Global warming
[edit] Global warming
- Global warming is the observed increase in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans in recent decades.
- The Earth's average near-surface atmospheric temperature rose 0.6 ± 0.2 °Celsius (1.1 ± 0.4 °Fahrenheit) in the 20th century. The prevailing scientific opinion on climate change is that "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities" United Nations Environment Programme
- The increased amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) are the primary causes of the human-induced component of warming. They are released by the burning of fossil fuels, land clearing and agriculture, etc. and lead to an increase in the greenhouse effect.
- Also see: Climate change
[edit] What is global warming?
Global warming is when the earth heats up (the temperature rises). It happens when greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrous oxide, and methane) trap heat and light from the sun in the earth’s atmosphere, which increases the temperature. This hurts many people, animals, and plants. Many cannot take the change, so they die.
Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, cloud forests are drying, and wildlife is scrambling to keep pace. It's becoming clear that humans have caused most of the past century's warming by releasing heat-trapping gases as we power our modern lives. Called greenhouse gases, their levels are higher now than in the last 650,000 years.
We call the result global warming, but it is causing a set of changes to the Earth's climate, or long-term weather patterns, that varies from place to place. As the Earth spins each day, the new heat swirls with it, picking up moisture over the oceans, rising here, settling there. It's changing the rhythms of climate that all living things have come to rely upon.
What will we do to slow this warming? How will we cope with the changes we've already set into motion? While we struggle to figure it all out, the face of the Earth as we know it—coasts, forests, farms and snow-capped mountains—hangs in the balance.
[edit] What is the greenhouse effect?
The greenhouse effect is when the temperature rises because the sun’s heat and light is trapped in the earth’s atmosphere. This is like when heat is trapped in a car. On a very hot day, the car gets hotter when it is out in the parking lot. This is because the heat and light from the sun can get into the car, by going through the windows, but it can’t get back out. This is what the greenhouse effect does to the earth. The heat and light can get through the atmosphere, but it can’t get out. As a result, the temperature rises. The sun’s heat can get into the car through the windows but is then trapped. This makes what ever the place might be, a greenhouse, a car, a building, or the earth’s atmosphere, hotter. This diagram shows the heat coming into a car as visible light (light you can see) and infrared light (heat). Once the light is inside the car, it is trapped and the heat builds up, just like it does in the earth’s atmosphere.
Sometimes the temperature can change in a way that helps us. The greenhouse effect makes the earth appropriate for people to live on. Without it, the earth would be freezing, or on the other hand it would be burning hot. It would be freezing at night because the sun would be down. We would not get the sun’s heat and light to make the night somewhat warm. During the day, especially during the summer, it would be burning because the sun would be up with no atmosphere to filter it, so people, plants, and animals would be exposed to all the light and heat.
Although the greenhouse effect makes the earth able to have people living on it, if there gets to be too many gases, the earth can get unusually warmer, and many plants, animals, and people will die. They would die because there would be less food (plants like corn, wheat, and other vegetables and fruits). This would happen because the plants would not be able to take the heat. This would cause us to have less food to eat, but it would also limit the food that animals have. With less food, like grass, for the animals that we need to survive (like cows) we would even have less food. Gradually, people, plants, and animals would all die of hunger.
[edit] Aren't temperature changes natural?
The average global temperature and concentrations of carbon dioxide (one of the major greenhouse gases) have fluctuated on a cycle of hundreds of thousands of years as the Earth's position relative to the sun has varied. As a result, ice ages have come and gone.
However, for thousands of years now, emissions of GHGs to the atmosphere have been balanced out by GHGs that are naturally absorbed. As a result, GHG concentrations and temperature have been fairly stable. This stability has allowed human civilization to develop within a consistent climate.
Occasionally, other factors briefly influence global temperatures. Volcanic eruptions, for example, emit particles that temporarily cool the Earth's surface. But these have no lasting effect beyond a few years. Other cycles, such as El Niño, also work on fairly short and predictable cycles.
