A new epidemic has taken its toll – climate change, also known as global warming, and matters will only get worse if people don’t start cleaning up their act.
Climate change refers to the rise in average surface temperatures on Earth. For those who may be unsure of what exactly global warming is, the process goes as this. Primarily due to the human use of fossil fuels, which releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the air. Those gases trap heat within the atmosphere, which can lead to a wide variety of effects on ecosystems. These include severe weather events, rising sea levels, and droughts that leave landscapes more likely to wildfires. There has already been compelling evidence made showing the effects of climate change. Some being, global temperature rise, warming seas, shrinking ice sheets, declining arctic sea ice, glacial retreat, ocean acidification, and decreased snow cover.
On Earth, humans have contributed immensely to the warming of this planet. This is because human activities are changing the natural greenhouse. In short, the greenhouse effect is the trapping of the sun’s warmth in a planet’s lower atmosphere. According to NASA, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – which is a group of nearly 1,300 independent scientific experts around the world – concluded that “there’s a more than 95 percent probability that human activities over the past 50 years have warmed our planet.” Due to the usage of burning fossil fuels – such as coal and oil – there has been an increase in carbon dioxides atmospheric concentration.
The consequences of altering the natural greenhouse is often difficult to pinpoint, however, assumptions have been made. Outcomes range from rising temperatures, lengthened “frost-free” and growing season, as well as sudden changes in precipitation matters. On top of that, more droughts and heat waves, hurricanes will become more strong and intense, the sea levels will continue to rise, and the arctic will most likely become ice-free.
Despite the hole we’ve dug ourselves, it’s not too late to fix the damage. There are various simple things people could do to help prevent causing more climate change. People could reduce energy use, rethink your way of transportation (such as trying a carpool), properly insulate your home, try to use high efficiency appliances, switch to “green power” (such as solar paneling), recycle, re-purpose, and one of the key solutions, plant some things. Unless people start caring and make a difference, climate change will continue through this century and beyond. After all, we need Earth a lot more than it needs us.
