Global Warming Facts

From rising sea level to increasing frequency of hurricanes - the evidence exists in plenty. Surprisingly though, we are trying our best to turn a blind eye towards the fact that Earth is getting warmer, and this warming is threatening our basic existence. The evidence mentioned below are perhaps the best possible examples to claim that global warming is happening and it's going to affect us sooner or later.

Climate Change
The increasing number of hurricanes is perhaps the biggest evidence of climate change induced by global warming. More importantly, a look at the data of the last 10 years shows that summers have been warmer and winters colder than usual. In fact, 11 of the last 13 years feature in top 25 warmest years on the planet. These variations in global temperatures are also causing droughts, floods, heat waves, cold waves and changes in the precipitation patterns around the world. The rise in global temperatures also mean that certain disease carrying insects, which thrive in warm climates, will spread to newer regions on the warm planet, thus propagating the spread of the diseases they carry.

Extinctions
The list of animals extinct in the last 100 years include mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects as well. A large number of this extinct animals were wiped off the planet due to sudden change in temperature levels and loss of habitat due to climate change. One such example is the Monteverde toad, endemic to the tropical rainforests of Costa Rica. It became extinct in 1989 as a result of unusually warm climate, wherein sudden evaporation of water bodies killed all the tadpoles before they matured. Another example of an animal fighting for its basic survival against the odds of global warming is the polar bear. Melting ice caps is resulting is loss of habitat for these bears, forcing them to migrate further north towards the pole.

Effects on Humans

The hazards of global warming haven't yet started to affect us directly, but the indirect effects have already started to surface. Basically, all the things on the planet are related to each other, and therefore the effects of global warming are also interrelated. We humans are most dependent on nature, which we have been exploiting continuously over the years, so any alterations in nature are bound to impact us either way. Crop failure induced by climate change will leave us without food. Extinction of tigers will increase the number of herbivores, which will feed on the vegetation cover, and loss of vegetation cover in turn will impact the rains as well as the ground water source.

Global warming induced sea level rise and melting glaciers are bound to disrupt the fresh water supply, thus leaving us with no water to drink. Rise in sea levels will also submerge coastal areas and tiny islands. More importantly, most of the prominent cities in the world are located in the coastal areas. Submerging of coastal areas of Bangladesh, sinking of Maldives islands, flash floods in the Himalayas, etc., are just some