

Do you have an air-conditioner? Do you separate your garbage, use hair spray,

spray deodorant, spray paint, flea spray, perfume, kitchen spray cleaner, bleach

in your laundry, bleach in your hair, use a freezer, use an air conditioner in

your car, use your fireplace, have a growing collection of newspaper and

magazines, throw away food, use paper and plastic food containers, use bug

spray, use lawn pesticides, … Okay, this could go on forever. The effects of

the huge overuse of these items of luxury plus all the other unmentioned items

and activities plays havoc on our atmosphere. We didn’t worry about this 100

years ago, and the industrial revolution is the culprit for a large part of

this. The reason for this is a little thing called Carbon dioxide. Where is the

C02 coming from? Fossil fuel burning (75%), land clearing & burning (25%) ,

as well as car exhaust and coal burning. This stuff stays in the atmosphere for

50-200 years. Here is how it works. The chemical makeup of our atmosphere and

ozone is very complex. It is a combination, and interaction of the ocean, sun,

land, and the biosphere. The greenhouse gases work to trap the heat producing

energy on our Earth, and pretty much does a good job of it if left undisturbed.

We have disturbed it. The human production of greenhouse gas producing chemicals

is what is disturbing it. This production by humans of these particular gases

linger in our atmosphere for many many years and they burn up our protective

ozone blanket faster than it can rebuild itself. Our ozone blocks out most of

the killer radiation rays from our sun. Ozone is a molecule with just three

Oxygen atoms. It is created when UV light reacts with oxygen gas, which has two

Oxygen atoms. UV light also destroys ozone, so you need just the right mix of UV

light and oxygen to get an ozone layer. For the last 450 million years, our

ozone has been our sun screen. Chemicals that we use in daily life produce ozone

eating atoms when they reach the stratosphere and are exposed to intense UV

rays. Chemicals such as CFC’s are too unreactive to be removed and they rise

slowly, taking 10-20 years to make the journey up to the stratosphere. Once

there, the high UV rays breaks down the atoms into chlorine atoms which speeds

up the breakdown of ozone (O3) into O2 and O . Each of these molecules last from

65-110 years and each one can convert up to 100,000 molecules of O3 to O2. These

guys in turn, are the ozone terminators., and they are not even the only ones.

Over Antarctica there is a gaping ozone hole measuring about three of our

continental U.S. in size. What has happened is during their sunless winter,

winds blow steadily in a circular pattern over the earth’s poles, which creates

huge swirling masses of ice-cold air that gets trapped above the poles. When the

sun returns a few months later the water droplets in the clouds enter these

large circling streams of icy air and form tiny crystals. The surfaces of the

crystals collect ozone depleting chemicals in the stratosphere which allows them

to deplete the ozone layer at a much faster rate. The return of the sunlight

triggers weeks of ozone depletion before vortex breaks apart. THEN, masses of

ozone-depleted air flow northward and linger for weeks above Australia and New

Zealand, raising the UV levels in these areas by as much as 20%… and guess

what? They have had a HUGE rise in skin cancer. This very thing is also

happening over parts of North America, Asia and Europe. So, what would global

warming do to us? (as in, do I really need to worry about this???) Well, to put

it bluntly, it eventually would kill you and everything else that is alive. The

rise of a few degrees doesn’t seem like a big deal, but in global terms… it is

deadly. It isn’t just the rise of surface temperature, it is the pollution from

the over production of the greenhouse gases as well. By the year 2020, over

700,000 deaths worldwide will occur annually from exposure to particles as a

result of fossil-fuel burning that could be avoided by a climate control policy.

New animal and human studies confirm that airborne fine particles can sicken or

kill people. For example, laboratory rats with respiratory disorders died after

being exposed to air pollution at concentrations found today in Massachusetts.

Today our atmosphere contains 28% more carbon dioxide than it did 100 years ago,

and that percentage is rising drastically. Some of the warning signs that have

already taken place are: Surface temps at nine stations north of the Arctic

circle have risen by about 9 degrees F., since 1968. That is almost half a

degree a year. The thick massive ice shelves surrounding the continent in

Antarctica are beginning to break up. We had a huge one the size of a state

break up just recently. Winter snow in the northern hemisphere has been

decreasing every year, in fact, I have heard it said that Washington state will

someday have southern California weather. Since 1980 the average water temp. in

Alaska’s Toolik lake has increased by about 3 degrees. The surrounding tundra is

beginning to thaw which could accelerate global warming by releasing massive

carbon dioxide and methane from these soils. Future implications could cause a

change in where food can and can’t grow. Drops of only 10% in global crop yields

would lead to large increases in hunger and starvation. Wild fires would

increase, in up to 90% of North American forests. This certainly would not help

in reducing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Climate change would lead to

reductions in bio diversity. This leads to ecosystems that can not adapt. The

rise in sea level would cause massive flooding. Even a rise of one foot would be

disastrous. Global warming poses an unprecedented threat to our environment and

our economy. Climate change can cause a spread in the ranges of tropical

diseases (Dengue fever, a painful life-threatening disease endemic to tropical

regions, broke out on the Texas border in the fall of 1995), intensified storms,

mass extinction of plant and animal species, and crop failures in many

vulnerable regions. Deserts may expand into existing rangelands, and the

character of some of our National Parks may be permanently altered.

Unfortunately, many of the potentially most important impacts depend upon

whether rainfall increases or decrease, which can not be reliably projected for

specific areas. We certainly still do not know enough. There are disagreements

all around, and the cost plus the emission of the ozone killers that are

produced, trying to cut down on the ozone killers, is a problem in itself. This

is a bit disappointing, the fact that we all will most likely be dead by the

time there is really any significant change… but our kids and their kids will

still be here…. Thats another thing… the population problem….