Global Warming Essay, Research Paper
How can the nations of the world work together multilaterally to successfully
address the problem of global warming?
The numbers are striking. No region of the world will be unaffected if Global Warming continues to increasingly grow. Yet day after day people take actions that can change the earth and its climate in significant ways. Many people just stand motionless as the wave of climate change becomes more apparent. The IPCC predicts that during the next century, the average rate of warming will be greater than anything seen in the last 10,000 years. Global sea levels could rise by at least fifteen and perhaps as much as ninety-five centimeters. Surface temperatures could increase by between 1.0 and 3.5 degrees Celsius.
With climate change there will be an even greater complexity with water resources in every branch of the globe. Nineteen countries are under strain for deficiency of water. This figure is expected to double by the year 2025 even if the climate does not change.
The present rate of extinction for birds, animals and plants is already between 50 and 100 times the natural one. If the current rate of deforestation in the tropics continues this would go up, potentially, to 1,000 to 10,000 times the natural extinction rate within the next 30 years. If global warming occurs, every thing and everyone will be affected in some way. An increase of just 0.2% in the solar output could have the same affect as doubling the carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere.
On average most places will be warmer which will cause changes in the quantity and pattern of rain. Everything in the natural environment will all be affected. If a blanket of air did not surround the Earth, it would be much too cold for human habitation. Earth?s atmosphere acts as a shield. Small amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere, help to retain heat in a crucial process known as the greenhouse effect. Sunlight passes through the atmosphere and strikes the Earth, some of the light is reflected and some of the light is absorbed. The absorbed light warms the surface of the Earth. The heated surface then radiates infrared light into the atmosphere, where small amounts of carbon dioxide keep the radiation from escaping.
Since prehistoric times, carbon dioxide has helped to regulate the temperature of the Earth. Due to the burning of large amounts of coal, oil, and natural gas, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has nearly doubled over the past one hundred years. As we all know, trees remove carbon dioxide from the air as part of their natural processes. As human being cut down forests, the capacity of trees to remove carbon dioxide from the air is diminished.
It is believed that as we continue to burn large amounts of fossil fuels, and deplete our forests, the greenhouse effect will result in Global Warming. Scientists warn that the Earth’s average surface temperature could increase by five degrees Celsius over the next century A warming trend of only a few degrees could cause a melting of the polar ice caps, resulting in increased ocean levels and flooding of coastal cities.
United Nations programs and organizations actively focus on global warming to stifle the ever more evident battle of Global Warming. The ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement that aims to diminish the discharge of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, has shed new light into the ongoing battle of Global Warming. Under the 1997 protocol, 38 industrialized nations are committed to cut their greenhouse gas emissions to an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012. The United States, the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, pledged to reduce its emissions to seven percent below 1990 levels, while the European Union pledged to reduce its emissions by eight percent below its 1990 levels.
Developed countries have been previously responsible for the majority of the Earth?s greenhouse-gas emissions. It is enormously critical that industrialized countries should carry on with their treaties and contracts to pave the way on climate change. Developed countries should serve as a model to under industrialized countries. ?The ultimate objective of the Convention on Climate Change is to achieve a stable level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that will avoid dangerous interference with the climate system. Even stabilization at a little above present level will require significant cuts in global emissions next century. The dilemma facing us is how to achieve that at the same time as improving living standards throughout the developed and developing worlds.?
Trading emissions credits, received by companies that surpass authorized emissions cuts, is one of the systems encouraged by the protocol for combating global warming. But the Kyoto Protocol will not take effect until it is ratified by fifty-five percent of the nations emitting at least fifty-five percent of six greenhouse gases that trap the sun?s heat close the Earth?s surface.
A report commissioned by the United States Department of Energy demonstrates that ?Companies can reduce their emissions through energy efficiency measures and save costs. Capital turnover during the next 15 years will allow industry to introduce cleaner technology with lower emissions at little extra cost.? Lower emissions are often united with other environmental enhancements, such as improved air quality.
?Emissions trading has become the policy of choice for addressing climate change in nations around the globe, finds a new report from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. The report concludes that, while the greenhouse gas emissions market remains fragmented, trading activity has increased around the world over the last five years.? Many major corporations are already indicating that emissions? trading is a very moneymaking and lucrative means to ease greenhouse gas ejection.
Some authors estimate that ?approximately 65 greenhouse gas trades for quantities above 1,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide have occurred worldwide since 1996.? This outline includes trades of actual emissions cutbacks as well as financially based reductions. The authors also warn that local and national trading programs are working under different rules, which could delay the formation of a united market and boost the costs of trading.
?With the level of greenhouse gas emissions in the Asia-Pacific region increasing, measures to curb the effects of these emissions are urgently needed. A model?is being developed to coordinate efforts for greenhouse gas emissions forecasting, the analysis of the results of measures to curb emissions, and the evaluation of the effects of global warming. Forecasts on global warming are being used to develop another model to evaluate the phenomenon’s effect on water resources, plant life, human health, and agriculture.?
President George Bush’s new global warming plan was announced on February 14 of 2002. Officials at the World Resources Institute declared that the plan was said to increase greenhouse gas emissions by fourteen percent, which was later followed by some skeptics as misleading information. Certain organizations stress the need for an accurate system that institutes a suitable emissions foundation for greenhouse gases. One such program fulfilling the concept and that has been used in the past is voluntary emissions reporting. Reporting programs that not only attract practical companies, but also draw basic fundamental corporations, should be considered a necessary dynamic characteristic.
A strategy by which communities seek economic development and benefit the local environment is known as sustainable development. Societies have found that they are creating, rather than solving, environmental problems by traditional approach. Sustainable development offers long lasting solutions. The future depends on how well we balance social, economic, and environmental goals, and this is what sustainable development suggests
?Sustainability refers to the ability of a society, ecosystem, or any such ongoing system to continue functioning into the indefinite future without being forced into decline through exhaustion… of key resources.”
With the many questions and unanswered problems that Global Warming encompasses, market-based measures and other actions of the sort must be achieved in order to establish safety and security on Earth. In the world?s pursuit of economic growth, we must treat our world with pure motives with chaste solutions. It is absolutely mandatory that the nations of the world work multilaterally to not only address the problem of Global Warming, but also resolve and decipher the crisis that it withholds.