Global Warming Impact on the Earth

The Global Warming dispute has baffled scientists for many years and as the increasing carbon dioxide deposits continue to flood the atmosphere it is now considered one of mankind's largest challenges in the 21st century. Global warming is climate change that causes the average temperature of the Earth's lower atmosphere to increase. Global warming can have many different causes, but it is most commonly associated with human interference, specifically the release of excessive amounts of greenhouse gases. With this gas buildup, the Earth's atmosphere warms to unnatural temperatures, which causes an increase of natural disasters and causes sea levels to rise amongst other things. This warming trend is sometimes called the greenhouse effect because gases, such as water vapor and carbon dioxide, act like a greenhouse around the earth. Scientist continue to struggle to determine whether or not the global warming and the increase in carbon dioxide emissions is caused by human burning of fossil fuels, farming, and deforestation activities or whether it is a completely natural phenomena caused by the Sun.

To understand global warming's impact on the Earth we must first understand the Sun's contribution to the warming effects. As supplier of almost all the energy in Earth's environment, the Sun has a strong influence on our climate. According to Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years. Solanki states that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes. The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures. The Sun is in a changed state, it is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago. Research shows that the brighter the Sun and higher the levels of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature. Solar scientists have long known that solar variability changes the distribution of energy in the Earth's atmosphere. During the Sun's 11-year cycle, from solar maximum through solar minimum, the energy released by the Sun changes by only about a tenth of a percent. New studies have clarified that when the solar cycle is at a maximum, it puts out a larger percentage of high-energy radiation, which increases the amount of ozone in the upper atmosphere. The increased ozone warms the upper atmosphere and the warm air affects winds all the way from the stratosphere to the Earth's surface. The change in wind strength and direction creates different climate patterns around the globe. I believe it is difficult to develop a clear understanding of how the sun affects the Earth's climate. Scientists have proven the energy released by the sun is only a slight percentage so therefore can only credited to playing a small but significant role in Earth's changing atmosphere. Nonetheless, more recent studies have confirmed that changing levels of energy from the Sun are not significant enough to be a major cause of global warming.

On the other side of the debate, many scientists still argue that human contribution is the prime cause of global warming damage. The chief cause of global warming by humans is due to the carbon dioxide released when fossil fuels like oil and coal are burned for energy. Burning of fossil fuels for electricity generation results in emission of green house gases in huge