Friday, 8 November 2013

The Earth is warming up...but don't panic!

This morning I was flicking through the BBC News website and I came across an article titled ‘Concentrations of warming gases break record’. I read through it and wasn’t surprised to find that according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), atmospheric CO2 grew more rapidly last year (2012) than its average rise over the past decade. To be exact, the amount grew by 2.2ppm (parts per million) in a year, which may not sound like a lot but is a significant step to make in just a year.

Then it struck me that people are told by the media that gas emissions are increasing and this will cause global warming and the ice caps will melt etc etc, but the question I want to know is what do people really know about global warming?




For instance, do people know that global warming is a completely natural thing and it has happened regularly in the recent past?

Its true! Historical evidence of the natural cycle includes a record of floods on the Nile going back 5,000 years, Roman wine production in Britain in the first century AD and thousands of museum paintings that portray sunnier skies during what is called the Medieval Warming. The Mail online did an article on this (and many other newspapers, articles and programmes have too!) which can be found at the address here for an example:



So don’t spend your life worrying about whether global warming and climate change is going to ruin it because it has happened in the past, will happen in the future and humans have and will adapt to it through time.

There have been many many scientific journals written about global warming and climate change, so if you are interested in finding out more just type it into google. But remember that there are conflicting views about whether global warming is even real so think about who is writing the article/story and why before taking information as fact.


Happy reading!

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