So what will happen if global warming is true and continues
to persist; global unrest, extreme temperature changes, other terrible things,
the end of all mankind or just a slight temperature rise that will make the
Earth more balmy? Well for starters we would see a lot if not all of the
factors that I mentioned about in my last post exacerbated: temperature rise,
melting of snow & ice reserves, extreme weather events etc. The predicted
temperature on Earth is predicted to rise 2 to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100
depending on our level of greenhouse gas emissions according to National Research Council. In addition to this
by the same date the global average temperature is expected to double the
previous century’s temperature rise. With this increased temperature comes a
massive increase in the melt of snow and sea ice. The NRC published in it’s
2011 paper Climate Stabilization Targets: Emissions, Concentrations, and
Impacts over Decades to Millennia that every time the Earth warms 2 degrees Fahrenheit
about 15 percent decrease of the existing sea ice and a 25 percent decrease in
the summer Arctic sea ice. Which has given way for reliable models to put 2040 as the earliest possible date for
the Arctic to be ice-free during the summer. The melting of all these
snow and ice reserves will cause the worlds oceans to rise considerably. The USGCRP
2009 report Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States estimates a
2-foot rise in the global sea level by the end of the century. This will displace millions upon millions of
people around the world especially those in developing nations. All of these changes
would lead to mass die offs of plant and animal life across the globe not to
mention making it harder and more uncomfortable for humans to live. Ultimately
if we do not curb global warming in a moderate to large fashion our children
and our children’s, children will be growing up in a much harsher world with a
lot more problems that we could have ever foreseen a couple of decades ago.
Monday, October 27, 2014
Monday, October 20, 2014
The Evidence
In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
which was run by the United Nations, stated in a report “Scientific
evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” So how did the vast
majority of scientists and scientific bodies come to this conclusion? For one temperature
has been rising globally since the late 1800’s, the NOAA, CRU, and NASA have
backed up this assertion when they reconstructed the Earths global surface
temperature. Secondly the major ice reserves all across the globe are
decreasing year to year. The Arctic sea ices area in which it inhabits and its
overall depth has decreased abruptly in the past several decades (L. Polyak, et. a 2009). Furthermore the World
Glacier Monitoring Service has recorded glacial retreat from both coastal and
mountain glaciers all across the globe. Another reason is the sea level is
rising 17 centimeters in the last 100 years of which the rate is steadily
increasing says John Church and Neil White in the 2006 book Geophysical
Research Letters. Lastly scientists cite extreme weather events as evidence for
global warming. NASA has tracked the number of record high temperature events
and number of record low temperature events across the United States and has
seen that the prior has been increasing over the last couple of decades while
the later has been decreasing. They have also documented the number of severe
rainfall events and have shown those to be increasing as well. To sum this all up when they compared all this information
with a graph showing the global Co2 concentrations since the 1800’s they found
a clear relationship showing that as CO2 concentrations increased so did all
these facets (temp, global ice melt, severe weather events, ext.)
Friday, October 10, 2014
Is Global Warming Even A Issue?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)