Global warming is the warming near the earth 's surface that results when the earth 's atmosphere traps the sun 's heat. The earth is getting warmer. The changes are small, so far, but they are expected to grow and speed up. This year we are experiencing record breaking high temperatures all over the world, this is due to global warming. Within the next fifty to one hundred years, the earth may be hotter than it has been in the past million years. As oceans warm and glaciers melt, land and cities along coasts may be flooded. Heat and drought may cause forests to die and food crops to fail. Global warming will affect weather everywhere, plants and animals everywhere, people everywhere; humans are warming the earth 's atmosphere by burning fuels,
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In many parts of the world today, forests are being destroyed at an alarming rate. Enormous numbers of trees are being cut down, both to provide timber and to clear the land for farming or ranching. This destructive process is called deforestation. In order to clear forests for agriculture, people cut down and burn all the trees in area. When the flames die down, nothing is left but acres of blackened, lifeless countryside. The fire destroys all the plants and kills or drives off the animals. Because there has been little attempt to replant trees in deforested areas, the world 's forests are disappearing very quickly. Deforestation makes the problem of the greenhouse effect worse in two ways. When trees are burned, carbon dioxide is released into the air. Some researchers think that the large-scale burning of forests around the world adds at least one billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year. But deforestation does more than just add carbon dioxide into the air. To also eliminates countless numbers of carbon dioxide-absorbing trees from the environment. As fewer and fewer trees are left to take up carbon dioxide, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases faster and faster. NASA predicts that if current deforestation levels proceed, the world 's rainforests may be completely in as little as 100 …show more content…
The first half of 2012 's historic drought saw more than 80 percent of the country in abnormally dry or drought conditions in mid-July. Drought of course threatens our water and food supplies and is driving up the cost of everything from corn to milk. Unfortunately, drought conditions are expected to become the new normal for many parts of the country if we don’t do more to address climate change.There are solutions to addressing the effects of drought. For one thing, we can stop wasting so much water, and energy that 's required to pump it around. We also need our lawmakers to quit ignoring climate change and start limiting carbon pollution that is heating our planet and increasing the intensity of extreme weather. While some regions get wetter as the earths temperature rises, other regions will become extremely dry. In drier regions, evapotranspiration may produce periods of drought—defined as below-normal levels of rivers, lakes, and groundwater, and lack of enough soil moisture in agricultural areas. Precipitation has declined in the tropics and subtropics since 1970. Southern Africa, the Sahel region of Africa, southern Asia, the Mediterranean, and the U.S. Southwest, for example, are getting drier. Even areas that remain relatively wet can experience long, dry conditions between extreme precipitation
In many parts of the world today, forests are being destroyed at an alarming rate. Enormous numbers of trees are being cut down, both to provide timber and to clear the land for farming or ranching. This destructive process is called deforestation. In order to clear forests for agriculture, people cut down and burn all the trees in area. When the flames die down, nothing is left but acres of blackened, lifeless countryside. The fire destroys all the plants and kills or drives off the animals. Because there has been little attempt to replant trees in deforested areas, the world 's forests are disappearing very quickly. Deforestation makes the problem of the greenhouse effect worse in two ways. When trees are burned, carbon dioxide is released into the air. Some researchers think that the large-scale burning of forests around the world adds at least one billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year. But deforestation does more than just add carbon dioxide into the air. To also eliminates countless numbers of carbon dioxide-absorbing trees from the environment. As fewer and fewer trees are left to take up carbon dioxide, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases faster and faster. NASA predicts that if current deforestation levels proceed, the world 's rainforests may be completely in as little as 100 …show more content…
The first half of 2012 's historic drought saw more than 80 percent of the country in abnormally dry or drought conditions in mid-July. Drought of course threatens our water and food supplies and is driving up the cost of everything from corn to milk. Unfortunately, drought conditions are expected to become the new normal for many parts of the country if we don’t do more to address climate change.There are solutions to addressing the effects of drought. For one thing, we can stop wasting so much water, and energy that 's required to pump it around. We also need our lawmakers to quit ignoring climate change and start limiting carbon pollution that is heating our planet and increasing the intensity of extreme weather. While some regions get wetter as the earths temperature rises, other regions will become extremely dry. In drier regions, evapotranspiration may produce periods of drought—defined as below-normal levels of rivers, lakes, and groundwater, and lack of enough soil moisture in agricultural areas. Precipitation has declined in the tropics and subtropics since 1970. Southern Africa, the Sahel region of Africa, southern Asia, the Mediterranean, and the U.S. Southwest, for example, are getting drier. Even areas that remain relatively wet can experience long, dry conditions between extreme precipitation