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Global Warming Essay, Research Paper

This essay will address the question, what is global warming, and how is it affecting the Earth and its inhabitants? Despite much media coverage of the role of human activity in the furthering of harmful global warming effects, the majority of the general public does not view global warming as a definite and imminent danger. Robert T. Watson supports this in his comment about society s failure to recognize the severity of a potential environmental disaster as a result of global warming. It is important that society treat human-induced global warming as a serious global-scale environmental threat. (_____) The overwhelming majority of scientific experts believe human-induced climate change is inevitable. The question is not whether climate will change in response to human activities, but rather where (regional pattern), when (the rate of change) and by how much (magnitude). —– This essay will examine how global warming is affecting world temperature, plant growth, the oceans, agriculture, animal life, and human life.

In recent years, the term global warming has been associated with such phrases as impending environmental disaster , the greenhouse effect and the most serious environmental threat of the 21st century (Newton, 1993). Global warming is defined as an increase in the average temperature on Earth. The increase was first detected in the 1980 s. The cause of global warming is believed to be the greenhouse effect. This is the process of trapping heat with the Earth s atmosphere due to the presence of large amounts of carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, methane, and nitrogen oxides.

The most prevalent issue of global warming is the increase in overall world temperature. In the thirty year time period of 1951-1980, a 0.47 degrees Celsius temperature increase has been documented (Hansen,1998). Michael D. Lemonick predicts that unless the world takes immediate and extreme steps to reduce the emissions of heat-trapping gases, global temperatures could be driven up by as much as 6.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100.(Lemonick, 1997) This drastic temperature change is comparable only with the one that occurred at the end of the last Ice Age. The effects of this temperature rise, in collaboration with projected temperature increases, transcend over almost every aspect of society and ecology.

An alteration in the earth s plant growth will accompany the changing temperatures. The forest regions would be affected adversely. According to Jill Jaeger, the reproductive abilities of many tree species would be reduced by a warming trend that would threaten both tree and plant mortality. Major effects on forests are estimated to begin around the year 2010 with forest dieback starting between 2025 and 2050. A warmer, drier climate would also lead to increased forest fires and what research ecologist, Daniel Fagre, calls a nixing out of such rare alpine plants as the Glacier National Park s northern eye-bright and the whitlewort. While some species of tree, such as the lodge pole pine, would increase in population, the majority overall species could collapse. If, under projected global warming conditions, a 500-year-old cedar forest in the Lake McDonald valley were to be wiped out by a forest fire, the trees reproductive abilities would be so hindered by a hotter, drier climate that they would not be able to restore their species population in the area.(Jaeger, 1998)

Global warming will also incur a serious impact on the world s oceans. Confirmation is already apparent in numerous areas of the world. Glaciers are disappearing globally. In the past fifty years, four Antarctic ice shelves have collapsed. Ice slabs as large as Rhode Island are breaking off and floating into the open seas (Moore, 1997). In the Alps, the ice masses have lost half their size since the middle of the 19th century. El Nino, the Pacific Ocean phenomenon that causes a warm current along Peru s coast, has occurred every year since 1991. El Nino has caused crop failures in Australia and floods in California (Spiegel, 1997).

In the past century, the world s sea level has risen by nearly eight inches. The temperatures of the oceans themselves are also rising. For example, the temperatures of the upper layers of water in the tropics have warmed by 0.57 degrees Celsius in the past 50 years (Spiegel, 1997). Warming temperatures cause the ocean waters to expand, mountain glaciers, to liquefy, and possibly some portions of the polar ice caps to melt (Newton, 1993). Rising sea levels are a particular concern of scientists around the globe because they can lead to changing shorelines or even the entire submergence of some island nations (Newton, 1993). A personal anxiety of the United States is suggested by George J. Mitchell in the fact that five thousand to ten thousand square miles of United States dry land could go under the ocean sometime in the ensuing hundred years. Globally, the submergence of coastal lands is anticipated to displace a quarter of the world s population by the end of the next century. Mitchell also points out that rising temperatures, combined with the effects of rising seas, could possibly wipe out entire fragile oceanic coral reef systems. Since the first observations of coral demise in 1979, coral reef extinction has been recorded in sixty places (Moore,1997). This example of the destruction of an ecosystem is just one of the harmful ways that life on Earth could be disrupted.

Seas level elevations would also induce increased erosion. James G. Titus, a senior scientist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, concludes that even a 30-centimeter rise in sea level would result in beaches eroding 20 to 60 meters or more. On an economic note, Titus also suggests that sea level rise would increase the costs of flood protection and flood insurance in coastal areas (Newton,1993). Kathlyn Gay poses another

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