global warming?

Question

I need to write a research paper about global warming...Any good ideas/websites for me ??? ;) thanks

Answer 1

There are numerous sources of information on global warming. The best place to start is at a school library. It is best to go into your research and study with an open mind. Remember, the Earth has gone through a lot of changes over the time. Many of these changes had occurred well before the great industrial revolution and even well before humans are believed to start making as great of an impact as many believe they are doing today. I’m am glad to see that someone like you to have decided to find out for themselves what global warming is really about. My advice is to make sure you not only to research both sides of the issues, but to see if global warming is really true, what positive and negative impacts it would have on the planet.

As a meteorologist for almost two decade, my expertise is mainly on short term weather forecasting. However, in order to do short term forecasting , you really must try to understand the earth climate. I’ve read a lot on global warming and I have seen a lot of politics that has been mixed into some of modern studies of climate change. So I think it is important to keep an open mind, read both sides, research the possible negatives and positives, and try to stay away from the politics of this important issue. Oh, don’t forget, the Earth has gone through a lot of changes over time. It is amazing how mother nature has kept it in balance with or without its human inhabitants. At least so far…

If your finish your paper and still have not come out with a strong conclusion on either way, I would not worry about it. Many of the papers still don’t. That is why there is still a lot of people in my profession that has not taken a side to it and also why the debate still continues to be so heated.

Good luck. When you do finish your research paper, please post a link to it. I would love to read it.

Answer 2

One excellent place to begin is your local newspaper or if you wish you can go on-line to the Washington Post.com or New York times or other papers and use their archive search features using global warming as a keyword. This will give you everything that has been printed in the paper for whatever period of time you specify. In these articles you will find references to the most current research results, who the researchers are, where their results have been published, and so on. You can then retrieve the original publications through your library if so desired. I heartily recommend this approach over a reliance on doing a web search. All too often what we find on the web is not well documented, incorrect citations, and questionable conclusions. I would go to the web only to do the newspaper archive search. You will find tons of info in the larger newspapers.

In conducting a quick search, I dialed up washingtonpost.com, went to the bottom of the page, and typed in "global climate change" in the search box. The search came back with 161 results in the past 60 days alone together with short abstracts on each article. You may click on any of these to retrieve the entire article. This is a quick and honest way to do your research and it will be easy to document, with dates, authors, article names, and newspaper.

Answer 3

Very good answers above. Another aspect is 'what is the place in the Earths natural system of CO2?' It is a basic plant food. Along with water and sunlight using chlorophyll, it makes into cellulose. CO2 is heavier than air. It is instantly absorbed and used by growing plants. It also is instantly absorbed by water. The colder the more is absorbed. CO2 has been added to greenhouses to see the effect. It made the plants grow faster and more lush. It was not possible to maintain the elevated CO2 levels without constantly adding more CO2. Experiments at UCDavis in California. Further, land plants , trees,grasses, are on less than 15% of the Earth's surface. Take out the polar areas and deserts. Water covers 85% of the Earth. Water and snow absorb CO% instantly. It then goes into a buffer system which allows unlimited storage of CO2. The ocean plants use CO2 and in warmer weather the CO2 is released as it is used. Trees and grasses only use CO2 in the day light in the summer. So at night and in the colder seasons no CO2 is taken up by plants. So land plants can only use CO2 about 2% of the time. A minor carbon sink compared to the oceans.
The one area that CO2 cannot be removed from efficiently is the upper atmosphere. If fuel is burned above 30,000 ft it may be a significant issue. JET engines burn 1-5 tons of kerosene per hour. Each ton of fuel burned produces 3.66 tons of CO2 1.56 tons of water. There are thousands of hours of JET traffic above 30,000 ft each day over the earth. It takes time for the CO2 to drift down to earth. For the last 40+/- years the JET traffic has been increasing, along with CO2 according to Al Gore.
Perhaps the Jet is the primary source of the 'human contribution' to GW.
Another troubling issue is the bulk of fuel burning is in the Northern Hemisphere. The weather masses of the northern and southern hemisphere do not mix to a great extent. And yet the South Pole is said to be melting as fast as the North Pole area.

