Evidence of Global Warming

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Evidence of Global Warming
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INDEX OF SAD FACTS

• Carbon Dioxide Increasing in Atmosphere
• Methane Also Increasing
• More Frequent Extreme Weather
• Disappearing Glaciers
• Melting Arctic Sea Ice
• Greenland's Ice Sheet Melting
• Tropical Diseases Spreading

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Carbon Dioxide Increasing in Atmosphere

• The atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas
  carbon dioxide, have increased since
  pre-industrial times from 280 part per million
  (ppm) to 360 ppm, a 30 increase. Carbon dioxide
  concentrations in the atmosphere are the highest
  in 160,000 years. Carbon dioxide is a by-product
  of the burning of fossil fuels, such as gasoline
  in an automobile or coal in a power plant
  generating electricity.

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Methane Also Increasing

• Levels of atmospheric methane, a powerful
  greenhouse gas, have risen 145 in the last 100
  years. Methane is derived from sources such as
  rice paddies, bovine flatulence, bacteria in bogs
  and fossil fuel production

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More Frequent Extreme Weather

• The potential for floods and droughts is
  increasing."....... the heating from increased
  greenhouse gases enhances the hydrological cycle
  and increases the risk for stronger,
  longer-lasting or more intense droughts, and
  heavier rainfall events and flooding, even if
  these phenomena occur for natural reasons.
  Evidence, although circumstantial, is widespread
  across the United States

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Disappearing Glaciers

• Ice is melting all over the planet. Glaciers are
  melting on six continents.  If present warming
  trends continue, all glaciers in Glacier National
  Park could be gone by 2030. The park's Grinnell
  Glacier is already 90 gone. Pictured here is the
  glacier prior to its meltdown.
• Because of global warming, the glaciers of the
  Ruwenzori range in Uganda are in massive
  retreat.  The Bering Glacier, North America's
  largest glacier, has lost 7 miles of its length,
  while losing 20-25 of parts of the glacier.  Ice
  cores taken from the Dunde Ice Cap in the Qilian
  Mountains on the northeastern margin of the
  Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau indicate that the years
  since 1938 have been the warmest in the last
  12,000 years.   The melting is accelerating. The
  Lewis Glacier on Mt. Kenya (In Kenya) has lost
  40 of its mass during the period 1963-1987 or at
  a much faster clip than during 1899-1963.

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Melting Arctic Sea Ice

• According to a report by Norwegian scientists,
  the arctic sea ice in about 50 years could
  disappear entirely each summer. Researchers at
  the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing
  Center based their predictions on satellite
  pictures. These pictures showed that the Arctic
  winter icescapes decreased by 6 (a Texas-size
  area) during the last 20 years

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Greenland's Ice Sheet Melting

• A NASA high-tech aerial survey shows that more
  than 11 cubic miles of ice is melting along
  Greenland's coasts yearly, accounting for 7 of
  the annual global sea level rise.

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Tropical Diseases Spreading

• A recent study by New Zealand doctors,
  researchers at the Wellington School of
  Medicine's public health department said
  outbreaks of dengue fever in South Pacific
  islands are directly related to global warming.
  Global warming is projected to significantly
  increase the range conducive to the transmission
  of both dengue and yellow fevers

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Pacific Island Threat

• Present research has suggested that there will be
  an 0.5 - 0.8 degrees C rise in regional surface
  temperatures during the 20th century with less
  warming in the northern hemisphere. As a
  consequence of this, Pacific Island countries are
  experiencing certain effects which are consistent
  with the anticipated impacts of global climate
  change such as adverse effects on human health,
  drought and the subsequent decline of
  agricultural productions.

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Pacific Island Threat

• This will adversely affect many Pacific Islands,
  particularly those comprising low-lying coral
  atolls such as in Kiribati, the Marshall Islands,
  Tokelau and Tuvalu. Indeed, the effects of global
  warming are already becoming apparent in many of
  the outer islands of Papua New Guinea where the
  rising sea water level has spilled inland with a
  resultant detrimental effect on food gardens and
  crops. Indeed, when the tide subsides, pools of
  salt water remain causing the root crops such as
  banana, breadfruit trees and other foods to die
  from an excessive intake of salty water

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Pacific Island solution 1

• The two obvious options are firstly to construct
  sea walls around the low-lying atolls and
  secondary to progressively relocate the people on
  these atolls to higher safer ground. The first of
  these options appears not to be economically
  viable as the cost of constructing a sea wall for
  one Marshall Island atoll alone has been
  estimated at one hundred million US dollars. This
  is more than twice the wealth that the country
  produces each year.

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Pacific Island solution 2

• The option of resettling people who lose their
  island atolls as a result of global warming
  appears to be the only viable one. In some cases,
  this may eventually result in the resettlement of
  virtually all the population of many of our atoll
  island nations....they will simply disappear. In
  other cases, this may involve the relocation of
  people from an outer island to the main island.