Assignment 1: Critic on global warming Global warming has become a major topic of interest in last decade.

Global warming is the rise in the average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans since the late 19th century and its projected continuation. A lot of research has happened in weather prediction, and climate model. They have equipped researchers to look into the future of earth, of course with some assumptions. Since the early 20th century, Earth's mean surface temperature has increased by about 0.8 C (1.4 F), with about two-thirds of the increase occurring since 1980. Global warming theory proposes that it is primarily caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases produced by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Scientists are more than 90% certain about this theory. If the theory holds correct, then predictions are that within next 40-50 years, there will be huge climate changes, including increase in sea levels, very high temperature in arctic regions, tornados etc. It is clear how this climate change will affect human society and planet disastrously. On one side there is industrialisation happening, which is necessary for developing countries and is also going to produce green house gases, and on another side the theory proposes that it will cause a great danger in next few years, so we should stop using fuels. Above being the reason of so many people taking interest in global warming. There is also a theory which proposes that global warming is the biggest conspiracy theory of modern time. It was created by some politicians in order to promote nuclear power, but it got bigger and got a lot funding, and now it has become a big corrupted filed, where scientific results are seen in manipulative ways to generate corrupted results and to get huge amount of funding for saying that global warming theory is true. They also claim that global warming theory will destroy the African dream of self sufficiency and industrialization. It has sure become a very big field not only for scientists or researchers, but for every individual. Any product in market nowadays is marketed as green or pollution free etc. Not even that, but governments have passed very strict laws for reduction of carbon emissions. Funding for green energy research has increased tremendously. Some of major organizations working on controlling global warming are IPCC and Greenpeace. Some scientific details [1] are presented below, on which the theory is based. Theory suggests that solar radiations gets reflected from the earth, but there are some gases called green house gases like, water vapour, CO2, methane, ozone which dont let the heat go away and trap them below a layer in atmosphere around 11-12 km height. This is called green house effect which keeps the earth warm, but if these gases are so much in the atmosphere, that will cause the atmosphere to heat up, and glaciers will melt and sea levels will rise, this will cause many environmental changes, and will cause storms also. Carbon dioxide and temperature relation:

Scientists have deducted temperature trends and carbon dioxide concentration trends over last 800,000 years from Antarctica ice cores and isotope studies. This suggests that in all those years carbon dioxide has never gone above 300 ppm and its current value is 392 ppm. It is also seen that over the past many years, carbon dioxide concentration and temperature graphs are similar, but carbon dioxide concentration graph lags the temperature by 800-1000 years. This lag has decreased to 5 months at present. There is a theory that suggests that high temperature effects causes Sea waters to emit carbon dioxide in huge amount, and thus it lags temperature. But since the lag has decreased now, and it is believed that in past, climate changes were because of astronomical changes, and now they are mostly due to human actions, scientists suggest that global

temperature increase is due to human caused carbon dioxide and other green house gases concentration

increase. Human caused global warming OR sun caused global warming?

A few studies say that the present level of solar activity(measured by sun spots) is historically high as determined by sunspot activity and other factors. Solar activity could affect climate either by variation in the Sun's output or, more speculatively, by an indirect effect on the amount of cloud formation. Some researchers suggest that solar activity for the last 60 to 70 years may be at its highest level in 8,000 years [4]. Trends of solar activity and temperature match very accurately, but very recent climate models shows that at the most 30% of the strong warming since then can be of solar origin. Carbon dioxide emitted by human activities or volcanoes.

There is a controversy that volcanoes, other animals than humans, emit more carbon dioxide then humans, but recent models suggest that fossil fuel use produces more than 10 times carbon dioxide than volcanoes per year [3]. Reliability of climate models:

Climate models have lot parameters as inputs, and lot assumptions. A small error in measurement or assumption can give vastly different results [2]. Climate models are studied from 1980s. It is also hard to verify climate models as the changes in worlds climate are very much slow and takes a long time. Due to slow changes, one is not able to see the whole picture and say that whether that was a fluctuation or trend. Currently all predictions of global warming are based on these climate models. These models suggest that temperature should raise more at the height of 11-12 km. But contradicting that, weather balloon reports show that actually temperature are not that much high at those heights. Models have been able to give good results for ground surface but not for those heights. So, at this point of time, climate model improvement and verification seems to be very much important. Predictions by climate models [2], if we suppose global warming theory is true:

Continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century, with warming expected to be greatest over land and at most high northern latitudes, Snow cover is projected to contract. Widespread increases in thaw depth are projected over most permafrost regions. Sea ice is projected to shrink in both the Arctic and Antarctic under all SRES scenarios. In some projections, arctic late-summer sea ice disappears almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century. It is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent It is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense,

Extra tropical storm tracks are projected to move poleward, with consequent changes in wind, precipitation and temperature patterns, Increases in the amount of precipitation are very likely in high latitudes, while decreases are likely in most subtropical land regions Contraction of the Greenland Ice Sheet is projected to continue to contribute to sea level rise after 2100, whilst the vulnerability of the Antarctic ice sheet could increase to warming, increasing future sea level rise. Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations will lead to increasing acidification of the ocean. There are also predictions that before fossil fuels are empty, destructing effects of global warming will take place. Any ways, as the problem contains huge number of stake holders and huge money amount for funding, it is very hard to get transparent answers to questions, at this point of time, we should do whatever we can do to reduce pollution from our side, try to find a reliable alternate energy source, as anyways fossil fuels are scarce, and hope for the best.

References: 1. 2. 3. 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy Inter-Governmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), 2007: Summary for Policymakers http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm Leidig, Michael; Nikkhah, Roya (17 July 2004). "The truth about global warming it's the Sun that's to blame". London: Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 12 April 2007.