The Climate Crisis

The Climate Crisis Global warming: an increase in the earth’s atmospheric and oceanic temperatures widely predicted to occur due to an increase in the greenhouse effect resulting especially from pollution. Given the definition it may not sound as scary as it actually is. The whole process of global warming is a science in itself. It may also be known as ‘the climate crisis’ because scientists believe that the occurrence of such extreme temperatures will bring our earth to turmoil. Almost) President A1 Gore irected an Academy Award winning documentary on the topic called ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. The film went into great detail on evidence that scientist have found about the effects of global warming. Awareness was the meaning behind Gore’s movie but the first step to helping ourselves is knowledge. The Sun plays the main part in the process of global warming. It shines its rays down on earth giving us heat and reflecting back up into the atmosphere. Kind of like when you shine light in a mirror, it reflects back at you.

It has been discovered that the Sun’s magnetic field has doubled since 1900. This tells us that changes in the Sun have had a hand in the recent general warming of the earth’s climate. If the sun’s rays come down on earth and are trapped from going back into the atmosphere it causes the temperature to rise and therefore causes numerous issues with the climate and our personal health. Pollution is the main cause of global warming. It is defined as: the release of chemicals and particulates into the atmosphere. Some examples are

Carbon monoxide, Sulfur dioxide, Chlorofluorocarbon, and Nitrogen oxide produced by big industries and car emissions. When there is an overabundance of pollution in the air the sun’s rays get trapped on earth because of something called the Ozone layer. The Ozone layer is the part of the Earth’s atmosphere which contains relatively high concentrations of Ozone (03). This causes the ozone to be like a blanket on top of the earth which then causes the temperature to rise. Drastic changes in the weather have been the cause of two storms killing millions of people in the last entury.

Scientists behind Gore believe this is Just the beginning of things to come from global warming. They have discovered that since the earth is so hot the snow caps from the northern and southern poles are melting. This is causing our beaches to be washed away from rise in sea level. In the future it is predicted that the sea level will rise at least an inch per year. It may be inevitable but it isn’t completely unstoppable. When you think of the things like warm days spent on the beach, you should probably cherish them.

Someday they may not be there for you to enjoy as your summer tradition. There are some ways you can help reduce the occurrence of the ‘climate crisis’ that you may not even know about. Changing a light bulb toa fluorescent light bulb will change 150 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. Recycling and driving less also stop pollution therefore helping our ozone layer out. Global Warming may be something we can’t completely stop but we can certainly try to keep it within controllable limits. By ashleymariel 114