Why is global warming topical

That figure includes the surface of the ocean. The warming is greater over land, and greater still in the Arctic and parts of Antarctica. The number may sound low. We experience much larger temperature swings in our day-to-day lives from weather systems and from the changing of seasons. But when you average across the entire planet and over months or years, the temperature differences get far smaller — the variation at the surface of the Earth from one year to the next is measured in fractions of a degree.

So a rise of 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 19th century is actually high. The heat accumulating in the Earth because of human emissions is roughly equal to the heat that would be released by , Hiroshima atomic bombs exploding across the planet every day. Scientists believe most and probably all of the warming since was caused by the human release of greenhouse gases. If emissions continue unchecked, they say the global warming could ultimately exceed 8 degrees Fahrenheit, which would transform the planet and undermine its capacity to support a large human population.

The risks are much greater over the long run than over the next few decades, but the emissions that create those risks are happening now. This means the current generation of people is dooming future generations to a more difficult future. Over the coming 25 or 30 years, scientists say, the climate is likely to resemble that of today, although gradually getting warmer, with more of the extreme heat waves that can kill vulnerable people.

Rainfall will be heavier in many parts of the world, but the periods between rains will most likely grow hotter and drier. The number of hurricanes and typhoons may actually fall, but the ones that do occur will draw energy from a hotter ocean surface, and therefore may be more intense. Coastal flooding will grow more frequent and damaging, as is already happening.

Longer term, if emissions continue to rise unchecked, the risks are profound. All of this could take hundreds or even thousands of years to play out, but experts cannot rule out abrupt changes, such as a collapse of agriculture, that would throw civilization into chaos much sooner. Bolder efforts to limit emissions would reduce these risks, or at least slow the effects, but it is already too late to eliminate the risks entirely.

You can reduce your own carbon footprint in lots of simple ways, and most of them will save you money. You can plug leaks in your home insulation to save power, install a smart thermostat, switch to more efficient light bulbs, turn off the lights in any room where you are not using them, drive fewer miles by consolidating trips or taking public transit, waste less food and eat less meat.

Perhaps the biggest single thing individuals can do on their own is to take fewer airplane trips ; just one or two fewer plane rides per year can save as much in emissions as all the other actions combined.

If you want to be at the cutting edge, you can look at buying an electric or hybrid car, putting solar panels on your roof, or both. If you want to offset your emissions, you can buy certificates, with the money going to projects that protect forests, capture greenhouse gases and so forth.

Some airlines sell these to offset emissions from their flights. You can also buy offset certificates in a private marketplace, from companies such as TerraPass ; some people even give these as holiday gifts. In states that allow you to choose your own electricity supplier, you can often elect to buy green electricity; you pay slightly more, and the money goes into a fund that helps finance projects like wind farms. Leading companies are also starting to demand clean energy for their operations.

You can pay attention to company policies, patronize the leaders, and let the others know you expect them to do better. In the end, though, experts do not believe the needed transformation in the energy system can happen without strong state and national policies. So speaking up and exercising your rights as a citizen matters as much as anything else you can do. In the best case that scientists can imagine, several things happen: Earth turns out to be less sensitive to greenhouse gases than currently believed; plants and animals manage to adapt to the changes that have already become inevitable; human society develops much greater political will to bring emissions under control; and major technological breakthroughs occur that help society to limit emissions and to adjust to climate change.

Some technological breakthroughs are already making cleaner energy more attractive. In the United States, for instance, coal has been losing out to natural gas as a power source, as new drilling technology has made gas more abundant and cheaper; for a given amount of power, gas cuts emissions in half. In addition, the cost of wind and solar power has declined so much that they are now the cheapest power source in a few places, even without subsidies.

Unfortunately, scientists and energy experts say the odds of all these things breaking our way are not very high. The Earth could just as easily turn out to be more sensitive to greenhouse gases as less. Global warming seems to be causing chaos in parts of the natural world already, and that seems likely to get worse, not better.

So in the view of the experts, simply banking on rosy assumptions without any real plan would be dangerous. They believe the only way to limit the risks is to limit emissions. Agriculture of all types produces greenhouse gases that warm the planet, but meat production is especially harmful — and beef is the most environmentally damaging form of meat. Some methods of cattle production demand a lot of land, contributing to destruction of forests; the trees are typically burned, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Other methods require huge amounts of water and fertilizer to grow food for the cows. The cows themselves produce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that causes short-term warming. Meat consumption is rising worldwide as the population grows, and as economic development makes people richer and better able to afford meat. This trend is worrisome. Studies have found that if the whole world were to start eating beef at the rate Americans eat it, produced by the methods typically used in the United States, that alone might erase any chance of staying below an internationally agreed-upon limit on global warming.

Pork production creates somewhat lower emissions than beef production, and chicken lower still. So reducing your meat consumption, or switching from beef and pork to chicken in your diet, are moves in the right direction. Of course, as with any kind of behavioral change meant to benefit the climate, this will only make a difference if lots of other people do it, too, reducing the overall demand for meat products.

That is actually hard to say, which is one reason scientists are urging that emissions be cut; they want to limit the possibility of the worst case coming to pass. Perhaps the greatest fear is a collapse of food production, accompanied by escalating prices and mass starvation.

It is unclear how likely this would be, since farmers are able to adjust their crops and farming techniques, to a degree, to adapt to climatic changes. Such changing conditions put our agriculture, health, water supply and more at risk. The crops get more flooded and damaged than they did half a century ago. Every rise in warming is worse for the planet than the last. It's not too late to slow the pace of climate change as long as we act today.

With your help, we can attack this challenge. Every day more than 60 people sign up for news and alerts, to find out when their support helps most. Will you join them? Read our privacy policy. Since the above-mentioned report was written, these patterns have not changed. This temperature increase we are seeing now is also having a devastating effect on other environmental factors which will continue to see our climate carry on with the unprecedented rise.

Our environment is now in a period of rapid change. The webinars that have been produced are aiming to give property professionals this baseline understanding of climate change, impacts and policy that affect us all now and in the future. Username or Email Address.