global warming ke upar essay

Essay on Global Warming – Causes and Solutions

500+ words essay on global warming.

Global Warming is a term almost everyone is familiar with. But, its meaning is still not clear to most of us. So, Global warming refers to the gradual rise in the overall temperature of the atmosphere of the Earth. There are various activities taking place which have been increasing the temperature gradually. Global warming is melting our ice glaciers rapidly. This is extremely harmful to the earth as well as humans. It is quite challenging to control global warming; however, it is not unmanageable. The first step in solving any problem is identifying the cause of the problem. Therefore, we need to first understand the causes of global warming that will help us proceed further in solving it. In this essay on Global Warming, we will see the causes and solutions of Global Warming.

Causes of Global Warming

Global warming has become a grave problem which needs undivided attention. It is not happening because of a single cause but several causes. These causes are both natural as well as manmade. The natural causes include the release of greenhouses gases which are not able to escape from earth, causing the temperature to increase.

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Further, volcanic eruptions are also responsible for global warming. That is to say, these eruptions release tons of carbon dioxide which contributes to global warming. Similarly, methane is also one big issue responsible for global warming.

So, when one of the biggest sources of absorption of carbon dioxide will only disappear, there will be nothing left to regulate the gas. Thus, it will result in global warming. Steps must be taken immediately to stop global warming and make the earth better again.

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Global Warming Solutions

As stated earlier, it might be challenging but it is not entirely impossible. Global warming can be stopped when combined efforts are put in. For that, individuals and governments, both have to take steps towards achieving it. We must begin with the reduction of greenhouse gas.

Furthermore, they need to monitor the consumption of gasoline. Switch to a hybrid car and reduce the release of carbon dioxide. Moreover, citizens can choose public transport or carpool together. Subsequently, recycling must also be encouraged.

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For instance, when you go shopping, carry your own cloth bag. Another step you can take is to limit the use of electricity which will prevent the release of carbon dioxide. On the government’s part, they must regulate industrial waste and ban them from emitting harmful gases in the air. Deforestation must be stopped immediately and planting of trees must be encouraged.

In short, all of us must realize the fact that our earth is not well. It needs to treatment and we can help it heal. The present generation must take up the responsibility of stopping global warming in order to prevent the suffering of future generations. Therefore, every little step, no matter how small carries a lot of weight and is quite significant in stopping global warming.

हिंदी में ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर निबंध यहाँ पढ़ें

FAQs on Global Warming

Q.1 List the causes of Global Warming.

A.1 There are various causes of global warming both natural and manmade. The natural one includes a greenhouse gas, volcanic eruption, methane gas and more. Next up, manmade causes are deforestation, mining, cattle rearing, fossil fuel burning and more.

Q.2 How can one stop Global Warming?

A.2 Global warming can be stopped by a joint effort by the individuals and the government. Deforestation must be banned and trees should be planted more. The use of automobiles must be limited and recycling must be encouraged.

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Global Warming Definition, Causes, Effects, Impacts, Solutions

Global Warming is a long-term increase in average global temperature. Read about Global Warming Definition, Causes, Effects, Impact on Climate Change & Solutions for the UPSC exam.

Table of Contents

What is Global Warming?

Global Warming is a long-term increase in average global temperature. It is considered a natural phenomenon, but anthropogenic activities on earth, particularly post Industrial Revolution , have led to an increase in the rate of this temperature increase. Various Reports published by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have time and again highlighted that since 1850 human activities have led to an increase of about 1 degree Celsius in average global temperature. Most of this warming has taken place in the second half of the 20th century. The fact that 5 of the hottest recorded year have occurred since 2015 can help us better understand the calamitous impact of anthropogenic activities.

Global Warming Causes

Green House Gases also known as GHGs in the atmosphere trap the solar radiations that are reflected by the earth’s surface. Under normal circumstances, most of these radiations escape into outer space. However, the release of GHGs by anthropogenic activities has increased their concentration in the atmosphere. Thus, the earth is getting hotter and hotter.

Some of the common GHGs include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and water vapour, among others. The global warming potential of each GHG is different. For example, methane has a 25-time warming potential than carbon dioxide. Similarly, nitrous oxide has more than 250 times the warming potential than carbon dioxide. The top anthropogenic activities that are responsible for the release of GHGs are shown below.

Global Warming Definition, Causes, Effects, Impacts, Solutions_4.1

Global Warming and Green House Effect

Both phenomena are related to each other. Green House Gases also known as GHGs in the atmosphere trap the solar radiations that are reflected by the earth’s surface. Under normal circumstances, most of these radiations escape into outer space. However, the release of GHGs by anthropogenic activities has increased their concentration in the atmosphere. This is the primary cause of Global Warming .

Global Warming Effects

Increase in the average temperature of the earth.

According to IPCC reports, human-induced global warming is responsible for nearly 1 degree Celsius temperature rise vis a vis pre-industrial level. Data from NASA suggest that 2016 has been the hottest year on record.

Frequency of Extreme Weather Events is Increasing

Across the globe, extreme weather events have increased in occurrence. For example, forest fires in California have become an annual event. Also, it is increasing in frequency each year. Most recently, we have recorded the phenomena of heat waves in Antarctica. The intensity of cyclones in the Bay of Bengal region has increased. Similarly, the frequency of occurrence of El Niño and La Niña has reduced from once in 8–10 years to once in 3–4 years now. More frequent episodes of floods and drought are being recorded every year across the world.

Melting of Ice

According to IPCC, there is 10% less permafrost in North Hemisphere at present compared to the 1900s. Remote sensing data suggest Arctic ice is melting fast. Experts suggest that not only will the sea level rise with the melting of glaciers, but there is also a danger of new bacteria and viruses being released into the environment which has so far been trapped in ice sheets. This may lead to outbreaks of disease and pandemics which are beyond the control of human medical sciences.

Sea Level Rise and Acidification of Ocean

A report published by WMO, suggests that the rate of sea level rise has doubled for the period between 2013 and 2021 compared to the rate for the period between 1993 and 2002. Earth scientists are suggesting that if this phenomenon continues, many human-inhabited coastal areas will be submerged into the sea in the coming decades. Also, with the concentration of carbon dioxide rising in the atmosphere, oceans are absorbing more of it. This is leading to ocean acidification. The impact of this phenomenon can be disastrous for ocean biodiversity, particularly the coral reefs.

Adverse Impact on Terrestrial Ecosystems of the Earth

It has been recorded that many flora and fauna species are heading northwards in Northern Hemisphere. Significant changes have been observed in the migratory movements of birds across the world. Early arrival to their summer feeding and breeding grounds is quite evident. Expert biologists suggest that rising temperatures in the tropical and subtropical regions may lead to an outbreak of new diseases, which in turn may render many floral and faunal species extinct.

Social and Economic Impact

A rising number of extreme weather events will have an adverse impact on agriculture and fisheries. Rising global temperatures will have a negative impact on the productivity of human beings, particularly in tropical and subtropical regions of the earth. The impact on life and livelihoods of indigenous people across the world will be even more pronounced.

Global Warming Solutions

Global cooperation for reduction of emissions.

It is time that the target of containing the global average temperature rise within 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels is taken seriously. Also, global efforts should be based on a spirit of Common But Differentiated Responsibility. This will ensure that historical injustices done to the global south are duly acknowledged, and they have an equal chance to transform themselves into developed countries. Countries must act proactively to achieve Net Zero Emission status at the earliest.

Transition to Cleaner and Greener Forms of Energy

Thermal power plants based on coal should be made more efficient and inefficient ones should be phased off. Also, mass adoption of renewable forms of energy like solar should be promoted. Similarly, avenues for using hydrogen as energy fuel should be looked into. We must also explore the possibility of Nuclear fusion for energy generation, in addition to making nuclear fission-based energy generation safer.

Changes in Agricultural Practices and Land Use

Agriculture based on the use of nitrogenous fertilizers must be replaced with organic farming techniques. Also, methane gas released from agricultural and cattle waste must be trapped as biogas for domestic usage. Massive afforestation drives must be organized. Urban governments must make it a point to include green spaces in urban planning.

Improving Transportation System

The advent of E-vehicles is a welcome change, but we need to make the batteries used in these vehicles more efficient. Urban planners must make public transportation systems inherent as a benchmark of good urban planning. Also, urban planning should be such that it promotes more walking and cycling habits among the residents.

Behavioural Changes

All the above discussions will have no meaning if we as individuals are not sensitive enough. We need to make reducing, reusing and recycling a mantra of our living. It should be our civic duty to save water, and wildlife and raise awareness among others.

Solar Geoengineering

Solar geoengineering, a proposed climate intervention method, aims to counteract global warming by reflecting a portion of the sun’s rays back into space. One prominent approach involves injecting substances like sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to create reflective aerosols. These particles can scatter sunlight, reducing the Earth’s temperature. However, solar geoengineering is a topic of debate, with concerns about its side effects, such as disrupted weather patterns and potential geopolitical risks. Research in this field is ongoing, but it remains a theoretical concept with limited practical implementation.

Can Solar Geoengineering Halt Global Warming?

Solar geoengineering, specifically solar radiation management (SRM), is under scrutiny as a potential method to mitigate global warming. SRM involves reflecting sunlight away from Earth, often by injecting substances like sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to create reflective aerosols. However, its effectiveness remains a subject of debate, with concerns about potential side effects and ethical implications. While research in this field is ongoing, solar geoengineering is currently in a theoretical stage, with limited practical implementation.

Global Warming Conclusion

It is rightly said that “Charity begins at home.” Climate action will be more efficient if we go by this spirit. To begin with, each individual can make sure that what is happening in their house and immediate surroundings is in harmony with the environment. If this can happen, all the policies we are making at the local, national, regional and global levels will give far better results.

Global Warming UPSC

Each year, we read about rising global temperatures. Also, catching the headlines is the news related to disasters caused by events like cyclones, forest fires, floods and drought. All these phenomena can be attributed to one single cause which is global warming.

Global Warming is a long-term increase in average global temperature. It is considered a natural phenomenon, but anthropogenic activities on earth, particularly post-Industrial Revolution, have led to an increase in the rate of this temperature increase.

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Why is global warming a problem?

Global Warming at present rate can lead to disastrous impacts like rising sea level, out break of new diseases, extreme weather events among others.

What are 3 causes of global warming?

Human induced green house gas emission due to activities like agriculture, industrial emissions, transportation are the top 3 causes of global warming.

What are 5 effects of global warming?

Rising sea level, out break of new diseases, extreme weather events, changes in biodiversity and melting of glaciers are top 5 effects of global warming.

Why global warming is important?

Global warming at its natural rate is important to keep up the temperature of earth within the range that makes it habitable. This makes global warming important.

Can we control global warming?

Number of mitigation measures like shifting to cleaning forms of energy and transportation can be taken to control global warming.

Who help with global warming?

Global Warming is a collective challenge for entire humanity. Citizens, civil societies, governments and businesses must act in unison to address it.

I, Sakshi Gupta, am a content writer to empower students aiming for UPSC, PSC, and other competitive exams. My objective is to provide clear, concise, and informative content that caters to your exam preparation needs. I strive to make my content not only informative but also engaging, keeping you motivated throughout your journey!

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ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के प्रभाव (Effects of Global Warming in Hindi)

हमारी पृथ्वी के चारों ओर का वायुमंडल एक कांच की खिड़की की तरह है जो सूर्य से आने वाले अधिकांश विकिरण को पृथ्वी के धरातल तक प्रवेश करने तो देता है, किन्तु पृथ्वी द्वारा वापस भेजे जाने वाले लंबे विकिरण को अंतरिक्ष में जाने से रोकता है। बाहर जाने वाले इस लंबे अवरक्त विकिरण को ग्रीनहाऊस गैस द्वारा अवशोषित कर लिया जाता है जो कि वायुमंडल में साधारण रूप में मौजूद रहती हैं। वायुमंडल पुनः इसके कुछ भाग को वापस पृथ्वी पर भेजता है विकिरण का यही वापसी प्रवाह ग्रीनहाऊस प्रवाह कहलाता है जो कि पृथ्वी को गर्म रखता है। इस प्रकार वायुमंडलीय ग्रीनहाऊस गैस पृथ्वी के ऊपर एक कंबल की तरह काम करती है जो पृथ्वी से बाह्य अंतरिक्ष को भेजी जाने वाली ऊष्मा को नियंत्रित करती है ताकि पृथ्वी की गर्मी को स्वास्थ्य की दृष्टि बरकरार रखा जा सके। यह अद्भुत स्थिति ही ग्रीनहाऊस प्रभाव कहलाती है। पृथ्वी का औसत बार्षिक तापमान लगभग 15° C है। यदि ग्रीनहाऊस गैस न हो तो पृथ्वी का तापमान गिरकर लगभग 20°C हो जाएगा। पृथ्वी को गर्म रखने की वायुमंडल की यह क्षमता ग्रीनहाऊस गैसों की उपस्थिति पर निर्भर करती है। यदि इन ग्रीनहाऊस गैसों की मात्रा में वृद्धि हो जाए तो ये अल्ट्रावॉयलेट (पराबैंगनी किरणों को अत्यधिक मात्रा में अवशोषित कर लेंगी। परिणामस्वरूप ग्रीनहाऊस प्रभाव बढ़ जाएगा जिससे वैश्विक तापमान में अत्यधिक वृद्धि हो जाएगी। तापमान में वृद्धि की यह स्थिति ही ग्लोबल वार्मिंग (वैश्विक कोष्णता) कहलाती है।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के लिए वास्तव में मानवीय गतिविधियां ही जिम्मेवार हैं जिनके कारण हमारी सुन्दर पृथ्वी का स्वरूप बदलता जा रहा है। तीव्र औद्योगिक विकास, नगरीकरण, जीवाश्म ईंधन के द्वारा ऊर्जा उत्पादन, भूमि उपयोग का बदलता स्वरूप तथा जंगलों के कृषि योग्य भूमि में बदलने के कारण विश्वव्यापी कार्बन चक्र प्रभावित हो रहा है। विश्व के अनेक देश जैसे अमेरिका, आस्ट्रेलिया, ब्राजील आदि में प्रत्येक वर्ष देश के किसी न किसी वन प्रदेश में भीषण आग लगने के कारण जहां हजारों हेक्टेयर में फैले जंगल नष्ट हो रहे हैं, वहीं दूसरी ओर वायुमंडल में अत्यधिक मात्रा में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड गैस इकट्ठी हो रही है। यही नहीं, विभिन्न मानवीय गतिविधियों के कारण अत्यधिक मात्रा में मीथेन, क्लोरोफ्लोरोकार्बन, नाइट्रस ऑक्साइड, हाइड्रोफ्लोरो कार्बन आदि वायुमंडल में जमा हो रही हैं। ये सभी ग्रीनहाउस गैस कहलाती हैं क्योंकि ये लंबे अवरक्त विकिरण (इंफ्रारेड रेडियेशन) को अवशोषित करती हैं। वायुमंडल में इन्हीं ग्रीनहाऊस गेसों की मात्रा में वृद्धि होने के कारण वैश्विक जलवायु परिवर्तित हो रही हैं, और यही परिवर्तन विश्वव्यापी जलवायु परिवर्तन कहलाता है।

