I know that we have had a lot of entries on global warming, but in my Natural Disasters class on Thursday my professor talked about it. There were two things that hit me pretty hard.
The first is about the earth heat cycle. Scientists believe that the earth has periods of "ice ages" and "warm ages." Right now we are towards the end of a warm age and we should in the next couple houndred of years be heading to a cold age. He explained that many politicians and people in general blame this cycle for the world's overall temperature for rising. They are true but my teacher showed us that this cycle is only to be blamed for 1/5 of the heat rise. The other 4/5 is from global warming.
The second thing that he said was the artic ice caps. Usually the ice caps in the north pole melt a little bit, then refreeze again, and this process happens back and forth through the seasons. My professor showed us a picture in which over a third, almost half, of the artic caps in the north pole have melted! I couldn't believe it and he said that NO scientist predicted it either. They say that is one of the biggest signs that global warming is getting worse and that we have to do something about it.
Before I was a fence sitter but now I'm pretty convinced that global warming is a problem and we have to do something about it.
¡Finzamos!
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2 comments:
The year in which a third of the artic ice caps melted is 1997. I just forgot to include that.
If I'm not mistaken, what has accelerated the melting of the ice caps (beyond the projections of scientists) was the fact that when the ice started melting it created pools of water on top of the ice sheets. These pools were then warmed and began melting the ice even faster, something the scientists hadn't counted on [info taken from Inconvenient Truth]. The reason I bring this up is because it's scary to think that maybe all the warnings about global warming are a 'low-ball' estimate; perhaps there are unforseen repercussions just like the pools of water.
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