Global Warming
(After a lot of reading and hunting around on the net, I found a great
deal of
information on this topic. I had never really researched on it before
so wanted
to make sure that calculations agreed from report to report. Most
of them did so
I will base my answer on these different reports. This
subject is extremely
interesting, scary and a bit of a shock as to how much
we have abused and taken
advantage of this Earth. Though progress as far as
technology has been something
we make use of and enjoy, we are paying for it
in ways I never thought of before
this subject came up in this class! Please
forgive my ignorance. I am troubled
that my children and their children will
suffer because of our lack of concern,
knowledge and greed. I read a short
story the other day, about the people in a
village having never heard the
word cancer until they were run out of their
homes and into the city area's.
Years later, some of the people from this
village are dying from disease. my
point is that before they came to the cities,
they had always died of old age
...) FIRST of all, it is important to know that
the "greenhouse effect" is
not a bad thing in itself. In fact, this
planet would be a life-less waste
land without its natural greenhouseing. There
are a collection of gases
called "greenhouse gases," which are water
vapor, carbine dioxide, ozone,
methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons
(CFC). Without the natural
greenhouse effect, the surface temperature of our
planet would be an average
of -18°C (zero degrees F). The mixture of these
gases have remained pretty
much stable over the centuries and have kept us all
living. But here we are
in the late nineties, and we are not so stable anymore.
Our activities
and what we use to perform our activities is increasing year to
year, many of
them doubling and tripling. It's a case of the amount of gases
that Earth
produces naturally vs. the amount of gases produced manually by us.
Do
you drive? How about using those disposable diapers that NEVER
disintegrate?
Do you smoke? How about garbage or junk burning? Do you
BBQ? Where do you work?
Do you have an air-conditioner? Do you separate
your garbage, use hair spray,
spray deodorant, spray paint, flea spray,
perfume, kitchen spray cleaner, bleach
in your laundry, bleach in your hair,
use a freezer, use an air conditioner in
your car, use your fireplace, have a
growing collection of newspaper and
magazines, throw away food, use paper and
plastic food containers, use bug
spray, use lawn pesticides, ... Okay, this
could go on forever. The effects of
the huge overuse of these items of luxury
plus all the other unmentioned items
and activities plays havoc on our
atmosphere. We didn't worry about this 100
years ago, and the industrial
revolution is the culprit for a large part of
this. The reason for this is a
little thing called Carbon dioxide. Where is the
C02 coming from? Fossil
fuel burning (75%), land clearing & burning (25%) ,
as well as car
exhaust and coal burning. This stuff stays in the atmosphere for
50-200
years. Here is how it works. The chemical makeup of our atmosphere and
ozone
is very complex. It is a combination, and interaction of the ocean,
sun,
land, and the biosphere. The greenhouse gases work to trap the heat
producing
energy on our Earth, and pretty much does a good job of it if left
undisturbed.
We have disturbed it. The human production of greenhouse gas
producing chemicals
is what is disturbing it. This production by humans of
these particular gases
linger in our atmosphere for many many years and they
burn up our protective
ozone blanket faster than it can rebuild itself. Our
ozone blocks out most of
the killer radiation rays from our sun. Ozone is a
molecule with just three
Oxygen atoms. It is created when UV light reacts
with oxygen gas, which has two
Oxygen atoms. UV light also destroys
ozone, so you need just the right mix of UV
light and oxygen to get an ozone
layer. For the last 450 million years, our
ozone has been our sun screen.
Chemicals that we use in daily life produce ozone
eating atoms when they
reach the stratosphere and are exposed to intense UV
rays. Chemicals such as
CFC's are too unreactive to be removed and they rise
slowly, taking 10-20
years to make the journey up to the stratosphere. Once
there, the high UV
rays breaks down the atoms into chlorine atoms which speeds
up the breakdown
of ozone (O3) into O2 and O . Each of these molecules last from
65-110
years and each one can convert up to 100,000 molecules of O3 to O2.
These
guys in turn, are the ozone terminators., and they are not even the
only ones.
Over Antarctica there is a gaping ozone hole measuring about
three of our
continental U.S. in size. What has happened is during their
sunless winter,
winds blow steadily in a circular pattern over the earth's
poles, which creates
huge swirling masses of ice-cold air that gets trapped
above the poles. When the
sun returns a few months later the water droplets
in the clouds enter these
large circling streams of icy air and form tiny
crystals. The surfaces of the
crystals collect ozone depleting chemicals in
the stratosphere which allows them
to deplete the ozone layer at a much
faster rate. The return of the sunlight
triggers weeks of ozone depletion
before vortex breaks apart. THEN, masses of
ozone-depleted air flow northward
and linger for weeks above Australia and New
Zealand, raising the UV
levels in these areas by as much as 20%... and guess
what? They have had a
HUGE rise in skin cancer. This very thing is also
happening over parts of
North America, Asia and Europe. So, what would global
warming do to us? (as
in, do I really need to worry about this???) Well, to put
it bluntly, it
eventually would kill you and everything else that is alive. The
rise of a
few degrees doesn't seem like a big deal, but in global terms... it
is
deadly. It isn't just the rise of surface temperature, it is the pollution
from
the over production of the greenhouse gases as well. By the year 2020,
over
700,000 deaths worldwide will occur annually from exposure to
particles as a
result of fossil-fuel burning that could be avoided by a
climate control policy.
New animal and human studies confirm that
airborne fine particles can sicken or
kill people. For example, laboratory
rats with respiratory disorders died after
being exposed to air pollution at
concentrations found today in Massachusetts.
Today our atmosphere
contains 28% more carbon dioxide than it did 100 years ago,
and that
percentage is rising drastically. Some of the warning signs that have
already
taken place are: Surface temps at nine stations north of the Arctic
circle
have risen by about 9 degrees F., since 1968. That is almost half a
degree a
year. The thick massive ice shelves surrounding the continent
in
Antarctica are beginning to break up. We had a huge one the size of a
state
break up just recently. Winter snow in the northern hemisphere has
been
decreasing every year, in fact, I have heard it said that Washington
state will
someday have southern California weather. Since 1980 the average
water temp. in
Alaska's Toolik lake has increased by about 3 degrees. The
surrounding tundra is
beginning to thaw which could accelerate global warming
by releasing massive
carbon dioxide and methane from these soils. Future
implications could cause a
change in where food can and can't grow. Drops of
only 10% in global crop yields
would lead to large increases in hunger and
starvation. Wild fires would
increase, in up to 90% of North American
forests. This certainly would not help
in reducing the carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere. Climate change would lead to
reductions in bio diversity. This
leads to ecosystems that can not adapt. The
rise in sea level would cause
massive flooding. Even a rise of one foot would be
disastrous. Global warming
poses an unprecedented threat to our environment and
our economy. Climate
change can cause a spread in the ranges of tropical
diseases (Dengue fever, a
painful life-threatening disease endemic to tropical
regions, broke out on
the Texas border in the fall of 1995), intensified storms,
mass extinction of
plant and animal species, and crop failures in many
vulnerable regions.
Deserts may expand into existing rangelands, and the
character of some of our
National Parks may be permanently altered.
Unfortunately, many of the
potentially most important impacts depend upon
whether rainfall increases or
decrease, which can not be reliably projected for
specific areas. We
certainly still do not know enough. There are disagreements
all around, and
the cost plus the emission of the ozone killers that are
produced, trying to
cut down on the ozone killers, is a problem in itself. This
is a bit
disappointing, the fact that we all will most likely be dead by the
time
there is really any significant change... but our kids and their kids
will
still be here.... Thats another thing... the population problem....