In your opinion, what are three reasons as to why climate change is a threat to the planet now?

Question

What's you opinion(s)?

Answer 1

it's not a threat to the planet.

just to the plants and animals that live here.

not all of them, but many.

but, i think i just answered this.

let me look ........ yep.

Answer 2

freeze kills plants. heat kills water supply, winds promote forest fires

Answer 3

Global warming is causing the Earth to dry out and farm lands to become useless for farming. This will be caused by the pollutants in the atmosphere that allow heat in but not out, and by the severe decrease in Polar ice that normally reflects light off the ice.

Global warming is thawing the polar ice caps bringing the sea levels up 20 to 30 feet. This will take away thousands of miles of land including most of Central states in the US. Texas, Mississippi, Florida, California, and too many other states will be under water.

After the water is done rising it will cool off creating a global freeze. Ice will cover about 80 % of the World from about Georga North World wide.

Answer 4

people are careless

corporations are greedy and careless

Answer 5

The Climate Threat

We are on the threshold of a frightening new era........ never before has humankind's abuse of the environment put the whole planet in danger.

This is what Climate Change does.

It has become the very greatest threat to our planet and everyone on it, besides all-out war with modern weapons of mass-destruction.

The Greenhouse gases that cause climate change have a delayed effect, like a disease with a long incubation period. This means that we do not know how much irreversible damage we have done already - but we know that if we don't act now the effects will be many times more devestating still.

The damage has been done mainly by the rich nations (which burn more fossil fuels like coal and oil, and so emit more C02 - the main 'greenhouse gas') but the poorest will suffer worst and most immediately ...though everyone is threatened in the long run. People are dying from climate change now though it is not obvious since it is happening through a steady and unrelenting increase in the frequency and severity of the kind of 'natural' disasters (floods, droughts, hurricanes, wildfires, etc..) that we are used to.

Essentially this is because 'global warming' means an increase in the 'energy' in weather systems generally : that energy not only makes for an increase in temperatures : it also makes for more extreme and more violent weather. Furthermore the rate at which humankind is causing global temperatures to increase (and the climate to change) is much greater by far, than ever before while humankind has existed. And it will not neccessarily be a slow, steady increase : when we reach certain thresholds there could be very sudden changes ....and the whole process could accelerate and spin out of control in the nightmare of what scientists call "run-away climate change". So what 'global warming' and 'climate change' really mean is 'climate de-stabilisation' ....with the threat of total disruption of the global climate upon which every one of us depends upon for his or her existence.

The vast areas of cold empty space that make up the vast bulk of the Universe are inhospitable to Life. Life is able to exist on the earth only thanks to its gossamer-thin protective covering - its atmosphere. And thanks to the fact that this atmosphere contains just the right amount of heat-trapping gases. So that our planet is not a desolate frigid lump like Mars or Pluto, or scorchingly, intolerably hot like Mercury. Now humankind is upsetting that precious and precarious equilibrium.

This is down to the Industrial Revolution and the massively increased release of certain gases into the atmosphere that this brought about. Most of all this was Carbon Dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas formed from "fossilised" vegetation, buried beneath the earth's surface) but also included increased amounts of methane, nitrous oxide, and halocarbons. At the same time we have been cutting down trees - clearing forests - at an unprecedented rate. Trees, like most vegetation - and indeed 'life' forms - are largely made of carbon so their burning or rotting away releases what had been "stored" carbon, back into the atmosphere, as C02.

The result of this is that over the last 2 hundred years we have increased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by about ONE THIRD. This is - already - a higher level than has ever been reached in the last 20 Million years....that's far longer than humankind or humanoid-type creatures have existed. So don't let anyone tell you : oh, we've seen this all before....in the seventeenth century there was a mini-ice age. What's happening now is on an infinitely greater scale than that.....we just haven't seen anything like all the effects feed through yet (that's frightening). Yes there have been changes that big, way, way, back in the geological record but they were always accompanied by a catastrophic impact on Life on Earth - as it at that time existed.

This doesn't mention the increases in other 'greenhouse' gases. Altogether the rise in greenhouse gas concentrations is just beginning to feed through into actual climatic impacts. Global average surface temperature has risen by about 0.6 degrees C in the last hundred years. This might not sound much but already the global 'physical' impacts have been considerable, including a 10% reduction in snow cover and a 40% decrease in the thickness of Arctic sea ice (at its seasonal thinnest)). The 1990s were the warmest decade on record.

How much are temperatures going to rise this century ? No-one really knows. The IPCC (Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change)have suggested between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees celsius. To understand what that means you have to bear in mind that the upper figure represents a 41% increase over todays global average temperature: it took just a 21% decrease to bring about the last ice age. Small temperature rises are more significant than they sound when you bear in mind the sensitivity of the earth's climatic systems.

