Disclosure Article on Global Warming

Global warming and its effects, explained in a simple way

The global warming and climate change are today everywhere: in the press, in specialized documentaries and in the mouths of politicians of different ideological persuasion. But what exactly is global warming? When it started? ¿Why is it so important?

Let's start by remembering that we live on a planet made up of a more or less rocky surface (the land), flooded with water in 70% of its total area (the oceans) and surrounded above by a ball of gases more or less homogeneous (the atmosphere). These three elements are in continuous exchange of matter and energy, in different cycles or circuits that affect each other.

Let us take the water cycle as an example: it is heated by the action of the sun and evaporates, ascending to the clouds where it is cools and condenses to fall back as rain, snow, or hail, to flow back down rivers and groundwater into the seas. This cycle is called the hydrological cycle, and it is not the only one that exists on the planet: the carbon cycle, which encompasses other actors and other times, is another very important circuit.

In the carbon cycle, the organic material containing a large number of these atoms decomposes upon death living beings and transmit your molecules to other living beings that feed on the body, and also to the atmosphere, in the form of organic gases, many of which are captured by the plants, such as carbon dioxide (CO₂) and used during photosynthesis to make starches and other organic compounds.

As we can see, it is an efficient recycling dynamic, which however has an impact important in the atmosphere, since carbon-rich gases are heavy gases, capable of retaining radiation of the solar energy and prevent it from dispersing into space. These gases are capable of heating the atmosphere, retaining the sun's heat and preventing it from escaping. Something known as the greenhouse effect.

The abundance of these gases in the atmosphere, therefore, is an important factor that determines the heat of the planet and affects the type of climates that exist. to major temperature planet, there is more water vapor in the atmosphere and there is less freezing capacity, so that ice and snow polar ice caps and summits melt, which causes an increase in the water level of the seas and a change in their balance chemical.

Life, therefore, has had a long-term impact on the fate of the planet since its inception. For example, when the first plants arose and the world was filled with oxygen for the first time, the climate changed dramatically, because until then the atmosphere was full of methane molecules (CH₄), released by the metabolism of bacteria anaerobic decomposers (such as those that exist today in our own intestines).

Methane is a heavy, carbon-rich gas, but it rapidly oxidizes under ultraviolet light to carbon dioxide, a lighter gas. Thus, the atmosphere changed and the temperature of the planet decreased, which cost the lives of thousands of species which perished en masse, in what we now call the Paleoproterozoic Oxygen Catastrophe (about 2.4 billion years ago).

human intervention

Similarly, just over two centuries ago, the human species began its Industrial Revolution and forever changed the way we work, move, and handle tools. The machine could do things much more quickly, easily and continuously than people, but it required energy in return. And the energy must also be produced.

From then on, humanity focused its efforts on obtaining more and better energy to feed its numerous machines, which allowed it to produce more food in less time, move through the air, the seas or the land, and even, much later, reach space. The main way of obtaining energy that we had was the burning of certain materials of fossil origin, of organic origin, which, being very rich in carbon, produce an intense flame during their combustion.

The first of these materials was mineral coal, which is nothing more than the remains of fossilized trees. Later we discovered natural gas and lastly oil, highly flammable substances from which we learned to refine powerful fuels. Since then, we have used them in internal combustion engines to power our vehicles, to heat our homes and light our kitchens, but, above all, to produce electric power.

This revolution changed humanity forever. It allowed us to grow and that in turn increased our needs for food, transportation and energy. But at the same time, it has been having a cumulative effect on the environment.

On the one hand, the burning of these powerful fuels produces different types of gases, some very toxic but unstable such as carbon monoxide (CO), but above all they produce carbon dioxide (CO₂), the same gas that we exhale when breathing (which would not be a problem, since there is a carbon cycle that would take care of it). But we have also cut down huge forests Y jungles to extend our farmland, we have polluted ecosystems whole and reduced biodiversity so that the environment has been losing its ability to naturally capture and assimilate excess carbon in the atmosphere.

The consequence of this increased carbon in the atmosphere is exactly the opposite of the Paleoproterozoic Great Oxygenation Event: the atmosphere has gone filling with heavy gases that retain heat and global temperatures have been increasing in recent decades by just over a degree and a half centigrade.

This might seem like a very small thing, but it's not just that it's a little warmer, it's that we've started an environmental reaction in chain, which will warm the world more and more until it becomes a very different (and possibly crueler) place from the one where our species.

The consequences

The consequences of global warming are complex and are grouped into what is known as climate change: more extreme temperatures (summers warmer climates and drier, harsher winters), desertification in dry places, and melting of glaciers and permafrost at the poles, which release more water in the oceans (which increase their level) and in turn more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, since this gas is frozen and in physical form in the poles.

The process that we have set in motion could increase its speed and in a few decades become irreversible, transforming the planet into a very different version of the one that suits us. Thousands of species will become extinct, impoverishing their ecosystems and changing our ways of life forever, and the climate crisis will continue along paths that we simply cannot predict.

The actions to prevent it are clear: we must stop bombing methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, since the profitability of their industries it will not be useful to us in preventing climate change. We must obtain our energy in a more friendly way with the atmosphere, that does not generate so many greenhouse gases, and we must change some of our habits to attend to what is an environmental process that we must become aware of responsible.

References:

• "Scientific popularization" in Wikipedia.
• “Global warming” in Wikipedia.
• "What is global warming?" in National Geographic.
• “What is global warming and what are its causes?” in BBVA.
• “Climate change for children – What is it?” (video) in Smile and Learn.

What is science popularization?

Is named scientific popularization to the set of articles, essays Y explanatory studies that address a scientific topic, but do so from a point of view accessible to all audiences, with the intention of educating the reader on the subject. In this it differs from specialized scientific publications, since the latter aim at a public educated in the matter, that is, endowed with certain technical and academic knowledge.

Scientific dissemination plays a very important role in the massification and democratization of knowledge, and is always part of the the need to “translate” scientific thinking into terms that are easier to understand and can be handled by the general public. A famous example of popular science was the television show Cosmos: a personal journey written and conducted by the American astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan between September and December 1980.

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