One of the most polarizing debates in the world for the last few decades have been the issue of global warming. The catastrophic impacts predicted by scientists have led to diverse interpretations with arguments starting from the leading causes of global warming. Some evidence credits natural causes as the primary cause of the current global warming but most of the scientists claim that although nature is responsible for climate change, anthropogenic climate changes or changes causes by human activities have led to the rapid global warming. This essay intends to compare and contrasts the natural and anthropogenic climate changes determine whether the current and predicted increased global warming is mainly due to nature or human activities.
Natural versus Anthropogenic Climate Changes
Climate changes are mainly caused by the components in the atmosphere which is the between the earth and the sun. The sun is the primary source of energy, and the center of the solar system has heating effects through some rays that is absorbed by the atmosphere gases and particles and the ability of the soils and oceans to absorb the warmth. Natural climate change as the past and recent studies indicate are due to two primary reasons namely; earth axis tilt and volcanic eruptions (IPCC. 2007). The earth revolves around the sun and is held on its axis, tilt or change in the axis lead to the sun becoming more directly or further to the earth surface. In the case of the former, the heat increases and interfere with the atmospheric warmth and the land is unable to absorb or radiate the excess heat leading to increased temperatures.
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Scientists credit axis tilt as the primary cause of the change in temperatures in the Sahara Desert that was formerly a grassland savannah. The tilting of the earth’s axis led to disturbance of the radiative force leading to increased constraint for nature to react (Joos, & Spahni, 2008). The main hindrance of assuming that earth’s axis position is responsible for the current global warming is that the tilts takes place after every 41,000 years whereas climate change has been more rapid and random over the last three decades. Although the solar output is noted to have increased since the industrial era and can affect the atmospheric plenty of various greenhouse gases, the solar radiation has a fixed cycle of 11-years and cannot be the leading cause of the global warming we are experiencing today (IPCC. 2007). Volcanic eruptions result in sulphate aerosol in the stratosphere, but it has a short-life spell in the atmosphere of two to three years. Therefore, with the last major volcanic eruption taking place in 1991 when Mt. Pinatubo erupted, the stratosphere is currently free of the aerosol (Joos, & Spahni, 2008).
Since the Industrial era, studies demonstrate that the rate of greenhouse gases, mainly CO2 is approximately 20 times more than the highest recorded in the pre-industrial era. CO2 among other greenhouse gases is the leading cause of global warming as it has a non-defined life span and does not react with the other atmospheric components (Joos, & Spahni, 2008). Studies show that the amount of CO2 produced in one year can take more than a century to be absorbed by plants, soil, and oceans or eliminated from the atmosphere.
CO2 is the primary radiative force as it absorbs most of the heat and limits the ability of the earth to absorb or radiate the excessive heat. The containment of the heat leads to increased temperatures which have increased by over 5.2 degree Celsius since 1960s (Joos, & Spahni, 2008). Human activities that range from the burning of fossils fuel, deforestation and degradation of the soils have led to the increased volume of CO2 thus leading to the rapid climate changes. The CH4, CFC, and methane have also been led by the various human activities since the industrial era and have prevented the atmosphere from emitting the excessive heating thus trapping the heat in the air.
Global warming is evident in the world today based on the increased temperatures in the world which in normal, natural climatic changes would take thousands of years to be witnessed. The continuous depletion of ice in the north and south poles is a clear indication of the increasing global temperatures and one of the major concerns. The warmth in the Pacific Ocean since 1990 to 2003 that led to the several El Niño floods is also articulated to the inability of the oceans to absorb heat and CO2 (IPCC. 2007). Scientists’ prediction of the catastrophic magnitude that human activities have led to the rampant global warming has resulted in formulation of several policies to mitigate global warming.
The international agreements since the beginning of the 21st century have resulted in the developed nations taking initiatives in trying to reduce global warming. The use of carbon tax is proposed in the USA, whereby, producers who tend to emit the maximum CO2 are subjected to higher taxes. The method is intended to discourage the industries from emitting greenhouse gases due to the increased financial costs. The United Nations have set standards that the developed the volume of CO2 the developed nations should issue setting the standards to reduce emissions by 50% of what they emitted in 1990 (Victor, 2011). By using the CO2 taxes to discourage emissions but it hinders productivity as most of the energy required is from burning fossil fuels and natural gases.
Most of the countries have thus begun projects to facilitate effective non-carbon producing fuels or the Green fuel projects to enhance productivity and reduce greenhouse gases emissions. The promotion of geothermal, nuclear, biogas, electric vehicles, natural energies for example wind and solar, among other innovations are the best ways to mitigate global warming, but they are expensive and with the increased need for energy, it is still hard to predict the success of the mitigation strategies (Victor, 2011).
Conclusion and Recommendation
Although the world as a whole is focused on mitigating global warming, financial constraints, and lack of cooperation due to the different interests is still the major hindrance towards the success of the policies. The developed nations argue that the developing countries should also lower their greenhouse gases emissions whereas the developing countries claim that their emissions are much lower than those of the developed countries. The underdeveloped countries also do not have the financial muscle to change their fossil fuel dependency. Other nations argue by per capita and population to be the primary determinant of the volume allowed to emit CO2 (Falkner, Stephan, & Vogler, 2010). These disagreements and with global warming being affected by all nations must end for mitigation to succeed. I propose a scenario where the UN sets comparable reduction rates based on per capita and population with those violating the standards set are fined, and the money is used in developing green energy resources that will enable even the underdeveloped nations to afford the technologies.
References
Falkner, R., Stephan, H., & Vogler, J., (2010). ‘International climate policy after Copenhagen: Towards a ‘building blocks’ approach’, Global Policy, vol. 1 , no. 3, pp. 252-262. Retrieved May 18, 2017, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1758-5899.2010.00045.x/full.
IPCC., (2007). Technical Summary. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
Joos, F., & Spahni, R. (2008). Rates of change in natural and anthropogenic radiative forcing over the past 20,000 years. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , 105 (5), 1425–1430. Retrieved May 18, 2017, http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0707386105
Victor, D. G., (2011). Global warming gridlock: creating more effective strategies for protecting the planet , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