And in any case the Hadley Weather Centre has suggested a temperature rise of around 8.8 degrees : this is, in effect, a really massive increase. Part of the reason they have come up with this bigger figure is that they have begun to take into account what are called "positive feedbacks". That means reactions in the biosphere triggered by rising temperatures, that cause them to rise yet faster. For instance there are huge 'stores' of carbon, in for instance, forests or tundra permafrost that rising temperatures could cause to be released, thereby causing temperatures to rise yet higher again. A real frightener (not taken into account by the Hadley Centre) are the 'methane hydrates', crystal structures on the edges of continental shelves whch contain vast quantities of carbon (in the form of methane which is 20 times more powerful as a 'greenhouse gas' than C02). If rising temperatures in the water or sediment around them caused the methane to be released the impact could be absolutely enormous.

These factors could all bring about very sudden (and quite likely unpredictable) changes. It is not just a case of temperatures rising but whole climatic systems suddenly changing (like the possible 'switching off' of the Gulf Stream) We could be tipped into dire and irreversible situations on reaching certain thresholds. The cumulative effect would be "run-away" climate change that would render our planet uninhabitable. This word "uninhabitable" has not just sprung out of my own morbid imagination: its the one actually used by the British Secretary of State for the environment, Michael Meacher, MP.

In the final analysis the really important figures to keep in mind are the ones about the background rise in carbon concentrations .....the once-in-20 million year increase from which the effects can hardly be anything but very frightening indeed.

It is as well to remember that not only has the consensus around the reality of human-induced climat change been consistently building but the seriousness of the impacts have consistently been revised in an upwards direction. Extrapolating on this basis just imagine what they will be predicting in 20 years time ! Remember that while it may be possible to find at least one scientist to say more or less anything most of them do not prosper in their careers or gain respect from their colleagues by sticking their necks out and making statements that risk sounding outrageous. There is an inbuilt bias towards conservatism in the scientific/academic establishment : these frightening conclusions about climate change would never have surfaced in the way they have without something very, very, real behind them. And what is more their predictions are, for the most part, much more likely to err on the side of a cautious underestimate, than they are to overestimate, the scale of the climate change problem that we will have to face.

Climate Change, then, is not 'just another' environmental problem. We have only been significantly aware of it for the last twenty or so years...in that time it has revolutionised the environmental debate, and magnified beyond measure the scale of the environmental threat. At one time talk of "Saving the Planet" was a rather meaningless slogan. Climate Change means that now its for real.

But don't take our word for any of this. Check out our climate info links and resources.

Answer 6

Troy   thanks for a great job of spelling out the real theat of climate change.  

Well,  I definitely don't share the opinion of Sean Hannity, the far right wing propagandist of FOX news.  As I write this, he is on the air trashing Al Gore, trying to prove Gore wrong about global warming, based on comments by the usual suspects,  Linzer and Spencer, well known climate change skeptics.   I find it amusing that the same handful of skeptics are quoted over and over again as proof against the tens of thousands of IPCC climate scientists  who agree with the AGW theory.  This is yellow journalism.

What isn't suprising about that, is that FOX  now owns the Wall Street Journal, who prints stories about how AGW has been scienitfically disproved.

They came out with headlines that said:

"The Science is in- AGW is a Myth",  or words very close to that.  

Their article has been thoroughly debunked for what it is.   It was based on an unpublished manuscript by two scientists who never presented it to fellow scientists for peer review.   Real science is not done that way.   Real scientists don't go through the mass media in order to sway public opinion.  They present their findings to the rest of the science community for review.  If an article isn't published it is because it can't pass the scrutiny of other scientists.

" The conclusions reached by Robinson et al., upon which The Wall Street Journal news item was based, in my opinion and that of my class, cannot stand the scrutiny of objective peer-review. Our judgement notwithstanding, The Wall Street Journal presented an unpublished manuscript as actual science to a gullible business world. Giving support and credence to an unpublished manuscript certainly reflects poorly on The Wall Street Journal and its standards of reporting and objectivity. We know The Wall Street Journal’s science reporting cannot be trusted if they don't know the difference between opinion and science, or worse, if they do know the difference, then they're just dishonest."

http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v06/n08/...

http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v06/n08/...

Debunking of Wall St Journal claim in article

It's no wonder skeptics are confused.  They are listening to sources that they assume to be authoritative.   After all its the Wall St Journal right?

Nothing could be further from the truth.

And FOX news is the most "unbalanced" network on the air.   O'Reilly's supposed "no spin zone" is nothing but spin, for instance.  

Hannity must have played Rev Wrights remarks a hundred times, and talks about it nonstop.  How many times have they actually played Obama's speech?  Once?

Fox isn't a news channel it's completely Op Ed.

Anyway back to global warming.

The real threat isn't just the change of a few degrees in temperature, it's the rapid rate of the change.  

