The Statistics of Global Warming

Question

Global warming has become one of the most serious problems of humankind in the last decades. Climate changes affect every sphere of human lives, especially health and the economy. The temperature worldwide continues to increase steadily with no sign of cooling down. Therefore, this paper will discuss what exactly global warming is and how humanity can overcome this drastic problem.

Global warming is caused by carbon dioxide and other pollutants. When these elements collect in the atmosphere like a thickening blanket, they trap the Sun’s heat and cause the planet to warm up. Over the past 100 years, the worldwide temperature has been increasing at the fastest and truly alarming rate. This rate is caused by the industrialization of the modern world, with more and more factories each year polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. Global warming and climate change are complex phenomena that are very hard to predict. Suffice it to say, climate change affects agriculture, transportation, water resources, and the whole ecosystem.

The problem of global warming worries the whole of humankind. That is why major world scientific institutions have been trying to simulate climate to predict the pace of global warming and its consequences. The NASA Center for Climate Simulation has been running different tests on global warming. According to the results, in 2014, there has been a major increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – exceeding 400 parts per million across the northern hemisphere. Before the industrial revolution, the number of carbon dioxide concentrations reached only 270 points per million (Lynch n.p.). The concentration of greenhouse gas continues to increase mostly because of the burning of fossil fuels. This clearly illustrates the pace of air pollution and the probability of dire consequences.

The global temperature has risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius since the beginning of the industrial revolution and continues to grow. The limitation before temperature rise could bring dangerous consequences (Curry n.p.). According to the estimation of experts, this limit could be reached in the next 70 years if humankind does not decrease the ejection of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Crossing the limitation point of 2.0 degrees Celsius could result in the rapid melting of glaciers, an increase in the water level worldwide, and unpredictable disastrous changes in climate.

In the most pessimistic predictions of experts, the dangerous level could be reached as early as 2040 in case of heavy use of coal and rapid population growth. On the other hand, the optimistic predictions state that if humankind decreases the output of carbon dioxide and starts using alternative power sources, the temperature limit will never be reached (Curry n.p.). The main aspect of all these predictions, however, is climate sensitivity to the increase of carbon dioxide concentration. That is a very controversial issue because different tests performed by scientific organizations provide different results. The lower the sensitivity of climate change is, the more time humankind has to decarbonize the economy and find an alternate affordable solution to the problem of energy shortage.

The problem of global warming is direr than ever. To overcome this problem, humankind needs to put all the forces together. It is imperative to find cost-effective alternate sources of energy and put them to use until it is too late. It is also important to modify the existing power-saving and purification technology to emit less greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. In my opinion, humanity can overcome such dramatic problems as global warming and continue its way to a successful future. It is only a matter of time before this threat can be neutralized.