Tuesday 22 February 2011

The Natural Causes of Global Warming and Its Environmental Consequences


Global warming has been an issue of discussions by world leaders and environmentalist and different solutions have been proffered on ways to curb this social menace. Lots of natural and human induced activities have been traced to global warming with an increase of temperature in our planet.
This condition is caused as a result of a progressive rise in the average temperature on the earth's surface and a result of sunlight being trapped by various greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane which are either released through natural components of the planet or human induced activities.
Over the years, global warming skeptics and environmentalist have argued that human induced activities or natural disasters are actually responsible for the rise of global warming and the drastic climatic change across the globe. To get to the root of this issue, we have to consider some of the natural causes of global warming as well as human induced factors responsible for this surge.
Enumerated below are some of the human induced factors.
Pollution: Pollution is one of the major contributors and undoubtedly a depleting factor of the environment. Vehicle and industrial pollution are two major types of pollution that are directly associated with global warming. Various harmful gases that are released in the atmosphere such as burning of fossil fuel to generate power by the release of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. These gases are trapped in the sunlight and thereby causing global temperature to rise.
Mining: After a mining activity by digging the earth, a large amount of methane gases beneath the surface of the earth are released into the air, and after a long time it can cause serious damaging effect to the atmosphere.
Deforestation: While plants give out oxygen and absorbs carbon dioxide, excessive cutting of the trees by humans causes an increase in the carbon dioxide and less oxygen in circulation and makes it remain static, thereby contributing immensely to global warming.
Population: With an increase in the global population, the release of more carbon dioxide generally leads to more carbon dioxide in circulation and thereby causing global warming.
Some natural causes of global warming includes,
Solar variations: In the process of orbiting the sun, the earth changes angle and tilt over a period. As a result of this change, the planet variates because of the level of sunlight received which also causes a significant rise in temperature.
Volcanic eruptions: Volcanic eruptions also cause global warming by the release carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The release of methane gases; Methane is a greenhouse gas which has also trap sunlight and thereby making the planet a bit warmer.
These are few among a large list of causes and of this disastrous condition which in turn are responsible for the gradual increase in temperature with a pending disaster caused globally either physically or scientific without minding it's devastating consequences.
Mass extinction and climatic change are just some of its many effects. Global warming unfortunately has continued to multiply and has caused a major concern on how to balance its effect between developed, underdeveloped and developing countries of the world. It has an overwhelming effect on the environment as well as plants, animals and human beings. Extinction of animals or plant will equally affect man but since animal, plants and man depends on them selves for survival any extinction on one will adversely affect the other by mounting up pressure on the other.
Amaechi is also an expert on compagnie d'assurance sante and compagnie d'assurance
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Amaechi Ekufu - EzineArticles Expert Author