Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Concerns on Global Warming
Coming into the 21st century, one of the biggest concerns of the entire world is on the global warming. As consequences of global warming, we have been experiencing significant natural disasters over the past, and the frequency of them continues to increase, including major earthquakes in Japan, New Zealand and China. United States of America had more snowfalls than some parts of Canada, while other parts of the world had disastrous droughts. Many organizations such as Greenpeace are trying to protect natural environment and promote countries to reduce consumption of fossil fuels to slow down the speed of global warming. Is there anything that we can do to stop global warming? Do you think all the countries are putting global warming as their first priority over their economic growth? Is Canada safe from the natural disasters?
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There is a lot of skepticism that global warming is not true and the other half believe that it is real. My first thing is Al Gore’s movie “The Inconvenient Truth” is that he really emphasized that global warming is real and will destroy the earth in 100 years. So not true! He only looked at what humans are doing to contribute to global warming and not the nature side which is fact that it does play a big part in it. There is no doubt that we are speeding it up with all of the carbon dioxide that we are putting into the atmosphere. With China and India building 2-3 new coal plants a week, that is not helping out at all and also with more cars being put on the road. Nature does have it’s systems at when the carbon dioxide levels do go up and beyond the levels that we are seeing today. We are trying to do things to cut down on the environmental impact by making nuclear plants, fuel efficient motors and many more. The western world is trying to cut back but the developing countries put their economy first and one day the natural resources will run out. We need to act now for the future!
ReplyDeleteI believe that the earth has naturally heating up over time aswell humans have most recently played a role in speeding up the process of global warming. Most of the observed temperature increases since the middle of the 20th century has been caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, which result from human activities such as the burning of fossil fuel and deforestation. this then leads to the melting of polar ice caps.
ReplyDeleteThere are 5,773,000 cubic miles of water in ice caps, glaciers, and permanent snow. If all glaciers melted today the seas would rise about 230 feet. Ultimetly no one is safe from global warming especially in the coastal regions where the water is rising. A couple of ways people can contribute to the solution is to find simple ways to reduce their ecological footprint. Some ways this can be achieved is recycling cans and plastics, car pooling with friends or using public transit, and being more environmentally friendly around the house.
I believe the planet is warming, as Peter mentioned in his blog. All over the world the climate is being impacted. In the last year we have witnessed some severe incidents/natural disasters, just two weeks after we flew over the volcano in Iceland it erupted and caused a lot of havoc in Europe due to the ash spewing into the atmosphere. Both land and air travel were severely impacted. Following that there were the floods in Australia which were recorded to be the worst in Australia’s history. The raging floodwaters killed a number of people. In Alberta this winter we have had a record amount of snowfall. All of this leads me to believe that Global Warming is impacting us negatively a big way. The question in my mind is what can we do about it?
ReplyDeletehttp://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-effects/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story
According to what Robert Essenhigh, E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conservation in Ohio State's Department of Mechanical Engineering, he said the increase in the level of carbon dioxide which causes greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. He looked at this exactly opposite to what the people have been saying about global warming. He said that it is the natural increase in the temperature which causes the carbon dioxide level to rise. The amount of carbon dioxide we produce from burning of coils and others only contributes to about 5 percent of the entire amount that exist in the earth. Essenhigh argued that there is a cycle where temperature keeps changing; either rising or falling, which causes the carbon dioxide in the water and atmosphere to change. He said, "Today, we are simply near a peak in the current cycle that started about 25,000 years ago.". While the world’s leading countries such as China and US are not making significant changes to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide they produce, I am actually hoping that Essenhigh’s statement will be true. We still have to do something to protect ourselves from natural disasters that are happening around the world. But if all of these are just a natural phase of the cycle, then the main thing we will have to do is to wait.
ReplyDeleteAhhh Global Warming! It seems like it’s just one of those topics that will never die. Even if we have very strong opinions towards different sides we can all come to a consensus that humans have not been tracking weather information for even 150 years. THIS IS NOT ENOUGH RAW DATA to make an assumption that the world is changing. EARTH HAS BEEN CHANING SINCE ITS CREATION, we still don’t have raw data on how the Dinosaur age ended. It might have been a meteor or it might have been the constant change of temperature that we call global warming. My opinion on this topic is no opinion. There is no normal sea level, there is no normal way of life, life is just a constant adaption to its surroundings. So what I’m trying to say is that for the 4.55 BILLION YEARS the earth has been rotating around the sun were going to be making an assumption called GLOBAL WARMING with only 150 years of data. That’s 3.3333333 * 10^-8 of data.
ReplyDeletehttp://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215471/global_warming.htm
Here are some interesting facts related to global warming:
ReplyDelete1) Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of which was in the past century.
2) The 20th century’s last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that 11 of the past 12 years were among the warmest since 1850.
3) Glaciers and mountain snows are melting at a rapid pace. For instance, Montana’s Glacier National Park now has only 27 glaciers, versus 150 about a century ago.
4) Carbon dioxide is emitted in the atmosphere by the human beings at a much faster pace than plants and oceans have the tendency to absorb it.
Source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html
I think global warming is just something the government made up to exert control over businesses and people so they can write laws and collect taxes. If the world cared so much about life when is the money going into help the helpless and needy around the world that are dying each and every day from non global warming related deaths. You never hear about deaths from global warming and countless from humanity. The world needs to open their eyes and see what is really going on. I do agree that humans have had an effect on global warming but such an insignificant amount. If you take a look at the graph in the link:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.freedomforallseasons.org/MyWebSiteImages/Greenhouse%20Effect%20Man%20vs%20Natural.gif
Most of the global warming is caused by non-human activities.
As I have been growing up, I have been taught with the idea of that human beings are major influences on global warming. But after doing research, humans don’t even contribute more than 80 percent. Natural disasters are a part of it too. But in my mind the main culprit towards global warming is the government. Instead of tell major companies to change or reduce their method who pollute so much, they charge the companies carbon tax and more fees in which the government is pulling in millions of dollars. This is ridiculous, all they worry about is that they are pulling in enough money and don’t look at the future. I’m taking about major changes like telling them to change their methods of producing. I know they have eco-friendly buses and etc. but that won’t really change that much if you compare how much these companies are polluting.
ReplyDeleteI just think there is nothing that we as individuals can do about. If all the major countries decide to contribute more towards maintaining environment, the other countries will follow. For example, green campaigns are now being enforced in most countries, and almost all the countries are participating in Earth Hour events, which will take place on March 26. This small event that started with only 2.2 million people in Australia is now becoming one of the biggest green events with more than 128 countries taking part in 2010. So if the leaders of big countries can step forward and promote more environmental sustainment, their decision will affect so much within the globe. Buying and using more environmental friendly products will definitely change the ethics of the companies, but new legislations towards consumption of fossil fuels and any other anti-environmental substances will speed up those companies to reconsider what they should do.
ReplyDelete