Global Warming.

For the last 10,000 years, the Earth's climate has been extraordinarily beneficial to mankind. What is global warming, and how is it affecting the Earth and its inhabitants? Global Warming is sometimes referred to as the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is the absorption of energy radiated from the Earth's surface by carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to become warmer. The greenhouse effect is raising the temperature, increasing and decreasing the rainfall, and it is raising sea levels.

As a possible prelude to global warming, the decade of the 1980's has had the six hottest years of the century. Atmospheric disturbances brought on by the additional warming will produce more violent storms and larger death tolls. Some areas, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, will dry out and a greater occurrence of lightning strikes will set massive forest fires. The charring of the Earth by natural and man-made forest fires will dump additional quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Mean surface temperature change for 1999–2008 re...

This figure is a simplified, schematic representat...

Greenhouse Effect

These certain gases that occur naturally in the atmosphere tend to trap the sun's heat, which is called global warming. By trapping in the sun's heat, the Earth can be warmed up. "Many of the Earth's natural disasters, such as volcanic activity, and other factors, have caused our planet's" (Bates, 23). The atmosphere in the air will become either colder or warmer. The global average temperature of the surface has increased by one degree Fahrenheit over the past century. This indicates that this warming trend is due to human influences.

Changes rainfall brought on by global warming will change the composition of the forests. At the present rate of destruction, most of the rain forests will be gone by the middle of the next century. This will allow man-made deserts to encroach on once lush...