Sometimes the temperature can change in a way that helps

us.  The greenhouse effect makes the earth appropriate for

people to live on.  Without it, the earth would be freezing, or on
the other hand it would be burning hot.  It would be freezing at
night because the sun would be down.  We would not get the
sun’s heat and light to make the night somewhat warm.  During
the day, especially during the summer, it would be burning
because the sun would be up with no atmosphere to filter it, so
people, plants, and animals would be exposed to all the light and
heat.

Although the greenhouse effect makes the earth able to have

people living on it, if there gets to be too many gases, the earth
can get unusually warmer, and many plants, animals, and people

plants and causes some of them to die.  When they die, the

animals lose a source of food, along with their habitat.  Although
animals have a better ability to adapt to what happens than
plants do, they may die also.  When the plants and animals die,
people lose two sources of food, plant food and animal
food.  They may also lose their homes.  As a result, they would
also have to leave the area or die.  This would be called a break
in the food chain, or a chain reaction, one thing happening that
leads to another and so on.  

The oceans are affected by global warming in other ways, as

well.  Many things that are happening to the ocean are linked to
global warming.  One thing that is happening is warm water,
caused from global warming, is harming and killing algae in the
ocean.

Algae is a
producer that you
can see floating on
the top of the
water.  (A
producer is something that makes food for other animals through
photosynthesis, like grass.)  This floating green algae is food to
many consumers in the ocean.  (A consumer is something that
eats the producers.)  One kind of a consumer is small fish.  There
are many others like crabs, some whales, and many other
animals.  Fewer algae is a problem because there is less food for
us and many animals in the sea. 

Global warming is doing many things to people as well as animals

and plants.  It is killing algae, but it is also destroying many huge
forests.  The pollution that causes global warming is linked to acid
rain.  Acid rain gradually destroys almost everything it
touches.  Global warming is also causing many more fires that
wipe out whole forests.  This happens because global warming
can make the earth very hot.  In forests, some plants and trees
leaves can be so dry that they catch on fire. 

What causes global warming?  

Many things cause global warming.  One thing that causes global

warming is electrical pollution.  Electricity causes pollution in
many ways, some worse than others.  In most cases, fossil fuels
are burned to create electricity.  Fossil fuels are made of dead
plants and animals.  Some examples of fossil fuels are oil and
petroleum.  Many pollutants (chemicals that pollute the air,
water, and land) are sent into the air when fossil fuels are
burned.  Some of these chemicals are called greenhouse gasses.

We use these sources of energy much more than the sources that
give off less pollution.  Petroleum, one of the sources of energy,
is used a lot.  It is used for transportation, making electricity, and
making many other things.  
Past warming

■ Evidence for man's warming of the climate system is now unequivocal. From 1906 to 2005, global
surface temperatures rose by 0.74 degrees.

■ Global warming over the past half century has been nearly twice that of the century as a whole,
coinciding with a surge in greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. Eleven of the past 12 years
rank among the dozen warmest years on record.

■ Ocean warming now extends to a depth of at least 3000 metres as the seas take up heat from the
air. Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined in both hemispheres. Sea levels rose globally
by 1.8 millimetres a year from 1961 to 2003, a pace that accelerated to 3.1 millimetres per year
from 1993 to 2003.

■ The top layers of the Arctic permafrost have warmed by up to 3.0 degrees since the 1980s. The
maximum area of seasonally frozen ground has decreased by about 7 per cent in the northern
hemisphere since 1900.

Forecast for 21st century

■ By 2100, global average surface temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees
compared with 1980-99 levels, depending on levels of carbon dioxide (CO 2) in the air. Within this
range, the likeliest rise will be 1.8 to 4 degrees.

■ Sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 centimetres, although this could be amplified by
accelerating melting of icesheets.
Global surface temperatures may also be at a record high, according to leading climate
scientist James Hansen and colleagues at the National Aeronautic Space Administration (Nasa).
In a paper which is yet to be peer-reviewed but has been submitted to the journal Reviews of
Geophysics, they suggest that the Earth has been 0.65C warmer over the past 12 months than
during the 1951 to 1980 mean, and that the global temperature for 2010 will exceed the 2005
record.

