What's the Real Cause of Global Warming

Global warming, is it a real thing? Is it simply earth’s natural climate change? Or are humans contributing to it? These a few of the questions raised when talking about global warming. There are many views to whether or not global warming is humans caused or natural, and there’s evidence to support both sides of the debate. Many people think that humans are the main cause of global warming. I think however, that while we may have a part in it, I don’t believe we’re the main cause of global warming.

Earth’s climate has raised and lowered the temperature several times in the past and I think that is what’s occurring now. Natural Causes of Global Warming website states that scientists have studied and proven that in the past, temperatures were higher than they are today, and they also produced more extreme conditions than we’re seeing today. Why is everybody freaking out when this has all happened before? The Earth has had Ice Ages and those have melted away into nothing, hint, the Earth’s temperature has riser before. The Earth’s climate goes in a cycle and about every 40,000 years is when the cycle changes. If people have been able to study this fact that every 40,000 years the climate changes, I would say it’s occurred enough times in the past.  

Several “go-greeners” think that humans drive too much and don’t recycle enough because it pollutes the air. I think recycling is a good and necessary thing, but I don’t think it aides to global warming. Methane is a greenhouse gas that helps to trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. Methane is released from the arctic tundra and the wetlands almost year round. As the tundra freezes it releases methane gas into the air from the ice squeezing the greenhouse gas out of the soil as its refreezing. However not all of the methane in the soil is released. Some of it gets trapped underneath the ice thus having no place to go. In the article Nature published called MethaneBursts from Frozen Tundra it discusses this new phenomenon and how scientists have been studying it. The article says that scientists have discovered that the trapped methane gas escapes through plant roots and stems and is emitted into the atmosphere that way.  Also the northern wetlands release a considerable amount of methane because of microbes breaking down organic debris once the tundra has frozen.

Global warming is an important issue in our world. While humans can take precautions for ways to reduce greenhouse gases, I don’t believe we can make a huge difference in preventing it.  The arctic tundra and wetlands have been proven to release a large amount of methane yearly and recycling just won’t fix that. People say history repeats itself, and I think we’re in the midst of that repeating cycle right now.