Global Warming

Abstract
What is global warming? Global warming is the heating of the earth. Global warming happens when greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrous oxide, and methane trap heat and light from the sun in the atmosphere. This is known as the greenhouse effect. It prevents heat and light from escaping the earth’s atmosphere kind of like the earth is a giant greenhouse. Global warming is a good thing, but at the same time, can have devastating effects if not properly monitored and taken care of. Without global warming, the earth would freeze and life would not be able to survive on the planet. The rapid burning of fossil fuels is just one of the ways that causes the pace of global warming to dangerously increase. Another way is electrical pollution. If the planet becomes too hot, the polar ice caps may melt, causing Earth to become inhabitable. Another huge impact that global warming has is its impact on the ocean. Global warming can kill algae in the ocean and algae is a huge source of food to many species in the sea. The heating of the earth is a huge problem. Another problem is what is being done to prevent global warming? The human race does many things to make global warming a dangerous factor, changes in habits, and activities can greatly reduce in global warming. Another question asked is, what is the government doing to stop global warming? They have taken action and made an act called The Clean Air Act that is supposed to reduce global warming. I believe that scientific studies should attempt to make something that releases these gases so heat can escape and the Earth can cool down. Something needs to be done so the Earth is a safe place to live!

Introduction Global warming is a world-wide problem. If it is not taken care of and carefully monitored, it can be devastating for life on Earth as a whole. Global warming is the heating of Earth. The heat that is generated from the sun travels to Earth and is then trapped by greenhouse gases that contain the heat in our atmosphere. This heats the Earth up and can heat it up to a dangerous extent. Global warming is almost impossible to prevent in our day and age, due to the extensive use of motor vehicles and electrical appliances. Global warming affects everyone and everything. If global warming is ignored and not taken care of, then one day the Earth will become inhabitable. It will become too hot due to the melting of the polar ice caps causing everything to eventually die. Another huge factor to why global warming is so important is the ocean. Global warming affects the ocean by killing many of the fish in the ocean. It can kill the fish in the ocean because some fish actually eat plants on close-by low land islands that are killed in result of the rising of the water that global warming is responsible for. This effect can be never ending! The plants that are a food source for some fish are killed causing the fish to have no food. This may cause the fish to starve to death. If the fish dies, then the fish that is a predator of the fish that died will have no prey. This result can go on forever, making the results of global warming disastrous. The purpose of this paper is to help explain the importance of global warming. It also will help explain what can be done to prevent global warming and how to do so. It will answer many questions on the matter of global warming. Some questions that will be answered in this paper are: What causes global warming, what is global warming doing to the environment, and what is being done to prevent global warming? This paper will explain how dangerous global warming is and go into great detail of why we should do something about it. Global warming needs to be taken care of right and right away!
Body
Global warming is caused by something called the greenhouse effect. It is called the greenhouse effect because heat is trapped inside the atmosphere kind of like heat becomes trapped inside of a greenhouse. Heat from the sun travels to Earth and then is incapable of leaving the atmosphere because the heat becomes trapped inside gases. The gases that the heat gets trapped in are called greenhouse gases. They include: carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrous oxide, and methane (Lawrence 1). With too many of these gases in the air, the heat from the sun is trapped and cannot escape our atmosphere causing the Earth to heat up. Look at it as a car sitting in a parking lot for a period of time. The heat enters the car through the windows but then is incapable of escaping causing the inside of the car to heat up. See picture ‘1a’ in the appendix for an example. Cutting down on the use of or the producing of these greenhouse gases is key to prevent global warming and to keep Earth a safe place to live. Many factors contribute to global warming. One thing that causes global warming is electrical pollution. Many people do not know what electrical pollution is. Electricity causes pollution in many ways, some worse than others. The majority of electrical pollution comes from the burning of fossil fuels that are burned in order to create electricity. Anything that uses electricity contributes to global warming. One of the biggest factors contributing to global warming is the burning of petroleum. Almost every motorized vehicle requires petroleum to be burned in order to run. Motorized vehicles are a huge part of society today and millions are used every day, releasing more and more carbon dioxide (CO2). America is the biggest contributor of releasing carbon dioxide into the air. Refer to chart ‘1b’ in the appendix to view the world-wide distribution of carbon dioxide. Reducing the releasing of carbon dioxide would drastically help slowing down the process of global warming.
Global warming is so dangerous because if it becomes too serious, it may melt the polar ice caps completely causing the Earth to not be able to support life. In the last 100 years the earth’s temperature has increased about half a degree Celsius (Brain 1). This may not sound like a big increase, but even just half a degree can have an effect on our planet. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency the sea level has risen six to eight inches (fifteen to twenty centimeters) in the last 100 years (Brain 1). Global warming affects the sea level in a couple ways. One way is that it could be from the melting of icebergs. The rise in temperature can cause these to melt but the affect it has on the rise of sea level is rather small. Another reason that the sea level may rise because of global warming is that the rise in temperature may weaken glaciers causing chunks to fall into the ocean. When these chunks are in the water it causes the water to raise, kind of like an ice cube would in a glass of water. The main reason that global warming affects the sea level is the higher temperature of the water. Water is most dense at four degrees Celsius (Brain 8). Above and below this temperature the density of water decreases. So as the overall temperature of the ocean increases due to global warming, the ocean water naturally expands causing the oceans level to rise. This can affect low land islands with life on them. The raised water may overtake these islands causing plants to die along with organisms that fail to escape. This may affect fish in the ocean by taking away a food source that may come from the island that is overtaken by water. The fish can starve and then that fish is no longer prey to nearby predators. These predators may starve due to this and it is all started by global warming. Something needs to be done in order to stop global warming. The average person can contribute a little to the cause, but if everyone contributes, a huge impact can be made on global warming. Carpooling is the best way an individual can contribute to help stop global warming. Carpooling is sharing a ride in order to burn less fossil fuels. Another thing an individual can do to contribute to the cause, is to remember to turn off electric devices when not using them. This will help stop the releasing of greenhouse gases in the air. If global warming is to be put to a stop, the government is going to need to get involved, and they already have. The government has created a law called The Clean Air Act so there is less pollution in the air (Lawrence 23). The Clean Air Act forces companies to change their products or how their products are produced, so that it does not pollute the air to a certain extent. Some examples of products that have to be careful not to violate the rules of the act are hairspray, and Styrofoam cups. If everyone takes part in this change, the global warming crisis can be put to an end!
Conclusion
Global warming can put an end to man-kind. It is the most important matter that scientists and the government should be spending all their time on controlling. If global warming is not taken seriously, one day the polar ice caps will melt causing life to be impossible on planet Earth. The ocean can also take devastating blows if global warming is not closely monitored. Complete stopping of global warming is almost impossible due to the society we live in. We live in a society that burns fossil fuels every second of every day and electrical pollution is nonexistent. There needs to be a big wake-up call if something is to be done about this epidemic. The research in this paper can be put to good use if you use the advice that is stated. Turning off all electrical devices when not being used is just one small little thing that a person can do to prevent global warming. Carpooling and preventing the excessive use of petroleum is another small thing that can go a very long way if everyone plays their roll. Global warming is not completely avoidable, so future problems and question lay ahead. What if global warming turns out to be completely inevitable and the end of life on Earth starts to come to an end? There’s nothing to do but wait and see and hope for the best. It is clear that global warming is a huge matter in society today and should always be taken into consideration. The many possibilities stated in this paper that a person can do to limit the greenhouse effect, can be shared and viewed to help the cause. The society we live in will have to cooperate in order to get global warming under control. Hopefully the research in this paper describes global warming and how to prevent it well and is put to good use!