Recently, I looked at the October 2007 issue, which has a great article on growing food for fuel, and reviewed its map. The map is about our changing climate and contained some very interesting and scary facts. 

Basically, todays surface temperatures are on the rise in an extreme way. These new temperatures are only expected to heighten and will continue to do so for at least the next couple hundred years! Now there is a role of nature here… natural cycles of temperature do occur on the Earth. They are the result of variations in the Earth’s orbit which effect the amount of Sunlight we receive for warming. The problem is, this extreme change is gradual and natural and what we are experiencing right now is the same natural cycle being increased by the catalyst of human activity. 

When we burn fossil fuels like coal, gas, oil, etc., we overwhelm the atmosphere with carbon-dioxide. The problem with carbon-dioxide is that it traps heat. So far, this has caused a one degree fahrenheit (0.6 degrees celsius) spike in the average global temperature this past century. Most of this has occured in the last 30 years. Already we have seen some severe impacts such as changing rain patterns, more severe storms, melting glaciers, and a n increased sea level. 

The bottom line is that unless CO2 emissions are cut or eliminated, we are headed down a path that will change our world drastically, and probably not in a way which is beneficial to us! What we can do in the mean time is try to stay informed, try to burn less CO2 producing fuels like all fossil fuels, and push for newer, cleaner forms of energy. Greenerthinking.com will do its best to keep its readers informed in the years to come. 

-LINKS-

National Geographic magazine 
Greenerthinking.com