Global warming is the extra heat within the earth’s atmosphere that has caused the rise in global temperature. Global warming leads and continues to cause climate change. Climate change can cause rising sea levels, destruction of communities, as well as extreme weather conditions. Here are 10 causes of global warming that are contributing to the climate crisis.
10. Overfishing
Fish is one of humans’ main sources of protein and a lot of the world now relies on this industry. Due to the number of people buying and consuming fish, there is now a reduced amount of marine life. Overfishing has also caused a lack of diversity within the ocean.
9. Industrialization
Industrialization is harmful in a variety of ways. The waste this industry produces all ends up in landfills, or in our surrounding environment. The chemicals and materials used within industrialization can not only pollute the atmosphere but also the soil underneath it.
8. Farming
Farming takes up a lot of green space meaning local environments can be destroyed to create space for farming. These animals produce a lot of greenhouse gases for example methane, as well as they also produce an extreme amount of waste. Factory farming is responsible for even more climate issues because of the extra pollution it produces and the more animals it can hold.
7. Consumerism
Due to the innovations in technology and manufacturing customers are able to purchase any product at any time. This means we are producing more and more products every year, and overproducing them. Most items we purchase aren’t very sustainable, and because of the reduced lifetime of electronics and clothing items, we are creating more waste than ever.
6. Transport and Vehicles
A large amount of transportation is done through cars, planes, boats, and trains, almost all of which rely on fossil fuels to run. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon and other types of pollutants into the atmosphere. This makes transportation partly responsible for the greenhouse gases. This effect could be reduced with the introduction of electric vehicles.
5. Oil Drilling
Oil drilling is responsible for 30% of the methane population and around 8% of carbon dioxide pollution. Oil drilling is used to collect petroleum oil hydrocarbons in this process other gases are released into the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change, it is also toxic to the wildlife and environment it surrounds.
4. Power Plants
Power plants burn fossil fuels to operate, due to this they produce a variety of different pollutants. The pollution they produce not only ends up in the atmosphere but also in the waterways, this largely contributes to global warming. Burning coal which is used in power plants is responsible for around 46% of total carbon emissions.
3. Waste
Humans create more waste now than ever before, because of the amount of packaging used and the short life cycle of products. A lot of items, waste, and packaging isn’t recyclable, which means it ends up in landfills. When the waste in landfills begins to decompose/break down it releases harmful gases into the atmosphere which contribute to global warming.
2. Deforestation
Deforestation is the clearance of woodland and forest, this is either done for the wood or to create space for farms or ranches. Trees and forests turn carbon dioxide into oxygen, so when they are cleared like the stored carbon is then released into the environment. Deforestation can also occur naturally which has a greater effect because of the fumes released from the fire.
1. Oil and Gas
Oil and Gas are used all the time in almost every industry. It is used the most in vehicles, buildings, production and to produce electricity. When we burn coal, oil, and gases it largely adds to the climate problem. The use of fossil fuels is also a threat to wildlife and the surrounding environments, because of the toxicity it kills off plant life and leaves areas uninhabitable.
Other Causes of climate change
Humans are increasingly influencing the climate and the earth’s temperature by burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests, and farming livestock.
This adds enormous amounts of greenhouse gases to those naturally occurring in the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect and global warming.
Greenhouse gases
The main driver of climate change is the greenhouse effect. Some gases in the Earth’s atmosphere act a bit like the glass in a greenhouse, trapping the sun’s heat and stopping it from leaking back into space and causing global warming.
Many of these greenhouse gases occur naturally, but human activity is increasing the concentrations of some of them in the atmosphere, in particular:
- carbon dioxide (CO2)
- methane
- nitrous oxide
- fluorinated gases
CO2 produced by human activities is the largest contributor to global warming. By 2020, its concentration in the atmosphere had risen to 48% above its pre-industrial level (before 1750).
Other greenhouse gases are emitted by human activity in smaller quantities. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 but has a shorter atmospheric lifetime. Nitrous oxide, like CO2, is a long-lived greenhouse gas that accumulates in the atmosphere over decades to centuries.
Natural causes, such as changes in solar radiation or volcanic activity are estimated to have contributed less than plus or minus 0.1°C to total warming between 1890 and 2010.
Causes for rising emissions
- Burning coal, oil and gas produces carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.
