Global Warming - Have We Passed the Point of No Return?

If you spend any time at all watching TV, browsing the web or reading popular magazines, you will have seen many examples of global warming and climate change. Despite the growing amount of information freely available, many people still think of climate change as the "next generations problem" and simply fail to realise how the changing climate is already having a profound impact on our planet and indeed our lives.

Erratic and destructive weather has been on the increase for some time, by destructive weather I mean changing weather patterns that ruin crops causing starvation, that destroy homes and personal possessions, that cost people their lives. This is already happening throughout the world, not just in Africa or Asia, but in the U.S.A. All the experts agree that the main cause of these unpredictable weather patterns is global warming.

The high number of hurricanes and tsunamis really hit the headlines and there is no doubt these are destructive and dangerous. However there is a much more insidious danger in the form of subtly changing weather patterns which are gradually changing factors like rainfall distribution, average temperatures and the glacier formations. Plants and wildlife have evolved for billions of years to thrive and survive in a particular climate, now this climate is changing so fast they cannot adjust.

Many still believe that the melting of the polar icecaps is such an incredibly slow process that any potential impact will not be felt for hundreds of years. Think again! The north west passage (through Canada, Alaska, and Greenland) has always been impassible due to being ice locked all year round. Is now open to some shipping during the summer and many forecast it will be completely open in a few short years! According to NASA over half a million square miles of solid ice has disappeared since 2005! Disturbingly, rather than focus on this huge problem and how we can reduce this loss of the polar ice caps, what has actually happened is that Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the United States are now in a race to secure rights to the Arctic so they can excavate the estimated 25% of the worlds oil and gas reserves located beneath the ice! Talk about ironic, the use of oil and gas for the energy consumption of the western world and the emerging third world countries is decimating the Arctic ice cap and the first thing we think about is how to use this fact to get even more oil and gas! This does note bode well for the future.

The melting of glaciers and icecaps means that huge amounts of water are being released into the ocean. Many low lying Caribbean islands are starting to disappear already, luxurious beach villas with private beaches have now become luxurious villas with the waves lapping on the front door! Many islands will disappear completely in the next few years followed by all the coastal regions of the world.

Another effect of the loss of ice at the poles is to accelerate the effects of global warming, those vast expanses of shiny white ice have been reflecting much of the suns heat back into space for thousands of years, effectively keeping the Earth cool. Now the ice is melting the Earth is getting hotter, because the Earth is getting hotter more ice is melting - its a vicious circle which is accelerating all the time. The majority of scientists agree that at some point this acceleration of global warming will reach a critical point where even if we instantly stopped all harmful emissions (which is almost impossible) the damage will be done and we will not be able to stop the process with our current technology no matter what. The really worrying thing is that many respected scientists believe we may already be approaching that critical point, or in fact have already passed it.........