Now, humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than a third since the industrial revolution. Changes this large have historically taken thousands of years, but are now happening over the course of decades.
[edit] What are greenhouse gasses?
Greenhouse gasses are gasses are in the earth’s atmosphere that collect heat and light from the sun. With too many greenhouse gasses in the air, the earth’s atmosphere will trap too much heat and the earth will get too hot. As a result people, animals, and plants would die because the heat would be too strong.
[edit] What is global warming doing to the environment?
Global warming is affecting many parts of the world. Global warming makes the sea rise, and when the sea rises, the water covers many low land islands. This is a big problem for many of the plants, animals, and people on islands. The water covers the plants and causes some of them to die. When they die, the animals lose a source of food, along with their habitat. Although animals have a better ability to adapt to what happens than plants do, they may die also. When the plants and animals die, people lose two sources of food, plant food and animal food. They may also lose their homes. As a result, they would also have to leave the area or die. This would be called a break in the food chain, or a chain reaction, one thing happening that leads to another and so on.
The oceans are affected by global warming in other ways, as well. Many things that are happening to the ocean are linked to global warming. One thing that is happening is warm water, caused from global warming, is harming and killing algae in the ocean.
Algae is a producer that you can see floating on the top of the water. (A producer is something that makes food for other animals through photosynthesis, like grass.) This floating green algae is food to many consumers in the ocean. (A consumer is something that eats the producers.) One kind of a consumer is small fish. There are many others like crabs, some whales, and many other animals. Fewer algae is a problem because there is less food for us and many animals in the sea.
Global warming is doing many things to people as well as animals and plants. It is killing algae, but it is also destroying many huge forests. The pollution that causes global warming is linked to acid rain. Acid rain gradually destroys almost everything it touches. Global warming is also causing many more fires that wipe out whole forests. This happens because global warming can make the earth very hot. In forests, some plants and trees leaves can be so dry that they catch on fire.
[edit] What causes global warming?
Many things cause global warming. One thing that causes global warming is electrical pollution. Electricity causes pollution in many ways, some worse than others. In most cases, fossil fuels are burned to create electricity. Fossil fuels are made of dead plants and animals. Some examples of fossil fuels are oil and petroleum. Many pollutants (chemicals that pollute the air, water, and land) are sent into the air when fossil fuels are burned. Some of these chemicals are called greenhouse gasses.
We use these sources of energy much more than the sources that give off less pollution. Petroleum, one of the sources of energy, is used a lot. It is used for transportation, making electricity, and making many other things. Although this source of energy gives off a lot of pollution, it is used for 38% of the United States’ energy.
Global warming has become perhaps the most complicated issue facing world leaders. On the one hand, warnings from the scientific community are becoming louder, as an increasing body of science points to rising dangers from the ongoing buildup of human-related greenhouse gases — produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and forests. On the other, the technological, economic and political issues that have to be resolved before a concerted worldwide effort to reduce emissions can begin have gotten no simpler, particularly in the face of a global economic slowdown.
After years of preparation for climate talks taking place in Copenhagen through Dec. 18, 2009, President Obama and other leaders announced on Nov. 15 what had already become evident — that no formal treaty could be produced anytime soon. Instead, the leaders pledged to reach a placeholder accord that would call for reductions in emissions and increased aid to help developing nations adapt to a changing climate and get access to non-polluting energy options.
This would in theory give the nations more time to work out the all-important details. Negotiators would then seek a binding global agreement in 2010, complete with firm emission targets, enforcement mechanisms and specific dollar amounts to aid poorer nations.
At the heart of the debate is a momentous tussle between rich and poor countries over who steps up first and who pays most for changed energy menus.
Within the United States, Congress is similarly fighting over legislation on climate change. The House in the summer of 2009 passed a bill outlining a cap-and-trade system that could, over the next few decades, lead to an early end to conventional use of coal and oil, fuels that have underpinned prosperity and growth for more than a century. But between stiff opposition from energy interests and the overwhelming distractions of health care reform and the economy, the legislation has stalled in the Senate.
