Are human beings the one to make the world warm? : An investigation based on paleoclimate study.
Introduction: It is often said that global warming is led by human activities. After the industrialization, the CO2 level has been rising extraordinarily in a few folds in such a short period of time. As CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it is generally believed that human is the killer of Earth’s climate and the weapon is the CO2 level. However, is this general believe true? Is CO2 the crucial factor to change global climate? Is global warming really a outcome caused by human beings or the world is juts in an inevitable cycle? I am going to investigate more about this issue based on the study of paleoclimate. Body:
(The proxy data) Paleoclimate is the climate in the past. In the recorded history, there are too few data for us to investigate the relations among global temperature, global CO2 level, Oxygen isotope level, methane level, etc. In order to have a more broadened and reliable database for us to investigate paleoclimate, we might have to use the proxy data. Proxy data is data that paleoclimatologists gather from natural recorders of climate variability, e.g., tree rings, ice cores, fossil pollen, etc.
In this essay, we will mainly use one of the proxy data, Ice core in Vostok, to let us know more about the previously mentioned relations. The working principle of the proxy data (Ice core) is that the ancient air was trapped by the snow deposited on it and the snow later solidified. The chemical composition of the ancient air trapped may be experimentally recorded and later reveal the ancient climate after correlating their relations.
Vostok is chosen to be a good position of reliable proxy data probably because of its low temperature throughout its past years. Snow is keeping on depositing on the land and helps the formation of ice core. A place without snow deposition will be quite difficult to do so in the same way. Unfortunately, just