Blog #6

The “National Geographic: Six Degrees Could Change the World” was a shocking eye opener to me!  Global warming is here and we need to ask ourselves what could happen to the earth that we all live on?  Scientists have data showing that the temperatures are rising which can cause serious complications to all.   The scientists believe in 3 decades it will be worse.  The rising temperatures cause changes to the earth that changes the way the whole system operates.  Scientists fear that the temperatures will rise up to 11 degrees in the next 100 years!!  Watching this video – even 1 degree is cause for alarm. 

Scientist, Sam Hansen was the first to set the alarm of the issues we face with global warming.  If the temperatures rise just 1 degree the artic will be free of ice, hurricanes will hit where they didn’t before and droughts will happen where there was never an issue.  We talk of our carbon footsteps and every activity we do in every day, every, hour, every minute affects that carbon footstep!

If the temperatures rise 2 degrees the Greenland glaciers will begin to melt at a faster rate, in turn causes the animals to disappear.  Islands will be lost due to the rising waters all around.  The oceans will experience changes to the coral reefs.  The waters become warmer and the algae needed to keep things alive will become sparse. 2+ degrees cause serious flooding in the terms of oceans rising 3 to 4 feet. 

Rising temperatures of 3 degrees will cause the Artic to be ice free throughout the summer, and the Amazon rainforest to dry out.  Summer “heat” waves are the norm, violent storms as we have never seen, and oceans becoming hotter and hotter.  All these changes will create a different planet in which people have never seen before.  3 degrees can cause the oceans to rise to kill billions of people, wipe out total land, cause glaciers to slowly disappear, and the Arctic Ice sheet to collapse. 

Are we prepared for this?  Scientists feel that we have some solutions in place already, and some in discussion stages.  It won’t be an easy fix but it can be fixed.  However, remember that the warmer the earth becomes the faster the warming occurs.  Earth will become something totally different than what it is today if we don’t make changes now.