I’m sure you have heard that global warming is the number one culprit for: flooding, droughts, unusual weather patterns, sea levels rising, these are all head liners in news papers these days and blamed on the inhabitants of our planet Earth but is global warming fact or fiction?

As big industry carries on spewing out smoke from high stacks, vehicles exhausts fumes are improving but the numbers are getting ever larger, fossil fuel burners, and so on and so on, but are the perceived dangers truly a reality?

Global warming fact or fiction

Global warming refers to recent global climate change that the IPCC has attributed to measured increasing levels of Atmospheric CO2 from Human activity. IPCC is the acronym for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, founded in 1988 by the United Nations.

To raise awareness about the impact of global warming, WWF-Paraguay made a lunch cooked on the asphalt.

Global warming fact or fiction?

The effects of carbon emissions seem to be the elephant in the room in our world.

We are all aware of the abuses of our environment and yet we do not compromise our lifestyles.

Global Warming – Conclusive Evidence Below

Damage control would cost money, regulating carbon emissions to an effective degree would cost money, and who would want to deplete their pocketbook; certainly not most big businesses.

So I ask, how worthwhile is the pursuit of wealth if your children’s children will not benefit from it?

Is wealth truly so pleasurable at the expensive of mankind?

Global warming can affect:

• Sea levels
• Coastlines
• Ocean acidification
• Ocean currents
• Seawater
• Sea surface temperatures
• Tides
• The sea floor
• Weather

Plus it can trigger lots of changes in ocean bio geochemistry; all of these affect the functioning of a society.

Global warming fact or fiction – smoke stacks

Global warming also has an enormous impact with respect to melting glaciers and ice sheets.

Higher global temperatures melt glaciers such as the one in Greenland, which flow into the oceans, adding to the amount of seawater.

A large rise (on the order of several feet) in global sea levels poses many threats.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “such a rise would inundate coastal wetlands and lowlands, erode beaches, increase the risk of flooding, and increase the salinity of estuaries, aquifers, and wetlands.”

Global warming conspiracy theorists typically allege that, through worldwide acts of professional and criminal misconduct, the science behind global warming has been invented or distorted for ideological or financial reasons, or both.

They would, wouldn’t they!!

Global warming also affects weather patterns as they pertain to cyclones.

Scientists have found that although there have been fewer cyclones than in the past, the intensity of each cyclone has increased.

A simplified definition of what global warming means for the planet is that colder regions would get warmer and warmer regions would get much warmer.

However, there is also speculation that the complete opposite could be true.

A warmer earth could serve to moderate temperatures worldwide. There is still much that is not understood about the earth’s climate, because it is very difficult to make climate models.

As such, predicting the effects that global warming might have on our planet is still an inexact science.

Global warming effects on Earth affect many things like animals, plants, weather, glacier, humans, economy and many other things.

The Earth’s average temperature for each year of the last decade has been in the top 25 high temperatures of all time.

Indeed, 1998 and 2005 the warmest year in the history of the Earth.

The planet is getting warmer every day, and only because the change is gradual, we cannot ignore the fact that we are vulnerable to the threat of global warming.

The consequence of global warming and its effects on Earth is legion.

Many animal species are disappearing from the planet due to loss of habitat caused by global warming.

We need your help…

Even plants have not been spared from suffering the effects of global warming on earth.

Since the drastic temperature levels, different species of plants have had difficulty adapting to the area where once flourished.

Rising temperatures will lead to negative effects of the weather. Even minor changes in global temperatures will trigger a series of extreme weather and changing weather patterns around the world.

One of the worst effects of global warming on Earth is a long term time and permanent ice cover on the planet.

The evidence for global warming due to human influence has been recognized by the national science academies of all the major industrialized countries.

No scientific body of national or international standing maintains a formal opinion dissenting from the summary conclusions of the IPCC.

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In simple terms, global warming refers to an overabundance of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. This carbon dioxide traps heat and acts like a blanket warming the earth. Humans are contributing to the excess amounts of carbon dioxide present in our atmosphere in many ways.