संयुक्त राज्य अमेरिका के मौनालीया निरीक्षणशाला में एक अध्ययन में पाया गया है कि वातावरण में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड की मात्रा बीसवीं सदी के छठे दशक से ही बढ़ रही है। यदि यह प्रवृत्ति इसी रफ्तार से जारी रही तो उम्मीद की जाती है कि वातावरण में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड की यह मात्रा इक्कीसवीं सदी के अंत तक 600 से 900 पार्टिकल प्रति 10 लाख (पी.पी.एम.) के स्तर पर पहुंच जाएगी। वायुमंडल में ग्रीनहाउस गैसों की मात्रा में हुयी अप्रत्याशित वृद्धि के फलस्वरूप उत्पन्न हुयी ग्लोबल वार्मिंग की स्थिति के लिए कई कारण है जो निम्न प्रकार हैं

तीव्र औद्योगिकीकरण

बीसवीं सदी में द्वितीय विश्वयुद्ध के पश्चात् विभिन्न देशों में तीव्र औद्योगिक विकास की आवश्यकता महसूस की गयी। फलस्वरूप उद्योगों की स्थापना और उनसे होने वाले उत्पादन का जो सिलसिला चला वह आज भी अनवरत जारी है तीव्र औद्योगिक विकास की भूख ने मनुष्य को इतना स्वार्थी बना दिया कि उसने प्रकृति और पर्यावरण के संतुलन की परवाह न करते हुए सारे नैसर्गिक नियम-कानून ध्वस्त कर दिए। बीसवीं सदी के उत्तरार्ध से सदी के अंत तक लगभग पांच दशकों में अमेरिकी और यूरोपीय देश पूर्णतः औद्योगिक रूप में परिवर्तित हो चुके थे जिनमें प्रमुख हे संयुक्त राज्य अमेरिका, भूतपूर्व सोवियत संघ इंग्लैंड, कनाडा, फ्रांस, जर्मनी, इटली आदि। एशियाई देशों में चीन, जापान, भारत, इंडोनेशिया, सिंगापुर, मलेशिया, ताइवान, उत्तरी तथा दक्षिणी कोरिया आदि देश भी औद्योगिकीकरण की इस अंधी दौड़ में शामिल हो गये। वर्तमान में ये सभी विकसित और विकासशील देश हैं जिनकी पर्यावरण को प्रदूषित करने में सर्वाधिक महत्वपूर्ण भूमिका रही है। ये वही देश हैं जो सर्वाधिक मात्रा में ग्रीनहाउस गैस उत्सर्जित करते हैं। वैज्ञानिकों के अनुसार एक अध्ययन में यह पाया गया है कि औद्योगिकीकरण आधारित विकास में ग्रीनहाउस गैस उत्सर्जित करने वाले देशों में अमेरिका पहले और कनाडा दूसरे स्थान पर है। 1980 के दशक के बाद इसमें कुछ अन्य देश भी शामिल हो गये जो आज विकासशील देश कहे जाते हैं।

विश्व में तीव्र औद्योगिक विकास के कारण वायुमंडल में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड, कार्बन मोनोक्साइड, क्लोरोफ्लोरोकार्बन, मीथेन, नाइट्रस ऑक्साइड आदि गैसों की मात्रा बढ़ने लगी जिससे वैश्विक तापमान में वृद्धि हुई। परिणामस्वरूप मानव सभ्यता के इतिहास में बीता दशक सर्वाधिक गर्म दशक और 1998 सबसे गर्म साल रहा और आज ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के रूप में एक वैश्विक समस्या हमारे समक्ष मौजूद है। यदि यह कहा जाए कि वैश्विक आतंकवाद से भी ज्यादा खतरनाक है 'ग्लोबल वार्मिंग तो अतिशयोक्ति नहीं होगी, क्योंकि पिछले पचास वर्षो में जितनी कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड उत्सर्जित हो चुकी है, यदि उसमें हम और बढ़ोत्तरी न भी करें तो भी भविष्य में इसके गंभीर परिणाम होने वाले हैं। यह एक ऐसी समस्या है जिसके लिए विकसित राष्ट्र और उनकी आर्थिक व औद्योगिक गतिविधिया मुख्य रूप से जिम्मेवार हैं किन्तु इसकी सजा सभी को भुगतनी पड़ रही है। ध्यान देने योग्य बात यह है कि जितने भी विकसित राष्ट्र हैं उनमें से 80% देश समशीतोष्ण जलवायु प्रदेश में स्थित हैं। अनुमान लगाएं कि यदि इतनी ही मात्रा में ग्रीनहाउस गैस उष्णकटिबंधीय जलवायु प्रदेश में स्थित देश उत्पन्न करने लगें तो स्थिति क्या होगी।

औद्योगिकरण के अंतर्गत मानव की विभिन्न गतिविधियां शामिल हैं जो इस धरती के स्वरूप को बदल रही है जैसे तीव्र औद्योगिकरण के कारण जहां एक ओर कृषि योग्य भूमि घटती जा रही है, वहीं दूसरी ओर इसके परिणामस्वरूप विश्वव्यापी कार्बन चक्र प्रभावित हो रहा है। वर्तमान में कोयले के इंधन के रूप में घरेलू तथा औद्योगिक उपयोग के कारण बड़ी मात्रा में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड गैस वायुमंडल में एकत्रित हो रही है वायुमंडल में ग्रीनहाउस गैसों की मात्रा में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड का मौजूदा स्तर 430 पार्टिकल प्रति 10 लाख है जबकि औद्योगिक क्रांति से पूर्व यह 280 पीपीएम था इस अंतर के कारण विश्व का तापमान लगभग आधा डिग्री सेल्सियस बढ़ गया।

इसी प्रकार कुछ उद्योग ऐसे हैं जो अत्यधिक मात्रा में नाइट्रोजन ऑक्साइड तथा सल्फर डाइऑक्साइड गैस वायुमंडल में छोड़ते हैं जो वायुमंडल में मौजूद अन्य गैसों के साथ मिलकर तीव्र प्रतिक्रिया करती हैं जैसे- लोहा-इस्पात निर्माण उद्योग, तेलशोधक कारखाने, ताप विद्युत संयंत्र, वस्त्र उद्योग, सीमेंट उद्योग, घरेलू ईंधन के रूप में उपयोग किया जाने वाला कोयला एवं लकड़ी तथा मोटरवाहन में उपयोग होने वाला पेट्रोलियम पदार्थ आदि । इसके अलावा बहुत से उद्योग ऐसे हैं जो कार्बन डाइजॉक्साइड, कार्बन मोनोक्साइड, फ्लोरोकार्बन, नाइट्रोजन मोनोक्साइड, हाइड्रोजन सल्फाइड, नाइट्रस ऑक्साइड, जेट वायुयान द्वारा उत्सर्जित एयरोसोल तथा औद्योगिक कचरा जैसे सीसा, जस्ता, पारा, सायनाइड, औद्योगिक राख एवं अन्य जहरीले पदार्थ वायुमंडल और भूमि पर छोड़ते हैं। यहीं नहीं, मानव निर्मित रसायन क्लोरोफ्लोरोकार्बन की भी ग्लोबल पर्यावरण को बिगाड़ने में महत्वपूर्ण भूमिका है क्योंकि इसका उपयोग रेफ्रिजरेटर उद्योग में किया जाता है किन्तु जब इसे तोड़ा जाता है तो यह सीधे वातावरण में घुल जाता है और पर्यावरण को प्रदूषित करता है।

तीव्र औद्योगिक और तकनीकी विकास के कारण पिछली एक शताब्दी में विश्व के लगभग सभी देशों में नगरीय जनसंख्या और नगरीकरण में तीव्र वृद्धि दर्ज की गयी विश्व में पूंजीवादी व्यवस्था आने के बाद कल-कारखानों के आकार और उनकी संख्या में वृद्धि होने के साथ-साथ नगरीय स्वरूप में भी आमूल-चूल परिवर्तन हुए मशीनीकरण ने उद्योगों को विशाल रूप प्रदान किया। यूरोप में औद्योगिक क्रांति के फलस्वरूप नगरीय जनसंख्या और उसके स्वरूप में तेजी से विकास हुआ और इसका प्रभाव लगभग सारे विश्व में पड़ा। तीव्र औद्योगिक और तकनीकी विकास तथा बढ़ती हुई जनसंख्या ने नगरों में वाहनों की संख्या में अप्रत्याशित वृद्धि करने में चुम्बक की भूमिका निभाई। परिणाम यह हुआ कि नगरों के केन्द्रीय भाग (या हृदय स्थल ) का तापमान उनके पृष्ठ प्रदेश की तुलना में काफी बढ़ गया शोधों द्वारा यह बात सत्य प्रमाणित हो चुकी है कि महानगरों के कोर क्षेत्र में उसके बहरबा भाग की अपेक्षा तापमान 2 से 3°C अधिक पाया जाता है। ऐसा विभिन्न प्रकार के वाहनों तथा कारखानों को चिमनियों से निकलने वाले विषैले हुए के कारण होता है।

वर्तमान में मुम्बई, दिल्ली और कोलकाता जैसे महानगरों में बढ़ते तापमान का मुख्य कारण वहां उनकी क्षमता से अधिक वाहनों का होना है। ऐसा अनुमान है कि मुम्बई और दिल्ली में प्रतिदिन तीन लाख वाहन सड़कों पर दौड़ते हैं और वातावरण में छोड़ी जाने वाली कार्बन मोनोक्साइड में 50 प्रतिशत योगदान इन्हीं वाहनों का होता है। कार्बन मोनोक्साइड अत्यंत जहरीली गैस है जो खून में ऑक्सीजन धारण करने की क्षमता को घटा देती है कुछ नगरीय क्षेत्रों में तो होने वाले वायु प्रदूषण में 80 प्रतिशत तक योगदान इन्हीं वाहनों का होता है। लगभग यही स्थिति विश्व के अन्य महानगरों के साथ भी है खोज के पश्चात् ज्ञात हुआ है कि फ्रांस की राजधानी पेरिस की सड़कों पर प्रति 100 क्यूविक लीटर हवा में 92 लीटर कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड का अनुपात है जबकि कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड की अधिकतम सीमा, जिसमें मनुष्य आरोग्य रह सकता है, वह 100 लीटर ही है। कमोवेश यही स्थिति न्यूयॉर्क, लंदन, टोकियो, मेक्सिको सिटी, शंघाई आदि नगरों की भी है। कुछ वर्ष पूर्व विश्व स्वास्थ्य संगठन द्वारा कराये गये सर्वेक्षण के अनुसार विश्व के 10 सर्वाधिक प्रदूषित नगरों में दिल्ली और मुम्बई भी शामिल हैं। कहने का तात्पर्य यह है कि अत्यधिक जनसंख्या, उद्योगों का केन्द्रीकरण, वाहनों की अधिकता के फलस्वरूप वातावरण में ग्रीनहाउस गैसों के अनुपात में वृद्धि होती है जो ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का एक महत्वपूर्ण कारण बनती है।

प्राकृतिक संसाधनों का दोषपूर्ण विदोहन

विश्व के अधिकांश देश ऐसे हैं जिनकी अर्थव्यवस्था प्राकृतिक संसाधनों पर आधारित है। इन देशों का सकल घरेलू उत्पाद और उनसे प्राप्त होने वाली आय में इन प्राकृतिक संसाधनों की अहम भूमिका हैं। उदाहरण के लिए हम दक्षिणी और दक्षिण-पश्चिमी एशिया को ही लें। दक्षिणी एशिया में चीन और भारत दो ऐसे विकासशील देश हैं जो आज भी अपनी ऊर्जा की जरूरत का अधिकांश भाग कोयता और लकड़ी द्वारा प्राप्त करते हैं, वहीं दक्षिण-पश्चिमी एशिया के अधिकांश देशों की अर्थव्यवस्था खनिज तेल पर ही टिकी हुई है। इन दो जनसंख्या बाहुल्य प्रदेशों द्वारा प्राकृतिक संसाधनों का अत्यधिक दोहन प्रकृति का संतुलन बिगाड़ रहा है आज भी चीन और भारत विश्व के दो बड़े कोयला उत्पादक एवं उपभोक्ता देश हैं, वहीं ओपेक देशों द्वारा खनिज तेल के उत्पादन पर पूरे विश्व की अर्थव्यवस्था टिकी हुई है।

