The rising and falling of
varyingly heated gases, particles and water, which make up the weather
patterns we see as moving currents, shape the climate on the Earth.
A variety of factors control how hot molecules get and thus, how they
move about in the currents and how the climate behaves. Such factors
include the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, as
well as solar energy.
Climate change also occurs
systematically with different oscillation periods on Earth and effects
from the sun. This fact is the source of much of the controversy within
scientific and political communities. Some opposing parties of treaties
such as the Kyoto Protocol claim that it is this natural climate change
that is causing the increase in global temperatures, and that we are
just on the cusp of another climatic change of guards. They claim that
human activities could not possibly match the scale of the climate variations
imposed by nature; climate change is ultimately an aspect of Earth that
we cannot control.
However, these climate change
phenomena have been shown through research to take hundreds of years
to happen, causing change to be slow. It is the current rapid rate of
change, coupled with the rapid increase in greenhouse emissions, that
has caught concerned scientists’ attention.
Over the last 160 years,
the earth has seen vast changes in the concentration of greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere due to industrial advancements. Molecules such as
carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) have properties that allow them
to absorb energy from ultraviolet light and emit it as heat into the
atmosphere as opposed to reflecting it back into space, and this increases
temperatures (this is the “greenhouse effect”).
Without the Greehouse Effect (left) and With
the Greehouse Effect (right). Source: http://climatechange.sea.ca/climate_change.html.
Below is a chart detailingt
he properties and sources of four major greenhouse gases:
Sources of Four Common Greenhouse
Gases
Greenhouse
Gas |
Sources
from Human Activities |
| Carbon Dioxide (CO2) |
Fossil fuel burning
(industry, automobiles, etc.), wood and wood products, solid waste |
| Methane (CH4) |
Extraction and production
of fossil fuels, organic decomposition from herding and farming,
decomposition of municipal landfills, emission from peat bogs |
| Nitrous Oxide (NO2) |
Agricultural and industrial
activities; combustion of fossil fuels and solid waste |
| Chlorofluorocarbons
(CFCs) |
Production of foams
and as a by- product from refrigeration and air-conditioning appliances |
A number of things are affected
with the increase in temperature and greenhouse gas emissions. Since
the 1840’s, fossil fuel combustion has lead to the increase in
carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, with a particular spike
from the 1950’s on. Since then, there has been a recorded increase
in global temperatures and artic sea ice melting.
Source: http://climatechange.sea.ca/climate_change.html
Scientific research has brought
many scientists to dread the outcome of this temperature increase and
water level raise. They concluded that with more fresh water in the
oceans from the freshwater melted ice, the water in the ocean will change
its pattern of sinking and rising (due to differing densities of fresh
and salt water). This could eventually result in the ceasing of the
main current that runs warmer water up to Europe, resulting in a Europe
enveloped in ice-sold temperatures and making it virtually uninhabitable.
Another consequence of the
increase in carbon dioxide emissions is the potentially irreversible,
devastating effect of the release of tons and tons of methane gas from
boreal peat bogs in the northern ecosystems of Canada, Scandinavia and
Russia. This could be triggered by increasing temperatures in the north
and the rising of the methane gas from these gigantic sinks. One thing
to point out is that methane (CH4) has a capacity to store 4 times more
ultraviolet energy than CO2. This means that once it is released in
large quantities, a positive feedback system will kick
in, and more and more energy will be absorbed into the atmosphere, permanently
accelerating global warming.
Other effects include the
preference of certain ecosystems for plants that favor warmer temperatures,
such a preference of deciduous trees in the boreal forests over the
evergreen old-growth coniferous that serve as massive carbon sinks (Deciduous
trees shed their leaves every year, effectively losing large amount
of carbon to microbial decomposers, which convert the carbon to, you
guessed it, more CO2).
These are only a few
examples of the probable effects of unbridled greenhouse gas emissions
into the atmosphere, and they along with many others have prompted the
United Nations to try and reverse the damaged already caused by implementing
the Kyoto Protocol.
