Global Warming And The Rising Sea Level

In 2008, the effects of the rising sea level will be more obvious than ever, as global warming moves to the forefront of international concern. Especially, to the United States who has seen disaster.

When Hurricane Katrina hit the coastal city of New Orleans in 2005, the world watched with horror the devastation it created in an American city. As global warming continues, unforeseen levels of natural disaster will become increasingly common, while erratic weather patterns will plague our natural seasons. It is not a coincidence that one of the warmest years ever recorded all occurred between 1995 and 2006.

And scientists predict the rest of 2007 and 2008 will be even hotter. The extreme levels of carbon emissions released by human activities have reached all time high, a shocking 379 parts per million in 2005- the highest amount ever in the last 650,000 years! No wonder heat is getting trapped at incredible rates in our atmosphere.

So what does all this mean? As the earth's temperature continues to rise, our natural reserves of ice caps and glaciers continue to melt.

Scientists are already alarmed at the unprecedented rate at which the world's frozen bodies are melting, from Greenland and the Antarctic to the glaciers of the Himalayas.

As more ice sheets and glaciers melt, more water gets added to the seas and oceans around the world, increasing their level in general. But it is also natural for water to expand upon warming. So not only will the sea levels rise, its waters will in fact take up more space as it heats. The large ice sheets have also traditionally worked as reflectors of the sun's heat. But as the size of these sheets gets smaller, instead of reflecting the heat, it begins to observe it and melts ever faster.

Of course, this a disaster for the world's ecology, it has already forced Polar bears to become an endangered species, but just as devastating for humans too.

In India, scientists have already recorded an annual rise in sea levels at a rate of 3.14mm in Bay of Bengal, and as much as 10mm in the Khulna region of Bangladesh. It's the same case in coastal towns and cities across the world. Its evidences have become clear in the US too. While the edges of Mangroove forests are already dotted with submerged forests in the Bermuda, as much as one third of the marsh at Chesapeake Bay's Blackwater Natural National Wildlife Refuge is gone!

Major cities like San Francisco, Manhattan, to Mumbai are all at risk. Increasing sea levels will not just mean loss and erosion of land, but also more frequent occurrences of super hurricanes such as the one that drowned New Orleans or cause the Tsunamis of 2004.

Another humanitarian crisis that could be caused by the rising sea level is that they will also create an acute shortage of fresh water reserves on land. Scientists have confirmed that at this rate the Himalayan ecology in South Asia will now almost certainly face extreme floods followed by extreme droughts. And hundreds of millions of people in the region will experience water and food shortage.

When global warming was first discussed, it seemed like the consequences would be in many life times later. But today, within our own life time, the possibility of witnessing the havoc cause by global warming and the rising sea level has become distinctly clear.

Global Warming in the Antarctic

After 40 years of being away I returned to the Antarctic in 2005. Even with over 98 percent of Antarctica being ice, global warming has started to change the fifth largest contient. In the 1960s I had worked on the Antarctic Peninsula as a meteorologist, and I drove huskies. (Environmental concerns that the Antarctic-born huskies were an alien species meant that by 1994 all the huskies were removed from the Antarctic). A major change has been the increase from a few hundred tourists in the 1960s to the present number of over 30,000 Anatractic visitors annually. But the greatest change has been the effects of global warming. Comparing my meteorological records from forty years ago to those of the present has added to the evidence that changes have occurred in Antarctica.

The effects are not immediately obvious to Antarctic visitors even though the temperature has increased by 2.5 degrees C over the last few decades.

There are still masses of ice, glaciers, and frigid waters along the Antarctic Peninsula. I had spent a year at Adelaide Island in Marguerite Bay forty years ago with no fur seals, now they lazed around on the rocks of the closed down base. In the 1960s the seals lived 700 kilometers to the north. Now they are spread all along the Antarctic Peninsula. In some breeding areas there is concern that the huge numbers, now in the millions, will destroy other Antarctic flora and fauna habitats.

The increase in temperature means less sea ice. Less sea ice has meant less krill larvae, (krill are the shrimp-like creatures that most Antarctic marine life depend on for food). This affects the more southerly Adelie penguins' feeding habits. The more northerly gentoo penguins are surviving the increased temperatures, though some recent warm summers with temperatures over 8 degrees C has resulted in penguin heat exhaustion.

