the greenhouse effect means that the earth is getting hotter, therefore glaciers/the antartic etc places with ice are melting and penguins/polar bears wont surive, the ocean level will eventually rise, drowning or countries etc, all this becuase we all waste energy and dont protect environment........whats your opinion? im doing a report for college
128943
Global warming and cooling, in nature, has cycles beyond our control. AS a species, we have vastly accelerated the warming by CO2 emissions from burning of fossil fuel. The CO2 is/has formed higly reflective shield around the globe that holds heat IN, yet allows sunlight to go through it. The heat builds up, but cannot escape fast enough to prevent warming of the planet. We have reached a critcal stage in this cycle. IF we do not greatly reduce CO2 emissions within the next 10 years, it will be too late for us to stop the cycle that has started. Ice caps will melt and the surface of the Earth will change drastically. Storms will intensify dramatically, having more and more heat to power them. WE are within just a few years of a catastrophe, and yet, no one seems willing to act upon it, in fact, no one seems to even acknowledge the pending disaster. Life as we know it will be very different than it is today. WE are, time wise, just around the corner from a life threatening climate which will be conducive to an instant ICE AGE. If you have any doubt, see the movie, "Day After Tomorrow." The premise of the movie is NOT sci fi...it is very real.
91379
Energy. That is the concern over the greenhouse effect, that energy will be trapped in the atmosphere raising temperatures. The average surface temperature of the earth would be -18 degrees zero without a greenhouse effect and 72 degrees zero without a biosphere which counteracts the Greenhouse effect.
92960
OMG...this is a very sad question. The reason why gloval warming NEEDS to affect the earth is because without it, we would all DIE. Think about it, what would we do if there was no heat at ANYTIME. We would all die because we would all freeze to death. Besides in order to keep anything alive we need Gloval Warming. The food we eat need it, the water need it, the plants, animals everything and everyone needs it.
55138
Yes it is. We are destroying our planet for our grandchildren. You will hear a lot of nonsense about how the temperature has only gone up a certain number of degrees in the last how ever many years and how that increase is not significant enough to warrant changes on a global scale. \n\nPoint one) There are not as many cars, oil refineries, etc now as there will be in five, ten, fifty years. Our output of pollution will go up exponentially.\n\nPoint Two) Any change in our planet's climate is significant. It's not just temperature. It effects weather, global health, crop production, etc. As humans, we have pretty narrow envirnomental parameters in which we can survive. And we're messing with that to make a buck. Unreal.\n\nPoint three) It takes pollutants about one hundred years to have effects on our atmosphere. Think about that. That means that the effects of global warming that we are experiencing now are caused by the pollution in 1906. Think of the explosion of industry which has taken place in the last 100 years, and how much worse it will be in 100 years...\n\nWe need to take some responsibility for the mess we've made. Yeah, we've made trillions of dollars destroying this planet. It's time to spend millions if not billions fixing it. A child can only live in a filthy room for so long before it's time to clean up, go on a diet, and pull it together, man.\n\nGood Luck!
347769
The earth is protected by the Ozone Layer, which helps us from the sun's damaging uv rays.  As people pollute the air, the ozone layer becomes damaged and evenutally will diminish causing the sun's damaging rays to enter the earth's atmosphere increasing temperatures.  The increase in temperature would cause areas of extremely cold temperature where icebergs are found to become warmer; thus causing icebergs to begin melting.  The increase in temperature will also cause many of the plants that survive and grow in the tropics to die.\n\nAir pollution contribuites to GW by causing the ozone layer to dissapear, leaving sections of "holes" where the powerful ray's of the sun will cause increase in temperatures damaging life forms to include plants, animals that survive on such plants, polar caps melting which could affect the animals (polar bears, penguins, etc).
612917
First of all, I think it is going to take a tad bit longer than a few decades to heat up the planet to the point of being uninhabitable. Go sit in yellow knife naked in the middle of winter and tell me then how long you think it will take to get the planet to the point hot enough to kill you.\n\nSecond, when we do reach that point, I think we will also have devised ways of living in hotter temperatures. I am thinking more of a bio dome type of surrounding. Or somehow force us to live underground. \n\nLastly, with things like the Kyoto accord helping, maybe we can turn things around with global warming, but only if we get rid of our dependency on fossil fuels.\n\nOtherwise, we are hooped.
