Global Warming

Global Warming is a very serious issue in today's society, and is a topic that is becoming better known among people around the globe. The Earth's icecaps are melting at an exponentially increasing rate, which in turn is causing the oceans to rise. Our atmosphere is being polluted heavily by greenhouse gases that are harmlessly spread by burning fossil fuels with the use of cars, trucks, trains, boats, etc. The temperatures of the oceans as well as the air we breathe are rising, also at an exponential rate.

Global warming has serious effects on the Earth and the beings that inhabit it. "Because humankind is a narcissistic species, our focus, when considering the implications of global warming, usually is fixed on the land. While the land warms, the other two-thirds of the earth will be warming as well, with profound implications for the species which inhabit it, including a holocaust for coral reefs, which already has begun"(Johansen, 153).

Rising waters of oceans will also greatly affect the human race. "More than 20 percent of the world's population lives within 30 kilometers of coastal areas. That population is increasing twice as quickly as aggregate population (Mathews-Amos and Berntson 1999). According to one estimate, a one-meter rise in sea level could displace 300 million people around the world (Edgerton 1991, 70). Thirty of the world's largest cities lie near coasts, and are vulnerable to a one-meter rise in ocean level (Augenbraun et al. N.d.). Most of Australia's population lives in coastal cities. By 1990, more than 100 million people lived within 50 miles of coastlines in the United States" (Johansen, 154). Due to the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, ice is melting around the globe causing ocean level rise as well as temperature rise.

Greenhouse gases produced from automobiles and all other sources of fossil fuel consumption are the sole creator and starter of global warming. "In the 1970's concerned environmentalists like Stephen Schneider of the National Center of Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado feared a return to another ice age due to man made atmospheric pollution blocking out the sun. Since about 1940, the global climate did in fact appear to be cooling. Then a funny thing happened--sometime in the late 1970's temperature declines slowed to a halt and ground-based recording stations during the 1980's and 1990's began reading small but steady increase in near-surface temperatures. Fears of global cooling then changed suddenly to global warming" (A Chilling Perspective).

This was not just one or two insane scientists that were thinking this; most did when the conditions of the earth's atmosphere were first observed. Another scientist, John Tyndall measured the absorption efficiencies of various gases in earth's atmosphere, which is a measure of their effectiveness as greenhouse gases. He thought a decrease in CO2 could lead to another ice age.

Unfortunately for all living the creature son earth, the climate is rapidly changing for the worse, much worse. Bizarre weather has been witnessed in the last decade, unlike any other seen before. "Many greenhouse climate models call for "junk" rainfall. Omaha's 10.5 inches one night during August, followed by .01 inches between September 4th and November 23rd, seemed to be something of a rehearsal for this pattern. The dry winter of 1999-2000 also seemed to be something of a rehearsal for another pattern forecast for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): monthly average temperatures were 5-10 degrees F above average for the entire period, or roughly what some of the IPCC's climate models called for in the area a century from now" (Johansen, 232). With this in mind, although it may be hard to do so, we must consider the fact that winters, springs, summers, and autumns will eventually become entirely different from the way we know them now.

The earth is being polluted by the combustion