- Cutting down forests (deforestation). Trees help to regulate the climate by absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere. When they are cut down, that beneficial effect is lost and the carbon stored in the trees is released into the atmosphere, adding to the greenhouse effect.
- Increasing livestock farming. Cows and sheep produce large amounts of methane when they digest their food.
- Fertilisers containing nitrogen produce nitrous oxide emissions.
- Fluorinated gases are emitted from equipment and products that use these gases. Such emissions have a very strong warming effect, up to 23 000 times greater than CO2.
Global warming
2011-2020 was the warmest decade recorded, with global average temperature reaching 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels in 2019. Human-induced global warming is presently increasing at a rate of 0.2°C per decade.
An increase of 2°C compared to the temperature in pre-industrial times is associated with serious negative impacts on to the natural environment and human health and wellbeing, including a much higher risk that dangerous and possibly catastrophic changes in the global environment will occur.
For this reason, the international community has recognized the need to keep warming well below 2°C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.
Global Warming: The Effects Predicting the consequences of global warming is one of the most difficult tasks faced by climate researchers. This is due to the fact that natural processes that cause rain, snowfall, hailstorms, rise in sea levels is reliant on many diverse factors. Moreover, it is very hard to predict the size of emissions of greenhouse gases in the future years as this is determined majorly through technological advancements and political decisions. Global warming produces many negative effects some of which are described here. Firstly, extra water vapor which is present in the atmosphere falls again as rain which leads to floods in various regions of the world. When the weather turns warmer, the evaporation process from both land and sea rises. This leads to drought in the regions where the increased evaporation process is not compensated by increased precipitation. In some areas of the world, this will result in crop failure and famine particularly in areas where the temperatures are already high. The extra water vapor content in the atmosphere will fall again as extra rain hence causing a flood. Towns and villages which are dependent on the melting water from snowy mountains may suffer drought and scarcity of water supply. It is because the glaciers all over the world are shrinking at a very rapid rate and the melting of ice appears to be faster than previously projected. About one-sixth of the total population of the world lives in the regions which shall be effected by a decrease in melting water. The warmer climate will likely cause more heatwaves, more violent rainfall, and also amplification in the severity of hailstorms and thunderstorms. The rising of sea levels is the most deadly effect of global warming, the rise in temperature is causing the ice and glaciers to melt rapidly. This will lead to rising water levels in oceans, rivers, and lakes that can pilot devastation in the form of floods.
Effects on Living Beings: Global warming can severely affect the health of living beings. Excess heat can cause stress which may lead to blood pressure and heart diseases. Crop failures and famines, which are a direct consequence of the heating up of the earth, can cause a decline in human body resistance to viruses and infections. Global warming may also transfer various diseases to other regions as people will shift from regions of higher temperatures to regions of comparatively lower temperatures. Warmer oceans and other surface waters may lead to severe cholera outbreaks and harmful infections in some types of seafood. Moreover, it is an established fact that warmer temperatures lead to dehydration which is a major cause of kidney stones. A medical team from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia examined the health proceedings of more than 60,000 Americans alongside weather records. They discovered that individuals were most likely to be hospitalized with kidney stones three days after a temperature rise. Since 1994, kidney stone incidence has risen from about one in 20 people to one in 11. This trend is likely to increase as the globe gets hotter. According to Luis Ostrosky, M.D. of the Division of Infectious Diseases at The University of Texas Health Science Centre at Houston Medical School and medical director for epidemiology at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Centre: “One infection that is definitely making a weird pattern is valley fever”. In his words, “This is a fungal infection we used to see only in California, Arizona, New Mexico and a little in Texas, but last year we found it for the first time in Washington State. ”This potentially deadly condition caused apprehension in California when the number of cases increased drastically during 2010 and 2011. Valley fever infections have been on the rise, probably because of warming climates and drought-causing dust storms. Dry soil and wind can carry spores that spread the virus. Hotter and drier climates are projected to increase the amount of dusting carrying this disease.
Are humans causing to global warming?
At present, humans are putting an estimated 9.5 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year by burning fossil fuels, and another 1.5 billion through deforestation and other land cover changes. Of this human-produced carbon, forests and other vegetation absorb around 3.2 billion metric tons per year, while the ocean absorbs about 2.5 billion metric tons per year. A net 5 billion metric tons of human-produced carbon remain in the atmosphere each year, raising the global average carbon dioxide concentrations by about 2.3 parts per million per year. Since 1750, humans have increased the abundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by nearly 50 percent.
