Eleanor Babcock
9/18/15
Climate Science

Reading the IPCC report and listening to our guest speaker in class, Troy Knight, discussing climate change put a perspective between anthropomorphic climate change and the earth's natural cooling and warming systems. The science behind climate change is truly the root of all discussions taking place, whether it be climate denial, assertion of its presence, or research surrounding green house gas emissions, the science is the underlying argument for all discussions. It is the scientific evidence which also validates that our emission of carbon dioxide into the air is the cause of the period of warming on our earth.

Understanding the earth's natural cycle of weather patterns, temperatures and atmosphere helped me establish an understanding of how important it is to fight climate change. We are in an era of the melting of the most recent glacial ice sheet. the Earth goes through periods of ice ages with glacial formation and reduction. Between these ice sheets melting, the climate has been observed in the past to be very stable with no dramatic increases or decreases in temperature. Observations in recent global average temperature and sea level rise, there is an unnatural rise in temperature going against the normal stable temperature observed in the past from climate periods between glaciers. This is attributed to the amount of green house gases being pumped into the atmosphere by human activity.

The reason for the sped up process of carbon being emitted back into the atmosphere is because us humans have found ways to mine it out of the earth then pump it into the atmosphere. Coal in the ground is a result of dead decayed organic matter breaking down in the soil . While it was alive it up took CO2 from the atmosphere and stored it in its tissues. these decayed trees stayed under the soil and rock for millions of years. When we burn coal, we are burning the remnants of these decayed trees and putting that stored CO2 back into the atmosphere. Humans are causing global warming by consciously emitting more carbon into the atmosphere than it was meant to hold, thus resulting in increasing global temperatures.