ONE of the following Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

ONE of the following - Essay Example It is still possible to mitigate, avoiding the worst. The scientific community has offered specific recommendations to governments, but the question is whether politics are going to listen to the recommendations of scientists. Thus, we are going to discuss the challenges that global warming presents to both governments and businesses. First of all, it is necessary to mention that global warming is a tremendous challenge to the whole humanity. To date, the global scientific community has received the irrefutable proofs of the secular trend of global warming, which serves as an indicator of climate changes on the Earth. The surface temperature of the atmosphere has increased by 0, 74 ?C over the past century. Average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were higher than in any 50-year period in the last 500 years during the second half of the twentieth century, and probably is the highest in the last 1300 years. Thinking about consequences of global warming, Weart (2003) stated that widespread phenomena, such as rising sea levels, melting glaciers and polar ice sheets (particularly in the Arctic), the reduction of snow and ice covered areas of the earth’s surface, the increase in rainfall in some regions (the eastern part of North and South America, Northern Europe, North and Central Asia ) and a decrease in others, the expansion arid zones (Africa, South Asia, part), more frequent tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic, etc. are connected with global warming. Global warming and climate change affect the condition of many natural ecosystems in some ways, and thus, they have an impact on climate conditions in the biosphere as a whole, the biosphere conditions of human existence. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which includes up to 2500 experts from 130 countries, stated in the Fourth Assessment Report, which was presented in 2007, that global warming is an undeniable and already irreversible fact. The IPCC projected that by the end of the XXI century, if current trends continue to develop, surface temperature can rise to the most accurate estimate on 1,8-4,0 ? C (different scenarios), but likely, a greater value will have a place - from 2,9 to 6,4 ? C. This will entail an increase in climatic ‘shocks’ and disasters, such as more frequent and extensive flooding, flooding of low-lying coastal areas in one regions, drought and desertification in others. The changes, in turn, will lead to a reduction in agricultural productivity, especially in arid zones, water resources depletion, a dramatic reduction of biodiversity, and a spread of dangerous infectious diseases due to worsening conditions of the existence of a huge mass of people, especially in the poorest countries and to general regression in human development throughout the XXI century. Arguing the problem of global warming some researchers declared that the Industrial Revolution has changed the lives of mankind for the better, but the annual e missions of carbon dioxide and other gases that cause a greenhouse effect, has grown considerably at its very beginning. Billions of tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases accumulate in the thin protective layer of the Earth. Nowadays, the concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere are half as much again as before the Industrial Revolution. Discussing the challenges that global warmi