Effects of Global Warming

Global Warming effects
Green house gases stay can stay in the atmosphere for an amount of years ranging from decades to hundreds and thousands of years. No matter what we do, global warming is going to have some effect on Earth. Here are the 5 deadliest effects of global warming.
5. Spread of diseaseAs northern countries warm, disease carrying insects migrate north, bringing plague and disease with them. Indeed some scientists believe that in some countries thanks to global warming, malaria has not been fully eradicated.
4. Warmer waters and more hurricanesAs the temperature of oceans rises, so will the probability of more frequent and stronger hurricanes. We saw in this in 2004 and 2005.
3. Increased probability and intensity of droughts and heat wavesAlthough some areas of Earth will become wetter due to global warming, other areas will suffer serious droughts and heat waves. Africa will receive the worst of it, with more severe droughts also expected in Europe. Water is already a dangerously rare commodity in Africa, and according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global warming will exacerbate the conditions and could lead to conflicts and war.
2. Economic consequencesMost of the effects of anthropogenic global warming won’t be good. And these effects spell one thing for the countries of the world: economic consequences. Hurricanes cause do billions of dollars in damage, diseases cost money to treat and control and conflicts exacerbate all of these.
1. Polar ice caps meltingThe ice caps melting is a four-pronged danger.
First, it will raise sea levels. There are 5,773,000 cubic miles of water in ice caps, glaciers, and permanent snow. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, if all glaciers melted today the seas would rise about 230 feet. Luckily, that’s not going to happen all in one go! But sea levels will rise.
Second, melting ice caps will throw the global ecosystem out of balance. The ice caps are fresh water, and when they melt they will desalinate the ocean, or in plain English - make it less salty. The desalinization of the gulf current will “screw up” ocean currents, which regulate temperatures. The stream shutdown or irregularity would cool the area around north-east America and Western Europe. Luckily, that will slow some of the other effects of global warming in that area!
Third, temperature rises and changing landscapes in the artic circle will endanger several species of animals. Only the most adaptable will survive.
Fourth, global warming could snowball with the ice caps gone. Ice caps are white, and reflect sunlight, much of which is relected back into space, further cooling Earth. If the ice caps melt, the only reflector is the ocean. Darker colors absorb sunlight, further warming the Earth.
So what is the solution? Are we just being negative? Are there any positive effects of global warming? What about all the stupid global warming solutions. We welcome your thoughts.

Global Warming May Stop

Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said.
Have your say: Do you believe in global warming?
Arctic ice melting 'faster than predicted'
Weather Channel boss calls global warming 'the greatest scam in history'
Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Melting icebergs: The study predicts the IPCC's 0.3ºC temperature rise for the next decade may not happen
The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged.
This would mean that the 0.3°C global average temperature rise which has been predicted for the next decade by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may not happen, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Nature.
However, the effect of rising fossil fuel emissions will mean that warming will accelerate again after 2015 when natural trends in the oceans veer back towards warming, according to the computer model.
Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Kiel, Germany, said: "The IPCC would predict a 0.3°C warming over the next decade. Our prediction is that there will be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that."

He stressed that the results were just the initial findings from a new computer model of how the oceans behave over decades and it would be wholly misleading to infer that global warming, in the sense of the enhanced greenhouse effect from increased carbon emissions, had gone away.
The IPCC currently does not include in its models actual records of such events as the strength of the Gulf Stream and the El Nino cyclical warming event in the Pacific, which are known to have been behind the warmest year ever recorded in 1998.
Today's paper in Nature tries to simulate the variability of these events and longer cycles, such as the giant ocean "conveyor belt" known as the meridional overturning circulation (MOC), which brings warm water north into the North East Atlantic.
This has a 70 to 80-year cycle and when the circulation is strong, it creates warmer temperatures in Europe. When it is weak, as it will be over the next decade, temperatures fall. Scientists think that variations of this kind could partly explain the cooling of global average temperatures between the 1940s and 1970s after which temperatures rose again

Global Warming Predictions

Climate models attempt to predict the future. They work like this. Climatologists must first consider umpteen climate variables which play a part in affecting long-term weather patterns (eg variations in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the cloud cover, humidity, how heat energy from the ocean interacts with the atmosphere). These parameters are then fed into a computer model of the atmosphere, built from standard physics principles.
When all the parameters have been entered, the model begins number-crunching, letting every variable interact and 'stew'. The model typically calculates the outcome for a 30-minute interval. But obviously, predicting the climate 30 minutes from now is pretty pointless, so the computer crunches for 30-minute intervals over a longer simulated period of time, typically 30 years. It advances the new data from the last 30-minute run into the next 30-minute run, and so on. Hence the need for powerful computers – a 30-year time period means over half a million 30-minute solutions for every location on the planet! At the end of the simulation, climatologists can analyse what effect occurred over specific areas, known as grids.

