Is Climate Change Our Fault?

If you were to look only at what is above you would feel very worried and guilty. There are mechanisms throughout the planet that exacerbate the problem which were kicked off by humans. This shows that a small temperature rise can lead to a massive temperature rise. An example of this is the increase in temperature has caused the snow and ice over dead vegetation to melt. These plants, once they have died, release methane - this is known as permafrost

. This methane was trapped and therefore not released into the atmosphere. The snow melts and the methane is released. Methane is four times more potent than CO2  which makes it more of a threat. As the temperature rises more methane is released and this continues indefinitely. This is called a mechanism and makes it obvious why a small temperature rise can lead to global climate change.

The surface of the Earth reflects some of the Sun’s light. White surfaces reflect more light than other surfaces. The reflectivity of an object is called albedo. The seas are warming which is melting the Arctic from beneath. The Arctic is white because it is made out of ice. The reduction of the ice has lead to the global albedo being reduced. This then causes the Earth to warm up and the North Pole melts even further. Glaciers are also retreating which also reflect a lot of the sun’s light. This is occurring almost everywhere on the planet such as the Andes. The Peruvian glaciers have lost one fifth of their mass in less than 35 years. The ice turns into water and the glacial melt water goes down through valleys which may cause more floods when the river begins to meander (bend). This is because the river slows down and the excess water has nowhere to go apart from sideways. A lot of farm land would be affected and so would settlements. When the water reaches the sea the levels would rise as well. As more ice melts the higher the temperature goes.

Other factors that are not controlled by humans can account for climate change. A Serbian Scientist called Milutin Milankovitch. He stated that the Earth’s orbit around the sun was not always the same. Due to the gravitational pull of other planets over the Earth, the Earth changes its course around the sun. The amount of solar energy reaching the Earth varies according to this.

Inter-stellar dust prevents sunlight from reaching the Earth. This causes the Earth’s temperature to change or to change its normal patterns. The dust would decrease the Earth’s temperature and could cancel out the effects of global warming.

Sunspots are dark spots on the sun’s surface and they are large bursts of magnetic energy. The sunspots go up and down on an 11 year cycle. We have a cooling effect when we have large amounts of sunspot activity. In the last 10 years we have had a lot of sunspots but the Earth’s Global temperature has remained around the same. This could mean that the effects of Global warming have been balanced by sunspots.

Volcanic emissions also are a major factor in climate change. Scientists say that increased volcanism several million years ago may have lead to the downfall of the Dinosaurs. This is because volcanoes when they erupt they release soot and dust. This then could increase the atmospheric albedo. It would have to be a very large eruption and could lead to the temperatures going dramatically down. 

The Earth is on a cycle in which there are short peaks and troughs over thousands of years. The temperatures fall and rise extremely rapidly. Many factors can effect the global climate such as volcanism and the reflectivity of the Earth. A small temperature rise which may have been kicked off by humans may rapidly increase due to all these natural mechanism which give us positive feedback.

There are also natural factors on the Earth that will bring down the temperature or slow down climate change. An example of this is the forests are are getting smaller and vegetation reflect the least amount of light. As the forests disappear, they are replaced by deserts which have the highest albedo on the Earth. This may bring the temperature down therefore it is negative feedback.

Overall, humans are to blame for the initialising climate change but the other factors may exacerbate the problem. Positive feedback will drive the temperatures upwards like seen in the past. Humans have not been to blame for climate change as all the cycles have been kicked by something. This time it has been humans, other times it has been volcanoes.