■ By mid-century, water availability is likely to increase in high latitudes but fall by up to 30 per cent
in mid-latitudes and the dry tropics, some of which are already badly water stressed. Water from
glaciers and snow melt is also projected to decline, reducing resources for regions where more than
a sixth of the world population lives No "natural" causes for global warming have been
confirmed. Sea-surface temperature in the Gulf of Alaska has increased about 3%
over the past 30 years. And, the Arctic sea-ice extent has decreased about 5% over
the past 25 years

increasing, hurricane frequency should be on the rise, and polar sea ice should be
melting. Figures 2-4 show that the trends for all three processes seem to be
consistent for at least the short term. Hurricane frequency in the western Atlantic
appears to have increased about 3% over the past 150 years.. Note, within the general
trends, however, shorter period oscillations occur. Hurricane frequency is the most
variable, with 30-40 year periods of lower and higher frequency. This has become
particularly noticeable since about 1995 when a sudden increase in the frequency of
hurricanes hitting the southeastern U.S. followed a 30-year period of lower hurricane
frequency. These shorter period oscillations are normal in most geophysical
phenomena and are evident in the sea-surface temperature and Arctic sea-ice extent
as well, although with less fluctuation.

Based on these limited observations, it appears likely that global warming seems to
be occurring over at least the past 30-50 years. I would be quick to add, however,
that because of the limited spatial coverage and short time period of these data, it is
still not possible to say if these trends will continue. There may be even longer-period
fluctuations which we don't yet see in the data. When long-period records of data are
plotted, oscillations for many periods are often seen.
. The melting ice and vanishing glaciers are not just some scientific prediction,
they are a reality. But still there are doubts. Do some people not listen to the
news, or are they completely stupid?

■ Warming will occur most over land at high northern latitudes and least over the Southern Ocean
and the North Atlantic.

■ Carbon emissions this century "will contribute to warming and sea level rise for more than a
millennium", due to the timescale required for greenhouse gases to degrade.

Likely impacts this century

■ Heatwaves, flooding, drought, tropical storms and surges in sea level are among the events that
"will become more frequent, more widespread and/or more intense" this century.

Introduction

The global warming issue will not go away. Evidence continues to mount that some
type of warming is occurring, maybe temporarily or of longer duration. But, is it
caused by man and can anything be done about it? Environmental activism to reduce
carbon dioxide emissions has reached a new intensity. The U.S. Supreme Court is
being asked to rule on a suit which demands that the Environmental Protection
Agency regulate the release of carbon dioxide as part of its air pollution
responsibility. The president is being heavily lobbied to subscribe to the Kyoto
Protocol which would require the U.S. to emit less carbon dioxide than it released in
1990. A book and a movie with the titles, An Inconvenient Truth, which press the
case for global warming were released during 2006 by Al Gore, former vice president
of the United States.1,2 He makes the case that man's actions in burning fossil fuels
are projected to increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to
the highest levels in history. He insists that uncontrolled releases of carbon dioxide
will eventually melt the polar caps completely, raising sea level and inundating many
coastal communities like New York, Miami, New Orleans, and Los Angeles; and
drastically changing agricultural patterns because of redistribution of temperature
and precipitation. And finally, on February 2, 2007, the Fourth IPCC Assessment
Report on global warming was released. Interestingly, the report reduced the
alarmist rhetoric because climate modelers found that they had overestimated the
rise in global temperature and observations did not support the predictions.

Measures of Global Warming

For many years I have been a skeptic of global warming because the climate record
available to assess the effects of increased carbon dioxide emission has been too
short to say with confidence that the effect is real. There is no question that the
concentration of carbon dioxide shown in Figure 1 has been increasing exponentially
for almost 50 years now. These data were collected by C. C. Keeling of the Scripps
Institute of Oceanography at the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii. 3

 This warming may only be a short-term fluctuation but could be a longer-

term trend.
 Evidence is still inconclusive whether man is causing the warming.
 No "natural" causes for global warming have been confirmed.
 One possible new theory is that galactic cosmic radiation (GCR) modulated
by solar activity affects low-level cloud cover and is causing the warming.
Global warming may affect some parts of our society negatively but would likely
benefit others. In fact, the current warming trend may be returning our global
climate closer to that prevalent in the Garden of Eden. Compared to climate changes
which have occurred in earth history, a temperature rise of a few degrees is a small
fluctuation which will not lead to a complete melting of the polar caps or another ice
age. Earth has a stable environmental system with many built-in feedback systems to
maintain a uniform climate. It was designed by God and has only been dramatically
upset by catastrophic events like the Genesis Flood. Catastrophic climate change will
occurIf global warming is occurring then sea-surface temperature should also be

again in the future, but only by God's intervent