GLOBAL WARMING: Research Paper

Our climate issues are happening all over the world. Everybody is polluting the earth in so many ways. According to a report humans have caused all or most of the current planetary warming. Human-caused global warming is often called anthropogenic climate change. Humans have caused industrialization, deforestation, and pollution. Which have increased the atmospheric concentrations of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Plants and oceans can't absorb the amount of carbon dioxide humans are releasing into the air. Gases such as Carbon Dioxide stay in the atmosphere for one hundred years. If we were to stop the emissions today there would still be effects from years prior. More than one million species will face extinction. According to an article from National Geographic "Some experts point out that natural cycles in Earth's orbit can alter the planet's exposure to sunlight, which may explain the current trend. Earth has indeed experienced warming and cooling cycles roughly every hundred thousand years due to these orbital shifts, but such changes have occurred over the span of several centuries. Today's changes have taken place over the past hundred years or less." (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/73625218.html).

In order for my climate issue to take effect there has to be greenhouse gas concentrations via the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is the process in which the emission of infrared radiation by the atmosphere warms a planet's surface. The warming of the planet’s surface is exactly what global warming is. The greenhouse effect gives off green house gases that could potentially be dangerous to Earth.

The environment and the people are effected greatly. Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees since 1880. The last two decades were the hottest in the last 400 years. The IPCC reports that 11 of the last 12 years are some of the warmest since 1850. Temperatures in the Artic have risen a

t twice the global average. Artic ice is disappearing. The Artic may have its first completely ice free summer by 2040. Polar bears are already suffering form the sea-ice loss. Montana’s Glacier National Park now has only 27 glaciers compared to the 150 it had in 1910.

Thaws come a week earlier and freezes come a week later. Coral reefs are under stress. They suffered the worst bleaching ever recorded in 1998. Some areas have seen bleach rates of about 70%. Bleach rates are expected to increase over the next 50 years. The increase in extreme weather events is aided by the

climate change.

Many things could happen in the long run. According to IPCCIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) “Global warming could lead to large-scale food and water shortages and have catastrophic effects on wildlife.” Sea levels could rise between 7 and 23 inches and could flood many South Seas islands and swamp parts of Southeast Asia. Louisiana and Florida are especially at risk since they are coastal states. Glaciers around the world could melt. Natural disasters could

occur more frequently. The ocean’s conveyor belt (global density-d

riven circulation of the oceans) could be permanently altered, which could cause a mini-ice age in Western Europe. “At some point in the future, warming could become uncontrollable by creating so-called positive feedback effect (feedback loop system in which the system responds to perturbation in the same direction as the perturbation). Rising temperatures could release additional greenhouse gases by unlocking methane in permafrost and undersea deposits, freeing carbon trapped in sea ice, and causing increased evaporation of

water.”(http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/73625218.html). At http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/environment there are 51 things you can do to prevent global warming. To see more effects of global warming visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming .

There really were no predictions for global warming. It is an ongoing thing and it just progresses to be worse for us as the time goes by. There are many global warming warnings. Heat waves and periods of unusually warm weather, Ocean warming, sea-level rise and coastal flooding, Glaciers melting, and Arctic and Antarctic warming.

There are many people involved with changing the climate. Perhaps the most notable person is Al Gore. Al Gore produced the movie An Inconvenient Truth, which is all about global warming and how humans have impacted it and changed our future. It talks about his travels and how he wants to change the world and explain to everybody the effects of global warming. The band 30 Seconds to Mars is involved in the ice caps melting in Antarctica. They wanted to show their fans how concerned they were that they actually performed a music video on a glacier in Antarctica.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Information:

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, 3 April 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback
I got the definition of positive feedback from this website.

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc ,14 April 2008,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation
I got the information about the ocean’s conveyor belt.

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, 17 April 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
All the information about global warming,

National Geographic Society, 1996-2008
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/73625218.html
Everything else about global warming.

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, 17 April 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect

1999
http://www.climatehotmap.org/
The warning signs of global warming

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc,18 April 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_inconvenient_truth

Virgin Records / 30 Seconds To Mars, 2007
http://www.abeautifullie.org/

Pictures:

(1.) Rugby471 ,25 October 2007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Greenhouse_Effect.svg