Climate change and its impact on human and the environment 13

Climate change and its impact on humans and the environment

Zhadyra Tajimuratova

NIS Karaganda

Introduction

Every year the climate changes constantly and affects to human development. More than thirty years of conferences, in printing editions and through mass media scientists try to find out and explain the reasons of the happening climate change of Earth. Some scientists agree that weather variability will not hamper human development and that the worst of them can be prevented by urgent adoption and implementation of appropriate solutions. However, the majority of scientists assume that with increasing of accidents, development of humanity will decrease. Moreover, they suppose that it will not be possible to avoid. (Hannah, 2014)

In 11th grade, we had learned the theme about global warming, from that lessons I knew how and why it is happening. At that moment I am interested in this theme, it was interesting for me to identify the consequences of climate change. As well as for all people, for me have a decent standard of living plays an important role in life. Therefore it can be said that humanity is one of the most important values for me. That is why I decided to take this theme. I am going to research this theme more deeply because climate change is one of the serious problems not only in Kazakhstan but also in the whole world. From my personal experiences recently I often hear this issue on the news. Additionally, we always use the issue for debates in our lessons. I found this issue interesting and I wanted to know more about this problem, how the climate change affect to the human development, could the influence of climate change to human development be prevented, can climate change positively effect on human development.

Further the outcomes of this research will be used to notify people of 11 grade the impact of climate change on humanity and advise them to learn more about this topic in the 11th grade as it is one of the significant issue. It will help them to understand how this is a problem is more serious than it seems in fact..

In my personal perspective the results of this problem may lead to irreversible consequences. As the climate change is global issue and it was not considered and solved in the beginning, it is already late to prevent it. My personal bias is that climate change affect more negatively than positively. However, despite this, to be more confident about it I will search both sides of effect.

Hypothesis of this research is that majority of students and teachers of Nazarbaev Intellectual School of Karaganda presume that climate changes negatively influences on health and leads to reduction of human development. So how the climate change affect to the human development?

Context

Nowadays weather variability is one of the most important development issues. “Climate change is observed and projected long-term changes in mean climate indicators, as well as climate variability, including such anomalies as droughts, severe storms and flooding.” (Walmsley, 2010, p.5) Earth's climate has fluctuated in the past but in the last 100 years it happens much more often. Every year climate is changing and negatively affecting to humanity. According to the National Human Development report, the average temperature of the Earth’s surface has increased by 0.89 °C from 1901 to 2012. (Medalye, 2007)

Scientists have a lot of predictions about this problem. “Accelerated climate change is anticipated to have wide-ranging effects on the future sustainability of the Earth due to adverse ecological, social and economic impacts. “ (Walmsley, 2010, p.2) For instance, according to the study of Manitoba University drought that has been in Canada in 2001 has cost over $5 billion in agricultural losses which negatively affect to their economy. All above mentioned factors may have a strong influence on people's health, economy and humanity as a whole.

Generally, weather variability is a result of human activity which causes the problems such as global warming. Global warming is the recent increase in the world's temperature that is believed to be caused by the increase of certain gases in the atmosphere. Use of fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas, as well as deforestation has led to a significant increase of the content in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide (CO2), and other greenhouse gases. However scientists are properly sure that a 100 million years ago carbon dioxide values were several times higher than now. In very general terms, 500 million years ago atmospheric CO₂ was some 20 times higher than current values. It throw down, then rose again some 200 million years ago to 4-5 times present-day levels-a period of increasing of huge leaf forests-and then begin slowly decrease until modern time. (Gage, 2008) From figure 1 it can be seen that the average concentration of carbon dioxide in 1959 was higher than the previous year. The average for 1960 was higher still.