By Lubna Abdel-Aziz Are you feeling the heat? Not the normal excessive heat of the mid-summer months, but the general atmospheric global heat that seems to increase from year to year! It is probably not too obvious to you, but it certainly would be if you were a polar bear. As winter sets in over Northern Canada, polar bears travel South after spending the summer playing on the Arctic, a journey they are accustomed to take annually. On November 1988 they came to an unprecedented halt on Hudson Bay. The water on Hudson Bay had not yet frozen and the stranded bears had to wait six weeks before they were able to continue their journey to their hibernation grounds. While you may think nothing as significant as this has happened to us, think again. The reason you have not felt the difference is because the Earth's surface has warmed by only about 1 Fahrenheit in the past 140 years, because of the "greenhouse effect". The greenhouse effect is caused by increasing levels of certain gases in our atmosphere. The worst offender is carbon dioxide (CO2) a natural by-product of animal and plant life. CO2 is produced mainly by us, as we continue to burn excessive amounts of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and oil. In addition, as we breathe, we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide and the human contribution to the atmospheric carbon dioxide is also increasing as we populate our earth. We need carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, for without it, the sun's heat would radiate back into space and the earth would freeze. But as this carbon dioxide blanket becomes thicker, too much heat is trapped. We release more than 400 thousand million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year in the air. Between 1968 and 1989, the world's average temperature rose 0.08 Celsius, and by the year 2050 computers predict an additional rise in temperature of about 2.5 Celsius, which may seem rather insignificant, but not to scientists. Their overall consensus is that we are faced with a threat to our very survival. What are we doing about it? Or rather why do we need to do anything about it? The gradual, but potentially disastrous warming effect of the Earth's atmosphere that has been increasing since the industrial revolution has already wreaked havoc on the human race. Nature's ecosystem and Earth's stratosphere. Plants and animals have shifted their habitats northward. It is predicted that the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free during the summer months, a development that would push Polar bears, ice-dwelling seals, and some sea birds to the brink of extinction. Actually we need those gases that are responsible for the greenhouse effect. Without them heat would escape back into space and the Earth's average temperature would be a lot colder. Some scientists fear that we are getting more than we need, and that the increased heat would make any life on our earth unbearable for humans, plants and animals. What is wrong with a little extra warmth anyway? According to the World Meteorological Organisation the 1900s was the warmest century in the last millennium, and the 1990s the warmest decade, with no apparent significant change to our planet. Not so fast! Is the increasing number of hurricanes, droughts, dry heat-spells, intense rain, and severe weather events in the past decade a direct consequence of global warming? Professor James McCarthy of Harvard asserts that "weather records are being set all the time now. We are in an era of unprecedented extreme weather events." With sea levels expected to rise due to climate change, Hollywood folk have taken notice. Their grave concern was expressed in several features, the most recent, The Day After Tomorrow (2004) written and directed by Roland Emmerich. The film depicts the catastrophic results of global warming including multiple hurricanes, tornadoes, tidal waves, floods, and the beginning of the ice age. Says Roland Emmerich: "It is not just science- fiction, but something that is very real." Paleoclimatologist Dennis Quaid tries to save the world from the inevitable disastrous effect of global warming as the polar ice-caps melt overnight, pouring huge amounts of fresh water into the oceans and unleashing a super storm that brings with it a new ice age. Janet Sawin director of Worldwatch Institute comments: "climate change is already happening now, not the day after tomorrow." Climate changes could drive a million species to extinction by the year 2050. Many of us are unconcerned, including many scientists. While one quarter of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today comes from human activities, power plants, factories, cars and lorries, it also enters the atmosphere quite naturally when we breathe, when plants decay, or when volcanoes erupt. In fact our breathing releases 10 times more carbon dioxide than the burning of fossil fuel. Studies have shown that cycles of atmospheric warming and cooling have occurred numerous times before the Industrial Revolution. The dire predictions of global warming consequences have all happened in the past. What about the Cretaceous period some 140 to 70 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the land, when the CO2 in the atmosphere was five to 10 times higher and the average temperature four to seven degrees Celsius warmer? Trees flourished within the Arctic circle and the global sea level was 200 metres higher than it is today. These conditions were not a hindrance to life, since they permitted such immense creatures to find an abundance of food and survive. The Earth has also been immensely colder, the CO2 less plentiful, and the sea-level much lower. 15,000 years ago, the sea level was at least 90 metres lower than it is at present. No grass grew, just shrubs, bushes, and moss grass. The animals were different too. Back then there were woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, cave bears (all three now extinct), bison, wolves, horses, and herds of reindeer like modern- day reindeer. Whether CO2 is the guilty one or not, there is a concentrated effort to reduce it. The Kyoto Treaty is bent on reducing the levels of CO2 but some scientists are convinced that the level of CO2 in our atmosphere is near its historic low. In the long run the greatest danger is too little rather than too much CO2. There has been a long term reduction od CO2 throughout the 4, 5 billion year history of the Earth, and if the trend continues, our planet they fear, may become as lifeless as Mars. What we should fear is glaciation which has prevailed for 90 per cent of the last several million years. Extreme biting cold, icycold, too intense for seaside holidays, bikinis, mini- skirts, or Victoria's Closet. Their scenario seems even scarier than what global warming scientists dream up. Global warming a catastrophe? It is rather an ice age that would be disastrous. Those scientists hope Antarctica will melt, followed by Greenland. They hope the sea levels will rise. They glorify the heat, "Only death prefers the icy fingers of endless winter!" With both scenarios before us which do you choose? If we must be destroyed, should it be by heat or cold, fire or ice? What a choice we are faced with! We march on into the third millennium as best as we know how. Are we to give up our automobiles, planes, trains, ships and ride horses or walk on foot from here to there? Give up our factories, industries, heaters, air- conditioners, microwaves? Are we to rub two stones to make our tea and cook our food? What about textiles? Give up our clothes, fashion, furs? We can conserve, preserve, maintain, control, economise, change, dust, tidy, polish, and then what? What happens to our lifestyle? Let those who know best, politicians, scientists, and others, guide us. We can only go forward and hope for the best!
