Global Warming:Destruction of Human society
Destruction of Human society
Human are living in society in peacefully but there are chance of breaching of this peace.
Global warming can destroy the society of humankind.Nowadays global warming is measure issues in world.Who is responsibility for "global warming".We human is sole responsibility for global warming and not other living things like Animals & Birds.
Polar bears listed in endangered species acts,but US government limits its protection.it is very risky.if endangered specie like polar bear disappear then polar bear became world most wanted animals.The polar bear was officially listed as threatened under the U.S. endangered species act (ESA) on May 14, 2008. This the first creature brought under the act's protection for habitat loss that is linked to global warming.The official reason given was loss of Arctic sea ice and predictions that the ice will continue to decrease.Although global warming has been identified by most atmospheric and polar scientists as the main reason for Arctic warming and melting of sea ice, the U.S. Interior Department did not use man-made global warming as a reason and clearly signaled it would not apply the law to greenhouse gas emissions.
Pushing the Boundaries of Life: Alaska
The listing of polar bears as threatened under the U.S. endangered species act will name global warming as the main threat, a first. The reduction of the permanent Arctic sea ice by 14 percent since the 1970s is causing not only feeding and breeding difficulties, but also drownings and apparent cannibalism among bears. The listing should be official by the end of 2007. For more information, see Center for Biological Diversity. Scientists are just beginning to see the effects of climate change on other Arctic wildlife. Caribou give birth at specific times and locations, making them susceptible to changes in weather and vegetation. Studies show that the tundra is now blooming slightly earlier and that it is affected by drier summers and heavier winter snow.
Biologist Gus Shaver at one of his experimental plots at Toolik Lake, Alaska, monitors increased birch growth due to experimental fertilization and global warming. Shaver says the results of his experiment suggest that warming eventually will promote the growth of birch at the expense of sedges, forbs, and other plants that caribou and other wildlife favor as food sources. During an initial 15-year study (1981-95, which included the warmest decade on record) the sedge Eriophorum decreased by 30 percent while birch biomass increased, even in control plots. In 2002 Shaver reports the growth of birch has changed the ecology of tundra in some plots by covering and killing moss with large amount of leaf litter.
The great loss of ice from the Arctic, which includes not only the polar sea ice cover but also thawing glaciers and tundra permafrost, has other major implications. One of the most important is that dark open water and tundra absorb much more solar heat than white ice and snow. This is a "feedback loop" that will make changes happen faster.
Something should be done it is very danger to humankind
Before everything is finished, it is responsibility of each of us to preserve our earth from such a massive destruction .
It is our duty to save our earth.We should halt deforestation and pace towards activity of afforestation.
As our country become greenish,we can view from stratosphere that earth is greenish.
Another large effect in the Arctic is a freshening of the Arctic Ocean. In late 2002, geochemist Bruce Peterson of the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole, MA, and his collaborators in the US and Russia, showed that the major rivers of Siberia and Eurasia are discharging much more water now than in the 1930s. This not only meets the predictions of an effect of climate change, but indicates the scale of change affecting the Arctic.
In late 2002, geochemist Bruce Peterson of the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole, MA, and his collaborators in the US and Russia, showed that the major rivers of Siberia and Eurasia are discharging much more water now than in the 1930s. This not only meets the predictions of an effect of climate change, but indicates the scale of another source of added fresh water into the Arctic.
So what is happening to all this fresh water from increased river flow, melting glaciers and shrinking sea ice? It mixes into the Arctic Ocean and the less salty Arctic water flows south around Greenland, to the source of some of the greatest ocean currents.
U.S. Global Change Research Program summarizes climate changes in the United States in a
June 2008 report.
This report, "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States," spells out in great detail what global warming has already caused across the continental states (Alaska and Hawaii are of course included, and show how these American states are affected by important shifts in Arctic and Pacific island climates). The report is available at the government climate website.
The summary here is taken directly from the report and should dispel any doubt that the U.S. has already been changed by increasing atmospheric temperatures. The nation has a huge stake in lives, buildings, agriculture and ecosystems being damaged enormously if heat-trapping greenhouse gases are not curtailed very rapidly -- here and around the world.
1. Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced.
Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years. U.S. average temperature has risen more than 2 degrees F over the past 50 years. This observed increase is due primarily to human-induced
emissions of heat-trapping gases.
2. Climate changes are underway in the United States and are projected to grow.
Climate-related changes are already observed in the United States and its coastal waters. These include increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the ocean and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alterations in river flows. These changes are projected to grow.
3. Widespread climate-related impacts are occurring now and are expected to increase.
Climate changes are already affecting water, energy, transportation, agriculture, ecosystems, and health. These impacts are different from region to region and will grow under projected climate change.
4. Climate change will stress water resources.
Water is an issue in every region, but the nature of the potential impacts varies. Drought, related to reduced precipitation, increased evaporation, and increased water loss from plants, is an important issue in many regions, especially in the West. Floods and water quality problems are likely to be amplified by climate change in most regions. Declines in mountain snowpack are important in the West and Alaska where snowpack provides vital natural water storage.
5. Crop and livestock production will be increasingly challenged.
Many crops show positive responses to elevated carbon dioxide and low levels of warming, but higher levels of warming often negatively affect growth and yields. Increased pests, water stress, diseases, and weather extremes will pose adaptation challenges for crop and livestock production.
6. Coastal areas are at increasing risk from sea-level rise and storm surge.
Sea-level rise and storm surge place many U.S. coastal areas at increasing risk of erosion and flooding, especially along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, Pacific Islands, and parts of Alaska. Energy and transportation infrastructure and other property in coastal areas are very likely to be adversely affected.
