This paper examines the accelerating crisis of human-caused global warming, focusing on carbon emissions as the primary driver. It traces the historical rise of CO2 output from the Industrial Revolution through the late twentieth century, explains the greenhouse effect and feedback mechanisms, and identifies major emission sources including fossil fuel combustion, transportation, and deforestation. The paper then evaluates a range of mitigation strategies: international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, a shift to renewable energy, individual consumer behavior changes, carbon capture technologies, and political action. The author argues that economic and political obstacles have delayed an urgent, unified global response.
For over two decades, the scientific community has been sounding the alarm about a human-caused warming of the Earth's lower troposphere. This warming has been accelerating at an unprecedented rate, and its effects have been accumulating at a level visible in recent weather changes and natural catastrophes. Examples include the most powerful El Niño ever recorded; the hottest European summer in 2004, which killed over 26,000 people; some of the worst hurricanes and flooding on record, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which devastated New Orleans; and the fact that one in every five species now faces extinction because of the effects of increasing greenhouse gases over the last few decades.
The causes of this accelerated global warming are both simple and complex. The simple reason is that our overuse of fossil fuels in industrial, affluent, and increasingly populated nations, and the release of excess CO2 into the atmosphere, is disrupting the thermostatic temperature balance of the globe. The complex, interrelated causes have to do with our dependence on these fossil fuels and the local, regional, and national economic interests of a free-market economy. These forces create tensions between developed nations—and between developed and underdeveloped nations—and between special-interest groups whose relatively short-term economic goals are taking precedence over immediate and pressing global concerns. According to the majority of scientific experts on global warming, these complex economic, national, and social factors are impeding what should be an immediate, unified effort among nations to fashion solutions before it is too late (Johansen, The Global Warming Desk Reference, 2).
The widespread use of fossil fuels began during the Industrial Age, when economic development brought greater financial profit along with an increase in human comfort and convenience. The combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas has been altering the atmospheric balance ever since, increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxides, other naturally occurring trace gases, and synthetically produced chemicals released into the atmosphere. During 1860, human-created carbon emissions stood at about one-tenth of a gigaton (one billion metric tons). This figure had risen, between 1900 and 1940, to approximately 1.0 to 1.5 gigatons. By 1960, carbon emissions had passed 3.0 gigatons, climbing to more than 8.0 gigatons by the late 1980s — a worldwide increase of 219 percent, or approximately 7.3 percent annually. Between 1850 and 2000, human CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion increased fifty times over (Johansen, 3).
Greenhouse gases are a class of gases that trap heat near the Earth's surface. As their concentrations rise in the atmosphere, the extra heat they trap creates global warming, affecting the Earth's climate system and leading to weather changes around the world. Carbon dioxide is the best known of these gases because it is responsible, along with methane, water vapor, and trace gases, for about half of the atmosphere's greenhouse effect. CO2 is produced whenever we burn something and when organic matter decomposes. Without greenhouse gases, life as we know it could not exist: CO2, as the most abundant of these gases, keeps the planet at an average temperature of 57°F, maintaining the surface above freezing. A doubling of atmospheric CO2, however, has the potential to heat the planet by approximately 5°F and perhaps as much as 10°F, causing catastrophic climate changes worldwide (Flannery, The Weathermakers, 22).
CO2 also acts as a trigger for the more potent greenhouse gas water vapor. By heating the atmosphere, CO2 allows the air to take up and retain more moisture, which in turn warms the atmosphere even further, operating as a feedback loop that drives temperatures still higher (Flannery, 28).
About 40% of U.S. carbon emissions come from the burning of fossil fuels for electricity generation. It is a little-known fact that our twenty-first-century society is still run on a nineteenth-century form of energy production. Coal is the greatest producer of carbon emissions, with an emission rate 1.7 times greater than natural gas and 1.25 times greater than oil. Driving at 25 miles per gallon for 10,000 miles, heating a home for one year with a natural-gas furnace, or powering a home for four months using electricity from coal-fired plants each causes the average U.S. household to emit approximately one metric ton of carbon (EcoBridge, ¶2).
About 20% of carbon dioxide emissions come from burning gasoline in the internal-combustion engines of cars and light trucks — minivans, SUVs, pickup trucks, and jeeps. Poor fuel-economy vehicles contribute the most. An SUV designed for rough terrain but used predominantly for city driving creates a disproportionate environmental burden (¶3). Carbon emissions from commercial trucks contribute another 13%, and aviation is estimated to account for 3.5% of global warming today, with projections reaching 15% by 2050.
After fossil fuel combustion, deforestation is the second major human cause of increased atmospheric CO2. It is estimated that deforestation is responsible for 25% of all carbon emissions entering the atmosphere, through the burning and cutting of approximately 34 million acres of trees each year. By destroying the rainforest at the rate of millions of acres annually, we release millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air every year. Cutting these forests not only adds more CO2 to the atmosphere but also radically reduces a major mechanism of CO2 absorption. The temperate forests alone account for the absorption of 2 billion tons of carbon annually (¶10), and vigorous new forest growth absorbs more CO2 than older, mature forests.
Places and things that absorb carbon from the atmosphere are called "carbon sinks." All living things are carbon sinks, as are the rocks and soil beneath us. Over recent decades, scientists have been monitoring where CO2 from fossil fuel burning goes by tracking CO2's unique chemical signature as it circulates around the Earth. The major carbon sinks are the oceans, which are great absorbers of CO2. However, the cyclical changes in sea-surface circulation and temperature caused by global warming are increasingly impairing the oceans' ability to absorb CO2 (Flannery, 33–34).
The increase in greenhouse gases, particularly CO2, creates what is called a "positive feedback loop." Rising CO2 levels produce overall global warming, which in turn raises ocean temperatures. Because warmer oceans absorb less CO2 than colder ones, this warming decreases the oceans' capacity to absorb CO2 at the very moment CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere at a faster rate (Flannery, 34).
Mitigation of global warming refers to the alleviation or reduction of its root causes. First on the list of immediate solutions is a radical reduction in fossil fuel usage through conservation. Energy conservation on a large scale must be addressed at the level of international energy policy. The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an international treaty aimed at cutting global greenhouse gas emissions. As of April 2006, 163 countries had ratified the agreement; notable exceptions were the United States and Australia. China and India, two of the largest carbon-producing countries, ratified the protocol but were not required to reduce their CO2 emissions.
"Conservation, renewables, and consumer action reduce emissions"
"U.S. leadership and policy change urgently needed"
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