the line is going up
Global warming and Climate Change
The chances that these terms are new to you is probably near zero. Yes, I have heard it too. But I could not answer myself for simple questions such as “Isn’t the earth warming and cooling all the time?”, “Our planet temperature will increase by 3°C but what does that even mean?”. So, if you are ignorant about this whole climate change thingy like me all this time, this post is for you.
What actually it is?
But first, greenhouse effect. If oversimplified, our earth absorbs its energy from sun and reflects some of it in the form of infrared waves. Greenhouse gases like CO2, traps them from reflecting back to space. This process is what makes our planet maintain an ideal temperature for life to thrive in. And now to global warming, It’s the long-term rise in the overall temperature of our planet through greenhouse effect. Our earth has been warming and cooling for millions of years in this process. That’s also the reason for occurrence of ice ages.
Now, what’s wrong?
Now it should be clear that more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere equals increased atmospheric temperature. Now imagine digging tons of CO2 and releasing it to the atmosphere from the underground. This is what decades of burning fossil fuel is doing to our planet. In our planet’s relative timeframe, this is a sudden and drastic change.
According to NASA,
Since the onset of industrial times in the 18th century, human activities have raised atmospheric CO2 by 50% - meaning the amount of CO2 is now 150% of its value in 1750.
As per the current reports, global average temperature(of last 30 years) have reached 1.28°C since its pre industrial levels and we are closing down on reaching 1.5°C soon at the current rate. Back in 2015, at the climate change conference held in Paris, all the countries got together and decided to reduce the carbon emissions. Its aim is to keep the rise in temperature below 2°C, preferably within 1.5°C. But we are nowhere near achieving it as you can see from the graph below.
Okay, But what does this all even mean for us?
No, there will be no apocalyptic events as shown in the movies. It will be a gradual but a definite decrease in the quality of individual’s life and communities worldwide. The combination of high humidity and high temperature will make some places in the world simply unlivable. Please read about what wet bulb temperature is and why it matters to know the reason.
The effects of global warming will be specific to regions but overall there will be more heatwaves, floods, wildfires, sea level rise and so on. I suggest you to take a look at this site for an overall view. Let’s take Chennai floods for an instance, it will be more frequent and more intense, the heatwaves we had this year in India will be multiplied in duration, occurrence. And we haven’t even started about socio-economic impact due to all these. The scary part is that our predictions could be wrong and our planet may be worsening even faster than we predicted.
If we don’t find a way out of this, it’s going to be real bad for the future of humanity.
Some links to take a look at,
A really cool comic graph on the increase in temperature.
All the lines that are either going up or going bad.
(this post was originally published on the internal zoho forum by me. keeping a copy here.)