Global Warming Cause and Mitigation

The topic of global warming has received a lot of attention for the past couple of decades. The massive impacts and risks posed by this phenomenon on humans and environment have been severe, thus calling for swift attention. Basically, globalization refers to the rise of average temperature of oceans and earth’s atmosphere. Global warming is a reality which has faced the human society for over a century now. Since the beginning of the 20 th century, the average earth’s surface temperature has gone up by 0.8 °C. Much of the increase in earth’s surface temperature has occurred since 1980. Over the last decades, there have been increased instances of drought, unusual heat fire and storms which are a clear manifestation of global warming and climate change. The issues of extreme weather conditions of drought, wildfires, hurricanes, and water shortages are clear indicators of global warming (Halder, 2011). Global warming is caused by both natural and anthropogenic or human factors. Causes of Global Warming Global warming is caused by different factors, which are either natural or anthropogenic/human. Scientists have for long engaged in research on causes of global warming other than the natural factors. This has led to identification of many human related factors towards global warming. Greenhouse gases have been the major factors towards global warming. Both natural and human forces are responsible for triggering greenhouse gases thus causing global warming. Whereas natural causes of global warming are as old as the earth, human factors towards global warming have been rapid since the industrial revolution (Maslin, 2007).
GLOBAL WARMING: CAUSE AND MITIGATION 3 Natural causes The changes of earth’s temperature can be attributed to natural changes in the earth’s environment over time. The changes on earth’s temperature and climate before the industrial revolution can be attributed to natural causes. These include phenomenon like volcanic eruptions, solar energy and greenhouse gas concentrations. The occurrences of volcanic eruptions releases large amounts of CO2 thus trigg