The world is undergoing various transformations directly and indirectly affecting its inhabitants. One characteristic of all living things is irritability. Irritability refers to the ability of living things to react to the environment as a result of change in natural or manmade stimuli.
This means that living things are very cautious of the environments within which they live. Any change in climatic pattern of the earth will affect one particular group of living things negatively and another particular group positively or in the same way.
One major environmental problem that is witnessed on earth since human beings became cautious of it is global warming. Global warming has been a menace to the peaceful existence of man and to the natural functioning of the environment.
Rising global temperatures, flooding, and rise in the water level are some of the effects linked with global warming. This predicament has been highlighted in various forums and round table meetings in an effort to find a lasting solution to its cause.
However, despite several efforts to eliminate it, debates about its causes has for reason not reached an agreement in summits. One side points to human beings as the cause whereas the other points to nature as the cause.
The question as to whether human beings are responsible for global warming or not and its agreeable rates can be answered well if the myths existing on the subject can be countered well with scientific facts.
According to orld Almanac Books (25), the 21st century has been received by environmental challenges of global warming believed to have been inherited from manmade activities of the past generations and the present ones.
Ever since the start of 20th century, the temperature of the globe has been intensifying with the major increase taking place in 1980s. This averaged increase in temperatures of the earth constitutes global warming.
Because global warming has heightened in the recent years, it means that the condition is worsening with the current generation than in the past. This implies that there must be some activities, which have heightened the menace.
Science has given global warming a detailed description of the process. Scientifically, the heating or warming of earth results from blanketing effects of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, water vapour, oxides of nitrogen gas, and methane gas.
These greenhouse gases forms a covering on the upper part of the earth’s atmosphere, which traps the sun’s rays in the earth. Because of the covering or the blanketing effect of greenhouse gases, the earth warms up gradually. The intensity of warming is directly related to the thickness or quantity of greenhouse gases (World Almanac Books 25).
Thus, basing on the scientific information at hand, it means that the more the quantity of gases emitted into the atmosphere the thicker the layer of the blanket and the warmer the earth.
Many arguments have been put forward to oppose or proposes the causes and rates of global warming. Majority of these arguments have been based on scientific postulations whereas other has been backed by some evidence.
Hansen, Ruedy and Sato (12) note that in 2001, an Integrated Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) came up with some general findings on global warming cuases and rates.
The panel attributed global warming to human activities and projected that the warming effects was increasing at the rate of 0.17oC per every 10 years since 1980s.
IPCC also projected that the temperature of the earth has increased to about 0.8oC since the start of the 19th century.
The panel further concluded that the activities of human beings are the main causes of global warming notably the emission of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which accounted to more than 90% of the global warming phenomena.
At the same time, IPCC projected an unprecedented increase in the earth’s temperatures will be witnessed on earth. According to this projection, the earth’s temperature will rise by 1.4 to 5.8oC between 1990 and 2100.
Despite these agreements by IPCC, which is a panel of highly professional scientists, there are some arguments against the same.
The first disagreement is based on carbon dioxide source. In the first place, there is a general agreement on carbon dioxide as being the cause of global warming. The National Academy of Science has agreed to the same.
However, the scientific opinion differs on the source of the carbon dioxide causing global warming (National Academic Press 51).
One side explains that the carbon dioxide gas causing global warming come from the activities of human beings whereas the other side argues that the same carbon dioxide does not result from activities of human beings but rather from natural geological activities such as volcanic eruption.
The argument goes on further to explain that human activities cannot cause a release of carbon dioxide on a global scale that affects the environment to the extent of causing the global temperatures to rise to more than 5oC, which is contrary to the IPCC’s postulation.
The argument in opposing the activities of human beings as the cause of carbon dioxide responsible for global warming has scientific backing but has been misconstrued.
Although it is true that natural process on earth releases carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the amount released is quickly used up through a balanced symbiotic process.
