Is Global Warming Taking Place?

First, I will go through what evidence there is that the Earth’s atmosphere is warming. Well, what evidence is there? This graph here shows very clearly that over that past 45 years the average temperature has risen, especially since the year 2000. You may wonder why it goes up and down every year. This is due to the plants breathing in and out the carbon dioxide every year. But as you can see, the general trend is upwards. This is because of what is called the “Greenhouse Effect”. It is actually vital for our existence! What happens is that CO2, water vapor and other greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the surface. However the problem is that too much greenhouse gas is being sent up into the atmosphere and the layer of gases is growing. Leading to more heat being kept in and therefore letting less out and warming the planet more. This is a general fact and it is definitely happening.

What are the causes of this, you may ask? As I said earlier, the “Greenhouse Effect” is a natural cause which happens everyday. The trouble is that we have added to it by burning fossil fuels in industry generating CO2 and every day life. Of course as the problem grows it won’t stop. If it gets hotter and hotter and we do nothing to try and stop the planet from overheating now, we’ll just turn our fans and air conditioning on, which uses power, which mostly comes from fossil fuels, which give off greenhouse gases. This contributes more the atmosphere making it even hotter.

The effects, well these could be tremendous if nothing is done to cancel out the inconvenient truth. The first thing we would probably notice here in Britain is that we will get a lot more extreme weather. Severe heat in the summers and very very cold winters. We could also start to see more massive floods like the ones we saw earlier in the year (2007). The hurricanes may even migrate northwards and we may get almost as a harsher hurricane season as the south of the USA sees and may see more of the sort of hurricanes like the one we had that night in 1987.

The next major effect could be seen as a great success for Britain. Although we could get more extremes of weather the overall weather conditions would be better. This would bring about more tourism causing the British economy to grow. This would also reduce the CO2 emissions from Britain because instead of all of us going to Spain, we could just nip down to Bristol for the week-end and experience exactly the same living conditions.