The Potential Effects and Ramifications of Global Warming

For the first time in planet earth’s history, one of its inhabitants has acquired the power to change the global climate. By releasing the huge amounts of carbon stored in fossil fuels over millions of years, mankind has disrupted the natural carbon cycle. We have intensified the natural greenhouse effect and turned it into a planetary menace that is melting our ice caps. In his award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore (2006) states, “human activities, if unchecked in the next decade, could destroy one of the earth’s principle mechanisms for cooling itself” (p.291). The world needs to address the potentially disastrous consequences of our earth’s rapidly changing climate by acknowledging the existence of global warming and understanding its impact on the present and future generations.

The greenhouse effect is a natural process that keeps the earth at temperatures that are livable. Energy from the sun warms the earth when its heat rays are absorbed by greenhouse gasses and become trapped in the atmosphere. Some of the most common greenhouse gasses are water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane. If there were no greenhouse gasses, very few rays would be absorbed and the earth would be extremely cold. When too many rays are absorbed the earth’s atmosphere heats up and it causes what we know as global warming. Al Gore (2006) described the greenhouse effect as the potentially most dangerous environmental problem facing mankind, with consequences second only to nuclear war (p.299). As the name suggests, global warming isn’t merely affecting parts of the world, it is threatening the world globally.

Most of the rays from the sun are absorbed by water vapor that is naturally in our atmosphere. Water vapor accounts...

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...es an increase in temperature. Increases in temperature can do a lot of damage, even in small increases. Only a few degrees ended the ice age thousands of years ago (Kluger, 2006, p. 319). Another warming like that could have detrimental environmental effects. Changes in temperature will upset water cycles. A warming of a few degrees could cause glaciers and sea ice to melt. This would lead to ocean levels rising and swallowing coastal cities and islands. In order to stop global warming, much has to be done. Although it is very difficult to reverse once the process is started, global warming has to be stopped if we want to live like we are now. Emission of fossil fuels by humans is a big factor in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Controlling these emissions is one of the first of many steps that we must take in order to combat global warming.