Global warming
(After a lot of reading and hunting around on the net, I found a great deal of information on this topic. I had never really researched on it before so wanted to make sure that calculations agreed from report to report. Most of them did so I will base my answer on these different reports. This subject is extremely interesting, scary and a bit of a shock as to how much we have abused and taken advantage of this Earth. Though progress as far as technology has been something we make use of and enjoy, we are paying for it in ways I never thought of before this subject came up in this class! Please forgive my ignorance. I am troubled that my children and their children will suffer because of our lack of concern, knowledge and greed. I read a short story the other day, about the people in a village having never heard the word cancer until they were run out of their homes and into the city area's. Years later, some of the people from this village are dying from disease. my point is that before they came to the cities, they had always died of old age ...) FIRST of all, it is important to know that the "greenhouse effect" is not a bad thing in itself. In fact, this planet would be a
Over Antarctica there is a gaping ozone hole measuring about three of our continental U.S. in size. What has happened is during their sunless winter, winds blow steadily in a circular pattern over the earth's poles, which creates huge swirling masses of ice-cold air that gets trapped above the poles. When the sun returns a few months later the water droplets in the clouds enter these large circling streams of icy air and form tiny crystals. The surfaces of the crystals collect ozone depleting chemicals in the stratosphere which allows them to deplete the ozone layer at a much faster rate. The return of the sunlight triggers weeks of ozone depletion before vortex breaks apart. THEN, masses of ozone-depleted air flow northward and linger for weeks above Australia and New Zealand, raising the UV levels in these areas by as much as 20%... and guess what? They have had a HUGE rise in skin cancer. This very thing is also happening over parts of North America, Asia and Europe. So, what would global warming do to us? (as in, do I really need to worry about this???) Okay, this could go on forever. The effects of the huge overuse of these items of luxury plus all the other unmentioned items and activities plays havoc on our atmosphere. We didn't worry about this 100 years ago, and the industrial revolution is the culprit for a large part of this. The reason for this is a little thing called Carbon dioxide. Where is the C02 coming from? Fossil fuel burning (75%), land clearing & burning (25%) , as well as car exhaust and coal burning. This stuff stays in the atmosphere for 50-200 years. Well, to put it bluntly, it eventually would kill you and everything else that is alive. The rise of a few degrees doesn't seem like a big deal, but in global terms... it is deadly. It isn't just the rise of surface temperature, it is the pollution from the over production of the greenhouse gases as well. By the year 2020, over 700,000 deaths worldwide will occur annually from exposure to particles as a result of fossil-fuel burning that could be avoided by a climate control policy. New animal and human studies confirm that airborne fine particles can sicken or kill people. For example, laboratory rats with respiratory disorders died after being exposed to air pollution at concentrations found today in Massachusetts.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Subject Global, Asia Europe, O3 O2, North American, Alaska's Toolik, National Parks, Chemicals CFC's, Australia Zealand, global warming, carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, uv light, amount gases, 100 ago, ozone killers, o3 o2, greenhouse effect, people village,
Approximate Word count = 1613
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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