Global warming

Vocab- climate catastrophe

 Earth has warmed and cooled time and again. Another force has started to influence
Earth’s climate: humanity.
 before the Industrial Revolution, Earth’s climate changed due to natural causes
unrelated to human activity. These natural causes are still in play today, but their
influence is too small or they occur too slowly to explain the rapid warming seen in
recent decades.
 Models predict that as the world consumes ever more fossil fuel, greenhouse gas
concentrations will continue to rise, and Earth’s average surface temperature will
rise with them.
 Based on plausible emission scenarios, average surface temperatures could rise
between 2°C and 6°C by the end of the 21st century. Some of this warming will occur
even if future greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, because the Earth system has
not yet fully adjusted to environmental changes we have already made.
Impact-

 Perhaps the most visible effect of climate change so far is the melting of glaciers and
sea ice.   warming has hastened their demise.
 Warming modifies rainfall patterns, amplifies coastal erosion, lengthens the growing
season in some regions, melts ice caps and glaciers, and alters the ranges of some
infectious diseases
 snow cover and permafrost will be lost entirely in many places, and sea ice at the
poles will continue to melt away.
 Hurricanes and typhoons are expected to become more intense as the planet
warms. Hotter oceans evaporate more moisture, which is the engine that drives
these storms
 Oceans act as carbon sinks, which means they absorb dissolved carbon dioxide.
That's not a bad thing for the atmosphere, but it isn't great for the marine
ecosystem. When carbon dioxide reacts with seawater, the pH of the water declines
(that is, it becomes more acidic), a process known as ocean acidification. This
increased acidity eats away at the calcium carbonate shells and skeletons that many
ocean organisms depend on for survival. These creatures include shellfish, pteropods
and corals,
 From the Arctic, where polar bears, ice seals, and walruses are losing their sea-ice
habitat, and species that can’t adapt to new conditions or migrate out of harm’s way
will die
Greenhouse effect: Earth’s temperature begins with the Sun. Roughly 30 percent of
incoming sunlight is reflected back into space by bright surfaces like clouds and ice. Of the
remaining 70 percent, most is absorbed by the land and ocean, and the rest is absorbed by
the atmosphere. The absorbed solar energy heats our planet.As the rocks, the air, and the
seas warm, they radiate “heat” energy (thermal infrared radiation). From the surface, this
energy travels into the atmosphere where much of it is absorbed by water vapor and long-
lived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.When they absorb the energy
radiating from Earth’s surface, microscopic water or greenhouse gas molecules turn into tiny
heaters— like the bricks in a fireplace, they radiate heat even after the fire goes out. They
radiate in all directions. The energy that radiates back toward Earth heats both the lower
atmosphere and the surface, enhancing the heating they get from direct sunlight.
This absorption and radiation of heat by the atmosphere—the natural greenhouse effect—is
beneficial for life on Earth. If there were no greenhouse effect, the Earth’s average surface
temperature would be a very chilly -18°C (0°F) instead of the comfortable 15°C (59°F) that it
is today.
But in the late 18 th century, the advent of fossil fuels set off a chain reaction. When coal,
oil, and natural gas are burned, they release enormous amounts of greenhouse gases —
especially carbon dioxide, or CO2, which is by far the most prevalent.  After the Industrial
Revolution changed everything from goods manufacturing to land use to lighting and
heating methods, fossil fuel combustion increased dramatically — and then came cars. Coal-
burning power plants - one of the top emitters of greenhouse gases. Combined with massive
population growth and the effects of large-scale deforestation and industrial agriculture, the
widespread combustion of fossil fuels has made greenhouse gas concentrations in the
atmosphere climb to levels never seen before in the more than 200,000-year history of the
human subspecies.

Cause-mostly by burning fossil fuels, but also from cutting down carbon-absorbing forests.
In fact, deforestation is the second largest anthropogenic (human-made) source of carbon
dioxide, 
After trees die, they release the carbon they have stored during photosynthesis. According
to the 2010 Global Forest Resources Assessment, deforestation releases nearly a billion tons
of carbon into the atmosphere per year.  
Since the Industrial Revolution began in about 1750, carbon dioxide levels have increased
nearly 38 percent as of 2009 and methane levels have increased 148 percent.

Problem : The atmosphere today contains more greenhouse gas molecules, so more of the
infrared energy emitted by the surface ends up being absorbed by the atmosphere. Since
some of the extra energy from a warmer atmosphere radiates back down to the surface,
Earth’s surface temperature rises. By increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases, we
are making Earth’s atmosphere a more efficient greenhouse.
scientists have built a record of Earth’s past climates, or “paleoclimates.”
Models predict that Earth will warm between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius in the next century. In
the past two million years, it has taken the planet about 5,000 years to warm 5 degrees. The
predicted rate of warming for the next century is at least 20 times faster.
In Earth’s history before the Industrial Revolution, Earth’s climate changed due to natural
causes not related to human activity.
Solutions:

 cutting down immediately on emissions of black carbon and methane, which remain
in the atmosphere for much shorter time periods than CO2, is a way to buy ourselves
time to perfect other strategies.
  Solutions must be enacted individually, locally, nationally, and internationally if we
want to curb the emissions that cause global warming in order to save millions of
species (including our own).
 Projections of what will happen if we continue on our present course paint a stark
picture of the future

 Countless other disastrous outcomes, many of which can’t be precisely modeled for
predictive purposes, make climate change a looming threat.
 Humans have added so dramatically to the atmospheric blanket of greenhouse gases
that the greenhouse effect that first made life possible now threatens the world as
we know it.

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