सिर्फ इतना ही नहीं, विश्व में वन क्षेत्र बहुत ही तीव्र गति से सिकुड़ते जा रहे हैं, विशेषकर विकासशील देशों में जो उष्णकटिबंधीय प्रदेशों में स्थित हैं। एक अनुमान के मुताबिक यदि समशीतोष्ण वन प्रदेश में एक प्रतिशत जंगल की कमी होती है तो उष्णकटिबंधीय वन प्रदेश में 40 प्रतिशत तक जंगल की कमी हो सकती है। वनों के क्षेत्रफल में कमी का मुख्य कारण कृषि भूमि का विस्तार, औद्योगिकीकरण नगरीकरण लकड़ी का अत्यधिक वाणिज्यिक उपयोग तथा ईंधन के रूप में घरेलू उपयोग आदि है। वर्तमान में उष्णकटिबंधीय क्षेत्रों में लगभग 10 मिलियन हेक्टेयर प्रतिवर्ष की दर से वन सिकुड़ते जा रहे हैं और यदि यह गति इसी तरह अनवरत जारी रही तो एक शताब्दी के अंदर अत्यंत गंभीर परिणाम सामने आयेंगे।

बीसवीं सदी के प्रारंभ में भारत में लगभग 50 प्रतिशत भूमि वनाच्छादित थी परन्तु बीसवीं सदी के समाप्त होते-होते यह 19.4 प्रतिशत ही रही गयी यह राष्ट्रीय वन नीति 1988 द्वारा अनुमोदित मैदानी क्षेत्रों में 33 प्रतिशत तथा पर्वतीय क्षेत्रों में 67 प्रतिशत अनिवार्य वन प्रदेश से काफी कम है। यही स्थिति दक्षिण और दक्षिण-पूर्वी एशिया के देश जैसे चीन, - श्रीलंका, इंडोनेशिया आदि की भी है जहां पिछले कुछ दशकों में लगभग 11 प्रतिशत वन भूमि में कमी आयी है।

इससे स्पष्ट है कि समशीतोष्ण कटिबंधीय प्रदेश में स्थित देशों की तुलना में उष्णकटिबंधीय प्रदेश में स्थित देशों की स्थिति कहीं ज्यादा गंभीर है क्योंकि इन वन प्रदेशों में घटते वन के कारण ग्रीनहाउस गैसों में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड का अनुपात बढ़ता जा रहा है जो ग्लोबल वार्मिंग की स्थिति उत्पन्न करने में महत्वपूर्ण भूमिका निभाता है।

ऊर्जा के वैकल्पिक स्रोतों का सीमित या कम उपयोग

विश्व में बढ़ती ऊर्जा जरूरतों की पूर्ति हेतु विकासशील और अविकसित या निर्धन देशों द्वारा अब भी ऊर्जा के परंपरागत स्रोतों का ही प्रयोग अधिक हो रहा है जैसे विद्युत उत्पादन और उद्योगों के संचालन में कोयले का उपयोग, रेलगाड़ी के परिचालन में डीजल एवं कोयले तथा घरेलू ईंधन के रूप में कोयले तथा लकड़ी द्वारा ही ऊर्जा की आवश्यकता पूरी की जा रही है जबकि ऊर्जा के गैर-परंपरागत स्रोतों का उपयोग बहुत ही कम क्षेत्रों में हो रहा है। सौर ऊर्जा, पवन ऊर्जा, ज्वार शक्ति, भू-तापीय शक्ति तथा जल शक्ति जैसे ऊर्जा के अनेक वैकल्पिक स्रोत हैं जिनका न सिर्फ बारम्बार उपयोग किया जा सकता है अपितु ये अक्षय ऊर्जा के भी स्रोत हैं परन्तु इनके अल्प विकास के कारण विश्व की अर्थव्यवस्था इन्हीं परंपरागत ऊर्जा के स्रोतों पर निर्भर है जिससे न सिर्फ पर्यावरण में प्रदूषण बढ़ रहा है अपितु वैश्विक तापमान में भी वृद्धि हो रही है जो अंततोगत्वा ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का कारण बनती है।

उच्च तकनीकी ज्ञान पर विकसित देशों का एकाधिकार

यद्यपि विश्व के कुछ विकसित देश अपनी बढ़ती ऊर्जा जरूरतों की पूर्ति वैकल्पिक स्रोतों से बखूबी कर रहे है किन्तु इनकी तकनीक महंगी होने के कारण इसका लाभ विश्व के अन्य देशों को नहीं मिल पा रहा है। साथ ही साथ इसके प्रचार-प्रसार में विकसित देशों का रवैया भी उदार नहीं है। यह बात सिर्फ ऊर्जा उत्पादन के क्षेत्र में ही लागू नहीं होती अपितु पिछड़े देशों की आधारभूत संरचना के विकास के मामले में भी उनकी सोच भेदभावपूर्ण है। यदि हम अपनी कुल ऊर्जा जरूरत का 25 प्रतिशत हिस्सा भी अक्षय स्रोतों द्वारा प्राप्त कर लें तो यह हमारी बहुत बड़ी उपलब्धि होगी और इससे अप्रत्यक्ष रूप से ही सही पर्यावरण को बचाया जा सकता है।

दोषपूर्ण अंतर्राष्ट्रीय राजनीति एवं कानून

विश्व के जितने भी विकसित और औद्योगिक देश हैं उनके पिछले कुछ वर्षों में, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के संबंध में कथनी और करनी का मूल्यांकन किया जाए तो हम पायेंगे कि उनमें पर्याप्त अंतर है। दूसरे शब्दों में कहें तो इस मामले में उनकी गतिविधियां उनके वक्तव्य के अनुरूप नहीं रही हैं। ये देश दूसरे देशों को वे सभी कार्य करने से रोकना चाहते हैं जिससे वायुमंडल में ग्रीनहाऊस प्रभाव बढ़ता हो परन्तु मे स्वयं वैसे कार्यों में लिप्त रहते हैं। अर्थात् उनकी नीति भेदभावपूर्ण होती है। इस परिप्रेक्ष्य में संयुक्त राष्ट्र की भूमिका भी संतोषजनक नहीं है और इस संदर्भ में विकसित देशों द्वारा नियम-कानून का घोर उल्लंघन किया जाता है। दूसरे शब्दों में कहें तो ग्लोबल वार्मिंग को रोकने या कम करने की एक ईमानदार कोशिश एवं राजनैतिक इच्छाशक्ति की कमी देखने को मिलती है। यही वार्मिंग के कारण है कि इससे होने वाले दुष्प्रभाव को जानते-समझते हुए भी हाल के वर्षों में ग्लोबल वार्मिंग में कमी आयी है ऐसा हम नहीं कह सकते।

नवीनतम कारण

साइबेरिया क्षेत्र में साल भर जमी रहने वाली मृदा परमोफॉस्ट के गलने से ग्लोबल वार्मिंग बढ़ रहा है। इसके कारण भारत समेत पूरे विश्व में गर्मी का प्रकोप है। परमोफॉस्ट के गलने से ग्रीनहाऊस गैस बनती है। साइबेरियाई मिट्टी में प्राचीन काल से ही कार्बन दवी हुई है और अब यह कार्बन झीलों के नीचे से ऊपर आकर हवा में मीथेन के रूप में घुलने लगी है। यह ऐसी ग्रीनहाऊस गैस है जिसकी क्षमता कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड के मुकाबले बीस गुणा अधिक होती है। विशेषकर उत्तरी साइबेरिया में पिछले 40 हजार वर्षों से भी अधिक समय से दबी कार्बन गैस अब काफी तेजी से ग्लोबल वार्मिंग बढ़ाने लगी है।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का प्रभाव

जलवायु पर प्रभाव वैज्ञानिकों द्वारा गहन शोध के आधार पर यह बात सामने आयी है कि बीसवीं सदी में वैश्विक औसत तापमान लगभग 0.6 बढ़ गया। तापमान में वृद्धि की प्रवृत्ति यदि इसी प्रकार जारी रही तो अनुमान है कि इक्कीसवीं शताब्दी के अंत तक पृथ्वी का तापमान लगभग 6°C तक बढ़ जाएगा। तापमान में यह परिवर्तन मध्य और उच्च अक्षाशिए प्रदेशों में हो सकते हैं। इस प्रकार वायुमंडल में तापमान के बढ़ने से हवा में नमी धारण करने की क्षमता बढ़ जाएगी जिससे क्षोभमंडल और समतापमंडल के स्वरूप प्रभावित होंगे। ऐसा वायुराशि के बदले स्वरूप के कारण होगा जिससे काफी बड़े भू-भाग पर वर्षा का वितरण और उसके स्वरूप प्रभावित होंगें जैसे- दक्षिणी (और पूर्वी एशिया में जहां गर्मियों में तथा उच्च अक्षाशिए प्रदेशों में ग्रीष्म और शीतकालीन वर्षा की मात्रा बढ़ सकती है, वहीं निम्न अवाशिए प्रदेशों में शीतकालीन वर्षा घट सकती है। यही नहीं, पृथ्वी के विभिन्न भागों में बाढ़ और सूखे का प्रकोप बढ़ सकता है।

इसके अलावा औद्योगिक नगरों में यदा-कदा अम्लीय वर्षा भी हो सकती है जिससे जल, भूमि, वनस्पति और भवनों के स्वरूप प्रभावित हो सकते हैं। मथुरा तेल शोधक कारखाने के कारण ही विश्व प्रसिद्ध ताजमहल का रंग पीला पड़ता जा रहा है। इस प्रकार वैश्विक तापमान में वृद्धि के कारण वैश्विक जलवायु परिवर्तित हो रही है। परिणामस्वरूप विभिन्न प्रकार की बीमारियों का प्रकोप बढ़ रहा है जिससे न सिर्फ मानव अपितु सभी जैविक प्राणियों के अस्तित्व पर खतरा मंडराने लगा है, विशेषकर उष्ण और उपोष्णकटिबंधीय प्रदेशों के निवासियों के लिए, क्योंकि जिस रफ्तार से वायुमंडल में ग्रीन हाऊस गैसों की मात्रा बढ़ रही है उससे आने वाले कुछेक वर्षो में विश्व का तापमान लगभग आधा डिग्री सेल्सियस और बढ़ेगा। परिणामस्वरूप गर्म हवाएं चलेंगी और समुद्री तूफानों का रूप और विकराल हो जाएगा। इससे मानसून भी प्रभावित होगा जिससे विशेषतः दक्षिणी और दक्षिण-पूर्वी एशिया के देश प्रभावित होंगे।

वर्ष 2003 में ऐसी ही गर्म हवाओं के चपेट में आने से फ्रांस की राजधानी पेरिस में 3000 व्यक्तियों की मौत हुई। इसी प्रकार मध्य भारत में जाने वाली बरसाती 'अ' 'रनस्टॉम' का ग्लोबल वार्मिंग से सीधा संबंध है। इसके कारण एक दिन में 100 मिली. से अधिक वर्षा होती है मौसमविदों ने एक अध्ययन में यह पाया कि यद्यपि पिछले पांच दशकों में वर्षा के वार्षिक औसत में कोई विशेष अंतर नहीं आया है इसके बावजूद, रेनस्टार्म की संख्या में प्रति दशक 10 प्रतिशत की दर बढ़ोत्तरी हुई है। पिछले पांच दशकों में रेनस्टॉर्म की संख्या दुगुनी तक पहुंच गयी है। इसके ता ऊष्मा में परिवर्तित हो जाती है जिससे मंडल साथ-साथ इसकी तीव्रता भी बढ़कर डेढ़ गुनी अर्थात् एक दिन में 150 मिली. वर्षा तक पहुंच गयी है। इस प्रकार UNEP का विश्व समुदाय को चेताते हुए यह नारा "ग्लोबल वार्मिंग ग्लोबल वार्निंग" तर्कसंगत है।

वनस्पति पर प्रभाव

वायुमंडल में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड की मात्रा में वृद्धि के फलस्वरूप उत्पन्न ग्लोबल वार्मिंग की स्थिति का प्रभाव बहुत से पेड़-पौधों के विकास पर पड़ेगा, विशेषकर कार्बन तीन (यानी C3) प्रजाति के पौधों पर यद्यपि वायुमंडल में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड की मात्रा बढ़ जाने के कारण पौधों में प्रकाशसंश्लेषण की दर बढ़ सकती है जिससे बहुत ही कम समय में पौधों की संख्या और उसके आकार में 25 प्रतिशत तक की वृद्धि संभव हो सकती है। वायुमंडल में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड के बढ़ने के फलस्वरूप पौधों की यह प्रतिक्रिया कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड का उर्वरता प्रभाव कहलाता है। तथापि, वायुमंडल में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड के बढ़ने के फलस्वरूप उत्पन्न ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के कारण इस पर अंततः हानिकारक प्रभाव ही पड़ेगा।

