Still hotly debated by some, human-induced global warming is now accepted in the scientific community. Earth’s average yearly temperature is getting steadily warmer; sea levels are rising due to melting ice caps; and the resulting impact on ocean life, wildlife, and human life is already evident. The human-induced buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere poses serious and diverse threats to life on earth. As scientists work to develop accurate models to predict the future impact of global earth warming, researchers, policy makers, and industry leaders are coming to terms with what can be done today to halt and reverse the human contributions to global climate change impact.
In the “business as usual” emissions scenario, climate change will have an array of substantial impacts on our society and the environment by the end of this century. Patterns of rainfall and drought are projected to shift in such a way that some regions currently stressed for water resources, such as the desert southwest of the United States and the Middle East, are likely to become drier. More intense rainfall events in other regions, such as Europe and the mid-western United States, could lead to increased flooding. Heat waves like the one in Europe in summer 2003, which killed more than thirty thousand people, are projected to become far more common. Atlantic hurricanes are likely to reach greater intensities, potentially doing far more damage to coastal infrastructure.
Furthermore, regions such as the Arctic are expected to warm faster than the rest of the globe. Disappearing Arctic sea ice already threatens wildlife, including polar bears and walruses. Given another 2°C warming (3.6°F), a substantial portion of the Greenland ice sheet is likely to melt. This event, combined with other factors, could lead to more than 1 meter (about 3 feet) of sea-level rise by the end of the century. Such a rise in sea level would threaten many American East Coast and Gulf Coast cities, as well as low-lying coastal regions and islands around the world. Food production in tropical regions, already insufficient to meet the needs of some populations, will probably decrease with future greenhouse global warming. Thee incidence of infectious disease is expected to increase in higher elevations and in latitudes with long term warming temperatures. In short, the impacts of future climate change are likely to have a devastating impact on society and our environment in the absence of intervention.
We had expressed our disagreement with Biofuels and tell them also that the European Union also wants to distance themselves from them. Now the FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture) has been enacted against biofuels in its annual report. The main problem with biofuels is that the growing of them, occupy spaces before for food, and to create more spaces and woodlands are only by cutting down forests. (more…)
The leading automotive brands are being focused to produce electric vehicles because they believe they represent a harmony to the environment and climate change solution. (more…)
A vece the attempt to find alternatives to fossil fuels leads to something worse, such as biofuels or agrofuels, considering the drawbacks of biofuels. In Tenerife (See Hotels in Tenerife) is doing great damage to biodiversity, forests and jungles, the environment, and after all does not help in the fight against climate change. (more…)
Although the focus of many policy studies of climate change is on establishing the causal links between anthropogenic systems, emissions of greenhouse gases climate change, the line of causation also runs the other way. Short-term fluctuations in climate conditions, particularly in the temperate zones on the planet, affect energy consumption. If the popular expectation that the climate will become warmer becomes a reality, we can expect winters and summers that are warmer than those of the past. (more…)
In recent years, there has been a greater understanding of the role of automotive emissions as environmental pollutants. Sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and carbon monoxide degrade the earth’s atmosphere and are health hazards. Carbon dioxide adds to the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gases and in turn accelerates the process of global warming. (more…)
The quantification of the actual reduction in green house gases sourcess emissions resulting from the substitution of fossil fuels with energy from waste biomass requires a complete lifecycle assessment (LCA). A systematic framework for estimating the net Green House Gases emissions from bioenergy systems and comparing them against the fossil fuel reference system that it would replace has been developed. The major considerations of the life cycle assessment approach to quantifying the greenhouse impacts of bioenergy are as follows: (more…)
As a result of high and rising costs of fossil fuels and fossil fuels affect global environment concern , and by the reduction of greenhouse effect gases from burning causes (Kyoto Protocol), the heat recovery gain importance growing. A heat exchanger absorbs a significant portion of the heat energy of the gases generated during combustion of solid fuel, liquid and gas in the smelting process, heating, roasting, and drying. (more…)
It is of interest to examine potential sources of greenhouse gases sources or atmospheric CO2 by analysis of the global distribution of carbon in all its forms. Atmospheric carbon, which can be assumed to be essentially all in the form of CO2 (i.e., 700 Gt carbon equals 2570 Gt of CO2) comprises only about 1.6% of total global carbon, excluding lithospheric carbon. Obvious greenhouse gases sources of direct or indirect additions of CO2 to the atmosphere are therefore fossil fuel deposits, since portions of them are combusted each year as fuels, and terrestrial biomass. (more…)
Since preindustrial times, ambient concentrations of the greenhouse gases have exhibited substantial increases, inter alia CO2 by 30% to about 360 parts per million (ppm), CH 4 by 145% to more than 1700 parts per billion (ppb), and N20 by 15% to more than 300 ppb. The growth rates in the concentrations of these gases in the early 1990s were lower than predicted; while subsequent data indicate that the growth rates are comparable to those averaged over the 1980s. (more…)
