Global-warming
Message de calvinc posté le 03-04-2006 à 09:13:36 (S | E | F | I)
For few years, you can ear and read many things about global-warming. This topic raises many controversies.
The usual argument put forth by global-warming skeptics for why we should'nt rush to do anything yet is that the science behind climate change is uncertain, and in fact it is. But all the while, polar ice caps are melting faster than ever, more and more lands are being devastated by drought (Ethiopia for example), and rising waters are drowning low-lying communities (India for example). There's about ten years, global-warming scenarios, that will eventually happen, won't take place before a period of several thousand years, and people didn't seem concerned. But recently, many scientists suggest that it could happen in a few hundred years. In Time magasin (february 27,2006) i have read an article about the melt and the slide of the ice in Greenland into the ocean, which would cause a rise of sea level. Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton, answers this : « that's a few feet per century, which may not sound like a lot, but it's more than society can handle. In places like the eastern seaboard of the U.S., a foot (30 cm) vertical rise in sea level means a one hundred feet (30.5 m) retreat of shoreline. » So imagine in low lying countries like Maldive or Bangladesh, the resulting flooding could dwarf the 2004 tsunami. Others consequencies are : a decreasing of reflection from raies sun and their energy ; the melt of polar ice caps could change salinity and temperature water which replenishes ocean currents like the Gulf Stream, which is the only reason much of Western Europe has so mild and temperate climate.
Global-warming is a huge problem which concerns everybody. Here, i have talked only about polar ice caps which are melting faster than ever, but we can notice that the ice of many glaciers (in France or in the South American Andes) is retreating at least several meters per year, while others suffer from drought.
Even if few people are little doubt that humans are helping heat up the planet, because they don't want admit their responsabilities and change their habits, it's now urgent to find solutions but for this we need to act together and we need that each countries act in the same aim. It won't be easy but for us, our children, our grandchildren and all animal or vegetal species on the earth we must react.
We have only one world to play with.
You could talk about the consequences of global-warming, or the changes we could make to slow down process.