Global Warming? So what's wrong with that!?

Plenty. We're all in this TOGETHER.

Think global warming won't hurt much? Well...

In the temperate regions of the world, maybe where you live, you might not even notice a few degrees warming. Hey, you can always crank the air conditioner up another notch, right?

But if you live in a place with big, old trees, you might notice them drying out in the summer, getting cinnamon-colored dead spots from the drought and insects.

You might notice the fall and winter storms are getting bigger.

You might notice the mountains don't get snow on them until late...

You might notice that last year, there was flooding in areas that there was never flooding before...

...and that there were more BUGS this summer than you remember.

These are all thought to be caused by global warming.

Is global warming REAL? Read my page about the global warming "myth" here.

What Causes Global Warming?

• Burning fossil fuels:When oil, gas, coal, wood, or other carbon-containing fuels (called fossil fuels because they come from living things which have died) are burned, carbon dioxide and water vapor are released into the atmosphere. These gases are called greenhouse gases because they trap long-wave radiation from the sun and heat up the atmosphere, just like the glass in a greenhouse.

  More fossil fuels are burned to power CARS with gasoline engines than for any other purpose...
  
  ...and as more of the world becomes modernized, more and more people are driving gas-burning cars.

  China is adding a thousand cars a day, every day, to the roads...and adding gobs of heat-trapping gas to the atmosphere.

Read my Australian friend's thoughtful assessment of the Kyoto Protocol, developing nations' contribution to global warming, and the resistance of Australia and the United States to the Kyoto Treaty (based on economic worries) at his website, here.

• Deforestation:Trees use carbon dioxide from the air to eat (photosynthesis), and they eat a lot. The more humans cut down forests - including the tropical rain forest - the fewer trees are available to gobble the carbon dioxide up.
  
  (note: trees also breathe, just like us; they "inhale" oxygen and "exhale" carbon dioxide...but they use much more carbon dioxide than they produce. Consider this: since wood burns...

  ...it must be full of carbon, from using carbon dioxide.)

• Natural sources of warming, such as the seasons, accumulation of naturally-occurring greenhouse gases, solar storms which occasionally bombard the earth with excessive solar energy, and volcanoes which spew ash and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Because natural sources of climate change do exist, unscrupulous people use this as an excuse to claim that human activity (such as driving gas or diesel powered cars) is not a major contributor to climate change. This could be related to the amount of money those people and their friends and families have invested in oil and oil-burning products (like cars).

Once, the tobacco companies rented scientists to claim (and testify before Congress) that smoking was not bad for your health, or at least, not worse than other naturally-occurring things......but today we know better.

It is a similar thing with gas-burning cars and climate change.



• Feedback loops, in which the warming effects such as melting of glaciers cause further warming which accelerates out of control. This is the most worrisome cause of global warming on the list, because nobody knows how close we might be to the tipping point -- the point at which global warming accelerates out of control.

When the Climate Changes...

• Glacier Melt: As the freshwater ice sheets at the poles melt into the sea, the ocean levels rise, and what used to be seaports become SEA. This means cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo will be underwater in fifty years if the sea levels rise as much as many respected scientists are predicting.


• Storms: Since the fifties, storms have been increasing in intensity every year. Average wave height in North Atlantic storms has increased by 40%.Hurricanes and other cyclone-type storms in the South Atlantic are also getting more intense. This causes more destruction, more erosion and more flooding near the coasts...

  ...like we experienced with Hurricane Katrina.
  
  
  

  
• Flash Floods: These come from thunder storms that get stalled or parked in place, and it just rains and rains.When the ground's absorbency gets overwhelmed by water, it collects in puddles that become lakes and rivers, and you get flash floods. Flash floods also happen as a result of rapid snow melt.
• Food Shortages: Lester Brown, the president of Earth Policy Institute, reports that a 1 degree C rise in temperature leads to a decline in wheat, rice, and corn yields of 10%.

• Water Shortages: Mr. Brown goes on to say in Outgrowing The Earth that water tables are affected dramatically by global warming -- our freshwater supplies are dwindling as our glaciers and ice sheets melt.In response to falling water tables, people overpump the existing aquifers to meet demand.
• Wildfires: Noticed a lot of raging forest fires lately, and in areas where you never saw them before? This is due to trees drying out in the summertime and becoming vulnerable to every little spark and before you know it the whole forest is in flames.

  I have noticed that people are quick to find some individual to blame...somebody failed to put out their campfire, somebody tossed a bottle out a window in a national forest and it was THEIR fault...but fail to mention that the trees were so dried out that any little thing would have set them off. If we want somebody to blame, blame General Motors for selling gas-burning SUVs that cough up 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year.

Some Areas are More Sensitive to Global Warming

Alaska has a few things that make it special: Polar ice caps...
glaciers...
big, beautiful, wide-open wilderness areas that many animals call home...

...and OIL deposits under the ice in the Arctic Refuge.

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