Relevance For The Global Climate
Carbon-based molecules are crucial for life on earth, as it is the main component of biological compounds. Carbon is also a major component of many minerals. Carbon also exists in various forms in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is partly responsible for the greenhouse effect and is the most important human-contributed greenhouse gas.
In the past two centuries, human activities have seriously altered the global carbon cycle, most significantly in the atmosphere. Although carbon dioxide levels have changed naturally over the past several thousand years, human emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere exceed natural fluctuations. Changes in the amount of atmospheric CO2 are considerably altering weather patterns and indirectly influencing oceanic chemistry. Records from ice cores have shown that, although global temperatures can change without changes in atmospheric CO2 levels, CO2 levels cannot change significantly without affecting global temperatures. Current carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere exceed measurements from the last 420,000 years and levels are rising faster than ever recorded, making it of critical importance to better understand how the carbon cycle works and what its effects are on the global climate.
Read more about this topic: Carbon Cycle
Famous quotes containing the words relevance, global and/or climate:
“The most striking fault in work by young or beginning novelists, submitted for criticism, is irrelevance—due either to infatuation or indecision. To direct such an author’s attention to the imperative of relevance is certainly the most useful—and possibly the only—help that can be given.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“Ours is a brand—new world of allatonceness. “Time” has ceased, “space” has vanished. We now live in a global village ... a simultaneous happening.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“When we consider how much climate contributes to the happiness of our condition, by the fine sensation it excites, and the productions it is the parent of, we have reason to value highly the accident of birth in such a one as that of Virginia.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)