Global Environment team 6

Man-made Causes

If somebody is interested in global warming he/she would probably know what IPCC is. IPCC stands for intergovernmental panel on climate change and it is the biggest group of scientists formed of united nation. They review the latest scientific findings and write a report summarizing all that is known about global warming. Scientists have looked at the natural cycles and events that are known to influence climate but this huge climate change can't occur by natural factors alone.The only way to explain the pattern is to include the effect of GHGs emitted by human.

Human emit GHGs in a variety of ways. The first reason is pollution such as burning fossil fuels which emits carbon dioxide and mining coal and oil which makes methane escape. Most GHGs come from the combustion of fossil fuels from cars, factories and electricity production. The second reason is a population growth. More people need more food and use more transportation. In order to support all the people, wee need more fossil fuels, more agriculture, and more manure. In addition people breathe out carbon dioxide more and more at the same time and cut down trees for their homes and buildings.

Since 1990, yearly emissions have gone up by about 6 billion metric tons of "carbon dioxide equivalent' worldwide, more than a 20 percent increase.

We are not replacing trees so we just take advantage of our natural resources and give nothing back in return.

Ewha Woman's University

Environmental Engineering

GE class(35949-01)

Made by..

Kim Moonkyung

Lee Hayeon

Park Jieun

with Professor Park

Natural causes

(natural forcing of climate change)

Global warming is a non-linear process and occurs widely so causes of global warming can vary in many ways. There are both man-made causes and natural causes. Carbon dioxide from human activity may affect atmosphere of the earth but if we compare to the natural forcing like solar sunspot cycle or solar radiation human can only have a slight influence on the earth’s atmosphere. Moreover the climate models predicting future climate changes have uncertainty.

Some researchers found out that the periodical solar activity makes the earth’s temperature go up and down through ice core records. This increasing temperature is not the first time in global history. This phenomenon is very common if we look at earth’s history from the beginning so there’s no need to regard this climate change this seriously like environmentalists these days. Furthermore there were several time periods that the temperature of the Earth was higher than today but human couldn’t affect all kinds of increasing temperature time periods in the past. Some scientists predict that there will be more and more disasters and if we don’t solve global warming, finally Earth will be no longer available for humans to live. However the globe already went through several ice ages and higher temperature periods and it is just fine now.

Of course human activity emits carbon dioxide; however, there is a carbon cycle, so called ‘C-cycle’, in the earth. People think the increase of the amount of carbon dioxide can only cause global warming but we can find many papers that according to increase of carbon dioxide the rate of plants growing also increases. Similar to that example there are unpredictably many interactions between all global warming factors so it’s impossible for human to know the exact procedures and causes of global warming.

AGREE OR DISAGREE: IS THAT YOUR OPINION?

Man-made Causes