Answer 4

in case you opt for to receive provide funds for climate study, do you imagine that you receives a cheque in case you're saying," i elect the provide, as i imagine that i visit tutor that the figures that the present paradigm is depending upon are incorrect" ? the finished environmentalist, David Bellamy, has been silenced, and refused airtime. there continues to be no shown causative link between the quantity of Co2 contained in the ambience, and a upward push in international temperatures. The WWWF images of the polar bears swimming were taken contained in the Arctic summer; even as the ice cap partly melts, as they couldn't get up to image contained in the iciness. The ice become too thick! The East-Anglian uni study figures. "Oh! The figures do not journey our expectancies. Oh properly. save quiet. because all of us understand that we are accurate." even as the perception, and the religion is extra major than squarely dealing with the valid doubts of a great number of non provide-supported scientists, technological expertise has been superceded via religious zealots. As Oliver Cromwell colourfully suggested." I pray thee, contained in the bowels of Christ, evaluate that thou mayest be incorrect."

Answer 5

C_C follow "1ofSelby's" lead and you will find all the information "Trevor" presented you with.
It is important to state fact when writing a research paper, "1ofSelby's" gave you good solid advice.

Answer 6

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v1/n2/global-warming

Answer 7

SHORT ANSWER:
The world has been warming up for a long time and everything suggests it will continue to do so for some time yet. How much of this is natural and how much is man-made is open to debate. There is also debate about how much warmer the world will get and what the effects will be. The consensus is a rise of 2 to 4 degrees Celsius over the next century. This will cause sea levels to rise due to the melting of polar ice caps which in turn will lead to massive human displacement, there will be a shift in weather patterns, more extreme weather, some species will become extinct, others will flourish.

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LONG ANSWER:
Within the scientific community there's much debate about global warming and amongst the many questions raised there are three fundamental ones. One question concerns how much global warming is attributable to human activities and how much is natural, the other two questions are - by how much will the temperature of the earth rise and what will be the consequences.

The planet goes through it's own natural warming and cooling phases. The most recent ice age was the result of a global cooling. About 18,000 years ago the earth entered a state of global warming, the temperatures started to rise, the ice melted and the temperatures have continued to rise ever since. There have been warmer and cooler periods but the general trend has been one of warming. No-one disputes this.

One thing that is being disputed is the effect mankind is having on global warming. But before coming to that, a slight digression as it's important to know that it was about 150 years ago with the advent of the Industrial Revolution that we started burning large amounts of fossil fuels (coal back then) and created machinery and factories that produced substantial quantities of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.

Using science and technology we can get a pretty accurate picture of the climate over the last 650,000 years and a general picture stretching as far back as 542 million years. In the last few hundred years there are detailed weather records we can refer to.

Using this information we can plot a graph showing the rise in temperature up to say 1850 - prior to the Industrial Revolution. This shows an upward trend that we can project forward and see how temperatures would have increased of their own accord.

If we then compare this graph with one showing what has actually happened since 1850 there is a marked difference. Rather than a steady and predictable increase there has been a much sharper rise in temperatures, the difference between the two being in the order of 2 to 3 degrees Celsius. In some parts of the world the rise has been greater and in others it has been lesser.

There are some people who would dispute that mankind has contributed to global warming. They may genuinely believe this to be the case but unfortunately this can not be backed up with any evidence. One of the primary arguments being that the world is warming of it's own accord; this fails to explain why the world has warmed up so much faster in the last 150 years and fails to take into account that the speed at which the temperatures have risen is directly proportional to the levels of industrialisation.

There are corporations and governments who would prefer that global warming wasn't happening. There is a lot of misinformation and what can only be described as propaganda produced by such people. Don't forget that the tobacco industry adamantly refused to accept that smoking was bad for health until just a few years ago.

So... it's an established fact that the world is warming up, something no self-respecting scientist disagrees with. It's also fair to say that man's contribution to global warming to date has been a rise of between 2 and 3 degrees.

Where it gets much harder is predicting what will happen in the future - there's a huge number of factors to be taken into consideration. There’s been substantial research undertaken around the globe by a wide range of institutions. Some of the research is more reliable than others, some of the conclusions are clearly biased and have been produced by people with a vested interest one way or the other.

