Analysis: Greenhouse Gases and Their Effect on Temperature

The issue that I am concerned with is the reducing of greenhouse gases and the effect of that on global warming. The definition of a greenhouse gas is a gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect, which is “the phenomenon whereby the earth's atmosphere traps solar radiation, caused by the presence in the atmosphere of gases such as carbon dioxide, water vapor, and methane that allow incoming sunlight to pass through but absorb heat radiated back from the earth's surface (http://www.answers.com/greenhouse+effect?cat=technology).” Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, the main one in the atmosphere, methane, nitrous oxide and fluorocarbons (http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/greenhouse.htm). The definition of global warming is “an increase in the average temperature of the earth's atmosphere, especially a sustained increase sufficient to cause climatic change (http://www.answers.com/topic/global-warming?cat=technology).” This issue is very polarized in society today as some people think that nothing needs to be done to combat rising greenhouse gas levels as the temperature is not affected by that. These people also think that if climate change occurs people should adapt to it and not control it. Others think that global warming is occurring because of increased greenhouse gas levels. This causes them to be active in the fight against global warming by reducing their greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible. (http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/roger_pielke/hp_roger/debate.html).

The issue of climate change in relation to greenhouse gases is much nuanced as many scientists have their own, thought out and complicated idea on what is happening (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/debate/). They do much research in the field and try to find out what is going to happen in the future related to the climate. Many people are led to believe there are only two sides of the global warming debate when, in fact, there are many because of all the factors that go into climate and the possible scale of severity of the warming (http://www.reason.com/news/show/34939.html). Furthermore, many people are misled to think that there is a scientific agreement that global warming is happening now, because of the level of greenhouse gases in the air, and must be stymied (http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4674).

Some people think that even though greenhouse gases are rising in the atmosphere, they have no influence on the temperature of the Earth. They stress that greenhouse gases need to be in the atmosphere or else the temperature on Earth would be 54 degrees F colder (http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/a/greenhouse.htm). These people say that even if there is a rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, each individual molecule would absorb less energy resulting in less heat given off per greenhouse gas molecule. Eventually there would be so many greenhouse gas molecules in the air that the temperature change would be minimal or none. They point out the temperature change from the beginning of the Industrial revolution to now is between .5 and 1.5 degrees Centigrade, which is not much when compared to some other measurements that say that temperature would change that much in the next fifty years (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,192544,00.html). One point they bring up is the more carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere, the better it will be for life because plants use them as a resource in producing glucose for themselves and releasing oxygen into the air by the process of photosynthesis (http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/BioBookPS.html). This results in the growth of plants, an increase in agricultural output and more biodiversity. They say the best thing to do is to adapt to changes in temperature like our ancestors in the Ice Age 125,000 years ago. Also, these people point out a warming of the planet is better than a cooling because growth of plants and economy is possible during warmer weather. In addition to that, they also point out that the carbon dioxide levels were twenty times as much 600 million years ago, during which life flourished. Even though greenhouse gas levels are high today, the Earth has not had ill effects from high greenhouse gas concentrations. It is also pointed out that the surface temperatures are skewed because of the urban heat island effect (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/debate/singer.html). When confronted with the issue of why the average temperature is rising, people with this viewpoint say that the warming is part of the natural cycle of the Earth and has nothing to do with greenhouse gases. Dr. Akasofu, an Arctic researcher, says there has been a consistent rise in global temperature since the Little Ice Age (1400-1800) according to data as far back as 1660. He says the Earth is still recovering from that ice age and there is no acceleration in temperature change due to global warming. He also points out that the Earth cooled from 1940-1975 before it started getting warmer again and that some places have cooled while others have gotten warmer recently. This shows that the warming is a natural process and not a man-made one because of the randomness of all the changes that are occurring. If it was man-made, there would be a linear temperature rise. (http://libproxy.lib.unc.edu/login?url=http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?risb=21_T2272174331&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T2272174334&cisb=22_T2272174333&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=10882&docNo=5).

