Global warming is one of the greatest challenges for the environment. It is the increase in the temperature of the Earth. There are several things happening now that demonstrate global warming as directly impacting the rising of sea levels, the melting of ice caps and significant worldwide climate changes. Unfortunately, the imbalance which has been created between life and earth is already showing the signs of disaster in forms of floods, cyclones, landslides, tsunamis and droughts (Global Warming Basics, 2005).
Carbon dioxide is an important factor that is causing a warming effect on the Earth’s surface and is made by the fossil fuels that are burned for energy such as coal, natural gas, and oil along with the loss of forests due to deforestation. Earth’s atmosphere is being overloaded with carbon dioxide, which traps heat in and drives the temperature up. Other gases such as methane and nitrous oxide are also responsible for global warming.
The rate in rise of temperature depends greatly on certain developments such as economical and technical. Increases in these gases are partly due to an increased industrial expansion, technological advancement, and deforestation (Global Climate Change, n.d.).
Trees have a huge role to play when it comes to global warming, they are the largest land-based mechanism for removing carbon dioxide from the air. Deforestation is causing this to not happen (Tropical Deforestation, 2011) and is one of the main principles to blame for atmospheric carbon dioxide. Deforestation is partly responsible for carbon emissions entering the atmosphere by the burning and cutting of trees. Each year over thousands of acres in the rainforest is being destroyed. Do to the massive loss of forests it is causing carbon dioxide levels raise more and more as the days go by.
The growing concerns over global temperatures have led to the nations, states, corporations and individuals to draw out a plan of action to help aid the
References: Global Climate Change: http://climate.nasa.gov/causes The Kyoto Protocol: http://www.mfe.govt.nz/issues/climate/international/kyoto-protocol.html Global Warming Basics: http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/f101.asp Tropical Deforestation and Global Warming: A Solution: http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/Tropical-Deforestation-Basics.pdf