Z7-J.S.

Journal, step 1-5

Global Warming Why, how, and what we can do about it

Right after the Big Bang, Earth was left with a thick layer of carbon (co2) around the atmosphere. Heat could pass through this blanket, but once the heat was in the atmosphere, the co2 layer would trap most of it and prevent the sunlight from bouncing off the Earth into space like it does today. Earth was very hot then, and that is exactly the direction that we are headed today. Why is Earth heating up?

Fortunately, the Big Bang also left chemicals in the seas, which was gradually able to support the producer at the bottom of the ocean food web- phytoplankton. As a producer, pyhtoplankton needs carbon to survive, and slowly but surely, phytoplankon used up most of the co2 around the Earth. Life on Earth was much, much more sustainable with the lower temperatures plus the oxygen from the phytoplankton producers. When the phytoplankton died, the co2 they contained sank down under the bottom of the sea and into the ground. Today, we are mining those fossil fuels to use for gasoline to use in cars, planes, boats, etc.

Greenhouse gasses (Called greenhouse gasses because these gasses act like greenhouses by trapping heat in)

The problem is, the co2 and other greenhouse gasses found in this fuel that made up the thick blanket around Earths' atmosphere more than 4.5 billion years ago are being released into the air from these modern modes of transportation. The more of them surronding the atmosphere, the warmer the planet. If we keep this behavior up, Earth will be to hot to sustain life!

We, as humans, have a few options. A. We could spend billions and billions of dollars for NASA to send severel rockets into space to attempt to find another planet in another galaxy that has plenty of water and oxygen, although we'd most likely fail at doing so. To fuel the rockets, we would use //even more// co2, increasing the greenhouse gasses around the atmosphere and global warming on Earth. If we did find a sutiable planet, we would have to spend even more money getting resources and people there. We would have to transport //13 billion people// and //all of their possesions.....// B. We could use that money to build a major greenhouse powerplant to asorb all of the co2 in the atmosphere, like the phytoplankton did in the very early days of Earth. The greenhouse would be much faster than the phytoplankton were to clean up the air because it is much larger. C. We could stop using fossil fuels in the first place and hope for the best.

Option A is just plain unrealistic. Option C will just pause global warming, not stop it. By the way, try to get 13 billion people to stop using fossil fuels, OK? :) Option B is the most realistic, but how to we achieve it? First, lets learn more about global warming.

BP's take on co2 

Where our greenhouse gases are coming from



Vocabulary: Global warming- the heating of our planet climate zones- areas where climate is different greenhouse effect- the effect where gases surrounding our atmosphere trap in heat greenhouse gases- gases that surrond our atmosphere and trap in heat (see above) climate change- the change in the climate, the heating of the planet in global warming