301125
The fact that the globe has been slowly warming up ever since the last ice age should be reason enough to suspect that global warming isn't at all a catastrophe.  We people on Earth really need to start looking to other problems like natural resources.
523408
We don't need to counter the greenhouse effect. Global warming is caused by the Sun, not by anything that we are doing. and we cannot prevent it. We need to make realistic plans to move our cities inland, not to waste time trying to prevent it.\n\nAttributing global warming to human causes is political hype, exploited by unscrupulous people who want to gain fame without having to do anything to earn it and influence without being responsible to anybody in their use of it.\n\n13 NOV 06, 0323 hrs, GMT.
246600
all the heat from the sun's rays will stay trapped in the earth and it will get hotter, the polar ice caps will melt and we will all be flooded, which in turn will cool us down form the heat, but if u can't swim you're screwed.\nstop pollution and start recycling now!!!
520984
C for sure.\nMy but didn't this question get some folks hot and bothered. \nMay I point out that yes the plants are using the co2. Meanwhile, we silly homo saps are, while busily pumping hydrocarbons and co2 into the atmosphere, blithely burning down, chopping down and otherwise doing away with rain forests in South America. We are also draining swamps in Florida and filling them in to build houses, hacking down forests in Africa and other countries for the same reason.  All that means less of those nice green plants to absorb all that CO2.\nNow it is possible that we are just in a between glaciation warm spell. But even if we are, there is still the possibility of pushing that warm up over the edge into something we might not be able to survive.
460410
I do agree,they claim el nino is responsible,some claim global warming. The semi cold weather with wet,cloudy days is depressing not to mention it brings on aches and pains......Illness The cold snowy days seem to bring excitement, to cold for the germs. My personal theory is the whole Earth has shifted orbit just enough to mess the weather up. Scientifically I would go with global warming or the green house effect. We have used and released so much freon or R-12 into the atmosphere, plus other pollutants its really damaged are enviorment all for comfort. Maybe we should go back to horse and buggies..lol
360093
Global warming is the observed increase in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans in recent decades.\n\nThe Earth's average near-surface atmospheric temperature rose 0.6 ± 0.2 °Celsius (1.1 ± 0.4 °Fahrenheit) in the 20th century [1]. The prevailing scientific opinion on climate change is that "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities"[2].\n\nThe increased amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) are the primary causes of the human-induced component of warming[3]. They are released by the burning of fossil fuels, land clearing and agriculture, etc. and lead to an increase in the greenhouse effect. The first speculation that a greenhouse effect might occur was by the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius in 1897, although it did not become a topic of popular debate until some 90 years later. [4]\n\nClimate sensitivity is a measure of the equilibrium response to increased GHGs, and other anthropogenic and natural climate forcings. It is found by observational [5] and model studies. This sensitivity is usually expressed in terms of the temperature response expected from a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere. The 2001 IPCC report estimates a likelyhood between 66% and 90% for a climate sensitivity in the range 1.5–4.5 °C (2.7–8.1 °F)[6]. This should not be confused with the expected temperature change by a given date, which also includes a dependence on the future GHG emissions and a delayed response due to thermal lag, principally from the oceans. Models referenced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), using a range of SRES scenarios, project that global temperatures will increase between 1.4 and 5.8 °C (2.5 to 10.5 °F) between 1990 and 2100.\n\nAn increase in global temperatures can in turn cause other changes, including a rising sea level and changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation. These changes may increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, and tornados. Other consequences include higher or lower agricultural yields, glacial retreat, reduced summer stream flows, species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors. Warming is expected to affect the number and magnitude of these events; however, it is difficult to connect particular events to global warming. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming (and sea level rise due to thermal expansion) is expected to continue past then, since CO2 has an estimated atmospheric lifetime of 50 to 200 years. [7]. Only a small minority of climate scientists discount the role that humanity's actions have played in recent warming. However, the uncertainty is more significant regarding how much climate change should be expected in the future, and there is a hotly contested political and public debate over implementation of policies that deal with predicted consequences, what, if anything, should be done to reduce or reverse future warming, and how to deal with the predicted consequences.\n\nYou could get more information from the link below...
