Global Warming Causes and Solutions

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The planet earth is in serious jeopardy due to global warming. The polar ice caps are melting at an astonishing rate. Severe flooding and droughts are creating havoc around the world. All nations must begin to address, formulate, and implement the necessary solutions to reduce global warming before it becomes irreversible. Developed countries can drastically reduce the emission of green house gasses (GHG) which are destroying the ozone layer by reducing the destruction of rainforests, switching from electric generating power plants that are burning fossil fuels, to electricity generated by wind technology, and reducing the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from vehicles. Rainforest once covered fourteen percent of the earth’s surface. Today this figure has shrunk to six percent. Approximately 1.5 acres of rain forests are lost every second throughout the world. Rain forests play a fundamental role in local and global weather conditions through the absorption and creation of precipitation. A rainforest can generate as much as eighty percent of its own rainfall through transpiration. Each canopy tree in a rain forest can transpire as much as two hundred gallons of water per year; this equates to approximately twenty thousand gallons of water transpired into the atmosphere for each acre of canopy trees (“Structure”). Rain forests can receive anywhere from eighty to four hundred and thirty inches of rain in a year (“Structure”). These magnificent forests act as sponges absorbing precipitation and then later releasing it into the atmosphere. When forest cover is totally stripped, rain rapidly runs off the barren ground into streams creating massive flooding conditions down stream, devastating villages, cities and farmlands. Th... ... middle of paper ... .... NASA. “New NASA Map Reveals Tropical Forest Carbon Storage.” Works Cited N.P., 31 May 2011. Web. 19 Nov. 2011. ---. “NASA Spacecraft Provides Direct Evidence – Smoke Inhibits Rainfall.” 5 Oct. 1999. 99-101. Web. 26 Nov. 2011. “New Report: Power Plants Emit Three Times the Pollution of All the Nation’s Cars.” Environment America. 24 Nov. 2009. Web. 27 Nov. 2011. The Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Impact Zone-Amazon Rain Forest. N.P., n.d. Web. 20 Nov. 2011. “Structure of the Tropical Rainforest.” Mongabay. N.P., n.d. Web. 21 Nov. 2011. “U.S. Emits Nearly Half World’s Automotive Carbon Dioxide.” Washington DC.: Environmental News Service, 28 Jun. 2006. Web. 25 Nov. 2011. “Wind.” Greenpeace. N.P., 16 Mar. 2006. Web. 7 Nov. 2011. “Wind Energy Today and Tomorrow.” Windustry. N.P., 2011. Web. 22 Nov. 2011.

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