The current debate on global warming isn’t so much whether it exists, as to what is natural and what is not. If man did not exist on Planet Earth, would global warming exist?

Perhaps if we all had a clearer idea about the effects on our daily lives, we would try to do more about global warming.

 

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I hope you have found this article – Global Warming Fact or Fiction – informative, and you will share your own experiences below in the comment box and please take the time to click on the share button, many thanks; see more articles on The Daily Green Post home page.

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Just when you thought it was safe to come in from the cold the Greenhouse Effect is being highlighted in the Arctic Ocean.

It seems wherever you look these days, there are new warnings on global warming, and now even the Arctic regions are coming under the spotlight.

Arctic Ocean could be source of greenhouse gas: study

Greenhouse Effect Arctic Ocean

A new airborne study with NASA contributions measured surprising levels of the potent greenhouse gas methane coming from cracks in Arctic sea ice and areas of partial sea ice cover.

(Phys.org) — The fragile and rapidly changing Arctic region is home to large reservoirs of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. As Earth’s climate warms, the methane, frozen in reservoirs stored in Arctic tundra soils or marine sediments, is vulnerable to being released into the atmosphere, where it can add to global warming.

Now a multi-institutional study by Eric Kort of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has uncovered a surprising and potentially important new source of Arctic methane: the ocean itself….
Kort, a JPL postdoctoral scholar affiliated with the Keck Institute of Space Studies at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, led the analysis while he was a student at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

During five HIPPO flights over the Arctic from 2009 to 2010, Kort’s team observed increased methane levels while flying at low altitudes over the remote Arctic Ocean, north of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.

The methane level was about one-half percent larger than normal background levels.

But where was the methane coming from?

The team detected no carbon monoxide in the atmosphere that would point to possible contributions from human combustion activities.

In addition, based on the time of year, location and nature of the emissions, it was extremely unlikely the methane was coming from high-latitude wetlands or geologic reservoirs.

By comparing locations of the enhanced methane levels with airborne measurements of carbon monoxide, water vapor and ozone, they pinpointed a source: the ocean surface, through cracks in Arctic sea ice and areas of partial sea ice cover.

More at Arctic Ocean could be source of greenhouse gas: study

I have to admit that as fascinating as this study is, it still leaves me feeling rather cold in a global warming kind of way, (sorry, I had to get that in).

I just wonder where we are heading next; what will the outcome of the next greenhouse effect be?

More Reading…
Arctic Ocean could be source of greenhouse gases – InterAksyon.com
Global warming: Colorado researchers pinpoint atmospheric …

The greenhouse effect is creating situations on a worldwide level and it’s causing problems to every kind of living thing, from us humans (who are the architects of the problems) and animals, plant life, you name it and it’s having an impact.

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I’ve come across two interesting articles on global warming and rising sea levels in the last few days; one from the National Geographic and the other from The Inquisitr.

They make for interesting reading, the first talks about rising sea levels and the second reports – Global Warming has paused: I’ve included links so you can read the full stories.

Global warming and rising sea levels

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More on Global Warming

About five million years ago, sea levels rose by up to 70 feet (20 meters) as ice sheets in the South Pole began melting during past instances of global warming and rising sea levels.

Ker Than for National Geographic Published July 23, 2013

Scientists have now concluded that about half of that sea-level rise was due to the thawing of a single, enormous ice sheet in East Antarctica that was once considered stable.

“We estimate from our study that the East Antarctic ice sheet contributed about 10 meters (33 feet) of sea-level rise,” said Carys Cook, a geochemist at Imperial College London in the U.K. and the first author of a new study that details the finding.

“Our study demonstrates that if carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures continue to rise, the East Antarctic ice sheet may become increasingly vulnerable to large changes,” Cook said.

The research is published in this week’s issue of the journal Nature Geo-science.

What’s new?

Scientists had previously known that the ice sheet of West Antarctica had melted and that Greenland’s ice sheet did not yet exist between five to three million years ago, during a geological period called the Pliocene epoch.

But the melting of such a significant part of the East Antarctic ice sheet is a surprise.

