Jennifer Wolters
Math 1030 Final Project
(e-portfolio link)
The Relationship of Human Activity and Global Warming
When beginning this project I wanted to show the relationship between human activity, the rise in greenhouse gases, and the decline of habitats over time. I decided my time frame would be from
10,000 B.C. to 2010. I thought this would be important to see a wider view of human advancement and how it is affecting our climate. I thought that population would be a good way to measure human activity. I first found estimated worldwide human populations in that time period from several sources and then found the mean population for each year using them all. (Next page)
Then I made tables from this quantitative data to see what kind of growth has been happening over time. I found that world population has grown exponentially. Around 1500 A.D. my graphs showed that the growth was logistic; it started to level out as the world reached its carrying capacity. However, after advancements in science and technology grew, so did our carrying capacity. It is around the 1700’s that population growth has increased dramatically. It is hard to tell what our new carrying capacity has become. It seems, compared to previous patterns, that the growth has gotten past the predicted carrying capacity. Between 2000 and current day the world population has grown by 1 billion. It seems from this that we can expect overshoot and collapse- where the human population will reach too high and then collapse. It seems that this event would be the only thing that could save our planet now.
When I began to search for CO2 levels in the atmosphere from before the 1800’s I found it very difficult. I wanted to gather quantitative data so that I could use it to put together my own graphs, but I could not find this. I decided that I could use other graphs that scientists and credible sources have made from their research and compare them to show their relationships.
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Jennifer Wolters
Math 1030 Final Project
(e-portfolio link)
700
800
900
1000
1100
1200
1250
-200
0
14
200
350
400
500
600
Year
-10000
-8000
-5000
-4000
-3000
-2000
-1000
-500
-400
1300
1340
1400
Estimated
World Population
5,363,363
7,142,857
World Populations 10,000 B.C. to 2010
1500 415,651,750
1600
1650
1700
544,537,000
515,250,000
624,789,396
12,058,823
7,000,000
14,000,000
27,000,000
50,000,000
100,000,000
162,000,000
190,500,000
264,701,429
256,000,000
223,000,000
254,000,000
203,000,000
203,000,000
214,333,333
1710
1720
1730
1740
1750
1760
1770
1780
1790
1800
1810
1820
1830
1840
1850
662,378,306
679,615,896
689,238,580
769,991,547
729,863,636
846,137,329
864,445,832
949,409,344
982,617,842
929,000,000
1,045,073,963
1,055,837,845
1,138,392,564
1,192,729,394
1,235,387,992
208,500,000
222,000,000
233,000,000
385,657,300
310,500,000
398,500,000
403,200,000
373,000,000
410,500,000
362,000,000
1860
1870
1875
1880
1890
1900
1910
1913
1920
1925
1,270,044,073
1,290,672,568
1,325,000,000
1,397,685,022
1,516,025,314
1,635,406,383
1,751,797,222
1,791,091,000
1,905,344,709
2,000,000,000
2
2,096,121,140
2,313,180,646
2,775,550,878
2,769,643,657
3,034,868,828
3,115,869,005
3,340,297,008
3,381,437,103
3,664,548,353
3,927,121,875
4,031,513,068
4,442,012,780
4,874,612,205
5,278,290,678
5,707,878,255
5,925,809,351
5,951,197,299
6,021,127,121
6,154,124,255
6,229,181,697
6,477,617,672
6,542,089,890
6,615,689,613
6,692,532,162
6,755,987,239
6,860,733,398
2002
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
1985
1990
1995
1998
1999
2000
2001
1930
1940
1950
1955
1960
1962
1965
1966
1970
1973
1975
1980

