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Global Warming: Causes and Effects

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Global Warming: Causes and Effects
Global Warming: Causes and Effects

The term “global warming” is often used synonymously with the term climate change, but the two terms have distinct meanings. Global Warming is a gradual increase in the earth's temperature. Novdia explained that “global warming refers to the documented historical warming of the Earth's surface, based upon worldwide temperature records that have been maintained by humans since the 1880s” (Global Warming). Global warming is a major crisis in the world today. Three causes of global warming are the greenhouse effect, increase of carbon dioxide emission, and the effects of temperature increase. The greenhouse effect is a primary cause of global warming. It is a gradual rise in temperature in the earth's atmosphere due to the heats absorption from the sun and entrapment of gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, in the air around the earth. An example of this is a bright sunlight will effectively warm an individual’s car on a cold, clear day by the greenhouse effect. The longer infrared wavelengths radiated by sun-warmed objects do not pass readily through the glass. The trap of this energy warms the interior of the vehicle. The trapping of the hot air so that it cannot rise and lose the energy by convection also plays a major role. Stephen Novdia stated, “The greenhouse effect was discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824, first reliably experimented on by John Tyndall in 1858, and first reported quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896” (Global Warming). Greenhouse effect then becomes a primary cause of global warming. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions cause global warming. It is gas in the earth’s atmosphere that came from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are formed by natural resources and are decomposed from buried dead organisms. A study on Carbon dioxide emissions in a magazine article on May 2009 found the following evidence:
“In the 19th century, scientists realized that gases in the atmosphere cause a "greenhouse effect"

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