According to a new model of the earth's progressive climate change, human made carbon-dioxide emissions may prevent the next ice-age. Based on the geological evidence of the past ice-ages, the earth is due to enter another ice age 10,000-100,000 years from now. However, scientists have found that even small changes in carbon dioxide emissions could put it to a halt. Since it would not be natural for the planet to forgo a natural ice-age, instead there might be unexpected climate effects that we wouldn't have any way of predicting since this has not happened before. Scientists say that over the last 400,000 years sea temperature and ice coverage have been more variable, which usually indicate the coming of an ice age. Global CO2 levels have been increasing steadily the more developed human civilization has become. The natural process of increased CO2 levels is 100,000 times slower then what humans have been contributing. Scientists look at the oxygen levels in the shells of tiny sea creatures and combine this with the data of the past few years to estimate the global tempuratures and sea-ice levels for the past 3 million years. Scientists warn that we are raising tempurature at such a rate that we may create a different world.
I think paying attention to this sort of information is important, but to a lot of people this may seem like a far of event that we don't need to take notice of. People only act if a crisis is immentent. I am not sure myself whether or not this would cause any big problems, but I think it is worth considering how much we are contributing to climate change.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7722300.stm
3 comments:
I believe this issue is definitely worth thinking about. There are many things that humans do to the planet that could have negative effects in the future. If people choose to act early, they could prevent ecological problems in the future. However, like you stated in your article, most people are only concerned about what effects them in the present.
I agree. People don't realize that the climate crisis is approaching. It may not seem like it is affecting them presently, but when they decide to do something about it it may be too late. It's definitely worth looking into.
I'm not sure if "climate change" is the biggest issue on everyone's plate, don't get me wrong, I believe going green is important but I do think that since scientists have already gone from "global warming" to climate change that maybe they are a little unsure of what is going to happen.
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