Global warming is one of the most dangerous challenges that all of humanity has ever faced. Its multiple effects will cause disruptions in everything from natural habitat to drinking water and food supply. And even more dangerously, it will give birth to some of the most powerful natural disasters ever known to mankind.

In 2004, the Tsunami in Asia displayed an unforgiving act of nature. Less than a year later, across continents in the United States, Hurricane Katrina delivered a blow of equal magnitude. Both the disasters caused massive humanitarian crisis, effecting hundreds of thousands of lives. These might not have been directly caused by global warming, but it certainly paints a picture of thing to come.

In India, the speed of cyclones in the Andra Pradesh region has jumped from an average of 150 kilometres per hours to 250 kph within just six years! And while some cities are at a risk of being washed out, other are at the risk of drying up.

Global warming will cause parts of the world to be very fertile for a period of time but simultaneously, it will also cause droughts in other parts. Scientists have estimated that as much as half a million people in Asia could face starvation within the next 30-40 years at this rate.

But it’s not just these devastating disasters that hint towards what’s happening with our weather. Summers are becoming hotter by the year, and this winter Ski resorts in Central America, Europe and the United States all lost business because it just hadn’t snowed like it used to even last year! For the first time in over a hundred years, Central Park in New York saw no snow in December 2006.

With global warming, “extreme weather” or “freak weather” is becoming a part of daily life. June and July alone has witnessed massive floods in the UK and parts of the United States, while in other parts of the United States heat has caused dangerous forest fires. And this week, the west coast is expected to hit temperatures in triple digits!

There is little argument that global warming is real and it causes changes in our weather pattern. Every week, scientists find more startling and disturbing evidence to support this fact. And the scientific community is trying everything from simple steps to cut carbon emission en masse, to designing colossal artificial air purifiers for earth. This time, it’s for the sake of our planet.

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In 2008, the effects of the rising sea level will be more obvious than ever, as global warming moves to the forefront of international concern. Especially, to the United States who has seen disaster.

When Hurricane Katrina hit the coastal city of New Orleans in 2005, the world watched with horror the devastation it created in an American city. As global warming continues, unforeseen levels of natural disaster will become increasingly common, while erratic weather patterns will plague our natural seasons. It is not a coincidence that one of the warmest years ever recorded all occurred between 1995 and 2006.

And scientists predict the rest of 2007 and 2008 will be even hotter. The extreme levels of carbon emissions released by human activities have reached all time high, a shocking 379 parts per million in 2005- the highest amount ever in the last 650,000 years! No wonder heat is getting trapped at incredible rates in our atmosphere.

So what does all this mean? As the earth’s temperature continues to rise, our natural reserves of ice caps and glaciers continue to melt. Scientists are already alarmed at the unprecedented rate at which the world’s frozen bodies are melting, from Greenland and the Antarctic to the glaciers of the Himalayas.

As more ice sheets and glaciers melt, more water gets added to the seas and oceans around the world, increasing their level in general. But it is also natural for water to expand upon warming. So not only will the sea levels rise, its waters will in fact take up more space as it heats. The large ice sheets have also traditionally worked as reflectors of the sun’s heat. But as the size of these sheets gets smaller, instead of reflecting the heat, it begins to observe it and melts ever faster.

Of course, this a disaster for the world’s ecology, it has already forced Polar bears to become an endangered species, but just as devastating for humans too. In India, scientists have already recorded an annual rise in sea levels at a rate of 3.14mm in Bay of Bengal, and as much as 10mm in the Khulna region of Bangladesh. It’s the same case in coastal towns and cities across the world. Its evidences have become clear in the US too. While the edges of Mangroove forests are already dotted with submerged forests in the Bermuda, as much as one third of the marsh at Chesapeake Bay’s Blackwater Natural National Wildlife Refuge is gone!

Major cities like San Francisco, Manhattan, to Mumbai are all at risk. Increasing sea levels will not just mean loss and erosion of land, but also more frequent occurrences of super hurricanes such as the one that drowned New Orleans or cause the Tsunamis of 2004.

Another humanitarian crisis that could be caused by the rising sea level is that they will also create an acute shortage of fresh water reserves on land. Scientists have confirmed that at this rate the Himalayan ecology in South Asia will now almost certainly face extreme floods followed by extreme droughts. And hundreds of millions of people in the region will experience water and food shortage.

When global warming was first discussed, it seemed like the consequences would be in many life times later. But today, within our own life time, the possibility of witnessing the havoc cause by global warming and the rising sea level has become distinctly clear.