The only two flowering Antarctic plants, the hair grass and the pearlwort, have increased their range and area.

There are more plants growing, and they are now found as far south as 68 degrees latitude.

87% of the glaciers in the Antarctic Peninsula region have retreated in the last fifty years. This rapid change has not been evident for thousands of years. Ice shelves have lost much of their ice; some have now disappeared. Antarctic ice drill cores have shown the fastest and highest jumps in temperature over the last 900,000 years has been in the last 200 years. Human activity has affected not only the temperate and tropical parts of the world, but also the polar areas. The edges of the north and south polar-regions are more vulnerable to change that the zones in between. Global warming is changing our world.

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Ah, Global Warming

Most people do not really understand what "Global Warming" is, it is not climate change, rather it is new "buzz-word" created by humans which is defined as human's emission of green house gasses is causing the Earth to heat up. Now you might say that you believe that, but I would ask you why? Why do you believe that? Do you really believe that mankind's CO2 is causing the Earth's ambient temperature and atmosphere to heat up?

Okay, so let's say you do believe this, may I ask why? Is it because you read it somewhere? Or that you heard that some scientists believe this to be the case, or is it because Al Gore received a Nobel prize for a docu-drama depicting catastrophic consequences to human civilization if we continue to all "pollutants" or CO2 to enter the Earth's atmosphere? And have you ever asked yourself why CO2 is a pollutant at all?

Did you know that humankind has been living with and around CO2 for most all of its evolutionary development? Did you know that humans create CO2 when they breathe? If you really want to be carbon neutral, then stop breathing, remove yourself from the planet and vote with your life.

The reality is that this pale blue dot, Planet Earth has been heating up and cooling down for 5.5 Billion Years.

It was doing this before mankind evolved and will continue after we are gone. Trying to stop the Earth's climate cycles is akin to trying to prevent Continental Drift. If you think you are going to stop climate change plus or minus in temperature by driving a smaller car, you are uninformed.

It has been estimated that to cool the Planet's Temperature one-degree using wind energy it would take 60 Trillion Dollars and put wind generators everywhere, which could even slow the air circulation and cause heating to boot, no not much, but you get the point.

Sixty Trillion with a Capital "T" is the entire world's GDP put together.

And just because you cooled the Planet one-degree does not mean the planet itself might not cool another 5 degrees, so you are not going to change much. In the 1970s and 1980s the scientists said we were going into an Ice Age, now they say we are going to overheat, and of course once upon a time the Earth was the center of the Universe and it was flat!

Perhaps, what I am getting at is humans are so ego-centric that they think everything is about them, it isn't. There is nothing wrong with the planet, perhaps only the people on top. Why do so many people believe in Global Warming? Because the newspapers and TV tells them too, just like it tells them whom to vote for, as folks have surrendered their minds to the media.

But that does not make Global Warming Real. The planet heats and cools all the time, just like there are 50-year drought cycles, 20-year Hurricane Cycles, 22-year Solar Cycles, and Ice Ages, but that does not mean it's due to man. Sometimes multiple cycles hit together, sometimes not, but when they do humans freak out a little and come up with various theories. They choose theories that best fit their political, nationalistic, and religious needs, desires and belief systems.

So what else is new?

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Global Warming: Global Devastation

It appears that since 1750 the planet has been gradually warming. This is now thought to be due to human activity - caused by man alone. Amazingly there are still people who doubt that global warming either exists or is caused by man. They insist that such events are "only circumstantial".

They claim that temperatures go up and down and that greenhouse gas levels are much the same. Estimates suggest that summer temperatures in the U.K. could rise by up to five degrees centigrade in the southeast of England. This is predicted by the year 2080 and has been supported by a scientific panel of 2,500 scientists appointed by the United Nations. Areas in sub-Saharan African and parts of the Mediterranean would be even more dry with episodes of droughts.

The effect of global warming will be also that of increasing storms and rainfall and this will be increased in the winter months, especially in Northern Europe.

