Global Warming: The Earth's New Climate Control

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Global Warming: The Earth's New Climate Control

Global warming: two words you are probably hearing a lot lately on the news. But what is it, and why are some people calling referring to it as earth’s new climate control. Global warming is in fact referred to as a global climate change because that is precisely what it is: the earth is heating up, and it is because of the human activity that has been taking place for the last century and a half.

So what exactly is global warming? Global warming is a response to the greenhouse effect that has been taking place. The greenhouse effect is generally a natural part of the earth’s operation that has only recently gone out of balance. In truth, the greenhouse effect is natural. The greenhouse effect refers to the activity of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases refer to naturally occurring gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and other natural gases that are emitted and released into the earth’s atmosphere.

The greenhouse effect, although it had definitely gotten a bad rap in recent years, is a normal, natural, and thoroughly necessary part of the way the earth sustains human life on this planet. In essence, the world would be too cold to sustain human life (or almost any other kind of life) if it were not for the activity of greenhouse gases and the so-called greenhouse effect. To put it as simply as possible, imagine that the earth can only absorb so much of the sun’s rays (around roughly 30 percent) before the rest of the rays are refracted back into space. Imagine that the world needs more warmth than that to sustain life. That is where greenhouse gases come into play.

Imagine greenhouse gases surrounding the earth like a thick layer of blankets, keeping the earth just warm enough to sustain human life and a diversity of ecosystems. Imagine too many greenhouse gases floating up to the earth’s atmospheres. Most of the time this is OK—the earth will absorb the extra greenhouse gases and release them back up to the atmosphere. But now imagine that way too many greenhouse gases are being released up to the earth’s atmosphere. That is global warming—to many gases has been sent up and now the earth is too warm.

This is how global warming has become the earth’s new climate control. In effect, global warming has begun to make the world a warmer place. Gradually, the earth is becoming warmer, and even a single degree Fahrenheit can make a world of difference. The world is built on a myriad number of fragile ecosystems that must stay in balance in order to keep the world working as it has been. But when these ecosystems become disrupted—and remember that this can happen when the earth’s temperature is raised by just a few degrees—drastic things can happen.

What is some of the drastic fall-out from the age of global warming? We have already seen some of the results from global warming—more hurricanes, more frequently and more intense. It is believed that global warming will cause more tsunamis and more earthquakes, including the undersea earthquakes that cause the tsunamis. Heat waves in places where heat waves are not the custom. More forest fires in the desert southwest. The melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers are poised to change the shorelines and drown out whole cities and possibly continents. This all sounds very devastating and almost apocalyptic, but the world’s scientific community agrees that global warming is very real and on its way to causing massive destruction if the world does not do something about it soon.