Roughly the size of Australia, the East Antarctic ice sheet is the largest ice mass on Earth. Its size has fluctuated since its formation 34 million years ago, but scientists had previously thought it had stabilized around 14 million years ago.

But recently, Cook and her team analyzed mud samples gathered by drilling nearly 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) beneath the seafloor off the coast of Antarctica.

“The good thing about drilling offshore into sediments is you can look at climate several million years back in time,” said study co-author Trevor Williams, a geophysicist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The mud that the scientists extracted carried a unique chemical fingerprint that allowed the scientists to trace where it came from on the continent.

But when the team analyzed mud from the Pliocene epoch, they found that it didn’t match sediments from the current coast of the ice sheet.

Why is it important?

Understanding glacial melt during the Pliocene could give scientists insight into how sea levels could rise as a result of current global warming.

What does this mean?

Cook and her team speculate that the melting of the East Antarctic ice sheet was caused in part by the fact that some of it rests in basins below sea level.

This puts the ice in direct contact with seawater, so when the ocean warmed during the Pliocene, the ice sheet became vulnerable to melting.

“Our work now shows that the East Antarctic ice sheet has been much more sensitive to climate change in the past than previously realized.
More on global warming and rising sea levels at…National Geographic

Global warming and rising sea levels – Antarctica

Has Global Warming Paused? – Scientists Say Yes
The Inquisitr

Scientists are now saying that global warming is on pause, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.

According to Cleveland.com, researchers in Great Britain report there currently is a “pause” in the gradual increase of worldwide temperatures.

They say that the earth has been on pause for the past 15 years, and surface temperatures on the earth have not increased on average since the late 1990s, officials with the U.K’s meteorological office report.

The Independent stated the following:

“A scientific assessment of the planet’s heat balance has found that the most likely explanation for the recent hiatus in global warming is the continual absorption of thermal energy by the huge “heat sink” of the deep ocean many hundreds of meters below the sea surface, according to scientists from the Met Office.”

Professor Rowan Sutton, a climate scientist at Reading University said, “some people call it a slow-down, some call it a hiatus, some people call it a pause. The global average surface temperature has not increased substantially over the last 10 to 15 years.”

“It looks like the Earth is continuing to accumulate energy but it looks like it is being re-arranged and hidden from view,” he said.

So global warming is on pause, and not going away according to scientists.

More at… The Inquisitr

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More on Global Warming

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Global warming effects

After going through numerous reports and articles, I settled on this report from CNN, I hope you find it of interest.

Global warming effects is epic, long-term study says
By Ben Brumfield, CNN

(CNN) — Global warming has propelled Earth’s climate from one of its coldest decades since the last ice age to one of its hottest — in just one century.

A heat spike like this has never happened before, at least not in the last 11,300 years, said climatologist Shaun Marcott, who worked on a new study on global temperatures going back that far.

It is a good indicator of just how fast man-made climate change has progressed.

A century is a very short period of time for such a spike.

It’s supposed to be cold
The Earth was very cold at the turn of the 20th century. The decade from 1900 to 1909 was colder than 95% of the last 11,300 years, the study found.

Fast forward to the turn of the 21st century, and the opposite occurs. Between 2000 and 2009, it was hotter than about 75% of the last 11,300 years.

If not for man-made influences, the Earth would be in a very cold phase right now and getting even colder, according the joint study by Oregon State University and Harvard University.
Marcott was the lead author of the report on its results.

To boot, the range of temperatures from cold to hot produced since the industrial revolution began are about the same as the 11,000 years before it, said Candace Major from the National Science Foundation, “but this change has happened a lot more quickly.”

Global warming effects – Polar Bear

Far from natural warming
Variations in how the Earth is tilted and its orbit around the sun make for a pattern of planetary warming phases followed by cooling phases across the millennia.

The team’s research shows the Earth’s overall temperature curve dipping down over about the past 4,000 years, but the downward plod comes to an abrupt halt in modern times.

“If you were to predict — based on where we are relative to the position of the sun and how we are tilted — you would predict that we would be still cooling, but we’re not,” Marcott said.

