Global Warming Caused By Human Activities, Burning of Fossil Fuels and Deforestation

Student’s Name
Instructor
Course
Date
Global Warming
Introduction
Global warming is a topic of every day. News articles hardly conclude their sentiments without mentioning global warming in one way or the other. Scientists, politicians, human rights activists and anybody else is talking about global warming, but what is global warming? Global warming is described as the gradual rise in average temperature of the earth's surface due to the solar radiations trapped in the earth's atmosphere. Scientists have shown that average temperature of the earth has risen from 0.4 to 0.8 degrees Celsius in the last hundred years. The earth's atmosphere traps some dangerous sun rays and reflects them back to the sun while allowing those less harmful rays to humans to pass through into the earth's surface where they are reflected back to space by water bodies and the earth itself. These rays warm the earth, but excess should be reflected back into space through the atmosphere. However, the process of reflecting back these rays into space may not be possible when the atmosphere is sealed by pollutants collective known as greenhouse gasses. Greenhouse gasses include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and many others. Nevertheless, there has been a serious debate on whether nature or human activities cause this scenario of global warming. People are divided with those claiming that it is a natural cause citing natural occurrences such as orbital change that change the climate. Those who attribute global warming to be caused by human activities claim that human activities such as burning fossils release the greenhouse gasses that create a blanket in the atmosphere. This paper argues that global warming is caused by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
The burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas contribute to the high accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (Greg O'Hare 244). Many power stations, industries, vehicles and households all over the world burn millions of fossil fuels every day. Coal developed out of ancient plant remnants that are believed to have grown over 200 million years ago. Oil and gas are compost of remnants of microscopic planktons. Plant and animal remnants altogether decayed and became the carbon-rich oil, coal, and gas which are used today as fuel. As a fact, these fuels are rich in carbon dioxide as that is the main building block. When these fuels are combusted, huge amounts of carbon dioxide is released which finds its way into the atmosphere (Greg O'Hare 263). As more fossil fuels are burnt, more carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere creating a "blanket" of the greenhouse gasses. The amounts of carbon dioxide thicken the atmospheric layer. It is estimated that one gallon of gasoline produces 19 pounds of carbon dioxide when burnt and yet there are no means of re-using this carbon dioxide hence all ends into the atmosphere (Greg O'Hare 281). The "blanket" builds by carbon dioxide blocks the excess sun radiations that are being reflected back by the earth's surface. As the heat is blocked, it comes back to the earth causing an increase in temperatures and hence global warming. The role of carbon dioxide in warming the earth's surface was first confirmed by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius about a century ago. Svante carried out a study during the industrial revolution by investigating the amounts of carbon dioxide emitted by the industries that burnt coal, oil, and natural gas. Svante found that about 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide was released and about half was retained in the atmosphere (Greg O'Hare 291). This explanation concurs with the fact that earth's temperature has increased from 0.4 to 0.8 degrees Celsius since the last century which was the beginning of industrial revolution (Greg O'Hare 321).
Additionally, carbon dioxide and methane gasses are emitting in the process of extraction and distribution of the fossil fuels. As the drillers open the oil and gas wells, carbon dioxide and methane will be released into the atmosphere (Pachauri and Mayor 62). Greenhouse gasses may also result from human accidents, improper maintenance of storage tanks that leads to leaks as well as improper pipe fittings and pipelines. Methane is dissolved in coal and the process of mining, it pulverizes and diffuses into the atmosphere. Hydrocarbons are released to the atmosphere from the regular routines in handling fossil fuels such as refuelling vehicles or spills from tankers during processing of the oil and gas. Further, burning of oil products such as plastics releases more greenhouse gasses such as sulphur dioxide carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide (Pachauri and Mayor 73). Households usually burn the plastics and polythene bags after use without bothering on the release of these gasses into the atmosphere. They are unaware that they are causing the global warming that they constantly complain about. Even the educated human beings who know the effect of burning plastics are ignorant and do as the uneducated do (Pachauri and Mayor 84).
Deforestation also produces greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Human beings have invaded the forests as they seek more land for food production, settlement, and development (Dai 53). As the forests are cleared, the trees decompose releasing more carbon dioxide gasses into the atmosphere. People also burn charcoal in the forests. Charcoal burning releases carbon monoxide which reacts with oxygen to form carbon dioxide and escape into the atmosphere where it accumulates. Also, defor...