Many parts of Britain already have very little snow fall and it is thought that snow would be a thing of the past in Britain by 2080. In tropical regions, that already suffer from hurricanes and cyclones, it is thought that these will increase in frequency and intensity.

The effect of global warming is also that of increasing sea levels as the polar ice caps melt. Areas such as Bangladesh, which is low lying, plus areas of the African coast would be flooded repeatedly if sea levels rose. It is predicted that it may rise by up to 17 inches in some parts. This would lead to some parts of the world being uninhabitable.

The Great Global Warming Scam

Never a day passes without another scare story about the imminent extinction of some form of wildlife due to global warming. First it was polar bears, now it is penguins. We have all seen the films and photographs depicting the plight of wildlife and potentially mankind. How convenient that it was never mentioned that most of the films and pictures were taken in the summertime when the ice melts naturally. The films of glaciers crashing into the sea is another scare story. I remember seeing films of this sort many years ago.It is a natural phenomena that the moving glaciers meet the unfrozen sea and huge pieces fall off because the sea melts the glacier from below the surface.

In the UK the government decreed that Al Gore's highly political and wildly inaccurate film should be shown in every school without any genuine proof against climate change.

A perfect method of brainwashing our children into believing that it is happening and therefore pass the message on to their parents.

The world was warmer in the fifteenth century and what we are experiencing is a natural cycle. Yes CO2 emissions are higher now than several hundreds years ago but there is still no scientific evidence to prove that CO2 emissions are the cause. We are well aware that the rain forests absorb vast quantities of CO2 gas but they can't keep absorbing it for ever. Like everything else you can get too much of a good thing and something has to give. It was discovered by a French scientist that the rain forests release vast quantities of CO2 when they have had their fill.I am totally against de-forestation and the best way to protect them is to pay off the farmers, give them enough to keep them and their villages in comfort.

Instead we are conned into paying more taxes for something that is not happening.

Here in the UK we are the highest taxed nation in the western world, in particular road and fuel taxes. The government wants us out of our cars and into public transport but public transport is more expensive than using our cars, for example: If I take four people in my car on a 30 mile round trip it will cost me £3 or £4, but if I take the same amount of people on a bus for the same distance it will cost over £12. We all have to sit in traffic jams, even with the vast tax revenue the government fails to provide adequate road links to keep traffic moving. They are happy to see us burning gallons of fuel and going nowhere it means we have to fill up our fuel tanks more often. Now they want to build another air terminal at Heathrow which will double the amount of air traffic and get double green tax revenue from the passengers.

The latest scam is the carbon trading companies which are growing at a tremendous rate. I will bet my last penny that 95% of the revenue they receive goes on salaries and administration and the remaining 5% on planting trees or some other form of so called saving the planet.

To finalise, do you honestly believe that China, India and other developing nations give a damn about climate change. Their motto is to live for today and worry about tomorrow later and global warming is a myth.

Global Warming- The Worried Heat Of People

 

Ignoring the poor misguided people who’re saying wrong global warming is just a small sign.

It really happens. Most scientists now agree that because of people’s non-stop thirst for consumption, we are suffering the ever increasing global temperatures. 

 

 

There is mounting evidence to suggest that the accelerating global population growth combined with a general increase in living standards is placing the Earth's natural systems under an immense strain. Many believe we are at the tipping point right now.

 

Others would go further and suggest that the tipping point has been and gone. We are now entering a phase in the Earth's history which Al Gore describes in his documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth", as a period of consequences.

 

In other words we have left it too late. If this is to be believed then we are past the point of no return. The climate is literally going into meltdown with vast swathes of ice sheet plunging into the ever warmer waters.

 

Here's the big problem. Where once there was ice, the majority of the suns' energy was reflected back out into space. Now that the ice has been replaced by water, the majority of the suns' energy is being absorbed and the seas are warming up at an alarming rate.

 

The warming of the seas melts the ice sheets more quickly and the problem becomes compounded. This is an exponential problem and it's why the brains behind the computer modelsand predictions are warning the human race of the most dire consequences.

 

Some predictions warn that vast areas of the Earth's surface will turn to desert. We're seeing the beginnings of this now. This is not theory, it's happening. There could be 100's of millions of people displaced due to desertification and ironically, flooding in other areas.

