Global warming

General note : not again!!!!

Major causes:= Sun , Fire below us, natural cycles , deforestation, Development, Global filling & pollution by nature and humans.

Effect on :- humans and nature.

no answer, but some people said its because of more co2 release into air space. I dont k ow if its right.

According to the 'research' I have read, many malenia ago the oxygen levels were down under 5% (currently about 22% if I remember right). It is only because these things called 'plants' started to 'photosynthesize' as part of their life cycle, that converted CO2 into 'excessive levels' of O2 or what we call gasisous Oxygen.

The latest part of the fable I have heard is we are generating to much Nitrogen in the atmosphere, as it was stated in the press. Since the current atmosphere is mostly Nitrogen (about 76% or so), the way it was stated causes me some issues. ... Looking more deeply I could understand if they said something about 'nitrogen compounds' (in agricultural terms, that turns out to be ammonia in various forms ... used as fertilizer in most of the world). Actually composting organic matter (whether it be on the forest floor, or in compost piles, or sewer treatment plants) also releases ammonia / nitrogen into the atmosphere.

Yes, much of the WAY I said the forgoing is toung in cheek humor. Are there some real problems we are percieving? Probably. ... Does man have anything to do with them? Again, probably. But I doubt to the extent the 'chicken littles' of our world are calling due to the way people tend to over-dramatize anything they are passionate about. ... All in all, I would like for us to do some 'sensable' things, that reduce ALL OF OUR footprints, whether it is carbon, nitrogen, excessive resource usage, helium (yes, we are getting much closer to running out of industrial helium world wide, and the USA still has the largest helium deposits underground around Amarillo TX), or anything else.

Big government is not the answer. Big companies are not the answer. People are. In the 'old days' (1960's?) the term used was 'act locally, think globaly'. For the most part that still works.

Cause and effect for global warming

Cause of global warming

Almost 100% of the observed temperature increase over the last 50 years has been due to the increase in the atmosphere of greenhouse gas concentrations like water vapour, carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane and ozone. Greenhouse gases are those gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect (see below). The largest contributing source of greenhouse gas is the burning of fossil fuels leading to the emission of carbon dioxide.

The greenhouse effect

When sunlight reaches Earth's surface some is absorbed and warms the earth and most of the rest is radiated back to the atmosphere at a longer wavelength than the sun light. Some of these longer wavelengths are absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere before they are lost to space. The absorption of this longwave radiant energy warms the atmosphere. These greenhouse gases act like a mirror and reflect back to the Earth some of the heat energy which would otherwise be lost to space. The reflecting back of heat energy by the atmosphere is called the "greenhouse effect".

The major natural greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36-70% of the greenhouse effect on Earth (not including clouds); carbon dioxide CO₂, which causes 9-26%; methane, which causes 4-9%, and ozone, which causes 3-7%. It is not possible to state that a certain gas causes a certain percentage of the greenhouse effect, because the influences of the various gases are not additive. Other greenhouse gases include, but are not limited to, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and chlorofluorocarbons.

Global warming causes by greenhouse effect

Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (see above) act like a mirror and reflect back to the Earth a part of the heat radiation, which would otherwise be lost to space. The higher the concentration of green house gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the more heat energy is being reflected back to the Earth. The emission of carbon dioxide into the environment mainly from burning of fossil fuels (oil, gas, petrol, kerosene, etc.) has been increased dramatically over the past 50 years, see graph below.

Fig. 1: Cause for global warming: Carbon dioxide emissions in million tons per year over the last 200 years. (graph taken from http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Global_Carbon_Emission_by_Type_png)

Fig. 2: Global warming cause: Concentration of carbon dioxide has dramatically increased in the last 50 years (Source: NOAA)

Fig 2: Trends for greenhouse gases: Carbon dioxide (CO₂) and nitrous oxide (NO_x) concentrations in the atmosphere are still increasing. For the other major greenhouse gases, the steady upward trend has been broken. (Graph taken from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bb/Major_greenhouse_gas_trends.png)

Fig 3: From which sectors do the major greenhouse gas emissions come from? The lower part of the picture shows the sources individually for the gases carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, respectively. (Graph from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Greenhouse_Gas_by_Sector.png)

The increase of greenhouse gas concentration (mainly carbon dioxide) led to a substantial warming of the earth and the sea, called global warming. In other words: The increase in the man-made emission of greenhouse gases is the cause for global warming. For the effects of global warming see below.

Effects of global warming

There are two major effects of global warming:

• Increase of temperature on the earth by about 3° to 5° C (34° to 41° Fahrenheit) by the year 2100.

• Rise of sea levels by at least 25 meters (82 feet) by the year 2100.

More details about the effects of global warming :

Increasing global temperatures are causing a broad range of changes. Sea levels are rising due to thermal expansion of the ocean, in addition to melting of land ice. Amounts and patterns of precipitation are changing. The total annual power of hurricanes has already increased markedly since 1975 because their average intensity and average duration have increased (in addition, there has been a high correlation of hurricane power with tropical sea-surface temperature).

Changes in temperature and precipitation patterns increase the frequency, duration, and intensity of other extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, and tornadoes. Other effects of global warming include higher or lower agricultural yields, further glacial retreat, reduced summer stream flows, species extinctions. As a further effect of global warming, diseases like malaria are returning into areas where they have been extinguished earlier.

Although global warming is affecting the number and magnitude of these events, it is difficult to connect specific events to global warming. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming is expected to continue past then because carbon dioxide (chemical symbol CO₂) has an estimated atmospheric lifetime of 50 to 200 years.

For whom enough is too little - nothing is ever enough.

this is sakthi....an indian

From how I read the graphs, individually as 'non-company, non-government' entities, we have little say over what really gets done when ALL Of our direct actions collectively are only 10.3% (with a portion of the transportation pie, so assume it takes it up to 12.5% making only 1/8 of the energy do we have any personal direct say over how we use it).

propaganda and false assumptions.

Probably since I got the numbers from the EPA web site.

As to the effects, extinction is a possibility.....

It's happened before, it will happen again. We are all dinosaurs of one kind or another. Even if we hold it off, in a several million years we will be consumed when our sun runs out of Hydrogen and starts burning the Helium it has generated anyway.

Interesting that we were fighting the upcoming ice age just 40 years ago. I guess we won that battle!

I wonder when we will be fighting the next ice age? Another 40 years? ... I wouldn't doubt it.

I have some nagging questions.

Hasn't the earth been warming since 1850, the end of the Little Ice Age? This was long before "greenhouse gases." People used to ice skate on the Hudson river during Revolutionary War days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

Why is there global warming on Mars? Do our greenhouse gases reach that far?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html

Why can't scientists who diasgree with the politically correct view of global warming (i.e., WE caused it) get government grants to study it? Seems like all government-funded research is one sided.

http://yourdaddy.net/2010/06/27/2009-senate-testimony-claims-global-warming-research-grants-diverted-from-scientist-that-disagree/

I don't doubt that the earth is warming a little--what, 2 degrees in the past 100 years?--but I don't think we caused it.