Lol, i believe global warming is actually a very huge topic, and there are many many ways of looking at it. 1 is of ourse, you look at what is likely to happen in the next 50 or so years. If you want to look at the really long term, 1000+ years and more, go read up "A short history of nearly everything" by Bill Bryson, i wouldn't care to elaborate.
Basically, when we release more greenhouse gases(carbon dioxide for example), it traps the heat inside the earth's atmosphere. The result, is more energy being present on earth. Remember that energy cannot be created, or destroyed, the only way is to throw them back into outer space
. I'll touch on this excessive energy later.
So what does more energy mean for the world? Actually, i don't know. I'll just raise some examples.
1. Extremes of climate on earth. The areas near the equator will get warmer, thus, desertification in areas like Africa is going to affect agriculture there, and whatsoever other problems. The areas near the north and south pole, however, may get cooler. The higher energy levels present will cause some of the iceshelfs on the edge of these poles to break off, and thus, cause problems and so on(yea, i know you all watched the day after tomorrow)
2. More of the weird weird stuff, like hurricanes and earthquakes. As we all know, there has been a great rise in the incidence of hurricanes(tropical cyclones), tsunamis, and earthquakes, whatever. I dunno much about the earthquake part.But for the hurricanes, this is what happens. Take the analogy of a hurricane as a cake. One of the ingredients you need will be a huge body of warm water(so that they evaporate quickly and so on), which is why it never happens in the north, or south, only the tropial areas get hit the most. With the advent of global warming, ppl guess that seawaters(near the equator) will get warmer, thus the higher incidence of hurricanes. Perhaps some earthquake specialist can tell us what's happening there.
3. The rise of pests, like mozzies in the tropical areas. Mosquitoes, and the what nots, thrive at a temperature slightly higher than the usual(not the high temperatures will not cause them to die, haha, that's a myth). Thus, they will reporduce and get higher in numbers. This will cause problems like the spread of dengue fever and malaria(S'pore has been whacked by dengue fever real bad this year, 2 of my friends got hit
)
Haha, i guess i'll touch on solutions of global warming right now(reminds me of my geography classes, local, regional, global) What i meant is that you can deal with it on different scales, the local(which is what changes you can make to your lifestyle), the regional(what your country and your neighbouring countries can do as a group), and the global(agreement countries around the world can make to curb carbon emissions)
For the local, i guess spencer will be touching on them. For the regional, we have examples like the ASEAN Haze Pact(basically to stop indonesia from burning its forests). On the global scale, we have stuff like the Kyoto Protocol(which the US didn't sign
) All these pacts and agreements are a good sign, but they are not effective. Take the Haze Pact for example, indonesia, the culprit itself wouldnt sign the Pact, and the Kyoto Protocol, which the US wouldn't sign
The truth is that will we are making efforts to cut down on all this carbon emissions, we should have done so a long time ago, and its starting to take its toll now. So even if we take taking action, there will be damages, and poeple will be saying(see we are doing this and this and this, but it didn't work). And, the sad fact is, what we do, changing lifestyle and so on(it will still help a lot), may not stop the situation much unless the ppl at the top stop talking and start takin action.
look forward to reading up on it Spence
Linear Mode
