admin on July 21st, 2008
There are many different views and opinions on what is causing global warming, however, the facts on global warming are in general agreed by most scientists and researchers.
The Artic is probably feeling the most effects of global warming. As the ice rapidly disappears animals and plant species are already suffering from the loss of sea-ice.
Montana’s Glacier National Park now only has twenty-seven glaciers due to the rapidly melting mountain snows and glaciers, in 1910 there were 150 glaciers in the Park.
Coral reefs, which are very susceptible to the slightest temperature changes, suffered the worse bleaching, ‘dying off’, due to stress ever recorded in 1998. Some areas had bleaching of over seventy percent. Scientists believe that over the next fifty years, as the sea temperature carries on rising, that these events will increase in both frequency and intensity.
The increase in natural disasters such as heat waves, tropical storms and wild fires, are thought by some experts to be due to climate change and global warming.
It is a fact that man is pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than plants and oceans can absorb it. Industrialization, deforestation and pollutants produce greenhouses gases such as methane, carbon dioxide, water vapor and nitrous oxide, which attribute to heat being trapped near the earth’s surface. As these gases remain in the atmosphere for years if global warming were eliminated global warming would not be stopped immediately.
There are some experts who tell us that the change in the earth’s orbit can also have an effect on global warming, which may be the reason or be part of the reason for the diverse natural occurring weather conditions, which are being experienced around the world. Other research suggests that the variation in the sun’s out-put may be a cause of global warming; however, this has not been proven or validated.
Recent facts on global warming based on a report written regarding the work of over two and a half thousand scientists in over one hundred and thirty countries concluded that humans were the cause of all or the majority of the current planetary warming. Global warming caused by humans is often called and known as anthropogenic climate change.
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admin on July 18th, 2008
What is global warming? It is the effect of heat and energy made up of greenhouse gases being trapped in the earth’s atmosphere. Scientists acknowledge that some natural causes occur, but the majority are convinced that humans are having a profound effect by adding multitudes of greenhouse gases which would not occur naturally.
The term global warming refers to the average rise in the earth’s temperature, this in turn causes climate change. As the earth becomes warmer this may lead to changes in rainfall patterns, a rise in sea levels and potentially an enormous effect on animals, plants and humans.
It is known that the Artic circles are shrinking and that glaciers are melting at a faster rate than previously recorded. Loss of ice sheets on polar land could potentially have a dramatic effect on the amount the sea levels rise; the rising sea levels will in turn have an impact on the coastlines, also with major changes being seen as the sea inundates low lying lands.
Manmade gases, predominantly carbon dioxide and to a lessen extent methane, trap infrared radiation, in other words the heat radiation which cools the earth. For the earth to remain at a constant temperature it must lose the same amount of energy through heat radiation as it gains from the sun, this is known as energy balance. The burning of fossils fuels such as oil and coal produce carbon dioxide, which is now fifty percent higher than it was at the turn of the twentieth century.
One of the ways the earth loses its heat is via rain clouds, and it is thought that changes in current rain patterns and expected changes in future rain patterns will contribute to global warming.
Deforestation by man and by natural causes are also contributing to global warming; while natural deforestation caused by forest fires raging out of control can most probably be counter effected by nature’s natural rhythms the vast amount of deforestation by man is making the balance tilt towards the lack of plants and vegetation being able to absorb the increase in carbon dioxide.
So the answer to the question ‘what is global warming?’ can be partly explained by scientists and researches however, there is still much uncertainty as to the actual or potential impact global warming will have on the earth.
Technorati Tags: What Is Global Warming
