Globalization : Global Warming BBC news : 2013 'one of warmest' on record

Name : Doan Ngoc Tu Lecture : Nguyen Thi Bich Diep Subject: Contemporary Issues in Management

Class: BM103 Student ID : 000845500

Word Count : 1914 words ( Not include reference list and cover page)

IntroductionAccording to “2013 'one of warmest' on record” published on BBC by Roger Harrabin. In his

article, Harrabin focused on discussing the effects of global warming that causes extremely

disaster around the world such Haiyan storm (Harrabin, 2013). He quoted Michel Maraud, a

board member of the IPCC that: “the coldest years now are warmer than the hottest years before

1998”. The author agree with him that global warming cannot be ignored due to its extremely

effects on human and animals around the world such as Haiyan storm in 2013. This storm

devastated a large portion of Southeast Asia especially in the Philippines, Haiyan storm has

killed nearly 6,201 people (NDRRMC, 2014). It was said that raising in ocean temperatures has

played a big role in Haiyan storm (Costa , 2013). Moreover, he discussed the serious effects of

global warming by quoting Prof. Kevin Parton from Charles Sturt University, New South Wales.

Prof. Parton said that many countries all over the world are suffering from the high temperatures.

The author also provided a confirmation from Dr. Steve Rintoul, an Australian researcher that

human activities are the main reason that cause the global warming (Habarrin 2013).

It has instructed the writer author to do more research about global warming in order to answer

these questions: What is Global Warming? How the global warming occurs? And what are

global warming effects on human? That will be answered throughtout the mainbody

What is Globalization ?

In the 21st century, the term “globalization” is usually used to describe the changes in the society

and global economy. There are many definitions for it. So what is globalization? In a common

definition (Stief , 2008) , globalization is connection between nations and companies all over the

world. It contributes its part in economic growth, and cultural as well as political integration. In

the context of developing and developed nations wanting to cooperate to enhance their positions,

globalization brings up many benefits, especially on the economic and cultural side. In some

aspects, globalization, however, brings about negative impacts. To some extent, it is possible to

consider that globalization has its part in causing global warming. People develop economies by

building industrial factories, by deforestation to get resources for urbanization and other

resources. Global warming is getting worse and worse on the global scale, causing damages for

people.

What is Global Warming?

The world today is facing many problems, one of the biggest problem is global warming. So

what is global warming ? According to the EPA (2014), Global warming is the phenomenon that

has increasing the average temperature of the earth's surface. Is the earth really getting warmer?

People are still debating about it, however, scientists have proved that the earth is warming. In

addition, data from NASA shows that 2005 and 2010 are the hostess in record since 1890, and

2014 will become one of the 10 hottest years (Steve and McCarthy, 2011) and (NASA , 2014).

Based on researches conducted in the U.S, NASA calculated that the U.S average temperatures

could rise 3 to 9 levels by the end of this century (NASA , 2014).

Global warming can lead to forest fire, harsh weather (the temperature higher than over the past

60 years), melting ice causes rising sea levels, because of drought, farmers couldn’t produce

export crops (UCSUSA, 2013). The effect of global warming, the changes of weather and

ecosystems, rising the temperature causes suddenly changes. In temperate zones, the season’s

changes will last longer than normal together with increased rainfall. In the other hands,

temperature in the zones which have moderate weather increased remarkable, and significantly

reduced rainfall caused prolonged drought. Global warming could affect manpower, it makes a

thousands of death each year. The poor and underdeveloped countries were be the most affected

because they didn’t have enough financial resources to resolve the problem from the global

warming effect. A large of population would starve if reduced minimum rainfall for cultivation

or death due to disease outbreak after floods.

How the global warming occurs?

Many scientists believe that human are the main caused of global warming and climate changes

due to our production of greenhouses gases especially carbon dioxide (Taylor , 2013 ). Research

data has showed that the world’s temperature has been warming since 1950 primary due to the

emissions from forest destruction and burning of fossil fuels. CO2 is the primary constituent of

greenhouse gases. In 2008, 81 percentage of greenhouse gas emissions were mainly CO2, which

is a consequence of the use of charcoal, natural gasoline, petroleum (AmesLab, 2014). Below is

the figure showing distributed emissions of the greenhouse industry worldwide in 2011 by sector

( IEA Statistic , 2013) .

Figure 1 : Distributed emissions of the greenhouse industry worldwide in 2011 by sector

Source : International Energy Agency (IEA ) .

In this statistical chart show that the electrical and thermoelectrical industry are the leading

of greenhouse gas emissions with 42 percentage proportion of global emissions. The second is

the transportation sector with 22 percentage. third belongs to industries such as factories,

mining and processing account for about 21 percentage . Standing in the fourth is the

construction sector with building residential areas, buildings or commercial centres accounted for

approximately 6 percentage . The last one is others such as agriculture and forest account

for 9 percentage , the main cause due to cutting and burning of forests to obtain land for

cultivation serve. By analysing this graph, we see that this is the industries caused greenhouse

gas emissions. Besides, the mainly cause due to human activities in the exploitation of natural

resources for raw materials, burning of forests for business serve, the proliferation of the

transportation has created a large amount of CO2 - the main greenhouse gas contributed to

climate changes.

