To what extent is Climate Change a result of human activities?

Course Code and Title: FIBS3002 English for Academic Purposes,

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Assignment title: To what extent is Climate Change a result of
human activities?

Introduction

Climate change is one of the most alarming and major threats to the environment and to
humanity. Global warming, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), is an indistinguishable and ambiguous phenomenon. The same experts have pointed
out and raised the alarm about the increase in the global average temperature of both water
and oceans, not only the global average air temperatures, but also degrees Celsius. Experts
also point to warming waters and oceans, extensive melting snow and glaciers, massive
landslides and snow on the highest mountain peaks but also an average rise in sea level.
Experts and other researchers in the field believe that it is very likely that global warming is
largely due to greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

This essay will discuss the concept of climate change and what this phenomenon entails, how
people influence climate change or not, through their activities. Of course, there will be
arguments for and against the assertion that people, through their activities, are responsible
and contribute to climate change.

The first argument

Over the course of 150 years of global average temperatures and climate change, the average
global temperature has risen by almost 0.8 ºC to 1.0 ºC in Europe. The period between 1995
and 2006 represented 11 years that recorded the highest average temperatures that were
instrumentally recorded on the surface of the globe, which was also found in 1850. According
to the IPCC, gas emissions are responsible for this phenomenon and if not Practical measures
will be taken to limit emissions, the researchers warn that global average temperatures could
rise by more than 1.8 ºC to 4.0 ºC by 2100.

Climate change is having a negative, disastrous effect and is already being noticed by people
in general but especially by researchers who are trying to sound the alarm about the impact
that people have on the environment through their activities. Researchers point out that
people are the ones who cause climate change through their actions, and extreme weather
events are being felt more and more often. These extracted events include heat waves, periods
of flooding, as well as periods of increasing drought and lack of rain, drought in some parts
of the globe.

According to other researchers analyzing the concept of global warming and climate change,
(NOAA, 2013) atmospheric levels have doubled since 2013 without the year 175, and this
phenomenon poses a threat to the entire planet.

The second argument

According to an evaluation report also conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change (IPCC), greenhouse effects are produced by humans through their activities. They
listed the main sources of greenhouse gases that are caused by humans through their actions.

Thus, the main sources specified by experts are: burning fossil fuels to produce and use for
transportation, electricity, heating or cooling households, as well as agricultural practices
that are carried out associated with methane emissions due to animal digestion, through in
which their waste is managed, nitrogen emissions that come from agricultural solutions used
for fertilizers. They also specify the storage and incineration of waste on land, the way in
which wastewater is handled, the way in which fluorinated industrial gases are used, but also
the reduction of forested lands as a result of changes in their destination. which encompasses
the activities of everyday people and which lead to a change in global average temperatures.

Also, global warming is causing a number of changes in a continuous process that take place
in different ways in different parts of the globe. Therefore, according to the authors Soon and
Baliunas, there are areas of the globe that are facing severe droughts, but also areas where
they are facing floods, hurricanes landslides, areas where they are facing forest fires, as was
the case in Greece or the forest. from the Amazon, heat waves or extreme cold. Soon and
Baliunas (2003)

The final argument

The first two arguments brought as deductive conclusions but also direct arguments about the
fact that people, through his activities is responsible for climate change. The third argument
makes the same statement about man's responsibility for the disaster he creates involuntarily
or voluntarily and the effects that are caused by it.

There are many studies that claim that man is the driving force behind climate change. One
of the most controversial studies on this subject is the COOK Review (2013), which
conducted 11,444 studies that claim that humans are directly responsible for global warming.
99.3% of the critics, scientists, researchers and experts who evaluated all these reports stated
what the 2013 research states, namely, human involvement in climate change. Of course
there are researchers or professors who believe that man is not solely responsible for global
warming and its effects, or on the same side researchers who say that humans are not
responsible at all for their global warming activities.

The first point

There are scientists alike who say and sound the alarm about climate change, but who say
that it is not people and their activities that lead to this phenomenon. However, they point out
that climate change is greatly degraded and causes losses of terrestrial biodiversity but also
losses of marine biodiversity. But biodiversity naturally contributes to mitigating and
reducing climate change in both the oceans and the soil, forests, and wetlands that act as a
heat reservoir for the earth and beyond.

However, in addition to mitigating these previously mentioned climate changes, terrestrial

and marine biodiversity also help to adapt to these changes, through natural phenomena that
occur as floods for flooded areas, wetlands by providing protection against floods, or by the
power to absorb water. from excesses caused by floods, or for example the case of forested
slopes that protect against landslides, according to the UNFCCC.

The second point

Even ordinary people believe that people are responsible for their activities and contribute to
climate change. This is also stated in a study conducted by the EIB, the Banque Europeenne
d'Investissement, which conducted an opinion poll on climate change taking place between
2021 and 2022 where they explored people's views on the concept. Climate change and also
wanted to know if people believe that they are responsible for the climate change that is
taking place as a result of their activities.

The results of the survey showed that more than 3/4 of those who responded to this
questionnaire, namely 84% of people said that climate change is caused by humans.
Therefore, people are aware that their daily actions lead to all this disaster that they are also
facing and will have even more devastating effects if there are no measures to limit the causes
that lead to climate change.

The end point

According to Mann in his work on global surface temperature, he warns people that all these
phenomena that occur as a result of global warming threaten and tend to threaten even more
in the future, the exercise of human rights. Specifically, through the effects of people's
activities that lead to climate change and these will lead to the threat to the right to water, the
price of food / food, the right to health, the right to housing and even the right to life. Mann,
M., Zhang, Z., Hughes, M., Bradley, R., Miller, S., Rutherford, S. and Ni, F. (2008).

This is due to the fact that there will be catastrophic effects that people, regardless of
experience, skills, intelligence, or level of science, will not be able to control if malaria,
incurable diseases caused by global growth occur, they will not be able to stop the drying of
the waters and oceans, they will not be able to prevent or stop the fires of vegetation spread
over thousands of hectares that will take decades to recover.
Soon W. in his book on the worries of the globe believes that climate change is a
consequence of human actions, but that they can be kept under control, and of course it has
two options: to aggravate change or to keep it under control. Soon, W. and Baliunas, S.
(2003).

Conclusions

In conclusion, opinions are divided, but they tend to draw more on the part that claims that
man through his activities is responsible for climate change. Numerous studies by both
professors, scientists and experts have shown that man's actions contribute to climate change,
but he is not the only one responsible for these changes. It is said that there were extreme
temperatures and events even before man prevailed on earth, where at the beginning of
mankind, there is no such technology, no activities that take place today and yet extreme
climate change has taken place.

Bibliography

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