Global warming, something that we all hear about quite often. Global warming or commonly known as climate change, is defined as how the planet has been slowly warming up in past years, since 1880, because of us humans.

Studies have shown this, various studies at that, that climate change is influenced by us humans. When Covid forced everyone to quarantine, the energy levels decreased because of the lower energy levels when people weren’t going out as much. According to the UN website, the levels decreased by 5.2% during the brute of the quarantine, then rose during 2021. Secondly, global warming can’t be explained by irregularities in the sun or that the sun is causing global warming. For one, since 1978 scientists have been tracking how much solar energy has been hitting the top layer of the atmosphere. Also, if the sun really was responsible for global warming, wouldn’t we be seeing the temperature rise throughout all the layers of the atmosphere, but we haven’t. Thirdly, as us humans cut down trees or burn fossil fuels such as oil, we are releasing greenhouse gases into the air. According to the NRDC, greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are currently the highest it’s been; and other greenhouse gases such as hydrochlorofluorocarbons didn’t even exist in nature until now. In America, transportation related greenhouse gases make up for the highest cause of global warming for the country for 27%. The average passenger car emits around 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide each YEAR. According to the NRDC, despite trucks making up around 4% of vehicles on the road in America, they contribute about 23% of total greenhouse gas emissions for the country. Clearcutting or clearing an area of all trees releases about 25 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for Canada’s boreal forest alone or about 5.5 million vehicles. 

In conclusion, if us humans hadn’t interfered with the natural ecosystem, we wouldn’t be in this predicament where it feels as though we are melting into a puddle. The earth is slowly heating up because of emissions from our cars and energy consumption but there is something that we can do. We could turn off the lights when we go out or use public transportation to travel somewhere, decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide as many people use it. It can seem as though we don’t have any control over global warming, but that’s just not true, we can do things to help.