The Causes and Effects About Global Warming

The Causes and Effects about Global Warming

Xinghan Lin

ACLA 485 PMB2 - Selected Topics

Cause-effect Essay

Professor Tsz Yin Szeto-McNatt

George Fox University

November 02, 2017

        Have you ever noticed that winter days have become much warmer than before? More and more extreme weather like droughts and hurricanes occurred? Scientists have related these phenomena to global warming. There are many complex reasons for global warming, including the nature cause, the rapid growth of the world's population over the past one hundred years, and industrial development and its harmful effects on environment. Global warming has been an issue that many people are paying attention to, for it brings much negative effects like increasing the frequency of some types of extreme weather, the rising of sea levels, the spread of tropical infectious diseases and the land desertification. My hometown is in the very northern part of China which supposed to have a lot of snow in winter. However, in recent years, the snow depth has decreased from 20 centimeters to 10 centimeters, and winters become very “warm” and short.

        Global warming is affecting all of the countries and people around the world, including agriculture, water resource, human activities, health issues, tourism and traffic etc. First, Global warming can lead to the increase of the temperature in the ocean, Glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland will melt faster leading to the rising of sea levels. As a result , the reduction of land area will greatly affect human's living environment. According to UK essay (2017), “As the temperature increases, the ice at the North Pole will melt. Once the ice melts the first effect will be the raising of sea levels because the melting glaciers will become oceans.” Thus, at the low altitude areas, such as Oceania island of Tuvalu will be flooded, which may trigger controversy for land among countries. What’s worse, it may lead to frequent floods, landslides, and mudslides. Besides, it also has negative effects on tourism industry like the disappearing of beaches in some coastal cities. There might be no tourism spots in Maldives to visit in the next century. Also the snow is melting and there would  limited place for people to go skiing. Last but not least, sea transportation will be hit especially northern route. In recent years, much more icebergs come from the Arctic ocean float in the north Atlantic ocean where Titanic sunk because of hitting into an iceberg one hundred years ago .As a result, some very busy ocean route will not be navigable any more.

        Second, the increase of temperature will cause more and more health problems than before. Global warming can increase the spreading of tropical infectious diseases from low to high latitude areas. Many viruses cannot survive in low temperature. However, after the temperature increases, viruses will become active throughout the whole year. According to a recent research, the diseases that have been controlled are likely to have the chance to outbreak again such as tuberculosis.  Otherwise many countries are beset by endless new disease such as Sars, bird flu, Ebola virus.... These diseases not only could influence people, but also would affect the biodiversity.  According to Walsh (2013), “Whole species of coral in the Caribbean have been lost thanks to the rapid spreading of disease — and since corals are the framework builders of the marine ecosystems, other species can quickly follow them into oblivion.”