Exemplification Essay: Do Humans Cause Climate Change

The climate of earth has been increasing for past decade. The increasing temperature is not only harmful for environment but also dangerous for earth and peoples' survival. However, many international societies and groups have been putting their efforts to keep the atmosphare balanced, they are not enough. I believe people are the main cause of pollutions, destroy forests, and natural habitat. Therefore, atmosphare has been changing drastically.

The earth is constantly undergoing changes. This ranges from tectonic activity to atmospheric and climate changes. The most recent change that we have noticed, is the increase in temperature. Some believe that this increase is the result of human activity. However, this is not the case. The increased temperatures are within the normal tolerances from the past few thousand years (Robinson, Robinson, & Soon, 2008). This and other changes to the atmosphere have been going on for millions of years. Global warming is not our fault because it is a natural occurring phenomenon.

“More than a million species face potential extinction as a result of disappearing habitats, changing ecosystems, and acidifying oceans” (Berger). Climate change affects all living things on the earth and is accelerating because of human activity. Climate change is happening right now, scientists are trying to figure out what is causing it, what the effects of climate change are, and they are researching how the atmosphere has changed.

A study shows that there was a 97% consensus among scientists who were interviewed said that global warming is caused by humans in 2015. The number is always changing considering the fact that there was a 100 percent consensus by 2004, with a percentage of 91 scientists in agreement in the beginning of 2014 with a 93 percent consensus by the end of 2014. (Friends) All of these scientists believe that global warming is being caused by and can be prevented by humans. They see that sea levels are rising because of melting ice caps, the number of immense wildfires is increasing along with the length of the wildfire season, droughts are becoming more severe, storms are becoming more extreme and common, and dangerous heat waves are becoming an issue. Sea levels rising dramatically increases the risk of flooding, especially in the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. East Coast. Similarly, more rain falls during the heaviest downpours, increasing the risk of flooding events even more with the temperature increase caused by climate change. Scientists see that climate change has significant implications for our health, including increased air pollution and a longer and more intense allergy

Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.

The evidence supporting the fact that climate change is occurring because of man is strong. It’s just to spread out over so many fields of study that linking them all together and proving it remains elusive. Man-made climate change is very real, despite denial by some and our government’s failure to act, the consequence appear too grave to ignore. Reducing carbon emissions would mean disrupting the livelihood of lots of people, that is usually the reason that people continue to not believe. More people have to be made aware of what is going on, because our governments cannot solve this problem on their own. Convinced or not, any mature person should realize that wasting energy is wrong and there are laws against it. All one can really do in

Thermal expansion and the melting of continental ice sheets and glaciers are raising sea levels. Predictions are complicated with this issue because as the atmosphere absorbs more and more greenhouse gases the faster the melting will occur. When only 1% of the three largest ice bodies on Earth melt, the Greenland ice sheet, the west Antarctic ice sheet, and the east Antarctic ice sheet, there is a sea level rise of 76 cm, which is not including the melt runoff from smaller glaciers and ice sheets all over the world. Now this is simply a rise in the water level, however combining sea level rise with land subsidence will amplify flooding (subsidence is the sinking of continental land which occurs after subduction zone earthquakes, ground water over use, and has many other causes). Every coast line will change, flooding the most populated and dangerous areas, I say dangerous because nuclear power plants are built on the coasts to access sea water for facility cooling and catastrophic damage will add additional poisons and toxic nuclear waste that will travel around the planet. (SkepticalScience). In 2008 there is an estimated 20 million climate refugees, as these events continue it is projected that there will be 200 million climate refugees by the year 2050.

To understand climate change, one must understand what a climate is. A climate can be defined as “the usual weather of a [particular] place…[to] include patterns of temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind, and seasons” (State of Washington, n.d.), just to name a few. Climate differs from weather as a climate is comprised of the usual conditions of a given place (i.e. is it consistently humid, dry, wet, cool, etc.), while weather is the conditions present at a given place at any one time (i.e. it is raining, snowing, sunny, etc.). Climates are unique to individual places and generally stay the same over time, while weather can change by the day.

Climate change is not something we think about everyday and can be a complex and confusing topic to research or understand. Many of us do not understand the daily implications of climate or what the future climate may look like. Regardless, most people have strong opinions on the climate change topic and many are adamant about their decisions. All across the world, people wonder, is global warming a threat to our lives as we know them? Is the majority of it caused by humans? While some sources say that 97 percent of climate change scientists agree, other sources say it’s more like 40 percent. That is a very large difference in statistics that ranges from almost 100 percent to well under 50.(percent quote) There is still a large amount of controversy

There have been many studies performed that show humans are the major factor in climate change. They take into consideration both natural drivers and human drivers that impact our earth. “When all the natural and human-induced climate drivers are stacked up and compared to one another, the accumulation of human released heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere is so large that it has very likely swamped other climate drivers over the past half century, leading to observed global warming” (Union of concerned

Climate change’s effects are very real and some have even already started, Earth 's surface temperature has already warmed more than 0.8 °C over the past century and roughly 0.6 ° C in the last 30 years. (Campbell-Lendrum) The main culprit is human

Do to the climate changes, I believe that us humans caused it to be happening. I have

"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."

Humans may be causing the world to end? According to Melissa Davey, “Greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans over the past 45 years, on the the other hand, ‘have increased the rate of temperature rise to 1.7 degrees Celsius per century, dwarfing the natural background rate,”’...(Okco 2). Furthermore, scientists have proved that simple chemistry, the monitoring of climate control, and the ruling out of natural factors were an essential part in proving how this had hurt our climate. Climate change will be disastrous if not changed.

The issue is simple and rather obvious; climate change is real and a problem. With a changing climate comes rising sea levels, hotter days, and stronger and wilder storms, and long painful droughts. What most people can’t seem to agree on is whether or not human activity is playing some role in it. From media outlets to internet forums, the debate is being fought on all fronts. Most of these arguments, however, are just personal opinions and poorly-made observations from the comfort of a gas-guzzling SUV. Honestly, it doesn’t take a genius to look up a legitimate scientific paper and see the data for yourself. Human activity is influencing the global climate in a negative way, with plenty of evidence to prove it and very little disagreement in the scientific community.