Rising Global Warming and Its Causes

Abstract

Global warming will not only be felt many decades from now—it is already happening and its impacts are clearly visible. This paper gathers examples from the peer reviewed scientific literature of recent impacts around the world. These include increases in extreme weather events, rising sea level, disappearing glaciers and polar ice, damaged coral, changes in wildlife distributions and health, and increased activity and abundance of disease vectors. Although a direct link to global warming is difficult to establish for some of these phenomena in isolation, the multitude of changes collectively provide clear evidence of the immediate and growing danger that global warming poses to the economy, human health, and the ecosystems upon which humans and other species depend. Since greenhouse gas pollution stays in the atmosphere for decades or centuries, humanity may have no more than a decade left to begin stabilizing the climate to avert devastating and irreversible impacts.