Essay on The Environment

Submitted By Kristiinmarts
Words: 1012
Pages: 5

Environment
Climate change is an ongoing process of the nature and environment we live in. It has never stopped and never will. The one thing that changes with climate change is the pace of it. It has been brought to our attention that in the past years it has only accelerated and if no measures will be taken to prevent the fast acceleration then the consequences might be devastating. Already there are animal species extinct (frogs and mountain-dwellers)(The Associated Press) or at the brink of extinct (penguins and polar bears). Besides species dying we have a major worry of our major energy source – peak oil. If this is not enough for people to think twice about their actions then we really are in serious trouble.
Global warming is the effect of the greenhouse effect. As UNEP puts it then the greenhouse effect is the consequence of ‘atmospheric greenhouse gases warm the Earth by trapping the Sun’s radiation near the Earth’s surface.’(UNEP, 1993: 7) All the trapped gases are those that warm the Earth even more. Eventually with the way people live nowadays more of greenhouse gasses stay in bigger amount inside Earth’s surface and that makes the climate rises bigger and faster. There are computers with what the weather is predicted with the purpose to exactly stimulate climate changes and they are called General Circulation Models (GCMs). “The GCMs divide the earth and the atmosphere into a three-dimension grid and are able to calculate the way in which temperature, wind, humidity and other variables are likely to change under different conditions.”(Foley, 1991: 20). A lot of trust has been put into those computers but with the way our technology has developed and still continues to develop that trust has been earned. Most of our information comes from those computers which are situated in bigger countries like USA, UK, Russia and some more.
Climate change has a big impact on environment and society. “The environmental changes would be in ice and snow, oceans and coast, the hydrological cycle and ecosystems and vegetation. The impacts on society would be in water resources, food and agriculture, coastal dwellers, economic activity and human settlements and health.”(UNEP,1993 :13) A big impact will be on different animal species. From the climate impact to the ice, snow and oceans already polar bears and penguins are in danger of extinct, there are more floods in the world and even tsunamis and earthquakes are bigger and occurring more often. Since basically everything in this world is linked to each other then if some things will change, everything in the world will be affected from that. Not only has the climate a big affect on animals but also humans and nature. In the 1950 there was about 15% of land covered in tropical forests and by the year 2000 there has been left only about 7% of that. Some of it is due to climate but also some of the fault is by human hand.

A big problem for climate change is peak oil. Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction used is reached, after which the rate of production becomes very difficult.(Wikipedia) The usage of oil and coal has risen in massive amounts. Lots of countries have reached their peak in oil usage which will make those countries pay a lot of money to get the amount of oil they need to make it through. Since peak oil does not mean that the oil has finished, it just means that it is more and more difficult to reach it and that itself costs a lot more. Peak oil is used in many different things, of which most are necessary to live then that means that even the simplest things will be more expensive.
All these problems are brought in front of us and luckily some amount of people and countries are doing something to prevent things going very bad and a