For several decades, scientists have wondered what causes global warming. They looked at a number of things such as the natural cycles and events that influence the climate. Some things they learned that causes global warming include:
- Methane gas release in the areas of the wetlands and arctic tundra. Methane is known as a greenhouse gas that results in heat bring trapped inside the atmosphere.
- Climate change cycle, which tends to occur every 40,000 years.
- Lots of volcano activity causes an increase of greenhouse gases.
- Sunspots
And, while they’ve looked at the above events and cycles, they noted that the pattern and amount of global warming cannot be explained by them alone. Scientists could only explain that the pattern included human’s effect on the greenhouse gases. After all, the human population is growing rapidly, which means they’re raising more animals for food and have regular growth in technology.
Now, scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC), meet every several years to check on recent scientific findings and put together a report that summarizes everything they’ve learned about global warming.
Greenhouse Gases Causes Global Warming
Now, one thing scientists have learned on what causes global warming is that there are several kinds of greenhouse gases responsible for the problem. And, humans are largely responsible for these greenhouse gases, emitting them off in a number of ways. Most greenhouse gases come in the form of fossil fuel combustion such as electricity production, cars and factories. The primary cause of global warming, however, is carbon dioxide, which is also known as CO2.
So what causes global warming? Some other causes include methane from agriculture and landfills, fertilizers’ nitrous oxide, gases used in industrial processed and refrigeration and deforestation, which leads to CO2.
When people drive their cars, heat homes with either natural gas or oil or use electricity from plants that use coal, they release more heat-trapping gases like CO2 into the environment. Deforestation means there are fewer trees and when there are fewer trees planted, it means less carbon dioxide being changed over into usable oxygen.
The heat-trapping abilities of the different greenhouse gases vary. Some tend to trap more heat than carbon dioxide does. One molecule of methane generates over 20 times the warming of a CO2 molecule. Nitrous oxide is nearly 300 times stronger than carbon dioxide. Chlorofluorocarbons, which are banned in most of the world due to causing the degradation of the ozone layer, can trap heat more than a thousand times more than carbon dioxide. However, since their concentration is lower than CO2, they don’t add a lot of warmth to the environment.
When scientists get together, they tend to converse about the different greenhouse gases and how their equivalent amount to carbon dioxide. Since the early 1990s, annual emissions of CO2 has risen to around six billion metric tons or a 20 percent increase.
Bear in mind that in the industrial age, carbon dioxide emissions increased by approximately 31 percent. And, during the same time, there was a 151 percent increase in environmental methane, which came from agricultural activities like growing rice or raising cattle.
What causes global warming is the increase of greenhouse gases because more heat becomes trapped in the atmosphere and is not able to escape into space. This rise in the amount of trapped heat will lead to changes in the environment, altering weather patterns, speeding up species extension, influencing the seasons, causes coastal flooding and resulting in more severe storms.
There is absolutely no doubt that greenhouse gases have a direct impact on what causes global warming. So, it’s up the humans all around the world to ban together and reduce the release of greenhouse gases to save the environment…and the world!
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