Global Warming

Global Warming:

“It’s gettin’ hot in here, so take off all your clothes…” The famous words of R&B star, Nelly, are truer than one might think. It really is getting hot in here. The world’s average temperature is rising every year and is expected to be 5 to 10 degrees higher by the end of the century, which is faster than they have increased in the last ten millennia, according to the National Resource Defense Council’s website.

But why is this epidemic happening? As the Defense Council states, global warming is caused by carbon dioxide and other types of heat trapping pollution that are collecting like a blanket in the atmosphere, trapping heat from the earth as it tries to radiate back into space. As a result, the planet is getting warming. In fact, 2002 was the hottest year yet. In an article in World Almanac and Book of Facts, 9 out of the10 hottest years have been in the 90's.

There are a few major causes of theses heat trapping gases. According to a study conducted by Dr. Gerald Meehl, Warren Washington, T.M.L. Wigley, Julie Arblaster, and Aiguo Dai from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder Colorado, the main contributors to global warming are derived from human activities. Since the start of the industrial revolution, atmospheric concentrations of CO2, CH4, and N2O have increased by 30%, 145%, and 15%k respectively. The gases are emitted mainly by cars, power plants, and other industrial sources that burn gasoline, coal, and other fossil fuels.

Obviously, the emissions of these greenhouse gases in excess are leading to the planet’s consistent increase in temperature. For example, in a study conducted by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, it was confirmed that earth’s early century warming was caused by mostly solar and volcanic forcing, and the late century warming, from 1940-2000, was mostly caused by the increase of greenhouse gases. The National Resource Defense Council states, if global warming persists, there will be more air pollution and problems with water supplies as precipitation patterns change, as well as huge threats to ecosystems from the Everglades to the glaciers. Not only will there be hotter, longer heat waves and more intense storm systems, but also forests, farms and cities will face troublesome new pests and more mosquito-borne diseases.

As a result, past predictions show that as long as the population continues to emit these harmful gases into the atmosphere, the planet may heat up at an uncontrollable rate. This trend will even be noticeable the next few decades. It is essential to following generation's comfort that this trend stops now because, according to author Kathryn Schulz, Chicago will start to feel a lot like southern Missouri in this lifetime.

For instance, the Qori Kalis glacier in Peru is shrinking at a rate of 200 meters per year, 40 times faster that in 1978. Ice is disappearing from the Arctic Ocean and Greenland, spring is starting sooner in 200 other countries, and animals are moving to cooler areas (Carey & Shapiro, 2004). Ecologist Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution states, “…Even the most modest warming today is having large effects on ecosystems. The most compelling impact is the 10% decreasing yield of corn in the Midwest per degree of warming,” (Carey and Shapiro, 2004).

Moreover, robins, traditional indications of spring, have been showing up earlier and earlier at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado. The bird’s change in arrival time relates with increasingly warm spring temperatures in the area. In addition, many of the woody plants of Boston’s Arnold Arboretum are blooming earlier every few years. In a study conducted at the Arboretum, from 1980-2002 plants flowered eight days earlier than they did from 1900 to 1920. “What the study is showing is that plants are very responsive to global warming,” says biologist Richard Primack. “And the global warming we are seeing in the Boston area right now gives us a preview or window into what’s going to be happening throughout the rest of the United States over the coming decades or centuries,” (Jensen, 2004).

However, one may ask, “Does it really matter if the robin comes out earlier or a rhododendron blooms earlier?” As indicated by the Cooperative Research Centre for the Tropical Rainforest Ecology in Australia, it most certainly does matter. They conducted a study using bioclimatic envelope modeling (using information based on an organism’s climatic requirements) and mapped out where 65 species could live if the warming increased by 1.4 degrees Celsius. The results were catastrophic. Austrailia would be losing half of their endemic species and the rest would be reduced to very small areas (Jensen, 2004). Obviously, this study showed a window into