What is environment? What is environmental pollution? These are basic questions one needs to address for a start. The environment is something you are very familiar with. It’s everything that makes up our surrounding and affects our ability to exist on earth, the air we breathe, the water that covers 70% of earth’s surface, the planets and animals around us and much more.
Scientists have been carefully examining the ways that people effect the environment. They have found that we are causing air pollution, deforestation, acid rain and other damages that are detrimental both to planet earth and to humankind alike. Now here’s where the topic of global warming comes in.
Global warming is the predicted outcome of the increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” released by human activities such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation. Scientist estimates that earth’s temperatures will rise a few degrees celsius in next century. This temperature rise may cause changes that would affect the ecology of the environment like rising sea level and new infectious diseases et cetera.
Some scientists believe that global warming could increase the population of mosquitoes leading to malaria, heat waves and hurricanes, ocean disruption, damage to coral reefs, crops and exponential reduction in global food production. Well, this answers some skeptics’ question, Why would I bother about global warming when there are more pressing issues like hunger, war and economic draught to worry about? I would agree totally with this. A human's physiological needs take the highest priority. Physiological needs can influence thoughts, alter behavior and can cause people to feel sick, pain, and discomfort. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, represented as a pyramid with the more primitive needs located at the foot, is the basic human needs such as food, warmth, sex, water, and other bodily needs. If a person is deprived of any of these then all of his energies turn toward remedying these deficiencies while other needs remain inactive. Maslow explains that, if these requirements are not fulfilled then he or she is certainly blind to many things.But lets examine what will happen to these issues if global warming is true and not merely a smoke screen .
Let’s take rising sea levels for example to see the economic and societal impact. Coastal zones have always had a high population and economic activities because of their natural resources and trading opportunities. Many of the world’s largest cities are on seacoasts and along great rivers. If sea levels rise, especially if combined with extreme climatic events, it would flood large parts of these areas. It would also introduce salt water into surface fresh water thus affecting water supply, and modifying critical ecosystems supplying ecological services and natural resources to urban areas. It would inevitably provoke migration to other urban areas. Coastal settlements in lower-income countries where fishery and agriculture is the only source of income would be more vulnerable and these lower-income groups living on flood plains are at a most vulnerable situation.
Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until 1930’s the media peddled a coming ice age. Recently advocates of alarmism have grown increasing desperate to try to convince the public that global warming is the greatest moral issue of our generation. Having said that, some groups believe in the opposite site of the coin. They believe that there are no such phenomena as global warming. Let me summaries the recent development in these area.
The theory would be that climate change is controlled primarily by first, cyclical eccentricities in earth's rotation and orbit as well as variations in the sun's energy output. Earth's combined tilt and elliptical orbit around the Sun change slightly over long periods of time cause differences in the amount of sunlight the Northern and Southern Hemispheres receive. Earth is like the wobble of a spinning top. Over time, it causes the seasons to occur at different locations in earth's elliptical orbit. As the cycle progresses, earth will be closest to the sun during summer and farthest from the sun in winter. So the output of the energy (sun spots, radiation, solar flare, sun storm, etc) from the sun is beyond our control.
Second, the "Greenhouse gases" (heat retention mechanism due to atmospheric gases, mostly gaseous water vapor (not droplets), also carbon dioxide, methane, and a few other miscellaneous gases) in Earth's atmosphere also influence earth's temperature, but in a much smaller way. Human additions to total greenhouse gases play a still smaller role, contributing about 0.2%-0.3%. Also solar reflectivity due to white clouds, volcanic dust and polar ice caps (frozen water has higher reflective index as compared to glass).
The third, Tectonic Causes. Landmass distribution like shifting continents (continental drift) causing changes in circulatory patterns of ocean currents. It seems that whenever there is a large land mass at one of the earth's poles, either the North Pole or South Pole, there are ice ages. Undersea ridge activity: "Sea floor spreading" (associated with continental drift) causing variations in ocean displacement. And many more reason given with some evident to support their argument.
However the media always highlights issues that have significant commercial interest. There are utmost amount of emphasis in conjuring up earth shattering ingredients to spice up events and create euphoria of sorts. Nevertheless, when this happens we tend to be extra involves in the material we read or watch as it now grabs our intention.
In conclusion, it is now safe to say that there is no conclusive evidence supporting or rejecting the existence of Global Warming. This eventually, would be to evaluate the reason for our actions and understanding its consequence. Ideally the media assumed to have undertaken a noble job of embracing, attaining and sustaining publics’ interest and highlight the relevancy of the usefulness of issues related to the topic. The pragmatist ‘s view would most certainly be to take care of mother nature regardless of any sorts of political, economical or even legislations hullabaloos.
The theory would be that climate change is controlled primarily by first, cyclical eccentricities in earth's rotation and orbit as well as variations in the sun's energy output. Earth's combined tilt and elliptical orbit around the Sun change slightly over long periods of time cause differences in the amount of sunlight the Northern and Southern Hemispheres receive. Earth is like the wobble of a spinning top. Over time, it causes the seasons to occur at different locations in earth's elliptical orbit. As the cycle progresses, earth will be closest to the sun during summer and farthest from the sun in winter. So the output of the energy (sun spots, radiation, solar flare, sun storm, etc) from the sun is beyond our control.
Second, the "Greenhouse gases" (heat retention mechanism due to atmospheric gases, mostly gaseous water vapor (not droplets), also carbon dioxide, methane, and a few other miscellaneous gases) in Earth's atmosphere also influence earth's temperature, but in a much smaller way. Human additions to total greenhouse gases play a still smaller role, contributing about 0.2%-0.3%. Also solar reflectivity due to white clouds, volcanic dust and polar ice caps (frozen water has higher reflective index as compared to glass).
The third, Tectonic Causes. Landmass distribution like shifting continents (continental drift) causing changes in circulatory patterns of ocean currents. It seems that whenever there is a large land mass at one of the earth's poles, either the North Pole or South Pole, there are ice ages. Undersea ridge activity: "Sea floor spreading" (associated with continental drift) causing variations in ocean displacement. And many more reason given with some evident to support their argument.
However the media always highlights issues that have significant commercial interest. There are utmost amount of emphasis in conjuring up earth shattering ingredients to spice up events and create euphoria of sorts. Nevertheless, when this happens we tend to be extra involves in the material we read or watch as it now grabs our intention.
In conclusion, it is now safe to say that there is no conclusive evidence supporting or rejecting the existence of Global Warming. This eventually, would be to evaluate the reason for our actions and understanding its consequence. Ideally the media assumed to have undertaken a noble job of embracing, attaining and sustaining publics’ interest and highlight the relevancy of the usefulness of issues related to the topic. The pragmatist ‘s view would most certainly be to take care of mother nature regardless of any sorts of political, economical or even legislations hullabaloos.
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