Global Warming Essay Sources

1) Other Effects Of The Global Warming

 The most pressing problems include:

     Rising sea levels, which lead to flooding and displacement and death of possibly millions of people.

·         Per the Inconvenient Truth website, "Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide."

·         Fresh-water polar ice caps melting into salt-water oceans alter the ocean gulf-stream patterns that regulate temperatures. This process leads to major temperature-pattern changes around Earth.

·         The changing landscapes and higher temperatures in polar regions will endanger countless animal and plant species, and irretreivably alter the balance of the ecosystem.

·         Ice caps and glaciers serve as sunlight reflectors, bouncing high-temperature sun rays back into space and away from Earth. When these natural structures have diminished greatly or vanished, Earth will be further warmed as the darker oceans absorb much of the sun ray heat.

Author:Deborah White

Source:http://usliberals.about.com/od/environmentalconcerns/a/GlobalWarm4.htm

2)The Solutions

Boosting energy efficiency: The energy used to power, heat, and cool our homes, businesses, and industries is the single largest contributor to global warming. Energy efficiency technologies allow us to use less energy to get the same—or higher—level of production, service, and comfort. This approach has vast potential to save both energy and money, and can be deployed quickly.

• Phasing out fossil fuel electricity: Dramatically reducing our use of fossil fuels—especially carbon-intensive coal—is essential to tackle climate change. There are many ways to begin this process. Key action steps include: not building any new coal-burning power plants, initiating a phased shutdown of coal plants starting with the oldest and dirtiest, and capturing and storing carbon emissions from power plants. While it may sound like science fiction, the technology exists to store carbon emissions underground. The technology has not been deployed on a large scale or proven to be safe and permanent, but it has been demonstrated in other contexts such as oil and natural gas recovery. Demonstration projects to test the viability and costs of this technology for power plant emissions are worth pursuing.
• Managing forests and agriculture: Taken together, tropical deforestation and emissions from agriculture represent nearly 30 percent of the world's heat-trapping emissions. We can fight global warming by reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and by making our food production practices more sustainable.

• Developing and deploying new low-carbon and zero-carbon technologies: Research into and development of the next generation of low-carbon technologies will be critical to deep mid-century reductions in global emissions. Current research on battery technology, new materials for solar cells, harnessing energy from novel sources like bacteria and algae, and other innovative areas could provide important breakthroughs.

Author: Union Of Concerned Scientists

Source: http://www.climatehotmap.org/global-warming-solutions/

3)Global Warming Impacts

Global warming is already having significant and costly effects on our climate, our health, and our environment.

Global warming has serious worldwide implications, though the type and magnitude of local effects varies considerably by region. This page highlights the consequences of global warming on a broad level.

Unless we take immediate action to reduce global warming emissions, these impacts will continue to intensify, grow ever more costly and damaging, and increasingly affect the entire planet — including you, your community, and your family.

Accelerating Sea Level Rise and Increased Coastal Flooding

Average global sea level has increased eight inches since 1880, but is rising much faster on the U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico. Global warming is nowaccelerating the rate of sea level rise, increasing flooding risks to low-lying communities and high-risk coastal properties whose development has been encouraged by today's flood insurance system.

Author:Union of Concerned Scientists

Source:http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/impacts/