Today Global Warming is affecting our world in a big way, and people are starting to recognize it more and more. This issue is affecting how long we all live on earth, and people continue to wonder if we can stop it or not. We can stop global warming from killing life on Earth, there are some things that would be an easy change in our lifestyle and some things that might be more difficult. However it is certainly possible to stop this phenomenon, the only question is if everyone will participate and make it happen.
“Carbon dioxide and other gases warm the surface of the planet naturally by trapping solar heat in the atmosphere. This is a good thing because it keeps our planet habitable. However, by burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil and clearing forests we have dramatically increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere and temperatures are rising. We’re already seeing changes. Glaciers are melting, plants and animals are being forced from their habitat, and the number of severe storms and droughts is increasing.”(An Inconvenient Truth:What is Global Warming?)The years 2005 and 1998 were the warmest years on record. “Global average surface temperatures pushed 2005 into a virtual tie with 1998 as the hottest year on record.[1] For people living in the Northern Hemisphere—most of the world's population—2005 was the hottest year on record since 1880, the earliest year for which reliable instrumental records were available worldwide(Union Of Concerned Scientists: Global Warming 2006).”
* Here is a chart showing the Earths temperature trends from 1880 till 2000, as you can see our temperature is on a nonstop rise.-(NASA Data Sets and Images 2005)
These record temperature highs are causing such a raise in the earth’s warmth that there has been severe melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet(below).
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(The red area shown is the ice melted in 2005 and the pink area shows the ice that had melted off during 1992.)
The melting of Greenland’s ice shows one just how severe and serious this problem is. If not stopped everyone will eventually be affected by it and life on Earth will end. Even though the severity of this problem is extreme there are certainly many ways in which it could be solved and some are already beginning to do so. Global Warming wasn’t much of an issue until industrial civilization boomed in our world, that’s when technology rose and used more and more energy and companies produced more and more carbon dioxide emissions and ruined our forests. Nonetheless there are many way to now stop the boom in this very serious and scary phenomenon.
Recently mass transit numbers have been on a constant rise, during an average New York City weekday around 7,126,950 people use New York City Transit, as a whole around 7,785,175 use MTA mass transit during an average weekday. Using mass transportation means less people driving their own cars, and in the long run meaning that there are fewer green house gas emissions every day. If people continue to use modes of mass transit everyday and more people begin to then we can save ourselves a lot of damage. Car pooling is also becoming more and more popular, it saves gas and using less cars you would emit less green house gases. “In Europe, car-sharing is estimated to reduce the average user’s carbon dioxide emissions by 40%-50%. In addition, many car-sharing organizations include low-emission vehicles, such as gasoline-electric hybrid cars, in their fleets, which also reduces user’s impacts on air quality and climate change.-(Vital Signs 2006-2007:World Watch Institute-Car Sharing Continues to Gain Momentum By: Susan A. Shaheem) According to a graph in the same book Vital Signs there is a growth in car sharing world wide, and it is increasing at a steady rate. New companies such as Flexcar and ZipCar let you rent a car for a certain amount of time without buying one, when done with the car you take it back to where you started the trip so someone else can come and use the same car for their own trip, they also cover gas maintenance and insurance, you only pay a certain amount per month. Companies like these promote car-sharing so that people save carbon dioxide and people save more of their money than purchasing their own car.
Car-sharing and using more mass transportation are very simple things that everyone can do to help save ourselves. There are also several more simple things people can do, if people learned to conserve energy more by doing little things like turning off the lights when not using them, using compact fluorescent light bulbs, air drying your clothes instead of using a dryer, unplugging electronics when you aren’t using them, buy more recycled paper products or using the computer and television less and going outside. Hybrid cars are also something that could make a big difference, it is expected by The Freedonia Group Inc. that the hybrid-electric vehicle demand will be at 8 Million by the year 2020. “Hybrid sales were up almost 14 percent from November 2005 in a car market that showed only 3 percent growth over the same period.”-(Hybridcars.com)
Those are some of the very easy things everyone can do, something a little more difficult would be for businesses to lower their budgets so that less of the forest is destroyed not only does it disrupt and kill different species that live there but chopping down trees affects global warming in more than one way. “A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. Shade provided by trees can also reduce your air conditioning bill by 10 to 15%.”-(An Inconvenient Truth) In the process of cutting down trees and destroying nature, the pollution and carbon dioxide emissions from the trucks and machinery is affecting global warming. And as the carbon dioxide there are no longer and trees there to absorb it. This solution to the problem of Global Warming is a little more difficult than the previous ones, however they are ways to accomplish what we need to do in order to survive.
It is very possible that we can do these things and save life on earth before it’s too late. Many scientists and authors don’t think this is plausible. The world will become unsustainable if we don’t act, the way we are headed with a current population of 6.6 billion people, the only thing that will happen is an increase in energy and oil consumed. However if the world does act then we can save ourselves and the Earth from an abrupt ending, The world oil consumption dropped slightly in the 1970s and then again a little more in the 1980s since then it has only increased. However if we have been able to bring the consumption down before, even if unintentional, why can't we do it now? If we wanted to do it for a reason and with a very serious cause it is very possible that we can defeat global warming as a world. With all the technology we have such as hybrid/electric cars, solar and wind power it is very possible to do this. The continuations and starts of everyone doing little things in their homes and outside their homes will start to make a huge difference in the warming of our earth.
Global warming is a huge issue that will eventually kill us all if there is nothing done about it. The world will become unsustainable, our current population is over 6.6 billion people, that means more and more pollution produced by each person more energy wasted and more oil consumed. It also means an increased need for transportation for them, food, shelter, clothes and other basic needs. This will start to affect everyone directly, and it has already started to directly affect our world.
“-The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years
-Malaria has spread to higher altitudes in places like the Colombian Andes, 7,000 feet above sea level.
-The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled over the past decade.
-At least 279 species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming, moving closer to the poles
-If the warming continues, we can expect catastrophic consequences.
-Deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years -- to 300,000 people a year.
-Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide.
-Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense.
-Droughts and wildfires will occur more often.
-The Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050.
-More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.
There is no doubt we can solve this problem. In fact, we have a moral obligation to do so. Small changes to your daily routine can add up to big differences in helping to stop global warming. The time to come together to solve this problem is now – TAKE ACTION”-(An Inconvenient Truth)
The warming of our own earth is something scary that can and will affect us if something isn’t done. Thankfully there are so many things we can do to save ourselves and in the end we hopefully will end up doing so. There isn’t a reason why we can’t stop global warming in its tracks if everyone does their share all we can do now is continue to help and hope that everyone will do the same so life on earth can continue.
Citations
-Shaheem, Susan. Vital Signs 2006-2007. 2006.
-"The Science." An Inconvenient Truth. 2006. 10 Dec 2006
-Eilperin, Juliet. "World Temperatures Keep Rising With a Hot 2005." WashigtonPost.com. 2005. 10 Dec 2006
