Global Warming

Global Warming:

According to www.wikipedia.org, "Global Warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans in recent decades and its projected continuation. I'm sure all of you have read, heard, or seen people debating the "global warming" issue in these recent years, but I'm even more confident that the majority of you are much like the United States in the fight against global warming (surprise, surprise), and do not care one way or the other. I am not here today to argue how global warming started, but, rather, what global warming truly is and why you should care. Hopefully, today I can show that there is, indeed, a problem, and more importantly, there are solutions.

I'd like to go over with you all some actual scientific evidence to show that global warming is, indeed, occurring:

According to www.nationalgeographic.com, there is little doubt that the planet is warming. Over the last century the average temperature has climbed about 1 degree Fahrenheit around the world.

The spring ice thaw in the Northern Hemisphere occurs 9 days earlier than it did 150 years ago, and the fall freeze now typically starts 10 days later.

The 1990s was the warmest decade since the mid-1800s, when record-keeping started. The hottest years recorded: 1998, 2002, 2003, 2001, and 1997.

According to the multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) report, it has recently concluded that in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia, average temperatures have increased as much as 4 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 50 years. The rise is nearly twice the global average. In Barrow, Alaska (the U.S.'s northernmost city) average temperatures are up over 4 degrees Fahrenheit in 30 years.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that global temperatures will rise an additional 3 to10 degrees Fahrenheit by century's end.

Over the last million years the Earth has fluctuated between colder and warmer periods. The shifts have occurred in roughly 100,000-year intervals thought to be regulated by sunlight. Earth's sunlight quota depends upon its orbit and celestial orientation.

Changes have also occurred more rapidly in the past--and scientists hope that these changes can tell us more about the current state of climate change. During the last ice age, approximately 70,000 to 11,500 years ago, ice covered much of North America and Europe--yet sudden, sometimes drastic, climate changes occurred during the period. Greenland ice cores indicate one spike in which the area's surface temperature increased by 15 degrees Fahrenheit in just 10 years.

Rising temperatures have a dramatic impact on Arctic ice, which serves as a kind of "air conditioner" at the top of the world. Since 1978 Arctic sea ice area has shrunk by some 9 percent per decade, and thinned as well.

ACIA projects that at least half of the Arctic's summer sea ice will melt by century's end, and that the Arctic region is likely to warm 7 to 13 degrees Fahrenheit during the same time.

By 2050, rising temperatures exacerbated by human-induced