Global Warming

The term global warming refers to the rise of global temperatures caused by increased amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As the sun's energy enters the Earth's atmosphere, these greenhouse gases block heat reflected from the Earth's surface, which would normally travel back into space. The result is an increase in global temperatures. As the amount of greenhouse gases increase in the atmosphere, the Earth's surface becomes warmer.

There are many greenhouse gases and the most abundant is carbon dioxide, which accounts for approximately 85% of all greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide is formed when fossil fuels, like gasoline or diesel are burned. The continued accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will result in a warmer atmosphere resulting in warmer winters, inundated coastal areas, droughts in arid areas, flooding in wet areas, lost habitat and species extinction, increased intensities of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, decreased productivity of agricultural land and more.

With the rising global use of fossil fuels comes an ever-increasing amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Though it can't be seen, scientists observe elevated amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The effect of annual amounts of carbon dioxide emissions on total atmospheric amounts of carbon dioxide is cumulative. The earth's natural cycles cannot process as much carbon dioxide as human activity is producing and scientists are observing corresponding increases in the average global temperature. Over the past 20 years, scientists have concluded that the increasing amount of carbon dioxide is the major contributor of rising global temperatures. In the last 15 years, the warmest 10 years of the century have been recorded. Over the past year, the Arctic ice cap is probably its smallest size in the last 100 years of record keeping. In recent years, the proportion of powerful hurricanes has doubled, from 1/6 to 1/3. (COURTESY: www.hyderabadunplug.com)

CRITICISM - In India we have to start a movement of not using vehicles on the roads for atleast a day in month, by this it will saves our cities from pollution a lot.