GlobalWarming Awareness2007

Temperature Rising; Feeling a Bit Warm? You May Just Have to Live with it. The Pacific Northwest has got warmer by 1.5 degrees since 1900, about a half-degree higher than the global average. Since 1949, snowpack in the Cascades, a primary source of water, has declined 50%, due to unusually warm weather, which is changing the precipitation cycle. More water is falling as rain and less as snow, a natural banking system that holds the precipitation until the spring. Over the past two years, the state was hit by a severe drought. The governor declared an emergency, ski resorts closed.

Climate Change is the most serious problem we face in the 21st century. Future generations are depending on us to do whatever we can to turn things around.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, a group of over two thousand scientists, has concluded that global warming is beyond dispute, and already changing our climate. The last 30 years have seen the warmest surface temperatures in recorded history, and the NOAA has recently predicted 2007 will be the warmest year on record.

Global Warming, in brief, is the warming of the Earth. Our planet, Earth, is continually being warmed by different sources (for e.g. gases in the atmosphere, ultraviolet rays from the sun etc.) This total process of warming of the earth due to different reasons is called the Global Warming. But why do we need to be so cautious of it? The truth is that certain human activities are affecting this process in a negative way. Industries and modern factories release gases in a large amount which enter the atmosphere and stay there. They have the ability to absorb heat and also to send it back towards earth. In this way, the planet's overall temperature starts increasing. This in turn results in more diseases and more severe natural disasters thus causing thousands of deaths.