Is the global warming the biggest hoax of the 21st century?

Discussions about the change of our world climate seem to be a very hot topic these days. Is the global warming just a fashionable subject to talk about and nobody can prove it or is it a fact based on recent scientific data?If there is any warming then what is the cause of it?Can we say that thisis only a natural way of how our global climate works? This argument paper will try to answer those questions. It will show that the global warming is anundisputable fact. It will also showthat as of now it is difficult to beexplained by the sun’s activity fluctuations orchanges in the earth’s orbit around the sun. It will also strongly suggest that it is caused by the greenhouse effect. And finally it will show from correlated graph information that it is highly probableto be caused by human activities.

Warming is a fact! According to United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC)report from 2007 the average global surface temperature has increased about 0.8 Celsius (1.4 Fahrenheit) degreessince the year of 1880. Also the rate of warming is increasing, most of this temperature change happened in the last fifty years.


Holli Riebeek (2007), NASA

National Geographic News (2007) reported that “the 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia” and by IPCC (2007) “11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850”.Glaciers and mountain snows are rapidly melting and average global sea level is rising. According to IPCC (2007)during the twentieth century the sea level rose for about 0.17 meters (0.56 feet) and Arctic sea ice shrunk by 2.7 percent per decade since 1978, the year when the satellite images began to be taken.All these facts are very hard to negate. Yes, the global warming is very real and is happening right now.


IPCC(2007)

Many people argue that if the scientists are not able to predict a weather forecast for several days how they can predict the weather in years or decades in advance?Holli Riebeek NASA (2007) explains that “weather is a short-term, small-scale set of measurements of environmental conditions, while climate is the average of those conditions over a large area for a long time”.It is compared to “the difference between predicting when a particular person will die versus calculating the average life span of an entire population”.


Holli Riebeek (2007), NASA

Ok, the global warming is the fact but what is the actual cause? So far there seem to be three main theories. The first one relates natural cycles in Earth's orbit to altering its exposure to sun. According to National Geographic News (2007) the “Earth has indeed experienced warming and cooling cycles roughly every hundred thousand years due to these orbital shifts” but “such changes have occurred over the span of several centuries”. Today’s changes have taken in less then one hundred years, and the biggest rate of change happened in the last fifty years.

The second theory is based on the effects of variations in the sun's output.But by Holli Riebeek NASA (2007) “an increase in solar output also falls short of explaining recent warming”.NASA itself states that its “satellites have been measuring the Sun’s output since 1978, and while the Sun’s activity has varied a little, the observed changes were not large enough to account for the warming recorded during the same period.” The graph below shows Satellite measurements of the Sun’s activity since 1978 and it also reveals the Sun’s eleven-year sunspot cycle.


Holli Riebeek NASA (2007)

The third theory explains the warming by the increase of greenhouse gases and clouds in the atmosphere.TheHolli Riebeek NASA (2007) says that “if there were no greenhouse gases or clouds in the atmosphere, the Earth’s average surface temperature would be a very chilly -18°C (0°F) instead of the comfortable 15°C (59°F) that it is today”. The greenhouse effect works in a very similar way to when the sun’s rays enter through the car’s window (Jonathan Strickland and Ed Grabianowski, 2005, How Stuff Works). It warms the car seats and its interior but when released it radiateson different wavelength and is stopped by the windows and reflected back. That’s why inside the car it is much hotter then outside. According to Holli Riebeek NASA (2007) from all the sun’s rays that hit the Earth about 70 % stays on the planet mirrored back by CO2 or methane gasses and the other 30 % returns back to space reflected by clouds and snow or other shiny surfaces. When all is in balance this absorbed energy is slowly released by oceansback to space or stored by plants or used in various chemical reactions and the temperature stays the same. When it is not balanced and more energy stays in the temperature slowly increases.


IPPC (2007)

According to IPCC (2007) since 1750“carbon dioxide levels have increased 35 percent and methane levels have increased 148 percent”. This data is well proofed by Paleoclimatology scientific methods when taking deep ice samples.The graph below correlates the increase in the temperature and in CO2 gasses. Those two graphs nicely follow the same curvature either before 1950 or fifty years later when the values are almost doubled in comparison to what was measured at thebeginning of the 19thcentury.


Holli Riebeek (2007),NASA

As of today the only viable explanation for warming after 1950 is an increase in greenhouse gases (Holli Riebeek NASA, 2007).

But are humans causing it?According to Holli Riebeek NASA (2007) there are no other explanations for so much increase of CO2 gasses during the last fifty years then the human activities. Also all these changes happened “since the industrial revolution began in about 1750” (IPPC, 2007). The scientists call this phenomenon the anthropogenic climate change.

There are arguments that frequent volcanic eruptionsrelease various gases and aerosols high into the atmosphere and this can cause the greenhouse effect also.But the Holli Riebeek NASA (2007) contradicts that “the cooling influence of this aerosol shade is greater than the warming influence of the volcanoes’ greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore such eruptions cannot account for the recent warming trend”. The following graph correlates the temperature change and aerosol thickness of recent eruption of Mt.Pinatubo volcano. It can be seen that there is actual cooling and not warming happening.


Holli Riebeek (2007), NASA

All scientific data show that the global warming is a fact and is happening right now. Not only the global average temperature is changing but also the sea level is rising and the snow and ice coverage in the northern hemisphere is decreasing. Most of the scientists are agreed on that this warming is caused by the greenhouse effect. As of now there is no other explanation for the cause of this greenhouse effect than that it is caused by the human activities (Holli Riebeek NASA, 2007). The biggest rate of changes in the global average temperature and CO2 density happened in the last 50 years and it nicely relates to the higher industry production all over the world.

Works Cited

  1. National GeographicNews (2007), Global Warming Fast Facts
  1. Jonathan Strickland and Ed Grabianowski (2005), How Stuff Works,How Global Warming Works
  1. Holli Riebeek (2007), NASA- Earth Observatory, Global Warming
  1. United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - IPCC (2007), IPCC AR4 Synthesis Report