Pollution Essay: Do We Cause Climate Change?

Introduction

For this individual research, the topic I will be looking at is climate change. I chose this topic because climate change is an environmental issue over the globe that jeopardizes people’s livelihoods and I am interested in looking more into details. Firstly, climate change is defined as the long-term shift in weather patterns including precipitation, temperatures, cloud cover and more in a specific region or globally. I will be looking particularly at deforestation as it is the clearing of forests which causes climate change. Rainforests not only house more than half of the world’s plant and animal species, they are also known as lungs of Earth. It is because they reabsorb tremendous amount of carbon dioxide and produce oxygen

Other than that, rainforests are land based “carbon sink” where they utilize the greenhouse gases by absorbing the carbon dioxide and release oxygen. A world without trees will result in climate imbalance. With the alarming rate of deforestation, the great amounts of carbon dioxide will cause global warming to accelerate. It is because greenhouse gases trap the heat from the Sun and they are unable to escape therefore increasing the temperature.

Trees no longer absorb and store large amount of water with their roots which will disrupt water cycles and rainfall pattern. The local climate will become drier and floods will also occur in some areas. Deforestation increases soil erosions and contaminants will flow into our water supply which decreases the quality of our drinking water. Roots of the trees can no longer hold up the soil and it will become loose. With that, landslides are more prompt to occur. Other than that, shade is no longer provided by the canopy of the trees and sun rays reach directly to the ground. It will cause the soil to dry out making it unfit for growth of trees. The atmospheric temperature will make conditions for the ecology difficult and species might not be able to adapt to the new