Hello everyone! Welcome back to another blog post. As our blog has completed the three mediums of pollution, we will now be looking at the total environment. Following our style of blogging, we will first introduce the type of pollutant/pollution, followed by introducing related policies adopted to govern them. Today, we shall start off with the biggest issue of our generation – climate change.
Climate change and global warming
As many of us are aware, “climate change” is the changes to our climate due to the anthropogenic activities (Crutzen, 2006). However, climate change is also a catch all phrase that we may loosely use when talking about the effects of climatic global variations. It is important to note that climate change is a naturally occurring process owing to natural variations such as solar radiation that gave rise to glacial and inter-glacial periods (Beer, 2005). Living in the Anthropocene, where human actions are the dominant drivers of the environment, our actions have lead to (amongst other things) many drastic changes in our natural environment (Brook, 2005). Hence, the climate change that our blog is concerned about is anthropogenic (or man-made).
(Enhanced) Greenhouse effect
The effects of additional greenhouse gases have been thoroughly studied and understood as the main contributor to global warming as they trap heat in the atmosphere (IPCC, 2013). However, it is important to note that life cannot be supported without the greenhouse effect as these greenhouse gases act as a blanket to capture the heat produced from the sun (Hill, 2010).
The greenhouse effect is essential to support life on Earth, meaning that it is not inherently bad to have natural greenhouse effect on Earth. The issue arises when anthropogenic activities emit excess amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Rather than the naturally occurring greenhouse effect, the excess greenhouse gases emitted by humans causing global warming is termed as the “enhanced greenhouse effect” (AAS, 2020). Because the warming today is occurring at a rate faster than the natural climate changes the Earth has experienced (170x faster, in fact!) (Davey, 2020), the Earth systems are unable to regulate these changes sufficiently to protect life on Earth. This makes climate change a major cause of concern.
Conclusion
When looking at climate change and global warming, it is important to note how the Anthropocene has changed our global environment due to the enhanced greenhouse effect (AAS, 2020; Crutzen, 2006). It is important to clarify these geographical terms of “climate change” and “greenhouse effect” before diving deeper into this issue. In our next post, we will be exploring the different types of greenhouse gases and their anthropogenic sources.
Stay tuned!
Ryan
References
AAS. (2020). The enhanced greenhouse effect. Retrieved from https://www.science.org.au/curious/earth-environment/enhanced-greenhouse-effect
Beer, J. (2005). Solar variability and climate change. Memorie-Società Astronomica Italiana, 76(4), 751.
Brook, E. J. (2005). Tiny bubbles tell all. Science, 310(5752), 1285-1287.
Crutzen, P. J. (2006). The “anthropocene”. In Earth system science in the anthropocene (pp. 13-18): Springer.
Davey, M., 2020. Humans Causing Climate To Change 170 Times Faster Than Natural Forces. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/12/humans-causing-climate-to-change-170-times-faster-than-natural-forces> [Accessed 19 September 2020].
Hill, M. K. (2010). Understanding Environmental Pollution: Cambridge University Press.
IPCC. (2013). Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 1535 pp.
National Geographic. (2020). Goldilocks Principle. Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/goldilocks-principle/