Instead, the planet is warming up. It hasn’t been quite this warm in thousands of years. And it’s getting hotter.

By 2100, the Earth will be warmer than ever before, Marcott said.

What a long range study means
To get a view on global temperatures that long ago, the researchers studied 73 sediment and polar ice samples, taken from all over the globe.

Chemicals found in fossils deep down in the samples span the ages and are good indicators of historic temperatures on Earth, Marcott said.

Humanity in the last 11,500 years
The scientists chose the period of time known as the “Holocene” for their research, because it is the most recent natural warm phase in Earth’s history. It began at the end of the last Ice Age about 11,500 years ago, and we are still in it.

Eventually, man invented machines, landing themselves in the industrialized age, driven by engines and turbines, which are powered by combustible fuel.
Thus began man-made greenhouse gases.

The world tomorrow
The main culprit is carbon dioxide, and its levels have jumped in the last 100 years, Marcott said.

The last time Earth has been as warm as it is projected to be by 2100 was before the last Ice Age started — over 130,000 years ago

…More at Global warming is epic, long-term study says – CNN International

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Is it time to start worrying about Global Warming yet?

If not now, when?

Take a  look at the information below, it makes a case for: ‘we had better start taking a much closer look at the impact we are having on our environment while there is still a small possibility that we can  make a difference’ and start to turn the clock back.

Arctic Sea Ice Thickness – Projections

Arctic sea ice set to hit record low
By M. Kinver – Environment reporter, BBC News

Arctic sea ice looks set to hit a record low by the end of the month, according to satellite data.

Scientists at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said data showed that the sea ice extent was tracking below the previous record low, set in 2007.

Latest figures show that on 13 August ice extent was 483,000 sq km (186,000 sq miles) below the previous record low for the same date five years ago.

The ice is expected to continue melting until mid- to late September.”A new daily record… would be likely by the end of August,” the centre’s lead scientist, Ted Scambos, told Reuters.

“Chances are it will cross the previous record while we are still in ice retreat.”

‘Rapid melt’

Sea ice extent refers to a measurement of the area of Arctic Ocean that contains at least some sea ice. Areas with less than 15% are considered by scientists to mark the ice edge.

In its latest summary, the centre said the average rate of ice loss since late June had been “rapid”, with just over 100,000 sq km melting each day.

However, it added, the rate of loss doubled for a few days earlier this month during a major storm.

Responding to the latest update, Prof Seymour Laxon, professor of climate physics at University College London, said that he was not surprised that 2012 was set to deliver a record minimum.

“We got very close to a record minimum last year,” he told BBC News.

“The fact that Cryosat showed thinner ice last winter, it is not surprising to me that it looks like we will have a record minimum this year.”

Cryosat is a radar spacecraft operated by the European Space Agency (Esa) that was launched in 2010 to monitor changes in the thickness and shape of polar ice.

Prof Laxon added that this year’s projected record minimum could result in a change in projections of when the Arctic would be sea ice-free during summer months.

“The previous [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report (published in 2007) stated that the likely date for an ice-free Arctic in the summer – and definitions for this vary a bit – was 2100,” he explained.

“When we had the 2007 minimum, that date was brought forward to 2030-2040.

“The fact that we look set to get another record ice minimum in such a short space of time means that the modellers may once again need to go and look at what their projections are telling them.”

Arctic sea ice plays a key role in help keep polar regions cool and helps control the global climate system.

As the ice has a bright surface, it reflects about 80% of the sunlight that hits it back into space.

When the sea ice melts, it exposes more of the dark ocean surface, resulting in 90% of the sunlight being absorbed, which warms the Arctic ocean.

More at… BBC News

Below is very informative video about the increase of speed in the flow of ice from the ice-sheets in Greenland.

Since measurements of Jakobshavn Isbrae were first taken in 1850, the glacier has gradually receded, finally coming to rest at a certain point for the past 5 decades. However, from 1997 to 2006, the glacier has begun to recede again, this time almost doubling in speed.

