Just Shooting the Breeze and Watching the Climate Change

Michael Iuliano
March 11, 2019
Argumentative essay

Why has there been so much conversation about global warming? Many researchers and

scientist have been showing data on how the earth’s climate is demonstrating a very rapid shift in

global temperature. This shift in temperature is heating both the ocean and atmosphere. Now on

the day-to-day basis the temperature really not much hotter but the variations are becoming more

extreme and more frequent. These extremes are causing shifts on local weather patterns yielding

more frequent thunderstorms, tornados, and torrential rains, mudslides and flooding. And it’s

not just in the United States. In fact a large sheet of very old ice very strong sea ice in the Arctic

has begun to melt and break up, a result of prolonged warm temperatures in the region north of

(1)
Greenland.

Yes, climate change is a natural phenomenon and has been going on for billions of

years. But the change we are experiencing are happening in the distant past and slowly

over vast millennium but happening right now and over just a few decades. Barack

Obama once said that climate change, “is not some distant problem of the future. This is a

problem that is affecting Americans right now. Whether it means increased flooding,
greater vulnerability to drought, more severe wildfires — all these things are having an

impact on Americans as we speak”. (2)

How did this happen? When did it start? Whose fault is it? Well to answer these

questions we only need look back two hundred years ago to the beginning of the industrial

revolution.

As western civilization transitioned from a strictly agrarian economy to an industrial

based economy, the amount of energy required to fuel this growth became enormous. Coal

started being strip mined and burned in massive amounts to drive the old fashion blast furnaces,

and steam engines to push trains and other machines. This pumped an ever-increasing amount of

coal emissions into the air. Then the automobile with its gas guzzling internal combustion came

along dumping even more fossil fuel emissions in the atmosphere. Right about the same time

electricity started becoming an important part of modern living. Suddenly coal fire electrical

generation plants started cropping up burning even more coal adding to the already heavy fossil

fuel emission being dumped into the atmosphere. (2)

Ok so what you say, the atmosphere is humongous. How could burning fossil fuels like

coal, oil and gasoline ever change ratio of all the different gases in the atmosphere? The

atmosphere is made up of 78% nitrogen gas and about 21% oxygen. So just those two make up

99% of the atmosphere. The rest are just trace gases. So even 2 centuries of burning fossil fuels
has not changed the atmosphere very much. But it’s not so much about the overall change in

overall volume or ratio of gases in the atmosphere but more about the sudden shift in the amount

of trace gases.

How could a fraction of a percent cause any change in weather you ask? You can see

burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Once in the atmosphere it

aggressively acts to trap sunlight in the atmosphere. This action is similar to how a green house

is warm even in the winter. “A doubling of the trace molecule CO2 from 280 parts per

million to 560 parts per million is still a trace, but just like with arsenic, the difference between a

small trace and a larger trace is fatal”. (3) This emission is a direct process but not the only one

impacting the climate.

Let look at the indirect things that impact carbon dioxide emissions. For example, when

you were a kid did you have a car? No right? But you have one now. So, does everyone that

was a kid and dreamed of driving. That implies that as the population grows the demand for

fossil fuel increase along with their emission.

So, population growth is driving emissions. Now let’s look at other things impacting the

atmosphere. Take for instance farming and food production. We have a very large dairy cows’

population and an even larger population cattle. All of these millions of animals produce

methane as a byproduct of digestion. Methane is released directly and constantly from each and
every cow and is an even more aggressive greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. (4) Then to make

matters worse the indirect impact of this is that the western diet of milk, steaks and hamburgers

have gone worldwide. This demand has caused an increase in the population of cows and

therefore accelerated the release of methane.

That’s not all. Now lets examine housing and buildings. Do you like to be warm in the

winter and cool the summer? Well most homes and buildings burn fossil fuels for heat. That

means our homes are dumping fossil fuel emission directly in the atmosphere. Indirectly, the

older they are the less efficient they are so the more emissions they produce. On top of that in

order to keep cool, you draw electricity from the grid, which is mostly made by burning fossil

fuels like oil, natural gas and coal. (5)

Oh, it gets worse. Now when your refrigerator or air conditioner springs a leak the

chlorofluorocarbons escape. These are an even more aggressive greenhouse gas than methane.

Then indirectly as there are millions of leaky old inefficient refrigerator and air conditioners all-

consuming excessive power and causing unnecessary fossil fuel emission. (6)

Lastly, I will give you one more. Let’s talk about deforestation. What does cut down

trees have to do with the weather? Trees are a tremendous force in the constant recycling of

carbon in the atmosphere through carbon fixation photosynthesis. If you reduce the overall

amount of biomass on the planet you effectively reduce the very thing that is pulling the carbon
out of the air. So more just builds up. It becomes a viscous circle of ever escalating carbon

dioxide. (7) This is all indirectly linked to the personal printer. Those reams of paper have to

come from somewhere.

So almost everything we do is affecting the atmosphere. In the short term these changes

can affect the local weather but in the long term it is warming the climate, which will impact the

entire planetary biosphere.

 References

1) Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Carbon-Cycle-T-M-

Wigley/dp/0521018625 pg26

2) MCSWEENEY, R. (2016, March 18). Analysis: The most 'cited' climate change papers.
Retrieved from
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-the-most-cited-climate-change-papers

3) Retrieved from
http://www.enviropedia.org.uk/Global_Warming/Industrial_Revolution.php

4) Retrieved from
https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/cows-contribute-global-warming-cars.html

5) Retrieved from
https://engineering.purdue.edu/~yanchen/paper/2014-19.pdf

6) “Global Warming.” National Geographic. Web. 02 Dec. 2011

Retrieved from
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/aerosols/

7) Retrieved from
http://climate.org/deforestation-and-climate-change/