Saeed
OVERVIEW
Climate changes characterized as global warming are leading to large-scale irreversible effects at continental and global scales. The likelihood and magnitude of the effects are observed and predicted to be increasing and accelerating.
Many consequences of global warming once controversial or thought to be unlikely are now being observed. Arctic shrinkage and Arctic methane release, alongside large reductions in the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets, accelerated global warming due to carbon cycle feedbacks in the terrestrial biosphere, and releases of terrestrial carbon from permafrost regions and methane from hydrates in coastal sediments are accelerating, leading to expectations of runaway climate change.
The probability of warming having unforeseen consequences increases with the rate, magnitude, and duration of climate change. Additionally, the United States National Academy of Sciences has stated, "greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the earth system may increase the possibility of large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional or global climatic events…. Future abrupt changes cannot be predicted with confidence, and climate surprises are to be expected."
HISTORY OF GLOBAL WARMING
THE AMAZING HISTORY OF GLOBAL-WARMING SCIENCE
John Tyndall, an English scientist in the forefront of the ice-age debate of the 1800’s, wondered how the climate could have changed so much. He suspected the atmosphere, which was known to have the ability to trap the sun’s heat. Working in his laboratory, in 1859 he found the most important greenhouse gas was water vapor (H2O), but that carbon dioxide (CO2) was also effective.
In 1896 Arrhenius completed a laborious numerical computation which suggested that cutting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by half could lower the temperature in Europe some 4-5°C (roughly 7-9°F) — that is, to an ice age level.
In the 1990’s French and Russian scientists extracted a mile and a half deep ice core from...
View Full Essay
