Climate Change

Human on earth in recent years have suffered a lot from the sweltering summer and green winter. The gradual climate change has drawn more and more attention. Now 'global warming', a clamant feature of the ongoing climate change, has become a frequently mentioned topic by the global village residents.

Indeed, the global warming caused by the emission of great amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases has put the earth environment into a crisis.

The temperature of the earth can be compared to that of human beings. It differs among various regions and is wavy during different seasons; nevertheless, the earth can keep a stable temperature by means of 'respiration' and 'perspiration'. As for human, if the body temperature rises by five percent, the man will have a high fever, go into a coma or even die; according to the diagnosis made by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), the earth temperature will go up by several degrees Centigrade within a hundred years.

However, the symptom of the global warming does not only embody the temperature rising. In the past years a series of extreme weather phenomenon, including the snowstorm, hurricane, lightning strike, flood and drought, appeared in many places of the world. What is more, the climate change also caused the glacial ablation, the sea level rise, the reduction in grain production and species extinction.

Especially, the global warming in China is serious and the weather condition has become irregular. In July 2007, a series of severe rainstorms struck southern China; in early 2008, an unprecedented snowstorm swiped most parts of the country; in spring of 2009, major provinces of northern China underwent a large scale drought.

Why has the global warming become more and more serious? Is it the course of nature or human's disturbance of the natural order?

In February 2007, the first report of IPCC stated that the global warming is more than ninety percent caused by mankind's activity. Human activities lead to excessive emission of carbon dioxide, which forms a thick layer of 'glass' over the earth. Then the earth cannot release the heat that has been absorbed from the sun. In this way, the global climate turns warm and the earth gradually becomes an awful 'fireball'.

In the very early age of the earth, the atmosphere is full of carbon dioxide and the earth was rather hot during that period. After billions of years when the plants and animals appeared, the component of the atmosphere gradually changed, finally forming a balanced system for the living of all creatures.

However, this balanced world was heavily hit by the industrial revolution formed within two hundred years. On the one hand, the carbon dioxide released from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas has altered the components of the atmosphere; on the other hand, the substantial deforestation has made that there are less plants to absorb the dioxide. The balance of the global climate was thus disturbed by the industrial exhaust gas, the deforestation, the smoke of gunpowder in the war and the garbage pollution. And all these have brought about the disastrous global warming.