Stop Global Warming

Take Action against Global Warming
There are many simple changes you can make in your daily life—what you eat, what you drive, what you do around your home—that can have a positive effect on carbon dioxide emission levels.

Use Compact Fluorescent Bulbs
Replace three frequently used light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. Save 300 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $60 per year.

Inflate Your Tires
Keep the tires on your car adequately inflated. Check them monthly. Save 250 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $840 per year.

Change Your Air Filter
Check your car's air filter monthly. Save 800 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $130 per year.

Fill the Dishwasher
Run your dishwasher only with a full load. Save 100 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $40 per year.

Use Recycled Paper
Make sure your printer paper is 100% post consumer recycled paper. Save 5 lbs. of carbon dioxide per ream of paper.

Adjust Your Thermostat
Move your heater thermostat down two degrees in winter and up two degrees in the summer. Save 2000 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $98 per year.

Buy Minimally Packaged Goods
Less packaging could reduce your garbage by about 10%. Save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide and $1,000 per year.

Buy a Fuel Efficient Car
Getting a few extra miles per gallon makes a big difference. Save thousands of lbs. of carbon dioxide and a lot of money per year.

Plant a Tree
Trees suck up carbon dioxide and make clean air for us to breathe. Save 2,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide per year.

Take Shorter Showers
Showers account for 2/3 of all water heating costs. Save 350 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $99 per year.

Bush Global Warming Miracle

President George W. Bush announced Wednesday what the White House calls "realistic long-term and intermediate goals" for stopping the growth of greenhouse gas emissions -- which scientists say are responsible for warming the planet.

President Bush delivered a speech Wednesday in the Rose Garden targeting a goal of reducing the growth of greenhouse gas emissions in the utility sector by 2025.(AP)
"I am announcing a new national goal: to stop the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2025," Bush said during a speech at the White House Rose Garden Wednesday.
Bush did not, however, propose specific legislation requiring reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Instead he offered a broad goal of reducing the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 without specifying how the goal should be reduced.
Environmental groups argue the president's speech is political posturing designed to erode support for more strident legislation that will be debated in Congress this June.
"He obviously is way too late with way too little in terms of emission reductions that are needed to address the crisis at this point," said Dan Lashof, science director of the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group.
"The president is throwing a Hail Mary to polluters in a last-ditch effort to stave off any meaningful action on global warming. Under the president's plan we'll need a real miracle to save us from global warming," said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club.
Environmental groups argue Bush's goal of halting the growth of emissions is insufficient, and point to scientists who have argued there needs to be a cut of total emissions by 80 percent by 2050 in order to prevent the most catastrophic effects of global warming.
"Europe has agreed to reduce its emissions 20 percent and pledged to 30 percent by 2020 if the U.S makes a comparable commitment," said John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA.
Despite Bush's assertion today citing a reduction in intensity of emissions, greenhouse gas emissions — including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide — have risen over 15 percent since 1990, according to the Energy Information Administration's latest report, released in November.
Scientists and environmentalists argue the current, rising carbon dioxide emissions must decrease within the next four decades by about 70 or 80 percent in order to have a chance of getting the rising global temperature to level off around 2050. At that point, it will be about two degrees hotter than it is today.

