Our planet's climate is anything but simple. All kind of factors influence it, from massive events on the Sun to the growth of microscopic creature in the oceans, and there are suitable interactions between many of these factors.
Yet despite all the complexities, ever growing body evidence points to a clear picture ------ the world's is warning , this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emission continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences.
Yes, there are still big uncertainties in some prediction, but these swing both ways. For example, the response of clouds clouds slow the warming or speed it up.
Though was not only the first to predict that human-induced global warming might be a problem.The calculation would take 3000 years for industrial emissions at 1896 levels to double curbon dioxide, and that this would not happen because the oceans would absorb most of this extra curbon dioxide(CO2).
Few years later some scientists came up with another objection. Their test tube experiments suggested that adding more curbon dioxide to the atmosphere would not trap any more heat.
Curbon Dioxide absorbs only certain frequencies of infrared radiation (heat), and in the atmosphere were already high enough to absorb 100% of the radiation at these frequencies. The experiments also appeared to show that the frequencies absorbed by curbon dioxide largely overlapped with those absorbed by water, another reason to think that adding more curbon dioxide to the atmosphere would make no difference.
So by the 1950s, it was starting to become clear that human activity was causing curbon oxide levels to rise and that this rise and that this rise would reduce the loss or heat into space. The implication seemed clear : provide all the other factors affecting the climate did not change, the Earth would warm.
But it was a conclusion scientists were reluctant to draw. There were many uncertainties and complexities involved. And at the same time other climate factors has changed : : the earth had cooled slightly after 1940. It was only in the late 1970s that a handful of scientists, began to warn that global warming was an imminent problem..
To non-scientists, these arguments can sound very persuasive. Why do carbon dioxide levels only start of interglacial period for instance ?
Why ? Because time running out. We need to be debating how to achieve the drastic cuts in curbon oxide emission that are required to reduce our impact on the climate, not wasting time endlessly rehashing a debate that was largely settled half a century ago.
Shibaji Mitra
With courtsy from New Scientist Environment (Science Journal)
Yet despite all the complexities, ever growing body evidence points to a clear picture ------ the world's is warning , this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emission continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences.
Yes, there are still big uncertainties in some prediction, but these swing both ways. For example, the response of clouds clouds slow the warming or speed it up.
Though was not only the first to predict that human-induced global warming might be a problem.The calculation would take 3000 years for industrial emissions at 1896 levels to double curbon dioxide, and that this would not happen because the oceans would absorb most of this extra curbon dioxide(CO2).
Few years later some scientists came up with another objection. Their test tube experiments suggested that adding more curbon dioxide to the atmosphere would not trap any more heat.
Curbon Dioxide absorbs only certain frequencies of infrared radiation (heat), and in the atmosphere were already high enough to absorb 100% of the radiation at these frequencies. The experiments also appeared to show that the frequencies absorbed by curbon dioxide largely overlapped with those absorbed by water, another reason to think that adding more curbon dioxide to the atmosphere would make no difference.
So by the 1950s, it was starting to become clear that human activity was causing curbon oxide levels to rise and that this rise and that this rise would reduce the loss or heat into space. The implication seemed clear : provide all the other factors affecting the climate did not change, the Earth would warm.
But it was a conclusion scientists were reluctant to draw. There were many uncertainties and complexities involved. And at the same time other climate factors has changed : : the earth had cooled slightly after 1940. It was only in the late 1970s that a handful of scientists, began to warn that global warming was an imminent problem..
To non-scientists, these arguments can sound very persuasive. Why do carbon dioxide levels only start of interglacial period for instance ?
Why ? Because time running out. We need to be debating how to achieve the drastic cuts in curbon oxide emission that are required to reduce our impact on the climate, not wasting time endlessly rehashing a debate that was largely settled half a century ago.
Shibaji Mitra
With courtsy from New Scientist Environment (Science Journal)
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