Often in science the subject in question is specifically the realm of one or two scientific disciplines, global warming comes under the umbrella of many disciplines including climatology, oceanography, geography, biology, meteorology, hydrology and demography. These many branches of science have each studied global warming in different ways, approaching it from different angles, looking at different causes and possibilities. The conclusions are unanimous in that it will continue and mankind is very much to blame. There is however, variability in how things might change in the future.

The most detailed and recent reports predict global temperature rises by the end of this century of between 1.4 and 4.0 degrees Celsius, the worst case scenario being a 6.4 degree rise.

The temperature rises to date have already had serious implications and recently the world bore witness to the first climate refugees when a group of Pacific islanders were forced to evacuate their islands because of rising sea levels. In Siberia one million square kilometres of permafrost (permanently frozen ground) is breaking up and turning into mud and lakes. In mountainous regions glaciers have retreated further than they’ve ever been known to retreat before and large sections of the polar ice caps are melting and crumbling into the sea.

One common error that people make is to confuse weather (short term) with climate (long term). When it's bitterly cold outside and heavy snow is falling it's easy to dismiss global warming and one could be forgiven for prophesising global cooling. Such events are short lived and of little significance to global trends over a long period of time.

As for what will happen in the future? The temperature will continue to rise, firstly because the world is in a warming up phase of it's own accord and secondly because mankind is contributing to climate change; those who have studied global warming are more or less unanimously agreed upon this. Just how much it will warm up by - well, we'll have to wait and see what the future holds but it does seem safe to say that it will certainly be by 2 or 3 degrees, possibly more.

So what will the effects of global warming be? To date we've seen the effects mentioned above, on top of this there has been more extreme weather in recent years than since records began. In Europe 11 of the hottest years on record have occurred in the last 12 years, in the US 5 of the hottest years have been in the last 7. 2006 is the hottest year on record beating the record set the previous year, 2007 may well be another record breaking year. Good news for those who like to top up their tan or enjoy a beer and barbecue.

And in the future? The polar ice caps will continue to melt which will in turn cause sea levels to continue rising. So far this hasn't had a dramatic impact but a rise of just a few feet will be enough to see many coastal areas inundated with water. Major cities such as London, New York and Miami which are at or very close to sea level, will see large areas lost to the sea unless enormous construction projects are able to protect them with levees.

Some countries won't have the resources to protect their towns and cities and the inhabitants will be forced to relocate. Millions of square miles of agricultural land will be lost. Parts of Asia and Africa will be hardest hit.

There will be a shift in weather patterns, like we've seen in recent years but more so. For some this will bring benefits but for others it will bring hardships. Areas of barren wasteland will become fertile and could be used agriculturally but at the same time there will be desertification of fertile areas. New areas suitable for habitation will be formed but at the same time some areas will become uninhabitable. Some places will become wetter, others drier, some will become hotter, others colder. Extreme weather conditions including tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods will be more common - we've already witnessed an increased frequency of such events.

Some plants and animals will have to adapt, others will become extinct. At the same time others will flourish and this may be a good thing or a bad thing. For example, increased grain production would be beneficial but more swarms of locusts would be detrimental.

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When discussing climate change there are many people who will say that mankind is not responsible, it’s a government excuse for raising taxes, there is no evidence etc.

It’s easy to understand this approach – to acknowledge global warming is to admit to being part of the problem and it’s human nature not to want to shoulder responsibility like this. It’s also disconcerting to realise that we may have to make sacrifices and adapt our comfortable lifestyles in order to address the problem.

The concept of global warming isn’t new, it was first discussed about 100 years ago but back then the mechanics weren’t understood. Even now there’s much still to be learned and each time we discover something new it reinforces what we’ve already learned and adds another piece to a very complicated jigsaw.

An interesting point to note is that the numbers of people who dispute mankind’s contribution to global warming is rapidly diminishing. In the face of growing evidence more and more people are accepting that we are at least partly to blame. In countries where global warming has been on the agenda for decades there’s almost no dispute at all and that includes countries where the government has had no involvement, there have been no tax rises and where there’s no advantage in refuting or accepting the evidence.

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Climate change is something I've observed, researched and studied for about 20 years - long before it became a buzz word. I've worked with people on both sides of the fence - the pro's and the anti's, I've read thousands of papers and must have heard every argument for and against many times over. I hope you find the above response to be factual and informative, even if it is on the long side.

Answer 8

fightglobalwarming.com