However, most people believe that greenhouse gases cause global warming and the only way to stop the warming is to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the air. These people have various ideas on what will happen if something is not done about the level of greenhouse gases in the air as some think the Earth will become uninhabitable for many species and others think that the Earth will get warmer but the consequences will be bearable. They believe that the warming is man-made because of the amount of greenhouse gases people emit everyday, which leads to a stronger greenhouse effect. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a body created by the United Nations to study and predict what will happen to the climate because the climate plays a role in almost all the activities that happen around the world such as transportation and agriculture. In their latest report, they said that the chance that the warming trend is because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions is 90% (http://www.ipcc.ch/). Time magazine says that the thinning of ice, warm and wild weather, and the decline of the population of colder climate species can be attributed to global warming. All of these effects are bad for biodiversity and the ecosystem as pieces of the food chain are lost (http://www.time.com/time/2001/globalwarming/a.html). This side of the argument also stresses that most of the hottest years on record have come in the past ten years. The people who choose this side of the argument believe that the rise of temperature might be between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century (http://www.livescience.com/globalwarming/). That could result in the rise of seas, flooding many coastal cities, loss of many Arctic species, an increase in infectious disease and severe weather such as drought and floods in many areas. That in turn could lead to famine as the agricultural output would be lower than needed (http://www.net.org/warming/impacts.vtml). In order to combat the potential effects of global warming, these people stress that lifestyles change and new energy resources be found to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. This could include public transportation, lowering energy usage in one’s home (see:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,175273,00.html) and finding a clean alternative to coal-burning power plants, the number one emitter of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. These people want to prevent the worst effects of global warming from happening and are taking a proactive approach in doing that (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_33/b3896001_mz001.htm).

There are two main political positions centered on the debate of if global warming is decreased by decreasing greenhouse gases. One such position is that greenhouse gases have a direct effect on temperatures and global warming. This position taken by many prominent politicians who are “Green” and others that think global warming is occurring and must be stopped. Many of these people are on the left of the political spectrum. Al Gore is the main such politician, devoting his life after politics to educating people about steps that can be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and global warming (http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/12/nobel.gore/index.html). These politicians are varied in how deeply they want to implement their policies as some want laws to be enacted so that the average greenhouse gas emission per capita does not pass a certain rate and also want a new energy policy in place as soon as possible (http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/01/13/doe-reprint/). Others, mostly in the middle and right of the political spectrum, rely on voluntary action by the people to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions rewarding tax cuts and other incentives for their cooperation. George Bushes policy on greenhouse gas emissions reductions is like this as he stresses that research is done to come up with a new way of using energy and also encourages industry to try and lower their emissions. However, Bush has undermined some other carbon reduction policies like the Kyoto Protocol and has wanted to drill for oil in wildlife refugees. The Bush policy is non-binding, which is the opposite of what the “Green” politicians want (http://topics.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/politics/campaign/14enviro.html?_r=1&oref=slogin).

The other political position on greenhouse gases in relation global warming says that there is no such thing as global warming. They support the view that greenhouse gases can be freely emitted into the air without an effect on the climate. They have policies that try to maximize energy output with as little cost as possible. They worry that “Green” politics will have a negative impact on the economy. Some of these people also think that a change must be made to get a new source of energy since fossil fuels supplies are being depleted (http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/01/13/doe-reprint/).

One recent breakthrough in the debate about whether greenhouse gases play a role in global warming is the research of the fossil record allowing scientists to see how much carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, was in the air 400 million years ago. Mostly, the research for greenhouse gas concentrations had looked at records since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The results they found were that the carbon dioxide levels were sixteen times higher than today and that the carbon levels in the ice ages of 440 million years ago and 150 million years ago had very high carbon dioxide levels. These results force the scientists to think outside the Earth and hypothesize what factors outside are planet influence temperature. The factors could be a change in the amount of heat given off by the sun, and the hitting of the Earth by cosmic rays. This puts into question the ratio of increasing global temperatures with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Also, the water and wind currents play a major role in temperature regulation, which means they could have been changing over time resulting in temperature fluctuations (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/science/earth/07co2.html?pagewanted=3&ref=science). New insight to this issue on the other side is that by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, people will be able to breathe in less polluted air, which can give major health benefits. The rate of heat-related illness will go down and people will not only be able to live better, they will live smarter (http://www.cana.net.au/report5.pdf). Some other insight include the economic effects of lower greenhouse emissions as there would be more resources to use for energy and less competition around the world for fossil fuels (http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2006/2006-11-15-insann.asp).

These two arguments on whether greenhouse gases affect global warming have the same data but draw different results from that data, which requires ordinary people to use their knowledge to decide what side they stand on. Each side has its strong points and its weak points. The strong points of the side that says greenhouse gases have no effect on temperature are that the climate cycles of the Earth are unpredictable and climate has many factors that are hard to point out. One of its weak points is a vague description of why there have been such high temperatures over the past years. The side that believes greenhouse gases have an effect on global warming has strong points in the arena of the specificity of effects that could arise if the issue remains unsolved. This side’s weak point includes not looking at the data from hundreds of million years ago and making such a bold prediction about the future that might not be true.

This issue is a very divisive one in society as people’s ways of life and the Earth’s ecosystems might be at risk, but it is up to the people to decide what action to take, if any, in order to protect the Earth.