Global Warming: The Influence Of Greenhouse Gases

Ah, Global warming! What? You don’t think it’s real? Or maybe you do. According to Yale.edu, “69% of Americans believe global warming is true.” This means that 31% of Americans don’t believe in global warming. That might not seem like a huge number but it is. Many of us do believe in global warming, but we do nothing about it. What is so good about believing if you don’t do it. For that 31% of people, I have something to tell you. Nasa, yeah Nasa says that the world is getting hotter, “ Most of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, with the five warmest years on record taking place since 2010”. As we can see there Nasa has been taking note of global warming, and it is an issue we need to solve. We all need to come together and solve this issue, there are ways we can solve global warming like reducing greenhouse gases by driving less and killing less animals, there are many ways we can come together as a community and get rid of global warming, but we do have to be fast. We are planning to stop global warming by the time of 2025. We need to start quickly though as if we don’t work on deleting global warming our planet will be permanently screwed. We need to take fast measures.

Global warming is the overall warming of the earth. Global warming is caused by greenhouse gases. Fossil fuels produce these greenhouse gases, and also caused by farming and agriculture. When we have these gases in the air, the sun’s rays go into our earth and warms it up, but the rays can’t bounce off out of earth because of the greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases are co2 or better known as carbon dioxide, and it produced from a number of things. Co2 is produced by nonrenewable energy such as coal and oil. Global warming affects us all. Macmillen says, “Over the past 50 years, the average global temperature has increased at the fastest rate in recorded history.” We as a society have bumped up the numbers due to how much greenhouse gases we are producing. If you look at the data, the use of our carbon has drastically gone up in the past 50 or so years. That’s why this would make sense, as we have way more cars, and are producing energy that is nonrenewable which is bad for the environment. When we burn fossil fuels or burn gas or even water vapor can destroy our ozone layer. When we burn all these gases it causes an imbalance in our world’s barrier making it trap in UV rays that are otherwise trying to escape, thus warming up our planet, and causing more and more problems as our world gets warmer. Levin says, “9.7 billion: Approximate tonnes of carbon emitted into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels and producing cement in 2012.” Almost 8 years ago 9.7 billion carbon, that is absurd. The use of nonrenewable energy produces a huge amount of co2 in our atmosphere and causes our world to warm up drastically. In the article, ‘Energy and The Environment Explained’, they say, “In 2017, carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is about 76% of the total U.S. GHG emissions.” Fossil fuels do give us most of our power and that is why we are seeing such a high percentage of co2 emissions, these numbers will keep rising and rising.

Global warming is the cause of greenhouse gases and such, but what these gases do is where the problem comes in. Our world isn’t meant to be turned up in the form of degrees. Just a few degrees can make a difference when we are talking about the world. “ Just Eight degrees Fahrenheit. To maybe you and I that may not seem like a whole lot of heat, but when were talking about the world turning up that much in degrees, it will bring huge consequences to the world we live in and will slowly get worse and worse as it keeps warming up.” (Denchak). So as Denchak is saying, we as humans will barely notice a drop in temperature. Having an 8-degree drop seems literally like nothing to you and me, but to the world as we know it, it gets cauterostraphic. Just cause the warming of the world, the world will, in turn, get angry, by producing a lot more catastrophic disasters like, “storms heat waves, floods, and droughts” (Denchak). The reason why warming of our world causes all these issues is that, “ A warmer climate creates an atmosphere that can collect, retain, and drop more water, changing weather patterns in such a way that wet areas become wetter and dry areas drier” (Denchak). Warming of our planet causes imbalances in our temperature throwing of mother nature and in turn screwing us over. Just imagine a world that we live in with much more catastrophic disasters in hand. Not only more weather imbalances but in the article, ‘Are the effects of global warming that bad,’ they bring up a quote that says, ‘There are more hot days, which it might not seem bad to the people that are used to hot, but the ones who aren’t, who don’t have air conditioning or even can’t afford it will lead to severe health consequences.’ This is especially true in third world countries which don’t have a lot of money and is already hot enough. More degrees aren’t always good. Just imagine a day where it is already 110 degrees, 8 degrees more to that would even more insane and just absurd. The number of health consequences of global warming would be immense. Another terrible thing global warming can do to our world, is warming our ice caps. If global warming continues our ice caps like Antarctica could flood our whole world. Mathez says, “If the ice on Antarctica, and other cold areas where to melt, the sea level would rise about 230 feet.” 230 feet is a ton! A ton of feet, that’s enough feet to almost cover our whole world in water. There will only be a limited amount of land left in the world if all the ice caps melt and we need to stop it.

This may seem bad and all, but we can still prevent it. There are many benefits to getting rid of global warming, like not preventing a lot of storms from happening, heat waves, and floods. There are ways we can prevent global warming to inturn not make all the terrible disasters happen. one way we can stop it from happening is by removing carbon dioxide from the air. That isn’t as crazy as it sounds though. In the article, ‘Scrubbing the skies’ it says, “After all, such machines already exist. they are used to “scrub” carbon dioxide from the air on board submarines and spacecraft.” Such technology is already existing but the article also says that, “If air capture is to get anywhere, however, it must overcome three sets of objections: technical, financial and political.” Using said devices to store carbon dioxide and pull it out of the air might go wrong or it might be good. We don’t know until we try it. The article also says that, “Some countries have pledged to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions by 80% by 2050.” If these countries do what there saying by reducing 80% of emissions, our global warming problem will go away with time, and our world will be happy. There are also other ways we can get rid of global warming, like the small stuff. If we all start to recycle and reuse everything like plastic bottles. Because in the article, The Hidden Climate Polluter: Plastic Incineration they say, “The research clearly shows that burning plastic in incinerators creates the most CO2 emissions among any plastic waste management method.” as we can see here, burning plastic producing a ton of co2. So much co2 and so much energy to burn plastic it is using our energy just to partake in global warming. We need to completely stop burning plastic and start looking for different routes.

In conclusion, global warming is a huge problem we all should be aware of, and take action upon, because it is up and coming and will ruin us all. Global warming can destroy our world and destroy us. Seeing that there are still people in this world who do not believe in it is just terrible, and idiotic. Even when there are stone-cold facts that the world is warming up and we will slowly die in the end.We need to unite as a society and do good in the world, recycle more and have cleaner ways of getting electricity. We can still stop global warming though, time will tell what happens.

Works Cited

1. Ballaw, Mathew. “Americans Underestimate How Many Others in the U.S. Think Global Warming Is Happening.” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 2019, climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/americans-underestimate-how-many-others-in-the-u-s-think-global-warming-is-happening/.
2. Denchak, Melissa. “Are the Effects of Global Warming Really That Bad?” NRDC, 6 Aug. 2019, www.nrdc.org/stories/are-effects-global-warming-really-bad.
3. eia, eia. “U.S. Energy Information Administration – EIA – Independent Statistics and Analysis.” Where Greenhouse Gases Come from – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), 2019, www.eia.gov/energyexplained/energy-and-the-environment/where-greenhouse-gases-come-from.php.
4. Lanallina, Marc. “Americans Underestimate How Many Others in the U.S. Think Global Warming Is Happening.” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 2019, climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/americans-underestimate-how-many-others-in-the-u-s-think-global-warming-is-happening/.
5. Levin, Kelly. “Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Fossil Fuels and Cement Reach Highest Point in Human History.” World Resources Institute, 26 Sept. 2018, www.wri.org/blog/2013/11/carbon-dioxide-emissions-fossil-fuels-and-cement-reach-highest-point-human-history.
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