 | Each one of us is a cause of global warming, but each one of us can make choices to change;that with the things we buy, the electricity we use, the cars we drive; we can make choices to bring our individual carbon emissions to zero. The solutions are in our hands, we just have to have the determination to make it happen. We have everything that we need to reduce carbon emissions, everything but political will. But in America, the will to act is a renewable resource." -Al Gore |
http://www.pandora.tv/category.ptv/video/category/c1/03/c2/0043/ch_userid/tbaragi/prgid/9163775
-> You can see the whole 'An Inconvenient Truth' movie on this site.
What is global warming?
Almost all of us have experienced getting into our cars on a warm summer day and realizing that the car’s interior is much warmer than the outside. This is the greenhouse effect in action. Visible light from the Sun goes through your car windows and is absorbed in the interior causing an increase in temperature. The seats then radiate energy, but in the form of infrared rather than visible light. Even though we can’t see infrared light without specialized equipment, it can be felt in the form of heat. There is an infrared camera in the lobby of Fiske Planetarium that visitors can use for free. Visible light escapes through the windows while the infrared light remains trapped, resulting in an increase in temperature. Earth’s atmosphere behaves just like our car windows. Some of the gasses in our atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and even water (H2O) have the ability to trap and/or block the transmission of infrared light. Without the greenhouse effect, infrared light leaving the Earth’s surface would escape into space, leaving the Earth much cooler than it is, particularly at night. The gasses in our atmosphere prevent that from happening and trap the heat. Earth’s average temperature is roughly 15 degrees C (59 F), whereas its temperature without the greenhouse effect might be -16 degrees C (3 F). The greenhouse effect is not, in itself, a problem; rather, it is having concentrations of greenhouse gasses that are too high that is of great concern. An example of what happens when such concentrations are too high can be seen by looking at our planetary neighbor, Venus: the Venusian atmosphere is more than 96% carbon dioxide (compared to 0.038% on Earth), and the temperature can reach 460 degrees centigrade, which is hotter than your oven can get. On the other hand the planet Mars, which has a very thin atmosphere is quite cold at -63 degrees C (-81 F). Venus, Earth and Mars are often referred to as the “Goldilocks” planets. Venus is the porridge that is too hot, Mars is porridge that is too cold and Earth is just right.
Finally, the term “Global Warming” is often used when referring to the anthropogenic (human caused) climate change. Since the end of the industrial revolution in the late 1800’s, the temperature of the Earth has rapidly increased, and this trend has been seen in temperatures recorded in many locations around the globe.
But an average warming of the climate is not the only result of climate change. Climate models also predict more extreme weather episodes such as hurricanes and heavy precipitation, including snow in some places, and the climate history of Earth shows many periods of rapid climate change were accompanied by episodes of extreme weather. Towards the end of 2010 and into the beginning of 2011 we have seen a lot of extreme weather across the world, from massive winter storms brining snow to Atlanta, Georgia, to unprecedented flooding in Australia, to a devastating heat wave in Russia. For us in Colorado we are still seeing a wetter than normal winter season in the mountains, and as of the start of the New Year, the average snow pack across the state was 140% of normal. This is only one year, so it should be described as weather, but it is the trend that “Global Warming” is predicted to cause. If you hear the media or politicians claim that a recent stint of cold weather events is proof that that global warming is a myth or made up they are simply wrong.