समुद्र के स्तर में परिवर्तन

वैज्ञानिक अध्ययन में तो यह बात अब सत्य प्रमाणित हो चुकी है कि बीसवीं शताब्दी में प्रतिवर्ष 2 मिली. मी. की दर से 2 समुद्रः के जल स्तर में वृद्धि हुई और अनुमान है कि इक्कीसवीं शताब्दी के अंत तक समुद्र का जल स्तर लगभग 0.88 मीटर से 3 मीटर तक बढ़ जाएगा। इसमें वैश्विक कोणता ( ग्लोबल वार्मिंग) का बहुत बड़ा योगदान होगा क्योंकि अंटार्कटिका की विशाल हिमराशि और ग्रीनलैंड के हिमचादरों के पिघलने के कारण समुद्र का जल स्तर काफी बढ़ जाएगा जो न सिर्फ मनुष्य को अपितु समूचे (जैव जीव जगत को प्रभावित करेगा, विशेषकर उन समीपवर्ती क्षेत्रों को जो समुद्र तट के 50 किमी. की सीमा में आते हो। इसके फलस्वरूप बहुत से नगर और तटीय क्षेत्र बाढ़ के खतरे के अंदर जा जाएंगे, बहुत से छोटे-छोटे द्वीप डूब जाएंगे। नमकीन दलदलों द्वारा अनेक एश्चुअरी तथा उच्च उत्पादकता वाली कृषि भूमि, पक्षी एवं मछली के प्रजनन क्षेत्रों कारण हो जाएगा। समुद्र तटीय क्षेत्रों में पायी जाने वाली वनस्पति संग्रोव डूब जाएगी। इस प्रकार समुद्र के जल स्तर में वृद्धि का मानव अधिवास, पर्यटन, शुद्ध जलापूर्ति, समुद्री संसाधन, कृषि भूमि, वनभूमि तथा आधारभूत संरचना पर नकारात्मक प्रभाव पड़ेगा।

विभिन्न प्रजातियों के वितरण पर प्रभाव

बहुत से पेड़-पौध तथा जीव-जंतु एक तापमान विशेष पर ही पाये जाते हैं या यूं कहें कि उनका विकास हो सकता है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के कारण इन जीव-जन्तुओं तथा पेड़-पौधों की लगभग 40% प्रजातियां नष्ट हो सकती हैं या अपने मूल स्थान से स्थानांतरित हो सकती हैं और इस प्रकार इनका अक्षाशिए वितरण प्रभावित हो सकता है। उदाहरण के रूप में समुद्री जीव प्रवाल को ही में, इनका विकास एक निश्चित ढाल, तापमान तथा गहराई पर ही होता है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के कारण बढ़े हुए समुद्र के जल स्तर के फलस्वरूप इनका विकास, वितरण एवं इनके द्वारा निर्मित विभिन्न स्थलाकृतिक संरचनाएं प्रभावित हो सकती हैं। इसी प्रकार बहुत सी वनस्पतियों तथा जीवों का पलायन धीरे-धीरे ध्रुवीय प्रदेशों या उच्च पर्वतीय प्रदेशों की तरफ हो सकता है। ऐसा अनुमान है कि यदि इक्कीसवीं सदी में 2.5°C तापमान में वृद्धि हो जाती है तो उष्णकटिबंधीय प्रदेशों में पायी जाने वाली वनस्पति 250 से 500 किमी. तक ध्रुवीय प्रदेशों की तरफ खिसक सकती है। यही नहीं जब तक वनस्पतियां बढ़े हुए तापमान के अनुरूप अपने आप को ढाल पायेंगी, तब तक बड़ी संख्या में वनस्पतियां नष्ट हो चुकी होंगी और उनका स्थान पास-फूस और कंटीली झाड़ियां ले चुकी होगी। इसके साथ-साथ बहुत सी प्रजातियां उतनी तीव्र गति से स्थानांतरित नहीं हो पाएंगी, जितनी रफ़्तार से तापमान में वृद्धि हो रही है। फलतः उनके अस्तित्व पर भी संकट के बादल मंडराने लगे हैं। इसका सबसे अच्छा उदाहरण मैरियन द्वीप पर देखने को मिलता है जहां पर ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का सबसे अधिक असर देखा जा सकता है। यहां प्रत्येक वर्ष तापमान में वृद्धि दर्ज की जा रही है यह प्रक्रिया पिछले 50 वर्षों से चल रही है जिसके परिणामस्वरूप वहां के जीव-जन्तुओं का विकास और उनका वितरण प्रभावित हो रहा है।

खाद्यान्न उत्पादन पर प्रभाव

तापमान में वृद्धि के फलस्वरूप उत्पन्न ग्लोबलवार्मिंग के कारण पौधों में विभिन्न प्रकार की बीमारियों का प्रकोप बढ़ेगा जिसे दूर करने के लिए उतने ही जोर से कीटनाशकों का उपयोग होगा। इन सभी परिस्थितियों में कुल मिलाकर खाद्यान्न का उत्पादन घटेगा तथा साथ ही भूमि और जल दोनों प्रदूषित होंगे। यदि थोड़ी मात्रा में तापमान में वृद्धि होती है तो समशीतोष्ण प्रदेशों में उत्पादकता में अल्पवृद्धि हो सकती है परन्तु यदि तीव्र वृद्धि होती है तो उष्ण तथा उपोष्णकटिबंधीय क्षेत्रों में निश्चित रूप से फसल की उत्पादकता में हानिकारक प्रभाव पड़ेगा। उदाहरण के लिए विश्व के प्रमुख चावल उत्पादक क्षेत्रों विशेषकर दक्षिण और दक्षिण-पूर्वी एशिया में प्रति । 1°C तापमान में वृद्धि उत्पादकता में 5 प्रतिशत तक की कमी ला सकती है। वैज्ञानिक रिपोर्ट बताती है कि वायुमंडल में ग्रीनहाऊस गैसों के बढ़ते प्रभाव के कारण वर्ष 2050 तक सालाना वैश्विक उत्पादन में एक प्रतिशत की कमी जाएगी। अगर तत्काल कोई कार्रवाई नहीं हुई तो प्रति व्यक्ति वैश्विक उपभोग में पांच से 20 फीसदी की कमी आ सकती है। यह स्थिति भविष्य में होने वाले खाद्यान्न संकट का खतरनाक संकेत है। यही नहीं विश्व बैंक के पूर्व अर्थशास्त्री स्टर्न महोदय के अनुसार यदि ग्रीन हाउस गैसों के उत्सर्जन में तत्काल कोई कटौती नहीं की गयी तो भविष्य में पिछली सदी में आयी भयानक मंदी से भी बड़ा आर्थिक संकट उत्पन्न हो सकता है जो पिछले दो विश्व युद्धों और 1990 की मंदी से हुए आर्थिक नुकसान से भी ज्यादा होगा।

ओजोन परत का क्षतिग्रस्त होना सामान्यतः

समतापमंडल के निचले भाग में धरातल से 16 से 55 किमी. की दूरी पर ओजोन मंडल का विस्तार है। ओजोन परत की मोटाई विषुवतरेखा के ऊपर आसतन 0.29 सेमी. और ध्रुवीय प्रदेशों के ऊपर 0.10 सेमी. है। यह ओजोन परत हमारे लिए रक्षा कवच के रूप में काम करती है जो सूर्य से आने वाली अल्ट्रावायलेट (परावंगनी) किरणों को अवशोषित कर इस सृष्टि की रक्षा करती है। परावंगनी किरणों को अवशोषित करने की यह क्षमता ओजोन परत की मोटाई पर निर्भर करती है।

विज्ञान में तरक्की तथा नवीन प्रौद्योगिकी के फलस्वरूप मानवीय क्रिया-कलापों के कारण ओजोन मंडल में लगातार रिक्तीकरण हो रहा है। 1956 से 1970 के बीच अंटार्कटिका के ऊपर ओजोन परत की मोटाई औसतन 300 डॉक्सन इकाई रही। वह मोटाई 1979 में कम होकर 225 डोवसन इकाई पर पहुंच गयी 1985 में यह 196, 1994 में 94 तथा 2005 में गिरकर लगभग 85 जोवसन यूनिट पर आ गई । इस प्रकार विगत पांच दशकों में इसमें लगातार क्रमिक ह्रास जारी रहा। ओजोन परत की मोटाई में यह ह्रास अंततोगत्वा ओज़ोन मंडल में एक बड़े छेद के रूप में परिणत हो गया। ओज़ोन मंडल के क्षतिग्रस्त होने में तीव्र गति से उड़ने वाले सुपरसोनिक जेट वायुयानों का कम योगदान नहीं है क्योंकि जब ये 18 से 22 किमी.की ऊंचाई पर ध्वनिगति से दुगुनी रफ्तार से उड़ते तो इनसे निस्सृत नाइट्रोजन ऑक्साइड से ओजोन परत में ह्रास होता है। एक अनुमान के अनुसार यदि 200 सुपरसोनिक विमानों का एक दल प्रतिदिन उड़ान भरता है तो ओजोन परत की मोटाई में 5 प्रतिशत की कमी हो सकती है।

ओजोन परत में छेद को पहली बार 1985 में अंटार्कटिका के ऊपर देखा गया यह छेद क्षेत्रफल में लगभग एक करोड़ साठ लाख वर्ग किमी. के बराबर होगा। इसी प्रकार 1990 में अंटार्कटिका क्षेत्र में भी ओजोन परत क्षतिग्रस्त हो गयी 1980 से 2001 के दौरान ओजोन परत की मोटाई में 3 प्रतिशत वार्षिक की दर से क्रमिक ह्रास दर्ज किया गया ओजोन परत के रिक्तीकरण में सबसे बड़ा योगदान मानव निर्मित रसायन क्लोरोफ्लोरोकार्बन, मीथेन तथा नाइट्रस ऑक्साइड का रहा। ओजोन परत में छेद से संबंधित इस खोज के लिए 1995 में रसायन का नोबेल पुरस्कार शेरवुड रोलैंड , मेरियो मोलिना और पॉल क्रुत्जैन को सम्मिलित रूप से दिया गया।

ओजोन परत में छेद का प्रभाव

ओजोन परत की मोटाई में क्रमिक हास के फलस्वरूप अल्ट्रावॉयलेट रेडियेशन अत्यधिक मात्रा में धरातल पर पहुंचने लगेंगे वैज्ञानिक अनुसंधान में यह पाया गया है कि ओजोन परत में 5 प्रतिशत की क्षति 10 प्रतिशत अल्ट्रावॉयलेट रेडियेशन में बढ़ोत्तरी करती है। इसके फलस्वरूप जीवों में त्वचा कैंसर, मोतियाविन्द, पाचनतंत्र और तंत्रिका तंत्र से संबंधित रोग हो सकते हैं। अत्यधिक मात्रा में अल्ट्रावायलेट विकिरण पौधों में भी प्रकाशसंश्लेषण की क्रिया को भी प्रभावित करता है।

अंटार्कटिका में इसके कारण लेक्टन के प्रकाशसंश्लेषण की क्रिया प्रभावित हो रही है जिसके परिणामस्वरूप वहाँ का भोजन चक्र प्रभावित हो रहा है। यही कारण है कि पिछले कुछ वर्षों में फाइटोप्लेकटन नामक पौधों की संख्या में आश्चर्यजनक रूप से कमी आयी है। यही नहीं, यह साफ और खुले समुद्र के भोजन एक को भी प्रभावित करता है क्योंकि अल्ट्रावॉयलेट किरणों मैं समुद्र के जल को भी पार कर सकने की क्षमता होती है।

इस प्रकार वायुमंडल में ग्रीनहाउस गैसों की अत्यधिक मात्रा में एकत्रित होने से हमारे समक्ष एक कठिन चुनौती खड़ी हो गयी कि कैसे वातावरण में इन ग्रीनहाउस गैसों की मात्रा को वर्तमान स्तर से न्यूनतम किया जाए। इस उद्देश्य की पूर्ति हेतु 1987 में 27 औद्योगिक देशों ने मोन्ट्रियल शहर में एक अंतर्राष्ट्रीय समझौते पर हस्ताक्षर किये जिसे मोन्ट्रियल समझौता के नाम से जाना जाता है। इस समझाते में इस बात पर सहमति हुई कि कैसे ओजोन परत में हुए छेद के लिए जिम्मेदार गैसों की उत्पत्ति को कम किया जाए और विकासशील देशों को क्लोरोफ्लोरोकार्बन के विकल्प के इस्तेमाल पर सहायता दी जाए। यह हमारे लिए संतोष की बात है कि इसकी भयावहता और इसके दीर्घकालीन दुष्प्रभाव को महसूस करते हुए आज 175 से अधिक देश समझौते पर हस्ताक्षर कर चुके हैं। 1992 में ब्राजील की राजधानी रियोडिजेनेरियो में पर्यावरण और विकास पर संयुक्त राष्ट्र सम्मेलन, जो पृथ्वी सम्मेलन के नाम से प्रसिद्ध है, आयोजित किया गया। इस सम्मेलन में इस बात की व्यवस्था की गई कि कैसे ग्रीनपऊस गैस की मात्रा को कम किया जाए। इसी प्रकार इसके आगे की कड़ी के रूप में दिसम्बर 1997 में जापान के शहर क्योटो में एक सम्मेलन आयोजित किया गया। इस सम्मेलन में विभिन्न देशों ने जलवायु परिवर्तन पर अपने-अपने विचार रखे और इस बात पर सहमति हुई कि सभी संबंधित देश ग्रीनहाउस गैसों के उत्सर्जन को 5 प्रतिशत कम करते हुए 2008-2012 तक की समय सीमा में वर्ष 1990 के स्तर पर लायेंगे । इस तथ्य को प्राप्त करने के लिए निम्नलिखित कदम उठाने होंगे :

