These week in environmental science class we watched Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth. From this film, I was able to learn a lot of information about global warming and its affects on the earth's atmosphere, people, and just the earth's at and the environment in general. I was also able to learn ways that people can work to help prevent global warming from destroying our planet. Below I will share some of the information I gathered from this film.
The most vulnerable part of the earth is the atmosphere because it is so thin, and so we can change its composition without intending to. In this sense, the atmosphere is very vulnerable to global warming. Sun radiation comes in the form of light waves, which are reflected back up into space. Some of these light waves end up getting trapped in the atmosphere as something called inferred radiation. Global warming pollution thickens the thin layer of atmosphere, therefore, more of these polluting chemicals that are heating up the rest of the world are being trapped in the atmosphere because the layer of atmosphere is bigger.
Global warming is harmful to society. One way global warming affects society is that 40% of people get over half of their water from glaciers, and soon those people will face a shortage of water because glaciers are melting all over the world. Global warming also means both extreme flooding and extreme droughts. Not only does the extra precipitation cause more rain, making certain areas more vulnerable to flooding, but when glaciers on the land melt into the ocean it causes the water level to rise, meaning huge chunks of land will be swallowed up by water. Millions of people will die from flooding if we allow our glaciers to keep melting. As far as the precipitation is concerned, all of that extra precipitation has to be coming from somewhere. This is where droughts come into play. Global warming focuses the precipitation in an area in Africa near Nigeria. It takes water from there and relocates it, causing drought in that area. In other areas it can also increase soil evaporation increasing the amounts of infertile soil. Another way global warming affects people is that it increases the frequency and severity of hurricanes and typhoons. Catastrophes like Katrina could have been prevented if it were not for global warming. As water temperature increases, wind velocity and moisture content do as well. Hurricanes and typhoons will pick up that extra momentum and get stronger and stronger, causing the eye of the storm to get bigger and bigger. If global warming was not warming up bodies of water hurricanes and typhoons would not be given this advantage.
Society contributes to global warming. There is a consistent pattern where the larger civilization gets, the more the environment heats up. In light of that, one way to help prevent global warming from affecting the atmosphere so much would be to decrease our population. Another way we contribute to global warming is by producing carbon dioxide. Consistently throughout history when there has been more carbon dioxide, the earth’s temperature has gone up. We have more carbon dioxide in the air now than ever by a lot and our carbon dioxide levels are continuing to rise. Graphs tracking back 650,000 years indicate that temperatures will continue to rise unless humans stop creating so much carbon dioxide. America in particular is contributing heavily to global warming. Even when you take into account countries like China who have way more people than us, America is responsible for nearly one and a half times as many fossil fuel emissions than any other country. American cars do not meet Chinese environmental standards because we do not want to lose automaker’s jobs. In fact if a state tries to create laws forcing people to drive more energy efficient cars like what California did, American automakers are allowed to sue you.
Out of 928 articles written by scientists from 1995-2005, none of them disagreed that global warming is taking place. People saying that there is not global warming are buying into false propaganda spread by a small group of people what are not scientists. They are trying to perpetuate a false image of global warming because they rely on money from big businesses. If we solve global climate change issues we will be creating jobs and wealth because if we allow this to continue it will become extremely expensive and damaging to solve the problems it will cause. Not to mention that if there is no planet then we have no economy to preserve anyways. Scientists estimate that we have the tools available to us to get below our 1970s emissions if we choose to use them. North and South Dakota reached record-breaking temperatures of 120 degrees in 2006. And they are not the only ones. Record-breaking heat waves were popping up all over the place and all fifty states were above their normal heat in 2006.
All of this information is taken from the film An Inconvenient Truth.
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