How are Humans Related to Global Warming?
Mankind may have started a worldwide catastrophe by just doing everyday activities enhanced by technology. With modern technological advances, many tasks that would have been hard are now easy, but they come with a cost. Driving to work in a car, for example uses up a considerable amount of usable energy, creates pollution, and wastes 80% of the energy produced from burning gasoline as heat. Pollution happens to be one of the main causes of global warming. One may be wondering, how many other ways are we driving global warming in our normal lives? The answer is, a lot. The wood in your house? That came from a forest which was creating oxygen (The breathable component of air) and decreasing carbon dioxide, one of the main chemicals driving global warming. Without these trees, carbon dioxide will keep building and further strengthening global warming. Although this may be starting to seem like there is no way to stop global warming, there are many ways we can still reverse global warming. In order to do this, we would need to know what causes global warming.
Pollution Problems
Since pollution is one of the major contributors of global warming, it is important that one is well informed on pollution in order to stop it from growing out of control. Pollution is mostly made up of many different toxic chemicals, of which some (like carbon dioxide and methane) can trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere, like in a greenhouse, hence the term “Greenhouse gases.” All pollution sources add up to a very high amount of pollution released into the air. Some of the major components of pollution include: carbon dioxide, methane, soot particles (this is what makes smog clouds their dark, grayish brownish color), and carbon monoxide, which is a colorless, odorless, toxic gas emitted by cars an trucks. However, pollution can also be created naturally. For example, volcanoes in Siberia, Russia once created an eruption so large, the sooty air an volcanic ash spread all around the globe and effectively blocked enough sunlight to cause a short ice-age. Today, these volcanoes are extinct. Today, pollution is mostly created in vehicles, factories and power plants. Lowering the amount of pollution from these sources would be a major step forward to stopping global warming. If instead of soot the volcanoes spewed car pollution, the world would have heated up instead of causing an ice age. Our job as humans is to prevent that from destroying our world.
Pollution's Effects
Pollution has many different types of effects, depending on the type of pollution. For example, pollution from burning fossil fuels, as said in a report from the UN panel, is changing the Earth’s climate. An example of this change is that in the last 29 years leading up to 2012, the northern hemisphere has been warmer than it has ever been in the last 1400 years. When Earth’s climate is too warm, storms will last longer, sea level will rise, and severe droughts will be more likely. Another example of a way pollution affects mankind is when thick clouds of smog form over towns and cities. These smog clouds have numerous unhealthy side effects. Smog can cause serious lung problems in a significant portion of a nation’s population. Another side effect of smog is decreased visibility. In Delhi, India, the smog is so thick the visibility was down to about 20 feet. This thick smog is being blamed for a tragic 70 car accident and for the thousands of complaints from the public about their poor health. In order to go outside in Delhi, one needs to wear a mask just to breathe safely. It is safe to say that pollution is what is mainly causing global warming.
Pollution Solutions
Although Pollution is a very serious subject, there are plenty of ways one can help to lower pollution’s presence in the air. For example, instead of driving to school, take the bus, bike or walk to school. This is just one small way of solving the problem of global warming. Another way to help is to use solar power with or instead of electricity from a power plant, which releases millions of tons of pollution annually. This is a bigger way to help because if enough people make the switch, electrical plants which run off coal or oil would be replaced with massive solar farms with thousands to millions of solar cells. This would have a considerable impact on global warming. The fate of the world is in your hands.
Global warming, if not stopped, would be catastrophic for the human race. Just because it can be stopped in so many ways, it does not mean that it is not a serious problem. Thankfully, some people are trying very hard to stop global warming from progressing. The many factors of global warming each need to be combatted in different ways, with pollution being the number one. Now that you know that global warming is stoppable, I leave to you one question: What are you going to do about it.