जीवाश्म ईंधन का न्यूनतम उपयोग करना ताकि ग्रीनहाऊस गैस का उत्सर्जन कम हो।
धरती पर वन भूमि का विस्तार करना जिससे अधिक से अधिक मात्रा में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड अवशोषित हो सके ।
कृषि में नाइट्रोजन ऑक्साइड उर्वरक का न्यूनतम उपयोग करना ताकि नाइट्रस ऑक्साइड का उत्सर्जन कम हो। इसके स्थान पर जैविक खाद के इस्तेमाल को प्रोत्साहित करना ।
क्लोरोफ्लोरोकार्बन के विकल्प का विकास हो ।
मोटर वाहन उद्योग में पेट्रोल एवं डीजल के स्थान पर वैकल्पिक ईंधन का प्रयोग करना जैसे बायोडीजल, - सौर ऊर्जा, सी.एन.जी., विद्युत और बैटरी चालित वाहनों का विकास करना। वाहनों में बेरियम मिश्रित ईंधन का प्रयोग भी किया जा सकता है ताकि निस्सृत धुएं की मात्रा कम हो सके।
नगरों में उद्योगों के एक ही स्थान पर केन्द्रीकरण की प्रवृत्ति कम करने के प्रयास हों अर्थात् उद्योगों का विकेन्द्रीकरण हो ।
सभी प्रकार के प्रदूषण (विशेषकर वायु प्रदूषण) के प्रति आम लोगों को जागृत किया जाए।
सभी प्रकार के उद्योगों में धुआं संवर्धन संयंत्र की स्थापना सुनिश्चित करना एवं ग्रीन टेक्नोलॉजी के विकास पर जोर देना।
प्रदूषण से संबंधित राष्ट्रीय एवं अंतर्राष्ट्रीय कानून का ईमानदारी और कड़ाई से पालन करना ।

ऊर्जा के परंपरागत स्रोतों पर निर्भरता कम करना और इसके विकल्प पर अधिक ध्यान देना जैसे सौर - ऊर्जा, पवन ऊर्जा, ज्वार शक्ति, भू-तापीय शक्ति, जल शक्ति आदि का विकास करना एवं इसकी तकनीक के अंतर्राष्ट्रीय विस्तार के साथ-साथ यह सुनिश्चित करना कि यह तकनीक विश्व के निर्धनतम देश को सुलभ हो । उदाहरण के लिए स्टील उत्पादन में कुछ तकनीक हैं, यदि उन्हें अपनाया जाए तो ग्लोबल वार्मिंग घट सकता है। स्टील उत्पादन के दौरान कोयले को पानी से ठंडा करने की तकनीक अपनाकर निकलने वाली गैस से हम ऊर्जा का उत्पादन कर सकते हैं। इसके लिए गैस को नियंत्रित करना होगा। इसमें एफ. सी.बी. बॉयलर तकनीक लगाकर ऊर्जा पैदा की जा सकती है। इस तरह की तकनीक का प्रयोग नेशनल थर्मल पावर कारर्पोशन (NTPC) कर रहा है और इस का प्रसार जरूरी है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग को अभी भी नियंत्रित किया जा सकता है। इसके लिए सभी औद्योगिक देशों और उद्योग जगत को आगे आना होगा।

'ग्लोबल वार्मिंग को नियंत्रित करने में वैज्ञानिकों के एक वर्ग का कहना है कि अन्तरिक्ष में सल्फर डाइऑक्साइड फैला दिया जाए जिससे प्रकाश का परिवर्तन हो सके किन्तु इससे आकाश का रंग नीले के बजाए पीला नजर आएगा।

कुछ वैज्ञानिकों की राय है कि अन्तरिक्ष में लगभग 12 लाख वर्ग मील क्षेत्र में कांच की छतरी फैला दी जाए। इस पर लगभग 3 खरब डॉलर का खर्च आएगा किन्तु वैज्ञानिकों को डर है कि असंतुलन की स्थिति में क्या होगा। यही कारण है कि दोनों उपायों पर अभी तक वैज्ञानिकों के बीच एकमत नहीं बन पाया है। अतः फिलहाल तो हमें कोई ऐसा कार्य नहीं करना चाहिए जिससे ग्लोबल वार्मिंग बढ़ता हो

एक ध्रुवीय चेतावनी

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के कारण दुनिया हर पल, हर दिन, हर महीने, हर साल बदल रही है। इसे देखते हुए सन् 2050 में यह जितना बदल जाएगी उसकी कल्पना करना उतना मुश्किल भी नहीं है। सन् 2050 तक में होने जा रहे बदलावों पर हमारी यह पैनी नजर कि प्रत्येक नया साल नई चुनौतियां लेकर आता है और नई चेतावनियां भी 2007 जिस चेतावनी को लेकर आया, वह पिछले कई वर्षों में आयी चेतावनियों से कहीं ज्यादा संगीन और बड़ी रही। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के कारण आर्कटिक में 66 वर्ग किमी. की विशाल हिम राशि का चटखना महज एक खबर भर नहीं रही। यह अचानक हुआ कोई हादसा भी नहीं था। चेतावनी तो वर्षों पहले से दी जा रही थी। पर्वत श्रेणियों पर हिमनदों के छोटे होते जाने की खबरें तो थीं ही, कहा तो यह भी जा रहा था कि ग्लोबल वार्मिंग इसी तरह बढ़ता रहा तो अंगद के पांव की तरह अटल होने के प्रतीक रही ध्रुवीय हिमराशि भी अतीत की बात बन जाएगी। हालत अगर यही रही तो हो सकता है कि सन् 2050 के बाद आर्कटिक में बर्फ ढूंढने से भी न मिले। देश दुनिया के ठंडे प्रदेशों से आ रही खबरें मौसम के बदलते मिजाज के तल्ख संकेतों से भरी हैं। जलवायु परिवर्तन पर अंतर सरकारी समिति (IPCC) की रिपोर्ट को देखें तो जो सच सामने आते हैं, वे रूह कंपा देते हैं। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग की हकीकत जिस तेजी से हमारे आस-पास की दुनियां को नरक बना रही है, अगर हम न चेते तो तबाही लगभग तय है।

पिघलते ग्लेशियर, चटखते हिमखंड और सर्दी-गर्मी जैसे हर मौसम में पारे का थोड़ा और उछल जाना ये सब हमें उस भविष्य की ओर ले जा रहे हैं, जहां से लौटना शायद मुमकिन न हो जाए। कुछ पर्यावरणविदों ने ध्रुवीय भालू और सील मछली के बदलते व्यवहार का अध्ययन करके भी चेतावनी दे दी थी। ध्रुवीय बर्फ घटने से वहां का भोजन चक्र प्रभावित हो रहा है और ध्रुवीय जन्तु भोजन की तलाश में मानव बस्तियों के पास आने लगे हैं। यह उनके अब तक के ज्ञात व्यवहार के बिल्कुल विपरीत है। बावजूद इसके हम भालू के बदलते मिजाज में मानव प्रजाति या यूं कहें कि सारी सृष्टि के लिए खतरे की चेतावनी पढ़ने से चूक गये। चेतावनियां और भी थीं। अभी 2005 में आर्कटिक का तापमान सामान्य से 5°C अधिक बढ़ गया। कुछ अध्ययनों में यह भी नतीजा निकाला गया कि आर्कटिक की फिजाओं की गर्मी अब पहले के मुकाबले पूरी रफ्तार से बढ़ रही है पर दुनिया अब तक यही मानकर आश्वस्त रही कि प्रलयंकारी बदलाव कोसों दूर है।

दुनिया के गर्म होते जाने की जानकारी कोई नई नहीं है। पता तो 1824 में ही लग गया था, जब जोसेफ फूरियर ने बताया था कि धरती पर यदि कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड की मात्रा बढ़ेगी तो धरती का तापमान बढ़ेगा, फलस्वरूप ध्रुवीय हिमखंड पिघल सकते हैं। बावजूद इसके पिछले लगभग 180 वर्षों में हमने कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड एवं अन्य ग्रीनहाऊस गैसों के उत्सर्जन घटाने के लिए कुछ नहीं किया, विशेषकर समृद्ध देशों ने, जो इसके लिए सर्वाधिक गुनाहगार हैं। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग जिस रफ्तार से बढ़ रहा है उसमें 60 प्रतिशत से ज्यादा योगदान विकसित देशों का ही है। एक तर्क यह है कि इसको रोकने की शुरुआत विकसित देशों को ही करनी चाहिए। दूसरा तर्क यह है कि विकसित देशों ने जिस शैली को अपना लिया है, उसे रातों-रात छोड़ना आसान नहीं इसलिए फिलहाल ध्यान उन देशों पर दिया जाए जो तेजी से ग्रीन हाऊस गैस को बढ़ाने वाली शैली को अपना रहे हैं। पर क्या विकासशील देश यह जोखिम ले सकते हैं कि वे ग्लोबल वार्मिंग रोकने में अपनी विकास यात्रा को रोक देगें।

किन्तु अब हाथ पर हाथ धर कर बैठने और एक दूसरे के ऊपर दोषारोपण करने का समय खत्म हो चुका है। ध्रुवों एवं पर्वत शिखरों में जमी बर्फ के पिघलने की रफ्तार कल्पनातीत ढंग से बढ़ चली है। यह और न बढ़े इसके लिए तुरंत कदम उठाने का समय आ गया है। हमारा पिछला रिकार्ड चाहे जितना भी खराब क्यों न हो, लेकिन हम इनका कोई और समाधान अभी भी निकाल सकते हैं बशर्ते कि सीमा, विश्व व्यापार, क्षेत्रीयता, पराये धन पर नजरें गड़ाने एवं सभ्यताओं की जंग जैसे बेवजह झगड़ों को ही सब कुछ मानकर हम इस चुनौती को ही न भूल जाएं। इस सदी में हमें मानव सभ्यता का भविष्य इराक, ईरान, उत्तरी कोरिया, अफगानिस्तान, फिलीस्तीन, डब्ल्यूटीओ, परमाणु परिसीमन और मिसाइल तकनीक से आगे बढ़कर बनाना होगा। मानव सभ्यता और इस सुन्दर सृष्टि को बचाना इस दशक का सबसे बड़ा संकल्प होना चाहिए क्योंकि अब इसका कोई विकल्प नहीं है। ये दोनों काम प्राथमिकता के आधार पर करने ही होंगे क्योंकि 21वीं सदी की इस वैश्विक चुनौती का समाधान हाथ पर हाथ धरे और पुराने तंत्र के भरोसे नहीं किया जा सकता।

संपर्क सूत्र :

श्री शैलेन्द्र कुमार गुप्ता, मुख्य पथ, भगत सिंह चौक, बैंक ऑफ इंडिया के पास, पो.-खूंटी, जि. रांची- 835210 (झारखंड)

Climate Change Essay

500+ words essay on climate change.

Climate change is a major global challenge today, and the world is becoming more vulnerable to this change. Climate change refers to the changes in Earth’s climate condition. It describes the changes in the atmosphere which have taken place over a period ranging from decades to millions of years. A recent report from the United Nations predicted that the average global temperature could increase by 6˚ Celsius at the end of the century. Climate change has an adverse effect on the environment and ecosystem. With the help of this essay, students will get to know the causes and effects of climate change and possible solutions. Also, they will be able to write essays on similar topics and can boost their writing skills.

What Causes Climate Change?

The Earth’s climate has always changed and evolved. Some of these changes have been due to natural causes such as volcanic eruptions, floods, forest fires etc., but quite a few of them are due to human activities. Human activities such as deforestation, burning fossil fuels, farming livestock etc., generate an enormous amount of greenhouse gases. This results in the greenhouse effect and global warming which are the major causes of climate change.

Effects of Climate Change

If the current situation of climate change continues in a similar manner, then it will impact all forms of life on the earth. The earth’s temperature will rise, the monsoon patterns will change, sea levels will rise, and storms, volcanic eruptions and natural disasters will occur frequently. The biological and ecological balance of the earth will get disturbed. The environment will get polluted and humans will not be able to get fresh air to breathe and fresh water to drink. Life on earth will come to an end.

Steps to be Taken to Reduce Climate Change

The Government of India has taken many measures to improve the dire situation of Climate Change. The Ministry of Environment and Forests is the nodal agency for climate change issues in India. It has initiated several climate-friendly measures, particularly in the area of renewable energy. India took several steps and policy initiatives to create awareness about climate change and help capacity building for adaptation measures. It has initiated a “Green India” programme under which various trees are planted to make the forest land more green and fertile.

We need to follow the path of sustainable development to effectively address the concerns of climate change. We need to minimise the use of fossil fuels, which is the major cause of global warming. We must adopt alternative sources of energy, such as hydropower, solar and wind energy to make a progressive transition to clean energy. Mahatma Gandhi said that “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not any man’s greed”. With this view, we must remodel our outlook and achieve the goal of sustainable development. By adopting clean technologies, equitable distribution of resources and addressing the issues of equity and justice, we can make our developmental process more harmonious with nature.

We hope students liked this essay on Climate Change and gathered useful information on this topic so that they can write essays in their own words. To get more study material related to the CBSE, ICSE, State Board and Competitive exams, keep visiting the BYJU’S website.

Frequently Asked Questions on climate change Essay

What are the reasons for climate change.