 

We're talking migration of human beings on a scale never before witnessed. The problems this will cause worldwide are unimaginable. The warnings are based on evidence from multiple authorities and we, as a species, would do well to recognise the fact that we're the problem.

 

Unless we all change our ways this obscene gluttony will almost certainly put paid the human race as we know it. The Earth will carry on regardless, make no mistake, but will webe around to see it?

 

This time we cannot simply "Get out of the kitchen"!

 

 

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Ceasing Global Warming Is More Simple Than In Your Minds

USA Today recently announced that the terrorism on 9/11 slump, air travel has reached a record high.

An Arbitron study reported that after 2 years, air traveling was a standstill shows that more than 92 million air travelers take two or more trips annually. 17 million, regarding as frequent filers, travel four to nine times a year. Few people give a moment thought to flying for holidays, vacations and business meetings. You need to make the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth on the Earth's climate crisis featuring Al Gore a priority if you haven’t read it.

 

An Inconvenient Truth emphasizes that we need to wake up to the fact that the U.S. alone is burning through mega gallons of fossil fuel on hundreds of daily flights, which emit megatons of the greenhouse gases that are causing global warming. Just an average personal roundtrip of 1,660 miles consumes enough fuel to release 2,258 pounds of gases into the atmosphere, injecting more than a ton of pollution into the air we breathe.

 

After watching, An Inconvenient Truth, I hope you are compelled to reconsider holiday, business and leisure plans, finding ways to fly less and travel closer to home. Many also are salving their conscience with another practical option. They are purchasing "Green Tags" to offset the carbon we personally generate when we fly or drive. These modest fees, easily calculated online, directly fund renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power.

 

Buying one green tag can offset an average air trip for less than .00. We can purchase offsets one trip at a time or for the whole year. Reliable sources include GreenTagsUSA.org and MyClimate.org. Some travel companies take care of this detail when booking a flight and may even match client contributions.

 

Observers predict that buying Green Tags will become as familiar as recycling and water conversation. Newsweek International has referred to carbon offsets as one of the 'hottest new trends' for travel--just the ticket for a guilt-free trip.

 

Living holistically includes replenishing not only our mind, body and spirit--it includes replenishing Mother Earth. Let us not forget Mother Earth is our home this time around--if we continue to chop holes in the Mother ship--it is safe to say, we will perish.

 

 

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Global Warming Explained

Global warming is thought of as one of the biggest threats to world security in modern times, and it is arguably already taking its toll in our weather system. By a combination of natural cyclical progression, and the impact of human behaviour and activity over the last century, the Earth is steadily seeing the effects of the global warming phenomenon. But what exactly is global warming, and exactly what impact could it have on our environment?

Global warming can be defined as an overall gradual increase in world temperature over time. This is measured by averaging Earth and Ocean temperature, and has shown a steady upwards trend over recent decades. Furthermore, it is thought that over the last half a century, this has been a result of human civilisation and industrialisation. One of the major contributors to global warming is what is known as greenhouse gas, which comprises largely of carbon dioxide from general human activity.

Global warming as a process is thought to be highly devastating in terms of its effect on the climate.

'Climate change' is a phrase which is often use in association with global warming, and it has potentially catastrophic consequences for the world in which we live. 'Climate change' also covers global cooling, which can also occur as a result of human activity and greenhouse gases, and reflects a substantial change in the world's climate, which could change our habitat beyond recognition. This could be characterised by unusual weather patterns, resulting in more frequent natural disasters, which could in turn lead to political and social chaos in the decades and centuries to come.

There are a number of international political treaties which have been set up to change the progress of global warming, although their tangible upshots still remain to be seen.

Through political cooperation, it is hoped that environmental targets can be met on an international scale, to make a real difference to the environment. However, at a personal level, there is significant scope for helping, rather than hindering the world in which we live, including recycling household waste, and reducing personal carbon emissions.

Global warming is arguably one of the biggest threats to human civilisation, and it is something which requires a drastic change in lifestyle to reverse. However, with a personal and political impetus, it is hopeful that the damage done to the planet can be reversed for future generations to enjoy.

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