Imminent Consequences Of Global Warming - 1700 Words

Imminent Consequences of Global Warming There is a dire divide between scientists and politicians in the world that has potential to seriously harm the entirety of the Earth. Nothing represents that divide as closely as the debate over climate change. In a NASA article describing global warming and authored by Holli Riebeek, it was found that an almost unanimous amount, 97%, of climate scientists believe that there is strong evidence to confirm global warming (Riebeek) Many world governments reflect the American congress, in which over a quarter of Representatives and Senators obstinately assert that global warming is a lie, no matter what evidence is presented to the contrary. The depth of the misunderstandings became especially apparent†¦show more content†¦All objects in the universe emit light energy in the form of radiation, or light. The light still exists even though we can’t see all wavelengths because our human eyes evolved to be attuned to only certain types of light. Specifically, the kind of light we can see is only emitted by incredibly hot objects such as the sun, which emits light with a very small wavelength. Comparatively, something relatively cool like the Earth or a human body emits a very large wavelength. When the small wavelength light of the sun enters the atmosphere, most of it does not interact with greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide and methane) and simply passes through. Once the light hits the Earth, it can either be absorbed or reflected. In the case where it is reflected, its wavelength does not change and it has the same relatively high chance of passing back through the atmosphere as it did coming in. If the light is absorbed, it will eventually be reemitted by the Earth at a comparatively longer wavelength light, which interacts with the atmosphere far more frequently. This results in more of the emitted light becoming â€Å"trapped† in Earth’s atmosphere. If there are more greenhouse gases, i t essentially increases the degree of the cycle’s effect. Therefore, more of the light being trapped leads to the Earth having more energy, or equivalently, a larger temperature. Global warming, as the name might suggest, has already resulted in a rise of global temperature