1. Deforestation 2. Excessive usage of fossil fuels 3. Water, Soil pollution 4. Plastic and other non-biodegradable waste 5. Wildlife and nature extinction

How can we save this climate change situation?

1. Avoid over usage of natural resources 2. Do not use or buy items made from animals 3. Avoid plastic usage and pollution

Are there any natural causes for climate change?

Yes, some of the natural causes for climate change are: 1. Solar variations 2. Volcanic eruption and tsunamis 3. Earth’s orbital changes

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How does global warming work?

Where does global warming occur in the atmosphere, why is global warming a social problem, where does global warming affect polar bears.

Brown layer of Los Angeles smog; photo taken on November 10, 2016.(California, environment, smog)

global warming

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U.S. Department of Transportation - Global Warming: A Science Overview
NOAA Climate.gov - Climate Change: Global Temperature
Natural Resources Defense Council - Global Warming 101
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global warming - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
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Table Of Contents

Human activity affects global surface temperatures by changing Earth ’s radiative balance—the “give and take” between what comes in during the day and what Earth emits at night. Increases in greenhouse gases —i.e., trace gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that absorb heat energy emitted from Earth’s surface and reradiate it back—generated by industry and transportation cause the atmosphere to retain more heat, which increases temperatures and alters precipitation patterns.

Global warming, the phenomenon of increasing average air temperatures near Earth’s surface over the past one to two centuries, happens mostly in the troposphere , the lowest level of the atmosphere, which extends from Earth’s surface up to a height of 6–11 miles. This layer contains most of Earth’s clouds and is where living things and their habitats and weather primarily occur.

Continued global warming is expected to impact everything from energy use to water availability to crop productivity throughout the world. Poor countries and communities with limited abilities to adapt to these changes are expected to suffer disproportionately. Global warming is already being associated with increases in the incidence of severe and extreme weather, heavy flooding , and wildfires —phenomena that threaten homes, dams, transportation networks, and other facets of human infrastructure. Learn more about how the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, released in 2021, describes the social impacts of global warming.

Polar bears live in the Arctic , where they use the region’s ice floes as they hunt seals and other marine mammals . Temperature increases related to global warming have been the most pronounced at the poles, where they often make the difference between frozen and melted ice. Polar bears rely on small gaps in the ice to hunt their prey. As these gaps widen because of continued melting, prey capture has become more challenging for these animals.

Recent News

global warming , the phenomenon of increasing average air temperatures near the surface of Earth over the past one to two centuries. Climate scientists have since the mid-20th century gathered detailed observations of various weather phenomena (such as temperatures, precipitation , and storms) and of related influences on climate (such as ocean currents and the atmosphere’s chemical composition). These data indicate that Earth’s climate has changed over almost every conceivable timescale since the beginning of geologic time and that human activities since at least the beginning of the Industrial Revolution have a growing influence over the pace and extent of present-day climate change .

Giving voice to a growing conviction of most of the scientific community , the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), published in 2021, noted that the best estimate of the increase in global average surface temperature between 1850 and 2019 was 1.07 °C (1.9 °F). An IPCC special report produced in 2018 noted that human beings and their activities have been responsible for a worldwide average temperature increase between 0.8 and 1.2 °C (1.4 and 2.2 °F) since preindustrial times, and most of the warming over the second half of the 20th century could be attributed to human activities.

AR6 produced a series of global climate predictions based on modeling five greenhouse gas emission scenarios that accounted for future emissions, mitigation (severity reduction) measures, and uncertainties in the model projections. Some of the main uncertainties include the precise role of feedback processes and the impacts of industrial pollutants known as aerosols , which may offset some warming. The lowest-emissions scenario, which assumed steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions beginning in 2015, predicted that the global mean surface temperature would increase between 1.0 and 1.8 °C (1.8 and 3.2 °F) by 2100 relative to the 1850–1900 average. This range stood in stark contrast to the highest-emissions scenario, which predicted that the mean surface temperature would rise between 3.3 and 5.7 °C (5.9 and 10.2 °F) by 2100 based on the assumption that greenhouse gas emissions would continue to increase throughout the 21st century. The intermediate-emissions scenario, which assumed that emissions would stabilize by 2050 before declining gradually, projected an increase of between 2.1 and 3.5 °C (3.8 and 6.3 °F) by 2100.

Many climate scientists agree that significant societal, economic, and ecological damage would result if the global average temperature rose by more than 2 °C (3.6 °F) in such a short time. Such damage would include increased extinction of many plant and animal species, shifts in patterns of agriculture , and rising sea levels. By 2015 all but a few national governments had begun the process of instituting carbon reduction plans as part of the Paris Agreement , a treaty designed to help countries keep global warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above preindustrial levels in order to avoid the worst of the predicted effects. Whereas authors of the 2018 special report noted that should carbon emissions continue at their present rate, the increase in average near-surface air temperature would reach 1.5 °C sometime between 2030 and 2052, authors of the AR6 report suggested that this threshold would be reached by 2041 at the latest.

Combination shot of Grinnell Glacier taken from the summit of Mount Gould, Glacier National Park, Montana in the years 1938, 1981, 1998 and 2006.

The AR6 report also noted that the global average sea level had risen by some 20 cm (7.9 inches) between 1901 and 2018 and that sea level rose faster in the second half of the 20th century than in the first half. It also predicted, again depending on a wide range of scenarios, that the global average sea level would rise by different amounts by 2100 relative to the 1995–2014 average. Under the report’s lowest-emission scenario, sea level would rise by 28–55 cm (11–21.7 inches), whereas, under the intermediate emissions scenario, sea level would rise by 44–76 cm (17.3–29.9 inches). The highest-emissions scenario suggested that sea level would rise by 63–101 cm (24.8–39.8 inches) by 2100.

The scenarios referred to above depend mainly on future concentrations of certain trace gases, called greenhouse gases , that have been injected into the lower atmosphere in increasing amounts through the burning of fossil fuels for industry, transportation , and residential uses. Modern global warming is the result of an increase in magnitude of the so-called greenhouse effect , a warming of Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere caused by the presence of water vapour , carbon dioxide , methane , nitrous oxides , and other greenhouse gases. In 2014 the IPCC first reported that concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxides in the atmosphere surpassed those found in ice cores dating back 800,000 years.

Of all these gases, carbon dioxide is the most important, both for its role in the greenhouse effect and for its role in the human economy. It has been estimated that, at the beginning of the industrial age in the mid-18th century, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were roughly 280 parts per million (ppm). By the end of 2022 they had risen to 419 ppm, and, if fossil fuels continue to be burned at current rates, they are projected to reach 550 ppm by the mid-21st century—essentially, a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in 300 years.

What's the problem with an early spring?

A vigorous debate is in progress over the extent and seriousness of rising surface temperatures, the effects of past and future warming on human life, and the need for action to reduce future warming and deal with its consequences. This article provides an overview of the scientific background related to the subject of global warming. It considers the causes of rising near-surface air temperatures, the influencing factors, the process of climate research and forecasting, and the possible ecological and social impacts of rising temperatures. For an overview of the public policy developments related to global warming occurring since the mid-20th century, see global warming policy . For a detailed description of Earth’s climate, its processes, and the responses of living things to its changing nature, see climate . For additional background on how Earth’s climate has changed throughout geologic time , see climatic variation and change . For a full description of Earth’s gaseous envelope, within which climate change and global warming occur, see atmosphere .

A cityscape view with reflections of people on windows and a dramatic cloudy sky in the background.

A problem built into our relationship with energy itself. Photo by Ferdinando Scianna/Magnum

Deep warming

Even if we ‘solve’ global warming, we face an older, slower problem. waste heat could radically alter earth’s future.

by Mark Buchanan + BIO

The world will be transformed. By 2050, we will be driving electric cars and flying in aircraft running on synthetic fuels produced through solar and wind energy. New energy-efficient technologies, most likely harnessing artificial intelligence, will dominate nearly all human activities from farming to heavy industry. The fossil fuel industry will be in the final stages of a terminal decline. Nuclear fusion and other new energy sources may have become widespread. Perhaps our planet will even be orbited by massive solar arrays capturing cosmic energy from sunlight and generating seemingly endless energy for all our needs.

That is one possible future for humanity. It’s an optimistic view of how radical changes to energy production might help us slow or avoid the worst outcomes of global warming. In a report from 1965, scientists from the US government warned that our ongoing use of fossil fuels would cause global warming with potentially disastrous consequences for Earth’s climate. The report, one of the first government-produced documents to predict a major crisis caused by humanity’s large-scale activities, noted that the likely consequences would include higher global temperatures, the melting of the ice caps and rising sea levels. ‘Through his worldwide industrial civilisation,’ the report concluded, ‘Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment’ – an experiment with a highly uncertain outcome, but clear and important risks for life on Earth.

Since then, we’ve dithered and doubted and argued about what to do, but still have not managed to take serious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which continue to rise. Governments around the planet have promised to phase out emissions in the coming decades and transition to ‘green energy’. But global temperatures may be rising faster than we expected: some climate scientists worry that rapid rises could create new problems and positive feedback loops that may accelerate climate destabilisation and make parts of the world uninhabitable long before a hoped-for transition is possible.

Despite this bleak vision of the future, there are reasons for optimists to hope due to progress on cleaner sources of renewable energy, especially solar power. Around 2010, solar energy generation accounted for less than 1 per cent of the electricity generated by humanity. But experts believe that, by 2027, due to falling costs, better technology and exponential growth in new installations, solar power will become the largest global energy source for producing electricity. If progress on renewables continues, we might find a way to resolve the warming problem linked to greenhouse gas emissions. By 2050, large-scale societal and ecological changes might have helped us avoid the worst consequences of our extensive use of fossil fuels.

It’s a momentous challenge. And it won’t be easy. But this story of transformation only hints at the true depth of the future problems humanity will confront in managing our energy use and its influence over our climate.

As scientists are gradually learning, even if we solve the immediate warming problem linked to the greenhouse effect, there’s another warming problem steadily growing beneath it. Let’s call it the ‘deep warming’ problem. This deeper problem also raises Earth’s surface temperature but, unlike global warming, it has nothing to do with greenhouse gases and our use of fossil fuels. It stems directly from our use of energy in all forms and our tendency to use more energy over time – a problem created by the inevitable waste heat that is generated whenever we use energy to do something. Yes, the world may well be transformed by 2050. Carbon dioxide levels may stabilise or fall thanks to advanced AI-assisted technologies that run on energy harvested from the sun and wind. And the fossil fuel industry may be taking its last breaths. But we will still face a deeper problem. That’s because ‘deep warming’ is not created by the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It’s a problem built into our relationship with energy itself.

F inding new ways to harness more energy has been a constant theme of human development. The evolution of humanity – from early modes of hunter-gathering to farming and industry – has involved large systematic increases in our per-capita energy use. The British historian and archaeologist Ian Morris estimates, in his book Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve (2015), that early human hunter-gatherers, living more than 10,000 years ago, ‘captured’ around 5,000 kcal per person per day by consuming food, burning fuel, making clothing, building shelter, or through other activities. Later, after we turned to farming and enlisted the energies of domesticated animals, we were able to harness as much as 30,000 kcal per day. In the late 17th century , the exploitation of coal and steam power marked another leap: by 1970, the use of fossil fuels allowed humans to consume some 230,000 kcal per person per day. (When we think about humanity writ large as ‘humans’, it’s important to acknowledge that the average person in the wealthiest nations consumes up to 100 times more energy than the average person in the poorest nations.) As the global population has risen and people have invented new energy-dependent technologies, our global energy use has continued to climb.

In many respects, this is great. We can now do more with less effort and achieve things that were unimaginable to the 17th-century inventors of steam engines, let alone to our hominin ancestors. We’ve made powerful mining machines, superfast trains, lasers for use in telecommunications and brain-imaging equipment. But these creations, while helping us, are also subtly heating the planet.

All the energy we humans use – to heat our homes, run our factories, propel our automobiles and aircraft, or to run our electronics – eventually ends up as heat in the environment. In the shorter term, most of the energy we use flows directly into the environment. It gets there through hot exhaust gases, friction between tires and roads, the noises generated by powerful engines, which spread out, dissipate, and eventually end up as heat. However, a small portion of the energy we use gets stored in physical changes, such as in new steel, plastic or concrete. It’s stored in our cities and technologies. In the longer term, as these materials break down, the energy stored inside also finds its way into the environment as heat. This is a direct consequence of the well-tested principles of thermodynamics.

Waste heat will pose a problem that is every bit as serious as global warming from greenhouse gases

In the early decades of the 21st century , this heat created by simply using energy, known as ‘waste heat’, is not so serious. It’s equivalent to roughly 2 per cent of the planetary heating imbalance caused by greenhouse gases – for now. But, with the passing of time, the problem is likely to get much more serious. That’s because humans have a historical tendency to consistently discover and produce things, creating entirely new technologies and industries in the process: domesticated animals for farming; railways and automobiles; global air travel and shipping; personal computers, the internet and mobile phones. The result of such activities is that we end up using more and more energy, despite improved energy efficiency in nearly every area of technology.

During the past two centuries at least (and likely for much longer), our yearly energy use has doubled roughly every 30 to 50 years . Our energy use seems to be growing exponentially, a trend that shows every sign of continuing. We keep finding new things to do and almost everything we invent requires more and more energy: consider the enormous energy demands of cryptocurrency mining or the accelerating energy requirements of AI.

