Global Warming: The Causes Of Climate Change

Currently, global warming is one of the prominent international issues that affect the Earth, but what is global warming exactly? What causes it, how can it be solved? These are the few common questions that are often asked when people try to understand this issue. To summarize the complexities of the issue, global warming is when global temperatures rise above the average over a short period of time and cause many changes to the environment. Examples of changes from global warming include weather, agricultural patterns, trade, damages in economies and infrastructures (Easterbrook, 2016; & Leahy, 2017).

Next, there is major controversy on what causes global warming, but the most common theory is the impacts of human activity and the largest

Also, an engineer Guy Callender creates a theory that larger amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are causing global warming with the rising global temperatures occurring around the same time, however, meteorologists did not believe him at the time and the dismissal of Callender's theory emphasizes the start of the controversy of the causes of global warming (A brief history of climate change, 2013). During the 1960’s, scientists discover that the effects of global warming over time will cause sea levels to rise from Antarctica's ice sheets melting (The discovery of Global Warming, 2017). Awareness had finally begun over global warming at the beginning of the 1970’s with Earth Day being celebrated for the first time (The discovery of Global Warming, 2017). Last, studies of global warming explain about how much damage in terms of global GDP would be caused by this issue first suggesting that global warming will have an effect financially as well as the environment. Overall, this international issue has been studied since the early nineteenth century, created major impacts over time, has changed the Earth’s environment, and economies

What are the solutions? How can they be achieved and what are the pros and cons? To start, the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere needs to become stable since this will help slow down the damaging effects that global warming causes because these gases reflect heat from the sun making temperatures rise (Desonie, 2016 & Nicklen, 2017). From research in order to stop the majority of the damage caused by this issue, about 50 to 80 percent of the number of greenhouse gases released would have to be reduced (Nicklen, 2017). According to Paul Nicklen, “A commonly cited goal is to stabilize GHG concentrations around 450-550 parts per million (ppm), or about twice pre-industrial levels” (2017, qtd. as cited in Nicklen, 2017). The solution is possible if countries began to convert to renewable sources of energy that would produce very little to no emissions; examples of renewable energy include hydropower, wind power, and biofuel (Nicklen, 2017). This solution will provide many benefits for the planet, both environmentally and financially, but will have some consequences as