‘Global Warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth's near-surface and oceans since the mid-20Th century and its projected continuation (Wikipedia, 2010).’ Recently, increasing global warming news have been reported, causing the government and public concern enormously. In the meantime, whether taking more action on Global Warming has sparked much debate. Some people assert that Global Warming is a absolutely serious problem, the government should spend more money and resources on solving this problem while the others argue that Global Warming is not true, spending plenty of money on it is not worthwhile. In this essay, I will give some effects of global warming, and discuss some arguments both for and against taking more action on solving Global Worming. Furthermore, considering both of them, I will give my personal view: We should not focus on Global Warming excessively.
Some effects of Global Warming
According to Michael D. Mastrandrea, and Stephen H. Schneider ( "Global warming." World Book Online Reference Center. 2005. World Book, Inc. http://www.worldbookonline.com/wb/Article?id=ar226310.):
Global warming could cause plenty of serious influences. It could damage the lives of plants and animals that both live on land and live in the sea. Due to the global warming, some animals, plants and human beings could have to move to another area to live. Furthermore, it also could change the weather and climate, causing drought, flooding, even damaging storms. The polar ice could be melted to raise the sea level. Global Warming could affect human life as well.
1.Effects of ocean life
Global warming could cause the higher temperature of the surface water of the ocean. Higher temperature could influence the ocean ecosystem. For instance, it could cause coral bleaching.
2. Habitat changing
Due to the higher temperature, some animals and plants could not live in their original habitat. They could move to another places which suit living, but if they could not find any appropriate place to live, they might die.
3. Changes of weather
Global Warming might cause increasing terrible weather. Plants, animals and environment could be damaged by flooding, drought and hurricane in some place.
4. Changes of sea level.
Higher temperature could melt plenty of polar ice and some ice covered some mountain. The sea level will raise, some of islands and inhabited area could disappear.
5. Influence human health
Due to the increasing temperature, some tropical diseases could expand to more area. In some regions, high temperature could last for long time, floods and droughts might cause more hunger. These factors could cause increasing death rate.
Reducing Global Warming
After showing some main effects of Global Warming, we can understand that Global Warming could be a serious problem on the Earth. Therefore increasing people suggest that we should take some action to reduce Global Warming, but how to reduce it? Before giving the answer, we should consider what cause Global Warming a lot? The answer is greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases are gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. They raise the temperature of the earth through the 'greenhouse effect'. Without greenhouse effect, the Earth would not be warm enough to live. However, if the greenhouse effect is too strong, it will influence human beings and animals to live on the Earth. Therefore, if there are too many greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, they will cause Global Warming.The main greenhouse gases are water vapor, carbon dioxide(CO2), methane(CH4), nitrous oxide(N2O) and miscellaneous other gases(CF C'S, etc.). Now back to the question: how to reduce the global warming?
In Mastrandrea etal. (2005), they give two main approaches: reducing CO2 emissions and carbon sequestration. Including preventing CO2 from entering the atmosphere and removing CO2 from atmosphere.
A vast number of people assert that CO2 is the most influential factor of causing Global Warming. They also think that human activities occurred lots of CO2. The main human activities which produced plenty of CO2 are burning the fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas (Mastrandrea etal., 2005). Furthermore, some people even think human activities caused Global Warming, so they support that government should spend lots of money and resources to reduce Global Warming immediately.
Different opinion
Some scientists and people have different opinion. They think the government should not take more action to solve this issue. Lots of scientists do not think that human activities threaten to destroy the earth’s climate. There are several arguments against global warming. First of all, human activities do not cause global warming. In Hieb(2003), he use a picture to explain that how much the Greenhouse Effect is caused by human activity.
Source: Monte Hieb, 10th July,2003, Global Warming: A closer look at the numbers
From this picture, we can understand that Water vapor is responsible for 95% of Earth’s greenhouse effect, and only 0.001% is caused by human activities. This means even if we wanted to reduce it, we could do nothing. Only 0.0017% of Earth’s greenhouse effect is caused by CO2, it is not significant. Secondly, some people think that global climate computer models are very crude, they cannot predict future climate changes accurately. All predictions are not based on historical data. They are based on computer models. Lastly, reducing human greenhouse gas emissions would spend lots of money and resources, but it would not stop the climate changes, because the vast majority of greenhouse gases are natural.
Have discussed the arguments both for and against Global Warming, we can understand that Global Warming is a real problem, and have caused many negative influences exactly. However, comparing the benefits and costs, we can realise that Global Warming could be natural. Even if we spent lots of money and resources, it could change nothing. Therefore the government should take more action to solve the effects of Global Warming and how to reduce the costs which are caused by global warming rather than reducing Global Warming itself. Furthermore, there are also many other serious problem, such as environmental pollution, unemployment and so on. If the governments take more action to solve these problems, it can change a lot. The environment and our society will be better. In conclusion, we should not take more action on Global Warming.
Reference:
1. Wikipedia (2010), Global warming [online] US. Wikipedia. Available from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming [accessed 10 May 2010].
2. Michael D. Mastrandrea and Stephen H. Schneider ( "Global warming." World Book Online Reference Center. 2005. World Book, Inc. http://www.worldbookonline.com/wb/Article?id=ar226310.)
3.Hieb M (2003), Global Warming: A closer look at the numbers [online] Available from: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html[accessed 10 May 2010]
Very good.
ReplyDeleteNeed to put quotation marks around first sentence.
Put the numbered effects into one paragraph.
Central argument in second half needs more support. Maybe you should have focussed on the question of whether we are causing global warming, which is prior to the question of whether governments should do something.