One effect of global warming that is not talked about much is:

Acidification of the ocean, which damages coral reefs which depend on calcification to grow.  Calcification  is at the opposite end of the PH spectrum from acids.  Alkalinity is required for this.

Without coral reefs, there would be a huge dying off of all kinds of sea life that depend on the reefs for habitat or feeding.

"Wildlife will also be in trouble. Some plants and animals will thrive as CO2 rises but at the expense of others. Coral reefs, which are already suffering frequent bleaching episodes, could be particularly hard hit. Many species, like the polar bear, will suffer as their habitat disappears."

"As global temperature climbs to 3°C above present levels - which is likely to happen before the end of this century if greenhouse emissions continue unabated - the consequences will become increasingly severe. More than a third of species face extinction. Agricultural yields will start to fall in many parts of the world. Millions of people will be at risk from coastal flooding. Heatwaves, droughts, floods and wildfires will take an ever greater toll."

"There are two factors should borne in mind when thinking about the impacts. Firstly, even countries that escape the worst of the direct effects will feel the economic effects of what happens elsewhere. There may be social and political problems too, as migration increases and water becomes increasingly scarce in some regions."

A huge segment of the Asian population depends on runoff from the melting of snow and glaciers in the Himalaya mountains for their drinking water.

California is almost completely dependent on snow melt from the Sierra Nevada mountains for drinking water as well as water for irrigation.  The central valley of California is the source of a large percent of all the produce in the U.S.  And it is almost completely dependent on irrigation from that water.

"Rainfall will fall in mid-latitudes but rise in high latitudes, and initially agricultural yields will probably increase (see Higher CO2 levels will boost plant growth and food production). Some regions will suffer, though. Africa could be hardest hit, with yields predicted to halve in some countries as early as 2020."

That's twelve years away.

"The IPCC predicts a minimum temperature rise by 2100 of 1.8°C. About 120,000 years ago, when it was 1 to 2°C warmer, the sea level was 5 to 8 metres higher - more than enough to inundate many major cities around the world, including New York, London and Sydney. Three million years ago, when the temperature was 2 to 3°C higher, it was 25 metres higher."

"There is no doubt that similar temperature increases will eventually lead to similar rises in sea level. The assumption is that it will take many centuries, as the Greenland and Antarctica ice caps slowly melt and the oceans expand as the waters warm. But some researchers think it could happen much sooner due to the sudden collapse of ice sheets."

"To ask questions and argue for and against the reality and consequences of climate change is step two. Step one is to ask if humans can evolve beyond the present state of selfish protectionism. This is the question. What sort of thing is a human and how can it see itself within nature? can virtue, in this case humility, be taught? the right question must be asked or all the answers /solutions will be incomplete and useless in the long term."

http://environment.newscientist.com/chan...

We have to change how we think, and quickly.  

We can have full lives with modern conveniences and high standards of living while at the same time becoming much less materialistic.  Our economy is what is called consumerism, a brand of capitalism that is not sustainable.  Market economies don't have to be like that.

We are coerced, cajoled and misled by advertising 24/7 telling us to buy more and more and more and bigger and bigger and bigger.  And it doesn't lead to happiness.  It really doesn't.  Studies have shown that people are the happiest at an economic level just above making ends meet. After that there is a diminishing return, more money and more possessions  do not make you happier, no matter what the constant barrage of subliminal and not so subtle message tell you.  It's a type of  group insanity.

The video, The Story of Stuff shows how this madness is destroying not only our environment, but our economic well being also.  

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

The amount of resources on the planet are finite.

At the rate we are going we will use them up in the blink of an eye, compared with the eons of the geological time scale.  Plus,doing so is about to make the planet uninhabitable.

So stop listening to Sean Hannity and the purveyors of dis-information,  and listen to what the scientists are trying to tell you.

"The global warming is a hoax believers don't understand the difference between informed opinion, uninformed opinion, misinformed opinion and totally ignorant opinions."  

from comments  by LeeAnnG  

at  gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/11/236...

Answer 7

The main reason is because of humans. Next is of course global warming, and then so on.

Answer 8

i think it is because the earth is changing or it is because of the pollution. WE use so many things that it is polluting our air and water supply and it is killing our animals. And the main reason our animals are dying is because we are ruening their homes with the construction! WE NEED TO FIX IT!!!!

Answer 9

Climate change is a threat to our planet because sea levels are rising and the Earth's temperature is also.

Stupid politicians are selfish and don't care about environmental issues!!!!!!!!!

Answer 10

1)  People will blame each other over the weather and fight about it, causing war.

2)  Some countries will benefit from natural climate change, others will suffer.  This will lead to war.

3)  Governments will use the weather as an excuse to tax their people into the ground.  This will lead to political instability and ultimately....you guessed it:  War.

(War at this stage of the game could very well damage the planet with the toys we have today)