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Climate Change – A Burning Topic

Climate change is a definition used to describe the transformation in the atmosphere on a global scale. Recent consequences of this have fallen under intense medial and scientific coverage in today’s industrial world.

It is a natural process which has occurred constantly in the past and is widely held as the reason for the ice age and other global events, scars of which can be found in our geography today.

Global warming of the planet is the product of an increase in carbon dioxide emissions, which blanket the higher areas of the atmosphere and prevent more and more warming UV rays from escaping. Scientists claim that the staggering rate of industrial growth on the planet could be leading to an international disaster.

Fact File

Many factors contribute to climate change. There are natural processes from plate tectonics dictating oceanic flow to varying solar activity that the sun uncontrollably radiates over time.

The most interesting however is volcano eruptions. They can throw ash into the atmosphere which can take six months to fall back to the ground.

However, a huge eruption known as an igneous province because of their size can cause ultimate climatic destruction. Experts theorise that these events shaped today’s climate change patterns and causes horrific amounts of extinction on a global scale.

Some evidence from the past natural activities have been confirmed by experts studying deposits of ice cores. Their findings, ancient air-bourne debris have been securely locked within them.

It is widely accepted that past ice ages have been caused by cataclysmic drops in temperatures after a steady rise in global temperature.

Speculation

For several years the patterns of these findings have signified that the next ice age to cover the earth is now overdue, and that human contribution to the atmosphere is merely delaying a normal and inevitable process.

However, recent publications on Nature.com, the international weekly journal of science has suggested that the delay may be another occurrence of a previous ‘warm period’ which lasted 28,000 years as opposed to the more common 12,000. It is also suggested elsewhere that human emissions into the air are responsible for the delay. Again, however, this is another speculation.

There are even theories that at one point in the earth’s life, the entire planet was covered in ice, and that it was eruption of super volcanoes that restored the balanced climate we live in today. But again, this is a speculation.

The Future

What can mankind do to sustain our lifestyle? Our industries? Our civilisations? The truth is nobody knows what to do. It is indeed true that man-made carbon emissions are contributing to the carbon blanket that traps the sun’s rays, but that is only one and wholly irreversible factor.

The other contributors and their affects on the future of climate are all based on theory and speculation. On deciding how to aid ‘against’ global warming and climate change on a public level, it boils down to a personal choice of what theory or study to take priority over another.

The problem, it seems, is deciding on what the world should consider as an answer.

By Tom Freeman