Global warming. For the last few years it has become a very much talked about and hotly debated topic. Is it real or is it just so much hogwash generated by uninformed scare tacticians trying to suppress free enterprise? Changing weather patterns around the globe seem to indicate that the earth may in fact be in the midst of a global warming cycle. Scientific data shows that the earth's temperature is gradually rising and climate changes are being seen in areas all around the world as a result. We are already seeing moderate rising of sea levels. Storms are becoming more severe. Areas which don't normally receive much precipitation are documenting higher than normal rainfall. Areas which would normally experience good rainfall levels are receiving less and less. The ozone layer over the south pole is being depleted allowing more radiation from the sun to enter earth's atmosphere helping to raise global temperatures, causing the arctic and antarctic ice caps to melt to levels not known of in thousands and thousands of years. Glaciers in various locations around the world once thought to be semi permanent are melting off and receding at alarming rates. The implications to mankind are enormous and potentially devastating. One half to two thirds of the worlds population live in coastal or low lying areas which could be totally eliminated by rising sea levels brought about by the melting of earth's polar ice caps. Society as we know it could be totally devastated. Major coastal cities totally wiped out or at the very least made partly or completely uninhabitable. Agriculture severely crippled. World commerce severely disrupted. And the more the earth's temperature rises the faster the effect is amplified. Scientists are predicting that global temperatures could rise by ten to twenty degrees and sea levels rise as much as twenty feet or more by the middle of this century due to accelerated global warming.

Quite a scary scenario for our future and our coming generations future. But what is causing this phenomena? Is it all part of some sort of natural cycle of the earth or is it somehow being caused or at least intensified by the way we live and use and abuse the resources of our planet? It is very possible that it is part of a normal cycle of climate changes that the earth has experienced since it was created. The earth has gone through numerous climate changes including ice ages and periods of tropic and Sub-tropic forestation since it was created and started to evolve. But it is also quite possible that this warming cycle is being amplified by human interaction with the atmosphere which protects the earth. Interaction in the form of fossil fuels which emit carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the air which help trap greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Industrial air pollution and pollution from the cars we drive are very possibly the main culprits in the effects we are seeing and experiencing with our atmosphere. Since the beginning of the twentieth century and the birth of the industrial age, pollution levels in our atmosphere have been steadily rising and as more of the world becomes industrialized the problem only gets worse as long as that industrialization relies on fossil fuels.

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