Katherine

I am a simple girl who has always just worried about her little world and what was in it. Growing up listening to what would make me happy, feel better and be able to sleep better at night. I understand that it's human nature to not worry about things until they interupt the bubble that surrounds each and every one of you. I also understand that politicians sometimes tend to exaggerate the truths and lies that they tell. We as a public to states, nations, continents all follow some sort of democracy but, when the government begins to make decisions involving the world that we live in and that our children live in...I begin to have a problem. Global warming does exist and it will not go away WITHOUT us changing things. If we turn our backs to this problem there will be no future for our children. We are beginning to lose precious things that we have always taken for granted. Even you may not understand or even believe in what I am trying to say, please at least read some of what is here; visit the sites I have here; watch AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. If you are given the difference between fact and fiction and are not clouded by prejudice of politics or any other thing that may hinder your judgement...your eyes will be opened to a truth that may not be pretty but necessary. The good news is that you can make a difference, each and every one of you, and by doing this you can change the outcome that is so brutal._____________________________________________________ ______THE BASICSThe greenhouse effect The atmosphere has a natural supply of "greenhouse gases." They capture heat and keep the surface of the Earth warm enough for us to live on. Without the greenhouse effect, the planet would be an uninhabitable, frozen wasteland.Before the Industrial Revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere was in a rough balance with what could be stored on Earth. Through photosynthesis, for example, plants take in carbon dioxide while the process of respiration or metabolism releases CO2 back into the atmosphere.New conveniences too much of a good thing Industry took off in the mid-1700s, and people started emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases. The fossil fuels we burn to run our cars, trucks, factories, planes and power plants add to the natural supply of greenhouse gases. The gases—which can stay in the atmosphere for at least fifty years—are building up beyond the Earth's capacity to remove the gases and, in effect, creating an extra-thick heat blanket around the Earth.The result is that the globe has heated up by about one degree Fahrenheit over the past century—and it has heated up more intensely over the past two decades.If one degree doesn't sound like a lot, consider this: the difference in global average temperatures between modern times and the last ice age—when much of Canada and the northern U.S. were covered with thick ice sheets—was only about 9 degrees Fahrenheit. So in fact one degree is very significant—especially since the unnatural warming will continue as long as we keep putting extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.How much is too much? Already, people have increased the amount of CO2, a key greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere to 31 percent above pre-industrial levels. There is more CO2 in the atmosphere now than at any time in the last 650,000 years. Studies of the Earth’s climate history show that even small changes in CO2 levels generally have come with significant shifts in the global average temperature.Scientists expect that by 2100, the global average temperature will increase another 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit, more than they predicted just seven years ago. A couple degrees may not sound like much, but it took only a nine-degree shift to end the last Ice Age 14,000 years ago.Even if the temperature change is at the small end of the predictions, the changes to the climate are expected to be serious: more intense storms, more pronounced droughts, coastal areas more severely eroded by rising seas. At the high end of the predictions, the world could face abrupt, catastrophic and irreversible consequences. Find out more about what a warmer world could look like.The science is clear Scientists are no longer debating the basic facts of climate change. In December 2004, Science magazine published an analysis of 928 peer-reviewed science papers on climate change from science journals between 1993 and 2003. The analysis found that not a single scientific article disputed the evidence that the climate is warming because of human activities.Unfortunately, a similar analysis of media reports had very different findings: about half still framed the issue as a science debate.The Science study showed the consensus among respected individual scientists. Here’s what highly respected science organizations say:In a joint statement with 10 other National Academies of Science, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences said: "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions."—Joint Statement of Science Academies: Global Response to Climate Change, 2005The American Geophysical Union, a respected organization comprising over 41,000 Earth and space scientists, wrote in its position on climate change that "natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century." ________________________________________________________FACT S VS. FICTIONMYTH: The science of global warming is too uncertain to act on.FACT: There is no debate among scientists about the basic facts of global warming.The most respected scientific organizations have stated unequivocally that global warming is happening, and people are causing it by burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which in 2005 the White House called "the gold standard of objective scientific assessment," issued a joint statement with 10 other National Academies of Science saying "the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions." (Joint Statement of Science Academies: Global Response to Climate Change [PDF], 2005)The only debate in the science community about global warming is about how much and how fast warming will continue as a result of heat-trapping emissions. In the case of global warming, scientists have given a clear warning, and we have more than enough facts to act on.MYTH: Global warming is just part of one of the earth's natural cycles.FACT: The global warming we are experiencing is not natural.People are causing it by burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests. Scientists have shown that these activities are pumping far more carbon dioxide (C02) into the atmosphere than was ever released in hundreds of thousands of years. This buildup of CO2 is the biggest cause of global warming. (IPCC 2001) Since 1895, scientists have known that CO2 and other greenhouse gases trap heat and warm the earth. As the warming has intensified over the past three decades, scientific scrutiny has increased along with it. Scientists have considered and ruled out other natural explanations such as sunlight, volcanic eruptions and cosmic rays. (IPCC 2001)Though natural amounts of CO2 vary from 180 to 300 parts per million (ppm), today's CO2 levels are around 380 ppm. That's 25% more than the highest natural levels, looking back 650,000 years. Increased CO2 levels have corresponded with higher average temperatures throughout that long record. (Boden, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center)MYTH: As the ozone hole shrinks, global warming will no longer be a