Jennifer Wolters
Math 1030 Final Project
(e-portfolio link)
World Population Year 10,000 B.C.-
2010 A.D.
4
3
2
1
0
8
7
6
5
-12000 -10000 -8000 -6000 -4000 -2000
Year
0 2000 4000
World Population Years 0-1800 A.D.
1 200
1 000
800
600
400
200
0
0 500 1000
Year
1500 2000
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Jennifer Wolters
Math 1030 Final Project
(e-portfolio link)
World Population Years 1800-2010
6
5
4
3
8
7
2
1
0
1750 1800 1850 1900
Year
1950 2000 2050
World Population Year 1900-2010
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
1880 1900 1920 1940
Year
1960 1980 2000 2020
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Jennifer Wolters
Math 1030 Final Project
(e-portfolio link)
Figure 1
Figure 1 is a graph I found in an article written by Robert A. Berner titled “The Rise of Plants and
Their Effect on Weathering and Atmospheric CO2”, published by the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. It shows that CO2 levels have actually declined in the last 200 million years.
The reason for this, scientists say, is that when the Earth was new and still being formed, it had tremendous amounts of volcanic activity compared to today (as we all learn in Geography the Earth was a hot ball of lava and monstrous volcanoes when it was first formed). When the Earth’s surface began to cool down and life began the amount of volcanic activity declined and leveled out. The problem with graphs like these is that people don’t realize that we are only looking at a small fraction of this graph.
Human evolution began 7 million years ago, and Figure 1 is of the last 600 million years.
To support the argument of volcanoes being linked to CO2 emissions, I decided to try to find a graph showing volcanic activity (the earliest I could find it was from 1790). I found a graph (figure 2) made by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in an article titled, “Has Volcanic Activity
5

Jennifer Wolters
Math 1030 Final Project
(e-portfolio link) been increasing?” The following graph (green) shows that overall major volcanic activity has stayed the same. They go on to talk about the reason why it seems the blue graph shows that volcanic activity has actually increased is because human population has increased. Basically, they explain that because there are more people to witness volcanic activity and to record it, it seems that it is increasing when in fact it is not. The graph shows that when humans were more preoccupied (WWI and WWII), less eruptions were reported. I feel that this is a strong correlation, though it is not easy to prove as fact- though it definitely seems to have a common underlying factor.
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Figure 2

Jennifer Wolters
Math 1030 Final Project
(e-portfolio link)
On the next page are two graphs (Figure 3 and 4) that I found- one recording CO2 emissions during the past four ice ages and the other shows the emissions over the last 50 years. The first graph shows that the last peak was 350,000 YBP (years before present- present is represented as 1950 when radiocarbon dating became practicable). The last peak was slightly under 300 ppm, and today it is over
380 ppm and is expected to increase to 400 ppm in the next ten years. (NOAA Satellite and Information
Service) This is a very big change in CO2 levels within the last 50,000 years. The graph below it shows the rising of CO2 in the last 50 years, which is also steadily increasing. Even though the graph showing rates of CO2 has a different pattern than that of population growth, they both show an exponential peak
There are hundreds of factors to be accounted for when it comes to global warming. It is important for not only people seeking biology majors to understand where global warming is headed, but for all human kind to know. It is a crisis that has not been completely realized and is something that we cannot fix unless we work together worldwide. Until then, it is important for us to look at the data and understand what is being said to us. There are still a lot of tests that need to prove that global warming is a more immediate danger, but from the data it’s impossible to deny that it will be a danger to our species in the future.
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Jennifer Wolters
Math 1030 Final Project
(e-portfolio link)
Figure 3
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Figure 4

Jennifer Wolters
Math 1030 Final Project
(e-portfolio link)
9

Jennifer Wolters
Math 1030 Final Project
(e-portfolio link)
http://news.rutgers.edu/medrel/research/really-big-eruptions-20110217 http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1.shtml
http://nsm1.nsm.iup.edu/nuttle/Botany%20Spring%202011/10.%20Berner%20(1997)%20Science%20-
%20Rise%20of%20plants%20and%20CO2.pdf
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/simple.htm
http://planetforlife.com/co2history/index.html
http://www.daycreek.com/dc/images/1999.pdf
http://www.edf.org/climate/human-activity-causes-warming http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16109.full
http://epa.gov/climatechange/science/pastcc.html#last http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16109/F1.expansion.html
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16109/F7.expansion.html
http://epa.gov/climatechange/science/pastcc.html#last http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/history/world-population-growth.htm
http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/Monitoring_the_world/1995_Monitoring_the_World/App_G.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates http://www.census.gov/population/international/ http://www.epa.gov/
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