97327
The degree to which humans are effecting the climate is unclear.  There are so many variables that even the most powerful computers or networks of computers can't effectively model them all.  Even if there were computers powerful enough, the honest answer is we don't understand enough about the world around us to know how each system effects the other.\n\nLooking back further than the VERY short timespan that humans have kept climate records, we see that in the past the world has been much much colder during certain periods, but also much, much much warmer during others.  We are now in what you would call "Ice House" conditions, where we cycle between long (100,000 year) glacial periods, and relatively short interglacial (~15,000 year) periods.  Right now we're sitting 2/3rds of the way into one the interglacial periods.  The slight fluctuation that is occuring now may be related to humans, or may be part of the natural cycle.  In any event, it has occured before, when there was no more human CO2 contribution than from campfires.\n\nAll this getting colder stuff happened when the space betwen North and South America closed off, which was once what was called the "Isthmus of Panama".  Before then, times were much much hotter, and correspondingly sea levels were higher too.  This was because the water could go around the equator and exchange hot water from Pacific to Atlantic.  Now, the only seawater exchange is North-South, and around the poles, so you can imagine that this would tend to act to depress temperatures.\n\nAnyways, long story short: We don't really know.  Personally, I think we should worry less about this global warming stuff, and more about reducing air and water pollution and dealing with the increasing water shortages around the world.
575063
Global warming is happening, make no mistake about it.  This natural cycle that we're going through seems to be accelerating.  Is it due to humans?  Quite possibly.  Can we do anything about it?  Maybe, but will it have a dramatic effect?  Who knows.\nNobody in their right mind believes we are going to "destroy" the planet.  At worst we'll just make it uninhabitable.
133140
Actually we are going for Global Warming, where all teh Ice is going to melt and probably flood alot of places, the atmosphere is gettinng thinner and more ultra violates are entering earth. P.S. did you see any Acorns? Keep looking for it...
669342
I've answered this question about a million times now in some form or other....\n\nThe Earth is a complex and robust system that operates with a number of positive and negative feedback systems. This means that all the systems are interconnected and all the systems change through time.\n\nWhat a lot of people miss is that humans are part of the system too. By virtue of our very existence, we change the environment.\n\nThe media has confused a lot of people about the climate-change/global warming situation. The fact is, we do know what causes global warming. Greenhouse gases like CO2. We also know that industry produces a large quantity of these gases. In fact the levels of CO2 in our atmosphere have more than doubled since the industrial revolution.\n\nNow you can sit there and tell me that Earth changes the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere naturally, and you'd be right. But does it not seem like a huge coincidence that the increase in CO2 levels, and the onset of global warming are occurring together?\n\nThe Earth is warming naturally, but it doesn't take an Earth Scientist to work out that dumping huge volumes of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere is likely to make it worse. Pretending its nothing to do with humans doesn't mean we can afford to ignore that it's happening either!
153046
Actually both are true.  However, global warming and an impending ice age will not cancel each other out, as far as, average temperatures are concerned.\n\nGlobal warming, whether caused by mankind or nature, will usher in another global ice age.\n\nAlthough this sounds contradictory, there is an explanation that I will attempt to explain:\n\nAtlantic ocean currents circulate from the warmer southern Atlantic ocean northward to the colder waters.\n\nAs the warm waters flow north, they cool down, and thus, begin to sink deeper into the colder northern Atlantic waters.\n\nThis colder water then continues to flow southward, and thus, begins to warm up again the closer it gets to the equator, effectively creating a self-sustaining flow.\n\nAs this colder water warms up, it begins to rise toward the surface where it continues to get warmer.\n\nThen, these warmer waters are caught into the northern flow\nwhere they will eventually begin to cool down again, sink, and continue the flow back southward.\n\nIt is this flowing current from warm to cold to warm again that regulates our weather systems.\n\nNow then, as the Earth warms up because of global warming (manmade or otherwise,) the Atlantic current is in danger of being disrupted and stopped.\n\nWhy?  Because as the northern Atlantic waters warm up, there will be a point at which the northern waters are too warm for the water to cool and thus sink.\n\nOnce the northern waters stop sinking, the whole process will come to a screeching halt.  Therefore, no more Atlantic current.\n\nNo more Atlantic current will then halt the process of "warmer" waters from flowing northward.\n\nOnce this massive amount of warm, energy filled waters stops flowing north, the Northern Hemisphere will then start cooling down enough to mark the beginning of a new ice age. \n\nHope this helps...\n\n-AwareOne\nAwareones@yahoo.com