In international discussions over climate, Mr. Obama has urged other countries not to be discouraged by the stasis on Capitol Hill, pointing to big investments in energy efficiency, solar and wind power and his move to restrict greenhouse gases using environmental regulations.
In the meantime, recent fluctuations in temperature, seized on by opponents of emissions restrictions, have intensified the public debate over how urgently to respond. The long-term warming trend over the last century has been well-established, and scientists immersed in studying the climate are projecting substantial disruption in water supplies, agriculture, ecosystems and coastal communities. Passionate activists at both ends of the discourse are pushing ever harder for or against rapid action, while polls show the public locked durably in three camps — with roughly a fifth of American voters eager for action, a similar proportion aggressively rejecting projections of catastrophe and most people tuned out or confused.
[edit] Public cooling on climate, bay cleanup?
A new national public opinion survey finds Americans are cooling on dealing with climate change, while a statewide poll finds Marylanders also want to put off saving the Chesapeake Bay.
In both polls, the vast majority rank jobs and the economy as their top priorities for government action. Climate and the environment trail.
The national survey, by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, says that global warming ranked last among the public's priorities. Just 28 percent of those questioned called it a top priority, down 10 percent from two years ago. Protecting the environment fared better, with 44 percent rating it a top priority. That's a slight improvement over last year, but down more than 10 points from where it was a few years ago.
A recent survey of more than 800 Marylanders, meanwhile, found that 77 percent think creating jobs and improving the state's economy should be a higher priority for the O'Malley administration than taking steps to reduce bay pollution. Just 15 percent put the bay first.
The poll, by Gonzales Research and Marketing Services of Annapolis, also found that a majority, 55 percent, think the state should postpone any new bay cleanup regulations until economic conditions are better. To see the full results, go here.
The poll was done for the Maryland State Builders Association, which is pushing back against new regulation requiring tighter controls on polluted storm-water runoff from development and redevelopment sites. Builders contend the rules could make their projects more costly and some even unbuildable.
[edit] Background
Scientists learned long ago that the earth's climate has powerfully shaped the history of the human species — biologically, culturally and geographically. But only in the last few decades has research revealed that humans can be a powerful influence on the climate as well.
A growing body of scientific evidence indicates that since 1950, the world's climate has been warming, primarily as a result of emissions from unfettered burning of fossil fuels and the razing of tropical forests. Such activity adds to the atmosphere's invisible blanket of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases. Recent research has shown that methane, which flows from landfills, livestock and oil and gas facilities, is a close second to carbon dioxide in impact on the atmosphere.
That conclusion has emerged through a broad body of analysis in fields as disparate as glaciology, the study of glacial formations, and palynology, the study of the distribution of pollen grains in lake mud. It is based on a host of assessments by the world's leading organizations of climate and earth scientists.
In the last several years, the scientific case that the rising human influence on climate could become disruptive has become particularly robust.
Some fluctuations in the Earth's temperature are inevitable regardless of human activity — because of decades-long ocean cycles, for example. But centuries of rising temperatures and seas lie ahead if the release of emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation continues unabated, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore for alerting the world to warming's risks.
Despite the scientific consensus on these basic conclusions, enormously important details remain murky. That reality has been seized upon by some groups and scientists disputing the overall consensus and opposing changes in energy policies.
For example, estimates of the amount of warming that would result from a doubling of greenhouse gas concentrations (compared to the level just before the Industrial Revolution got under way in the early 19th century) range from 3.6 degrees to 8 degrees Fahrenheit. The intergovernmental climate panel said it could not rule out even higher temperatures). While the low end could probably be tolerated, the high end would almost certainly result in calamitous, long-lasting disruptions of ecosystems and economies, a host of studies have concluded. A wide range of economists and earth scientists say that level of risk justifies an aggressive response.