Global Warming Melting Earth

If all ice on the earth melted, the level of the oceans would rise by 64 meters. Many coastal cities would be under water, and so would the Netherlands, a significant part of which lies below sea level. However, the Dutch and the rest of the planet may rest assured: this hypothetical catastrophe could not take place anytime within the next thousand years.
Our institute has prepared an atlas of the world's snow and ice resources, which describes all the ice on the earth and even offers a map of the world without ice. It is, however, a model, not a forecast. Yet there are forecasts warning that if the global warming seen at the end of the 20th century continues for several decades, a lot of ice in the Artic Ocean will melt.
There is, however, a subtle but important qualification: if Artic ice should melt, the sea level will not change because the volume of water created by melting ice is equal to the volume of water that ice displaces when floating. The danger is different: warming could lead to the melting of huge island and continental glaciers.
The biggest of them cover the Antarctic, where 90% of the world's ice is accumulated, and Greenland. The melting of this ice could lead to a catastrophe. But is there any reason to panic? The temperature rise of 3-6 degrees Celsius over the next century promised by pessimists could not have a significant influence on the Antarctic, where the average temperature is less than 40 degrees below zero.
The processes ongoing in the permafrost are even more complicated than those in the ice. All the winters of the last decade were more or less abnormal. Because of that, the permafrost in areas just beyond the Artic began receding and melting.
The period of warming was tangible, but now it may be drawing to a close. Most natural processes on the earth are cyclical, having a shorter or longer rhythm. Yet no matter how these sinusoids look, a temperature rise is inevitably followed by a decline, and vice versa.
Studies of the ice core retrieved by Russia's Vostok Antarctic station show that this is what has been happening on earth for at least the last 400,000 years. Today, scientists say that the melting of the permafrost has stalled, which has been proved by data obtained by meteorological stations along Russia's Artic coast.
We are now studying the influence of the atmosphere and snow cover on permafrost in space and time. In the permafrost zones, a layer melts in the summer, when the temperature rises above zero. However, in the winter this layer freezes again.
This is a normal process: what melts, freezes. Yet if a winter is abnormally warm, this seasonal melted layer may not freeze back. Then the so-called "talik," a layer with a temperature of around zero, is formed. This is a very unpleasant thing for buildings and pipelines.
It seems that the permafrost should be melting if the temperature is rising. However, many areas are witnessing the opposite. The average annual temperature is getting higher, but the permafrost remains and has even started to spread. Why? An important factor is the snow cover. Global warming reduces it, therefore making the heat insulator for the permafrost thinner. Then even weak frosts are enough to freeze the ground deeper below the surface.
In many places, the frozen ground is 500-800 meters deep. Even if the highest warming forecast comes true and the temperature rises by 3-6 degrees, no more than 20 meters of frozen ground will melt. Some people are afraid that the melting permafrost will pollute the air with methane. However, frozen water takes up only 15% of the 20-meter layer, and the amount of gases dissolved there is insignificant. So we are unlikely to receive such unpleasant surprises from the permafrost within the next hundred years.
Today, scientists fear not so much global warming as changes in atmospheric circulation. In recent years, the so-called western shift has dominated, which means that air masses have been moving from the west eastwards. There has been little mention of the so-called meridian masses, moving from the south to the north and back. Now, however, the meridian shift has become more frequent.
If it goes south, it causes a spell of cold weather; if it goes north, it brings warm air masses with a lot of precipitation in the winter. This results in thaws and snow drifts on plains and in heavy snowfalls, avalanches and mudflows in the mountains. Meridian processes have been gaining in frequency lately, which promises different weather anomalies: unusually high and low temperatures, heavy rains and snowfalls and longer droughts, which in turn may lead to natural calamities.

Global warming & Climate change

The issue at a glance...
Part 1: Climate
Burning coal, oil and natural gas releases carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere. On average, this may warm the earth and change the climate in other ways. For example, it might change the severity and duration of storms or droughts.
Other human activities, such as cutting down forests, and growing rice, and raising cattle, may have the same effect, but are less important.
Part 2: Impacts
If the climate changes heating, cooling, water use, and sea level will be affected. In wealthy countries, the average cost would probably be small, although some people and regions might have high costs and others might receive large benefits. In some poor countries, the cost could be very high.
A large or fast change in climate will have a big effect on plants and animals in the natural environment.
Very rapid climate change is unlikely, but could be disastrous, even for wealthy countries.
Part 3: Policy
We could reduce the rate at which we add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by burning less coal, oil and natural gas.
If climate changes, we could adapt by changing agriculture and other human activities. Many plants and animals in the natural environment might be unable to adapt.
If warming is large and costly, some people might want to make changes to the atmosphere or oceans in order to cool the earth. This is very controversial.