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Humans Cause Climate Change Essays

Decent Essays

"Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming."
-- Al Gore

Many misinformed people believe that extreme climate change is a natural process; something that human activities have nothing to do with. They cite events such as the Ice Age and believe that these events are part of a natural Earth cycling. Therefore, they happen despite anything that humans do. A common misunderstanding of the climate system characterizes it like a pendulum. The planet will warm …show more content…

Basic scientific concepts show that this view is naive and incorrect. The forces of the Earth do not work so that there are equal balances in the temperature chances in the world, so that they average out to be a comfortable room temperature. For example, the troposphere (the lowest part of theatmosphere) is warming, but the levels above, from the stratosphere up, are cooling, as less radiation is escaping out to space. This rules out cycles related to the Sun, as solar influences would warm the entire atmosphere in a uniform fashion. The only explanation that makes sense is greenhouse gases (Climatesight 1). Furthermore, it is clear that it is not the whole atmosphere that is heating up, only the troposphere is. The rest of the atmosphere above that is, in turn, cooling down. Clearly, the climate change is much more complex than this predicted equilibrium.

This perspective accepts that climate change is happening, it agrees with the data explaining that the existing climate patterns are extremely abnormal. However it denies the fact that humans cause it as seeks other blame for it. This model simply states that climate change is a natural process and nothing to worry about because of the Ice Age. It rejects any idea that human activities and their carbon footprint could cause these problems. In fact, it argues that the Earth would be experiencing the same climate changes even if humans did not populate it. However, the scientific data clearly rejects these

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