An Inconvenient Truth: A Global Warning

A reaction paper submitted to my Fourth Year Agricultural Arts teacher, Sir Dan

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Global warming is when the temperature on earth rises up more than normal. This hurts many people, animals, and plants. Many cannot take the change, so they die.

It happens when greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrous oxide, and methane) trap heat and light from the sun in the earth’s atmosphere, which increases the temperature.

Green house gases can stay in the atmosphere for an amount of years ranging from decades to hundreds and thousands of years. Global warming can cause the spread of diseases, warmer waters and more hurricanes, increasing of probability and intensity of droughts and heat waves, and melting of polar ice caps.

There are many ways are being pushed upon society in preventing global warming. Turning the lights off when leaving a room, turning the T.V. off at the plug, walk to the shop or into town, and buy a greener car. This is where the real green house gases and emissions are coming from. Yes of course, we need to do all the little things ourselves, it all adds up and we need to lead by example. But we need more pressure from the public and the governments on the large companies and corporations.

Due to human activities such as the combustion of fossil fuels and deforestation, and the increased release of CO2 from the oceans due to the increase in the Earth’s temperature, the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by about 35% since the beginning of the age of industrialization. Most of the CO2 taken up by the ocean forms carbonic acid. Some are consumed in photosynthesis by organisms in the water, and a small proportion of that sinks and leaves the carbon cycle. There is considerable concern that as a result of increased CO2 in the atmosphere the acidity of seawater will increase and may adversely affect organisms living in the water. In particular, with increasing acidity, the availability of carbonates for forming shells decreases.

As the earth heats up, ocean evaporation and soil evaporation rate increases. As the ocean gets smaller due to evaporation, many sea creatures, land animals, and humans that depend on water are deeply affected. As well as the trees and plants living on lands, waters are evaporated from the soils.

Agriculture on lands is also affected where most of the human beings depend from this resource. Intense heat can dry up all crops before they are ready to harvest and massive deaths in poultry.

As a student and a concerned citizen, I can help preventing global warming in many simple ways including conserving electricity, throwing garbage to right places, and (as much as possible) using alternatives for things that can emit CO2 .

Right now in Philippines, we are experiencing a hot temperature even in the night, moreover, the suns UV rays are even more dangerous that we can’t even go out and stay under the sun by 7:00 am.

I would like to thank my Agricultural Arts teacher for showing us the movie clip entitled “An Inconvenient Truth: A Global Warning”. That movie gave me lots of information regarding the present earth problem. I believe that Sir Danilo’s motive is to awaken us and move to help our world.