If this historical trend continues, scientists estimate waste heat will pose a problem in roughly 150-200 years that is every bit as serious as the current problem of global warming from greenhouse gases. However, deep heating will be more pernicious as we won’t be able to avoid it by merely shifting from one kind energy to another. A profound problem will loom before us: can we set strict limits on all the energy we use? Can we reign in the seemingly inexorable expansion of our activities to avoid destroying our own environment?

Deep warming is a problem hiding beneath global warming, but one that will become prominent if and when we manage to solve the more pressing issue of greenhouse gases. It remains just out of sight, which might explain why scientists only became concerned about the ‘waste heat’ problem around 15 years ago.

O ne of the first people to describe the problem is the Harvard astrophysicist Eric Chaisson, who discussed the issue of waste heat in a paper titled ‘Long-Term Global Heating from Energy Usage’ (2008). He concluded that our technological society may be facing a fundamental limit to growth due to ‘unavoidable global heating … dictated solely by the second law of thermodynamics, a biogeophysical effect often ignored when estimating future planetary warming scenarios’. When I emailed Chaisson to learn more, he told me the history of his thinking on the problem:

It was on a night flight, Paris-Boston [circa] 2006, after a UNESCO meeting on the environment when it dawned on me that the IPCC were overlooking something. While others on the plane slept, I crunched some numbers literally on the back of an envelope … and then hoped I was wrong, that is, hoped that I was incorrect in thinking that the very act of using energy heats the air, however slightly now.

The transformation of energy into heat is among the most ubiquitous processes of physics

Chaisson drafted the idea up as a paper and sent it to an academic journal. Two anonymous reviewers were eager for it to be published. ‘A third tried his damnedest to kill it,’ Chaisson said, the reviewer claiming the findings were ‘irrelevant and distracting’. After it was finally published, the paper got some traction when it was covered by a journalist and ran as a feature story on the front page of The Boston Globe . The numbers Chaisson crunched, predictions of our mounting waste heat, were even run on a supercomputer at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, by Mark Flanner, a professor of earth system science. Flanner, Chaisson suspected at the time, was likely ‘out to prove it wrong’. But, ‘after his machine crunched for many hours’, he saw the same results that Chaisson had written on the back of an envelope that night in the plane.

Around the same time, also in 2008, two engineers, Nick Cowern and Chihak Ahn, wrote a research paper entirely independent of Chaisson’s work, but with similar conclusions. This was how I first came across the problem. Cowern and Ahn’s study estimated the total amount of waste heat we’re currently releasing to the environment, and found that it is, right now, quite small. But, like Chaisson, they acknowledged that the problem would eventually become serious unless steps were taken to avoid it.

That’s some of the early history of thinking in this area. But these two papers, and a few other analyses since, point to the same unsettling conclusion: what I am calling ‘deep warming’ will be a big problem for humanity at some point in the not-too-distant future. The precise date is far from certain. It might be 150 years , or 400, or 800, but it’s in the relatively near future, not the distant future of, say, thousands or millions of years. This is our future.

T he transformation of energy into heat is among the most ubiquitous processes of physics. As cars drive down roads, trains roar along railways, planes cross the skies and industrial plants turn raw materials into refined products, energy gets turned into heat, which is the scientific word for energy stored in the disorganised motions of molecules at the microscopic level. As a plane flies from Paris to Boston, it burns fuel and thrusts hot gases into the air, generates lots of sound and stirs up contrails. These swirls of air give rise to swirls on smaller scales which in turn make smaller ones until the energy ultimately ends up lost in heat – the air is a little warmer than before, the molecules making it up moving about a little more vigorously. A similar process takes place when energy is used by the tiny electrical currents inside the microchips of computers, silently carrying out computations. Energy used always ends up as heat. Decades ago, research by the IBM physicist Rolf Landauer showed that a computation involving even a single computing bit will release a certain minimum amount of heat to the environment.

How this happens is described by the laws of thermodynamics, which were described in the mid-19th century by scientists including Sadi Carnot in France and Rudolf Clausius in Germany. Two key ‘laws’ summarise its main principles.

The first law of thermodynamics simply states that the total quantity of energy never changes but is conserved. Energy, in other words, never disappears, but only changes form. The energy initially stored in an aircraft’s fuel, for example, can be changed into the energetic motion of the plane. Turn on an electric heater, and energy initially held in electric currents gets turned into heat, which spreads into the air, walls and fabric of your house. The total energy remains the same, but it markedly changes form.

We’re generating waste heat all the time with everything we do

The second law of thermodynamics, equally important, is more subtle and states that, in natural processes, the transformation of energy always moves from more organised and useful forms to less organised and less useful forms. For an aircraft, the energy initially concentrated in jet fuel ends up dissipated in stirred-up winds, sounds and heat spread over vast areas of the atmosphere in a largely invisible way. It’s the same with the electric heater: the organised useful energy in the electric currents gets dissipated and spread into the low-grade warmth of the walls, then leaks into the outside air. Although the amount of energy remains the same, it gradually turns into less organised, less usable forms. The end point of the energy process produces waste heat. And we’re generating it all the time with everything we do.

Data on world energy consumption shows that, collectively, all humans on Earth are currently using about 170,000 terawatt-hours (TWh), which is a lot of energy in absolute terms – a terawatt-hour is the total energy consumed in one hour by any process using energy at a rate of 1 trillion watts. This huge number isn’t surprising, as it represents all the energy being used every day by the billions of cars and homes around the world, as well as by industry, farming, construction, air traffic and so on. But, in the early 21st century , the warming from this energy is still much less than the planetary heating due to greenhouse gases.

Concentrations of greenhouse gases such as CO 2 and methane are quite small, and only make a fractional difference to how much of the Sun’s energy gets trapped in the atmosphere, rather than making it back out to space. Even so, this fractional difference has a huge effect because the stream of energy arriving from the Sun to Earth is so large. Current estimates of this greenhouse energy imbalance come to around 0.87 W per square meter, which translates into a total energy figure about 50 times larger than our waste heat. That’s reassuring. But as Cowern and Ahn wrote in their 2008 paper, things aren’t likely to stay this way over time because our energy usage keeps rising. Unless, that is, we can find some radical way to break the trend of using ever more energy.

O ne common objection to the idea of the deep warming is to claim that the problem won’t really arise. ‘Don’t worry,’ someone might say, ‘with efficient technology, we’re going to find ways to stop using more energy; though we’ll end up doing more things in the future, we’ll use less energy.’ This may sound plausible at first, because we are indeed getting more efficient at using energy in most areas of technology. Our cars, appliances and laptops are all doing more with less energy. If efficiency keeps improving, perhaps we can learn to run these things with almost no energy at all? Not likely, because there are limits to energy efficiency.

Over the past few decades, the efficiency of heating in homes – including oil and gas furnaces, and boilers used to heat water – has increased from less than 50 per cent to well above 90 per cent of what is theoretically possible. That’s good news, but there’s not much more efficiency to be realised in basic heating. The efficiency of lighting has also vastly improved, with modern LED lighting turning something like 70 per cent of the applied electrical energy into light. We will gain some efficiencies as older lighting gets completely replaced by LEDs, but there’s not a lot of room left for future efficiency improvements. Similar efficiency limits arise in the growing or cooking of food; in the manufacturing of cars, bikes and electronic devices; in transportation, as we’re taken from place to place; in the running of search engines, translation software, GPT-4 or other large-language models.

Even if we made significant improvements in the efficiencies of these technologies, we will only have bought a little time. These changes won’t delay by much the date when deep warming becomes a problem we must reckon with.

Optimising efficiencies is just a temporary reprieve, not a radical change in our human future

As a thought experiment, suppose we could immediately improve the energy efficiency of everything we do by a factor of 10 – a fantastically optimistic proposal. That is, imagine the energy output of humans on Earth has been reduced 10 times , from 170,000 TWh to 17,000 TWh . If our energy use keeps expanding, doubling every 30-50 years or so (as it has for centuries), then a 10-fold increase in waste heat will happen in just over three doubling times, which is about 130 years : 17,000 TWh doubles to 34,000 TWh , which doubles to 68,000 TWh , which doubles to 136,000 TWh , and so on. All those improvements in energy efficiency would quickly evaporate. The date when deep warming hits would recede by 130 years or so, but not much more. Optimising efficiencies is just a temporary reprieve, not a radical change in our human future.

Improvements in energy efficiency can also have an inverse effect on our overall energy use. It’s easy to think that if we make a technology more efficient, we’ll then use less energy through the technology. But economists are deeply aware of a paradoxical effect known as ‘rebound’, whereby improved energy efficiency, by making the use of a technology cheaper, actually leads to more widespread use of that technology – and more energy use too. The classic example, as noted by the British economist William Stanley Jevons in his book The Coal Question (1865), is the invention of the steam engine. This new technology could extract energy from burning coal more efficiently, but it also made possible so many new applications that the use of coal increased. A recent study by economists suggests that, across the economy, such rebound effects might easily swallow at least 50 per cent of any efficiency gains in energy use. Something similar has already happened with LED lights, for which people have found thousands of new uses.

If gains in efficiency won’t buy us lots of time, how about other factors, such as a reduction of the global population? Scientists generally believe that the current human population of more than 8 billion people is well beyond the limits of our finite planet, especially if a large fraction of this population aspires to the resource-intensive lifestyles of wealthy nations. Some estimates suggest that a more sustainable population might be more like 2 billion , which could reduce energy use significantly, potentially by a factor of three or four. However, this isn’t a real solution: again, as with the example of improved energy efficiency, a one-time reduction of our energy consumption by a factor of three will quickly be swallowed up by an inexorable rise in energy use. If Earth’s population were suddenly reduced to 2 billion – about a quarter of the current population – our energy gains would initially be enormous. But those gains would be erased in two doubling times, or roughly 60-100 years , as our energy demands would grow fourfold.

S o, why aren’t more people talking about this? The deep warming problem is starting to get more attention. It was recently mentioned on Twitter by the German climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf, who cautioned that nuclear fusion, despite excitement over recent advances, won’t arrive in time to save us from our waste heat, and might make the problem worse. By providing another cheap source of energy, fusion energy could accelerate both the growth of our energy use and the reckoning of deep warming. A student of Rahmstorf’s, Peter Steiglechner, wrote his master’s thesis on the problem in 2018. Recognition of deep warming and its long-term implications for humanity is spreading. But what can we do about the problem?

Avoiding or delaying deep warming will involve slowing the rise of our waste heat, which means restricting the amount of energy we use and also choosing energy sources that exacerbate the problem as little as possible. Unlike the energy from fossil fuels or nuclear power, which add to our waste energy burden, renewable energy sources intercept energy that is already on its way to Earth, rather than producing additional waste heat. In this sense, the deep warming problem is another reason to pursue renewable energy sources such as solar or wind rather than alternatives such as nuclear fusion, fission or even geothermal power. If we derive energy from any of these sources, we’re unleashing new flows of energy into the Earth system without making a compensating reduction. As a result, all such sources will add to the waste heat problem. However, if renewable sources of energy are deployed correctly, they need not add to our deposition of waste heat in the environment. By using this energy, we produce no more waste heat than would have been created by sunlight in the first place.

Take the example of wind energy. Sunlight first stirs winds into motion by heating parts of the planet unequally, causing vast cells of convection. As wind churns through the atmosphere, blows through trees and over mountains and waves, most of its energy gets turned into heat, ending up in the microscopic motions of molecules. If we harvest some of this wind energy through turbines, it will also be turned into heat in the form of stored energy. But, crucially, no more heat is generated than if there had been no turbines to capture the wind.

The same can hold true for solar energy. In an array of solar cells, if each cell only collects the sunlight falling on it – which would ordinarily have been absorbed by Earth’s surface – then the cells don’t alter how much waste heat gets produced as they generate energy. The light that would have warmed Earth’s surface instead goes into the solar cells, gets used by people for some purpose, and then later ends up as heat. In this way we reduce the amount of heat being absorbed by Earth by precisely the same amount as the energy we are extracting for human use. We are not adding to overall planetary heating. This keeps the waste energy burden unchanged, at least in the relatively near future, even if we go on extracting and using ever larger amounts of energy.

Covering deserts in dark panels would absorb a lot more energy than the desert floor

Chaisson summarised the problem quite clearly in 2008:

I’m now of the opinion … that any energy that’s dug up on Earth – including all fossil fuels of course, but also nuclear and ground-sourced geothermal – will inevitably produce waste heat as a byproduct of humankind’s use of energy. The only exception to that is energy arriving from beyond Earth, this is energy here and now and not dug up, namely the many solar energies (plural) caused by the Sun’s rays landing here daily … The need to avoid waste heat is indeed the single, strongest, scientific argument to embrace solar energies of all types.

But not just any method of gathering solar energy will avoid the deep warming problem. Doing so requires careful engineering. For example, covering deserts with solar panels would add to planetary heating because deserts reflect a lot of incident light back out to space, so it is never absorbed by Earth (and therefore doesn’t produce waste heat). Covering deserts in dark panels would absorb a lot more energy than the desert floor and would heat the planet further.

We’ll also face serious problems in the long run if our energy appetite keeps increasing. Futurists dream of technologies deployed in space where huge panels would absorb sunlight that would otherwise have passed by Earth and never entered our atmosphere. Ultimately, they believe, this energy could be beamed down to Earth. Like nuclear energy, such technologies would add an additional energy source to the planet without any compensating removal of heating from the sunlight currently striking our planet’s surface. Any effort to produce more energy than is normally available from sunlight at Earth’s surface will only make our heating problems worse.