Other questions have persisted despite a century-long accumulation of studies pointing to human-driven warming. The rate and extent at which sea levels will rise in this century as ice sheets erode remains highly uncertain, even as the long-term forecast of centuries of retreating shorelines remains intact. Scientists are struggling more than ever to disentangle how the heat building in the seas and atmosphere will affect the strength and number of tropical cyclones. The latest science suggests there will be more hurricanes and typhoons that reach the most dangerous categories of intensity, but fewer storms over all.
[edit] Steps Toward a Response
The debate over such climate questions pales next to the fight over what to do, or not do, in a world where fossil fuels still underpin both rich and emerging economies. With the completion of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Earth Summit in 1992, the world's nations pledged to avoid dangerously disrupting the climate through the buildup of greenhouse gases, but they never defined how much warming was too much.
Nonetheless, recognizing that the original climate treaty was proving ineffective, all of the world's industrialized countries except for the United States accepted binding restrictions on their greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, which was negotiated in Japan in 1997. That accord took effect in 2005 and its gas restrictions expire in 2012. (The United States signed the treaty, but it was never submitted for ratification, in the face of overwhelming opposition in the Senate because the pact required no steps by China or other fast-growing developing countries.
It took until 2009 for the leaders of the world's largest economic powers to agree on a dangerous climate threshold: an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from the average global temperature recorded just before the Industrial Revolution kicked into gear. (This translates into an increase of 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit above the Earth's current average temperature, about 59 degrees).
The Group of 8 industrial powers also agreed this year to a goal of reducing global emissions 50 percent by 2050, with the richest countries leading the way by cutting their emissions 80 percent. But they did not set a baseline from which to measure that reduction, and so far firm interim targets — which many climate scientists say would be more meaningful — have not been defined.
At the same time, fast-growing emerging economic powerhouses, led by China and India, still oppose taking on mandatory obligations to curb their emissions. They say they will do what they can to rein in growth in emissions — as long as their economies do not suffer. The world's poorest countries, in the meantime, are seeking payments to help make them less vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, given that the buildup in climate-warming gases so far has come mainly from richer nations. Such aid has been promised since the 1992 treaty and a fund was set up under the Kyoto Protocol. But while tens of billions of dollars are said to be needed, only millions have flowed so far.
In many ways, the debate over global climate policy is a result of a global "climate divide. Emissions of carbon dioxide per person range from less than 2 tons per year in India, where 400 million people lack access to electricity, to more than 20 in the United States. The richest countries are also best able to use wealth and technology to insulate themselves from climate hazards, while the poorest, which have done the least to cause the problem, are the most exposed.
In Copenhagen in December 2009, negotiators had planned to try to settle on the basic terms of two new global climate agreements. One would renew the commitments of countries bound by the Kyoto emissions limits; the other would rein in emissions of all countries to varying extents, depending on their wealth and emissions history. Given the many competing interests, and the reality that any big emissions shifts would have substantial economic impacts, the negotiations have been called one of the most complex diplomatic challenges ever.
Democratic leaders in the United States Senate continue to try to follow the lead of the House of Representatives by securing passage of a bill aiming to sharply cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The chief mechanism would be a "cap and trade" system that sets a gradually declining ceiling for over all emissions. Companies and institutions could buy and sell credits from one another as a way to curb emissions at the lowest cost. Companies that made deeper cuts than required could sell credits to companies that fell short of their targets.
But a national preoccupation with the slow economy and competing issues, led by health care, threaten to delay or weaken such legislation. Another impediment is the shortage of money flowing to basic energy research and large-scale demonstrations of non-polluting energy technology. While the Obama administration and Congress directed some stimulus money toward such efforts, such spending comes only after decades of declining investment in these areas.
