Global Warming Truth Or Scare

Global Warming: Truth or Scare

Is our planet headed for irreversible disaster? Every reputable scientist in the world believes it is. Left unchecked, global warming's negative effects on our natural environment could have catastrophic consequences not only for our planet and wildlife but for mankind as well.

What is global warming you might ask? Global warming is a phenomenon where Carbon Dioxide (Co2) gas commonly called green house gas, gets trapped in the Earth's atmosphere. The trapped Co2 blocks excess heat from passing back through the Earth's atmosphere and into space, this causes our planet to get hotter and stay hotter than it normally would. Now, you may be thinking great longer summers! It's not great, in fact it's frightening.

Co2 is distributed into our atmosphere mainly by humans burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas (Flannery, T, 2005). We burn these substances to generate electricity to power our factories, gas to power our cars, and oil to heat our homes.

Now, there are natural causes of Co2 emission into our atmosphere, for example dead decaying trees, plants, animal carcasses and waste. However, the natural levels of Co2 in our atmosphere in the past 600,000 years have been at un-harmful levels. This is an undisputed scientific fact, proven by the testing of ice cores collected from the world's great ice sheets, which exist on land as ice pack and in the oceans as glaciers. (Al Gore, Inconvenient truth).

Scientists examine these ice cores in laboratories and can determine precisely what elements and the quantity of those elements that existed in Earth's atmosphere when that water froze.

600,000 years of data is a very solid base of information from which to construct CO2 emission models from. Armed with this data, scientists constructed a model of the Earth's natural CO2 levels over that 600,000 period. Based on these models, it has been determined with scientific accuracy, that Earth's current Co2 levels are the highest they have ever been in recorded history. Why is this significant you may ask?

The great ice deposits on Earth are extremely important to Earth's ability to maintain relatively constant temperature; they act like giant reflectors, by redirecting some 80% of the sun's heat back into space, keeping Earth at a relatively constant temperature. These ice deposits also cool the winds of the Earth as they pass over them.

This "air conditioning" system is breaking down because the amount of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere is so great; the CO2 has in effect, created an insulating layer within our atmosphere which prohibits the excess heat reflected off of these ice deposits to pass back into space.

The trapped excess heat is in reality the enemy. This excess heat is absorbed by Earth and causes the Earth's temperature to rise. This rise in temperature is causing the ice to melt which leaves less of it to reflect the sun's heat back into space; in turn the Earth gets even warmer and will continue to do so unless we curb our CO2 emissions.

More than 75% of Earth's fresh water is locked up in the Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets. To put this statistic into perspective, the Greenland ice sheet alone, covers more than 775,000 square miles. If the Antarctica ice sheet was to melt it would cause sea level to rise 20 feet worldwide. If the current rate of melting continues, this sea ice will be gone by the year 2060, that's only 53 years! If the melting of the ice sheets continues at its current rate, sea level will rise 3' by the end of this century. This would be devastating to coastal cities around the globe. Every vertical foot of sea level rise wipes out 100' of coastal land. A rise of 3 feet would devastate the coastal areas like Boston, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Washington, and Florida.

We can see evidence of this today, not only has sea level worldwide risen 4 to 10 inches since the 1940's and presently, the village of Tuvalu is experiencing higher tides than ever before, and these tide waters are present 9 months of the year. The water is approximately 2'/3' deep in the village. Nothing can be done to stop this devastation; building sea walls to stop the ocean from pouring in would be futile. These islands are made of limestone and coral, because of the rise in sea level, the high tides flow into the village from underground and flood the island from the inside out, the island is basically drowning.

The continued rise is sea level will cause these islands to vanish in as little as 40 years. (Global Warming, What You Need to Know).

The melting of the world's ice sheets isn't the only factor that is contributing to the vertical rise of the sea level. As a direct result of global warming, more than 50% of the present sea level rise is due to thermal expansion; as the oceans warm the water expands increasing its surface area.

With a projected sea level rise of 3' by the end of this century, what does this mean to the United States? New York, Boston, Washington, and California will be threatened by permanent loss of costal land area, droughts in normally wet areas, and floods in normally dry areas.

If we were to lose a significant portion of both the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets, sea level would rise so much that costal civilization would disappear, the state of Florida would be underwater, and Miami would be fifty miles out to sea. Keep in mind, at the current rate of warming and melting, this could happen in as little as 50 years (Global Warming, What You Need to Know).

The United States is the largest contributor to the emission of Co2 into Earth's atmosphere. America represents only 5% of the global population and yet we contribute 27.5% of the global Co2 emissions yearly. David, L (Executive Producer). (April, 2006). (Too Hot to Handle) (Television Episode). This statistic should really snap global warming into focus for you considering each molecule of Co2 that is released into the atmosphere stays there for approximately 100 years.

Automobiles in the United States alone, contribute 1.5 billion tons of Co2 into the atmosphere annually (National Resource Defense Council {NRDC} 2007 Global Warming Puts Arctic on Thin Ice).

The affects of all this unnatural Co2 in Earth's atmosphere is damaging our natural environment, climate, and eco-systems.

Heat waves (four consecutive days with temperatures above 95 degrees Fahrenheit) have tripled nearly 50% in the last fifty years David, L (Executive Producer)