D eep warming is simply a consequence of the laws of physics and our inquisitive nature. It seems to be in our nature to constantly learn and develop new things, changing our environment in the process. For thousands of years, we have harvested and exploited ever greater quantities of energy in this pursuit, and we appear poised to continue along this path with the rapidly expanding use of renewable energy sources – and perhaps even more novel sources such as nuclear fusion. But this path cannot proceed indefinitely without consequences.

The logic that more energy equals more warming sets up a profound dilemma for our future. The laws of physics and the habits ingrained in us from our long evolutionary history are steering us toward trouble. We may have a technological fix for greenhouse gas warming – just shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources – but there is no technical trick to get us out of the deep warming problem. That won’t stop some scientists from trying.

Perhaps, believing that humanity is incapable of reducing its energy usage, we’ll adopt a fantastic scheme to cool the planet, such as planetary-scale refrigeration or using artificially engineered tornadoes to transport heat from Earth’s surface to the upper atmosphere where it can be radiated away to space. As far-fetched as such approaches sound, scientists have given some serious thought to these and other equally bizarre ideas, which seem wholly in the realm of science fiction. They’re schemes that will likely make the problem worse not better.

We will need to transform the human story. It must become a story of doing less, not more

I see several possibilities for how we might ultimately respond. As with greenhouse gas warming, there will probably be an initial period of disbelief, denial and inaction, as we continue with unconstrained technological advance and growing energy use. Our planet will continue warming. Sooner or later, however, such warming will lead to serious disruptions of the Earth environment and its ecosystems. We won’t be able to ignore this for long, and it may provide a natural counterbalance to our energy use, as our technical and social capacity to generate and use ever more energy will be eroded. We may eventually come to some uncomfortable balance in which we just scrabble out a life on a hot, compromised planet because we lack the moral and organisational ability to restrict our energy use enough to maintain a sound environment.

An alternative would require a radical break with our past: using less energy. Finding a way to use less energy would represent a truly fundamental rupture with all of human history, something entirely novel. A rupture of this magnitude won’t come easily. However, if we could learn to view restrictions on our energy use as a non-negotiable element of life on Earth, we may still be able to do many of the things that make us essentially human: learning, discovering, inventing, creating. In this scenario, any helpful new technology that comes into use and begins using lots of energy would require a balancing reduction in energy use elsewhere. In such a way, we might go on with the future being perpetually new, and possibly better.

None of this is easily achieved and will likely mirror our current struggles to come to agreements on greenhouse gas heating. There will be vicious squabbles, arguments and profound polarisation, quite possibly major wars. Humanity will never have faced a challenge of this magnitude, and we won’t face up to it quickly or easily, I expect. But we must. Planetary heating is in our future – the very near future and further out as well. Many people will find this conclusion surprisingly hard to swallow, perhaps because it implies fundamental restrictions on our future here on Earth: we can’t go on forever using more and more energy, and, at the same time, expecting the planet’s climate to remain stable.

The world will likely be transformed by 2050. And, sometime after that, we will need to transform the human story. The narrative arc of humanity must become a tale of continuing innovation and learning, but also one of careful management. It must become a story, in energy terms, of doing less, not more. There’s no technology for entirely escaping waste heat, only techniques.

This is important to remember as we face up to the extremely urgent challenge of heating linked to fossil-fuel use and greenhouse gases. Global warming is just the beginning of our problems. It’s a testing ground to see if we can manage an intelligent and coordinated response. If we can handle this challenge, we might be better prepared, more capable and resilient as a species to tackle an even harder one.

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Global warming.

The causes, effects, and complexities of global warming are important to understand so that we can fight for the health of our planet.

Earth Science, Climatology

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Global warming is the long-term warming of the planet’s overall temperature. Though this warming trend has been going on for a long time, its pace has significantly increased in the last hundred years due to the burning of fossil fuels . As the human population has increased, so has the volume of fossil fuels burned. Fossil fuels include coal, oil, and natural gas, and burning them causes what is known as the “greenhouse effect” in Earth’s atmosphere.

The greenhouse effect is when the sun’s rays penetrate the atmosphere, but when that heat is reflected off the surface cannot escape back into space. Gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels prevent the heat from leaving the atmosphere. These greenhouse gasses are carbon dioxide , chlorofluorocarbons, water vapor , methane , and nitrous oxide . The excess heat in the atmosphere has caused the average global temperature to rise overtime, otherwise known as global warming.

Global warming has presented another issue called climate change. Sometimes these phrases are used interchangeably, however, they are different. Climate change refers to changes in weather patterns and growing seasons around the world. It also refers to sea level rise caused by the expansion of warmer seas and melting ice sheets and glaciers . Global warming causes climate change, which poses a serious threat to life on Earth in the forms of widespread flooding and extreme weather. Scientists continue to study global warming and its impact on Earth.

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What evidence exists that Earth is warming and that humans are the main cause?

We know the world is warming because people have been recording daily high and low temperatures at thousands of weather stations worldwide, over land and ocean, for many decades and, in some locations, for more than a century. When different teams of climate scientists in different agencies (e.g., NOAA and NASA) and in other countries (e.g., the U.K.’s Hadley Centre) average these data together, they all find essentially the same result: Earth’s average surface temperature has risen by about 1.8°F (1.0°C) since 1880.

Bar graph of global temperature anomalies with an overlay of a line graph of atmospheric carbon dioxide from 1850-2023

( bar chart ) Yearly temperature compared to the twentieth-century average from 1850–2023. Red bars mean warmer-than-average years; blue bars mean colder-than-average years. (line graph) Atmospheric carbon dioxide amounts: 1850-1958 from IAC , 1959-2023 from NOAA Global Monitoring Lab . NOAA Climate.gov graph, adapted from original by Dr. Howard Diamond (NOAA ARL).

In addition to our surface station data, we have many different lines of evidence that Earth is warming ( learn more ). Birds are migrating earlier, and their migration patterns are changing. Lobsters and other marine species are moving north. Plants are blooming earlier in the spring. Mountain glaciers are melting worldwide, and snow cover is declining in the Northern Hemisphere (Learn more here and here ). Greenland’s ice sheet—which holds about 8 percent of Earth’s fresh water—is melting at an accelerating rate ( learn more ). Mean global sea level is rising ( learn more ). Arctic sea ice is declining rapidly in both thickness and extent ( learn more ).

Aerial photo of glacier front with a graph overlay of Greenland ice mass over time

The Greenland Ice Sheet lost mass again in 2020, but not as much as it did 2019. Adapted from the 2020 Arctic Report Card, this graph tracks Greenland mass loss measured by NASA's GRACE satellite missions since 2002. The background photo shows a glacier calving front in western Greenland, captured from an airplane during a NASA Operation IceBridge field campaign. Full story.

We know this warming is largely caused by human activities because the key role that carbon dioxide plays in maintaining Earth’s natural greenhouse effect has been understood since the mid-1800s. Unless it is offset by some equally large cooling influence, more atmospheric carbon dioxide will lead to warmer surface temperatures. Since 1800, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from about 280 parts per million to 410 ppm in 2019. We know from both its rapid increase and its isotopic “fingerprint” that the source of this new carbon dioxide is fossil fuels, and not natural sources like forest fires, volcanoes, or outgassing from the ocean.

DIgital image of a painting of a fire burning in a coal pile in a small village

Philip James de Loutherbourg's 1801 painting, Coalbrookdale by Night , came to symbolize the start of the Industrial Revolution, when humans began to harness the power of fossil fuels—and to contribute significantly to Earth's atmospheric greenhouse gas composition. Image from Wikipedia .

Finally, no other known climate influences have changed enough to account for the observed warming trend. Taken together, these and other lines of evidence point squarely to human activities as the cause of recent global warming.

USGCRP (2017). Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume 1 [Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. Fahey, K.A. Hibbard, D.J. Dokken, B.C. Stewart, and T.K. Maycock (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, 470 pp, doi: 10.7930/J0J964J6 .

National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Partnership (2012): National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy . Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, Council on Environmental Quality, Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Washington, D.C. DOI: 10.3996/082012-FWSReport-1

IPCC (2019). Summary for Policymakers. In: IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, M. Tignor, E. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Nicolai, A. Okem, J. Petzold, B. Rama, N.M. Weyer (eds.)]. In press.

NASA JPL: "Consensus: 97% of climate scientists agree." Global Climate Change . A website at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus). (Accessed July 2013.)

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IELTS Daily Essay Topic: Some people believe that global warming is today’s most pressing environmental problem.

Updated on
May 8, 2024

IELTS Daily Essay Topic: Some people believe that global warming is today’s most pressing environmental problem.

Brainstorming Ideas

Refer to the following brainstorming ideas to get a better understanding of the answer.

Reasons for global warming is the most pressing issue:

The impact of the emission of greenhouse gases is extensive and potentially irreversible.
Rising sea levels, extreme weather events, loss of biodiversity and forest fires.

Reasons for deforestation being the most pressing issue:

It causes Soil erosion, loss of habitat for millions of species, and disruption of water cycles.

Q. Some people believe that global warming is today’s most pressing environmental problem. At the same time, some consider deforestation to have the most devastating impact on the world. Discuss both views and give your opinion on the same. You should write at least 250 words for this task.

Ans . Today’s environment is grappling with various challenges, with global warming and deforestation being two of the most pressing issues. While some individuals argue that global warming is the most critical environmental problem, others believe deforestation has a more devastating impact on the world. In my opinion, global warming is the most pressing environmental issue due to its urgency and potential for catastrophic impacts.

On one hand, global warming, characterised by the gradual rise in the Earth’s average temperature, is an urgent environmental concern. Its primary cause lies in the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, largely stemming from human activities such as burning fossil fuels. Its impacts are extensive and potentially irreversible. Rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and loss of biodiversity are among its dire consequences. Moreover, global warming exacerbates other environmental issues; for instance, the heightened frequency and severity of wildfires, such as those witnessed in Australia and California, can be directly attributed to this phenomenon. These fires not only devastate forested areas but also contribute to the release of stored carbon dioxide, perpetuating the cycle of warming.

On the other hand, deforestation, characterised by the large-scale removal of forests, is often viewed as having the most destructive impact on the planet. It serves as the root cause of soil erosion, loss of habitat for millions of species, and disruption of water cycles. For instance, the Amazon rainforest, often referred to as the ‘lungs of the Earth,’ is rapidly shrinking due to deforestation, leading to the loss of biodiversity and disruption in the global carbon cycle. Additionally, forests play a crucial role in absorbing carbon dioxide, which would otherwise remain in the atmosphere. Therefore, their destruction exacerbates the problem of global warming.

In conclusion, both global warming and deforestation are significant environmental issues that require urgent action. However, given the widespread and profound impacts of global warming, it is, in my view, the most pressing environmental problem being faced today.

Paraphrased Statement: Today’s environment is grappling with various challenges, with global warming and deforestation being two of the most pressing issues. While some individuals argue that global warming is the most critical environmental problem, others believe deforestation has a more devastating impact on the world.

Thesis Statement: In my opinion, global warming is the most pressing environmental issue due to its urgency and potential for catastrophic impacts.

Body Paragraph 1-Topic Sentences: On one hand, global warming, characterised by the gradual rise in the Earth’s average temperature, is an urgent environmental concern. Its primary cause lies in the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, largely stemming from human activities such as burning fossil fuels. Its impacts are extensive and potentially irreversible.

Body Paragraph 1- Supporting Reasons and Explanations: Rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and loss of biodiversity are among its dire consequences. Moreover, global warming exacerbates other environmental issues; for instance, the heightened frequency and severity of wildfires, such as those witnessed in Australia and California, can be directly attributed to this phenomenon. These fires not only devastate forested areas but also contribute to the release of stored carbon dioxide, perpetuating the cycle of warming.

Body Paragraph 2- Topic sentence: On the other hand, deforestation, characterised by the large-scale removal of forests, is often viewed as having the most destructive impact on the planet. It serves as the root cause of soil erosion, loss of habitat for millions of species, and disruption of water cycles.

Body Paragraph 2- Supporting Reasons and Explanations: For instance, the Amazon rainforest, often referred to as the ‘lungs of the Earth,’ is rapidly shrinking due to deforestation, leading to the loss of biodiversity and disruption in the global carbon cycle. Additionally, forests play a crucial role in absorbing carbon dioxide, which would otherwise remain in the atmosphere. Therefore, their destruction exacerbates the problem of global warming.

Conclusion: In conclusion, both global warming and deforestation are significant environmental issues that require urgent action. However, given the widespread and profound impacts of global warming, it is, in my view, the most pressing environmental problem being faced today.

Vocabulary in Use


Grappling	Struggling to deal with or overcome.
Pressing Issues	Serious problems needing immediate attention.
Characterised	Serious consequences cause worry.
Gradual Increase	Slow, steady rise in amount or size.
Destructive	Causing great damage.
Disruption	Interruption in a usual process.
Rapidly Shrinking	Becoming smaller quickly.
Severe Implications	Interruption is a usual process.
Far-Reaching	Having wide influence or effect.
Attributed	Regarded as caused by a particular source.

Linkers and Connectors Used

Following are the linkers and connectors used:

While
On one hand
For instance
On the other hand
In my opinion
Furthermore
In conclusion

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Global Warming Definition, Causes, Effects, Impacts, Solutions

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IELTS Daily Essay Topic: Some people believe that global warming is today’s most pressing environmental problem.

Brainstorming Ideas

Q. Some people believe that global warming is today’s most pressing environmental problem. At the same time, some consider deforestation to have the most devastating impact on the world. Discuss both views and give your opinion on the same. You should write at least 250 words for this task.

Vocabulary in Use

Linkers and Connectors Used

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