Carbon dioxide is emitted to the atmosphere through many sources such as burning trees, coal,

natural gas and oil, solid waste, etc . It is absorbed from the atmosphere by the photosynthesis

cycle of plants. Therefore, cutting trees and burning woods not only reduce the recycle process

but also provide more CO2 into the air (Ameslab, 2014). In addition, transportation produces

almost thirty percentage of all global warming emissions. According to the U.S Union of

Concerned Scientist (2014), when burning, one gallon of petrol will produce 24 pounds of CO2

emissions and other greenhouse gases into the earth's atmosphere. And every year, one car will

send about 6 tons of CO2, about three times its weight, into the atmosphere (UCSUSA , 2014).

Beside CO2, other greenhouse gases also come from human activities. For example, methane is

released from mining for coal and oil. It also comes from the agricultural practices and the decay

of organic waste. Nitrous oxide is emitted from fertilizers, industrial activities during combustion

of fossil fuels. Water vapor is also a powerful greenhouse gas, however, human activity does not

significantly affect water vapor concentrations in the atmosphere (Ameslab, 2014). Below is

charts for current emissions in our planet in 2010 from The United Nations Environment

Programme (UNEP). It showed that in 2010, China is responsible for 9,900 MtCO2e of

cumulative emissions while the U.S is second at 6,100 MtCO2e. It also projected that China will

still be number one in producing greenhouse gases in 2020 (UNEP, 2012)

Figure 2 : Greenhouse gases emission

Source : United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) .

The international community has agreed that the entire global must limit the greenhouse gases

emission by at least 25 percentage by 2020 in order to avoid the dangerous effects of global

warming (UNEP, 2012).

What are Global Warming effects on human?

The effect of global warming is very dangerous to natural and human systems in broad variety of

ways. First of all, global warming can cause floods and sea-level rise due to ice-melting. Rising

in sea-level will shrink the shorelines and maximize the wind speeds in the oceans. Haiyan

typhoon was one of the strongest typhoon since 1950 was identified as a consequence of global

warming (Costa , 2013). In addition, when temperature increases, it will change the marine and

freshwater ecosystem and has effects on thermal structure and water quality. Effects of

temperature increases also lead to lose productivity. More important, the Climate changes could

affect our health directly and indirectly around the world. The increased floods and damages to

sewage and water infrastructures further encourage the spread of diseases. For instance, tropical

diseases spread all over West Africa after floods in 2012 and caused severe morbidity and

mortality for thousands people. Global warming also influence human health particularly those

with low adaptive capacity. In 2013, extreme weather, especially extreme heat has killed nearly

20,000 people in Europe and 1,500 in India (WHO, 2013).

Scientists and economists have been researched and provided data with the serious economic and

environmental consequences. A research by the guardian stated that climate change has done

more damage to the world's 1,200 billion dollars, it also leads to GDP decreased 1.6 percentage

worldwide in 2012. The research also projected by 2030, climate change will raise to 3.2

percentage from global GDP (Harvey, 2013) . Let’s take a look at the statistical table about

economic damages and loss caused by flooding all over the world from 1900 to 2014 ( EM-DAT

, 2014)

Table 1: economic damages caused by flooding over the world from 1900 to 2014.

Source : International Disaster Database

This table show that Thailand suffered most from flooding with an economic loss of almost

40 billion USD. For China from 1998 to 2010, the economic loss and damages decreased.

However, the loss was still at a high level (18 billion USD) , which was higher than some

other countries ( America 10 billion USD in 2008 ; Pakistan 9.5 billion USD in 2010 ).

Global warming solutions

Human has significantly contributed to global warming, therefore, we should plan and provide

efforts to recover the natural balance and to reduce global warming. The most important steps we

should do to prevent temperature increasing is to reduce CO2 and to set limit on greenhouse

gases emissions. The largest source of CO2 is from power plants and transportations (UCSUSA ,

2014). Consequently, we should limit the number of power plants on the earth by saving energy

and finding alternative energy. We can avoid wasting energy by shutting down the systems when

not in usage and also buying energy saving equipment or we can use solar energy or wind energy

instead of energy from power plants.

We also should limit the CO2 emissions from transportation by manufacturing the fuel-efficient

cars such as electronic, hybrids and plug-in hybrids cars. We need to build better walking

communities and transportation including commuter bus and rail to help people more

comfortable with public transportations. Besides that, people should stop the burning of wood as

well as the deforestation, those steps would reduce a great extent of CO2 to the air. Instead, we

should plan more trees to absorb the CO2 in the atmosphere. It is said that a single tree is able to

absorb approximately one ton of CO2 in its lifetime.

Conclusion

People should be reminded that the earth is all that we have, if we continue to damage it with

pollution, deforestation and over population and to cause global warming, then we will destroy

ourselves and other creatures living on earth. And I believe that preventing global warming

might still be a long and complicated processes, but if we do the right things now, we will

conquer it before it’s too late.

References list :

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http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/basics/, [Accessed 3 March 2014] .

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