Challenges Brought About by Climate Change and Global Warming

Research Discursive Approach
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Research Discursive Approach
Climate change and global warming have emerged as the two most threatening human, animal, and plant life processes. This affects both the marine life and life on the land. Climate change, which is the alterations in climatic patterns of various regions around the world, has led to increased levels carbon dioxide gas, which is primarily generated from fossil fuels (Brooks, Oxley, Vedlitz, Zahran, & Lindsey, 2014). These global changes have had a significant impact on earth life, affecting both marine and terrestrial life. Among the effects of these global changes on people and the environment on earth, including changes in sea levels due to melting ice sheets, increased global warming, extreme drought conditions, and decline in crop productivity, changing ecosystems, and the acidification of water bodies (Meyer, 2012). These severe consequences of climatic change pose a significant threat to the lives of humans and other organisms on earth. While climate change is caused by natural causes such as volcanic eruptions, shifts in ocean currents, solar variation, and orbital changes of the earth, it is often exacerbated by human actions such as deforestation, burning fossil fuels, industrial processes, poor agricultural practices, and coal mining.
Climate change has resulted in some devastating consequences within the past half a century. Global temperatures have increased at an unprecedented rate within that time resulting in a series of life-threatening weather events such as droughts, heatwaves, floods, and other natural disasters that have become more frequent and more severe (Mckinney et al., 2015). These changes in climatic patterns have affected not only the developing countries but also the developed nations such as the US. For instance, in 2019, Australian Bush fires ravaged more than 12 million acres of land in a period spanning more than three months. The fires affected the habitats of millions of species, causing some of them to be endangered. There is a direct link between the vast forest fires and global warming, and climate change. Similar fires were also witnessed in the US in 2017 when Los Angeles had one of the largest fires in its history while Texas and Florida experienced major destructions from Hurricane Harvey and Irma, respectively (Borenstein, 2020). While many people around the world have come to accept the environmental impact of climate change, many of them are yet to grasp the expected effects of these climatic changes.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) developed the logic behind climate change by demonstrating how different elements work together to exacerbate climate change (Meyer, 2012). This logic helped develop the catastrophic manmade global warming theory. According to this theory, carbon dioxide gas contributes to global warming through the greenhouse effect. The process is then intensified by a series of processes that increase the global temperatures even further (Meyer, 2012). Consequently, the increased global temperatures result in various undesirable consequences, including floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and droughts. Warmer temperatures also raise the sea level as well as affecting biological processes.
Scientific evidence has proven that global temperatures have risen significantly in the past few decades. According to the IPCC, much of global warming is attributable to CO2 (Meyer, 2012). The current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is estimated to be about 0.039%. As the earth warms up due to the greenhouse gas effect, there is likely to be environmental feedback that could either accelerate or reduce the warmth (MacMillan, & Turrentine, 2021). For example, increased global warming implies that there would less ice or snow covering the earth. Snow and ice usually reflect the heat back into space (Meyer, 2012). Therefore, if the side of snow and ice reduces, there will be less heat reflected back into space. As such, much of the heat will be retained within the atmosphere, thereby increasing the rate of global warming (Meyer, 2012). Alternatively, the warmer temperatures facilitate the rapid growth of plants. Such rapid growth of plants can reduce the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and reduce the rate of global warming (MacMillan, & Turrentine, 2021).
Crucial environmental feedback in this process is water vapor. When compared to CO2, water vapor is a much or serious greenhouse gas. Higher temperatures increase the rate of evaporation, thereby increasing the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. More water vapor in the atmosphere can intensify the impact of climate change (Meyer, 2012). On the contrary, water vapor caused by rising temperatures could form clouds. The clouds will then shield the earth from intensified atmospheric temperatures (Brooks, Oxley, Vedlitz, Zahran, & Lindsey, 2014). Given the interactions between these different kinds of feedbacks in the environment, the impact of manmade global warming depends on the balance between the different effects (Meyer, 2012). The IPCC postulates that the negative effects of the feedback were dominant, leading to significant undesirable consequences (IPCC. 2007).
Global climate has been transformed significantly due to the accumulating greenhouse gas emissions. Today, uncertainties continue to persist regarding the extent of future climate change and the extent to which such changes can affect the socio-economic lives of people (US Global Change Research Program). This situation has prompted intense research into the nature of the problem, its potential impacts, and the most probable solutions. Notwithstanding the uncertainties that surround climate change, scientists are in concert that without adequate measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, climate change will have a substantial impact in the future (Meyer, 2012). The scientists project that climate change could have long-lasting effects that would significantly affect many of the US's physical, biological, economic, and social systems (Hochstetler & Milkoreit, 2015). These scientific statements are usually expressed through regular summary documents are published annually through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is a creation of the United Nations (MacMillan, & Turrentine, 2021). Today, climate change is seen as one of the biggest threats to America's economic stability. Increased heatwaves, cyclones, typhoons, and hurricanes devastate millions of people, rendering them unable to work and reducing the workforce's productivity (Brooks, Oxley, Vedlitz, Zahran, & Lindsey, 2014).
Greenhouse gases comprise a group of gases that trap the heat from the sun, preventing it from rising back into space. This functions more like the agricultural greenhouse, where the gases are trapped in the greenhouse for purposes of creating appropriate heat to support the growth of plants. Based on this principle, greenhouse gases receive heat from the sun and block it from rising back into space (Mckinney et al., 2015). The resultant effect of this is that the heat will be retained on the earth for a long time leading to increased heat intensity. Most of the greenhouses are naturally found in the atmosphere, but they can be increased due to various human activities. Some of the most common greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases (Mckinney et al., 2015). Carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas. Its concentr...