President Obama came into office vowing to take swift action on climate change, and under him, the Environmental Protection Agency has declared that it will regulate carbon dioxide emissions. But with the cap-and-trade bill facing an uncertain future in the Senate, his ability to take big steps on the issue has been severely constrained, and without significant actions by the United States, China and India had made it clear they would remain on the sidelines. Just weeks before the planned Copenhagen session, he and other leaders gathered for an Asian summit announced that no treaty would be reached in 2009. Instead, leaders will try to reach a political agreement that could be the basis for new treaty talks in 2010.
In the meantime, a recent dip in emissions caused by the global economic slowdown is almost certain to be followed by a rise, scientists warn, and with population and appetites for energy projected to rise through mid-century, they say the entwined challenges of climate and energy will only intensify.
Be Careful What You Wish For…[[1]]
For many years, the climate alarmist movement pushed the development of corn ethanol as the “fuel of the future” on the grounds that it would decrease fossil fuel emissions. As I detail in my book, The Really Inconvenient Truths, massive efforts were devoted to promoting this technology, with a textbook baptist-bootlegger alliance between green groups and Big Corn (most notably Archer Daniels Midland). Politicians joined in happily, with Al Gore stumping for Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar because of her support for ethanol and countless Presidential candidates in Iowa talking up the fuel.
The result of that push has, it seems, been an increase in fossil fuels. For the latest on this, see The indirect effects of increasing production of maize ethanol were first addressed in 2008 by Timothy Searchinger and his coauthors, who presented a simpler calculation in Science. Searchinger concluded that burning maize ethanol led to greenhouse gas emissions twice as large as if gasoline had been burned instead. The question assumed global importance because the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act mandates a steep increase in US production of biofuels over the next dozen years, and certifications about life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions are needed for some of this increase. In addition, the California Air Resources Board’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard requires including estimates of the effects of indirect land-use change on greenhouse gas emissions. The board’s approach is based on the work reported in BioScience.
Hertel and colleagues’ analysis incorporates some effects that could lessen the impact of land-use conversion, but their bottom line, though only one-quarter as large as the earlier estimate of Searchinger and his coauthors, still indicates that the maize ethanol now being produced in the United States will not significantly reduce total greenhouse gas emissions, compared with burning gasoline. The authors acknowledge that some game-changing technical or economic development could render their estimates moot, but sensitivity analyses undertaken in their study suggest that the findings are quite robust.
Promotion of technologies based on theory rather than practice has been a hallmark of the green movement. Every indication seems to be that their foolish promotion of ethanol has been written out of their history, rather than being treated as a cautionary tale to learn from.
Slash pine forests (Pinus elliottii) in Florida, which are the habitat of the key deer and other endandered/threatened species, are being killed by salt water intrusion by sea level rise and storm surges. Michael Ross and colleagues reported that in the Key Deer National Wildlife Refuge, an 88 Ha (220 acre) pine forest on Sugarloaf Key has shrunk to less than 30 Ha (75 ac) since 1935, with a relatively continuous change to salt-water tolerant plants like mangrove. The 8 foot storm surge from Hurricane Wilma in 2005 left more salt water in the forest, speeding the death of pines. Sea level at Key West is currently rising at a rate of about 9 inches per century, but the increasing rate of change makes possible a sea level increase of two feet by 2060, according to another study (assuming greenhouse gases are not reduced). This would inundate most of the Keys, all of the Everglades and 70 percent of Miami-Dade County at each high tide.
World View of Global Warming is an independent documentary project by photojournalist Gary Braasch, now in its 11th year, presenting a comprehensive look at global warming science, the world wide effects of climate change, its implications, and what action is being taken about it. Braasch documents this change through science reporting and photography from the Arctic to Antarctica, from glaciers to the oceans. Rapid climate change is occurring now and its effects are fast becoming one of the prime events of the 21st century.
Every citizen of the world needs to be aware of rapid climate change:
One- Understand the problem, its causes and threats. Two- Let your leaders know the facts and that you expect them to act. Three- Do something today to reduce greenhouse gas output -- please Take Action
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