This animation shows the flow of the Jakobshavn glacier and is narrated by Waleed Abdalati, head of the Cryospheric Sciences Branch at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

If you have any observations or comments you would like to share on the  ‘Arctic Sea Ice Thickness‘ debate; please leave them below, many thanks.

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Wherever you look these days, more and more evidence is coming to light regarding the plight of our planet due to the effects of  ‘Global Warming’.

I intend to highlight this topic as and when I discover new areas that are being affected by global warming.

Oxycheilinus Digramma (Cheeklined Wrasse)

By Leonard Low, Australia (Flickr) CC-BY-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Here is an interesting article below about the movements of fish in the Australian waters, if you would like to share your views on the subject, leave your comments at the bottom of this post.

Australian scientists said Friday there was now “striking evidence” of extensive southward migration of tropical fish and declines in other species due to climate change, in a major ocean report card.

Compiled by more than 80 of Australia’s leading marine experts for the government science body CSIRO, the snapshot of global warming’s effects on the island continent’s oceans warned of “significant impacts”.

“Climate change is already happening; widespread physical changes include rapid warming of the southeast and increasing flow of the east Australia current,” the report said.

“There is now striking evidence of extensive southward movements of tropical fish and plankton species in southeast Australia, declines in abundance of temperate species, and the first signs of the effect of ocean acidification on marine species with shells.”

The report described southeast Australia as a “global warming hotspot”, with the contraction south and strengthening of southern hemisphere winds causing the eastern current to become more intense and also warmer.

“A range of species including plankton, fish and invertebrates are now found further south because of the enhanced transport of larvae and juveniles in the stronger (current) and the high rate of regional warming,” it said.

Sea snakes were declining and warmer beaches were changing turtle breeding habits and seabird and marine mammal feeding and mating, it added.

Coral reefs had experienced increasing thermal bleaching in the past 30 years and that was projected to become more frequent and severe, “leading to chronic degradation of most coral reefs by the middle to late parts of the century.”

Poloczanska said Australia had some unique marine ecosystems and they provided “irreplaceable services including coastal defence, oxygen production, nutrient recycling and climate regulation”.

“Every second breath of oxygen we breathe is provided by marine plants.” 

I bet you didn’t know that!

….More at Times Live

Odax Acroptilus

By Richard Ling (Flickr) CC-BY-SA-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Staggering, isn’t amazing the things you learn when you are researching an article?

Many, many years ago I went for a vacation to the Great Barrier Reef, I never at that time gave a second thought to global warming and how it was causing such problems on a global scale.

If you enjoyed this ‘global warming news article’ – or at least found it of interest, perhaps you would leave your comments below or award it a like on Facebook; everything helps to get the word out.

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America, after weeks of delays have finally got their act together and put Polar Bears on the endangered species list.

After delaying a decision for several weeks, the U.S. government today listed the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), creating new protections for the bears in their Alaskan habitat.

But officials emphasized that the decision will not be used to determine U.S. climate policy.

At today’s announcement, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne noted the dramatic decline of Arctic sea ice as the greatest threat to the bears.

Polar bears live in the Arctic and hunt seals and other fatty marine mammals from sea ice.

They also travel, mate, and sometimes give birth on the ice.

But sea ice is melting as the planet warms, and it is predicted to continue to do so for several more decades.

“Because polar bears are vulnerable to this loss of habitat, they are—in my judgement—likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future,” Kempthorne said during a press briefing.

Because the U.S. classifies the polar bear as a marine mammal, the rule means that the bear’s new threatened status will not impact oil exploration within its habitat.

Subsistence harvesting of polar bears and interstate trade in native handicrafts made from the animals will also be allowed to continue.

However, the listing means that import of polar bear products from Canada—where trophy hunting is still legal—will now be banned.

More at: Polar Bears Listed as Threatened Species in U.S

There were mixed reactions globally; most agreeing that it was a step in the right direction but that there was a long way still to go.

The key to success is generally seen as needing more International Cooperation on the endangered species lists.

I hope you have found this article – Endangered Species – informative, and you will share your own experiences below in the comment box and please take the time to click on the share button, many thanks; see more articles on The Daily Green Post home page.

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