  The Keeling Curve The keeling curve, measuring the amount of carbon dioxide from Mauna Loa observatory. We can see how rapidly the concentration of carbon dioxide has increased for 50 years. A 2004 survey, by Naomi Oreskes of 928 peer-reviewed scientific articles on global climate change published between 1993 and 2003. The survey, published as an editorial in the journal Science, found that every article either supported the human-caused global warming consensus or did not comment on it. Gore also presented a 2004 study by Max and Jules Boykoff showing 53% of articles that appeared in major US newspapers over a fourteen year period gave roughly equal attention to scientists who expressed views that global warming was caused by humans as they did to global warming skeptics, creating a false balance.  Annual carbon emissions by region. As you can see the total amount of carbon emissions increased dramatically no matter which country that emitted carbon. In Western Europe and Communist East Asia the total carbon emission have decreasing trend recently. However in USA and Canada which emit the biggest amount among all countries still have a sharp increasing trend. | Some people say the increase of carbon dioxide amount is periodical so it is nothing to do with human activity. However if we see the graph and compare the temperature and carbon dioxide concentration, this sharp curve has never appeared in history. Carbon dioxide concentration has increased after the industry revolution that means human played an important role on increasing carbon dioxide concentration. As you can see in this graph temperature and the concentration of carbon dioxide has a very close relationship. According to IPCC reports, the mean temperature of the earth has increased 0.74 degree(celcius) through last hundred years. Moreover 11 out of 12 of the warmest winter weather after 1850 occered during recent 12 years. It is obvious that the temperature is increasing over the globe. If temperature rises 1.5~2.5 degree, 30% of earth living organism will extinct, if more than 3 degree rises 30% seashore over the world will be drown. As it gets warmer temperature of atmosphere and ocean go higher so that will cause more serious hurricanes, droughts, flood and so on. It will definitely affect the climate system, oceanic circulation and ecosystem. For example, more than 2,000 islands out of 12,500 islands have disappeared from 1861 until 2000. A study by researchers at the Physics Institute at the University of Bern and the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica presenting data from Antarctic ice cores showing carbon dioxide concentrations higher than at any time during the past 650,000 years.
The retreat of numerous glaciers is shown in before-and-after photographs. These three examples show obvious different amount of glacier or snow between 1941 & 2004, 1977 & 2006, and 1932 & 1988 on each locations like Boulder Glacier in Glacier National Park. Decreasing trend of glacier and snow have a massive impact on oceanic circulation, surface temperature, sea level rise, destruction of ecological system, abnormal climate changes and all other environmental crisis.
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Many kinds of data clearly shows climate change in the form of a trend toward warmer temperatures. Scientists agree that the Earth’s climate is warming. The real question facing us is how much of this warming is “anthropogenic” (caused by the actions of mankind). For instance, is all of the warming caused by humans, or is most of it natural, with our actions accounting for a small fraction? If our impact on global climate is large enough, the planet’s natural regulatory mechanisms may become overwhelmed and lead to further, even more dramatic increases in both temperature and extreme weather events in the future.
The two main sources of anthropogenic global warming on Earth appear to be the release of greenhouse gasses as a result of the burning of fossil fuels, and global deforestation. While the burning of fossil fuels is the most obvious culprit in global warming, the role of trees and vegetation in providing a natural defense against concentrations of greenhouse gasses is often overlooked.
Forests pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere during photosynthesis, and emit breathable oxygen as a byproduct. Widespread deforestation due to human activity is seriously crippling one of our planet’s climate regulation mechanisms: according to an EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) study from 2005, a one-acre forest can sequester two metric tons of CO2 in one year. Two metric tons of CO2 is the same amount of CO2 released when using 227 gallons of gasoline. A Department of Transportation study states that each driver in the US uses about 730 gallons of gas per year. When we put it all together this means it takes roughly three acres of forest to offset your yearly carbon emission from driving you car.
Humanity already possesses the fundamental scientific, technical, and industrial know-how to solve the carbon and climate problems.
Do we need to stop burning fossil fuels entirely? Some might say yes, but most agree that this is unlikely to happen as long as such fuels remain available. What actions can we take? As consumers, we have a great deal of power to effect change than we might suppose, and our actions don’t rely on government action to impact the global climate. Even small steps toward making clean energy cost-effective and improving efficiency in our appliances, homes and vehicles can have a real-world impact. Agricultural changes that enable more efficient use of land can help to reduce deforestation, as can minimizing the use of plant products that are not derived from renewable sources. There is no single, magical solution to global warming and climate change, but the vast majority of the evidence tells us that we can no longer wait to take action.
references
An Inconvenient Truth(2006), director: Davis Guggenheim, Stars: Al Gore and Billy West
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060524-global-warming.html
http://www.ipcc.ch/
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/
Global warming and global cooling: Evolution of climate on Earth, Oleg G. Sorokhtin, George V. Chilingar, Leonid F. Khilyuk, Pages xi-xvi,1-313
An end to global warming, Laurence O. Williams
