Question: people say that global warming is just a myth is this really true do cars effect antarctica millions of miles away

Carys Cook answered on 14 Jun 2011:

Hi there. Thanks for your question! Well, one thing Antarctic scientists do is study ice cores – narrow tubes of ice drilled from the centre of Antarctica’s ice sheets that are miles long. These cores contain many layers of snow that has fallen every winter for up to 800,000 years You can even count every layer back in time for every year, just like tree rings. Inside these layers are bubbles of air that got traped in the falling snow, and these bubbles contain gases from the atmosphere at the time that the snow fell, like carbon dioxide and methane. Scientists then measure the carbon dioxide in the bubbles. By doing this, and comparing how carbon dioxide levels have changed through time with global temperatures, we know that when you increase carbon dioxide, you increase global warming, as carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. There are different ways to increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, like volcanic eruptions, but we know that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere right now is the highest it has been for the last 3 million years. There is no natural process today that can produce the carbon dioxide levels we see, other than human activity like burning fossil fuels in cars and factories, and chopping down rainforests. So in a way, yes, driving a car in the UK contributes carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which is the same all over the Earth, which increases global warming, and will cause melting of Antarctica’s ice sheets (which is in fact only 20,000miles away – a lot closer than some might think!). It is this reason why I became a scientist, because we really need to understand how the planet is going to behave in response to our daily lives! Hope this answered your question – if you have any more, fire away!
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