What is global warming and what are we doing about it ?

Answer 1

Long answer coming up...

WHAT IS GLOBAL WARMING?
Global warming is a long term trend during which the average temperatures across the planet increase. The earth goes through natural warming and cooling cycles and has done since it was created a little over 4.5 billion years ago, these natural cycles are Natural Global Warming.

In the last 200 years temperatures have been rising much faster than can be attributed to natural events and the view is that this unprecedented rise is caused by human activities, something called Anthropogenic Global Warming. Often when people refer to global warming it's actually anthropogenic global warming that they mean; to avoid confusion it's important to distinguish between the two.

WHAT ARE WE DOING ABOUT IT?
Instead of going for the obvious answer I thought I'd approach it from a different perspective and mention some of the 'behind the scenes' plans that are currently being considered:

1) Human Volcano
Volcanic eruptions emit large quantities of sulphur dioxide which blocks out some of the heat from the sun. Following the massive eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 the average global temperature fell by 0.5°C. One proposal is to simulate natural volcanoes by firing pellets of sulphur into the upper atmosphere where the particles of sulphur will reflect back some of the solar radiation.

2) Sulphur Blanket
Nobel Prize winner Professor Paul Crutzen has put forward a scheme which, like the Human Volcano, uses the principle of sulphur to block out some of the suns rays. Professor Crutzen's idea is to launch rockets into the stratosphere (10 to 50km above Earth's surface) and release one million tons of sulphur. This radical plan could have drawbacks including an increase in acid rain and damage to the ozone layer. At low levels sulphur dioxide is a toxic gas and in the past was emitted in large quantities from factories; ironically the Clean Air Acts which reduced industrial pollution removed much of the cooling sulphur dioxide from out atmosphere.

3) Solar Mirrors

The US National Academy of Sciences has proposed a scheme that would involve positioning 55,000 gigantic mirrors in space. Each mirror would be 100 square kilometres in area and the effect would be to reflect some of the sun's heat energy back into space. For the time being neither the technology or financial resources exist to enable such a scheme to go ahead.

4) Global Sunshade

A similar scheme to the space mirrors idea involves placing a giant sunshade in orbit between the sun and Earth. British astronomer Roger Angel has proposed creating such a shade some 1.5 million miles from earth, at the point where gravity from the sun and the earth balance. His sunshade would consist of 16 trillion individual glass discs, each one microscopically thin and weighing just one gram. On board each disc would be a tiny camera, computer and solar sails allowing each disc to align itself so as to refract light from the sun just enough so it misses Earth. Angel proposes using electro magnetically propelled launches, each one delivering a million discs into space.

5) Moving Earth

Perhaps the most ambitious of all schemes so far proposed is one to actually move planet Earth into a different orbit. It has been estimated that if Earth were 1.5 million miles further from the sun then the reduced heat energy received from the sun would compensate for anthropogenic global warming. Dr Ken Caldiera of Stanford University, an opponent of geoengineering, has calculated that the energy required to move the Earth this far would be the equivalent of 5 quadrillion hydrogen bombs (5,000,000,000,000,000).

6) Cloud Seeding

Cloud seeding isn't a new concept and is one that has been tried with some success as a way of bringing rainfall to dry areas. One variation on this theme is to launch a fleet of self propelled vessels to sail the world's oceans and spray a fine mist of sea water particles into the atmosphere. Marine Stratocumuli clouds form over much of the world's oceans and they're particularly effective at reflecting sunlight back into space. Professors John Latham and Stephen Salter from the UK believe that by increasing the number of such clouds, enough heat from the sun can be reflected back into space to offset global warming.

7) Artificial Trees

A school science project provided the inspiration for Professor Klaus Lackner's concept of using artificial trees to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Air passes through the device and hydrogen sulphide absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, each 'tree' could remove 90,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year. The carbon dioxide would need to be permanently stored and the professor believes this could be achieved by drilling holes thousands of metres deep into porous rock beneath the oceans; the CO2 would be injected into the holes where it would permeate the surrounding rock.

8) Phytoplankton

Phytoplankton are microscopic marine plants, invisible to the naked eye but visible from space as blooms of green ocean. Like all plants they photosynthesise - taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. Increasing the quantity of phytoplankton will result in more carbon dioxide being absorbed and when the plants die they sink to the ocean floor taking the carbon with them. Professor Ian Jones of Sydney University advocates that by using nitrogen rich urea to enrich parts of the oceans low in phytoplankton their numbers can be significantly increased.

Answer 2

Greenhouse gas emissions (primarily CO2) in our atmosphere have risen significantly over then last 100 years, and it is trapping in solar heat and raising the global mean temperature. This has been caused primarily by the increased burning of fossil fuels.

What are we doing about it? Not as much as we probably ought to be doing about it, but at least the major industry leaders have started to come around finally about the significance of the impact if the rate of increase continues at this pace for another 20-50 years.

The good news, however, is that the technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to safe, sustainable levels that do not adversly impact huge populations already exists, so it's more of a matter of implementing existing technology in a more affordable, scalable manner.

Answer 3

global warming is the uncontrollable disapearance of the atmosphere, which eventually causes the planet to heat up. it is caused by the over-production of carbon dioxide and other unhealthy pollutions that are put out into the air. when the atmosphere becomes thinner, it lets more sunlight shine onto the planet, making the air warmer. as the air gets warmer, it melts the ice caps, which will eventually raise the surrounding sea level. for the past thirty or forty years, al gore has been trying to tell people about the affects that are being carelessly performed by ourselves. his new movie, "an inconvenient truth", tells of what he has been trying to get across for many years, but in a much more dramatic way. it is a great movie, and every body that reads this should take my advise and go rent it.

Answer 4

Global Warming is a serious issue with the temperatures warming on the planet due to emissions of greenhouse gasses...
and what are we doing about it???
SQUAT!!!

Answer 5

ask AL GORE and be snowballed with BS