Global Warming Theories

Paper Summary:

This paper addresses several theories addressing why Earth has experienced increases in its global temperature over the years. This phenomenon is also known as global warming. It focuses on the studies of Milutin Milankovitch, who proposed a theory of planetary motion that attempted to explain the Earth's periods of warming and cooling.

From the Paper:

"Global warming is one of today's most pressing issues. Though some dispute its existence, the great majority of individuals "scientists and lay people" do believe that the Earth is undergoing an unnatural warming. Hot summers, freak storms, melting glaciers, and other signs all seem to point toward a shift in the kind of weather enjoyed by many regions of the globe. Much of this change has occurred suddenly and rapidly, over the course of the last generation or so. Scientists know that there have been periods of climatic change in the Earth's past. The fossil and geological records bear witness to these fluctuations. Areas of the world that are today desert were once lush grasslands. Regions now frozen in the grip of perpetual winter were at one time home to tropical rain forests. Seas were to be found where at the present time there is only dry land. Various animal species came and went as the environments to which they had been adapted disappeared. Perhaps most graphic of all the great climatic changes to which the Earth has been subjected during its long history, were the series of ice ages that covered much of the globe in glaciers. Vast sections of Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia were buried beneath miles of ice and snow, the home of specially-adapted animals such as the wooly mammoth and rhinoceros. These great ice sheets retreated only in the geologically recent past. The planet warmed up again only a few thousand years before human beings first began to plant crops and to build cities. As well, there have been minor fluctuations in temperature over the past several millennia. It was a few degrees warmer during much of the Middle Ages, and a few degrees cooler than it is today for the ensuing five centuries or so. But what most disturbs today's scientists, environmentalists, and politicians, are the sudden changes of the past third of a century. Are we humans at fault? Are the greenhouse gases emitted by our cars and factories are rapidly smothering the Earth? Or is it the fault of the Earth itself - The result of fluctuations in the planet's motions and orbit, as hypothesized by the great Serbian scientist Milutin Milankovitch" "

More papers on Global Warming Theories:

• Article Review # 112045 : "Al Gore's Global Warming Theories"
• Analytical Essay # 61382 : "Global Warming"
• Research Paper # 109868 : "The Truth Behind Global Warming"

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