According to National Academic Press (52), this explains why the earth has remained stable in terms of temperature for thousands of years before the activities of man were heightened. In fact, the earth temperature rose to 0.7 degrees after the start of industrial activity (Hansen, Ruedy and Sato 11).
Human activities on earth are responsible for addition of carbon dioxide in the air. For instance, fossil fuel utilized in aviation industry burns up to give out energy and carbon dioxide gas. Energy is used to drive the car but the carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere.
Furthermore, some industrial activities have got reactions that produce greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The continued release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is contributing to global warming. As a consequence, it is man who is responsible for global warming (IPCC 49).
There is a scientific disagreement on the causes of global warming based on the medieval activities, which led to the rise in earth’s temperatures.
From an intense scientific analysis, it has been found that the earth warmed up during the medieval times just as it is with the case today. To this, science agrees. However, there is no scientific agreement on whether the same phenomena can repeat itself or not.
There is one side that argues that global warming being experienced today is natural just like it was during the medieval period. The argument explains that since the earth has a history of having warmed up, the same can be repeated in the contemporary world.
The medieval warm period is a localized earth warming experienced in 10th and 14th century. Despite the fact that the earth warmed up considerably, the phenomenon was not a worldwide happening but rather occurred in some parts of Europe alone.
Furthermore, the temperature at that time did not rise as high as today’s case of global warming put forward by IPCC (Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton 1132). This means that global warming being witnessed today is very different and its causes have been directly linked to man as put forward by IPCC.
A further argument is that the prediction of the coming of ice age in 1970s by scientist does not concur with the IPCC’s idea that the world is warming up. If the world was experiencing rising temperatures, then there was no way the ice age predictions would have been in the allegations of scientists.
The world has been characterized by longer periods of ice age that was followed by short warm periods. Based on this evidence, science predicts a repeat of the same. However, the cause of ice age is attributed to a swerve of the earth in its orbit around the sun.
In early 1920s the temperatures of the world begun to rise as a result of global warming but when it reached the mid 1970s, the temperatures cooled by small magnitudes. It was this phenomenal that compelled the scientists to predict on the possibilities of the coming of ice age (World Almanac Books 51).
Nevertheless, their concern in the subject led to a revelation that the presence of aerosols in the atmosphere led to the cooling effects of the global temperatures; the idea of the coming of the ice age was the propagation of the press. The threat of global warming remains real and is what has been on the minds of many scientists.
Lastly, the argument that science cannot prove the current global warming as natural is a misguided idea. Although it is difficult to prove if the rising of earth’s temperatures is not caused by natural processes, there is a scientific way out.
Through the process of elimination, science has listed all the possible natural happenings that may lead to global warming and then eliminated them one by one; the final results have pointed to manmade causes as the real threat to global warming (Hansen, Ruedy and Sato 48).
One clear point is that global warming is caused by increased emission of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which are trapping heat leading to warming of the earth on global scale.
This fact has not been refuted as it is scientifically true. Although greenhouse gases have been in existence before the age of man, its effects have never been felt because the world had a balanced way of eliminating any excess of them.
This means that only man’s activity have interfered with the balance in atmospheric temperature. The rate at which global warming is taking place is not constant but rather heightened by the activities of human beings.
The findings by the IPCC have been tested in some ways using other scientific methods but they have been found true.
Works Cited
Hansen, James. GISS surface temperature analysis, global temperature trends: 2005 Summation. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. 2006. Web.
Hays, John, Imbrie, John and Shackleton, Newton. Variations in the earth’s orbit: pacemaker of the ice ages. Science 194 (1976): 1121-1132.
IPCC. Climate change 2007: synthesis report. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2007. Web.
National Academic Press. The America’s climate choices: board on atmospheric sciences and climate. Washintgon: National Academies Press, 2011.
World Almanac Books. Environment global warming and greenhouse effect. Mahwah: World Almanac Books, 2000.