preview

Global Warming : Real, Risky, Relevant

Better Essays

Madison Smith
Jaydn DeWald
English 1101
4 October 2015
Global Warming: Real, Risky, Relevant Global warming is currently the single greatest threat to the continuation of life on Earth. This fact come as a surprise to some, and likely alienates many of them. Unfortunately for those naysayers, the fact of the matter is that global warming is neither hoax, political pawn, nor bogus contrivance, but rather an increasingly dangerous situation that is caused explicitly by the actions of humankind. If, per one popular story of creation, man is meant to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the Earth and subdue it, and to reign over the the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and every living creature on the ground, then man has certainly …show more content…

Firstly, we have the tilt of the Earth on its axis as it orbits the sun. Every 41,000 years, the exaggeration of the tilt varies on a range of about two degrees, which may seem small, but results in more solar radiation, and thus, and greater difference in seasons experience on Earth. Secondly, we have the atmosphere that envelops the Earth. Only 0.1% of the energy from the Sun’s rays penetrates the atmosphere in the form of heat, which is trapped to the Earth by molecules in the atmosphere. This is the natural and beneficial process of global warming: light energy passes through the atmosphere, and is kept close to the Earth in form of heat, which results in the natural average global temperature of about 60º F. Without this effect, the world’s average temperature would be around -3º F, and thus uninhabitable for life forms with which we are comfortable and familiar. The third aspect of global warming are those molecules in the atmosphere that keep the heat trapped in the Earth. While there is an infinite array of molecules, these ones of interest are of the more familiar variety: carbon dioxide, naturally exhaled by man and absorbed by vegetation; water vapor, from the evaporation of the oceans; and methane, a gas naturally formed in the decaying of organic matter. Now that we have familiarized ourselves with the cast of main characters, we can turn our attention to the causes and effects of unnatural global warming.

Get Access