7. Risks to human health will increase.
Harmful health impacts of climate change are related to increasing heat stress, waterborne diseases, poor air quality, extreme weather events, and diseases transmitted by insects and rodents. Reduced cold stress provides some benefits. Robust public health infrastructure can reduce the potential for negative impacts.
8. Climate change will interact with many social and environmental stresses.
Climate change will combine with pollution, population growth, overuse of resources, urbanization, and other social, economic, and environmental stresses to create larger impacts than from any of these factors alone.
9. Thresholds will be crossed, leading to large changes in climate and ecosystems.
There are a variety of thresholds in the climate system and ecosystems. These thresholds determine, for example, the presence of sea ice and permafrost, and the survival of species, from fish to insect pests, with implications for society. With further climate change, the crossing of additional thresholds is expected.
10. Future climate change and its impacts depend on choices made today.
The amount and rate of future climate change depend primarily on current and future human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases and airborne particles. Responses involve reducing emissions to limit future warming, and adapting to the changes that are unavoidable. For more on that, please see the Actions page on this website.
Pushing the Boundaries of Life: Mid-latitudes
The myriad creatures and plants with whom we share this planet are intimately tied to their habitat and zone of temperature, precipitation or ocean current. As mean temperatures rise, and climate is affected, living things have no choice but to react -- to move or adapt. On earlier pages, this Web site documents some of these changes in polar regions, where climate change is very dramatic
The same changes are at play in the mid latitudes, also. It is very clear that huge changes in biodiversity and individual creatures are happening now -- and many are accelerating.
In the past few years, scientists have published a large number of studies showing strong correlations between climate change and animal and plant range changes. The latest of these were published in the IPCC reports of 2007, based on peer-reviewed journal studies going back to January 2003 and 2004 in the journal Nature.
In one of the largest of these far-reaching peer-reviewed articles, an international group of scientists has predicted that by mid century up to a third of land plants and animal species may be pushed close to extinction. The study, "Extinction risk from climate change," measured the responses to current change and habitat limits of 1103 species in many habitats, and found that climate change is "...likely to be the greatest threat in many if not most regions." The scientists wrote that these climate effects and the damage being caused by over-grazing, over-fishing, and over-use of the planet are “strengthening the hypothesis that the natural world is experiencing the sixth major extinction event in its history.”
Nature also published an analysis of studies of more than 1,700 species indicating significant range shifts averaging 6.1 km per decade towards the poles. It reported that natural springtime events are occurring earlier by 2.3 days per decade in the late 20th century. A second analysis of 143 studies shows a significant impact of global warming is already discernible in animal and plant populations.
The IPCC review of changes to ecosystems and human habitations (see this website, section "About Global Warming") looked at over 650 studies of changes to the Earth and its inhabitants, which included 29,436 sets of long-term observations. They confirmed that effects of temperature increases are pervasive across the globe and that, in the words of Cynthia Rosenzweig, a NASA scientist who took part, “the changes have intensified.” They tallied ongoing habitat changes, landscape alterations, and loss of
biodiversity on every continent.
As changes proceed, many species will be able to shift their range or alter their behavior in response, and that is already leading to shifts in diseases, loss of agricultural production, and ecosystem alterations that affect human life. But some, perhaps many, species will
be blocked because they’ve run out of mountain or island, because potentially suitable habitat has been
destroyed, or because they can’t move fast enough. What will become of the familiar habitat associations
of Earth or the biodiversity and genetic flexibility they contain?
Unfortunately, ecosystems are unlikely to stay intact. “Communities of species do not move together,”
according to conservation biologist Thomas Lovejoy. “[Species] move individually at different
rates and in different directions.” As climate change intensifies, the life zones and ecological
associations familiar to us from introductory biology courses, represented by multicolored bands
splashed across world maps, are not going to move in synchrony. Rather, they will deform unevenly as
the plants and animals within them react in varying ways. No less than the ice shelves of Antarctica and
the permafrost of the Arctic, ecosystems worldwide are rending and disintegrating. With this, the rich
biodiversity of Earth, the flow of life that humans rely on, is threatened.
Alpine meadow and fell-field ecosystems are changing under atmospheric warming. On this site at 3000 meters in the Austrian Alps, Botanist Harald Pauli and researchers are finding plant species increasing and decreasing at different rates over a 10 year period. Essentially, the familiar alpine wildflower fields are being fragmented and rearranged. This is especially dangerous for plants forced to move upwards where there is just rock and ice, says Pauli. "We are running into a really serious loss of biodiversity." The 380 sites here were established in 1994 by Georg Grabherr, Pauli and others at the University of Vienna. This alpine research idea has expanded world wide into GLORIA - the "Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments."
The glaciers behind the scientists are an even more visible sign of global
Biologist Camille Parmesan compared old records of the Edith’s checkerspot butterfly against current habitat from Mexico to Canada and found that the insect had moved its habitat slightly north in response to climate warming. She found the level of population extinctions is four times as high at the far southern end of the range (Mexico) than at the northern. This change in a sensitive insect was predicted from the twentieth century warming of about 1 degree F. The butterfly pictured is laying eggs on Collinsia, an annual plant of Sierra Nevada high meadows. Annual plants are more affected by weather shifts, and this is one of the factors in the butterfly population shifting as climate changes the habitat of both animals and their host plants.
Dr. Parmesan later collaborated with many
European biologists and lepidopterists to
show that 2/3 of butterfly species with
long observational records had shifted
northward by from 22 to 150 miles,
consistent with temperature increases in
Europe. No butterflies were found to have
shifted to the south.
Parmesan has found many locations in
Southern France with apparently
intact food-plant habitat that no longer
have well known butterflies like the Apollo
(Parnassius apollo)..
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