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Global Warming: The End of our Ice Caps Essay

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Many people don’t know how much they contribute to the emissions of green house gasses. The truth is we as people support the burning of fossil fuels almost unknowingly. We use them for everything from daily household supplies to the gases we use to heat our homes and run our cars. The steady rise in the use of these fossil fuels is having an alarming affect on our climate. Global warming will change the Earth in unimaginable ways. With the ever increasing amount of Greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere, glaciers are now melting rapidly causing sea level to rise. The coastal changes will be sure to change our living environment over the next few hundred years.
Global Warming is a phenomenon in which the temperature on the Earth …show more content…

The temperature change caused by these gasses affect not only our warmth but the climate as well. (Pipkin 368-389)
There are both natural and anthropogenic causes for the build-up of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Natural sources for these emissions are “. . . Stratospheric volcanic sulfate aerosols, climate variability and solar radiation. . .” (Pipkin 368). This is volcanic matter being deposited on top of the already slowly melting glaciers covers them and reduces their albedo (ability to reflect light), thus making them absorb the heat at an even faster rate(O’Connor 287). This reduction in reflectivity paired with the circulation of wind and water is what Scambos refers to as the main reason for ice melting! With the increase in temperature the wind patterns are changing along with oceanic flow patterns. The pressure from the warmer water is too much for the ice to handle thus, leaving a thinner ice sheet more prone to breaking off .Just as there are natural causes for these gasses there are also human-causes. Many of these stem from the use of natural gasses: Coal, Gasoline, and natural gas. Intrinsic to our current means of transportation; without these travel by any engine powered means and the exportation and importation of goods would surely be affected. Natural gasses are also used to heat our homes; these gasses are burned and added to the carbon footprint of the family. Although getting

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