Preface:
I am helping my 19 year old daughter, Jennifer Bain, develop her argumentative writing skills.
See what you think...
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Global Warming: The Threat is Real -- and Now!
Far from being a fear of the future, it is happening now! Global warming is becoming a top priority. Global warming is the increase in the average global temperature. Natural events and human activities are believed to be contributing to an increase in global temperature, known as the green house effect.
This effect is when certain gasses in the atmosphere act like glass in a greenhouse, allowing sunlight through to heat the earth’s surface but trapping the heat as it radiates back into space. The greenhouse gasses build up in the atmosphere -- with the earth getting hotter because of this gas build-up..
This crisis is far from over; the effects of global warming are long lasting and have been developing over centuries. Recently effects have been recorded as directly relating to global warming such as:
Ice along the earth's north and south poles has been melting, including mountain glaciers and ice sheets that cover west Antarctica, Greenland and the Arctic sea. As the ice melts sea levels are raising and precipitation is increasing across the globe. So too, have the deadly effects of more powerful hurricanes, cyclones, and tidal waves along coastal shores throughout the world.
The increase in temperature has caused habitats and animal species to suffer. Animals like the polar bear and Inadelie penguins have decreased in population, less access to food, falling through the thinning ice and smaller amounts of offspring’s per year.
Due to the higher temperatures in Alaska over the last 20 warm summers, spruce bark beetles have bloomed chewing up over four million acres of spruce trees and reducing the amount of oxygen released into the air.
There are many different causes for the excessive amount of green house gasses some are caused by human dependency on fossil fuels and high amounts of electricity. Green house gasses can be caused by the natural earth pattern and emissions.
The earth goes through a natural climate change that lasts about 40 000 years causing temperatures across the globe to rise or decrease. In this case the temperatures are rising with lots of help from green house gasses. A natural substance called 'methane' is 20 times as influential as carbon dioxide (CO2) at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Methane levels have risen over 145% in the last 100 years. Methane comes from landfills, coalmines, oil and natural gas operations, and agriculture.
Human induced green house gasses are Nitrous Oxide and CO2.
CO2 is responsible for over half the greenhouse gasses released into the air. This is from the burning of fossil fuels for the purpose of electricity. Coal accounts for 93 % of the emissions in the electrical industry. 33% of emissions are from the burning of gasoline to run vehicles a large part of that is grid lock in cities when vehicles are left idling in traffic.
Nitrous Oxide used in atheistic is more commonly known as laughing gas, also used in fertilizers for agriculture is broken down in the atmosphere by chemical reactions involving sunlight.
Deforestation is also a growing cause for the increase in fossil fuels. This involves the clear cutting of trees in different types of forests such as temperate forests, rain forests, and tropical forests. The burning of all these trees is reducing the amount of oxygen in the air as well as increasing the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.
Governments in the past have tried to say that even though global warming is an issue, it will hurt the American industry and its workers if strong corrective measures are taken by the government to minimize greenhouse gas emissions. It can be counter-argued that if someone doesn't do something about these emissions, then there will be no humans left to work on the earth.
The naysayers have even used the excuse that the science behind global warming is too uncertain to take action on it.
Well, really there is no debate on the basic facts of global warming between scientists. The only real debate comes from those corporate organizations and people who do not want their yearly industry profits negatively affected.
A well-designed trading program will harness American ingenuity to decrease heat-trapping pollutions cost-effectively, jump starting a new economy.
A simple solution followed by the majority of people on earth can reduce the effects of global warming. Investing in renewable energy wind, solar power, geothermal energy and bio energy can increase the use in these free energies and limit the amounts of gasses released into the air.
Increasing the efficiency of our vehicles which are so dependent on oil and other fossil fuels right now, is just the beginning.
Is global warming really something to be concerned about? We shouldn’t measure a threat on whether it is made on purpose or not, but rather, on how much we can lose by continuing to ignore this threat.
We can educate the vastly large number of humans whose behaviours may in fact be destructive to any short and/or long-term progress in the fight against global warming.
Again, this is just the beginning. Everyone has to play their own particular part towards improving the state of our environment.
Otherwise, sooner than we think, there may be no more environment left to protect. And no one left to argue about 'global warming'.
-- Jennifer Lynn Bain, November 7th, 2008.
