Global Warming: The Main Cause Of Polar Ice Caps

The issue of global warming is causing the polar ice caps to melt at an accelerated rate with devastating impacts on the environment and mankind. Close your eyes. Imagine strong devastating storms destroying your city. Coastal cities under water. Arctic life disappearing. You are not dreaming, this could actually happen if the glaciers and the ice capes continue to melt at the speed they are now do to global warming. The main cause of global warming is the Greenhouse effect. This effect is natural and holds certain gases like carbon dioxide and methane and helps the Earth stay warm. The Industrial Revolution was not natural and directly contributed to the Greenhouse effect. According to Michaels and Balling, authors of Climate of

People on the opposing side argue that global warming and the affect on ice caps melting because of it is not a real issue. The opposing side states the global warming and the melting of the ice caps is a natural occurrence and not a man made one. “A study of the Earth’s climate 460-445 years ago found that an intense period of glaciation, not warming, occurred when CO2 levels were 5 times higher than today” (Is Human Activity). People argue that the global warming gas CO2 produced by man is not enough to cause the global warming blamed for polar ice caps to melt faster. This side points out there are natural areas like bodies of waters and forest that absorb the CO2 out of the atmosphere called carbon sinks. According to a 2011 study published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Science, “About 50% of the CO2 released by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities has already been re-absorbed by the earth’s carbon sinks.” (Is Human Activity). Non supporters of the global warming theory as the reason why ice caps are melting suggest the warming is all part of the recovery from the Little Ice Age. “beginning of the sixteenth century, the climate began to get colder....permanent snow was reported in Ethiopia.” (Shaw 32.) This happened before the Industrial Revolution so the burning of fossil fuel was very low. The planet Earth is billions of years old so changes is natural climate patterns could happen over thousands of years just making people 's impact not very big. These claims still don 't explain all the evidence proving global warming is a really issue that is causing the ice caps to melt at a faster