Global Warming is one of the most disturbing international issues going on in the minds of every human on earth, as animals have been blessed with the exception of using their brains, which sometimes becomes a burden to dealt with by the humans. Humor on its way but global warming is a phenomenon which enlightens the fact that owing to the emission of few hazardous gases into the atmosphere, the temperature of the environment of the whole planet is rising. This is not a good sign as the creatures on this planet; especially the humans can in no way be adjustable to such high extent changes in the environmental temperature.
It has been researched and found that if such emissions do not begin to decline by the end of 2015 at the most, the chances of humans to restrain the climate change within the two degrees of ‘safety line’- which basically is the level of warming below which the impacts though severe are tolerable- would highly diminish on a daily basis. Hence comes these few demands by the science of today - the peaking of emissions within eight years, worldwide cuts of 60 per cent by 2030, and 80 per cent or more by 2050. Above this two critical degrees, our chances of crossing “tipping points” in the earth’s system – such as the collapse of the Amazon rainforest, or the release of methane from thawing Siberian permafrost – can undoubtedly become much higher.
Despite this urgent timetable, the activities ongoing still heave the path with heavy traffic of such gas causing activities. Power companies are still drafting blueprints for their new coal-fired plants. The skies over England are still seen to be criss-crossed with vapor trails from aircraft travelling some of the busiest routes in the world. As a result of such irresponsible actions of humans around the world global emissions, far from decreasing, remain on a steep upward curve of almost exponential growth.
Now when attributing the cause of this widespread phenomenon on the factors that led to it, the most prevalent thought that emerges is whether human beings are responsible for this problematic situation. Independent experimental measurements demonstrate that the increased CO2 in the atmosphere comes from burning fossil fuels and forests. The isotopic composition of carbon from these sources contains a unique “fingerprint.” So are the humans at blame when talking about this fatal warming creeping up?
It is true that the climate of Earth has exhibited wide swings ever since the geologic time due to natural processes. However, scientists have reasonable qualitative explanations for most of the significant variations in climate over geologic time; and they largely attribute it to specific processes, not to unknown internal oscillations. Many of the major climatic changes can be traced to changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun (Hays et al. Science, 194, 1976, pg. 1121). Others can be linked to specific events (such as the impact of a comet or meteorite or the assembly or breakup of supercontinents) that led to large changes in the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Developments in studies in the recent times (the past millennium) have enabled the scientists to quantitatively attribute the major temperature fluctuations to changes in solar activity, volcanic eruptions, and human-produced greenhouse gases and particulate pollution. These natural processes can not explain the current warming though.
Contrary to the current worries, the Earth’s climate for the past 2 million years had been characterized by ice ages lasting close to 100,000 years, punctuated by relatively short (10,000- to 30,000-year) warm periods or “inter-glacials.” The shift from glacial to interglacial is caused by changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun amplified by natural feedbacks involving greenhouse gases. The Earth entered the present interglacial only about 10,000 years ago.
However it is argued that in the absence of a large quantity of human produced carbon dioxide or even such sources which could produce this gas, the Earth can, at one point of time, be believed to swing back to the glacial period or the ice age. However with the extent of warming reached, this seems to be unachievable even in the next thousands of years.
Scientists had been able to understand that the greenhouse gases were warming the planet as early as in the beginning of the 19th century. They also understood that the rate of increase in the atmospheric carbon dioxide could lead to this global warming on time scales of decades to centuries- which was much shorter a time span that had led to the fluctuations related to ice ages and interglacials. This was the time when the global temperature actually began rising and humans were blamed to be interfering with the climate through their activities. In the middle of the century, that is around 1950s however, the rise in the global temperatures unexpectedly started to show a downfall. This instead diverted the attention of the scientists towards botheration regarding the global cooling. However somewhere within the scientific literature, the botheration regarding global warming was still beaming.
Many scientists of the time were arguing that whatever be the cause of the cooling, natural or otherwise, it would be eventually overshadowed by the warming effect of carbon dioxide. In 1979, the National Academy of Sciences warned that a doubling of carbon dioxide would increase global temperatures by 1.5 to 4.5oC (Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment, NAS Press, 1979) and shortly thereafter a recommencement of the aloft trend in the temperatures was detected.
Over the past quarter century, scientific delve into on the global climate change has intensified and programs on an international scale have been organized. More and more data are included in computer models that are capable of recreating past trends and more precisely predicting future scenarios.
Currently however it had been said that the main reason for this global warming has been the pollution which is caused by burning of coal, which produces tiny particles or aerosols that result in blocking the energy from the sun. Now when this factor was found out, the aerosol emissions were controlled to a large extent but greenhouse gas pollution continued to increase, the cooling effect of the aerosols was overwhelmed by the greenhouse gases, and global warming resumed. Thus the only quantitative and internally consistent explanation for the recent global warming includes the intensified greenhouse effect caused by the increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences—the independent organization of the country’s most renowned scientists established by Congress to advise the nation on scientific and technical issues—has concluded:
“The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action.”
True as it is in all the aspect. Since this is a factor that has affected the nation or territory of not a single or a group of countries but the planet on the whole, the solution for it requires an integrated effort on the part of our national leaders and assistance by the scientists of the various countries as well. Thus the concept of ‘Carbon Credit’ came into being. With the advent of rising temperature figures on the planet, regulations regarding emission of carbon dioxide into the environment became very strict. Companies, industries and countries on the whole were given the maximum quota of the amount of the gas that could be expelled by them into the environment.
This was a very control measure which could have been taken by the regulators, undoubtedly. However statement of orders is never a problem, the difficulty comes only when it comes to the implementation or the execution part. This is what happened here as well; there were companies which had a set requirement of expelling a certain amount of carbon dioxide in the environment. They could reduce it only to a certain possible extent only; this way it was the same for the industries and countries as well. Now there are few firms or countries which required extra emitting capacity than was allotted to them. So they started trading in this field as well; other countries or firms which had lower emissions were contacted and business for contracting or selling out the extra capacity, which was the difference between the allotted quota and the actual emission, for the same was promoted. This was where the nations required prompt decision making to allow such business between the companies, industries or the countries for that matter.
Conclusively, it is known that the level of understanding of the climate system that the scientists have, is sufficient to provide qualitative models for most global or hemispheric climatic variations over geologic history and quantitative models for variations over the past millennium; but this understanding needs to be correctly tapped so that feasible and effective measures to combat the worrisome situation could be found. Also it could be said that the Earth’s climate may return to ice age conditions in thousands of years, but this does not preclude devastating effects from global warming over the next few centuries.
Above all, all the known natural explanations for the current global warming trend have almost been eliminated by direct observations; and finally the human-intensified greenhouse effect above all provides the only quantitative explanation for the current warming trend and requires effective national support across the boundaries to get proper and adequate redressal.
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