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Austin Bordeaux TA-Nate November 3, 2012 Science 101 Climate Change Climate Change is the differences in weather over an extended period caused by human actions. There are four main causes for this change, solar radiation, wind, greenhouse gases being trapped in the atmosphere, and the earths tilt. Climate change is occurring in the world today and there is obvious facts and proof that the world is changing for the worse. For instance, solar radiation is when sun light comes into the atmosphere and warms up the water and melts and reflects off the ice, this is happening excessively. Wind changes are affecting the absorption of solar energy between the atmospheres. Greenhouse gases are keeping more sunlight in the atmosphere then needed, raising the temperature. The tilt of the Earth is causing certain parts to be closer to the sun, and correlates to how hot that area is during that season. There are many factors that play into the change of the Worlds climate. The main point of emphasis that many look upon is the level of CO in the atmosphere. An interesting statistic that correlates with the raising CO is the temperature, that this time period is warmer than it has been in the last 20,000 million years (Muller, 266). Paradoxically the graphs of temperature and CO show a sudden increase, which sparked the interest of the research of climate change. This so happened to be the time of the Industrial Revolution starting in 1750. The levels of CO and the temperature of the Earth have been practically at a constant rate from the beginning of time and thus, this is the turning point for humanity. There are many ways of producing usable clean and unclean energy. The most abundant and easily accessed for humans is fossil fuels. There is so much of it and has been for the last 200 odd years, that we would be senseless not to use it. The only problem is that we are slowly running out of our resources because we have used so much of it carelessly throughout the past. The main fossil fuel that we burn mass amounts every day is coal. When coal is burned it produces carbon, which is an essential part of life on Earth. Plants use photosynthesis to take in carbon, turn it in a useable energy, and then produce oxygen as a waste product that humans need to live. The steady balance of humans producing carbon and plants producing oxygen has been in check until humans starting burning more coal and the process of deforesting many plants.

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The reason for CO being a huge problem is for many reasons, but it starts with the tilt of the Earth. The tilt of the Earth matters immensely because it shapes how long each season will last and the temperature during that time period. The sun lets off UV rays which travels to through the atmosphere and hits everything on the face of the Earth. Unfortunately if the Earth is tilted too much, it means the Northern Hemisphere is closer to the sun and surface area where the beams hit is larger. Some may think this is a good thing, but a majority of the Northern Hemisphere is covered in ice, snow and glaciers. This part of the World being closer to the Sun would cause all of this area to warm up and potentially melt away. This is very important when it comes to Solar Radiation because the less surface area the less Ice-albedo. This is the whiteness of ice and the amount of reflectiveness, without this there is only water which causes a great deal warming. With that adding that much fresh water to the Ocean would be very harmful. The Ocean is a huge conveyer belt; it flows around in a path around all of the continents pushed by the wind. The wind plays another roll pushing these currents around the World causing certain weather patterns. The top layer of water is very warm and creates weather, as it is carried around the world when it gets to a particular place the water shoots straight down and cools off because no light is warming it up and flows all the way back to the being of the belt, where the wind continues to push it in the same path. With the melting of these huge glaciers, the addition of fresh water to the salt water would cause this process to stop. Then causing any warm fronts not to hit any part of Europe causing an instant Ice Age (Gore). With the tilt of the Earth making the Northern Hemisphere closer to the sun its causes the glaciers to melt instead of the regular process of solar radiation to occur. When sun beams come down they go through the atmosphere and hit the ground or bounce of the clouds. Many statistics and observations have been recorded in my situations with warming and it is impossible that climate change is caused merely by natural inconsistency(IPPC). Clouds are a very constructive thing in the world because they cool down the Earth slightly by blocking some of the sunlight and reflecting it back into space. Thin clouds serve absolutely no purpose in cooling or warming the Earth. If sunlight surpasses clouds the Inferred Radiation produced by the Earth is immersed into the air. After this one of two things happen the sunlight either breaks through the atmosphere and goes back into space or reflects off of the atmosphere and stays within the blanket. This process is key into keeping the constant temperature of the Earth. It is evident that humans are the main cause of climate change. The excess amount of Carbon and other greenhouse gases is warming the Earth. CO is the main gas that causes problems on the Earth and is the reason for the increase in temperature. There is no possible Humans produce an unnecessary amount of waste every day from burning fossil fuels in

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factories or even the cars we drive every day. Adding all of this CO into the atmosphere ends up disturbing the process of the greenhouse effect. Adding this amount of CO is bad because it overall intensifies everything. Energy that is absorbed will cause heat to be insulated within the atmosphere, causing an increase in temperature. This is exactly what is happening as we speak to the Earth, humans are dumping so much CO into the atmosphere that the greenhouse effect is slowly becoming inefficient. Every single day we have to burn coal to make everything humans do work, so if we keep dumping coal into the atmosphere it is right to blame humans and that we are causing the deterioration of the Earth. The unfortunate part about climate change is that the Earth has hit a point where there is no turning back. There is no way to change what has happened, it is irreversible. Humans are also so dependent on our fossil fuels we could not just pick a day in the future and stop using them. Humans are going to continue to put CO into the atmosphere and the Earth will continue to get warmer. The climate models that humans develop show that the Earth is slowly getting worse, though these can be inaccurate sometimes, at the moment it proves the CO is the cause. Even if human CO waste isnt affecting the Earth and humans arent the cau se and this is all just part of the cycle, it is the only evidence we have and we will continue to believe it otherwise.