problem.FACT: Global warming and the ozone hole are different problems.The ozone hole is a thinning of the stratosphere's ozone layer, which is roughly 9 to 31 miles above the earth's surface. The depletion of the ozone is due to man-made chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). A thinner ozone layer lets more harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation to reach the earth's surface.Global warming, on the other hand, is the increase in the earth's average temperature due to the buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human activities.MYTH: We can adapt to climate change—civilization has survived droughts and ice ages before.FACT: Individual civilizations have collapsed from dramatic climatic shifts.Although humans as a whole have survived the vagaries of drought, ice ages and more, not every society has. What's more, unless we limit the amount of heat-trapping gases we are putting into the atmosphere, we will face a warming trend unseen since human civilization began 10,000 years ago. (IPCC 2001)The consequences of continued warming at current rates are likely to be dire. Many densely populated areas, such as low-lying coastal regions, are highly vulnerable to climate shifts. A middle-of-the-range projection is that the homes of 13 to 88 million people around the world would be flooded by the sea each year in the 2080s. Poorer countries and small island nations will have the hardest time adapting. (McLean et al. 2001) In what appears to be the first forced move resulting from climate change, 100 residents of Tegua island in the Pacific Ocean were evacuated by the government because rising sea levels were flooding their island. Some 2,000 other islanders plan a similar move to escape rising waters.Scarcity of water and food could lead to major conflicts with broad ripple effects throughout the globe. Even if people find a way to adapt, the wildlife and plants on which we depend may be unable to adapt to rapid climate change. While the world itself will not end, the world as we know it may disappear.__________________________________________________ _______THE ARTIC AND IT'S ENEMYThe Arctic is warming up faster than any other region. Because it plays a vital role in cooling the rest of the globe, the effects of this warming will be felt worldwide, not just on remote tundra.Nineteenth-century explorer Fridtjof Nansen called the Arctic "nature's great ice temple," a place teeming with roaming polar bears and a forbidding landscape frozen since "the earliest dawn of time."But today, one cannot venture far enough north to escape global warming. The region has heated up nearly twice as fast as the rest of the globe over the past 50 years, according to a 2004 study assessing climate change in the Arctic. Land-based ice such as glaciers, ice sheets and permafrost and floating ice are vanishing, and the ongoing thaw has profound ramifications for the rest of the world.Arctic powers the "heat pump" The Arctic is critical to the globe's climate and influence temperatures everywhere.It sounds counter-intuitive, but the Arctic plays a primary role in distributing heat around the world through what is known as the "heat pump." The ocean's currents circulate heat throughout the world, through a system known as the "great conveyor belt." Two main forces keep the conveyor moving: winds and ocean density differences. The Arctic is key to the density differences.The conveyor belt's critical points are where surface waters plunge into deep waters. This happens only in a few places, two of which are in the North Atlantic. As the ocean surface waters cool in the far north, they become denser and sink toward the bottom of the ocean. There, the cold water flows toward the equator. This combination of sinking and flow help drive the ocean conveyor.Because the cold waters that flow south must be replaced, warm surface currents flow farther north and deliver warmth to places far north. Without the ocean conveyor's heat pump, Europe's temperate climate would be much colder.Global warming is changing that key spot in the North Atlantic where the surface waters plunge. A mix of increased precipitation, river run-off and melting ice—all related to climate change—is making surface waters in the north less salty and dense, weakening a major pump in the ocean's natural circulation. (More about the oceans and global warming.)Arctic melt is speeding up warming The loss of Arctic ice is also speeding up the Earth's warming because of its reflective properties. Ice acts like a mirror, bouncing sunlight back toward space and preventing the sunlight from heating the surface. Winds carry the cooler air down from Canada into the U.S., cooling our climate.Open water and bare soil are not as bright as ice and snow, so they absorb heat instead of reflecting it. When ice melts, the darker surfaces are exposed and absorb more solar energy. This extra heat melts even more ice, which in turn exposes even more dark surfaces. This is what scientists call a positive feedback loop. Once the loop gets going, it tends to keep going—and to speed up. Less ice means less cooling much faster. Or, as the American Meteorological Society's senior scientist Susan Joy Hassol put it to U.S. senators in a committee hearing in 2004: "What we're looking at is having a less efficient air conditioner."Loss of Arctic ice is not just speculation—it's already happening. 2003 brought a dramatic example of Arctic ice disappearing. The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the largest in the Arctic, broke in two, draining a unique freshwater lake that was home to a rare microbial ecosystem. Since the 1970s, 400,000 square miles of Arctic sea ice has disappeared. That's the size of Texas and California combined. (IPCC Third Assessment report) Even worse, the years 2002 through 2005 have all seen record or near-record low ice cover.What this means for the rest of us While the Arctic melt has profound effects on the region's people and ecosystems, it also spells trouble for the rest of the world. For instance, the changes to the ocean's circulation system mean that though some places will get much warmer, other places, such as Europe, which won't get the warmth from the Gulf Stream, will get much cooler.One of the Arctic thaw's most profound effects on the world beyond the Arctic is sea-level rise. When glaciers melt and spill into the ocean, they raise sea levels around the globe. The booming cities and counties along the East and West coasts house half of the U.S. population and are among the communities that will be most threatened by melting ice.Currently, the retreat of the world's glaciers is adding enormous amounts of fresh water to the ocean. Between 1961 and 1997, for instance, about 890 cubic miles of ice has been lost. That means that melting glacier ice has added approximately 980 trillion (or 979,994,261,211,428.5) gallons of water to the oceans. That would be like dumping more than a million Olympic-sized swimming pools into our oceans.Some studies have even suggested the possibility that warming over the next several centuries would lead to the complete, irreversible disappearance of the Greenland ice sheet. Were that to occur, sea levels would rise an extra 23 feet. (More about the dangers of rising sea levels.)"If we ignore the Arctic's warning—and it is warming—the polar bears and native Alaskans won't be the only ones who suffer," notes Environmental Defense scientist Dr. Bill Chameides. "Our children and grandchildren could pay a hefty price."I edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4