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The Warmest Year on Record - Editorial |
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Does the weather around the world seem different this season?
According to the Washington Post, the last 10 years has been some of the warmest in history, and the last ~7 years have been the most warmest years in all of recorded history, in turn. Just a few weeks ago, Australia received temperatures so abnormally high that the country had to add black to it's temperature categorization.
The U.S Midwest is a region used to grow crops by the thousands each day. This involves wheat, vegetables, fruits, and, oh, maize(or corn). Corn is a grain that is widely used in almost every packaged food item. With our "rapid" and "busy" lives here in the U.S, getting packaged foods seem to be the easiest, quickest, and cheapest form of food. With so much demand, farmers are rushing to get corn to manufacturers.
As previously stated, 2012 has been the warmest year in recorded history. Temperatures have been so high that farmers cannot do anything about their wilting grains. In fact, some farmers have even given up and have sold their farms.
Another thing is water. The Mississippi River has become so dry that water flowing from the Missouri River have been pumped to be redirected there. With lesser and lesser fresh water, crops cannot be grown and, in turn, we will have limited food(unfortunately, we already do).
So why is this occurring and why hasn't it been stopped?
As you probably learned in school, Global Warming is the worldwide occurrence of the Greenhouse Effect. If you've forgotten, the Greenhouse Effect is a process in which greenhouse gases, such as Carbon Dioxide, absorbs incoming radiation and, in turn, re-radiates in all directions. This is not to be confused with Global Climate Change which is the natural, cyclic occurrences in the Earth's atmosphere that allows more or less radiation to be exposed on the Earth.
With the increasing amount of industries popping up through out the globe, more and more radiation is being re-radiated throughout.
Humans, naturally, refuse to talk about the negative even if the negative is the reality. Humans, naturally, refuse to talk about the reality. They are so caught up in their egocentric life that they are not seeing what needs to be physically adhered which, in this case, is Global Warming and it's problems.
My generation is especially egocentric. Despite the fact that we(my generation and the coming ones) are to be the most heavily impacted by this apocalypse-like circumstance, we never regard anything but our petty forms of entertainment such as gossip, vexatious music, and greedy media-leading television. We are not the only ones to blame, however.
Political leaders worldwide, from my observations, do not talk about this increasingly obvious issue. It's controversial, really, and it will only cause more debate between parties that don't even have a firm stand on the problem.
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In the coming future or, more specifically, 90 years from now, temperature is expected to increase by a staggering 4 to 11 degrees, water level is expected to increase by 54 inches, and atmospheric Carbon Dioxide concentrations could reach up to 800 ppm if we refuse to address this issue. Though hard to say, it may not be too late to resolve it... we just need to act as a global society and prevent this disaster from occurring.
Sources:
Statistics: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/future.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/globe-experiences-10th-warmest-year-on-record-in-2012/2013/01/15/47ac0002-5f3a-11e2-b05a-605528f6b712_blog.html
 oTobias · Tue Jan 15, 2013 @ 10:28pm · 2 Comments |
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