Will global warming really affect my future?

Question

So I read in this article provided by the Environmental Protection Agency that the Earth's surface tempurature has risen by 1 degree farenheit in the last twenty years, mainly due to human activities. Thats not good, but should I really be worried about it? So the waters have risen a few inches, is this really a big deal? I'm rather ignorant about what exactly is happening because of global warming, I'd like some enlightenment. Please?

Answer 1

Don't worry about it! Ohio used to be under ice glaciers. There were seas in Wyoming and Utah. The earth changes and man had nothing to do with Ohio thawing out or the seas of wyoming and Utah drying up. The weatherman cannot tell us what the weather will be in 2 weeks how do they know what it will be in 20 years? They don't, but for a few million dollars in grant money they'll look into it and promote whatever is in their monatary intrest. Like they say in politics follow the money to get to the answers.

Answer 2

Generally every time we release fossil fuels from the ground we are releasing locked away carbon dioxide, every time we burn fossil fuels to produce electricity we release CO2 especially nasty,nasty cheap coal that is one of the last fossil fuels that is still in abundance through the world.

Not every one agrees carbon trading will solve anything, nor nuclear technologies since they are potentially extraordinarily dangerous, but it can start with us, watch Al Gore's movie and look into this topic it's probably one of the biggest threats civilization will face.

Through rising levels of CO2 temperatures seem to be rising, oceans are heating up melting polar ice and affecting Sea currents and as you should know sea currents can dictate our weather.

As far as the science of Global warming is concerned it is rather in depth so look it up on the net.

Answer 3

of course it will...

due to global warming, the ices in north and south pole will melt and floods will occur. rainy season will be shorter but many strong typhoons will occur during that short rainy season...

so start saving the nature!

Answer 4

The rise of sea level will flood low level area and small islands will disappear. Some countries will be hit by some sort of weird natural disaster.

Answer 5

If we do nothing coastal areas will flood, first in storms, then all the time.  The cost of stuff we lose and relocating people will be enormous.  So will the cost of repairing damage to agriculture.  Those costs will affect you personally.  Poor countries can't afford that, so a lot of people will die of starvation.  You're safe there.

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNe...

We can't avoid it entirely, but if we start to work now, we can reduce it to the point where we can cope with it without losing a whole lot of money and without a lot of people dying.

Answer 6

The precise direct effects will depend on where you live. Some places will experience worsened flooding from the sea as it rises and storm surges become more violent. Some will see more drought, some more rain, and some few places will see hardly any difference for a decade or more.

Then things start to get tricky. As the climate changes, species adapted to the old climate will have three choices - adapt to the new climate, move to keep pace with their preferred climate, or die out.

For some species, there is nowhere to go - Polar bears are the most charismatic example, but mountain plants are another - they cannot go any higher up the mountain than the top of it. For most species the rate of change is too rapid and severe to make adaptation possible.

So many species - especially wild plants and smaller animal and bacterial species that cannot move very fast - will begin to die off in large numbers. This will disrupt ecosystems and could allow agressive, invasive species to take over. It could also cause them to collapse and large parts of the world will turn to desert. This is already happening in the worlds oceans, as shark numbers are collapsing and algal blooms creating dead zones.

Around this point the glaciers on the Hymalayas will finish melting and the rivers systems of India and China will start to dry up. Over 2 billion people will find themselves living in deserts with no fresh water to drink. Many of them will die in famines that will make Ethiopia in the 80s look like a burger shortage at MacDonalds. The rest will pick up the nearest AK47 and head north into Siberia (which is now fertile, mild and the breadbasket of the world) to find something to eat and drink.

If the global economy hasn't collapsed by this point, it will when Canadian food crops (the US midwest having become a dustbowl a decade or so previously) succumb to increasingly unpredictable weather patterns. The various wars that have been going on all this time then coalesce into one final cataclysm to determine ownership of the remaining fertile lands. The war will continue until some time after the global population is reduced below that which the land can support using low-tech agriculture, which will be about 250 million in total.

Then the methane clathrates on the ocean bed will be warmed up enough to effervesce. Vast quantities of methane will be released into the atmosphere, bumping temperatures up another 5 degrees. All remaining land surfaces will be turned to desert, and the oceans will become barren as well. Life will be reduced to a few lizards and mice, living off scrub vegetation. The remaining humans will live in a few isolated communities on the mountains of Antarctica, struggling to raise a crop in poor soil.

Or we could make our politicians do something about it now. Vote for a carbon tax. Vote for ANY international agreement that gets things moving, even Kyoto which was fatally undermined by the US negotiators obsessed with short termism, and then, once they had got all they wanted, abandoned by the corrupt Bush administration.

Answer 7

yes, a very big deal. its not something that can be fixed by one. it takes a mass amount of people to fix it.

Answer 8

you sound like you're really afraid to die

or suffer from heat...

you should stop rocking and start planting for good!!!

Answer 9

omg 1 degree! who's to say thats due mostly to human activities, we dont have data older than about 200 years on temperature, rainfall amounts, sea levels etc to accurately track climate changes; this "warming" may be just a cycle that the earth naturally goes through.  also what is the margin of error on the report released by the EPA? they could be totally skewing their numbers.  in total, dont worry about it, even if this "trend" continues it'll be about 5 degrees warmer in the middle of december when u die.

Answer 10

global warming is cause by greenhouse gasses right? well hate to break it to but eventually the greenhouse gasses will reflect the suns heat not absorb it and the oncoming ice age will happend...

Answer 11

If the water rises a few feet. Most of the valuable real estate, factories, industry will be gone. The economy of the world will collapse. People who are paying off houses on higher land will suffer from really high interest rates because the banks will have to recoup the losses of the trillions of dollars that have gone under water. People in low areas will lose everything. Then it will be all out civil war and anarchy across the globe.

So yes, global warming may have some impact on your social life.

Answer 12

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange

http://www.algore.com

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/...

The DVD "An Inconvenient Truth"

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/04/...

Countries such as The Maldives are disappearing forever now.

Hurricanes are getting stronger due to warmer ocean water.

Fast melting of Greenland ice cap may cause another Ice Age if Ocean Conveyor current is halted.

Birds migrations are being effected.

Bees are dying off. Now. Beekeepers are finding hives empty, and bees pollinate crops

(fruits, veggies).

Large lakes have gone dry (Sudan). This is one of the causes of the Darfur problem, scarce water.

A few degrees F over the whole world is the difference between drought and an ice age.

Answer 13

yes... good or bad depends on where u live

contries like finland, norway, USA will actually benefit from global warming

whereas countries like India, Bangladesh are going to suffer, they will 1st experience massive floods and then endless droughts. resulting in millions of deaths

it also depends on how rich the country is. the richer countries will be able to adapt more easily and will thus benefit from global warming. skii resorts in the alps will become casinos and spas. so once again poor countries are done for

btw, water levels will rise  several feet a few inches

Answer 14

Global warming will have many effects on daily life. When sea levels rise further (which will be due to glacial melting not sea ice melting) all low lying regions will be submerged by water. And if you notice most capital cities lie in coastal areas so this could be a problem. Temperature change will have drastic impacts on plant and animal life. Significant reductions in species will occur, thus food and livestock quantities will decrease in our constantly growing population. Thus feeding our population will be problematic.