MargretLover
Joined: Mar 28, 2005
Posts: 11 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Soft-spoken
User is
Offline
Gender & Age: Female & 22
Country: United States
Province/State: Oregon
City: Port Orford
|
Global Warming.
April 7, 2005 - 12:31 PM
|
|
Do you remember when i asked about Global Warming. Well all of your info has really helped and here is the finished project:
Global warming is everybody’s problem
By Cynthia McGowan
Rain, fog, partly cloudy . . . do those terms sound familiar? How about drought, flooding, and greenhouse gases? Not so familiar?
Well, they are in great danger of becoming so all over the globe.
Carbon dioxide (CO2), one of the main greenhouse gases that keep this planet from becoming a cold rotating rock, rises and falls seasonally. But with the burning of carbon-laden fossil fuels (the ones used for factories, homes and cars), the CO2 level is rising.
When the CO2 level rises, it throws out of whack the whole delicate cycle that keeps the planet alive. CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide are the three key greenhouse gases, and when one becomes unequal to the rest, a significant change in the climate will be evident.
Actually, it has already started to happen. Places such as Alaska, Chad, Bangladesh, and Madison, Wisconsin, have begun to feel the harsh reality of climate change.
Forest fires, melting glaciers, and above average heat have all affected Alaska in one way or another. Roads that were once even and straight have become crooked and disheveled, and it’s not an earthquake that caused this, it’s ice. It once held the roads together and straight, but since the warming of the region and its permafrost layer, that is no more.
And humans and their surroundings aren’t the only things affected by the climate change, animals are feeling it, too. In the Antarctic, Adelie penguins are reducing in numbers. One colony that once had 320 breeding pairs now has 54; that was between 1990 and 2004. These penguins have dwindled in numbers because the sea ice on which they once hunted has retreated by a fifth by the mid-1970s.
Animals from all over the globe are losing numbers and moving from areas in which they had lived for generations. In Glacier National Park, Montana, glaciers that once covered 800 acres now only cover about 300. The park that once boasted about 150 glaciers is now hanging on with less than 30. And most of the remaining glaciers have shrunk in area to about two-thirds. This melting is causing animals to move from their homes to find better places to live. The roaming of animals to find homes is killing many of them, and in a way disturbing the natural order of ecosystems.
All of this is happening because of the gases we burn and the things we use. The greenhouse gases have a special and delicate balance, and if it is disturbed, life becomes chaotic. Sea levels will rise because of melting ice and floods will occur. Droughts will happen because the warming evaporates much of the water that many people depend on.
Global warming is everyone’s problem because everyone, in some way or another, will be affected by it.
Thank you everyone.
|
Home
Community
Author
Post
