Global Warming 

Introduction 

The global warming hypothesis originated in 1896 when Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, developed the theory that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels would cause global temperatures to rise by trapping excess heat in the earth’s atmosphere. Arrhenius understood that the earth’s climate is heated by a process known as the greenhouse effect. While close to half the solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface is reflected back into space, the remainder is absorbed by land masses and oceans, warming the earth’s surface and atmosphere. This warming process radiates energy, most of which passes through the atmosphere and back into space. However, small concentrations of greenhouse gases like water vapor and carbon dioxide convert some of this energy to heat and either absorb it or reflect it back to the earth’s surface. These heat-trapping gases work much like a greenhouse: Sunlight passes through, but a certain amount of radiated heat remains trapped.

The greenhouse effect plays an essential role in preventing the planet from entering a perpetual ice age: Remove the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and the earth’s temperature would plummet by around 60 degrees Fahrenheit (F). However, scientists who have elaborated on Arrhenius’s theory of global warming are concerned that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are causing an unprecedented rise in global temperatures, with potentially harmful consequences for the environment and human health.

What Are Greenhouse Gases?
Some greenhouse gases occur naturally in the atmosphere, while others result from human activities. Naturally occurring greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and water vapor. Certain human activities, however, add to the levels of most of these naturally occurring gases:

• Carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere when fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal), wood and wood products and solid waste are burned.

• Methane is emitted during the production and transport of coal, natural gas, and oil. Methane emissions also result from the decomposition of organic wastes in municipal solid waste landfills, and the raising of livestock.

• Nitrous oxide is emitted during agricultural and industrial activities, as well as during combustion of solid waste and fossil fuels.

Very powerful man-made greenhouse gases that are not naturally occurring include hydro fluoro carbons (HFCs), per fluoro carbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), which are generated in a variety of industrial processes.

WHAT CAUSES GLOBAL WARMING

There is general consensus in the scientific community that global warming is mainly caused by the burning of fossil fuels, which increases the levels of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. The United States is the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases that cause global warming, producing 25% of worldwide emissions.

According to the EPA, the main causes of U.S. Global Warming pollution are:

• Electricity Generation: 33.9%

• Transportation: 26.8%

• Industry: 18.8%

• Agriculture: 7.6%

• Residential: 7.6%

• Commercial: 4.7%

Global Warming Impacts

Impacts from Global Warming are already happening
The IPCC's Third Assessment Report finds that in the last 40 years, the global average sea level has risen, ocean heat content has increased, and snow cover and ice extent have decreased, which threatens to inundate low-lying island nations and coastal regions throughout the world.

• More Floods: "Projected adverse impacts based on models include . . . a widespread increase in the risk of flooding for human settlements (tens of millions of inhabitants in settlements studied) from both increased heavy precipitation events and sea level rise."

• Increased spread of infectious diseases: "an increase in the number of people exposed to vector borne diseases (e.g. cholera) and an increase in heat stress mortality."

• Degraded water quality: "Projected climate change will tend to degrade water quality through higher water temperatures and increased pollutant load from runoff and overflows of waste facilities."

• More frequent and more intense heat waves, droughts, and tropical cyclones: "The vulnerability of human societies and natural systems to climate extremes is demonstrated by the damage, hardship, and death caused by events such as droughts, floods, heat waves, avalanches, and storms."

Other Global Warming Impacts
According to a 2001 report by the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Climate change science Global Warming will impact by causing:

• Great Lakes Water Level Decline
  "Climate change is likely to reduce water levels in the Lakes and summer time river levels , thereby affecting navigation and general water supplies."

• Snow pack Decline
  "It is very likely that as the climate warms, less precipitation will fall as snow, the existing snow pack will melt sooner and faster, the runoff will be shifted from late spring and summer to late winter and early spring."

• Increased Floods
  "Climate change is likely to increase flood frequency and amplitude in some regions, with major impacts on infrastructure and emergency management."

• Abrupt Climate Change
  A 2002 report by the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, also found that warming do to climate change and human activities "may increase the possibility of large, abrupt and unwelcome regional or global climate events." The NAS found that: "Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed, roughly half of the North Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climate changes across most of the globe."

Top 10 things you can do to help reduce global warming pollution

If your family did all of the items listed here, you could cut your own global warming pollution by more than 4990 kg per year!

10. Plant a couple of additional trees around your home.
Pollution reduction = 9.07 kg/year

9. Next time you buy a refrigerator, purchase a high-efficiency model with the energy star logo.
Pollution reduction = 99.8 kg/year

8. Buy food and other products with reusable or recyclable packaging.
Pollution reduction = 104.3 kg/year

7. Next time you buy a washing machine, purchase a low-energy, low-water-use machine with the energy star logo.
Pollution reduction = 199.6 kg/year

6. Install a solar thermal system to help provide your hot water.
Pollution reduction = 326.6 kg/year

5. Recycle all of your home's waste newsprint, cardboard, glass and metal.
Pollution reduction = 385.6 kg/year

4. If possible, leave your car at home two days a week. take public transportation to work, school, or on errands instead.
Pollution reduction = 721.2 kg/year

3. Replace two of the five most frequently used light bulbs in your home with compact fluorescent light bulbs.
Pollution reduction = 1043.3 kg/year

2. Insulate your home, tune up your furnace, and install low-flow shower heads.
Pollution reduction = 1124.92 kg/year

and the #1 thing you can do,...

1. Next time you replace your most frequently used automobile, purchase a fuel-efficient car, rated up to 32 mpg or more.
Pollution reduction = 2540.16 kg/year